Chewy's Blog

UUUHHHGGG-rrrrRRR!

This is too funny for words. I almost peed in my pants.

A Boom, but not a Bubble

Interesting piece in Wired 14.02: The New Boom explaining the state of internet tech companies. Suggesting the boom is back, but in a healthy way with no bubble. "Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters. Booms, on the other hand, tend to have strong foundations and gentle conclusions." He sites 3 points:

• technology adoption has continued despite the bust (e.g. broadband, iPods, digital media).
• all the investment of the 90's boom makes the economics of entrepreneurship more favorable today
• open source software and cheap hardware means start-ups can run lean and turn a profit quicker (without the need for IPO)
  

Road to Nowhere

Global climate change update. Balmy winter stings natives in Canada. Seems certain communities in northern Canada depend on seasonal roads that are built on frozen lakes and bogs each winter. The road is usually open Janurary through March. This year it has been too warm and they may not be able to build the road at all or will have to limit traffic because of thin ice. Not a problem you usually think of when you are wearing shorts in the winter...warm winter weather is just a fashion problem. For these folks it's a bit more serious.

So long and thanks for all the fish

Sad to hear about London's whale. But unfortunately, probably not too surprising. More surprising would have been if it had survived. Any whale that far away from the open water was obviously in distress. Likely distressed by something we men did.

Scientists have said fluctuating ocean temperatures, predators, lack of food and even sonar from ships can send whales astray into potentially dangerous waters.

"So long and thanks for all the fish"

Web 2.0 Hype

A funny piece on the Web 2.0 hype.

As the first properly valued “Web 2.0” properties began to find buyers, a frenzy like the old one popped hideously back to life. Yahoo spent how much? Google bought what? Here was real blood in the water.

But how to persuade the other sharks in the tank that this blood feast was different from the previous boom-and-bust? Easy: Dismiss everything that came before as “Web 1.0.”

iPod jeans

Levi Strauss debuts iPod-ready jeans - Yahoo! News

Special jeans for your iPod. Wonder if they will have different styles for different size iPods? Wonder if anybody will actually buy them? :)

Polar bears drown as ice shelf melts

Polar bears drown as ice shelf melts - Sunday Times - Times Online

Global climate change alert.

Those cute cuddly polar bears. They are drowning because the ice is receding in their habitat. This study showed that it is normal for them to swim 15 miles (up to possibly 100 miles). However when the ice receded 200 miles further north, that proved too much for some of the bears and they died of exhaustion, hypothermia, and just plain drowning.

So, what's in that Big Mac?

Well, a Big Mac has beef patties in it. Beef patty comes from cow meat.

Recently, McDonald's and other critics have come forward to say safeguards are not effective enough to prevent the spread of mad cow disease. Let's take a look at the problem. Seems there is lots of questionable stuff that goes into cattle feed that can pass along mad cow disease, including:

• cow brains and spinal columns (now removed to stop mad cow disease spread)
• cow eyeball and intestine
• other dead cow meat
• poultry litter (this is a nice way of saying chicken shit)*
• poultry blood (collected when chickens are slaughtered)*
• restaurant plate waste

The problem is that any of these can pass along mad cow disease to the cow from the cattle feed it eats and then possibly pass Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (rare but fatal) to the human who eats meat from that cow.

Ok, let's forget about the mad cow disease - Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease link and just think about the old addage "you are what you eat" and how it passes down the food chain from the cattle feed to the cow to you. Something to consider next time you bite into your Big Mac. Meanwhile I'll have the veggie burger, thanks.

[*] These items in cattle feed are particularly ironic when you think about the "Eat Mor Chikin" ad campaign from Chick-fil-A. Turns out the cows are the one's eating chicken, chicken shit mixed with some blood that is.

Bluetooth dialing with Sony Ericsson Z520a

Got myself a new toy for Christmas, the Sony Ericsson Z520a. While exploring the bluetooth features of the phone with my iBook, I was disappointed to find that the bluetooth dialing from Mac OS X Address Book did not work.

You'll find the solution here, macosxhints - Add Address Book support for the Sony Ericsson T630. Simply add an entry for Z520 as the hint describes.