Technology Aficionado
A new forest is afoot, and it is located in our front yard! This spring we had the stink pipe running from the house to the sewer main replaced. Digging up the front yard was required. This is the result:
Needless to say it isn’t pretty. Thankfully the yard replacment folk will be out this Monday to fix the situation. I mentioned to Hibbs that we should let the forest grow. Imagine: our own private forest. The possiblities would be endless! Hibbs however, failed to agree.
I’m working on moving TGR.com from the server in my basement to a host. I’m hoping to have the site back up sometime tomorrow evening. Thanks for your patience during the move!
Update: The move is now complete. I’ve got a few things to tidy up, but the core functionality is there!
If you enjoy using Firefox and are into social networking, Flock is the browser for you. Flock is built on the Firefox codebase, so you know it is solid. That being said: Flock feels a lot like Firefox, and many of your favorite Firefox extensions will work with Flock. Flock integrates with services such as: Digg, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pownce, Flickr, Blogger, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc. It also has a built in blog editor. I’ve been using Flock for a couple weeks now and find its additional features quite uselful. Flock makes it extremely easy to keep up on with my friends on the social networking sites that I participate in. I’ve even hacked Flock to work with Firefox Portable from PortableApps.com, so I can run Flock from my thumb drive. Download Flock at Flock.com.
Are you running the Aero theme in Vista? Do you enjoy the transparency effect Aero provides? Are you annoyed when you maximize a window and transparency is turned off? Well, do I have the handy little utility for you! Check out: VistaGlazz. VistaGlazz patches the following system files so that transparency is maintained while a window is maximized: ThemeUI.dll, UxTheme.dll, Shsvcs.dll, aero.msstyles.
I’ve been running this mod on my Windows Vista 64-bit installation for a few days. No longer am I annoyed with the lack of transparency while a window is maximized! Great success!
Score one for science. LS9, a company in Silicon Valley, has modified single-cell organisms that start out as industrial yeast or non-pathogenic strains of E. coli to excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready. Apparently crude oil is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids that are normally produced by yeast or E. coli during the fermentation process. This makes it easy to modify the yeast or E. coli to produce crude oil during fermentation. Anything that can be broken down into sugars can be fed to the single-cell organisms. LS9 would ideally like to use agricultural waste to feed the organisms instead of using food crops currently being consumed by the bio fuels industry. Greg Pal, a senior director of LS9, says: “Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011.”
Perhaps in the not-so-distant future we’ll all be powering our cars with bug crap… Full story.
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