If that’s true then James over at Gibbous Moon should be down right flattered. Some how it had never occurred to me to quit using my personal twitter account to post updates to my blog. James did this a few days ago, so I figured I should give him credit. aDLaaDS will now be posting updates to @ADLAADS on Twitter.
In terms of Systems/OS’s I’ve used to some degree or another, I think the list goes… Continue reading
An interesting article over at CNNMoney.com has found that only 27% of Twitter users are active. Their definition of active is people who have at least 10 followers, follow 10 people and have posted at least 10 times. Well with those criteria I’m a verbose barely active user with my 11 followers, 13 followings, and 250+ tweets. Continue reading
I just finished reading The Hawk and the Dove by Nicholas Thompson. It’s an account of the lives of George Kennan and Paul Nitze, who were two of the key figures for the American’s during the Cold War. Kennan developed the fundamental theory of Containment (The Long Telegram/The X Article) and Nitze was involved with the militarization and arms build up that defined the Cold War (NSC-68).
The book is written in a great style that tells these gentlemens’ story without feeling like a drawn out history text book. I highly recommend it for anyone who has an interest in the Cold War.
Recently while at a nearby tavern, I saw Guinness 250 on the draft imports list. I asked the waitress what it was and she had no idea but went off to ask the bartender. She came back and told me that it was a lighter stout and tastes more like Guinness does over in Ireland.
It looks like the Nintendo Power Glove has been updated for modern computer gaming. A company has released a new glove based computer interface. It offers 30 unique command interfaces which even for a game such as World of Warcraft should be more than enough. I still see risks of things such as miss clicked commands which can lead to entertaining foibles during fights. I should see this combined with a touch screen as a great improvement over the current mouse/keyboard interface.
Hopefully this will be the beginning of more advanced computer interfaces options meeting the retail market at a more reasonable price point.
James over at Under a Gibbous Moon caught this Newsweek Article about the potentially oldest human built temple in Turkey.
This got my dusty old history brain rumbling again.
Honestly I’m not all that surprised that they’ve found an earlier temple. One of the interesting things about the neolithic era and the transition from hunter gather to agricultural society, is that it wasn’t a singular event but more like the ebb and flow of the tides. Tribes of humans settled down tried to become farmers, sometimes it worked and other times it failed. The temple is in the region where the known ancient near east civilizations were founded. Sumeria was only a few hundred miles away further down the Fertile Crescent. Granted that was 2-3 thousand years later, but just a hop, skip and jump away 
I don’t agree with Schmidt’s closing statement that the temple was buried and forgotten because the religious views of the region changed and they didn’t need the old gods anymore. If we look at other examples of religious changes in regions… The Roman’s adopted much of the Greek pantheon and just gave them new names. The Turks in Turkey and the Moors in Spain converted Christian churches into mosques. They did this because it gives the new religion continuity and a longer history by absorbing the previous religions of the land in question. The Islamic crescent moon has been a religious symbol in the Near East going back to the Sumerian era.
I think he is giving an overly simple answer to what may be a large part of this temple’s history why after a millennium of use did the hunter gatherers stop meeting here, what happened to change this region?
James over at “Under a Gibbous Moon” sent this too me. “Study: Rumors of Written-Word Greatly Exaggerated“ finds that the amount of reading we do each day has increased since the 1960′s.
Recently my father loaned me a guide book on skiing- the book is Skiing Skills by Rüdiger Jahn and it was written in 1980. While this normally would seem a rather random attempt to refresh my memory on skiing, since Katie and I are planning on slipping in a few trips this year it was actually a very nice gesture. The first thing I noticed was how well the book was built. It’s held together very well for nearly 30 years. The second thing I noticed was how wordy it was. This made me think about how so many trainings and how-to guides that have been created lately rely heavily on images and videos with minimal words.
Earlier this week Katie went in to the doctor with most of the symptoms of H1N1. Thankfully it turned out to just be a run of the mill upper respiratory viral thing. What floored me was what the doctor said off offhandedly. H1N1 has peaked and is already on the way out. I guess I must have missed the memo. Continue reading
