Virtual Keyboards Approach Reality
Now this article is even better! Can't wait to try one of these out....
Virtual keyboards may change all that. Three competing companies—VKB of Jerusalem, Israel, Canesta of San Jose, CA, and Virtual Devices of Pittsburgh, PA—are selling products that use lasers to project an image of a full-sized QWERTY keyboard on a flat surface. Optical sensors then track the user’s finger movements and translate them into keystrokes on a screen. The owner of a mobile gadgets equipped with such a keyboard....
VANCOUVER -- Riding high after U.S. states rejected measures to relax drug laws, drug czar John Walters came to Canada this week to talk tough about a new front in the drug war.
Marijuana poses a greater danger to the United States than heroin, cocaine or amphetamines, said Mr. Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, in an interview yesterday in Vancouver.
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Honestly, I can't believe what that man says sometimes. Is he really so brainwashed that he believes all of this hogwash??
ABCNEWS.com : Lawyers Claim Big Macs Make Kids Fat
Alright, that's it, I give up. Lawyers are the most annoying people alive. What they hell are they thinking anyway, other than $$ that is.
Ok, hold the presses because I have a solution:
Kids don't eat so many Big Macs. Parents, you should know better than to let your kids eat that crap so often. I mean, geez oh petes -- do you really think that crap is healthy? Once in a while, you're in a rush, sure....that's why they call it fast food
Lawyers, you should be ashamed of yourselves...you know it's really for the money. You claim health of the kids I'm sure, but come on. Do you really enjoy broadcasting the message that it's OK for parents to not take responsibility for their kids?
Annoying, as I said.
Maxtor Corp. upped PC storage with a 250 gigabyte hard drive that offers 33 percent faster data transfer than current drives. The $400 device can store 62,500 songs, 250 hours of compressed video or 250,000 digital pictures.
What was that you said 15 years ago? What will we *ever* do with 20mb of storage?!
Scientists in Rockville are to announce this morning that they plan to create a new form of life in a laboratory dish, a project that raises ethical and safety issues but also promises to illuminate the fundamental mechanics of living organisms.
J. Craig Venter, the gene scientist with a history of pulling off unlikely successes, and Hamilton O. Smith, a Nobel laureate, are behind the plan. Their intent is to create a single-celled, partially man-made organism with the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain life. If the experiment works, the microscopic man-made cell will begin feeding and dividing to create a population of cells unlike any previously known to exist.
Fla. Sinkhole Kills 2 Horses
SANFORD, Fla. (AP)--A 50-foot-wide, 30-foot-deep sinkhole destroyed a barn, killing two horses despite rescuers' desperate efforts to save the second one Friday.
Bob Bonwit had returned home from his nursing job Thursday night and was walking to his barn to feed carrots to his horses when he discovered the sinkhole had engulfed the barn. "I nearly stepped into it,'' Bonwit said. "The whole world was wrong.''
The horses were at the bottom of the pit, which was filling rapidly with groundwater. By the time Seminole County sheriff's officials and other fire-rescue personnel had arrived, the older horse, Jack, 17, had drowned.
The other horse, 13-year-old Magic, was perched atop the dead horse, barely keeping its nose above water.
Rescue workers were able to place a harness around Magic's body early Friday morning and tried to lift him out of the hole, but his back legs were stuck in the mud. He eventually died.
Bonwit's house is close to the sinkhole, but authorities could not say if that structure was in danger.
Sanford is 19 miles north of Orlando.
Sinkholes occur when sand beneath the surface begins to erode and falls into underlying limestone cavities, causing the surface to collapse. Several factors may contribute to the collapse, including drought, excessive water pumping, traffic, construction or heavy rain.
The geology of Florida makes it especially vulnerable to sinkholes, although they also are found in Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
...i tried REALLY REALLY hard not to find this funny. i didn't succeed.
good new cds:
*coldplay, "a rush of blood to the head"
*the flaming lips, "yoshimi battles the pink robots"
*underworld, "a hundred days off"
*the rolling stones, "forty licks" (i'm gonna have to pick this one up soon)
find and listen!
What's everybody's favorite remedy for a sore throat?
Amazon.com: Segway Human Transporter -- First come, first served for delivery starting March 2003
Order your Segway now from Amazon! Who will be the first kid on the block to get one? It'd be a lotta fun.....
ABCNEWS.com : Leonid Meteor Shower to Be Last for Century
If it's clear in your area tonight, step outside and take a look! It may be the last great show until 2099!!
i really need to get my head screwed on straight. actually i need to go write my art history paper. no, i want my mail to start arriving so i don't feel like my friends have abandoned me. well - maybe i want to go back to sleep since i couldn't last night from all the excitement and too much caffeine. no, i think i'll go buy a sottotuta so i don't freeze in the cave this weekend and i look cool like the real speleologi. ...no, i was right with the first two. paper, then head. oh and then class. eew. this blog could be fun though. i'll be back later.
As most of you know, Dave Murphy is a good friend of mine and a great musician. He's recently released a new CD titled Chasing Ghosts which really brings out some of Dave's new songs with a great acoustic feel.
Dave Murphy's Official Website
With his new LP, Chasing Ghosts, Murphy again takes the indie approach, sculpting every song his way, with the help of co-producer and New Jersey native, Marc Muller. A gifted multi-instrumentalist and performer, Muller has been a member of the Shania Twain Band since 1995 and was a member of the popular, New York based band, The Surreal McCoy's. Over the course of his career, Muller has worked with the likes of Spencer Davis, Branford Marsalis and Tommy Shaw.
On Chasing Ghosts, Murphy brings twelve new songs to the table, and presents them the only way he knows how - simply and honestly, with a whole lot of heart. Muller crafts a sonic masterpiece, instilling Murphy's songs with a new energy and dimension. The duo also enlists the talents and contributions of top-notch musicians, including guitar wizard David Hamburger (Freedy Johnston, Chuck Brodsky, Jack Hardy), drummer-percussionist Graham Hawthorne (Paul Simon), and veteran troubadour Steve Forbert, who lends his voice to a guest appearance on Murphy's song "Quarter Moon Missing".
Some quotes about Dave's music:
About Under the Lights (his debut album):
Performing Songwriter selected Under the Lights as one of its prestigious “Top 12 Picks” in its December 1999 issue. Neil Fagan, of Performing Songwriter, describes Murphy’s work as eloquent and illuminating.
Chris Smith, of Twin Cities Revue (April 29, 1999), called Under the Lights “a tight, focused album that delivers everything it promises” and dubbing Murphy “a musical Raymond Carver”. Smith adds that, “Murphy taps the raw nerve so many struggling songwriters can’t seem to find . . .”
If anyone wants to be notified of updates to this site, just let me know and I'll add you to the auto-notify list.
One of my current favorite bands -- and they're from NJ. A super blend of bluegrass and acoustic rock...these guys really know how to bring it all together.
If they're ever in your neck of the woods, you should definitely check them out.
Railroad Earth Official Website
Bird in a House - the latest CD by Railroad Earth
The Black Bear Sessions the debut release by Railroad Earth
WOW! Woody Norris and American Technology have introduced a device called Hypersonic Sound.
Purpose: To deliver sound to a certain location....kind of like a focused speaker. Apparently he can point the device at you from up to 150 yards away and transmit the sound to you, but if you step out of the beam, you won't hear a thing. Amazing.
How does it work? A piezoelectric transducer (read fancy speaker) emits sounds at very high frequencies - about the 20khz that we can hear. These high frequencies don't spread out as they travel through the air. Yet, they still interact with the air to induce a set of ultrasonic waves - that combine with the original waves and make an audible signal. All focused into a beam.
Current price: $600
Stock quote: ATCO
Longer article at Popular Science
Check this out, VKB has introduced a "virtual keyboard".
Basically it's a small gum-pack sized device that projects a laser-light keyboard outline onto any flat service. When you type on it, it senses your hands and the keystrokes. Sweet for any small or portable device....PDA, Cellphone, Tablet PC, etc. Should be integrated into products at around $150.
The owners said that over the last 30+ years, technology has been improving at an insane rate....except for the input devices we use. Keyboards are virtually unchanged. So why not apply some of this new tech to and old technology -- pretty cool. I'm seeing visions of Minority Report type controls here.