March 2003 Archives

I decided on Friday that I wanted to make some fajitas this weekend, so I Google for a good marinade recipe. I found a fajita recipe that looked pretty good, including a decent chicken marinade. I picked up ingredients on the way home, trying to remember what I already had, or at least could substitute. I knew I didn't have beer, but I thought I had a bottle of hard apple cider that I figured would do well enough. So, when time came to make my marinade, guess what? No cider. What I did have, however, was guarana berry soda. Believe it or not, the fajitas actually came out pretty good.

Once a highly-respected Japanese reporter, Shun Akiba has become a journalistic pariah these days. While his book presenting evidence of the existence of a vast, secret underground complex beneath Tokyo is selling well, the rest of the Japanese media is giving him the cold shoulder.

What most concerns Shun is not the existence of this network, but why it is a carefully preserved secret. He can understand why maybe before World War II the government thought it prudent that the public remain in ignorance. "Not wanting the enemy to know, it was decided to tell no one and let the population survive as best it could."

Is there really a conspiracy to punish him for his speculations, or has the journalism community just written him off as a lunatic? [via Ars]

My computer crashed. Again. Only this time I'd already backed up the data I was so worried about last time. Which I figure has saved me form a massive I-told-you-so.

It looks like the next big thing in digital video recorders could be modularity. The newly announced TerraTec Lancaster will be composed of separate tuner, storage, and interface modules, to be connected using standard Ethernet cabling. While Gizmodo is excited by the prospect of expanding storage capacity by simply plugging in another module, I'd be interested to know if the system can support multiple tuners. As little television as I watch, there are always shows I enjoy scheduled for the same timeslot (24 and Smallville, for example); a second DVR tuner would be ideal.

Potentially losing a couple of years' worth of data can really help you reconsider your priorities.

Every now and then, digging through Microsoft's documentation turns up something... odd.

In VB.NET, the MonthName function takes an integer parameter, and returns the name of the month in question. Straightforward enough, right?

The numeric designation of the month, from 1 through 13; 1 indicates January and 12 indicates December. You can use the value 13 with a 13-month calendar. If your system is using a 12-month calendar and Month is 13, MonthName returns an empty string.

Do the boys in Redmond know something about astrophysics that they aren't telling the rest of us?

Today is payday.

The travelling computer sale comes to the St. Louis area today.

No good can come of this.

Update: In the end, I didn't do much damage at all. I picked up a newer, faster CPU at a price comparable to what I could have found on the net. Aside from that, I wasn't impressed with the prices or selection the dealers at the show had this time. Looks like Pricegrabber is the best way to find hardware bargains these days.

One of the best lists I've seen being spread around the weblog world lately (I think Kevin's was the first link I saw) has to be the Science Fiction Book Club's Top 50 SF&F Books covering the last half-century. At first count, I think I've read a little under half their selections; most of those, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to others. There's about another dozen that I keep meaning to read one of these days. Not to mention a couple that I started, set aside, and might attempt to start again if my life depended on it. Might. I was tempted to go through the list, item by item, and offer a little commentary on the ones I recognized, but it's late.

While protests against the Impending Inevitability have been making the news lately, activists for other causes have been going unnoticed. Although it occurred over a month ago, I've just now learned of the Robot Rights Protest held at MIT in January. A number of Mechanical-American celebrities turned out to raise awareness of robot exploitation, particularly the barbaric use of robots in gladiatorial competition.

The gadgets just keep getting better, don't they? Portable hard drives with built-in flash memory readers are nothing new. However, the upcoming FlashTrax looks to be the latest and greatest accessory for the digital photographer trying to travel light, combining an attractive folding design with a large LCD screen. I wish I could remember who said that all personal electronics would eventually integrate MP3 players, but this device has that base covered as well. [via Gizmodo]