KleffmanStyle: August 2005 Archives

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Tuesday August 30, 2005

I had a great encounter with that fun little happy animal today, and my arm is currently on fire. Sweet.

Hurricane Katrina Images & Video

Monday August 29, 2005

A Welsh View has a growing collection of links to coverage of the hurricane. If you're tired of the same boring news on CNN check out all of this for sure.

Hurricane Katrina Videos

Posted at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)

Winning Poker While You Sleep?

Monday August 29, 2005

CptPokr is a robot. Unlike the other icons at the table, there is no human placing his bets and playing his cards. He is controlled by WinHoldEm, the first commercially available autoplaying poker software. Seat him at the table and he will apply strategy gleaned from decades of research. While carbon-based players munch Ding Dongs, yawn, guzzle beer, reply to email, take phone calls, and chat on IM, CptPokr (a pseudonym) is running the numbers so it will know, statistically, when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

Wired 13.09: On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Bot

Posted at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

Saturday August 27, 2005

So I've been hearing a lot about this so-called "National Don't Buy Gas Day" on September 3rd. It goes by other names as well, maybe "Gas out" or numerous other ones. Of course this sounds like a great plan. Hey we think we pay too much for gasoline, lets really stick it to those bastards. Guess what, it doesn't work.

It turns out there are good reasons California has higher gas prices. Check it out:

California is the second-biggest gasoline market in the world, outranked only by the United States as a whole. (California alone consumes as much gasoline as all of Japan.)

All of the state's refineries, running at full capacity, cannot meet California's one million barrels per day consumption, requiring the importation of more expensive product to meet consumer demand.

Since 1996, California has required a cleaner-burning formulation of gasoline which is produced at few refineries outside of California.

The four largest oil refiners in California produce almost 80% of the gasoline supply, and the six largest refiners operate about 85% of the retail gasoline outlets.

Now of course oil companies can manipulate things a little bit by determining how much gasoline they produce, where it gets sold, etc. But they don't have any power to change simple supply and demand. If people are buying more gasoline prices go up, and vice versa.

Imagine now that we all don't buy gasoline for 1 day. This is the plan right? Does that mean they're gonna lose 1 single dime? I'll give you a hint: no. It simply means we're going to wait an extra day before buying the same amount of gas we already would have been purchasing. If you want to really screw over the oil companies then I suggest you don't buy anymore gas EVER, and sell your car. And that goes for everyone that owns one. Is this gonna happen? I'll let you figure that one out.

But hey - don't let me ruin your fun. Wait till September 4th to fill your tank. That'll teach em!

Some facts collected at snopes.com, mixed with a whole lot of pure common sense

Posted at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)

Google Messenger

Tuesday August 23, 2005

Let me be (not) the first to say I really hope that tomorrow Google releases a messaging client. Honestly name something Google does that sucks. If they go through with this like the rumors say they will I very well may uninstall AIM.

update: it's out...not that great, but I'd like to try the talk feature out a little more. It's a clean interface like I expected though.

Posted at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)

Bulletproof iPod

Monday August 22, 2005

Coolest iPod mod ever.

A Couple Interesting Stories

Friday August 19, 2005

India launches 'healthy beer'

Wild orgies leave the Great Wall in mess, and tears

I think my friend may have been at this thing on the great wall, and I'm not kidding. He's living in Beijing right now...

{via}

Posted at 01:49 PM

The Paper That Started Google

Friday August 19, 2005

"The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," the original research paper written at Stanford that started it all. 5 or 6 years later their stock will roll you for almost 300 a share. It's a great paper.

Read Google Paper

-- Thanks, Chris

Posted at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)

KidsBeer

Thursday August 18, 2005

Leave it to the Japanese to market a beer for kids, obviously without alcohol.

"Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink," reads the product's advertising slogan.

Posted at 03:33 PM | Comments (0)

$5 Gas By 2006

Thursday August 18, 2005

CHICAGO, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- An oil expert and author who correctly forecast $3 per gallon gasoline in the United States this year says the price will reach $5 next year.
Craig Smith, author of "Black Gold Stranglehold," told the Chicago Sun-Times there's also a possibility the price could hit $10 per gallon if terrorists strike a major Middle East oil field.

Posted at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)

Wynn Hotel - Las Vegas

Thursday August 18, 2005

Having been inside I agree the building is incredible.

"This is one of several indoor-outdoor patios," Wynn says at the ice cream shop, Sugar and Ice. "It's part of a 5.8 million-square-foot building. Next to it is what? Thirty feet of water? And then straight up here is a 100-foot waterfall. Five to 10 thousand gallons a minute coming over the edge. That requires a big, huge gravity-fed system. A huge cavity room there with heavy engineering is in that section of the mountain -- and it's one of several. This mountain is faceted all the way around, and each section of that structure is not only a complex building that's clad with an artificial rock and hundreds and millions of pounds of real trees, the stuff on top -- the big trees -- weighed as much as 200 tons to put up there, each!"

Posted at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)

Destruction of a Surf Spot

Wednesday August 17, 2005

This makes me want to puke.

Gone:

Destroyed

Posted at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

Modded Hybrid Car Gets 250 MPG

Monday August 15, 2005

Modified normal hybrids like the Toyota Prius have been the center of research lately, and it's sounding extremely promising.

Monrovia-based Energy CS has converted two Priuses to get up to 230 mpg by using powerful lithium ion batteries. It is forming a new company, EDrive Systems, that will convert hybrids to plug-ins for about $12,000 starting next year, company vice president Greg Hanssen said.

University of California, Davis engineering professor Andy Frank built a plug-in hybrid from the ground up in 1972 and has since built seven others, one of which gets up to 250 mpg. They were converted from non-hybrids, including a Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Suburban.

Posted at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

Great Programming EBooks, Get Em

Sunday August 14, 2005

There's books about all kinds of great stuff...pain to download though...anyone have a script that'll go through and do it?

:: View ::

Posted at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

7 GHz Pentium

Thursday August 11, 2005

Someone apparently overclocked a 3.8 GHz processor to an intense 7 GHz. Looks like another liquid nitrogen cooling job from the photo. Crazy.

{via}

Posted at 02:33 PM | Comments (0)

Donnybrook Album Review

Thursday August 11, 2005

"Donnybrook bring the core, Left Coast born and full-force. And though it's not something radically influential, like their West based contemporaries in Terror, Piece By Piece, More To Pride, and Internal Affairs, it makes for one hell of a good time."

These guys are friends of friends. Unfortunately I haven't had much of a chance to know any of them. They got a pretty sweet review on Lambgoat for the new album "Lions In This Game" though, and you need to go check them out. There's a song linked at the bottom of the review.

Read & Listen

Posted at 07:41 AM | Comments (1)