Man do I want one of these! How cool would it be to just adjust the mood lighting on a whim?

• IR remote can turn bulb on/off and adjust colors, transitions, brightness levels
• 4 transition effects - flash, strobe, fade, smooth
• Access to 16 specific colors (including White, Green, Blue, Red, Orange, Turquoise, Purple)
• Fits into a standard lightbulb socket
• Input voltage: AC110/AC220V, 50-60Hz
• Bulb Dimensions: 4" length x 2" dia.

Um, yeah! I just love ThinkGeek

Airzooka is the 'fun gun' that blows a harmless ball of air towards any object, person (or animal!). The airball will travel up to thirty feet and beyond...

I'm actually dangerously close to buying one of these. I played with one at the Pacific Science Center, Seattle WA a while ago and was really impressed. If I recall correctly I would have bought one but that was back when I thought I had to still act like an adult in front of my future wife. Mercifully, I was wrong. It's going to come down to this, I'm going to find something on ThinkGeek I can't live without (say a LED Light) and the Airzooka is going to make the order as well. It's not quite an order-just-that item.

I'm a web developer, and while there is a constant march of new tools and techniques that have made my life better, one thing that still tops the list is FireBug (the Firefox plug-in). Seriously, if you're developing web applications without Firebug you're working too hard.

Now, I think I may have another top 5 item. It's called Xobni (inbox backward - pronounced Zob-nee, so I can tell). I've been playing around with it for about two days now and it seems to solve really well some of the most basic outlook problems. The first and probably most annoying is the age old "I know he sent me a copy of it but where is the email". Until now I've been using Google Desktop and/or the Google Desktop outlook plug-in to do my find, usually searching on the person or something about the conversation to find a list of emails from the person. Their search results are really weak, it give me the email from the person with a from line a subject, maybe a couple lines of text and an icon indicating if there was an attachment. This approach breaks down if you're looking for something in even the semi-recent past or if there were multiple attachments flying back and forth between you and the person. You have to poke around. Xobni solves this by pulling up a file list of everything that the person has sent you in an email when you select that person when they are selected - amen.

The other problem I run into occasionally is trying to track down a phone number for someone. I'm pretty picky who I put in my contact list in Outlook but at the same time I need to find a phone number. Xobni automatically extracts phone numbers from all the email someone has sent me and displays it with a Skype tool menu. And if I have a phone number for the person in my contacts, it displays that.

Here is their little demo video that is pretty thorough:

Check it out, I'm pretty happy so far (Day 3). The Performance is good on my desktop, a little lack-luster on my laptop, but it doesn't hang up Outlook. There is a bunch more to it that I've left out and am still discovering, but I think they hit the nail on the head. I don't usually gush about stuff, but digging around Outlook has got to be one of my least favorite things ever, and this may keep me from having to do it ever again. Whoop Whoop! Give me a week or so and I'll place it in my top 5 tools of now.
hat tip to Drit for pointing it my way

Let me preface this by saying I have absolutely NO DATA support this idea, nor do I have any means to really acquire any. Let me just go further and say I have NO DATA WHATSOEVER on any subject besides what I had for breakfast. This is not an analytical piece, this is a hypothetical piece

Here is theory:
As the writer's strike continues (started November 5, 2007) the "compelling" programming available for television diminishes. This means two things about the TV watching public, there is less to watch on television and there are less people watching television because of the former. The fact that there are less people watching television is probably a bit of a farce, truly the American people will watch any crap on TV, but drip drip drip somebody is frustrated they don't have their new season of shows and may eventually turn off the television. Now, I would posit that a drop in television would very likely equal an increase in internet usage. What else is there to do but update your Facebook account, see what's going up on your favorite blog, or mindlessly surf? Since internet advertising is largely a numbers game. In display advertising more page loads = more impressions = more delivery of inventory and in text / CPC space more page loads = more opportunities to find the right ad you're going to click and when you do more $ for the site using adSense, more $ spent by the advertiser. Either way as volume increases on the internet more revenue pours into online advertising. So at what point do the advertisers and the agencies (let's call them the ad buyers) realize that television isn't reaching their demographic.

Let's talk specifically about men 18-34. Some time ago Wired magazine had an article entitled The Lost Boys (August 2004) where they looked at the difficulty in reaching males in the 18-34 range. Most telling is this quote from a Coke exec

"It's not that men 18 to 34 have stopped watching TV," explains David Raines, the Coke VP in charge of divvying up ad money. "But they're doing a lot of other stuff, too" - going online, watching DVDs, playing videogames. "The bottom line is, ad dollars will follow the consumer."

Network executives freaked at the Nielsen news, but not everyone was surprised. In the five years that Jeffrey Cole has been running the UCLA Internet Project, he's found that Net users consistently watch less TV than other people - in 2003, more than five hours less per week. This pattern has held for every age group, for both sexes, and in every country he's studied, from Hungary to South Korea. Young men are simply the advance guard. "Broadcasters used to say, Internet users are different," says Cole. "But we show that as you go online, you watch less television." Last year, when Cole did a quick survey of people who do watch TV, he found that only 5 percent of them actually paid attention to the ads anyway. "The business model of television, which is to deliver viewers to advertisers," he declares, "is as troubled as that of the music industry."

Okay, okay, so what this is an article from 2004 and some what tangential to my point. Yes, the my point is more or less a correllary to the point of the article that people are moving from TV to the web. I guess my point is, if I'm taking notice then people who are spending ad dollars and are getting Nielsen numbers for viewership on re-runs have probably long since concluded they need to find a way to reach the consumer, and my guess is online is where they are. They get the bit about the dollars following the consumers

Obviously, if this is any substance to this we're talking about fractions of a percent at this point if it's even measurable. Still, as the strike goes on fractions add up and while I'm sure we're not near the tipping point but will the reinstatement of TV really put the genie back in the bottle? While its too soon to tell what happened in Q4 and natural growth in the industry puts growth in display advertising industry in Q1-Q3 2007 up 15% against 2006 with network television down (Network TV -2.5%).

So, anyone have any numbers or research to make this unsubstantiated theory a substantiated one?

Well this actually comes from a serious article about ice melting and the rising ocean levels that might result (NYT: In Greenland, Ice and Instability) and is actually quite interesting. I jut can't get over this picture

I guess I haven't been on the radar long enough to really get a load of comment-spam. I'm sure having a non-wordpress URL helps a bit too. Initially I as using a CAPTCHA for comment entry. Well, I'm guessing that the shared (like a two dollar lady of the evening) server that is hosting my blog didn't have enough mojo to be reliably be generating and streaming CAPTCHA images, because the didn't reliably show up making commenting impossible. That was quickly ditched.

So I was left with after the fact moderation. I get an email every time a comment hits with the full text of it and two URL's in the email. One I can click to delete the comment and another to view it. This has let me get rid of the 5 or so pieces of comment spam I've gotten to date. I have neglected to use the blacklist and blocked IP functionality in dasBlog yet.

Today, I caught a post through my friend Bill's shared feed over at Bjorkoy.com called Bulletproof protection against comment spam. This reminded me that I'd seen another post about something similar over at thekindproject.com about comment spam called comment spam part ii. In that post jonk links to Ned Batchelder's post called Stopping spambots with hashes and honeypots. First of all if you don't know what a honeypot is you must look now.

Well, there is a great weath of information in Ned Batchelder's Post as well as Borkoy.com. Here are my favorite suggestions:

By watching how spammers fail to create spam on my site, there seem to be three different types of spam creators: Playback spambots, form-filling spambots, and humans.

-Ned Batchelder

Ned's piece is interesting because he focuses on using technology to counter the different approaches to delivering comment spam. Borkoy is more straight up technology.

The technique I am using, and which is working very well, is to randomise the names of the form fields.
When the form is loaded a PHP script generates random names for all the form fields and then adds a hidden element with instructions on which random form name should equal which real form name.
When the form is submitted the comment handler unscrambles the names and assigns the values. Any form fields submitted that were not included in the unscramble instructions are wiped.

-from Bjorkoy.com but apparently mentioned to him by Andrew whom I am triply removed from

Ultimately, just this evening, I have turned on the Askimet support in dasBlog and will see how this works out. My next goal is to make posting by email work. I'm aiming to be able to send in photos from my day to day directly from my phone. I see some really funny stuff in NYC and I'd love to share.

the kindproject has some posts about Manhattan's - the cocktail - but he doesn't give you a recipe. Perhaps I can spur him to divulge his. I know he's a serious drunk, let's see if he's a serious mixologist.

Let's start with my Manhattan Recipe. It's not fancy, but like anything in cooking - good ingredients = good result.:

• Bourbon - I use Bakers or Basil Hayden's or Bulleit usually. Bakers being over-proofed at 107 proof will really add a punch
• Sweet Vermouth - I generally use Martin and Rossi
• Bitters - Angonustra Bitters works fine but I especially like it with Blood Orange Bitters. If you aren't using bitters in your in your beverages you HAVE missed the boat - it adds fantastic complexity. You just can't leave it out
• Cherries - the traditional recipe is with Maraschino Cherries, but I've found these Pitted Sour Cherries in Light Syrup. I didn't order mine through Amazon, they are readily available here in Astoria, NY. Astoria is a major Greek enclave (largest Greek population outside of Greece) and sour cherries are a very Greek treat.

3:2 Bourbon to Sweet Vermouth, a dash of bitters in a shaker full of ice. Give it a good shake to put a firm chill on it and strain into a rocks glass (over rocks if you like)... Add your cherries and enjoy.

Luis keeps asking so I'm going to put it where he can always find it.

My favorite BBQ place (which will get it's own entry in the near future) is:

Fette Sau
354 Metropolitan, Brooklyn NY
Take the L-Train to the Bedford stop and walk. Sorry Luis you have to do the directions yourself.
They have good food, great atmosphere, and a fabulous bourbon selection.

My favorite two shoe stores in Manhattan are:

Jon Fluevog
250 Mulberry Street New York, NY
http://www.fluevog.com/
(212) 431-4484
Mon-Sat: 11-8 / Sun: 12-7
Fluevog has the curious distinction of being the only shoe designer I actually have two colors in the exact same shoe for. They are comfy and they look great and chicks dig em.

Gizmodo has a tidbit entitled Dr. Awkward Sings Backward... that is more or less amusing.

You gotta stick with it. It all gets explained.

You'll get a kick out of this guy's backwards singing, and he actually has a pretty good voice. Halfway through, the video is reversed, and you'll discover what song he's actually crooning. See if you can guess what the song is before the halfway point. We didn't get it until he was nearly finished with his backwards section. Great job of picking out things that look crazy when played in reverse, too. Jeez, how long did it take for this guy to learn to sing that reverse gibberish? Not to mix a maxim here, but jeez, the devil never even lived until he learned how to do that. It was worth it. After watching that, all we can say is, "Did I strap red nude, red rump, also slap murdered underparts? I did!"

This was a complete and total I'm Feeling Lucky Google moment. I was actually looking to have the phrase "we have a problem" translated into German because there is a problem in a UI I'm working on caused by the German version of a label.

Apparently there is a blog about Wii problems called Wii Have a Problem... Complete with a running count of broken parts. The post I stumbled onto was about a guy who had apparently tossed a Wii controller out a 12 story window while playing bowling

On Sunday July 23rd 2007, a Wii Remote committed suicide by launching itself through the blinds and through the window of John Doe's apartment. No one was injured as the glass and controller landed on the roof of the restaurant 12 stories below. There are now alleged reports that this may be an involuntary manslaughter case due to INNOCENT PROTECTED's fingerprints being found on the controller. The controller wrist strap broke off of the primary suspect's wrist and Wii Bowling was believed to be playing at the time of the incident. Witnesses could not be immediately contacted for comment.

This is certainly something I don't have to tell the women in the game group I'm in, but now according to a "reputable" survey of people in the UK there is empirical evidence. Or at least that's what the Wired blog network says: Female Gamers Have More Sex

Perhaps even more promising for gamers is the fact that many of the women that we interviewed who have only recently started playing games said that they now have sex more often than before.

So if you haven't all ready, get out your joy sticks now ladies.