furtive explorations

The sad thing here is that most pumps these days have vapor recovery systems to cut down on fuel loss. You could light a lighter 1 foot from the nozzle while it was pumping into your car and not get any effect. And really, if cell phones were regularly blowing sparks you'd already know about it from the screeching and ear rubbing.

Gas Companies and Canadian Authorities are annoyed to the point of outlawing them even though they know they shouldn't. And this quote should send shivers up your able-to-think-for-yourself spine:

Cellphones aren’t a significant safety threat at gas bars, but that there hasn’t been an explosion before doesn’t mean it won’t happen tomorrow, said John Wastle, the division’s Chief Engineer.

Nice one, lets play rewrite: "Your finger isn’t a significant safety threat to your sinuses, but that there hasn’t been an rupture before doesn’t mean it won’t happen tomorrow." Of course, trusting this stuff is easy to do. Heck, this story fooled someone at NASA into warning the staff. And, of course, some people are so bent out of shape about cellphones they will jump at any story that backs them up. Remember kids, if you truly believe something with all your heart, any story that comes along and agrees with you needs no fact checking. You already know it is true, why bother digging up sources?

Worse, of course, are sources like this one from ASSE that are confusingly written and formatted. The end result of that investigation is that static from sliding on the seat caused the fire. Further, the person whipped the hose out and sprayed flaming gasoline everywhere.

Now, think for a second, what is missing from that story? Oh yeah, the explosion! I've said this so many times in my life it has become a mantra: "If it were easy to get gasoline to explode, engines wouldn't be so complicated." Gasoline doesn't normally explode. It takes a proper vapor mix of oxygen and gasoline to get an explosion. Most gastank "explosions" are impact related. It is rare for a tank to have the proper mix and be open to a flame or ignition source. If you ever catch your gastank on fire at a station, stop the pump and swat the fire with a hat or shirt. No air in the tank means it should only burn at the top of the tank. It'll go out.

• Who will Guard the Guardians: Cops and E-mail and trouble...
• Hacker Brain Chemistry and no we're not talking caffeine here...
• Morning Zoos Cruel to Animals?
• Bush amuses vs. Milosevic's arrest. Oh yeah we got it REAL bad... =)
• Affirmative Inaction
• What up with the X-Box issue? Someone else owns the name and Microsoft just pushes ahead and uses it. Why? Well, maybe they saw the companies stock over the past few years and thought, "Screw it, they are fricking gone anyway." By the time the game console comes out, the company that owns the trademark should be completely dead...
• Fancy New Supercomputer? Or just cool software on old news?

• Quantum Ripples Test may or may not work. There, now if you don't know anything about Quantum physics theory, you just got everything that you were gonna get out of the article. Oh wait, if your last name is "Ng" it is pronounced "Eng". Two things...
• Giant Sunspot May Explode err... into a big flare. Get past the tabloid headline and there is a dang good article there. And please kids, don't stare directly into the sun. Learn to look at bright things with mirrors! =) Kaboom! the blast is on it's way! Cool!
• Oceans Goggling Up More CO₂ Than Expected which is good news for your kids and bad news for the Global Warming Chicken Little types.
• Secrets of Sight Discovered which includes graphic descriptions of Rabbit torture which is just pure bonus material!
• Clays added to plastics seem to get you better plastics if you can disperse the clay fine enough.

Anyway, not to be snotty about it, those are pretty damn good links. Hell, I may have to check out their scitech page more often. Best of all, you can get off their spam list by going to the personal config page. In my mind, it isn't spam if you can make it stop without calling your congressman...

Actually, parts of "da gang" got together and played cards. I successfully won exactly two hands of poker all night. But, they were both huge ones so I had basically as many chips as everyone else at the end...

Pop Stars will be the joke you will get sick of over the next few days, if real news doesn't intervene. Britney is to Pepsi as Christina is to _?_ should appear sometime next year on standardized tests. Also, look for Pop Rivalry to "bubble" up. We may see a pun-battle-royale as these articles go live...

Heelys are the newest personal wheeled transport fad. When skating is outlawed, only outlaws will rail-grind...

Blue-sky power idea should be fun until one breaks tether and chops its way into a school or a nunnery or something. I like the idea and the single blade fans kick ass but I just don't see whirring-bladed death 'copters as a serious energy plan.

This book is gonna cost me. I NEED it. =) James Burke's Connections series on TV and in Scientific American Magazine are true favorites of mine and I was sorry to hear he was retiring from the column. Heart-broken even. At least I'll be able to get one last hardback fix.

In this case, clearly not fucking MickeySoft since there is some terrible, terrible OLE borkage that is interfering with my bouncy-breasted musical fun. All I want is to see hi-rez rendered dancing chick on my now sadly obsolete VooDoo3 card before I junk the thing and buy a real card. And this is the sort of benchmarking that I have to try. Gar! Try it out, I think you'll be amazed that a computer can do that to the music so well.

Update: Ah Ha! And so we have an answer to the nightmareish OLEAUT32.dll borkage. It seems that M$ sucks on multiple levels. I'm sure there is some reason that this friggin plugin relies on IE to make its OLE calls and I'm sure there is some evil reason why IE relies on Visual Basic DLLs to make ITS OLE calls and I'm sure there is some reason why all this shit required a newer version of that DLL than I currently had. I just don't care enough to find out. The "cure" to my ills was to ... *dum da dum* install IE 5.5 SP1. Sigh. What a sad day when I have to upgrade my backup browser that I never use (23MB download, mind you) in order to get a 585 KB DLL that has been around since fucking 1999, WAY before the last time I fucking downloaded IE. At least, once that ordeal was over -- along with the obligatory multiple reboots (Again, remember I just installed DX8 and new video drivers which bought me 4 free reboots earlier) -- I was able to enjoy fast rendered 32bit sexy dancing goodness and all was right with the world for a few minutes. Mirror mode kicks butt too. The new dancer needs multiple skins tho, one just isn't enough...

The problem with ADD is that you never to get around to organizing little things like putting the mails you won't need in the trash or in historical folders. Historical folders are the same thing as the trash. I'd almost never find anything I put in there again. Worse, I tend to use the most recently received things in the inbox as a instant reminder. I'm mail-addicted so I never forget to check it for long.

Moz is making me real happy today, no crashes, fast as can be expected from an on the way to .9 product and doing everything I need. Plus I love the modern skin. Three "|<1[|< @22, |31@7[#"s for the whole team! err, that is "kick ass, biatch" for those who speak no l33t.

Update, well, err there is something wrong with the gif library and fast updating to the screen but it is liveable for a few days. Fricking flys vs that last build == don't care about minor glitches. Resize the window and the graphic comes back. NP.

?, the comic at ashfieldonline.com is quite good. I can't remember now why I didn't add it before...

One amazing art link: fsc's stuff is really effective. I love the long lines and Burton-esque touches. Once again my own poor talent is thrown into sharp relief.

Two amazing art link: An old favorite recently brought back to my attention, Dhabih Eng's stuff at Sijun is a major favorite from long back. I still have a couple of his earlier bits from the Quake 2 days. He has only improved from stellar to complete extra-universal. I'm running out of superlative similies he is so good. Oddly, the best thing about the site is the forums. Take that link and enjoy around 130,000 posts on art!

Three amazing art link: AntsIn3D. Cool textures, cool notes, cool renderings, and a giant copyright violation make this site worth the visit.

Seriously, the site seems thin when you first get there but Dan-fans and the band are all wacky wacky people and they have filled that server with sublime weirdness. Start clicking links and you will find that many pages lead on to other hidden sections that outline a slightly cock-eyed view of the universe. There is a minor mythology there that is quite cool. Keep in mind, these two sent a case of honey-mustard to the Rock'n'Roll HOF people to try and get on the inductance list. There are memos back and forth from their various and sundry webdrones and kidnappings and exploded sites and weird memorials. Wave the mouse over graphics and look for odd links.