The Crocodile Hunter Is Dead

It is an ironic twist of fate that Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter has died not at the hands of a crocodile or alligator, but rather from a Stingray's barb.

He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas where he had been filming an underwater documentary when it occurred. Ambulance officers confirmed they attended a reef fatality this morning at Batt Reef off Port Douglas. Mr Irwin, 44, was killed just after 11am, Eastern Australian time....It is understood Mr Irwin was killed instantly. A source said Mr Irwin was already dead when his body was brought onto the Isle.

We should be praying for Steve Irwin's wife who no doubt will have to deal with the media mob, and a number of people who will be laughing at his death, when all she will see is the passing of the man she loved.

Gas prices still dropping

Gas prices still dropping
Originally uploaded by nomad7674.

Woot! DIVX-playing DVD Player

Woot is a great little site which has tech deals every day. One deal per day, which expires at midnight (or whenever they sell out). Today's (Sunday's) deal is for an 8" portable DVD player that plays DVDs, DIVX disks, and MP4 disks, and has a built-in card reader for $89. If you need portable video and can not afford a video iPod, this is the way to go!

But you must act TODAY (Sunday). Tomorrow, Woot will have moved on to a new deal.

Yes, I literally have had this conversation with a manager

Google Image Labeler

Is it a tool or a game? Check it out and at the very worst, you will at least help Google to learn how to better rate and classify images for their searches.

If you think YOU'RE having a bad day...

"Extreme" Origami?

I enjoy doing a little (very simple) origami now and then. At my job, a lot of paper is produced and if it is not folded into something useful, then it is simply thrown out, shredded, and ultimately ashed. Well, I am amazed to see just how far some true origami experts have taken the art in their quest for greatness. It is now considered a "sport".

These days patterns requiring more than 100 steps are common. Some of that competitive acceleration is due to Lang, who transformed the art by writing a computer program that can generate the blueprint for ultracomplex origami sculptures. Even with digital assistance, figuring out the sequence of folds that will create a beetle and all its ornaments is a mathematical problem of staggering complexity. Still, the reigning champion of intricate origami is a 23-year-old Japanese savant named Satoshi Kamiya. Unaided by software, he recently produced what is considered the pinnacle of the field, an eight-inch-tall Eastern dragon with eyes, teeth, a curly tongue, sinuous whiskers, a barbed tail, and a thousand overlapping scales. The folding alone took 40 hours, spread out over several months.

Check out the article. Some of the designs shown there are truly amazing. It makes my silly little swans and balloons look even more juvenile than they are.