Some people have too much time on their hands. But, if you're going to be a huge geek, at least be good at it. These guys are. They fly precision aerobatics in a PC flight simulator. Some cool stuff, especially the virtual airshow video that has a bunch of these geek pilots flying an airshow. It's actually really well done. Worth a few minutes. (Click the link below, go to the Links menu on the site, and choose "VFAT Aerobatics Show".)

The Virtual Blue Angels

I volunteered at the Seattle Aquarium for a short stint when I first moved to Seattle (I used to dive a lot and almost became a marine biologist instead of a computer dude.) During orientation, I heard an amazing story about how the staff were finding dead sharks in the big tank. Their tails had been torn off and their guts sucked out, leaving only the skin.

Turns out the octopuses in the tank were snaring the sharks as the the sharks swam past. Well, now, someone has caught this action on video. It's absolutely amazing and more than a little scary, especially as someone who has done night dives with octopi. Check it out.

Those octopuses are super smart. The Seattle Aquarium staff also told a story about how the octopuses adapted to having divers in the tank doing feedings. The octopuses realized that the divers were handing out food every day and wanted to get closer to the action. They quickly figured out the easiest way was to slide up the glass, slide along the surface of the water and find the air hose the diver was using, and then slide down the airhose to the diver. Apparently, the first time this happened, the visitors were watching an octopus come down the airhose toward the oblivious diver. They gestured wildly to the diver, who thought the visitors were waving at him. He smiled and waved back. All of a sudden, the octopus, now on the diver's back, reached around the diver on both sides and started grabbing at the food he was handing out. Obviously, the diver freaked out and shot for the surface. That would definitely make me hang up my dive fins.

I think it's time to declare a truce with the octopuses: we won't eat you if you don't eat us.

Thanks to TEDBlog for the link.

This video shows a cool move to fold a shirt neatly and quickly. Slick.

From TEDBlog.

The first car I owned was a 1972 BMW 2002. It was a real lemon. The engine nearly threw a rod a week after I bought it junior year of college, stranding me in California's Central Valley and costing me my entire summer internship's salary to rebuild. The ongoing maintentance and restoration of this thing cost me a lot of my first Microsoft employee stock grants which, given the run up in the stock price between 1990 and 2000, meant I spent probably $100K on that damn thing.

Still, I loved it, and I love the 2002. This legend was the lineal ancestor of the BMW 3-series and really created the category of the sports sedan. So, I was incredibly pleased to see that the BMW Mobile Tradition division is building a new 2002tii (the fuel injected version) from mostly new parts they still make for 2002 devotees. They plan to auction it off for charity next spring. How I'd love to win that! Of course, they're building the much cooler version with the round taillights. (BMW switched to square taillights and heavy bumpers in 1974 to meet US safety regulations, destroying the look of the car in the process.)

Kudos to BMW for investing in this project.

For more, check out this article from Autoweek and this one from About.com.

Thanks to Metacool for pointing me to this..

Postsecret is an amazing website that shows postcards people have sent in that have some personal secret. The cards can be quite artistic, and the secrets range from very personal and deep to funny but real to plain scary and horrible.

They only have a few cards on the site now. The archives are available in book form (which is beautifully done and a fun read/browse) as well as a travelling exhibit. A small gallery of old cards is also available here.

As a side note, I think it's neat when a blog makes the transition to the "real world" like this, but I hope the site doesn't become worthless like Belle de Jour did when she published her book Belle De Jour : Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl. (Not safe for work, btw. Also, is it required that websites that move to book form take the title pattern, "[sitename]:[tagline]"? That's like the old Microsoft naming pattern "Microsoft [category name] for [platform name]". Lame.)

Anyway, it's worth a few minutes to check out. Anyone out there sent in a postcard?

PostSecret : Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives

Forbes has published their list of the fifteen richest fictional characters.

Topping their list, Santa Claus, with a reported wealth of "infinite". The profile of Santa, however, reveals labor complaints from the elves. My favorite, of course, is Lucius Malfoy, although I'm not sure what to make of the fact that Malfoy holds Microsoft stock. I also love the quote from Mr. Burns (of Simpsons fame), "Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business."

It's a funny set of articles and profiles. Worth a read.

The Forbes Fictional 15

The List:

1. Santa Claus
2. Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks


3. Richie Rich


4. Lex Luthor


5. C. Montgomery Burns


6. Scrooge McDuck


7. Jed Clampett


8. Bruce Wayne


9. Thurston Howell III


10. Willy Wonka


11. Arthur Bach


12. Ebenezer Scrooge


13. Lara Croft


14. Cruella De Vil


15. Lucius Malfoy

Well, the title of this post will probably wind up with me getting a lot more random people drifting into this stie...

I think every person has things where they are a leader among their friends; camera/photography stuff might be such an area for me. In other areas, each person has things where they follow their friends. Music discovery is definitely an example of this for me. Throughout my life, I've always been bad at finding new music. Occasionally, I'll have a friend like Chooky who introduce a pile of stuff to me for a period (high school, in Chooky's case); there are then ice ages in my music library where I don't have anyone to draft off of.

My friend Scott is a big fan of music and is always looking for new stuff (like his recent foray into Japanese rock -- also see this post.) He's just started a series in his blog on free MP3 downloads. I like the tune in his first selection and am looking forward to hearing his next selections.

I came across this post on Diaper Free Babies on Cool Tools and found it very interesting.

Briefly, in much of the world, babies don't use diapers and certainly not the extent and duration we do in the US. The link describes the methods and rationale for diaperless babies. Like breast feeding, diaperless babies are the norm throughout history and still throughout the bulk of the world, but both have left the mainstream in the "developed" world. It seems odd to me that decreasing the bond and communication between parent and child, increasing cost, and generating mountains of garbage are considered progress. I wish I'd seen this when the kids were still in diapers (although I doubt Michelle would have gone for it...)

As a funny aside, the article talks about the shii shii sound that parents use to signal kids to pee; I totally grew up with my parents making that sound to help us get started, and I do the same with the boys. I never knew why we did this.

I've always wanted to be one of the cool kids. Still do. Well, now all the cool kids are hanging out in the Facebook. For those of you who are old and uncool like me, the Facebook is Friendster, Orkut, or MySpace for college students. Apparently, people check their Facebook pages multiple times a day, posting photos, writing on their friends' "Wall", and seeing how many friends they can link to.

So, I joined. I still have a Stanford alumni account, so I was able to sign up (you need to go to a supported school or a college affiliated alumni account.) Frankly, it's pretty much like most of the other social net websites with a few exceptions. The privacy standards are lowered so you can browse your school and/or region more easily, the community is a bit more filtered so you have hopefully fewer weirdos (like old alumni lurking), and it's easier to post and tag photos.

It's a bit odd for me on Facebook since I don't really have many friends who have Facebook accounts. I'm pretty much limited to my former interns and recent grad new hires. They've humored me by allowing me to link to them, but I think my network will be pretty small. I may go find my cousins next...

In any case, if you want to find me and link to me, I'm all yours.

This is a pretty fun distraction. There are seventy-five bands in this photo. Michelle has found about fifty so far. Just to get you started, the ones in front are Queen holding up Prince.

How many can you find?

Here's a link to the full sized image on Virgin Digital's site. There's a fun video on the site too that has song titles hidden in it as well.