Silicium is a whimsical French society with a serious goal: collecting ancient computers.
Comprising a dozen active members, along with “hundreds of sympathizers”, they organize meetings where thousands come to commune with beautiful (and hideous) old machines.
Silicium’s tenth annual exposition, Vieumikro, will be held this December 2 and 3 at the convention [...]

via
Tags: halloween costume, halloween fish, cute

I’m sorry to report that two of my friends have unexpectedly departed this world.

Second Life Sex Club, by James Deavin
They’re off to Second Life, leaving only traces behind.
Bret Fausett, the gadfly lawyer who annoys ICANN so beautifully by holding them to their pontifical pronoucements, has set up shop in the trendy otherworld by buying [...]

A thought-provoking review appeared in the October 13 2006 issue of the Times Literary Supplement:

Privileged information has been leaking into the public domain since the Reformation. During the 1530s, in England, records that for centuries been restricted legal and religious texts were transformed into historical documents… [T]hey were picked up by… the antiquarian, who [...]

How many world-shaking ideas have you had in stop-and-go traffic, meditating on those Pennsylvania license plates URLs that seem to change every year? I’ve had 53 — but I can’t remember any of them.
Enter DictaBrain.
DictaBrain gets World-Shaking Idea #54 out of your head and onto your blog (or your book, or your [...]

The Wall Street Journal today, in a long article about book publishing on the Web, completely blew Names@Work’s cover as the producer of “Pulse.” There’s a long expose, in which we are accused of doing “innovative marketing.” Take that, Red Baron!

Fisherman at sunset, Lake Victoria
Just back from two weeks in Kenya. It was sort of a vacation. Probably better than a vacation, though I had to tromp around in the hot sun with 25 lbs of photographic glass on my back. I managed to get myself attached to a paleontological expedition as [...]

Dealing with some designers is hell. I’m talking about designers who think they know what a good design is and blather on about their superior knowledge. They don’t know what good design is. There’s no way they could. They might have a better idea of what might work, but it’s just [...]

I found neat little neat little app by yet another bright guy Google hired (George Steinbrenner, you got nothin’ for stars) that lets you show where you’ve visited in the world. Here’s mine:

create your own visited countries map
It looks a little pitiful. I’ll have to visit Russia and India to get the surface [...]

Personally I find those Bluetooth earpieces one of the least attractive pieces of technology ever invented — unless you want to look as if you’ve never had sex.
So I started thinking about past identifiers of male social cluelessness, and passing by the much-maligned pocket protector I hit upon slide rules. My father [...]