I didn’t get around to reading/watching the news much yesterday, so missed this little tidbit.

Shuttle exterior was penetrated during descent: “The space shuttle’s skin almost was certainly pierced, allowing superheated air inside the left wing and possibly the wheel compartment during Columbia’s fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere, investigators said Thursday. In its first significant determination, the accident investigation board announced that heat damage from a missing tile would not be sufficient to cause unusual temperature increases inside Columbia minutes before it disintegrated. Sensors detected an unusual heat buildup of about 30 degrees inside the wheel well before the accident.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]

Abraham Lincoln. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” [Quotes of the Day]

Yes, Flash can read your mind.

This has been posted all over the place today. Pretty nifty, the power of math with a little bit of misdirection.

I’d seen mention of FOAF, aka Friend of a Friend, on a few weblogs, but hadn’t known really what it was till I started reading up on it this morning. The idea of it is that you can have a file that says who you are and who you know. Then it’s possible to make links between people. One issue I have with it is that it seems to include having your email address. With the amount of spam going around the last thing I want to do is have my email address in plaintext where anyone can just grab it. I think there is a way to store your email address encoded, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet. If I do, then maybe I’ll look into this more.

Dane Carlson has a link to an article I found interesting:

Are developers programmers or engineers? “‘The act of constructing software is, in fact, not an engineering process,’ Cooper said. ‘Engineering to me is problem-solving, which is very different from solution implementations, which is what programmers [do].’ Title inflation is endemic to the industry, he said. ‘Web designers are called programmers, programmers are called engineers, and engineers are called architects, and architects don’t seem to ever get called,’ Cooper exclaimed.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]

This is exactly the kind of thing that happened at my last job. I remember having someone there who was at most a web designer. He’d learned HTML and some ASP and that was enough to make him a ‘programmer’. The issue was that he didn’t have any real programming experience. I think a lot of his had to do with the sudden growth of the dot com world. People were looking for anyone they could get to do programming.

Ogden Nash. “Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.” [Quotes of the Day]

A week or so ago I was using up a gift certificate from “Amazon” and had a few dollars left over so picked up a copy of

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctrow. I’d heard some good buzz about it and it sounded like a pretty cool idea. This morning I was stuck in the doctor’s office for a bit and started reading it. Seventy pages later I’m hooked. Enough so that I’m probably gonna curl up in a few and read a bunch more of it.

The book takes the future, people don’t use cash for money anymore. Your net worth as a person is determined by your reputation and is counted in someting called Wuffie. The higher your score, the more valuable you are. It’s a neat concept. The main character has just moved to Disneyworld to live and gets caught up in what is looking to be a pretty interesting adventure. So far I recommend the book, it’s completely sucked me in, but I’ll be sure to post an update when I finish.

Oh, and one other cool thing is that Cory has made the book available for download. That’s right, the whole book. Personally, I wouldn’t mind sampling a bit of a book that way. But the idea of reading around 200 pages on a computer screen leaves me a bit cold. Though, I guess I could print it out. I just like the feel of a book in my hands.

Last night my friend Susan came over and I made dinner for us. I always forget how much I love cooking for people. We had pasta with this really yummy garlic and herb sausage I got from Bread and Circus, honey glazed carrots (which were also amazing), and salad. I think it all came out pretty good. And I have leftovers, including some leftover sausage that I may try putting into an omelette today for lunch.

Alfred Hitchcock. “Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.” [Quotes of the Day]

A few months back a friend of mine was raving about this manga series he found called Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. He had me download all of it he’s found and I had it off in my download directory waiting to be purused. In the meantime I’d also found two OVA episodes that had been done.

I just started reading through the manga about two weeks ago and it was amazing. I am taking my time reading through it because it is just too nice to rush. The story takes place in the future. It’s off in the country and there is a robot girl named Alpha who has a cafe. For the most part you’d never know she was a robot. It doesn’t really get mentioned a real lot in the story. But the story is just many kind of moments in time. It’s got a very peaceful feel to it and I love the art in it.

Tonight I finally took in the first OVA and it was wonderful. It fit the feel of the manga perfectly. I was so pleased. I’m going to watch the second one in the morning, but I’m already knowing I’ll want more. Luckily, they just started putting out a new OVA for it called Quiet Country Cafe. I’ll watch that one after I finish reading more of the manga.

Anyone else seen/read this?