The Evil Eyebrow

  • Happy Birthday, Evil Eyebrow!

    Evil EyebrowToday is the Eyebrow’s 2nd birthday. This entry was posted to the minute of my first blog post ever. Yay for the Evil Eyebrow!

    Since it’s its inception, I’ve bumped up the frequency of postings a bit. We’re averaging about 10 or so a week right now. That may drop because there are plans to expand on another front which would divert some of my energies. Watch this space for more details. I expect that these “other plans” will fruit sometime in the next few months.

    Well, happy birthday, blog! Let’s keep it rockin’…

  • Geocaching Travel Bug

    Once upon a time, a long long long time ago (2001) I discovered this Geocaching* thing. It sounded cool, so I bought a global positioning system (GPS) receiver and went looking for the nearest cache to me, which at the time was 45 miles away in Plainview, Texas (looking today, I see there are now 194 caches inside that same radius). I alerted some friends of mine about this thing, and a few of them took up the hobby.

    Fast forward 6.5 years. I have a grand total of eight logged caches, all but one gathered in the first year. Mdsteele47** has found 42, Jcronen has 52. Vanepa has found 203. We’re Dead have 638. Aslanspawh has found 1310! He’s a nut.

    Anyhow, one of the intricacies of geocaching is a device called Travel Bug. A travel bug is a tag that you can attach to something then place in a cache. The bug has a destination, or series of destinations, and the bug will move from cache to cache (hopefully in the direction it is supposed to go) as people find it and move it along.

    Today, the Caldwell travel bug made its way to hot hands in Marietta. Here’s an image of it.

    Caldwell Travel Bug

    It had intermediary stops in Troy, NY, Pittsburgh, PA, and will continue to Lafayette, IN, and E. Lancing, MI, then finally back to Palmer, MA where it originated. I’ll need to place it in another cache and get it on its way to Indiana sometime soon.

    *At its heart, geocaching is hide and seek with Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates. One person hides a cache (usually a watertight box of some sort) containing a log book and some goodies, then posts the position of the cache on the geocaching website. The finder then goes out with a GPS receiver and attempts to locate the cache. For more detail go to the geocaching website**.

    **As a part of this blog entry research, I’ve discovered that the geocaching.com website is absolutely terrible. The search engine does not work effectively, i.e. I was unable to pull up the profiles of some of the usernames mentioned above. Their breadcrumbs aren’t operating like breadcrumbs. You can’t look up users. It’s barely possible to navigate, and often you end up back where you were by clicking on different links. It seems to me that all they’ve been doing since 2001 is adding features, not useability.

  • Alarm Clock with Retracable Snooze

    I need this alarm clock. It might get me out of bed and awake rather than like the last several days where I don’t even remember turning off the alarm.

  • uTube.com

    This story dropped into my reader today. It’s about how the Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment corporation (utube.com) has diverged from their product line and stuck Ringtone ads at the top of their website. It is a serious dichotomy. They apparently are being swamped by mistyped YouTube.com url’s and decided to cash in.

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    1102 Edit: It’s tough to make out the text on that image. I recommend going to the site and comparing their products with their other products.

  • Charging Your Portable Devices

    What’s more inconvenient: Bringing the appropriate cord, or wearing a breathing-powered USB charger?

    Yes, yes, I know that perfect utility is not the point behind the MAKE movement or Instructables, but this still struck me as a silly, yet cool device.

  • Computers Are Trying to Kill Us

    The Master Control Program has it in for humans. Or maybe it’s Skynet. Or maybe WOPR

    Whatever diabolical digital entity it is, it’s paring us down using our satellite navigation systems against us.

    Thanks to Transport Blog for alerting us to this menace.

  • Eric Rudolph is a Dolt

    Eric Rudolph, the convicted abortion clinic bomber and the perpetrator of the backpack bomb at the 1996 Olympics here in Atlanta, is sending out hate mail from prison.

    BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Victims of Eric Rudolph, the anti-abortion extremist who pulled off a series of bombings across the South, say he is taunting them from deep within the nation’s most secure federal prison, and authorities say there is little they can do to stop him.

    I’m not sure why this is news. Here is a man who is obviously not on the same path as the majority of Americans, who will probably never be convinced that what he has done is evil, yet is protected by the First Amendment. He may write whatever the heck he wants, and having AP articles pop up about it is just media masturbation.

    What causes the title of this post is the supposition that a man, who will die in his cell, can “get back” at the families of his victims. To anyone who is angered or disturbed by this man’s writings, especially the victim’s families, I say: “He will never ever breathe a free breath of air again.” To Eric Rudolph I say: “You are a dolt, dude, who is in prison. Congratulations on your letters, though.”

  • This Week in Traffic: 15 May 2007

    Highway of the Future

    This article links to a Disney video depicting the highway of the future. This ranks right up there with Where is my Jetpack.

    Comprehensive Alternative Transport List

    Want to try something new while getting from A to B? Kristi Keorkunian has a list.

    Using Available Traffic Congestion Resources

    I live in a congested city with numerous resources for tracking that congestion. Do I make use of it? Not as often as I should.

  • Museum of Useful Things

    Next time I’m in Boston, I’m going to the Museum of Useful Things. Rock on!

  • Chicken

    Thanks to jazzmasterson for showing me the way to present at conferences.

The Evil Eyebrow

There is no knowing the Evil Eyebrow

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