(Blackout template by Zachary Johnson) Today’s unprecedented Internet protest against SOPA/PIPA censorship laws was a huge success. Thousands of websites observed a “blackout” and even Google displayed solidarity and has forms posted for contacting lawmakers. So far 13 Senators – mostly Republicans – have withdrawn their support for PIPA. This is not a partisan issue. [...]

Wednesday, Jan. 18, some significant parts of the Internet will go on strike. The websites will only show one page related to the protest against the SOPA legislation the US Congress is considering. This law would allow the US government to shut down any site if there is any suspicion of copyright infringement. If the [...]

Yesterday, two NC DOT workers carefully measured the clearance of the crash beam of the 11foot8 bridge. The question as to whether the signage is actually accurate – especially after the recent re-paving of Gregson St – has now been settled. The actual clearance is 11 feet and 10.8 inches (or 11.90 feet or 3.63 [...]

Last week, a producer from MSNBC’s “Caught on Camera” contacted me about using my truck crash footage and about doing an interview.I was not so sure about doing a TV interview, but I couldn’t really think of any good reason not to do it, except that I probably would look like a dork. So I [...]

Friday morning, around 2:00 AM, I was at work dealing with a major email server problem, when I started noticing the news headlines about the disaster in Japan. It sounded bad, but I was too tired and too preoccupied with my work for the magnitude of that disaster to really sink in. Later that morning, [...]

Photo by Zack Wheeler Lunch today at Dain’s Place on 9th St. in Durham. I had a “Defibrilator” – a 1/2 pund burger with bacon, sweet chili, cheddar cheese, cole slaw … and topped with a hot dog … except I had mine with goat sausage. :)

Leaving work this afternoon, I encountered this beauty in the parking lot; a 1956 or 57 Porsche 356 Speedster (early Type A). I think this is one of the prettiest cars ever built. Yes it was essentially a souped-up beetle. But as such it combined the efficiency and simplicity of the early beetles with the [...]

In a recent interview about his TV Show, Dr. Stephen Hawking questioned the wisdom of trying to make contact with alien civilizations. When one of the few bona-fide geniuses of our time weighs in an any debate, it is significant. And I think the debate over whether to send signals into space or just to [...]

Google has long ago ceased to be the little search engine that could. The Mountainview Chocolate Factory has turned into a massive data-slurping behemoth with growth aspirations that make me think of Skynet: Last fall, Google released a brief video of a data center it built in 2005. The facility held 45 shipping containers, each [...]

Coming back from West Africa, I found some excellent truck crash footage, which I proceeded to post to my YouTube channel. Turns out that one of the trucks had some furniture on it that belongs to a guy who writes for Gizmodo and he posted the crash video on said website. Since the post appeared, [...]

“Oh boy!” – I thought when around luchtime today a reporter and cameraman from a local TV news station knocked at my office and asked me if they could do an interview about the truck crashes I had captured on video. But they asked nicely, and so I agreed to do it. I sent Jacob [...]

Tying my shoes is one of those things I don’t remember learning. I did it all my life without really ever worrying about it. However, there is this pair of shoes I really like, but the ties of these stupid shoes keep coming untied. Several times a day I have to stop to re-tie those [...]

About a year ago I installed a camera to record the traffic outside my office in dwntown Durham. Over the course of that year, that camera recorded several boxtrucks crashing into the railroad trestle crossing Gregson St. Here is the newest one: There’s more on my YouTube Channel. The fundamental problem here is not so [...]

The German start-up car maker Loremo says it is still on track with production in 2010 and they announced a couple of weeks ago that they will offer the Loremo in three flavors: Electric (EV), Gasoline (GT) and Diesel (LS). While I understand the idea of adding diversity to their product lineup, I hope they [...]

Geoeye published a great satelite photo (half-meter resolution) of the inauguration ceremony for Barack Obama. The image above links to a high resolution version. Geoeye provides the original high resolution image (3.5MB) that shows the entire National Mall.

Note to self : turn off theme before updating the blog software. After I installed the update nothing worked. Internal server error. So I deleted everything and rolled back to the old version, turned off my custom theme, updated again … and everything worked just fine. We’re now on WordPress 2.7.

The big splash about Tata Motor’s ultra-cheap Nano ($2,500) all but buried another announcement from the Indian automaker at the Delhi auto show: they signed a $20M deal with MDI, a European start-up car maker working on commercializing cars that run on compressed air. Of course, the cars don’t “run on air,” rather they use [...]

… computer product (according to PC World). AOL mailed a billion of these annoying CDs to people, and I think I received most of them.

Whoopee – isn’t it amazing when stuff just works??!! Upgraded to the latest version of WordPress in a few Minutes. I also added the calendar plugin (see on the sidebar at the top). maybe that’ll be useful.

Boy – Bill Gates is so not funny! Even Jon Stewart has a hard time being funny with the Ãœber-geek in the studio. “What does the F12 button do?” ??? This is a bit of an awkward interview, especially for Stewart, who is usually pretty good at it. Last night we watched the DVD of [...]