Andrea goes to Spain: The San Jose Mercury News sent Andrea to this year's Malofiej (a Society for News Design conference) in Bilbao, Spain. Here, we can see her having trouble with my iPaq. More photos here.

One's man's trash is another man's Ladmo Bag

Someone broke into my car -- probably after I left it unlocked, as I tend to do -- rifled though everything, but apparently didn't find anything he liked. Which is kind of insulting if you think about it.

I had a very nice mouse and keyboard in there, a pair of headphnes, some home-burned CDs and a couple of framed prints I plan to give to Goodwill. My stereo, factory installed, separates the radio and CD player. This setup hides the CD player near the cupholder, which makes the radio look like your basic factory-installed radio. Of course, even if the would-be thief had seen the CD player, if would probably fit only in another Honda Civic.

Ha ha!

Of course, this is probably a good sign that I should get a car alarm and clean up the car so no one is even tempted to see if I have anything valuable. Sometimes I do leave my laptop int he trunk.

Real-life searching with Google

The jaugernaut continues as Google unveils its new map service. It's a slick offering, with a 3D look for pushpins and direction bubbles. And if you click and hold your mouse button, you can drag the map around on the fly. There's lots of other nice little touches.

The one thing that this doesn't have yet is the ability to save frequently used adresses for quick directions like Yahoo, which is the deal-killer for me. But Google being Google, I'm sure they'll add the feature in eventually.

More on AAC+

This site goes into a litle more detail about the coding technology.

A few cool things

I've been neglecting the blog recently -- I've been extremely busy with work and life -- but I have some cool things to mention:

AAC+: Dolby's new sound format, which is part of the MPEG4 standard, gives really good sound at bitrates as low as 24 kbps. Don't believe me? Try Tuner2 and find out for yourself. I think you need Winamp 5.05 or above to use the format

Star Wars Republic Commando: The game demo is out. I liked it.

Lifehacker: This Web site explains how to do lots of techie and non-techie things. Pretty nifty.

Picasa 2: The new version of Google's photo-management software is out. It's free, and makes managing photos easier than it is on the Mac.

More of thiose red state family values

Police: Girl died after mother forced her to drink bleach - Jan 14, 2005

"A woman angry with her 12-year-old daughter for having sex forced the girl to drink bleach and sat on her until the child died, a police detective said.

The girl's 9-year-old brother was forced to watch the attack, Detective Warren Cotton testified Thursday in a preliminary hearing for Tunisia Archie, 31."

Mission accomplished

Iraq a new terror breeding ground

Another brilliant success from the man we re-elected to keep us safe.

Bush and the evildoers agree on something

MSNBC - Militants warn Iraqis not to vote on Jan. 30: "The radical Ansar al-Sunnah Army and two other insurgent groups issued a statement Thursday warning that democracy was un-Islamic. Democracy could lead to passing un-Islamic laws, such as permitting homosexual marriage, if the majority or people agreed to it, the statement said."

Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War

This story (reg required) is an interesting example of how the blogs and journalism mix. I was impressed with the amount of research that went into this story until I got to the jump and realized that hobbyist Bloggers had done much of the work.

In this case, it works -- a reporter can't be everywhere at once and has only so much time to work on the story. The more participants, the better.

I've finally made the switch

I've made Mozilla Firefoxl my default browser after open source developers finally got Yahoo toolbar working decently on it. The browser is fast and offers lots of cool plug-ins, like weather checkers, RSS readers and tons of navigation aids. It's also supposed to be a lot safer than Internet Explorer, though XP SP2 may have closed that gap.

Unless Microsoft acts quickly, Firefox could quickly reach a critical mass and steal serious market share. Not that they get any money off of the browser anyway.

Why the news media should be a bit more skeptical of "authority figures"

From the Los Angeles Times:PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror

"Officials at the Pentagon and other U.S. national security agencies said the CNN incident was not an isolated feint — the type used throughout history by armies to deceive their enemies — but part of a broad effort underway within the Bush administration to use information to its advantage in the war on terrorism."

One of life's great mysteries...solved!

A Microsoftie explains one of the things that, even after all these years, I still never really understood about Windows -- until today, that is:

Will dragging a file result in a move or a copy?

- If Ctrl+Shift are held down, then the operation creates a shortcut.
- If Shift is held down, then the operation is a move.
- If Ctrl is held down, then the operation is a copy.
- If no modifiers are held down and the source and destination are on the same drive, then the operation is a move.
- If no modifiers are held down and the source and destination are on different drives, then the operation is a copy.

Call me stupid, but this behavior, part of Windows since 1989, was news to me.

Nation's Poor Win Election For Nation's Rich

This just about sums it up.

Bush says voters set direction for next four years

Some mandate. The guy's talking like he won in a landslide. At least he's being honest about his plans to give more tax breaks to the rich (make no mistake: "simplifying" the tax code is another way of saying "flat tax") and gutting Social Security by tunneling some of the money to "private accounts" and eventually phasing out the government subsidy altogether. If you don't think that's going to happen, just take a look at the record deficit.

FOXNews.com - You Decide 2004

Bush just took Ohio. It's over.

Bush takes Colo., Ohio leanign Bush

If these numbers bear out, Bush has this wrapped up.

Bush takes Florida

This doesn't look good.

Blue Light Alert

From today's New York Times:

"In its final form, their project may be viewed as the Homeland Security Department's worst nightmare: a road map enabling all sorts of undesirables to penetrate a nation's borders, banking systems, supermarket loyalty clubs."

I seriously doubt that government officials are worried about someone stealing my Safeway discounts.

The Bush recovery continues!

Job-cut plans soar to 8-month high

Something to think about tonight during the VP debate.

Kerry wins!

That's what we're hearing from the undecided panels at NBC, CBS and ABC. Something tells me the Fox News poll will look a little different.

It's all about momentum, baby!