Paintball this weekend in Dripping Springs - Sunday, April 30th

In honor of our very own Mike Baker heading off to play in the sand, we are going to have a paintball game this Sunday, April 30th at Dripping Springs.

Bring your shemaghs - we will have a special jihadist-inspired scenario to prepare our fellow Raider for the slings and arrows of his fellow man. Also make sure to bring a suitable switch or stick, as we will also be "congratulating" him on his recent engagement!

Since it is going to be hotter, we are going to be starting later at 4pm. For those who want to meet-up at my place, we'll be heading out there at 3pm.

If you need to borrow gear, let me know soon so I can get it together.

Make sure to bring plenty of water. A camelback is advised . . .

Let me know who is coming out, so we know how to plan.

Would you like hardback, paperback, or man-hide?

Necronomiconexmortis, roughly translated, the Book of the Dead. Inked in human blood and bound in human flesh it was never meant for the world of the living. The book awoke something in the woods, something evil . . .
- From Army of Darkness

Ok, so it ain't the Necronomicon, but someone in England found a book bound in human skin, which was apparently all the rage back in the day.

Ancient Book May Be Covered in Human Skin

LONDON - A 300-year-old book that appears to be bound in human skin has been found in northern England, police said Saturday.

The macabre discovery was made on a central street in Leeds, and officers said the ledger may have been dumped following a burglary.

Detectives were trying to trace its rightful owner and believe it may have been taken from a dwelling in the area.

Much of the text is in French, and it was not uncommon around the time of the French Revolution for books to be covered in human skin.

The practice, known as anthropodermic bibliopegy, was sometimes used in the 18th and 19th centuries when accounts of murder trials were bound in the killer's skin.

Anatomy books also were sometimes bound in the skin of a dissected cadaver. In World War II, Nazis were accused of using the skin from Holocaust victims to bind books.

In a brief statement, West Yorkshire police said the ledger, which contained handwriting in black ink, appears to date back to the 1700s, and they appealed to anyone who may be able to help identify the owners of the item to contact authorities.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/
2006/04/08/D8GS2FNG1.html

Now, that would have to be one hell of a good book to be bound in human skin. I am thinking something like The Joy of Golf or The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pirates . . . er . . . at least not anything by Amy Tan.

More on the Necronomicon from the Cthulhu wiki.

Pay attention 007 . . .

Is it a case of art imitating life, or someone at the Ministry of Defence finally realizing the tactical importance of wrist dart guns? (Something we at the Orion Foundation have been advocating for years. . .)

The BBC reported today that British Secret Service will be investing in a "gadget center," similar to the Q-Branch labs shown in the James Bond movies.

UK gets Bond-style gadget centre

Britain's secret service is getting a gadget centre like the one used by super spy James Bond.

In the Bond films, 007 gets a string of amazing tools from a team of expert inventors led by the character, Q.

The Ministry Of Defence has brought together the best scientists in the business to develop technology to help in the fight against terrorism.

The Counter-Terrorism Science and Technology Centre will make stuff to defuse bombs and sniff out explosives.

A team of 15 scientists will work on various projects at a top secret laboratory in Wiltshire.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/
newsid_4890000/newsid_4895700/4895782.stm

I wonder if this means that all MI-5 agents will be traveling around in Aston-Martins? In either case, if you find yourself in the company of a rogue agent, make sure to twist the locks inward before opening the briefcase. Nothing like a blast of tear gas to ruin an otherwise uneventful train trip.

Better luck next time

While perusing The Onion this morning (America's Finest News Source), I disappointingly noted this latest bit on the long-ranging intergalatic conflict with our intra-solar system neighbors.

Earth Passed Over For Invasion

April 5, 2006 Issue 42•14 BETA QUADRANT, ZGYXA—Nearly 200,000 hostile aliens from the planet Zgyxa skipped invading Earth Monday, saying it "does not seem worth the effort." "A planet scan indicates that its resources will be tapped by 2015, its most intelligent life form cannot fly, and it possesses no significant deposits of Tangium," said Supreme Commander Kasha Ak-Bej, the nine-foot serpentine leader of the invasion. "Not to mention that their fleshy exoskeleton would make earthlings unfit slaves for mining Zgyxa's molten core." Representatives from the Council of Earth expressed their disappointment.

Contrary to recent cinematic suggestions (i.e. Signs) - the best way to defend against alien attack is not to hide in your basement and wait for them to go about their way. Most aliens don't fly 142 light years to our planet to engage in fisticuffs.

Oh well. Now I'll guess I'll have to put the shotgun back up on the mantle and the pitchfork back into the tool shed.

Getting Closer to the William Gibson Vision of the Matrix - Can you dig it?

A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void....
- William Gibson, Neuromancer

I just got finished reading an article on John Schwartz's blog about steps Sun is taking to bring the idea of true shared computing to the Internet. Basically, folks would be able to run their own supercomputer applications by renting time from a grid that is a virtual supercomputer. Why spend cycles of their own system when you can borrow time on a grid?

This is really close to the original idea of the internet - shared computing - not shared information, which is what we basically see today.

It sounds like we are getting dangerously close to the William Gibson vision of the Martix - which is the whole reason why some of us got into tech in the first place.

Excerpts:

The Network is the Computer

For those that don't know what a grid is, it's a collection of low cost network, storage, computing and software elements, lashed together to do work that historically required very expensive dedicated proprietary technologies

But about a year ago, after Sun outlined plans to build a public, multi-tenant grid (just like the power companies run), and make it available for $1/cpu-hr . . .

Most of us live on the grid at home - we use Google and Yahoo!, we love eBay, we upload and share photos and movies, and gather our news from various sources on the web. Most of us bank from home, we leverage network email services - and if you think about it, that transformation all occurred within the last decade. In the blink of an eye.

Smaller businesses especially have flocked to the grid to spare themselves the headaches of architecting and owning their own datacenters.

Just think back ten years - when most enterprises I met laughed at the idea of putting business systems on the internet. Now you're an anomaly if you're "off the grid."

Building a secure, publicly available multi-tenant grid also turned out to be exceptionally complex - there's a reason no one had ever done it before. Most grids are application specific - for search, or auctions or payment. A general purpose computing grid was ploughing new ground - and we wanted to ensure availability and security would be as high as possible.

If you're read this far, here's a final bit of color on the incredibly fortuitous domain name for the future of computing: Network.com.

So have at it! Go to network.com later this week, grab a PayPal account, and experience for yourself what it's like to use one of the world's largest supercomputers. Without having to house it, manage it, power it, administer it, provision it... or buy it.

Full text.

Everyone read this and let me know what you think . . . are we close?

Jack in.

In Korea, door handles do not break . . .

That's right kids, the rumors are flying in.

Apparently there is a remake/series/what-have-ya featuring everybody's favorite obscure action hero - Remo Williams!

Check it out!