Good explanation of the oil spill and the quantities involved.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

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Solar Rebates in Florida Expire. A crying shame.

Patrick Detscher: Don't let utilities determine the future | tallahassee.com | Tallahassee Democrat: "The Florida legislative session has ended and our leaders have returned to their districts without fulfilling a responsibility near and dear to your hearts, wallets and future. As things stand, Florida's only renewable energy incentive will expire at the end of June. With nearly $30 million in rebate money owed to more than 85,000 Florida family members and businesses that installed solar systems, the Legislature chose to turn its collective back on us."

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Live Owls

Video chat rooms at Ustream
My friend Paul Yorke loves owls.  He has now installed a live streaming video setup so that we can all watch his owls in real time.  He has a lot more on his website.  Here's the link. 

ISS ground track

I have seen four very bright passages of the ISS since this one.  I have an Iphone app named "ISS Visibility" that predicts when these passages will occur.  The ISS appears brighter than the brightest star on most of these passages and is moving faster than the fastest plane in the sky.  I can imagine that anyone not knowing this was the space station would think they were seeing a UFO. 

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First Recorded Senior Moment

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Impressive Results From New Cancer Drug - New York Times

NYT: After long fight, cancer drug suddenly effective - The New York Times- msnbc.com

updated 2:57 p.m. ET, Tues., Feb. 23, 2010

For the melanoma patients who signed on to try a drug known as PLX4032, the clinical trial was a last resort. Their bodies were riddled with tumors, leaving them almost certainly just months to live.

But a few weeks after taking their first dose, nearly all of them began to recover.

Love Hot Dogs? Watch This.

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Redirected Blog

I have setup a subdomain and have redirected my blog to it.  The new location for this blog is http://mothershiphq.bbbrown.com/ .  Will it work?  That remains to be seen.  I believe I have to wait until the DNS for the new subdomain is propagated throughout the Internet.  That can take up to 48 hours so it might be a while before this can be seen.  I am posting here to see how long it will take for the subdomain to appear.

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Roku Rocks

I have been using my Roku a lot.  I turned on debugging mode by using 5 times 3 times 3 times.  After watching it for a bit it seems that the box is learning my network's capacity and is now streaming much more reliably.  I have found a lot of content in the channel store and am liking Roku more and more. 

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One Sentence archive - story #3516

One Sentence archive - story #3516

Can you tell a story in one sentence? That was an interesting challenge. My favorite is number 3516. Click on the link above to read it.
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Linus' blog: Happy camper

Linus' blog: Happy camper

Interesting argument for using a smartphone and for the Nexus One in particular. Linus Torvals, known for creating the operating system, Linux, comments:

I no longer feel like I'm dragging a phone with me "just in case" I would need to get in touch with somebody - now I'm having a useful (and admittedly pretty good-looking) gadget instead. The fact that you can use it as a phone too is kind of secondary.

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Michael Paul Smith's Awesome Dioramas and Models

Michael Paul Smith has posted photos of his models on Flickr.  As one who has enjoyed building scale models for most of his life I am awed by his skills.  Check a slideshow of his photos here.

For more info on his modeling and photos please click here.

Mixed Results with Roku

I have had mixed results with my Roku video streaming device. When it works it delivers really nice video to my TV and sound system. But, the problem is the device is totally dependent on the quality of your network connection. Sometimes I can stream an entire HD movie from Amazon with no problems. Other times I get reloads and stumbles. Searching the Roku forum revealed that there were some settings that might help. These settings set the minimum bandwidth for the device rather than leaving it to be automatically set. I received mixed results from those tweaks as well.

I am still testing and tweaking trying to find the optimal setting for my network. My ISP is AT&T. I pay for 6mbps DSL which should be more than adequate for most people. I think the problem might be that I have five computers, a Wii, the Roku and an Iphone grabbing bandwidth from my network. Not all of them are on at the same time but I did find that when my Iphone is using WiFi in my house that it grabs a big chunk of bandwidth.

My results with the Roku are mixed. When it works it is very nice delivering 5.1 sound from Amazon and HD video. I can stream my Netflix Instant Que and watch a lot of techie video podcasts such as TWIT.TV and others. Because of my network situation it is not a spontaneous experience since one never knows what quality video one will get. When the device has to rebuffer because of problems with the network it drives me crazy.

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Citation Manager

How to Clip, Sort, and Cite the Entire Web with Zotero - Information - Lifehacker

If I were really serious about research this Firefox plugin would be very valuable.  At this point I am not motivated to be so disciplined about researching anything.

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Is Facebook Useful?

I have had a lot of email discussions with friends and family about the value of Facebook.  Many complain that it is difficult to manage and one must do a lot of tweaking to get it to filter the barrage of unrelated comments that are posted.

One suggestion was to reduce the number of friends.  That probably defeats the concept of having all of your friends accessible in one location. I don't like this option.

I personally use lists.  Lists on Facebook are basically filters.  You give the list a name and then assign friends to them.  So, if I have one called coworkers and only include people who work with me in the list I can click on coworkers and show only those conversations.  You can create numerous lists and use them to filter what you see.

One could create a Facebook group that would be targeted to a particular topic but I have had only a little success with that.  Many businesses use Facebook groups for fans of their products and in effect get free advertising.

The process that seems to have evolved among a few friends involves migrating an interesting topic that pops up to email or Facebook messaging where it can be continued in more length.

In short, it takes some work to configure Facebook to be more useful.  Some think it is not worth the effort.  I will probably stay with Facebook because it is the only single place where all of my friends and family can be reached.  Since some are discouraged by the techie aspect of tweaking it to be more useful we will probably lose one or two Facebook Friends but overall I find it more useful than annoying.

Apple Iwhat?

Leaks by Jason Calcanis, ubergeek, have revealed some fascinating aspects of the new Apple tablet, the I?.  With all of the details revealed such as the fact that it uses the Apple Iphone Operating System and many others, it is weird that the name has yet to be disclosed.  I guess Jason had a non disclosure agreement that expired today before the big release at 6pm in San Francisco.  Even the pricing was revealed with options ranging from $599 up to $799 depending on memory and options.  All in all it sounds like the tablet device to beat.  It is reported to be great for reading newspapers and magazines.

Personally, I think that the Kindle will still be hard to beat for book reading.  Why?  One word.  Amazon.  Others also agree saying that the black and white E-Ink used for the Kindle is easier on the eyes.  For me, the enormous library that Amazon offers gives the Kindle a lot of points.  But, knowing Apple as I do I will not count them out.  I am confident that they will have negotiated a block buster deal of some kind with a large book publisher.  That would be the only way they could stand a chance of competing with Amazon and the Kindle.

Margaret Designs 23 Stories High

Design Studio | CANTONI.COM

I knew that my cousin Margaret was a very talented woman.  I knew that she had impeccable taste.  Now, I have seen all of that expressed in a beautifully designed penthouse apartment.  I am very proud of what she has accomplished here.