YouOS is an online operating system that gives you the basic capabilities of a desktop PC, all within a standard browser. The upside is that you can log in from any internet-connected device and have all your apps and files right there. The downside is, of course, that everything you do is stored on a server somewhere. Everyone you email, every site you visit, every file you edit, every image you look at; all recorded and stored for someone else’s perusal. GooglePC, which is soon to become reality, may look very much like this. With Gmail and Google Desktop and all the other Google goodies tied in, it could be very useful and efficient. But it’s Big Brother’s dream come true. I created an account just to play around with it, and it is pretty cool. But I wouldn’t trust anything more than the name of my cat to this idea.

I love the shots of the external tank separating.

This little gadget will do more for marital fidelity than Fatal Attraction ever did. Just hide it in a car and track every movement for days. It’s a brave new world out there. 🙂

Stellarium is a free and very cool program which will show you your sky for any given time and label planets, stars, and constellations. You can set it to “fast forward” through the day and night and watch how the heavens change. Great for amateur star gazers and gadget freaks like me. 😉

Some great images can be seen at Hazecams. Each individual image can be viewed at very high resolution, resulting in ample opportunities to crop and save some really spectacular pictures. Here’s a nice evening in Burlington, VT.

I travel backroads quite often. There are virtually no cops or traffic, and the scenery is almost always better than that seen from an interstate. This past October we were driving around Cadillac, MI and decided to hunt down an old cemetery for some genealogy research. The route took us on some serious backroads. I’m talking no-pavement-lotsa-dirt backroads here. I had just acquired a Bluetooth GPS receiver, so I was game for some “let’s get lost” backroad fun. We found the cemetery easily, but what was more amazing was the incredible scenery. The foliage was almost at peak and the cornfields had yet to be harvested. Here’s the result.

So next time you’re out and about, get off the interstate and check out some backroads. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you may find.

The site tracking gizmo I have running on this site keeps track of referring pages, and when that page is Google, it keeps track of the search terms used. Figuring out why certain search terms lead people to my little corner of the internet has become an amusing and interesting diversion. To wit:

the toolshed restaurant in illinois  – Ok, I can see this one. In my “review” of Gunner Buc’s, I referred to the tool shed atmosphere there. Close enough. Maybe my lauding GB’s burgers will bring them some business.

historical importance of the measels  – This one caught me by surprise, especially since my site turned up on the first Google page. But after some quick investigation, I found that I had inadvertently misspelled measles and missed that faux pas on review of my post. As the person running the Google search also misspelled it, the match was easy. There just aren’t that many sites misspelling “measles” I guess.

champaign run bmw –  Hmm, I’d love to know what this person was looking for with these terms. Even more interesting is that this person is from the UK. I’m tempted to believe he/she meant Champagne, although that still doesn’t make any more sense overall, unless he was thinking about running his BMW on bubbly. 🙂

The other aspect of this is how dependent we’ve become on search engines. How did we ever get along without them? And you’d think with all this knowledge available at the tap of a few keys, we’d all be geniuses by now. Not so much, eh?

I bought a Slingbox when they first hit the stores about a year ago. It was a cinch to set up and I use it every now and then to watch TV from my office. Now they’ve released a PDA client, so I can watch my home TV from my Dell Axim X50v. It’ll be fun showing off at the next staff meeting.