This sounds important. Humans now have the ability to make materials with properties never before seen in the universe. That’s a big deal. You can get semi-conducting behavior out of natural substances (search for “crystal radio” and “razor blade” for an example). But you’ be hard pressed to find anything on the planet outside of an IBM lab that can switch optical energy using magnetic fields. Always a bit behind the curve, I’m finally understanding why nanotech is a big deal. ...

I’m back from a really cool 2 week vacation sailing in Croatia. I’ll be filling in weblog postings for the days of vacation in a bit. For now, let me just say it was wonderful, and I’d recommend Croatia to anyone!

Sometimes I come across a saying and I think, “that would make a good band name”. Tonight, which watching Insomniac, there was a steel mill on. In the furnace control room, there was a dial labeled megawatts. Megawatts! I immediately realized I just HAD to have one for a coworker. So I searched on ebay, and on Google. Nothing came up. Perhaps it was the search terms I used. I tried different things until I ended up with the search terms “megawatt gauge”. ...

Seen in Information Week: “My impression is that [SCO’s claim] is credible,” says Laura DiDio, a Yankee Group analyst who was shown the evidence by SCO Group earlier this week. Who is this chick? Here’s her bio, from the ITF2003 speaker list. Laura DiDio, Senior Analyst, The Yankee Group Laura DiDio is a senior analyst for the Yankee Group’s Application Infrastructure & Software Platforms Planning Service, which is closely aligned with the Enterprise Computing & Networking Planning Service. In this capacity, Ms. DiDio focuses on desktop and server operating systems, with a particular emphasis on Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Active Directory, and Novell, Inc.’s NetWare. Additional areas of coverage are Web services platforms and standards including Microsoft’s emerging .NET services and the rival J2EE. She also covers the directory services arena and interoperability and migration issues associated with Active Directory, eDirectory, and Sun’s iPlanet, as well as desktop and server operating system security, software distribution, and third-party performance monitoring and management tools. ...

Another interesting Joel note is about using VMWare on servers. When VMWare came out years ago, smart sysadmins I hung out with realized that it would be useful this way. But it hasn’t really taken off among folks I know. At Tellme there are a couple reasons why we don’t use it. First, it doesn’t run on the Solaris x86 servers. Second, we are very price sensitive, since our business model calls for us to deliver a complex and potentially very expensive service via a large set of very cheap systems. So, when we consider a change that involves putting new commercial software on all those little machines, the costs can add up quickly and overwhelm the benefit. I haven’t done a specific investigation at Tellme, but my gut instinct is that it wouldn’t fly. ...

Mozilla Firebird is almost ready to replace IE on my desktop. It is fast, and almost all of my habits from IE carry over. Joel’s review of it is what got me to try again. I’ve tried Mozilla several times in the past and just given up because it was such a pig. I have two complaints. First, the middle-click and drag scrolling behavior of IE is not supported. Second, the Moveable Type entry body editing box does not have the useful little “make link” button, which I use a lot. ...

Google’s HTTP replies have headers like this in them: Cneonction: Close NnCoection: Close The first one happens for responses with result code 200. The second one happens with responses of 403. (If you are asking yourself how I got Google to give me a 403, try http://google.com/wml with a user agent that does not include “Mozilla” in it. Weird.) Google is too smart of a company to do this by mistake. But what crazy bug could they possibly be working around with this? ...

OK, it is official, I am signed on to the trip to sail for 9 days off the coast of Croatia! Wow, this is going to be amazing! The sailboat we’ll be chartering is really swanky! We will be picking it up in Split, Croatia. From there we’ll probably be heading south in to the archipelago off the coast there. I really need to read up in my Lonely Planet to learn more about that area before I get there. ...

I get this certain feeling when I read some things on the net. It’s this “click” in my brain that says, “This is a smart person, making good progress on an important problem.” I get it almost every time I read philg. Today’s dose of that feeling came from this article about what’s happening at OSCOM.

SF Bay Bloggers is a website for bloggers in the SF Bay Area that some geeky chick put together. Congrats Courtney!