Sun baby, take me away

Via my new favorite newsbyte site, Geeks are Sexy, is this article on people who've made their billions from their solar power technology companies. As more and more of popular media are actually starting to take alternative energy and fuel efficiency seriously, solar power is making a major comeback, and it's all very exciting. I'm actually hoping gas prices continue to rise, because I believe that is the only way the masses will actually push for better fuel efficiency in car technology as well as fuel alternatives.

Another way, of course, is for big-name companies to set the bar and literally make the change they want to see. Take Google's conversion of their Googleplex so that a third of the building is powered by solar energy. Yay Google!

fresh new look and taste

Mmmm! That looks better. Still tweaking things, but I'm pretty happy with my new colors. Except for that tiny, thin, noticeable line between the masthead and wrapper. Why is it there???

More little changes to come.

Yay Photoshop!

And kudos to the wonderful artists whose beautiful brushes I used for the masthead.

the inner geek reminisces

Found this interesting blog post (part two here) via reddit about a guy who's teaching his daughter how to write code to make her own computer game, using a program he's been designing called Greenfoot. Pretty great stuff, especially as the daughter is 9 (in part two, his 7-year-old becomes interested and involved as well). This kind of logical creativity is exactly what kids need to develop critical thinking skills - at least I think so, anyway.

Reminds me of the various programs I use to fiddle with as a child, and learning how to navigate around DOS, before there was a Windows. There was also this great cartoon maker program we used in my elementary school's computer class, where they provided a slew of characters that you could drag onto a scene of your choice, then have them move by setting keyframes on a timeline. I forget the name of the program, it probably ran in Windows 95 or 3.1 (was there anything inbetween those two?), but it was so much fun to play with. You could make speech/thought/yelling bubbles, have inanimate objects, and the backdrops ranged from wooded forest to alien spaceship. Oh, and they even had various body parts you could add onto the character, like a Mr. Potato Head, so an angry character would have a "yelling" speech balloon and big angry eyes.

I wish I could remember the name! It wasn't the Dreamweaver storybook creator, or whatever. Something else...

Surf's up

I have just been whizzing through the internets at a higher than normal rate recently. Aided by the various links I get sent to me by friends, I've become addicted to websites like reddit.com, cracked.com, and scribd.com. And just now, I've found a webcomic I must add to my sidebar: Left-Handed Toons (by right handed people). Such a nifty idea, and it's got some funny strips.

But this one, which was on reddit, is already one of my favorites:

[link]

woefullness

O, horror, o agony...

My poor computer is on the rocks. As I type (on my aunt's aging Inspiron), I am formatting my hard drive in preparation to reinstall Windows XP. But I think my computer's sudden failure yesterday (by the Blue Screen of Death + chkdsk) is hardware, not software, related. I might need to get my hard drive replaced.

Lovely.

So, I managed to retrieve those files I hold dearest while in Safe Mode, except for a surprising number of my photos, which had been corrupted. But, all things considered, I suppose it could have been much, much worse. At least this isn't happening around exam time on campus.

Anyway, hopefully I can get things up and working again soon. I feel like I've lost a limb. (That's probably a bad thing in of itself).