it's elementary

The Hunt Is On: A practical guide to Internet reconnaissance is a fun little article on threat assessment.

"Utilizing publicly available resources, we can quickly learn a good deal about a suspicious host, such as its service provider and originating country. Coupled with real-world knowledge, we can assess the threat posed by a would-be attacker and react accordingly. Along with a good idea of where to start, this requires some basic working knowledge of the Internet and the communication for which it provides."

revolutionaryness

Ars Technica as an interesting rumor article about the specs of Nintendo's Revolution game system. (Hannibal's comments are also worth reading).

If the rumors are true, it would be interesting that Nintendo chose to stick with a good general-purpose CPU rather than the choices made by Sony and Microsoft. From an ease of development, a single general purpose CPU is much easier to take advantage of.

There was also mention of a PPU, something I didn't know if I'd every actually see. Ageia's business model for Novodex (PhysX) is interesting, but I always wondered if getting PC gamers to actually buy a PPU card was a realistic goal. Getting the hardware into a console is another matter, however. As long as the hardware is standard, everyone will try to use it.

dorky bikes

I don't know why I find strange, dorky, and folding bicycles appealing, but I do. Here's four:

The Bromptom seems to be the standard by which other folding bikes are judged.

The Xootr Swift has impressed me with a stronger lean toward ride-ability and standard parts (particularly wheels and drive-train). If I were getting a folding bike today, this would be the most tempting option I have found. They also make nice looking scooters if you are into that.

The Dahon seems to be the most direct competitor to the Brompton. They include an electric-assist version which might be a big help in the battle against showing up "sweaty".

The iXi bike is the maximum in dorky, (with all the beauty of a Honda Element) but has a really cool grease-less belt-drive and front disk brakes. It comes in folding and non-folding versions. (This blog posting is what put me onto it.) Despite a few negative comments in the weblog, this looks like it would be really swell if I were living in downtown Seattle by Stan or something.

I also find recumbent bicycles appealing, but since I don't feel like throwing down 3400 bones for a 50 pound Bigha, (and I can't get one of Stan's YellowBikes in the US anymore) I guess I will need to do more research on those too.

burnin' dirt

I have the google group mail list going, but a few of my friends have asked for a feed instead. Blogger supports Atom by default, but RSS seems to be the preferred standard that is more universally supported in browsers, etc. (e.g. this article)

I stumbled across FeedBurner which may provide an easy way to RSS feed this log, but I still need to look more carefully and read the fine print. Stay tuned...

UPDATE: I didn't realize that Atom is already supported in Firefox. Silly me.