Flash animation of coalition death locations in Iraq

Once the page loads, click the big red button to see a day by day animation of coalition deaths in Iraq since 2003. Even though it is just a map with dots on it to represent individual deaths, it is pretty disturbing to watch, and it just goes on and on.

Google house

Hey! That was my idea!

Linux ... You're soaking in it

Something interesting happened this weekend; I tried a Linux distro (Ubuntu Linux) and actually found it useful. No, I am not a Microsoft fanboy, nor am I anti-change (I'm a software developer; there's nothing *but* change in this business), I'm just extremely practical, and have not had the urge (laziness is the mother of all practicality, I say) to go from using an operating system that just works to one that requires a pretty high level of dedication to get working in any practical sense. I have downloaded/bought disks for various Linux distributions since about 1998 (or whenever it was that Red Hat 5.2 was out), and I always have thought it was enjoyable to get it installed, configured, etc. and running on whatever hardware I happened to have at the time. I always had the same thought: Hey, cool! This would be great if it could run [fill in the blank] and also if the web browser didn't suck. Every time, I think the same thing I think whenever people talk about how great Linux is and how Windows sux0rz: we are never going to reach the Utopia the Linux fanboys want if it is this much of a pain in the ass to use. I just don't know why anybody would want to make their lives that much more difficult just to be able to say they don't use Windows. I use Windows, I like it, it works, and I don't have any major complaints about it that I don't also have about any other piece of software that I use.

I have been reading about Ubuntu Linux for a little while now, and something finally clicked that made me want to give it a try. I knew they had a run-from-CD version, and I thought it might be cool to give that a shot. I didn't have an ISO image burning tool for the laptop, so I downloaded Nero Burning ROM, and off I went.

I burned the disk, and shut down the laptop so I could restart into Ubuntu, and here's what happened:

(hint: nothing).

Not deterred from my goal of checking out Ubuntu, I pulled the disk and took it to an old AMD Athlon machine that I had recently reimaged with Windows XP. And here's what it did: it just worked, albeit very slowly. The slow thing didn't surprise me; no Linux distro has ever been anywhere near fast, at least when compared Windows in any version I had ever seen. What was impressive, though, is that I didn't have to go through all the pain I've had to go through with past distros where you have to set up X, configure the network card, and do all the other crap you have to do just to boot up and be able to do *something* with the OS. Ubuntu figured all that out for me, and when it was done figuring it out, I had a pretty slick looking desktop with an easy and obvious way to get to the web, using Firefox no less, which is what I use on my Windows machines.

Luckily I had a test site in mind to try when I ran Ubuntu, so off I went to today's UserFriendly Link of the Day to try out a really cool program called Blueprint. It's the kind of game my kids like to play, and since the recently re-imaged PC is theirs to use for games, I thought that if this game worked, then all the other Flash-based games ought to as well, and that's where the practicality/laziness kicked in. I realized that if the kids are using a run-from-CD operating system, and it is a Linux OS (i.e. not a popular target of virus/worm/spyware software writers), the chances of me having to spend a lot of time cleaning up the computer and getting rid of the kind of crap that always seems to find its way onto Windows computers went down to pretty much zero. And the good thing is that the operating system is transparent to them (as I'm sure it is to most people); they don't care *how* they get to barbie.com, they just want to get there. Since the games run in the browser anyway, they were able to just sit down and play the game.

So, part of me thought it was pretty cool that my kids are using Linux, even if it was a no-brains turn on the power and it just works distribution. The practical side of me said "that's exactly the point," and happily went back to using Windows XP on the laptop while the younguns had their fun on the Linux box.

Now that's an interesting turn of events.

Fire Chief feeling sheepish

No matter how stupid that thing was that you did the last time you got really drunk, I bet it wasn't as bad as what this guy did.

Overheard in New York

I don't for a second believe that all submissions to Overheard in New York are genuine and not just made up by playwright wannabees, but this site sure serves up the funny.

I heart Natalie Portman

She rocked as a stripper in Closer, and it was good. She played Zach Braff's nutty girlfriend in Garden State. Loved it. It's the music career that makes her A-list, though.

Cat Piano

OK, I definitely need me a cat piano for those days when I am feeling down, and nothing but a screeching cat session will do the trick.

Tea water mysterious disappearance

When you make tea by putting hot water into a cup that has a tea bag in it, why is it that after 5 minutes or so of steeping there is about 3/4 of an inch less water in the cup? Can that much water evaporate that quickly? Of course, some of the water gets soaked up by the tea and the tea bag itself, but I'm talking about less water even before I remove the tea (i.e. I am talking about a drop in water level before I even remove whatever volume of water has been soaked up by the tea and bag).