Oh man, where are my editors when I need them? I just sent an email that said that a polite conversation was "markedly gentile." Bwahahahahahaha... I blame Mobile, Alabama. (I once pronounced the word "sublime" as "suh-bleem" and was teased by a friend who said "Why in the world would …

Tim's Chemistry Exam : What I find so wonderful about this is that today I couldn't do any better even though once upon a time I kicked ass in chemistry lectures (I sucked in chemistry labs because I was too impatient to get the weights / volumes exactly right).

Could you make a blimp from an aerogel created with helium?

I just received a press release titled "Why Open Source Can't Meet Mass-Market Demands," from a group called the Institute for Policy Innovation which identifies itself as "a non-partisan, public-policy organization." (It's easy to determine that the IPI was founded by Dick Armey and is primarily a pro-free-trade group, I …

Did you know that if you have an 64-bit Athlon chip (or an Opteron server in your closet), you can download XP-64? It's a "customer preview program" but not a closed beta. You're going to want to do this in a dual-boot configuration with a 32-bit OS: although the Windows-on-Windows …

On ActiveX control install prompts:

there are a few things I love about the work we did here.  You can now say "Do not install this control and never ask me again."

Yes! Now I never need to see a prompt for "Install Gator (click here for more information about …

The Game Developer's Conference is, without a question, the best programmer's tradeshow going. There's no other show that touches it in terms of technical depth -- introductory-level lectures at the GDC are what other shows would label advanced, and advanced-level lectures are the GDC are generally only comprehensible by excellent programmers …

According to City and Guilds, only 14% of British IT professionals are "very happy" in their jobs. The most satisfied are "Care Assistants" at 40% and the least are "[Real] estate agents" at 4%. via Good Morning Silicon Valley

I don't usually stick my nose into hardware issues, but one of the themes of the talk I had with Microsoft's Tablet PC gang today was that the Tablet PC technology (high-resolution digitizing screen, ink, etc.) is moving into some really interesting form factors -- some smaller than traditional notebooks, some …

In a meeting with Microsoft, Cory Linton clarified that the big \$100k contest is actually until September, not July, allowing for the possibility of some "from scratch" entries.

Blogged on a Tablet PC