After many long weeks (months, really) spent applying for and searching for the right job, white smoke! (sorry, couldn’t resist) I will be joining Luke Olson, Bill Gropp, Mike Heath and everyone else in the Scientific Computing Group at the Computer Science Department of the University of Illinois at …

Do you have a free checking account? A free credit card? Do you perhaps even get money back from your credit card company? Ever wonder who pays for all these freebies? This Frontline report (also embedded below) provides some answers and sheds light on the shady things going on in …

Is it possible to take the instrumentals from one track, the vocals from another, and come up with something that you’d actually want to listen to? Turns out yes:

Amazing what computers can do these days. (via Holger Levsen)

Original 1, Original 2.

I had a good laugh off this list of unintentionally offensive product names. As the title hints, Barf detergent is up there. But there’s one name that takes the cake. It hails from Germany, as it had to. To be precise, the electronics firm Trekstor decided to name the …

1,662,780How Many Germs Live On Your Keyboard?

(xkcd is great.)

Then go watch something sad and then laugh.

Thanks to Debian, I got pidgin 2.2.0 today, and with it, its new atrocious smiley theme—eyebrows and all. This prompted me to make a smiley theme out of Psi‘s old smileys, which I still remember liking the most.

You can download that theme here: PSI Smilies …

I’ve found it sad for a long time that I’ve read many books in my life, but my memory of them is slowly fading, and I would at least like to keep a list around. As you have probably guessed, you would not be reading this if I …