Happy May Day to you!  Man, four months gone in 2008 already, one third of the year.  Not that it hasn't been eventful - wow, has it ever - but still it does not seem like it has been that long.  Among other things, that means I've been blogging again for four months!  Yay.  I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am :)

Biking news - today I did the Stunt / Piuma loop, with my friend Tim; man, I felt strong.  Last Tuesday I did the Mount Palomar / Lake Henshaw loop, and that felt good, too.  I think I'm ready for Breathless Agony Saturday; now I just have to eat and drink a lot tomorrow, to make sure my tank is full. 

As you saw, today I was accepted to ride in the Furnace Creek 508 (yay!) and am turning it into Ole's Ride for Cancer (yay!).  I'm pretty excited about that!

So that's my news, now, let's see what's happening everywhere else, shall we?

TTAC on the Dodge Challenger: the retro-flop has landed.  What I think is really interesting is the accompanying picture, see at left, comparing the 1970 Challenger to the 2008 model.  Each seemingly epitomizes the design ethic of its time.  Now, which is more attractive?  To me there is no question, the 1970 car is way nicer looking.  The thick bodies, skinny windows, and big rear ends of today's cars are ugly.  It can only be a matter of time before the pendulum swings back...

I'm shocked: Twitter said to be abandoning Ruby on Rails.  This should spark a great debate in the Web 2.0 echo chamber, but really, we all know Ruby performance sucks, so why would it scale?

Other shocking news: Blu-ray: the future has been delayed.  "Hot on the heels of last week's report from ABI Research noting that many consumers may not see the picture quality difference between Blu-ray and standard DVDs comes the latest Blu-ray sales figures from NPD Group. And they're not pretty."  The real problem is online video, the attack from below.  Apple just announced they will be selling new movies on iTunes the same day they're released on DVD.  That's just another nail.  Blu-ray will never be big, before long it will be irrelevant, its "victory" over HD-DVD long forgotten.  Remember laser discs?

Here we have the R2D2 DVD projector.  Once you see it, you realize this was inevitable, how utterly cool.  Too bad it costs $3,000, however...

Derek Miller on the joys of the old IBM 101 keyboard.  Man, I loved those keyboards, makes me want to go find one.  Nothing quite like that real metal base, with the unique buckling-spring key action.  And you can be heard typing for miles :)  Right now I use a nine-year old Micron keyboard; I love it, but I know the day will come when a key will break, and then what?  Today's wimpy limpy keyboards are massively worse.  Well there is always eBay...

Finally, via my friend Peter, these pictures of a record-breaking Coke / Mentos explosion-fest, as 1,500 students discover the joys of Chemistry.  Whoa.