Greetings blog public, I'm checking in.  Hope you are all having a good week?  I am, most productive.  I have about ten plates spinning but they are all (fXf) staying in the air just now.  All subject to change.  Some stuff which may be of interest...

Can I just say how *lame* it is that Facebook no longer finds pictures in links to post as thumbnails?  What a bug, what an amazing crappy bug, that they would break this and not know.  And not fix it!  For all they have a kazillion users and are worth billions of dollars, they are not quite smooth in their product, are they?  And yet we love it anyway. 

I am now running Firefox 4.  I had switched to Chrome as my default browser, but now have switched back to Firefox.  Chrome was a little too flaky, and I never got used to having the address field and search box in one control.  It sounds like it would work better, but in practice it was just confusing. 

JavaScript: how it all began; a brief history with Brendon Eich.  (I am liking Alex Rauschmayer's 2ality; subscribed!) 

Also from Alex: multi-touch vs keyboard.  Apropos to my for a teen: iPad vs Macbook survey, which is presently running 76% Macbook vs just 14% iPad.  Looks like even a bluetooth keyboard doesn't make an iPad a "real" computer. 

Guess what I'm doing Saturday?  I'm riding the Solvang Double Century!  Yay, haven't ridden a full double in ... about six months.  Whew.  Time to see if I can still do it.  The profile at right is what I'm in for ...  stay tuned. 

Speaking of rides, this is most excellent; downhill bike race in Chile is insanity.  Yes it is.  Please watch, and pay particular attention to the dogs on the course :)  wow! 

Have you ever heard of Negrette?  It's a weird unknown grape grown only in a few weird unknown places.  But we had a 2008 Wild Horse Negrette the other night which was spectacular.  So good that I tried to buy some, and discovered they make enough to even distribute it.  You have to get it at the winery.  Might even be worth driving to Paso Robles to get some :) 

Not sure what to make of this: Sprint integrates Google Voice: 

"First, Sprint customers will be able to use their existing Sprint mobile number as their Google Voice number and have it ring multiple other phones simultaneously. So now, calls to your Sprint mobile number can easily be answered from your office or your home phone, or even your computer through Gmail. Calls from Gmail and text messages sent from google.com/voice will also display your Sprint number. This basically gives Sprint customers all the benefits of Google Voice without the need to change or port their number."

Cool, but ... so what?  I guess I'll have to dig into this a bit further :)

It's been raining here all week - off and on - but it is also apparently raining on Titan.  How cool is that?  (Liquid methane, so it's ... pretty cool :) 

Here's another amazing amateur video of the tsunami hitting Northern Japan; this filmer was standing in the harbor, safely behind three breakwaters, calmly watching the water get higher, and wilder, and higher, and wilder, and ... finally he had to climb up a tower to stay dry.  Just amazing...  [ straight from the Horse's mouth ] 

Why Fukashima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power.  "A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation." 

Boom!  LinkedIn passes 100M members.  Wow.  Two things about this, wow, can't believe 100M people have signed up (I can remember when Reid Hoffman started LinkedIn, just eight years ago), and wow, this "boom!" meme is taking off... 

Augmented reality on the iPad2.  So far we have English to Spanish translation, but soon, picture search, and then ... the sky's the limit.  Okay maybe not "soon", but soon. 

Making a microscope without a lens.  Huh, cool.  Feels a little like a sailboat, you know why it works, but it is amazing to see that it does work all the same. 

This is way cool: Muhammad Ali sculpture socks it to ya.  What a great idea, and what amazing execution. 

So, have you heard of Color?  (If you haven't, then you've spent zero time online.)  Well John Gruber says it's a breathlessly overhyped piece of crap.  Excellent.  I don't get it either.