AdamStovicek.com

Archive for January, 2008

Source … Daily Mail

Your eyes do not deceive you. That is a gathering of 395 smurfs by a riverside in Croatia.

A spokesperson for the group said they did some research and decided that they wanted to break the record for the largest gathering of smurfs. Their research led them to believe that the current record was being held by an American group with 290 smurfs and thought that an additional 105 would certainly gain them the top spot. However, upon contacting the World Guinness Book Of Records to register their accomplishment, they were told that a group at Warwick University had already taken the prize with 451 smurfs.

“We could easily have got more Smurfs, but we thought that over a
hundred more than the American record we found on the internet would be
enough.”

Indeed. The Croatians will not be defeated!

Source … Bloggasm

The day is here, yes indeed. International Delete Your MySpace Account. I commented a few days ago about Simon Owen of Bloggasm trying to organize a mass deletion at MySpace and today is the target date. And it’s gaining a bit of national exposure from The Washington Post to a Channel 9 News Now segment. Along with the rest of us trying to spread the word, there should be plenty of ex-MySpace users after today enjoying life without the umbilical cord feeding them useless spam friend requests, other user’s ridiculously formatted pages, and the blaring music coming from a media player hidden somewhere on a nine mile page.

MySpace isn’t necessarily evil, but the site has grown to such a capacity that it seems unmanageable in the terms of moderation to a point where it’s no longer a phenomenon but a failure. Maybe if we can convince enough to leave, the administrators will take notice and find a way to fix the issues.

Simon Owen gives a detailed list of instructions on how to successfully complete the deletion of your account in five (well six) easy steps. After 48 hours of submitting your request to delete your account, your profile should be removed.

My opinion is that there won’t necessarily be a huge exodus today as much as there will be a general fallout over the course of a week or two. If we can keep pushing the issue and convincing users that MySpace isn’t needed, we can keep the ball rolling and the avalanche to continue. In the spirit of the day, I have just deleted my own. We’ll see if it disappears in 48 hours.

Source … InformationWeek

Is Windows Vista too fat for you? I know it is for me. It’s one of the many reasons why I don’t touch the damned thing.

Enter vLite. This tool allows you to customize Vista before you install it. So, instead of it using up 15GB of hard drive space, you might only need half of that by limiting which components actually get installed. Other features include unattended setups, creating ISOs and bootable CD/DVDs, language pack and driver integration, and tweaking. We all like to tweak.

I have no personal experience to share. I tried Vista once and gave up on it. I am happy with my XP machine. Everything else I use has Linux installed. But from what I’ve read in the past, any way to customize the bloated Vista has to be good.

Source … Military.com

Quake fans rejoice! The US Navy has been the recipient of a brand new 32MJ rail gun, the most powerful one yet. It can fire rounds up to speeds of Mach 8, or 2722 meters per second.

In a practical sense, a rail gun eliminates many obstacles that a conventional gun presents.

• Since the rail gun propels its projectiles with electricity alone, storage would be free of explosive materials. Not only does this present a much safer environment for the sailors, especially during battle, it would free up space in order to store more ammunition.
• Gas expansion, driven by conventional explosive material, is limited in its ability to launch a projectile. A rail gun can launch a projectile much faster and further away.
• Rapid fire of a rail gun can be achieved much more efficiently. As there is no spent cartridge to clear from the weapon, a new projectile could be loaded within a moment after being fired.

The major drawback to this weapon is having to supply it with 3 million amps of power for each shot. The Navy is looking to get it’s hands on a 64MJ rail gun which would mean requiring up to 6 million amps of power. They estimate that in order to fire a 64MJ weapon six times per minute would require 16MW of power, a major reason why the Navy is getting its hands on these first.

The Arleigh Burke class of US destroyers are powered by four General-Electric turbines capable of generating 75MW of power. By balancing the power needs between propulsion and the weapon, a fleet of destroyers with mounted rail guns could be a very formidable force. From delivering supporting fire to troops on the ground from distances of 220 miles away, to supplementing the Aegis missile defense systems with hypersonic projectiles, fully functional rail guns would be indispensable.

Below is a video of a test shot done in October 2006. This is not the 32MJ rail gun but of NAVSEA’s testing of the technology. It is also accessible at Fredericksburg.com.

Source … Bloggasm

Simon Owen of Bloggasm has proposed that we all delete our MySpace accounts on January 30th. As a MySpace account holder, albeit much unused, I can sympathize with many of Simon’s points. He lists 10 reasons that pretty much hit home for most of us who dread visiting MySpace.

My only reason for having a MySpace account to begin with is to get pictures of bands and musicians to go along with my music. It is a requirement to have an account to see other details such as pictures or videos, which seems odd considering everyone seems to already be within my extended network. To this day I have no idea what the extended network is or how it benefits me.

I may join up with Simon and finally get rid of it. I may never have to see another useless email from them. My only fear will be that the frequent request emails I now receive will be replaced by pleas to return once the account is deleted. Maybe we’ll see some PSAs from Tom.

“You idiot! You own a Macintosh! The file is fucking gone!”

This wonderful version of a Macintosh commercial was created by Hunter Cressel. His website is supposed to be located at http://www.happynowhere.net/ but at this time it doesn’t seem to be loading. YouTube has a few copies of it, some that are tagged with someone else’s website or Hunter Cressel’s removed from the end. Holm Computing Consultants have it hosted there as well.

Source … The Morning Call

Originally found by the guys at fark, the story involves one William Torres who was arrested for two counts of possession of a controlled substance, two counts of possession with intent to deliver and conspiracy. The investigation led to even more surprising charges of murder. He is currently being held without bail for the homicide charges and two charges of conspiracy to commit homicide.

This is certainly one major badass, but you wouldn’t have guessed that by looking at his picture, furry lion slippers and all.

I’m not sure what will come of this, or what direction I will take it. It’s definitely a personal blog where I’ll share tidbits of my own life, musings that I find, ideas that come to mind, and anything else that relates to myself. I doubt it will make an impact on the Internet.

If I can keep friends and family in the know, I’ll consider this a success.