Author: Tommy

Now for something for our regular visitors and contributors - is there such a thing? I've added a small feature that will allow authors of articles, commentors and shouts to be displayed as links to wikipedia. No longer will you have to copy/paste the word in to Wikipedia and type in your "a href" HTML to have a link created, instead you only have to put the [ wiki ] tags around the word, vbCode style. (Contributors should know what I'm talking about.)

Now it is easy to make a direct link to a wikipedia article. It's a simple use of a regular expression that matches both of the tags. And these are just more words to display more URLs to wikipedia articles.

Ok, I finally got off my duff and fixed the signup page for those of you seeking new accounts. Long ago I decided to implement the reCAPTCHA mechanism to both block spammers and bots from creating accounts, but also to do some good.

For those of you that may not know what a CAPTCHA is, it's a block of text that is hard for computers to decode. Humans are great at pattern recognition, so it's a quick, easy way to ensure the person looking at the page is a real, live human - versus an automated spam bot. For more information about CAPTCHAs, check out the wikipedia article above.

How is reCAPTCHA different? Glad you asked. reCAPTCHA's aim is to assist in digitizing text of printed materials to help save and archive them for future generations. At the time of writing this, reCAPTCHA is helping to digitize old issues of the venerable New York Times, which is over 150 years old. reCAPTCHA's website says that over 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved per day, so if every CAPTCHA did something productive, you can see the benefit. So, that's why I went with reCAPTCHA, just my little way to help do my part.

Well, that was Thanksgiving and Black Friday. I was able to take advantage of a couple of good deals at Ace Hardware where I picked up a 12gal Shop-Vac ($19.99) and toolbox ($4.99). I didn't brave any stores very early, I chose to sleep in.

But, with the beginning of Christmas Season comes the Christmas Lists. Below is a list of Wishlistr links for Neodux members. Members, feel free to edit this post and link to your wishlistr.

Tommy's Wishlistr

Jennifer's Wishlistr

Greg's Wishlistr

Nikki's Wishlistr

Jeff's Wishlistr

Mom's Wishlistr

Other Folks:

Mackieman's Wishlistr

Get your links in soon, I'm going to make this a Christmas-time widget. update: Widget created. See upper left corner.

With all the talk about healthcare and the oh-so-scary "public option", it's hard not to touch on the increasing obesity problem in America. A recent infographic outlines the American obesity problem. (Americans eat the same as the average Chinese citizen, plus 19 slices of bacon!) Is there some sinister plot out to get you? Surely not. It's mostly due to portion control on behalf of the consumer. (Remember how small a "small" used to be?) Also think about how seemingly offensive it is when you order a meal at a restaurant and you finish it all! Heaven forbid you finish your plate and not hurt afterward!) But, for the most part, food is cheap and we love to eat. Salt, fat and sugar: our big three food groups. You'd be hard pressed to name a favorite dish that isn't just mounds of these three. But, again, those 3 are the cheap ones. Most vegetables aren't very cheap compared to a bag of chips. Calorie for calorie, junk food is cheaper. Why? Corn.

After watching the documentary Food, Inc., I began to realize just how extensive corn has become in all of our foods. Corn subsidies have helped junk food (of which corn is the #1 contributor) become the cheapest source of calories in the American diet. You can buy a ready-made hamburger for less than you can a head of lettuce. You can buy a order of french fries cheaper than you can buy a potato. These artificially low prices are due to corn subsidies.
Subsidies ensure Americans have access to cheap food. The problem has now become that our subsidized food is now too cheap. It's time we come off of our subsidies.

If we look at the infographic above, we learn that Americans consume nearly 4000 calories a day. That's almost 2000 calories more than we should, given our sedentary lifestyles. Essentially we're subsidizing excess calories that never get burned off. Excess food intake does one of two things, it either become fat (giving us the obesity epidemic) or it becomes waste (meaning our tax dollars are paying for crap).

So with the whole healthcare issue at hand and Americans upset about government spending, consider how much of your tax dollars are going toward financing turds.

update: Just in time for the holidays, if you don't believe that overeating causes more moves, consider this: The day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day for plumbers in America, of course Americans also appear to toss out about 40% of our food. So, whatever we're not flushing away, we're just throwing right in the trash.

Well, today I received my first box from The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk. As predicted, there was a lot of random stuff inside. Several bags of discrete components (capacitors, LEDs, etc), some DC motors of varying sizes and ratings, some copper-clad PCBs for homemade etching (with transfer film - very tempting), a couple of pagers, some random gears and knobs, a nice pack of 7 segment LEDs, some project enclosures, some random PCBs, wire wrap supplies, a DIY 9-pin serial cable and connector, and a nice looking character LCD that was unfortunately cracked right in the center.

Quite a bit of stuff to choose from. I chose to take out a 9V battery clip, some 7-segment LEDs, and the 2 project enclosures. I plan to use the parts for a solar-powered arduino project I read about and have been wanting to try out.

I'll probably pick some unsuspecting geek and mail the box out to him in a couple days. That is, after I dig up some worthy additions to the box. Interested in joining the ranks? Sign up!