From Trekmovie.com: Mythbusters To Test Star Trek’s Gorn Cannon
Picture from Grant Imahara’s Twitpics
Ah, Mythbusters and Star Trek two of my favorite shows together at last. Can’t wait to watch this episode. Grant twittered that he’ll be wearing an original Star Trek science officer’s uniform.
Every day it seems like there’s a new iPhone application that makes life a little easier.
Cardstar is one of those. It lets you get rid of your plastic loyalty cards that’s taking space in your wallet or hanging on your key chain.
Cardstar simply stores and recreates your loyalty cards in your iPhone. All you have to do is to choose your merchant from a list and enter your id number. Cardstar generates the barcode that you use when checking out. Currently there are over 190 companies listed in 7 different categories.
If your store isn’t listed, Cardstar gives you the option of generating different barcodes based on common barcode generating methods. My gym isn’t one of the businesses listed, but I was able to recreate the barcode by trying different generation methods until I got one that visually matched what is printed on my card.
Here are some tips from the Cardstar FAQ on how best to use Cardstar:
Are there any tips for insuring a successful scan?
1) Make sure the screen is free of dust and fingerprints. The screen MUST be clean in order to scan properly.
2) Keep the screen just shy of perpendicular to the scanner and hold the barcode image steady (don’t wave around).
3) Hold the screen approximately 5-7 inches from the scanning device.
4) Keep the screen in a vertical (portrait) orientation. Only use horizontal (landscape) orientation when the barcode is too wide to display otherwise.
UPDATE 7/13/09
Had trouble using Cardstar at the Cincinnati Public Library. The barcode scanner at the library is tilted at an angle to make it easier to scan the barcode on books. If you tilt the iPhone at the proper angle to be scanned, the barcode flips its orientation from vertical to horizontal making it unscanable.
I wrote an email to the developers suggesting a way of locking the direction and they said they’d think about it for the next version.
From NYTimes.com: What Does Your Credit-Card Company Know About You?
Put another way, credit-card companies are becoming much more interested in understanding their customers’ lives and psyches, because, the theory goes, knowing what makes cardholders tick will help firms determine who is a good bet and who should be shown the door as quickly as possible.
This is an interesting article from May that I somehow missed. Credit card companies are using your purchases to create a profile on you to determine your credit worthiness by comparing your profile to others.
Related links
Marketplace.publicradio.org : 10 purchases not to put on credit cards
Marketplace.publicradio.org: Credit card companies are watching you
Voxpublica.org: Shop at Walmart? Lower your credit limit.
From MacNN.com: iPhone 3.0 causing unusually rapid battery drain?
I don’t know if it’s iPhone OS 3.0 causing battery drain, but I do know that GPS and 3G can really use up your battery pretty quickly. I find that I have to charge my iPhone 3GS more often than my original iPhone, but that may be due to the fact that I’m using my iPhone 3GS a lot more often for things my original iPhone couldn’t do as well or at all. 3G makes surfing usable- a lot better than surfing with EDGE. Using EDGE for anything more than checking email is painful.
If you’re using GPS a lot, you’ll definitely need a car charger. Heavy use of the GPS caused my phone to run down within a few hours. The car charger that I use is the Griffin PowerJolt Redesign Home/Car Charger for iPod and iPhone which works for the iPhone 3GS.
From CNN.com: Palin: ‘I am not a quitter; I am a fighter’
“I am not a quitter. I am a fighter,” Palin told CNN on Monday while on a family fishing trip, on the heels of her Friday bombshell announcement that she was resigning as Alaska’s governor.
To give up one’s job or office; quit, especially by formal notification
Steps
1. Think of the object used to play with (eg. tennis ball, football) as something that really bugs you, that you really want to hit
2. Tense yourself, and look for some form of anger. Direct it towards the object. you should feel an adrenalin burst
3. When the object comes to you, unleash that anger towards that object
4. More often than not you will hit it, and hit it well.
Seriously, this is advise for improving your reflexes in sport? I can’t believe that it took 4 people to collaborate on this garbage.
Readers of my blog are familiar with my fascination of all things gummi. Well here’s something new. Gummi Army Guys.
It’s nice to know from the packaging that they’re fruit flavored, otherwise I’d be thinking napalm.
If you’re looking to reenact D-Day and need lots of Gummi Army Guys, they sell on Amazon a pack of 2 five pound bags:
I think this is just a case of her cashing in on her celebrity. And I don’t blame her for doing it. Governing during a recession is difficult. Lots of tough decisions to make and little upside. I think that by leaving now, she’ll be able to accept speaking fees from her base and perhaps parlay this into a radio hosting gig.
From CNN.com: Ocean trash problem ‘far from being solved,’ U.N. says
Scientists have been watching trash pile up in the world’s oceans for about a half-century, when plastics came into widespread use. Since plastics don’t biodegrade, or do so very slowly, the trash tends to remain in the ocean, where circling currents collect the material in several marine “garbage patches.
One of these trashy areas is said to be roughly the size of Texas. The water in these at-sea landfills is thick like a plastic soup, oceanographers told CNN.
…
Plastics and cigarette butts are the most common types of ocean litter, with plastic making up about 80 percent of the ocean trash collected in some areas of the world, a U.N. news release says.
This makes me sick to think of this.
From Wired.com: Photograph Fireworks
Some tips for photographing fireworks. Even includes tips for the iPhone!
