A while back I purchased a green 35mw Wicked Laser and it’s been a blast thus far. Think of the brightest “regular” laser you’ve ever seen (like from ThinkGeek, or whatever), then multiply that by seven times. This thing is visible from 15 miles away. It’s brutally cool.

Anyway, tonight it was foggy so I called my buddy Zed up to see if he wanted to check out how bright it would be with the added effect of the water particles. So we drove out to an area with less light pollution to shine it on some nature.

What turned out to be the highlight was the fact that Zed brought his camera. Zed used 2-15 second exposures for these, and here’s what we came up with. Keep in mind that it’s not raining; the sprinkles are fog droplets.

This first one is a telephone pole being painted into existence.

From Green Laser + Night + Fog

And this one is me:

From Green Laser + Night + Fog

And here’s the whole gallery:

I’ve been struggling with a problem for a while now. The problem is how to properly display on my site everything online that I create vs. everything online that I find and enjoy. The issue is that these two types of content need to be differentiated to provide maximum value to readers.

So here are my requirements.

1. I want to be able to instantly send any content that I’m viewing, regardless of medium, to my website as a link. So if I’m reading an essay/article or watching a video clip, I want to hit a single button and have it highlighted on my site’s sidebar under Discovered Content.

2. And I want the same capability for any content I create myself, but that would happen automatically as I posted it. So if I post an essay on my blog, or I send some images to Flickr, Tweet something, or I write a comment on Reddit, I want a link to that content in my site’s sidebar as well, but this time under Created Content.

I think the best distinction you can make regarding content is whether you made it yourself, or whether you’re simply passing it along as part of your input stream. Created vs. Discovered. Output vs. Input.

So here’s what I’m proposing: a service that separately collects together everything you create vs. everything you discover online, and then builds an aggregate syndication feed for each, and then gives you a simple javascript block that you can drop into your site to display each.

So it’ll:

• Collect your content (both created and discovered)
• Aggregate each into two distinct feeds (think Yahoo! Pipes)
• Give you a javascript snippet that you can use to embed it in your site/blog

Here’s a simple mock-up of the architecture as I see it:

This is very rough right now, but if I still think this is a good idea in like a week I’m going to contact some people at my favorite services, e.g. Google, FriendFeed, to see if they’d be interested in implementing it.

Any thoughts? Does this sound like something people would be interested in?

A humorous new Internet meme. Well, perhaps not new. But humorous.

I got a new mouse for my desktop today. It’s the new Microsoft BlueTrack deal. Very sweet.

It tracks excellently on my table, which is light-colored and very smooth. Most other mice had failed at this.

Image from slashgear.com

Anyway, great mouse. It’s heavy-ish, glides very smoothly over the surface, and I like the button feedback and functionality, the latter of which is pretty much a classic Explorer type of thing.

Yeah…stoked about the mouse.

[ Bit.ly: More Than Just a URL Shortener ]

Like. Want. I want a Mac Pro with a striped mirror of SSDs for my OS volume. That would be sick.

Perhaps in a couple of years when the price of SSD comes down…

Links

[ Two SSDs in Raid 0 | hothardware.com ]

And now for something completely different—a game based on a database. No, not a game that uses a database. It is a database. From the site:

THRILL as you insert your very own row in the “rows” table!

With careful selection of SQL queries, you will soon have three or even four-digit numbers in some of the fields in your row! Other queries may allow you to use those numbers to subtract numbers from rows entered by other players — all while pushing the numbers in your own row even higher!

(thanks to Brooks for the link)

A good primer on Geocaching using your iPhone 3G.

Links

[ Geocaching With Your iPhone 3G | tauw.com ]

ArsTechnica

A fellow security blogger, Michael Farnum, has posted a piece that I felt compelled to respond to. In the post he essentially complains that most of the pro-pc/anti-mac commentary he reads at Computerworld get modded down, while the pro-mac/anti-pc stuff he sees usually gets modded up.

He goes on to write:

So if you own a Mac and you think it is the best thing since sliced silicone, then more power to you. Just get off your preppy horse with a quasi-Mohawk and an earring and quit telling us PC owners that we are stupid. Sheesh…

I can help you, Michael. The problem is that just as some Mac fanboys are too rabid about loving their Macs, you’ve become too emotional as well — but in the opposite direction.

The fact is that there are extremely compelling reasons to be using a Mac instead of a PC — especially if you’re in information security. OS X is more stable, more secure (the reasons why is a separate discussion) and gives you access to UNIX power and great package management systems all from a highly usable GUI. These are the reasons people love it.

Look at Jeremiah Grossman. Look at Marty Roesch. Do you think they are silly fanboys on a bandwagon? Hell, just go to any serious security conference and see what most of the speakers are using. In the vast majority of cases it’s OS X or Linux. Most high-end security guys that I know who use Windows have to do so because of where they work, and they’re pissed about it.

There’s a reason for that.

Seriously, man, don’t be emotional about it. I agree the fanboy frenzy is annoying at times, but the reactions you’re seeing are actually powered by truth. Spend a month using OS X exclusively and see if you don’t agree.:

I just got my first new computer in around three years - a top of the line 24″ iMac with four gigabytes of RAM. Plus it has an nVidia 8800 with 512MB of video memory. The display makes all the difference, let me tell you.

Unfortunately I’m feeling a bit like crap tonight. So I’m going to take more medicine and try to sleep it off. I’ll start the data migration and application refresh tomorrow after work.

A slightly subdued W00t.