My macbook power cord has been in steady decline for the past few weeks. It had a bad short and I would often lose power. Even though I hadn’t touched it for weeks, it was taped to my desk, it was still getting worse. I’m not quite sure how this happened; I imagine it is a similar process that wires go through when they get tangled without being touched. No one is sure how this happens. Must be gnomes.

Anyways, back to the power cord. I followed the instructions in this Flickr set. It involved cutting around the transformer case with a rotary tool and cutting away the bad section of cord. I then rewired it and taped the original case back on with gorgeous red duct tape. Check out the pictures below and click for the full size image.

To anyone who is having the same problem, I would highly recommend doing this yourself. For 15 minutes of work, you save yourself $85 and your Macbook’s power cord will now look battle hardened.

These charts were inspired by indexed, a site that tries to make sense of life primarily by venn diagrams. The ideas in these charts are by no means new or my own, but I thought it would be neat to be able to visualize a few ideas I have in my head.

I think they’re pretty self explanatory:

That’s right I’m back. I was away last week and have lots of new ideas coming up.

I realized that I should have wrote some content before I went away and automated it, but….well I don’t really have a good excuse.

I am planning a few new changes here. First, I am going to commit to a regular posting schedule. I am going to take a page out of xkcd’s book and update every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I will still randomly post intermittently between those days, but there will be new content on those days for sure.

I am also getting a new theme ready to implement here. The current theme definitely needs to be replaced. I’m finding it to be pretty ugly. There’s going to be some fresh new eye candy here by the end of the week.

There was one particularly rewarding part of the week off and not posting. I realized that people actually miss what I have to say. It is good to know that I am actually reaching people. In particular, thanks to the Texan Democrat for letting me know that you enjoy this.

Don’t worry, this won’t happen again. Do you guys agree that I need a new theme?

I know nobody likes excuses but I will be away and won’t be updating here until next week. See you then.

This is a short post for a random quick thought that I had today. I don’t really think that it needs much explaining. Here it is:

“The only diet that works is a budget and the only budget that works is a diet.” - Adrian Corscadden

I now have an official quote!

Any thoughts?

re·li·gu·lous – adjective

1. When religious ideas, beliefs, claims are patently absurd, comical, ridiculous.

Religulous is not just a new word to rememberize, it is also the name of the upcoming Bill Maher documentary. It is slated to be released on easter, but IMBD is reporting that it won’t be released until June in the US.

I am not quite sure what to expect from religulous. I really don’t know Maher that well, apart from some his atheist monologues on youtube (if you haven’t seen them, check one out here; it’s a gooder). With directing from Larry Charles, the director of Borat, I am expecting it to be more of a comedy than a serious intellectual movie. Bill Maher is too well known to pull off Borat type humour, but I think that he will be able to achieve Michael Moore style comedy, even though Maher denies this.

Here is Maher on Religulous:

“We talked to everybody. We went everywhere. We went to every place where there is religion. We went to Vatican City. We went to Jerusalem. We went to Salt Lake City. And I think I’ve insulted everybody!”

Apart from Maher’s interview on Larry King (embedded below), there is little information about this upcoming documentary. I hope that it actually makes it out by easter. It’ll be a good laugh.

Over the last few years, there has been quite a bit of news about electronic voting machines. Almost all of the press seems to be negative. The media usually highlights security problems.

I am not an experienced programmer by any means, but I am capable of writing code that could perform the task of a voting machine. I realize that this isn’t the big issue, but I still don’t understand what can go wrong.

First of all, I am not talking about internet voting, which does have obvious security flaws that would be impossible to eliminate. I am primarily questioning direct-recording electronic voting machines. These are voting machines that electronically get user input and store the vote in computer memory. There is no paper involved. Activists and security experts claim voting fraud can occur if a third party modifies the software. Obviously this can happen, but the risk is no greater than with paper voting.

I think the bigger problem here is that people are still scared of technology and don’t trust it. No matter what kind of voting system is used, there are always going to be methods of modifying the results.

So, do you think that electronic voting machines are safe????

Ok, I’m not actually getting a tattoo, but I’m pretty tempted after seeing the science tattoos flickr set. These are tattoos from the readers of The Loom. It’s always good to see people dedicated to science.

As a spicy food addict, the capsaicin tattoo is my favorite:

The most useful science tattoo was this human ruler:

Check them all out Here.