Cooperative Blog

Over the last few days stories have circulated regarding the scopes used by overseas personel during our crusade (I mean war) in the middle east. Interesting part is the bible verses the manufacturer is adding to the scopes for a little extra help with targeting.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/us-military-weapons-inscribed-secret-jesus-bible-codes/story?id=9575794

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/01/military_biblical_optics_011910w/

God bless.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html

Comparing this world to one totally made up is something that I know I do on a regular basis, but I don’t get all bummed out when I realize that the bright lights and 3D glasses are just Hollywood FX.

I. Don’t. Get. It.

A while ago the site went down due to an exploit in the blogging software. When it went down no one complained. I emailed a couple of people to see what they wanted to do. It was quasi-decided, as per, to let the blog rest in peace.

Well, along comes Pete. He sees the ashes. And decides to piss on them. Here’s the blog Pete. Josh’s post included.

Note: Unfortunately during the reinstall process email addresses and passwords were lost. If you want your old username back, email me.

My friend Oliver is a musician. There is something so very cool about knowing a person well, and then putting a disc in the car or jacking into the ipod and have that person sing to you. Anyway, I love his solo stuff. He has been playing with a full band in Ohio, and some mp3s are now up on the web (the band just broke up so Oliver could go to law school). Road to Nowhere starts slow but has some killer guitar solos later in the song.

Check them out, and if you like, you can buy the band’s discs or his older solo stuff. His stage name is Oliver Buck.

And here are some YouTubes of his now-defunct band, in case you want to geek out (jb, this means you).

You may recognize these lyrics that I put in a mass email some time back, from his song

_Troubadour Life_

Oskaloosa to East Tennessee
Lawrence all the way to New Jersey
Dive bars and diners from here to L.A.
There’s no tellin’ just where I might be

Every time I leave I ask myself why
But the answer ain’t never quite clear
So we’re rollin’ on
Rollin’ on
Livin’ to play
And playin’ to live
It ain’t easy to explain or do

One thing I know about this troubadour life
Is you don’t choose it, it chooses you

So please keep me close in your heart
You know it’s killin’ me to part.

Today is the airing of the last new Reading Rainbow on PBS.  I understand their decision, but still sad…

I guess LeVar Burton needs to pray for a new Next Generation movie…

http://www.bust.com/blog/2009/08/28/the-end-of-the-rainbow.html#

I can’t describe how happy I am that baby Sola has come into the world. Welcome, little one.

In comparison to her arrival, the following seems trivial, but we are a bunch of folks that like trivia. In BabyBdayBetting, Holly guessed the date correctly. I guessed the weight closest. Nanny nanny boo boo : )

And consider this your official invitation to begin the guessing for Michelle’s delivery, due December 13. You can put your entry into the calendar on google — it still exists. Entries required at least a month before the event. If you don’t have access or are just lazy, simply email me and I’ll put your date and weight guess on the calendar. Go, team!

FYI:

Volunteers are needed to manually count bicycles and pedestrians at several locations across the city next month. The Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Organization and the City of Lawrence will be conducting bicycle and pedestrian counts on Wednesday, Sept. 9 from 10a.m. to 12p.m., 5p.m. to 7p.m. and on Saturday, Sept. 12 from 12p.m. to 2 p.m. Those interested in volunteering for one or all of the scheduled count times are required to attend training session on either Wednesday, Sept. 2 from 6p.m. to 7 p.m. or Tuesday, Sept. 8 from 11a.m. to 12p.m. Volunteers will be taught the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project method created by Alta Planning and Design and the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

Data collected on bicycling and walking will assist city and regional leaders in estimating usage and demand for bicycle and pedestrian facilities. The counts will also be used to track the region’s progress on increasing the use of non-motorized transportation, strengthen grant applications to leverage additional federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects, evaluate existing projects, and help determine the location of future investments.

For more information or to volunteer, please contact:
Bart Rudolph, Transportation Planner at 832-3165 or brudolph@ci. lawrence. us.ks .

Some scientists at the University of Utah have developed an HIV blocking gel that can be inserted into the vagina pre-sex that somehow contains the semen to keep the virus from spreading.  It seems like kind of big news that I hadn’t heard about…

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090810024837.htm

Hello, gang.

I’ve been sending sizable files to mi madre via yousendit.com, which gives me a gig of free file sharing. I can always reregister using one of my other email addresses and get another gb, but I was wondering if anyone knew another way to accomplish this task.

Fellow Cooperative Bloggians. It appears that our blog has become a bit stagnant. That doesn’t mean that we’ve left the wide world of the web. We’ve just found and embraced another means of sharing information . . . or at least of sharing news and blog articles.

Enter Google Reader.

Google Reader has been around for some time, and a subset of our fellow cobloggers have been consuming digital news via this RSS feed reader. It is great for many reasons. I’ll only highlight two reasons here:

It is quick. Once you’ve subscribed to the feeds that interest you, you’ll be able to peruse the news pretty fast . . . especially if you use keyboard shortcuts. It generally takes me about 5 minutes to make it through hundreds of headlines. I open the articles that I am interesting in in new tabs for further reading.

You can share. If you find something especially interesting, well-written, or relevant, you can share it so your friends can be enriched too. In general, we all have topics that we are more interested in than others. Sharing lets us cherry pick the best of our respective interests. For example, Himay shares music articles; Dillon shares design post; I share architecture pictures. Of course we all share more than just that, but you get the point.

If you are not using Google Reader, I encourage you to do so. And make sure you share with your fellow cobloggers.