Digital Media and whatever else flows through my head…
Archive for year 2007
How antibacterial soaps and cleaners could make you VERY sick
Jun 9th
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” is an oft quoted maxim that I personally feel is true. However, when applied to bacteria the results are stronger bugs that may be resistant to treatment.
The common use of ‘antibacterial’ products in the home introduces enormous amounts of the chemicals that were previously only used in hospitals and labs. These chemicals, while very effective at killing bacteria, don’t kill it all. That this left behind contributes to the production of resistant strains of bacteria. These strains have also been shown (in the lab) to be resistant to the most common treatments for bacterial infections.
The result is that we are contributing to the evolution of drug-resistant forms of bacteria through our use of anti-bacterial products in our homes.
Stick with soap and water; it is just as effective and does NOT contribute to super-bugs.
Strange but True: Antibacterial Products May Do More Harm Than Good: Scientific American
Truely wireless, solar powered WiFi
Jun 5th
Acording to the Gizmodo piece this is a repeater rather than a full access point. The difference being that it really just extends the range of a ‘real’ access point. All the packets still have to make it back to the AP and then uplink from there.
Since you’re going to loose some percentage of packets on each hop (…repeater->repeater->access point) the more hops away you get the worse your service will become.
It’s rather cool in that it is useful where you have no power such as in a remote location (Scout camp) or temporary setups. I don’t think I’m going to run out and buy them for my neighborhood however.
Free Wi-Fi: Meraki’s Solar-powered Repeater Lets You Create Your Own Neighborhood Network – Gizmodo
Yet another rational piece on ‘Network Neutrality’
Jun 5th
This piece by George Ou starts out with a description of carrier peering arrangements and moves into the various pieces of legislation pending to regulate Internet traffic & services. A worthwhile read by an informed party with no skin in the game.
» A rational debate on Net Neutrality | George Ou | ZDNet.com
A good piece on latency vs. bandwidth in network design
Jun 1st
Almost every geek knows the bandwidth of thier home internet connection. But a painful few have any clue what, nor the impact of, it’s latency.
edgeblog » It’s Still the Latency, Stupid…pt.1
Belagio Glass Flower Ceiling
May 18th
The lobby of the Belagio Hotel in Las Vegas has a HUGE glass flower sculpture on its ceiling. This installation includes over 2000 individually blown pieces by artist Dale Chihuly.
To take this shot I had to lay on my back and shoot straight up; I got lots of weird looks. 
The Belagio site has some more info. and the artist can be found here.
I’ve posted several other shots from that trip, the first with the new camera, on Flickr.
Dreamland Blues is huge in Algeria!
May 17th
One of the great features of Live365 is GEO stats. This gives me a view into the geographic location of my listeners on a country-by-country basis. The results are surprising.
The top two entries are no big surprise:
1) United Stats
2) Canada
But here is where things start to get interesting:
