n the summer of 2007, I suggested to the New York Times that they should run a story on steampunk culture -- how it had broken beyond mere tinkerers into domestic life. They gave it a green light and then killed the story for reasons unknown. I usually don't exhibit unpublished work, but after the Times ran its own new steampunk culture story, I thought -- in the vein of steampunk's attention to revisionist alternative histories -- that it would appropriate. So here it is, untitled and unaccredited.

It’s called the Telecalculograph. Amid modern contrivances – a digital picture frame, a mini-fridge stuffed with ramen packets and instant lemonade, a Back to the Future poster, a Game Boy Advance, “Seinfeld” DVDs, a folding 18-speed Fuji bicycle and bland summer-camp-meets-garage-sale dorm furniture – the Telecalculograph looms like a Franklin stove. It is a computer made to look like a Victorian furnace. When the computer processors flicker, an electronic fire seems to flare in the device’s iron belly. The brass mouse attached looks more like a 19th-century telegraph than a 21st-century doodad. The light that illuminates both devices emanates from a lamp of neon bulbs framed by horseshoe magnets wrapped in copper wire.

These are the brainchildren of Jake Hildebrandt, a 20-year-old Michigan Tech student. In total, the three devices – all unveiled this year – cost him $90 and 60 hours of labor. While Mr. Hildebrandt would seem to be part of a demographic that prefers hi-tech wizardry like the Wii or the iPhone, he opts instead for the retro comfort of the burgeoning aesthetic known as “steampunk” – a backlash not just to iGizmos, but also to the whole less-is-more design universe that includes recessed lighting, kitchen appliances camouflaged as cabinetry, cantilevered bathroom sinks with pipe-free underbellies, and discreet thermostat panels.

Well I'll tell you what Barack is not doing--closing the deal.

It's like he's got a girl back at his place, they're talking about philosophical things such as the myth of soul mates on his couch. The air is thick with sexual tension. He thinks about the lean-in, but it's as if she's miles away. She's ready for a move, but instead Barack awkwardly announces it's getting late and he has to get up early. Most likely because he's gay.

Is that a president you want, America? A sissy boy who is all talk and no bow-chicka-bow-wow? Or do you want someone who will bag the chick, by any means necessary (including the use of GHB if he/she has to) then will brag to their friends the next day about how the girl was begging for it. I'm that type of president.

James Carville said something salient on the topic: "If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two."

Not exactly how I would have put it, but there you go: Yes, I have three balls. You probably have a lot of questions. Is the third ball a mutation and hence ineffective at producing sperm? Are all three of my balls in one scrotum or do I have a spare ball inside a spare scrotum like that extra button in the little plastic baggy they give you when you buy a new shirt?

Inevitable @ scribbles and lies

If you're a poker player, and particularly if you're an online poker player, you've probably heard rumors about the rise of the poker bots. Unfortunately there's very little hard information out there (for obvious reasons) about how to build one of these bots. In fact, many so-called authorities still dismiss poker bots as a relic of the overactive poker player's imagination.

Zune's overall market share has grown from three to four percent, but that's most likely a steal from Creative (which sunk from four to two percent) than a steal from Apple or second-place SanDisk (with a billionty and 11 percent, respectively). But don't worry, we're sure that 2.5 update is going to change everything.

Compiz-Check is a script to test if Compiz is able to run on your system/setup and if not, it will tell you the reason why. Additionally you can use the output of the script to look for support in the official Compiz Fusion forums or the mailing list / forum of your distribution, which will make it much easier to locate your problem.

This plan first launched into action when a co-worker of the nameless woman at the Apple Store noticed her computer online and notified the woman. She was then able to log into her computer and the rest is history.

1983. The year of the IBM PC XT, the Apple Lisa, Pioneer 10 leaving the solar system, and Hooters opening up shop in Florida. It's also the birthyear of a 25 year old BSD bug, squashed only a few days ago.

The NVIDIA Quadro family of professional graphics cards are very, very expensive. They are generally 2-5X more expensive than their gaming counterparts, the NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards. But everyone knows that Quadro and GeForce graphics cards are virtually identical in hardware.

It has been a while since I came up with the original concept which proved to be hard to get across. But now there’s a Python-GTK demo, a GTK feature request and a narrated video :)

Google's video-sharing site YouTube began hosting a channel for The Church of Scientology last month. It's a "sponsored" channel, so Scientology pays for the privilege as well as for the Scientology ads YouTube also began serving in April. Now a group of Scientology critics have accused Google of banning users critical of Scientology in order to win the Church's advertising business.

This time a major U.S. newspaper editorializes against the American subsidies for ethanol. Their conclusion: “This does not mean that Congress should give up on biofuels as an important part of the effort to reduce the country’s dependency on imported oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What it does mean is that some biofuels are (or are likely to be) better than others….”

Their consensus is that the Skype problem is a symptom of being plugged into an under-powered USB port. It seems that only the front USB port on the MacBook offers a full powered, full speed bus. On the MacBook Pro the magic USB port is the left one, the right one is hubbed.

Take-Two Interactive Software Inc said on Friday that "Pirates of the Caribbean" director Gore Verbinski will make a movie version of "BioShock", its hit video game about an underwater utopia gone disastrously wrong.

The movie will be made by Universal Pictures, a unit of NBC Universal owned by General Electric Co, and John Logan, writer of "Gladiator" and "Sweeney Todd", was in talks to pen the screenplay, Take-Two said.

"Gore is an avid video gamer and true fan of 'BioShock'. That was extremely important to us in deciding to move forward with this project," Christoph Hartmann, president of Take-Two's 2K Games label, said in a statement.

Today we are going to look at CoolIT’s latest water-cooled processor heatsink, the PURE. CoolIT calls their cooling systems “Fluid Heat Exchangers” and have been building their FHEs for a couple of years now.

CoolIT Systems PURE CPU Cooler @ Tweak Town

After more than a decade of trans-Atlantic antitrust scrutiny, one would think Microsoft would be, oh, I don't know, subtle about its ambitions to destroy a competitor. Someone in Microsoft's European HR offices didn't get the message. A poster advertising jobs at Microsoft Europe lists, among other qualities it's looking for in candidates, the ability to be a "Google killer."

Presentations have just completed and we are on a break and the benchmarking session will begin shortly. At our benchmark desk when we arrived was sitting a GK-K8000 gaming keyboard. We were told they were delayed due to design issues but there seems to be many of them scattered throughout this meeting room. Maybe they are not the final version though.

First impressions are good though… first thing I noticed is just how solid it is. If I were to estimate, I’d say it weighs around 1KG without cables attached and the keys are very solid and feels great when typing. It has a detachable USB connector which is a bit odd but might be good if you are moving around to LAN parties for example.

David Copperfield may be able to make an entire house disappear, but missing windows are an event that nearly everyone has encountered. This occurs more frequently with laptops, as they frequently change profiles that have different video outputs (especially if you use a docking station). Some programs save their last window positions, so if you opened a program when you were docked, then the program may open off-screen when you are undocked.

Your program windows are still on your desktop; but you just can't see them. Most people have gotten so dependant on their OS's graphic user interface, that they can't understand how to interact with something that cannot be seen. Never fear, because I am here to gift you with second sight: how to see what cannot be seen.

In my post the other day about whether or not work in the ReiserFS file system would continue after Hans Reiser's murder conviction, I mentioned that this being an open source project, it wouldn't be hard for someone else to pick up where others leave off. And as it turns out, that's precisely what's happening: according to folks on the ReiserFS team, work on ReiserFS will continue.

Earlier today I was contacted by Alexander Lymin and Edward Shishkin, two of the developers on the ReiserFS team. Alex wanted to make it clear that "there is no need for drama" -- that work on ReiserFS hasn't stopped, even if they don't have the kind of resources they would like right now.

Alex echoed my point about picking up where others left off in his own words: "Perhaps the single strongest property of open source software is 'distributed reliability'; i.e., if one company/person fails, there are 10 others to pick up the banner." I'll add that while such a thing is not guaranteed, it's made that much easier, which is itself sometimes half the battle.

It is only after you look at the memory configuration does it finally strike you, this card is a 256MB card by name (and BIOS) only! Yep, this card comes packed with 512MB of memory, half of which is disabled in the shipping BIOS. It just so happens that we have a copy of a 512MB BIOS that we can flash to the card and unlock the full potential!

The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB Card That Is Really 512MB @ Legit Reviews