Tesla Model S ties highest ever Consumer Reports rating with a '99' - latimes.com

Want.

Robot dog ball thrower

Watch "What happens when engineers own dogs" on YouTube

This made me happy on so many levels.

Pocket Casts by Shifty Jelly

Finally, a very usable podcast manager for Android. It isn't perfect but it has all the basics covered.

My favorites:

• Phone and tablet support natively
• Podcast sync
• Playback speed from .5x - 3.0x
• Homescreen widget, lockscreen controls, and headset controls
• Android 4.0+ expandable, rich notifications
• 10 second reverse, 30 second skip
• Screen orientation lock for video podcasts
• Logical smart playlists
• Reliable downloads (but I can't find the auto-download settings?)
• To enable auto-download, create a new smart playlist and toggle the automatic download setting

I just wish I could get rid of ShiftyJelly's red interface branding, but I guess I can live with that. It would also be nicer to have more gesture support within a podcast feed but I'm very impressed with the amount of functionality included with this first release. I'm sure more is forthcoming.

I highly recommend this app. I'm still interested in programming my own. :-)

'via Blog this'

50 Years of James Bond

A very well made fan montage of James Bond through the years. What strikes me the most about this clip is how well Daniel Craig fits the role: he compares very favorably to the original, Sean Connery - more lithe and deadly than suave and powerful but most importantly, believable.

I never believed Roger Moore (judo chop!) or Pierce Brosnan could take anyone reasonably competent in a fight.

Android first - Shifty Jelly

Why Android first?

This is a really fascinating blog post as this company's experiences seems counter to most of the press we're hearing in the news lately. Podcasting clients are a really interesting beast, and while I still want to build my own, I trust Shifty Jelly to create am excellent app.

I agree completely with their thoughts about the state of Android and their sales numbers for Android vs. iOS give me hope regarding Android's sales potential.

I love the landscape of the tech world presently. There is so much change happening, fascinating times!

Jim Butcher has a Plan

The St. Louis Arch

Way back in 2007, I decided to give an up-and-coming author, Jim Butcher a chance. The TV show was coming on on SyFy and since I have a habit of reading the books TV and movies are based upon, I decided to hop on The Dresden Files book train.

Woah.

Fast forward six years, there are now fourteen books in the main series (lots of shorts on the side) and I'm thoroughly hooked. These fourteen books contain roughly six thousand pages of material, each with its own standalone story arc but building an epic storyline like no story before it.

Mr. Butcher has said that he plans on roughly twenty books followed by an epic three book ending. Even at the pace of a book per year, that gives me ten more years of reading pleasure ahead of me.

Given that this is such a long series and how long ago I read the initial books, I decided to revisit the series from the beginning, to get re-acquainted with the characters and the foundations of the Dresdenverse. I'm so glad I did, even though I'm only on book four (Death Masks).

Now that I know the direction of characters and storyline, I'm picking up a ton of nuances, hints, and tidbits of story lines to come. It really is amazing.



----------------------------------------------- SPOILER INCOMING -----------------------------------------------



Really, if you haven't read the series, don't read this coming paragraph. I'm not really giving away a whole lot, other than the ending of book fourteen (Cold Days) but since that has been one of my favorites, I don't want to spoil it for anyone else.

The ending of Cold Days is hinted at directly in book three (Grave Peril). You see, in book three, Harry attends a Red Court masquerade ball with Michael, one of the Knights of the Cross in an attempt to pinpoint a murderer in that book's story arc. While there, Harry's Godmother, Lea, makes an appearance and speaks to Harry and Michael. She says something along the line of:

I don't want you, Michael, you are to rigid and stuck in your ways. Now, your eldest daughter, however...

At which point, Michael goes ballistic and wants to take her on, telling her in no uncertain terms, to stay away from his family. Now, if you have read Cold Days, you know that Michael's oldest daughter, Molly (who is now Harry's apprentice) joins the Winter Court as the Winter Lady, mostly due to her proximity to Lea.

In a single story or even a trilogy, I could understand dropping a bread crumb such as the scene above. However, how does one plan eleven books in advance for an event such as Molly ascending to the Winter Court??? Sure, this could be a coincidence, but I suspect this was very much planned.

My hats off to you, sir. Well played, Jim. Well played.

Ubuntu SDK

This is an important step in finally developing a cohesive desktop strategy in Linux. Whether you like Ubuntu or not, I feel they are the one organization that is really moving the platform forward for end users.

This is an important step for making a unified app environment, I'm happy to see it announced.