The Balkan Yankee

Advert Screen shot, originally uploaded by garth walker.

Sometimes I’m amazed by how good targeted advertising can be whether its in search, on a blog, or some related site of interest.

Lately though, it seems every time I log into Facebook this advertisment appears at the footer or in the sidebar, which makes sense to the extent that my IP address is located in Bulgaria, but not on Facebook. They have access to more of my personal data than any other website and my U.S. citizenship is acknowledged on the very page this ad is delivered to (Hometown: Burbank, Ca.)

For a company that is apparently struggling to develop a revenue stream and coming on the heels of the Beacon PR disaster it just seems sloppy, and proves that Facebook could be doing a better job with even their very basic advertising.

From The Smithonian on record setting cold temperatures:

Ketterle’s achievement came out of his pursuit of an entirely new form of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The condensates are not standard gases, liquids or even solids. They form when a cloud of atoms—sometimes millions or more—all enter the same quantum state and behave as one…. ….The speed of light, as we’ve all heard, is a constant: 186,171 miles per second in a vacuum. But it is different in the real world, outside a vacuum; for instance, light not only bends but also slows ever so slightly when it passes through glass or water. Still, that’s nothing compared with what happens when Hau shines a laser beam of light into a BEC[: it’s like hurling a baseball into a pillow. “First, we got the speed down to that of a bicycle,” Hau says. “Now it’s at a crawl, and we can actually stop it—keep light bottled up entirely inside the BEC, look at it, play with it and then release it when we’re ready.”

I almost choked on my morning Banitsa when I read this article.

It sounds too good to be true. The way I see it there are three possibilites:

1) Verizon really is feeling the heat from Google’s impending Android coupled with not having the iPhone.

2) There is some other deeply sinister motive involved and Verizon is merely setting their trap.

3) We’ve slipped into a parallel universe like we did briefly on this day.

I’m guessing the penultimate is true, but we’ll see. As long as they don’t pull a complete head-fake, I’ll at least be able to benefit from their network quality over T-Mobile on short visits without buying new hardware.

Ye Old Powerbook Adapter, originally uploaded by garth walker.

Ok… I didn’t drop this, or crack it open accidentally. I did it on purpose.The power adapter casing is built to withstand far beyond what I would consider reasonable. What finally did this was a combination of Pliers, screw drivers, improvised vice grips and a lot of banging. The cord itself however, is more functional as a wick. These things seem timed to literally burn out after one year.

That’s what happened to this guy, right near the base of the adapter. This photo is the result of my attempt to expose enough of the wire to strip to Coaxial insulation, and reattach the wire.

I plugged it into the wall and to my joy it did not explode. I then plugged the other end into my computer. The result, unfortunately, was a green light around the rim for which was initially hopeful. (Later I remembered that this rim turns orange when the battery is charging) After 2-3 hours plugged in the computer has yet to startup.

I’m not sure what I can do from here. I sure as hell do not want to pay Apple another $75 ($150 in Bulgaria) for another one of these disasters. Read the customer reviews over at Apple for yourself. This happens to almost everyone. Unbelievable.

radiohead in rainbows

Originally uploaded by anatoliv73

I just got the new Radiohead album. For those of you who don’t know, Radiohead is bypassing the label system this round and distributing the album exclusively from their website site…. and what’s more you get to decide how much you pay for it. With people paying between 0 (nothing) and over a thousand dollars, I believe the average so far is roughly $5. Sounds good for Radiohead considering even a generous royalty contract would give them slightly less per album after marketing and distribution costs.

So, like I said, I just got the new album. I was going to pay $4-5 for it myself but I haven’t been able to get the website to accept my order. They must be getting flooded right now. So, I’ll have to go buy later when it calms down a bit and pay for it. I definitely will, and I hope a lot of other big bands with enough clout to pull something like this off give it a try. It’s the beginnings of a 21st Century business model in the music industry, and it’s exciting to see the fans and artists both getting a better deal by exchanging directly with one another.