FeedMe

Walk, Drive, Bus...

Google Maps has added walking directions. They already had public transit in some areas. They include a lot of helpful information, in addition to the router.

 For instance, I can drive the 3.5 miles from work to home in 8 minutes. On foot, the route is quite different but the distance is that same. Google thinks it would take 1 hour, 11 minutes (obviously, they don't take into account any ice cream stores en route).

By bus, they tell me it will take 58 minutes — and cost $1.75. They also tell me it would be $2.05 to drive. Again, no ice cream is factored in.

Nicely done. Though it's in beta, the walking route matches what I would choose.

I love the fact that Google keeps improving their systems. By the way, if you didn't know — one of the coolest features of Google maps is that you can click and drag to change a route. If their directions send you up 101 but you prefer to take 280, drag the route line over to 280 and a new route will be drawn, using the points you request.

This is too cool. The "Tilted Twister" is a robot, built from Legos, that solves Rubik's cube, with no external PC. It was built with standard Lego Mindstorms NXT kit.

You need to see it in action to appreciate it. First, it scans all the sizes and determines the colors the cube has. Then it begins twisting sides:

More info on the Tilted Twister page to the video.

From: Tilted Twister, via Hackzine.

Foodgal

When the Mercury-News laid off much of its staff recently, we lost the reporting of food editor Carolyn Jung. I loved her articles because she always went the extra mile. She reported not just on the food and the recipes, she would find out where it is available and interview local chefs on how they use it. I especially remember an article on fresh garbanzo beans (who knew?).

Happily, Carolyn resurfaced quickly as FoodGal, where she has been posting an article every day or two with her "musings on food, wine, laughter, and life."

Comic Compressed

This is very cool. Alt comic artist Meredith Gran posted a timelapse video of the creation of her comic, Octopus Pie. Hypnotic and revealing of the artist's process, this shows four hours of drawing in a few minutes. Way cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeKWsf1UzEg

Opt Out the Easy Way

I've started to opt-out of all the mail I receive, both electronic and paper. It's important — not only do these offers waste resources and your time, many open up opportunities for identity theft.

It's a pain to do opt-out one-by-one but happily, there are ways to do it en masse. You can register with organizations (almost always for free) whose members have committed to remove anyone who requests it. They include mail order companies who will stop sending catalogs; credit companies who will stop sending offers; anti-spam lists; and telemarketers.

Even better, all of these services have been gathered in one place. Visit the World Privacy Forum's Top Ten Opt-Outs. Just march down the list and follow the directions. 

One of the most important mailings to dodge are the ones that offer you pre-approved credit. If a bad guy were to intercept one of these from your mailbox, he could sign up for a credit card and if he watched for the response, he could run off with the new card and use it for at least a month. Before you even knew the card existed, your credit history would be a mess. The Pre-Screened Offers Opt-Out (number two on the top-ten opt-out site) is an important one to visit.

Once you have signed up, wait a couple of months and begin manually removing yourself from whatever remains.

And when you sign up for new things in the future, be careful to check (or uncheck) the privacy boxes. But be careful: Some of them are tricky.

Replace All Your Club Cards with One!

Tired of carrying all the club and discount cards? At justoneclubcard.com, you can enter all your cards and it produces a single image with all the bar codes. Print it and voila: One card fits all! Example:

It's free and requires no registration. Seems pretty safe, since the site does not know who you are and does not include cards that allow you to buy things.

NY Times Links

Links to the New York Times have a problem: They require login and after a while, they require payment. But the Times has a way bloggers can post a link that works without these issues. Feed the link to: 

New York Times Link Generator

Update (March 26, 2007):

I noticed that the Times has a "Permalink" link on at least some of their stories. Click on SAVE and it's one of the options. It delivers a permanent URL:

Tons of Wonderful Old Radio

When I first got iTunes, I found a site that had a dozen or so old radio shows -- Life of Riley, Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Jack Benny, and some fantastic George Burns and Gracie Allen. And Amos and Andy -- talk about politically incorrect!

Just the thing when you are waiting in, say, a doctor's office.

A friend found this -- an amazing archive with thousands of them:

This is your chance to hear the entertainment everyone listened to during World War II.  I was just listening to Abbot and Costello and they are still funny.

<http://www.otr.net/>

And you can hear cigarette ads right in the middle of the programs!

Dangerously Fun

Fun projects that have the additional advantage of being somewhat dangerous:

Link: Dangerously Fun: Illustrated Guides.

Danger! Danger!!

Handy Fractal

This is freaky.

http://zapatopi.net/themes/dactylfractalzoom.html