Steve’s Blog

Organized gadget owner Van Mardian cleared his desktop by mounting all his peripherals - external hard drives, USB hubs, network router - under his desk with pegboard and wire.

For under 35 bucks, Mardian hung pegboard under his Ikea desk and threaded wire through it to stow all his gadgets and wires, completely clearing the top area. This coupled with Adam’s cord management solution would make for an attractive, sparse desktop with lots of elbow room. — Gina Trapani

Declutter Your Desk [via A Whole Lotta Nothing]

Stephen :: Feb.28.2007 :: Interesting :: No Comments »

Its never good when your dive watch is giving you bad info!

Pelagic Pressure Systems is recalling some 2,800 of its Oceanic and AERIS digital dive computer watches, citing a possible decompression hazard for divers relying on them (the exact models affected are listed on the CPSC page linked below). The problem occurs when switching from one gas to another during a dive, which apparently has the dangerous side effect of locking up the watch’s display, leaving the diver uncertain of his or her dive time. That could either cause them to enter decompression unknowingly or ascend prematurely, resulting in the serious problem of decompression sickness. While there’s been two reports of defective watches, they apparently haven’t resulted in any injuries. Those with the watches won’t have to do without them for long, however, with a trip to an authorized Oceanic or AERIES dealer for a software upgrade the only fix needed.

From Engadget

Stephen :: Feb.28.2007 :: Interesting, SCUBA :: No Comments »

Lockheed’s shiny new F-22 Raptor stealth fighters may have owned a few war games, but crossing the International Date Line left them as helpless as a carrot in a rabbit trap, with multiple system crashes causing an emergency detour en route from Hawaii to Okinawa, Japan. Communication, fuel subsystems, and navigation systems were rendered useless and repeated "reboots" were of no help. Luckily, the fleet had clear skies and refueling tankers to guide them back to Hawaii. If they had separated from the tankers, "they would have turned around and probably could have found the Hawaiian Islands. But if the weather had been bad on approach, there could have been real trouble," states Retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd. The voyage suffered a two-day delay on account of the system failures — "a computer glitch in the millions of lines of code, somebody made an error in a couple lines of the code and everything goes." What should have been a showy parade of $125+ million super fighters quickly turned to disaster for Lockheed who would’ve had a lot of explaining to do, had this happened during combat.

[Via Slashdot]

From Engadget

Stephen :: Feb.28.2007 :: Interesting, Technology Related :: No Comments »

From GeeK.nL (Dilbert Archive)

Stephen :: Feb.23.2007 :: Funny Stuff :: No Comments »

If you’re looking for a few new fonts to spice up your presentation or document, head over to UrbanFonts, a site with pay-for and freebie fonts.

I’m no designer but lots of these look fun and interesting. The free offerings especially might contain something that should be in your collection. Urban Fonts free typefaces are available as a download for Mac and Windows. — Gina Trapani

UrbanFonts [via Daily Cup of Tech]

From Lifehacker

Stephen :: Feb.14.2007 :: Interesting, Website Design :: No Comments »