Castolon LLC — Web Stuff Made Fresh Daily

I've created a profile at LinkedIn for those of you wanting more background information about me.

In the olden days, we dealt with NiCd batteries and were glad to find anything that recharged better than a zinc-carbon battery. We had to put up with battery memory effect, which meant that we had to fully discharge the batteries before charging, and ensure that we fully recharged the batteries each time for the recommended amount of time.

I've just received Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 from Nuance. It's reputedly the best speech recognition software on the market. But, there's a problem:

It won't install.

"No problem", I thought. I'll just Google for the answer. It'll turn up the link that fixes what must be a very common problem. No such luck. Not only that, but it'll cost me at least $10 to even report to Nuance that there's a problem with their software.

I read another article about vitamins the other day. (I was thinking about the fact that we don't get enough vitamin D because we're not supposed to be out in the sun, and vitamin D helps prevent cancer, while the sun helps cause it.) This one was in Scientific American. It was an article addressing the question of whether the average person needs vitamins.

I was struggling with the toilet paper roll this morning, and I started to wonder why there isn't an automatic toilet paper dispenser that would automatically feed out and cut just the right amount.

For cleanliness, you'd want it to be motion activated, but you'd need a backup system so it wouldn't accidentally feed paper when it wasn't wanted. So, I was thinking sound would be a good backup. You could set it up so that if you tapped your foot and waved your hand under it... Wait... Never mind.

Somewhere way down in the Forbes article about the NBC Dateline reporter who tried to scandalize DEFCON (is that possible?) by posing as an attendee, is a paragraph about a couple of Feds who got married there.

Yes, I suppose they got a bit more than a stupid t-shirt. Nudge Nudge

The article's a good read, by the way. Give it a shot.

I can't imagine why Mozilla hasn't fixed the menu bug yet. And, I can't believe no one else is bothered by it.

Doesn't anyone use full-screen mode? Anytime you switch Firefox to full screen (F11) and try to access a menu using an Alt key combination--for example, Alt-F to bring down the file menu--not only does the menu not come down, when you exit full-screen mode you won't be able to bring that menu down again in that window until you restart Firefox.

Perhaps the whole world is so addicted to their mice that they haven't noticed, having almost completely abandoned the keyboard.

It appears that Dell will be selling laptops preloaded with Ubuntu Linux soon.

It's worth noting that Dell's CEO, Michael Dell has a Dell Precision M90 laptop loaded with Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. Details about Michael Dell's computers are here.

In a new development in the news this morning it appears that among wealthy people there's a trend away from the traditional pastime of collecting nerds. Here's an excerpt from the article, entitled There's history and money in obsolete computers:

"There has been a real steep upward trend in prices in the last year, year and a half," said Ismail, 38. "It seems it's become like the new collectible to moneyed people. Before it was just nerds and hobbyists."

Yes! It can't happen too soon for me.

I just saw an article entitled "Road to the driverless car" on CNN Money. (Update: See the video at ScientificAmerican.com.)

I remember when driving was fun. A long, long time ago, in a Ford Galaxy (it's just a model name, son) far, far away...