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 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.

Don't try this! It's dangerous in so many ways!

This is my brother's foundry, made from a standard turkey fryer with added insulation, burner modifications, etc. Here, he's casting a railroad frog for a friend with a large-scale model railroad.

Turkey Fryer Foundry 

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...

I like to think that racism and sexism and other prejudices are largely gone from our society, but I'm still occasionally disappointed.

Here's another mixed message in the news: A woman has won the Turing Award. That shouldn't have been a news item at all, but it turns out a woman has never won the Turing award before. It's a sign of progress that it's happened, but a sad reflection on our society that it hasn't happened before.

I've read several stories along these lines now, so I suppose I should pass it along.

For most people, apparently, one key to improved productivity is to reduce multitasking. That is, turn off your e-mail, reduce other interruptions, and allow yourself more uninterrupted time to concentrate on a single task.

I hadn't heard anything about the style known as "steampunk" until I stumbled into this. We'd been looking at the websites of people who had converted buses into motorhomes, and spent some time looking at this one.

I noticed a link to some brass lanterns on one of those pages, and that led me to the Steampunk Keyboard. This is essentially a loose set of instructions for creating your own antique brass computer keyboard. You just have to see it.

Some of you will have heard about SETI@Home, which uses your computer's spare CPU cycles to help search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, but fewer are aware that the same technology is being applied to help find cures for Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

It's easy to do, and won't cost you anything, except maybe a few cents' worth of electricity. Just go to Folding@home (folding.stanford.edu) and download and install the software.