Saturday, July 25, 2009

Only when the clock stops...


If you like OpenFOAM but wish it was more portable, maybe FreeFOAM is for you. Texas A&M became the first public university in the country to offer phone applications via TAMUmobile. I am tempted to say that only someone from Japan would combine fine art with the sophomoric photocopying of the buttocks to produce the iBum. Speaking of Fine art (pun intended), this limited edition, signed print of the Three Stooges can be yours for only $175.

Tools for safe computing: KRC's anti-spyware tutorial, about the Firefox search redirect, and some advice from 247fixes.com. Want to be a programmer? Here's how. If you're a web developer, some of these online presentations on AJAX, PHP, design, and other topics may interest you. Ever wonder what all those things are on the back of your computer? Let the mystery be revealed.

Your bacon is in my chocolate! Want your own personal clean-air zone? Check out the Humanair Air Purifier. Syfy. Syfy? Really? Is rebranding really gonna catapult them to the top of the basic cable charts? Seems to me that job #1 would be not showing movies that suck, like Mega Snake. The Marfa Lights are a ghostly paranormal phenomenon or headlights. Are you hungry? Have some bacon.

Stylus magazine offers this look back at Brian Eno's Ambient Series (1978-1982) , music as ignorable as interesting. A Twitter expose. Twitillating. Are your interns WINterns? Our are, at Little Debbie's InternHero.com. Got CAD you want to exchange? Try the aptly named CAD Exchanger. Generate your own custom Scrabble layout. The Enabling Technology Lab at the Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham has some interesting software projects underway including MiniCAD and MEGG3D. Concepts NREC provides a lot of CFD software for turbomachinery.

From the calendar...
  • International Conference on Applied Modeling & Information Security Systems, Birmingham, AL, 08-10 Oct 2009
  • Open Source CFD International Conference, Barcelona, Spain, 12-13 Nov 2009
Sure, why not. Jump on the Sprouts bandwagon. Simmetrix has released new parallel meshing software. Arcos provides interactive marketing services. Folks at Rutgers generate grids using gridpak. From the good news, bad news department: Good news, there's a blog about grid generation. Bad news, it hasn't been updated since Nov. 2006.

More proof that all the good ideas have been taken: Handerpants.

...does time come to life. -- William Faulkner

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Women speak two languages...


As we all know, ladies love a guy with awesome kitchen appliances (think banana hanger). However, I'm not sure these appliances will add to your mojo (although the banana handle is awesome). Please no comments on the banana motif. As Freud said, sometimes a banana is just a banana.

As an admitted anal-retentive, I am fascinated with time and clocks. Here's my latest find: timedrain. Fall fashions are now hitting the runway; don't get caught hiding your nuts in last years duds: squirrel fashion.

Evernote helps you capture and remember everything. And it's free. But I still can't figure out what it is. Hopefully you're running Firefox 3.5 by now which means that web sites you visit can use @font-face to enhance typography on the web. Neil Davidson has a blog.

Event calendar:
  • 16th annual Tcl/Tk Conference, 30 Sep - 02 Oct 2009, Portland
  • NUMECA's Worldwide User Meeting, 17-18 Nov 2009, Brussels
Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing with We Choose the Moon, a real-time interactive recreation of the Apollo 11 mission. Or if you're an ignorant, freaked-out whack job you can wallow in these conspiracy theories.

A new journal for computational fluid dynamics:
CFD Letters. Optimal Solutions joined Altair's Hyperworks Community. Via Slashdot we find this story about OpenBSD's release process and why it's good. A lot of airplanes have engines hanging below the wings but true innovation is putting the engine inside the wing, as the folks at Propulsive Wing have done.

The internet knows why you're afraid: DOOMWATCH. Hard working interns of America - go from intern to WINtern with Little Debbie.

...one of which is verbal. --William Shakespeare

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Now is the winter of our discontent...


How could you not like beers named Double Dead Guy and Arrogant Bastard? MSC.Software agreed to be acquired by a private equity firm. The question is, now what? A little company in California is taking on Seattle giant Microsoft with a new computer operating system called Chrome OS. Who do they think they are? The butter bell ain't no musical instrument; it's validation. Did I really graduate from RRHS 30 years ago? Someone's list of favorite freeware.

If you have never seen Al Pacino's award-winning film Looking for Richard, I highly recommend it.

...made glorious summer by this son of York. -- William Shakespeare, Richard the Third

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Be proud of your country...


Combine infographics with baseball and get Flip Flop Fly Ball. This year's Thermal Fluids Analysis Workshop (TFAWS) will be held in Huntsville, AL on 11-13 August. The 4th Drag Prediction Workshop (DPW) was held in San Antonio last month on 20-21 June. IDAC is an ANSYS VAR in the UK. I'm told that Three Olives Vodka is good (even with a twist). When US bombers mistakenly head toward Moscow with a payload of nukes, can President Henry Fonda avert disaster? See for yourself in 1964's Fail Safe. The Fort Worth chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Generate your own Twitter logo using Twitlogo. Create photo effects online using Tuxpi. Serving food on a stick doesn't necessarily guarantee a winner, but these examples do make a strong case. (Seahorse on a stick seems a little iffy, but the bacon wrapped sausage is pure genius.) ITI TranscenData has acquired Proficiency, bringing together two leaders in CAD data translation. What is the Texaplex and why is it good? For you CFDers seeking a new challenge, consider the High Lift Prediction Workshop (HiLiftPW-1) to be held in Chicago in June 2010.

Nigel Tufnel was wrong; there is indeed something more black. Oklahoma State has an Computational AeroServoElasticity (CASE) Lab. I know what you're thinking - wouldn't a jet-powered seaplane suck water into the engines? The F2Y Sea Dart. If you haven't yet seen this show, watch tomorrow on NatGeo and see how Northrop Grumman engineers created a full-size model of the Horten 229, Germany's stealth fighter from WWII. They must have written this for me: 78 photo rules for complete idiots. Firefox 3.5 is available. Update now? In case you need a map of the world's fastest supercomputers. To round out the list of CFD workshops, here's the Shock Boundary Layer Interaction (SBLI) Workshop, to be held in Orlando in January 2010. Marvin Electronics no longer carries B&O products. Where am I going to get my turntable fixed? (Why am I going to get my turntable fixed?) Maybe at Pyramid Audio.

...but live so your country can be proud of you. -- Abraham Lincoln (paraphrased)