Sorry it took so long but I finally fired up visio and put together a schematic of the interface circuit. It may not be complete in some areas because I am using the Parallax Homeworkboard yet the diagram shows the pinout of just a BS2. All Resistors are in Ohms unless otherwise noted. The power source I used is a 7.2V 1200MAH battery. If anyone knows of a good schematic drawing program thats free, please let me know.

Well so far I’ve downloaded FF 3.0 on both my home computer and work computer, both Windows PC’s and all I can say is fwooosh!. Definitely a lot faster as advertised. Although it seemed on the first run that it was a little sluggish, but after installing a few themes and restarting it’s running even faster. I’ll chalk it up to first install pains –which I can live with. My only disappointment is the lack of a good theme for it, all of them seem to use gray and I don’t like to look at gray, I’d much rather the white pinstripes from the earlier versions of OS X. There was a theme I liked but it hasn’t been updated. Oh well I guess I’ll have to wait….or create my own.

If you haven’t downloaded it you should seriously think about giving it a shot http://www.getfirefox.com

The Mozilla foundation is releasing Firefox 3.0 today and trying to set a world record. Aside from their aspirations of getting into the Guiness book of world records you should consider downloading it because it’s one of the best browsers I’ve ever used. I like Firefox for it’s flexibility and usability. It has a simplistic interface that’s easy to learn and interact with. It also supports 3rd party extensions which can really add to the user experience. And my most favorite feature is that it actually gives useful errors when I am trying to debug my Javascript, unlike IE. But my best advice is try it for yourself and keep an open mind, Firefox may not be the best thing for everyone…but it sure is for me. You might also want to check out this report from webMonkey.com about some of the improvements of Firefox.

As an interesting aside, with the rise of the internet and general increase of tech-savvy users in the world population, it is surprising they are only going for 1 Million downloads. I would have thought more on the lines of 5 Mil+. Also very interesting is a world map with all the pledge counts

More brainly meats posted in last week’s weekly week weak update. Hooray!

LOG: QUERIED ADJACENT FACILITIES
LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility [alpha, beta, gamma, epsilon, zeta, and kappa sites] have all replied [systems normal] within expected constraints. This would tend to signify that the containment failure was purely mechanical in nature;

When you’re playing a game of chess and you’re down to your king and your opponent has most of their court left you know that you’re boned. Some people might at this time accept defeat and submit to the other team, others will make their opponent chase them around the board. Sometimes it’s great to go down in a blaze of glory even though there is no way you can win, and other times you just have to throw in the towel. People seem to forget how to do the latter.

People who knew me in high school knew I loved Metallica aside from the fact I had a Metallica shirt for every day of the week (and then some). But as the years have passed I have changed and so has Metallica although they are both very different changes. I stumbled on the Metallica scene during the black album era. I can remember the Molson Ice polar beach party ads around that time too (even though I was too young to go). And most importantly of all I remember when Metallica used to be COOL.

In the latest weekly update Bungie included some very cryptic text:

The Smuggler

REPORT: CONTAINMENT FAILURE

LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility; [delta site] has experienced catastrophic specimen containment failure.

Brian was nice enough to send me a link to the trailer for “Gonzo” this morning. In short Gonzo is a documentary about the late Hunter S. Thompson, one of the most prolific and under appreciated authors of the 20th century. I think he is under appreciated for his no holes barred go for the throat writing style, otherwise known as Gonzo Journalism. If you have never seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I highly recommend that you do before seeing this documentary.

Gonzo Trailer

Here are some links today that I think are interesting:

Gizmodo: LED lego man mod

Digg:$8-a-gallon gas: 8 reasons higher prices will do us a world of good

Digg:Scads of photos of the space shuttle Atlantis

***Spoilers Ahead*** If you still want to enjoy the movie without my jaded opinion clouding your mind don’t read this line….this line right here….ok stop reading now….

For those of you who don’t have your finger close to the Macintosh pulse, you wouldn’t know who Andy Ihnatko is. He’s one of the more prolific pundits when it comes to technology and more importantly Macs. So while browsing a friends twitter account I found myself looking at this image that would be his ideal house:

Full size image