Of all my gifts I’ve enjoyed pouring through my DNA data since I got the results back on December 19th. It’s been absolutely fascinating, if not for the health and traits data then for the ancestry information that it has opened my eyes to. For anyone else that has been tested, you might find it interesting to know that my Paternal Haplogroup is R1b1c10 (also known as R-U152 or S28) and my Maternal Haplogroup is H3. I found out that I’m 100% European (more specifically from Northern Europe) and of all the groups of people from around the world I’m genetically most similar to the Irish.   And the great thing about 23andMe is that they’re constantly updating my information as DNA research uncovers more and more information.  So this will be a gift that keeps on giving!

My children enjoyed Christmas and we were able to hold them off until 7:45 a.m.  We went to the movies this afternoon (one of our Christmas day traditions) and saw Bedtime Stories.  I love to hear Griff laugh and this show got a few good laughs out of him.  I thought it was decent since I was there with my kids.  It’s amazing how seeing your kids get enjoyment out of something makes it all that much more enjoyable for you.

I hope you all enjoyed the time you were able to spend with your families!  I sure enjoyed a relaxing day with my very own family!Similar Posts:

• What Do People Know About Your Computer?  March 10, 2006
• Does Your Family Eat Together?  February 9, 2006
• Converting GPS Data to Google Earth  March 13, 2006
• One year later…what a difference!  May 7, 2011
• Movin' on up! (Or down as it were)  January 10, 2006

From The Guardian (UK)

Google has provoked the wrath of Iran’s notoriously suspicious authorities by appearing to question the country’s sovereignty over the province of Azerbaijan in an entry on its Google Video website.In a move tailor-made to wound Iranian patriotic pride and arouse a blizzard of protest, the Azeri provincial capital, Tabriz, is located “in southern Azerbaijan, currently in the territory of Iran”. To add insult to injury, the ancient city is listed as being in Azerbaijan, rather than Iran. Tabriz and southern Azerbaijan have belonged to Iran for more than 4,000 years.

The text of a tourist film on the site has drawn accusations that the US-owned search engine is deliberately trying to undermine Iran’s territorial integrity by fomenting separatist sentiment in the mainly Turkish-speaking province.

Jihad time, baby- cyber style!

The information technology ministry has branded the entry an attempt to intervene in Iran’s internal affairs and has urged Iranians to flood Google with emails.”This act is a typical example of interference in the affairs of another country,” said Samad Mohmen Bela, the IT ministry’s representative in parliament. “The simplest, most effective response is for all Iranian users to reflect their objection to Google’s management.”

Wow. Color me amazed. What a novel idea- expressing objection through peaceful means. It’s doubtful, however, that even repeated emails from all 18 of Iran’s Internet users will be that effective. But before you abandon Yahoo or Gigablast to return to Google, anybody care to bet how long it takes Google to remove the offending video in order to placate our peace-minded Iranian brothers?Similar Posts:

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• New Features on Google Video  January 12, 2006

At the moment you’ll need to fire up IE6 or IE7 in order for the software to work properly (doesn’t work in Firefox, although they’re working on it) and you’ll also need XP with Service Pack 2 or Vista.

Some tips as you move around in the pictures; don’t forget to make use of the zooming features. You can zoom by clicking the plus and the minus symbols, or use the scroll wheel on you mouse. It’s fun to see some of the detail in the high resolution pictures (especially in the art gallery collection) and it helps to get your bearings by zooming out and seeing all the tiny dots that make up the points of reference. Another fun thing to do is to see where the camera was when the photo was taken. This can be toggled on and off by clicking the camera icon. Little red triangles appear and when you mouse over one it projects the angle and crops the area of the virtual scene that makes up the photo from that angle.  Lastly, don’t forget that you can close the informational column on the left by clicking on the divider line in the middle.  This will maxmize your 3D model world and make cruising around experience even better.
Give it a try. Can you imagine when they give us the ability to upload are own collections? It’s coming soon, but for now we’ll have to pacify ourselves with the collections they’ve given us.

Click image for full-size view.Similar Posts:

• Tsunami Revisited in STUNNING Photo Essay  March 22, 2006
• Macro Setting Makes Grass Look Good!  June 6, 2006
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• Real Time Weather and Webcam  January 20, 2006

Wait a minute..  You mean they’re planning to land on our moon, not Saturn’s?  Ok, now I’m confused.  So is it the Chinese or Japanese? 

Whatever you do, don’t ask the professionals over at CBS News.  They’re more confused than anybody.  CBSNews.com ran an article Tuesday, which led with the following headline and picture:

Um… So either the Chinese will be planting a Japanese flag on the moon, or the authors and editors at CBS are idiots.  Given CBS’ track record (think Memogate), I’m betting it’s the latter.

What makes it even more hilarious, LGF points out that the astral sphere pictured in the CBS article is not Earth’s moon, but Saturn’s!  I know, I know- blame the Google image search on “moon” that returned the picture of Dione.  When it all comes down to it, a moon’s a moon,right?  And what’s with that flag shadow?  I’m no physics expert, but shouldn’t a shadow lie opposite the light source?  What are these people smoking?

Ok, ok.  People make mistakes.  But this is CBS– the “Good night, and good luck” pioneer of professional broadcasting.  Legends of news.  Even if the webmasters are dolts, you’d think the mesh of professional fact-checkers and editors might have caught this stinker before it was published to the world.  No bias here that I can detect.  Just pure, unadulterated incompetence.  You’d think a news organization that has the eyes, ears, and trust of millions of people around the globe would be responsible enough to catch a stupid mistake like this.  If they can’t even get the small stuff right, how can we ever trust them to get the big stuff right?

Of course, as soon as this oversight hit the blogosphere, it wasn’t long before CBS changed the flag in the picture.  That clears things up.  Now at least we know it’s the Chinese who will be landing on Saturn’s moon.Similar Posts:

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• Does Your Family Eat Together?  February 9, 2006

It’s available by invitation, along with the latest downloadable version of Picasa, and offers:

• One-click web upload using Picasa’s new “Web Album” button
• Free storage space to post and share approximately 1000 photos, with the option to upgrade to more space
• High-quality photos, automatically resized and optimized to fill available screen space
• Pre-loaded images enable quick scrolling using arrow keys, and mimic a desktop experience of “flipping” through photos, even on the web
• End-to-end photo management that makes it easy to download uploaded photos back to your computer

Take a look at this public gallery to see what it’s like to share photos using Picasa Web Albums.

The new version of Picasa includes a ‘Web Album” button that when selected will upload pictures to your own Picasaweb page. This requires an account on Picasaweb.google.com using your Gmail address.

Here is my first album located at http://picasaweb.google.com/tslack

Flickr enthusiasts won’t give a dang about Google’s attempt to further spread their foothold on all things web and will likely ridicule it. I’m so new to both services that I won’t be as biased. As I use both services, I’ll report back and let you know what I think of each.

At first glance, however, it’s obvious that Flickr has a lot more feautures. But for simple uploading and sharing of pictures located on your computer, Google has them beat hands down. Of course, Flickr doesn’t require a program be installed on your computer, which is part of what makes it so easy with Google.

For those of you who are trying this service (it’s only available on an invitation basis), let me know what you think. I think it’s interesting that Google is trying to get away from the “Beta” label on this one. Calling it “Test” instead of “Beta” may be the first time that I’ve seen any company release something that’s in Beta and calling it anything different. We’ll see how their test goes.Similar Posts:

• Tsunami Revisited in STUNNING Photo Essay  March 22, 2006
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• Pageflakes Tempts Me, Again  May 6, 2006

I credit Google with helping me work my way to a full-time tech support/network administrator job at that company. 

But Google’s recent antics have left a bitter taste in my mouth.  In defense of its principles of freedom and privacy, Google refused to provide anonymous search information to the Justice Department (a simple survey that inferior search engines like yahoo readily complied with).  But after snubbing the U.S. government on matters of principle, Google bent over and grabbed its ankles for the Chinese government.  They agreed to censor their Chinese service to eliminate any online information that communist government deemed inappropriate for its people.

The agreement outraged many American users, some vowing never to use Google again.  Michelle Malkin hosted a Chinese Google Protest Logo Album (which includes the one that leads this post).  Some of them are pretty hilarious.

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page justified the censorship agreement, saying that some informational freedom in China was better than no informational freedom in China (translation: some money from China is better than no money from China).

But AP reports yesterday that Brin acknowledges that his company “compromised its principles” by caving to the Red Chinese:

WASHINGTON – Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged Tuesday the dominant Internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course.

Google’s China-approved Web service omits politically sensitive information that might be retrieved during Internet searches, such as details about the 1989 suppression of political unrest in Tiananmen Square. Its agreement with China has provoked considerable criticism from human rights groups.

“Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense,” Brin said.

Good!  The boycotters can start using Google again now, right?  Not so fast.  The article concludes:

Brin said Google is trying to improve its censored search service, Google.cn, before deciding whether to reverse course.

Ok, so we admit we compromised our principles, but let’s see if we can make it work before pulling the plug.  That’s like confessing that you’re having an affair, but only going back to your wife if things don’t work out with your mistress.  Apparently Brin thinks a partial apology about China is better than no apology about China.  Google believes in principle, but only as a last resort.Similar Posts:

• Google: Zionist Tool?  November 13, 2006
• Wireless Beehive Surpasses Expectations Again!  March 2, 2006
• Japan, err.. China To Land On Saturn By 2024  June 21, 2006
• Has NetVocates Visited Your Blog Recently?  June 10, 2006
• What Do People Know About Your Computer?  March 10, 2006

I’m by no means a photographer, although I think still photography has a way of invoking thought and inspiration in a way that video can’t. For that reason, I have always wanted to be a photographer and capture inspiring moments in time. I took a photography class in ninth grade and entered a photo in a contest that won a prize. I think that’s the last time I ever tried to take a photograph that was stunning or impressive. In light of my new found macro setting that was always there but never used, I’m inspired to try and capture some of those moments in time.Similar Posts:

• Rose in Full Bloom at Grandma's  June 9, 2006
• Tsunami Revisited in STUNNING Photo Essay  March 22, 2006
• Stardust Arrives Safely in Utah  January 15, 2006
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• Ryan Leech Rides Like No Other  April 26, 2006

That’s what the folks at the Music Genome Project have done. They’ve created a service called Pandora that will allow you to create multiple radio stations based on a favorite artist or even just a song. Give it a shot! You’ll be surprised how fun it is to listen to new music and expand your music experiences!Similar Posts:

• Wireless Beehive Surpasses Expectations Again!  March 2, 2006
• What Do People Know About Your Computer?  March 10, 2006
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• A Crisp, Clear Tuesday  September 11, 2007
• New Video Blog Plugin (Failed)  February 8, 2006

I guess I could assume that the software is good if eConsultant put it there, but the list is so huge that I doubt that’s the case. It would be nice if we could all “digg it” as they do on digg.com and thereby have a little bit more knowledge about how good it is before we waste our time with the download and install. Such a freeware list that only lists freeware that is used and approved by the list author exists at Yalin’s Freeware Collection. It’s a much smaller list, but that’s likely because he’s tried much of the freeware on the eConsultant freeware portal and found that it doesn’t suit his needs or that it isn’t that great. These things are good to know and it’s nice to find freeware that comes reccomended.Similar Posts:

• Hand-picked Freeware Portal  March 27, 2006
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• Friends are great, family are wonderful!  January 8, 2006

Slashdotter 1.5 makes the “9 replies beneath your current threshold” into an expanded tree within the same page without having to navigate away from the page. Then you can quickly read the off-topic stuff without leaving the story. This is all made possible by Ajax. I just love what people are doing with it!

Other Firefox extensions that I’m using and really like a lot are:

• Google Toolbar for Firefox (recently updated to 2.0)
• IE Tab
• FireFTP
• All-in-One Gestures (Mimics Opera’s Mouse Gestures which is why I switched to Opera years ago to begin with. I’m still sad that I had to jump the Opera ship after being such a devoted fan for so many years. This extension is to blame.)
• del.icio.us
• Adblock & Adblock Filterset.G Updater (You don’t realize how annoying all those flash ads are until the page finally loads without them for once!)
• Tab Mix Plus (Again, mimics some of Opera’s great feauture sets, such as saved sessions)

Some that I’ve installed, but hardly ever use are:

• Viamatic foXpose
• Blogger Web Comments (used to use this all the time when my blog was hosted on Blogger.com, but ever since I started hosting it on my own server with WordPress, I don’t use it anymore.)

Similar Posts:

• Extension Makes Google Notebook Useable  June 24, 2006
• Desultory Thoughts  January 7, 2006
• Slashdot Editors De-value Grammar/Spelling  January 18, 2006
• Hand-picked Freeware Portal  March 27, 2006
• Switching over to WordPress!  January 23, 2006