Wikipedia and Census Data

Apparently someone in the Wikipedia project did an import of census data.

I only found this out by accident in Google during a lookup involving my home town Stony Creek, New York. I find it amusing that someone, apparently the Census Bureau, still considers Harrisburg and Knowelhurst to be “communities”. Perhaps in the early 1900s this was true but these days both are just a few houses spread apart on a dead-end rural road. You wouldn’t know the places were a unit or even had a name if someone had not labeled them on a map long ago. I find this and the census data amusing.

For the curious wikipedia also has census data for New Paltz, NY. Lets just say the average population density is a tad higher. It doesn’t seem like they include college students in the population tally.

Aquariass

Cleaning this toilet must be a real pain…

UrbanPeel.com: Aquariass

Microsoft Translation Error

CNET News.com: How eight pixels cost Microsoft millions

Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between “not specified,” “male” or “bitch,” because of an unfortunate error in translation.

My Blogroll

I have made my blogroll available via the excellent Bloglines service at http://www.bloglines.com/public/blocke.
Feel free to check it out and steal… err… export the OPML file.

Bear Guzzles 36 Beers, Passes Out

CNN.com – Bear guzzles 36 beers, passes out at campground – Aug 18, 2004

The picture says it all.

Explosive Sink And Toilet Plunger

Boing Boing: Explosive sink and toilet plunger is a gift from the gods

What a great idea! I could have used the toilet sized version a couple weeks ago. Or not…

Ren Faire on ebay

eBay item 4317282038 (Ends Aug-15-04 12:38:00 PDT) – Sterling Renaissance Festival

Current bid is $1,199,300. Reserve not currently met.

Fable Developer Video

GameTrailers.com has a 41 minute movie with developer interviews, game footage, and interesting information on topics such as the AI systems used in the game and design considerations. ( Direct Link To File )

Broadband News

It seems the next round of bandwidth cap increases for both downstream and upstream will come in the form of more expensive plans and tweaking at existing rates:

ArsTechnica: Cox turns up the speed, slashes prices

$39.95/mo for (4Mbps/512Kbps), $54.95/mo (5Mbps/768Kbps), Non-cable TV customers have to suck down an additional $10 (Cable companies just can’t resist that lameass tie-in!)

DSL Reports: Cable Speeds Up (Again)

Time Warner offers 6Mbps/512Kbps for $64.95-$84.95 (based on how much they screw you over on Cable TV), Article discusses how Canadian cable companies are far ahead of US divisions when it comes to bandwidth

TelephonyOnline: Upstream without a paddle

It is really lame how providers are just finally now approaching 768Kbps upstream. 384Kbps is bad enough…

Speculation about Verizon’s 3.0Mbps/768Kbps upgrade continues…

Apparently the sales people are about as knowledgeable about availability and pricing of the new option as their customers are… As in… Not very knowledgeable at all.

In other news my Verizon DSL service seems to be working well at 1.5Mbps/384Kbps. The modem claims to be syncing at the over provisioned rate. Unfortunately Verizon forces you to install crap under Windows to create an account and it hijacks Internet Explorer’s branding and installs some spyware like crud. Took me a good half hour to clean out all of the junk that was installed and I still have not figured out where to disable the “Internet Explorer provided by Verizon Online” junk. It may be a time for a reinstall… Sigh.

Make Your Own Stamps

Oh… Just think of the possible abuses… Boing Boing: Print real US postage stamps with your own photos. No boobies.