Six states still aren’t using Joe’s Filters: Arkansas, Idaho, Maine, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia.

This video makes me want to build robots. (2MB mpeg)

From David P. Anderson’s nBot Balancing Robot site. The Segway is amazing, but this is more inspiring.

Update: Michael Buffington wrote to remind me about the LegWay, a two-wheel balancing robot built from Legos. Also neat, but there is something about the videos of Mr. Anderson watching his little robot move around that’s just a fantastic display of everything I love about making stuff.

And I was seriously considering switching over to half-gig flash cards… 4Gb Microdrives later this year

All I can think of when using this navigation is WarGames. I wonder who it calls if you hold a phone up to the speaker? (It’s late and I’m too lazy/busy to find out)

Apple sent a “Breach and Termination of License” letter to the author of iCommune, James Speth. iCommune is/was basically another P2P application specifically for sharing iTunes libraries over networks. The stopping of this project is a bummer, although Apple’s lawyers had little choice in covering their legal behinds since the RIAA doesn’t seem to do anything anymore except sue everyone connected to anyone using music in interesting ways. I guess I should have downloaded it yesterday when I first heard about it.

Someday I’m going to figure out how to tunnel my local Rendezvous network over to the office and onto friends’ computers. Basically a Virtual Private Network for Rendezvous stuff. Then if someone builds something which bridges VPNs together iCommune is irrelevant…

Speaking of interesting uses of Music, this Tivo announcement might finally be the thing which gets a Tivo into our house. Currently we have an iPod playing through the TV speakers, a networked MP3 playing Tivo would be much easier.

New York is a hamburger heaven. (NYT) I think I know what I’m having for lunch…

update:

Dear Blue 9 Burger,
The decision to accept so large an order that you are unable to serve any walk-in customers during the lunch rush on the day you’re featured in the New York Times is just plain stupid.

In the meantime, my lunch plans were completely scuttled by a cascade of events set in motion by Blue 9’s inability to serve me. Now I’m hungry and annoyed, Lila is finally napping and our upstairs neighbors seem to be hammering on something over her room.

update 2:

So I didn’t get there for lunch, but I did make it for dinner. And I met the woman who I referred to as ‘stupid’. And I felt like a heel. Because I am. She’s very nice, and they’ve been completely swamped all day. I overheard two employees commenting on how the register totals were more than three times a normal day’s take, and they still had several hours to go before closing.

As for the burgers, they live up the to Times’ review. Well worth a visit.

(I forgot to ask, but I’m fairly sure they only serve beef burgers, no turkey, no veggie. It’s a small menu, to match the west coast burger drive-thrus it’s modeled after.)

Apparently, the wonder-browser, written by an Irish 16 year old for a science fair, is for real.