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  • “Transformers” Hostess Cupcakes And Sno Balls Roll Out – OK, I have to admit that "Chocwave" cupcakes are inspired.
  • Emergency Preparedness: Cell & Home Phone Guidelines. In particular: wireless home phones require power. Keep one landline phone with a cord on hand. And for non-emergency communications (“I’m OK, hope everyone else is”), stick to texting, email, or social networks so that emergency workers and people in immediate danger (“Help, I’m trapped under a fallen wall”) can use the voice channels.
  • Whenever I hear someone complain about “hipsters,” I always think of this comic.

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A few years back, while I was reading Eifelheim, I found myself curious about the timeline of the pandemic and read up on the Black Death. There was an idea floating around at the time that, based on descriptions of the symptoms and spread of the disease, the black death might have been caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever like Marburg, not by the bacteria that causes the bubonic plague that’s still endemic in some parts of the world. Since then, researchers have managed to extract bacterial DNA from the bones of Londoners who died when the plague reached the city in 1348, confirming that they were infected with a relative of the modern plague…and have reconstructed its genome. It’s virtually identical to the modern form.

Wow.

(via Slashdot)

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Blast from the past. Doing some email testing & dredged up my old netscape.net address. Had to re-activate it, and the handful of messages I probably saved way back in the day were gone, and now it’s aim.com instead…but it’s still got my years-outdated contact list, including people I haven’t interacted with in a decade.

As near as I can tell, I put together the list when I was in college, and never updated it. It’s still got all the old uci.edu and geocities.com addresses.

Oh, wow…there’s a pager number in there! (Remember those?)

Originally posted on Google+

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We’ve had a couple of storms run through Los Angeles over the past week. Last Friday, I went up to the top of a parking structure after work to look at the clouds, and stayed to watch a double rainbow and the play of light at sunset.

This was the view that surprised me the most: Bright orange (a little more magenta in real life than it looks here in the photo) on the underside of the clouds, but plain gray on the sides.

Continue reading →

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Some interesting technology articles I’ve found over the last few weeks.

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Those of you who know me well, or have been to a restaurant with me, probably know I have food allergies: some serious, some moderate, and some mild. I like to think I do a decent job of navigating the minefield that is the modern food industry, and striking a balance between not getting myself killed and not hiding away in my house like a shut-in.

I carry emergency medication whenever I eat somewhere. I don’t go out for Thai food or visit restaurants that hand out peanuts like chips and salsa. I check ingredients in the grocery store, and I ask the waiter about them when I order food. If I can’t eat one item on the menu, I look for another dish that I can.

Even so, sometimes something slips through (most recently: this past Saturday) and I have to spend an anxious couple of hours hoping that the medication I’ve taken will be enough, that I’ll keep breathing and won’t have to jab myself with an auto-injector (or have someone else do it) and go to the ER. Thankfully, it’s been years since I’ve had a reaction bad enough to send me to the hospital.

I’ve also got a not-quite-one-year-old son. I’d like to spare him from having to deal with all that, if I can. And if I can’t, and he develops serious allergies like I have, I’d like to help smooth the path for him as he learns how to live with them — or, better yet, help find a cure.

So I’m participating in the FAAN Walk for Food Allergy to raise money for research and education, and I hope you’ll sponsor me. Continue reading →