Adam and Jamie of Mythbusters fame are cool guys. I enjoy their program and find it oddly educational, in a sort of geeky-destructive way. But I have to admit that the following video of a demonstration they did at an Nvidia graphics card conference really impressed the heck out of me. The first part of the video shows their interpretation of computer graphics using a single CPU, and the second part is their version of a massively parallel GPU rendering.
I like coffee. I’m not a connoisseur: I prefer something like a basic arabica blend- more or less what Tim Hortons or McDonald’s serves. I may not define good coffee as something pooped out of a civet’s butt, but a good cup of coffee (based on my definition of “good”) is a crucial part of every day. I drink perhaps three or four 12+ ounce cups per day in total: more than I should, but less than some.
Irene can’t drink coffee any more, so brewing an entire pot each morning is not efficient. And a regular brewer isn’t very effective at producing a couple of cups- the magic that takes place when the hot water passes through the ground beans loses effectiveness. And instant coffee is barely a substitute: yes, I drink it, and it serves the minimal purpose of something calling itself “coffee” I.E.: jumpstarts my brain, but I can’t really say I enjoy it very much.
As a result of these factors, I’ve been exploring various single cup brewing systems. The “to go cup” brewers you can buy for $15 suffer from more or less the same problem as trying to run two cups through a brewer designed for a pot: the water and the coffee don’t intermingle quite the way they are supposed to. That leaves fancy gizmos like the Tassimo and Keurig single cup brewers.
I was visiting a news site with my OSX Leopard based MacBook Pro two days ago and was prompted to install RealPlayer in order to watch a video. I’ve never had any particular problems with RealPlayer in the past, so I said “yes”, and didn’t really think much more of it.
I may not be convinced that global warming is purely a result of human factors, but I am totally convinced that we have to radically reduce our carbon output. I also think it is long past time for us to stop relying on petrochemicals for energy.