Swine Flu Patient Zero Found

Here is how this all started......

Porkfluenza/H1N1 Swine Flu Google Map

I still have to fnish reading my copy of The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history. I better hurry up reading that book but I can already see that with the recent outbreak of the H1N1 Swine Flu the world shows that it is a lot more prepared than during the Great Influenza. In Europe the advised not to travel to the United States or to Mexico. One doctor even mentioned that he would rather be critized for overreacting than underreacting. The map below has all the confirmed and suspected case of the H1N1 Swine Flu





View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map

Pink markers are suspect
Purple markers are confirmed
Deaths lack a dot in marker
Yellow markers are negative

The Hunt For Gollum: A LOTR Film Created By Fans For Fans

The Hunt For Gollum; a 40 minute independent film inspired by The Lord of the Rings which is to be released to the internet for free on May 3 2009.

The script is adapted from elements of the appendices of The Lord of the Rings. The story follows the Heir of Isildur; the "greatest huntsman and traveller in Middle Earth" as he sets out to find the creature Gollum. The creature must be found to discover the truth about the Ring, and to protect the future Ringbearer.

Trailer one

Hunt For Gollum - Trailer One
by HuntForGollum

Trailer two

Trailer 2 - The Hunt For Gollum
by HuntForGollum

More info: http://thehuntforgollum.com/updates.htm

Reddigg, reddit pranks digg on April Fools day

This is just awesome. If you are a reddit user you will know that they don't really like digg users on reddit. Well today the did a nice April Fools prank

They changed their layout to look like digg and called it Reddigg

That is just brilliant

Did You Know 3.0

Some interesting stats

Hexspeak

This is pretty funny if you ask me. Found this gem on wikipedia:

Hexspeak, like leetspeak, is a novelty form of variant English spelling.

Hexspeak was created by programmers who wanted a magic number, a clear and unique identifier with which to mark memory or data. Using hexadecimal notation, which includes the digits 0123456789ABCDEF, it is possible to create small words with the digit "0" representing the letter "O", "1" representing the letter "I", and "5" representing "S".

0xABADBABE ("a bad babe") is used by Apple as the "Boot Zero Block" magic number.

0xBAADF00D ("bad food") is used by Microsoft's LocalAlloc(LMEM_FIXED) to indicate uninitialised allocated heap memory.

0xBADDCAFE ("bad cafe") is used by 'watchmalloc' in OpenSolaris to mark allocated but uninitialized memory.

0xCAFEBABE ("cafe babe") is used by both Mach-O ("Fat binary" in both 68k and PowerPC) to identify object files and the Java programming language to identify Java bytecode class files[1]

0xDEADBEEF ("dead beef") is used by IBM RS/6000 systems, Mac OS on 32-bit PowerPC processors and the Commodore Amiga as a magic debug value. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, marks freed kernel memory. On OpenVMS, running on Alpha processes DEAD_BEEF can be seen by pressing CTRL-T.[2]

0xDEFEC8ED ("defecated") is the magic number for OpenSolaris core dumps [3].

0xFACEFEED ("face feed") is used by Alpha servers running Windows NT. The Alpha Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) generates this error when it encounters a hardware failure.[4]

0xFEE1DEAD ("feel dead") is used as magic number in Linux reboot system call.

0xBADCAB1E ("bad cable") Error Code returned to the Microsoft eVC debugger when connection is severed to the debugger.

0xFEEDFACE ("feed face") is used as a header for Mach-O binaries, and as an invalid pointer value for 'watchmalloc' in OpenSolaris.

0xD15EA5E\0 ("disease") opens a game disc partition on the Wii video game console. (\0 is used to mark the end of a string. Also of note, it was 0xDEADBEEF on the Nintendo GameCube.)

0xDEADDEAD ("dead dead") is the STOP code when invoking a Blue Screen of Death by using a special keystroke on a Windows NT based OS.

0xBEADFACE ("bead face, or face bead") Is the pattern that fills all unused memory locations in the Motorola 68HCS12DP256 micro-controller simulator, SimHC12.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexspeak#Notable_magic_numbers


So guess what this will return if you run it in SQL Server
SELECT CONVERT(VARBINARY,'ÞþÈí')

Microwaving M&Ms??

Microwaving M&Ms?? Who comes up with such a thing.

I was listening to the This Week In Twit and Gina Trapani (from lifehacker fame)said to microwave M&Ms on high for 30 seconds. This will make the inside nice and warm but the outside is still crunchy. This means that they still melt in your mouth and not in your hand :-)

So I tied it myself and it is quite good, think of it like very small chocolate souffles

Bonuses for people with incomes over $250,000 would be taxed at a 90% rate for companies receiveing TARP money

The House just passed a Wall Street bonus tax

The measure would tax individuals on any bonuses received in 2009 from companies getting $5 billion or more in money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Bonuses for people with incomes over $250,000 would be taxed at a 90% rate.

Let's do some quick math shall we?

1) You get a million, you get taxed 90% and keep 100K


2) You return 750K, keep 250K, get taxed 35% and you keep 162.5K


For option 2 it looks like you did a good thing because you returned 750K. But in reality you did it because that way you can keep a lot more of the money

Please Tell Me That You Know The Answer To These 3 Questions

So I was listening to the This Week In Science podcast. A poll was conducted and three questions were asked. Amazingly only 21% of the people knew the answer to all three of these questions. These questions seem very simple to me so I don't really know how you can mess it up. Here are the questions

1) How long does it take for the earth to orbit around the sun once?
2) Did dinosaurs and humans coexist?
3) What percentage of Earth's surface is covered by water?

So there you have it? Do you know the answer to all three?

Mix 09 Day 1 Keynote

A lot of things announced today at Mix 09
ASP.NET MVC 1.0
Silverlight 3 Beta
Expression Blend 3 Preview

Watch The Keynote

Big Blue To Buy The Dot In .COM

Remember the we are the dot in .com ads? Of course later it became we are the dot in the .com crash :-)

So IBM is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems Inc for 6.5 billion dollars. Sun is up 3.42 or 68.81% in pre market trading today. A while back it was noted that Sun's stock was basically worth 0 dollars because their market cap was the same as what they had in cash.

This acquisition probably makes sense to IBM because it will take out another Unix vendor and IBM also has a heavy investment in Java with a variety of products.

Sun bought MySQL not too long ago and butchered it, MySQL 5.1 was released with crashing bugs and Monty Widenius left Sun. This is going to be interesting since IBM already has a database product DB2

The Sun acquisition could also be because of the announcement that Cisco Systems Inc would be selling their own servers and stepping on IBM's turf.

This is going to be very interesting, after this downturn/recession/depression is over I think we are going to have a lot less tech companies. I am wondering if Oracle, HP, Microsoft or Google will make any major acquisition s in the coming months.

Senator Charles Grassley to AIG execs: Resign or commit suicide

A prominent U.S. senator has intimated that executives of the troubled insurer American International Group Inc might consider suicide, adopting what he called a Japanese approach to taking responsibility for their actions.

The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them (is) if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide," Grassley said.

"And in the case of the Japanese," he added, "they usually commit suicide before they make any apology.

Okay, come on, that is a little harsh, I know that these people should not get bonuses but you can't tell them to kill themselves?

You can read the complete story on Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE52G3BQ20090317

Buy-n-Hold Rhapsody

Here are the lyrics if you want to sing along with this classic song


Buy-n-Hold Rhapsody
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a stockslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
At Bloomberg and CN-BC….

I’m now a poor boy
I need advisory
Because it’s easy come, easy go
Bubble high, Crash low
Never sell my broker told
Doesn’t really matter to him
To her

Suze, told me not to sell
Put more funds into my plan
October bottom Warren said
Mama, retirement had just begun
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away

Boggle
Did ya’ mean to make me cry?
If m’funds not back again this time tomorrow
HOLD on, HOLD on
As if nothing really matters

Too late, my time has come
Losses up and down the line
Wallet’s aching all the time
Goodbye, everybody
I’ve got to SELL
Got to leave buy-n-hold behind to face the truth
Cramer
I don’t want to lose
I sometimes wish I’d never invested at all

I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouche, Scaramouche
Will you watch the Mad Money?
Buy-n-Sell and lightning-round
Very, very frightening to me
(Noriel) Roubini
(Noriel) Roubini
Roubini, Noriel
Magnifico
I’m now a poor fund and nobody loves me
(He’s just a poor fund from a poor family
Spare him his loss from this monstrosity)
Easy come, easy go, will you let me Sell

Bismillah!
No, we will not let you sell
(Let him sell!)
Bismillah!
We will not let you sell
(Let him sell!)
Bismillah!
We will not let you sell
(Let me sell!)
Will not let you sell
(Let me sell!)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
Oh, mama mia, mama mia
Mama mia, let me trade
Beelzebub has a devil buy-and-hold for me
For me
And for you…

So you think you can fool me with buy-and-hold lies?
So you think you can charge me and watch my money fry?
Oh, Broker
Can’t do this to me, broker
Just gotta get out
Just gotta sell right outta’ here
Nothing really matters
Anyone can see

Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters but the fee

Any way the market blows……

This is why I love living in New Jersey, They always find a way to generate revenue

STATE POLICE - NJ TICKETING

Here's the latest NJ State Police Initiative
(Radio Station 101.5 FM confirmed this info).
Starting today, New Jersey will launch a 30-day speeding ticket frenzy.
The state estimates that 9 million dollars will be generated in speeding
tickets. One million dollars will go to pay state troopers over-time.
There will be 50 state troopers on duty at all times patrolling the 9
main intersections and highways as follows:
I-295 North and South,
I-95 Jersey Turnpike North and South
I-80 East and West
I-287 North and South
I-78 East and West
I-195 East and West
I-280 East and West
Route 130 - North and South
Garden State Parkway - North and South

5 MPH above the limit can justify a ticket and every state trooper is supposed to pull a car over and write a ticket every 10 to 20 minutes.
They have issued 30 brand new unmarked Crown Victoria cruisers and are bringing in all of their part-timers on full time. If you work in NJ, NY, DE or CT, you will probably be on one of these
highways. So, please be on guard and drive safely!
Starting August 15, the price of a violation to show your driver's license, registration or insurance card at the time you are stopped, increased from $44.00 to $173.00. (Keep these documents in your car).And the fine for not having all three documents is $519.00! The fine for hand-held cell phone use while driving will be going up to $180.00.

Dexter is a real killer, productivity killer that is

So a friend of mine was so kind to let me borrow the Dexter: The First Season and Dexter: The Complete Second Season. Let me tell you, once you start watching this you can't stop. I just finished the first season and it is probably one of the best things I have seen in the last five years.

My plan was to mess around with jQuery this weekend. I created a jQuery wiki page on our site to document what I come across so that it might help others. Unfortunately I didn't add anything since I was watching Dexter. Oh well I have only one season left to watch, that should be done by the end of next week.

Are You Going To See Avatar The New James Cameron Movie?

Avatar, it will be out this Christmas

Who is going to see this?

In a distant future, humanity discovers the planet 'Alpha Centauri B-4', and for those scientists and astronauts who've traversed the gulf between neighboring suns and arrived on its alien soil know it as 'Pandora'. A world filled with an incredible diversity of beautiful and deadly ammonia-breathing lifeforms. Its also a world that harbors treasures and resources almost beyond price. But just as the original Pandora's Box wrought devastation on those who would use it for their own gain, so too this world may destroy not just the Pandorans home, but ours as well.

Avatar is the story of a wounded ex-marine, thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in bio-diversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival.

Here is the teaser trailer.


I always liked Aliens (Alien 2), probably my favorite from the Alien series. Avatar looks promising so I will probably see it

An Interview With Kevin Kline About SQL In A Nutshell Third Edition

I have interviewed Kevin Kline about SQL In A Nutshell Third Edition

You can find that interview here: An Interview With Kevin Kline About SQL In A Nutshell Third Edition


Also check out my All the interviews I did with the SQL legends post which has about 10 other SQL people

Thinking about a name for your child? Read this first.

I am reading this interesting article, here is the relevant part.

Boys in the United States with common names like Michael and David are less likely to commit crimes than those named Ernest or Ivan.

David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania compared the first names of male juvenile delinquents to the first names of male juveniles in the population. The researchers constructed a popularity-name index (PNI) for each name. For example, the PNI for Michael is 100, the most frequently given name during the period. The PNI for David is 50, a name given half as frequently as Michael. The PNI is approximately 1 for names such as Alec, Ernest, Ivan, Kareem, and Malcolm.

Results show that, regardless of race, juveniles with unpopular names are more likely to engage in criminal activity. The least popular names were associated with juvenile delinquency among both blacks and whites.

You can read the rest here: http://www.livescience.com/culture/090128-names-crime.html

So what does this mean? What if everyone named their child Michael? What will happen to Tom Cruise's or Gwyneth Paltrow's children, will those become criminals?

My children have the following names: Christian, Catherine and Nicholas (and no, Catherine and Nicholas are not named after Nicholas II and Catherine the Great

I think I am safe :-)

Am I doomed? Unborn with Odette Yustman as eye candy

I saw the movie Unborn yesterday and while I am not saying it is something you should see immediately it is not that bad. Odette Yustman from Cloverfield is the eye candy in this movie. It is an exorcist type of movie where the main character gets haunted by her unborn twin brother. Here is the creepy part.......the movie starts with Casey jogging and finding a blue glove on the ground, she picks this glove up, turns around only to find a creepy little boy standing there. This boy morphs into a dog and disappears.

On my way to work today I found this blue glove in the snow, it is almost the same as the one in the movie, not only that but take a look at the picture, notice something interesting? Yes that is a Corna (sign of the horns)

Anyway below is the trailer of unborn and hopefully I won't get any visitors tonight.......

When I grow up I want to be like mommy

When I grow up I want to be like mommy.......and sell shovels at Wal-mart.......oh wait....

Awesome first dance

Haven't seen something as good in a long time

Enjoy






I still haven't decided which one I like better

This is how you make a siren

Funny joke, unless you are a cat

A firefighter was working on the engine outside the station, when he noticed a little girl nearby in a little red wagon with little ladders hung off the sides, and a garden hose tightly coiled in the middle. The girl was wearing a firefighters helmet. The wagon was being pulled by her dog and her cat. The firefighter walked over to take a closer look.

`That sure is a nice fire truck,` the firefighter said with admiration.

`Thanks,` the girl replied. The firefighter looked a little closer. The fireman noticed the girl had tied the wagon to her dog`s collar and to the cat`s testicles...

`Little partner,` the firefighter said, `I don`t want to tell you how to run your rig, but if you were to tie that rope around the cat`s collar, I think you could go faster.`

The little girl replied thoughtfully, `You`re probably right, but then I wouldn`t have a siren.`


Just for the record, I am a cat person not a dog person.

Epirus Chimarra 1914 Issue, Creepiest Set Of Stamps Ever Issued

This has been mover to Stampio.orh, you can find it here: Epirus Chimarra 1914 Issue, One Of The Creepiest Set Of Stamps Ever Issued

This Is SPPPAAAAAARRTTAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I laughed my ass off and so will you. Everone I showed this clip to had a laugh attack, so enjoy

PowerShell V2 Comes With Windows 7

I installed Windows 7 today, and noticed it comes with PowerShell

Here is a screen shot

Lego Toys From 30 Years Ago Still In Use

When I went to Amsterdam recently I brought back a huge suitcase full of lego bricks. I have played with some of the bricks in that suitcase over 30 years ago.
I found the following 2 little cars in there:



They don't make them like that anymore, these were from the following two sets


This was made in 1978 so over 30 years ago by now. I also have the train tracks which were blue before they made the grey colored ones. I had so much fun with Legos when I was a kid and hope that my kids will enjoy these little bricks also. Legos are probably one of the best toys ever made, the good thing about them is that you can use those old bricks with the bricks that they make nowadays, it will never be outdated.