I’m not a Luddite. Really. Why did it take me so long to upgrade to HDTV? Probably because I’m not much of a TV person. I got this LCD HDTV for use as a TV and monitor and am loving it so far.

I’m pretty late to the game on this but I’ve had a lot of fun reading up on Hadoop and Cloudera. As I understand it, Apache Hadoop is a freeware/open-source software package that allows a lot of data-intensive computing systems to play nicely together and analyze large amounts of data. This is a top-level project from Apache who as you probably know supports a ton of software and web-related projects. Cloudera are the commercial Hadoop experts.

What strikes me as most interesting here is that the Hadoop system can bring together so many disparate functions – even during a system failure. Yes, it is self-healing. Interesting. It even does this working side-by-side of existing/legacy systems. Seems very pertinent to the ever growing mountains of data generated daily.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be so enamored by a flashlight, but that was before I got the Fenix LD10 R4 Tactical LED Flashlight.

I was looking for an upgrade to my nighttime bicycle light, and was pretty shocked to see high lumen lights in the bike department for north of $100. I ride just about every day so this purchase is important, but the >$100 price tag just seemed a little ridiculous.

Enter Paul D.Paul D. (a great guy and expert in equipment/gear of every size and shape) asked me, “Why don’t you just get a high-performance tactical LED flashlight with 4 lighting levels and 2 flashing outputs?” Ummmm. Because I have no idea what your’e talking about?

Long story short, I get this flashlight ($55 through batteryjunction.com) and am just blown away. I had no idea flashlights had so many settings and shine REALLY bright (my technical description of 132 lumens). The light cost less than half of what I was originally looking at and shines about 2x as bright. I did have to get a mount ($15) but that’s still less than what I was originally looking at. I’ll be trying it out for the first time tonight, weather permitting. Specs below:

• Cree XP-G LED (R4) with lifespan of 50,000 hours
• Two modes (6 types) of output, generation/turbo selected by turning the bezel (patented)
• General Mode: 9 lumens (34hrs) -> 50 lumens (6hrs) -> 105 lumens (2.2hrs) -> SOS
• Turbo Mode: 132 lumens (1.5hrs) -> Strobe
• Digitally regulated output – maintains constant brightness
• Uses one 1.5V AA ( Ni-MH, Alkaline ) batteries, inexpensive and widely available
• 100mm (Length) x 21.5mm (Diameter)
• Made of durable aircraft-grade aluminum
• Premium Type III hard-anodized anti-abrasive finish
• 54-gram weight (excluding batteries)
• Waterproof to IPX-8 Standard Toughened ultra-clear glass lens with anti-reflective coating
• Push-button tail cap switch
• Capable of standing up securely on a flat surface to serve as a candle
• Anti-roll, slip-resistant body design
• Included accessories: holster, lanyard, body clip, two spare o-rings, and a rubber switch boot

So I’m still holding my breath, but it appears that after roughly 1.5 months, SU Financial Aid finally got their act together and granted me the loan needed to pursue my MLIS. This time was nothing but stress and annoyance for me. Unfortunately there still are some issues but I’m fairly optimistic things will work out. I’ll write more later, but now I have another note of administrative disconnect/mismanagement.

I get an email from SU Housing with the Subject header: ‘Reminder – you have not yet submiitted your required ID Card photo!’

What’s funny/curious/lame is that this is the FIRST contact they’ve made regarding this matter. Whats also interesting is that they’re advising that I should submit my ID card photo after activating my SU email. This is the first I’ve been notified of that and have no record of how to proceed on that. I contacted the IT help dept.

Based on my experiences so far, I have a funny feeling that this latest slew of activities will be far from the last.

They’re baack…Those  mad scientists at EepyBird who shocked the world with those majestic Coca-Cola and Mentos fountains are at it again. They’ve moved on to much more functional projects, namely a Coke Zero & Mentos Rocket Car. Check the video after the jump.

The time has come for players to carve their name in history. One touch, tackle or free kick could crush a nation’s hopes or cause them to build a statue in your honour. Drogba, Rooney and Ronaldo are ready to Write The Future.

Write yours at http://www.nike.com/nikefootball/

NIKE FOOTBALL WRITE THE FUTURE – FULL LENGTH VERSION

This is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in some time. A woman gets walking directions to her destination from Google Maps, walks along a highway even though Google Maps advises her to use caution as that route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths, gets hit, sues Google and the individual who hit her. If she can operate a BlackBerry and can’t make a simple safety judgement things are a lot worse than I thought. Read it all here on the Search Engine Land site.

I needed to find Category ID’s for a widget I’m using. I had no idea how to. http://www.wprecipes.com does. It’s really pretty easy (if you know what you’re doing. duh).

According to an Interior Department report, staff members at an agency that oversees offshore drilling accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography. Awesome!…Not. Read the rest here on Yahoo.

Paul Rademacher is really awesome for coming up with this  tool for comparing the size of BP’s oil spill to cities around the world. From his site:

On April 20th, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon left 17 workers injured and 11 missing and presumed dead. Oil is spilling from a well 5000 feet below sea level, discharging 200,000 gallons of crude oil a day according to the official estimate. It is estimated that more than 6 million gallons of crude oil have spewed into the Gulf so far.