Our friends over at binary bakery are having a sale and they are offering 40% off a $10 app and charing $4.99.  Yay! 

My what?  I said what?  I've been a loyal iPad user since day 1 and I've now got an Android tablet?  Wait and just hear me out.  I love my iPad.  It's great.  I take it everywhere.  But when IT guys at work started letting us get our work email on our iOS devices, I decided to go for it.  It messes up my iPhone and I'm not about to let their stuff on my iPad. So what do I do? Clearly I needed a "spare" device.  How much should I spend on said device?  $200? $100?  Try $65 including shipping.  

And let me assure you it is awful.  It has a resistive touchscreen and the cpu is busy doing something else on almost every keystroke.  But it was only sixty five bucks.  For that much I thought it was worth a try.  

The OS is Android 2.1.  I know, old.  The app store that comes with it appears to be focused on gimpware.  I immediately downloaded the Amazon app store and my first app was Kindle reader.  Nice.  Well, the as nice as a resistive touchscreen can be kind of nice.  The device only has 4 gig of storage but it has a micro SD slot so I'll have to dig around for that 8 GB micro SD I had lying around from one of my old dumb phones, or was it my Blackberry?  Once I pop that puppy in there, I'll have a 7 inch tablet with 12 gig of storage for 1/7 what an iPad costs. It's amazing how Apple drives competitors into the dirt (price wise at least).  It reminds me of all those $49 mp3 players I see in the stores collecting dust while they can't keep $200+ iPod Touches in stock.

Via npr.org

There's a new weather widget out that creates a wind speed map.  Take a look here.

I ran across an article today that the police in Queensland Australia are going "wardriving" to find homes with unsecured wifi so they can issue a "warning" to help people avoid identity theft.  Talk about public service!  I wish the cops around here would do this. I find open wifi every day when I check my email sitting at a stop light, my iPhone 4 asks me if I want to join some wifi that reaches the intersection, presumably from somebody's house or appartment nearby.

I got pulled over the other day for going the customary speed which is 15 over the posted speed but alas I wasn't in the middle of a pack of cars so I had to pay.  I guess this wifi thing is the equivalent of cops walking up and trying the lock on your shed and giving you a warning if you left the thing unlocked but I'd rather have cops wardriving to help people understand how to set up their home wifi  than doing sneaky speed traps.

I came across this in my RSS feeds today and watched it over on Popular Science.  If it isn't a hoax, I expect to be able to buy sets of these "wings" in a few years from now.  Wow.  Very nice.  It sounds like two small gas engines are doing some work and he is "controlling" things by his flapping but it's really hard to tell in such a short video.

Update: Popular Science is reporting this as a hoax.  Nice thought though.

Every year on March 14th, it's PI day! At 1:59:26 this morning it was pi second but you had to stay up late last night or get up pretty early this morning to celebrate it!

There is a new "in browser" circuit simulator called CircuitLab. And it doesn't even require flash. Try it out here.

Go ahead and build this.  I dare you...