Rambles at starchamber.com

Have you ever suffered the occasional doubt that Divine Providence is manifest? Do you ever wonder why, if God is so great, He doesn’t make himself a little more obvious (not to mention useful)? Maybe you just haven’t given Him the right opportunity. If your home or place of employment is outfitted with a Yo, [...]

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I keep running into interesting scripts and alphabets these days: Elvish, Tamil, Malayalam. Recently I came across this site: Alphabets of the World. I would have been in heaven if I’d had access to such a thing as a seventh grader. I remember going to the great big library at the local university as a [...]

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Hey, look at this: Navan links to my blog. And Navan speaks Tamil. I have always been fascinated by exotic-looking characters and writing… that’s how I got started on Elvish (which now seems to be taking over my site). Ever since I bought Nakanishi’s Writing Systems of the World years ago, I have been enchanted [...]

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I’ve talked about sodaplay here before, the wonderful, whimsical, Java-powered world where people from around the net build matchstick monsters and bugs and lizards. The thing started out simply enough, but since the creators had done such a good job of making it extendable by visitors, a huge community of sodaplayers has built up. Visit [...]

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Paul Falstad is a software engineer who likes to make nifty applets. His Math and Physics Applets site is just loaded with beautiful illustrations of interesting phenomena. I remember fifteen or so years ago when the Mac was young, my physicist friend Dan at Stanford was busy (among other things) writing fun little graphical programs [...]

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My friend Kristin got two fish today for her office. One is black and the other is gold. She also got some fake underwater grass that glows in the dark. I think instead she should have bought transgenic mutant fish that glow in the dark. They really exist. Take a look at this SFGate article: [...]

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More fun stuff from the digital artist/UI designer Ben Fry. Go to zipdecode and type in your zip code. Then type in the zip code of some other place. This is a good example of how zero-latency response encourages experimentation. If there was significant lag each time you hit a digit, it wouldn’t be nearly [...]

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A few days ago, in the violent throes of a severe case of buyer’s remorse, I let fly at my poor trembling iPod. Ranting was both therapeutic and surprisingly entertaining. It went like this: I was uncertain about the big purchase. I finally got nudged over the edge, hesitating late adopter that I am, and [...]

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ZOMBO.com is one of the more remarkable sites I’ve seen in a long time. I highly recommend a visit. The intro animation takes a little while, but it’s worth the wait. Take in the site for a few minutes… maybe buy a ZomboTee t-shirt. Then go to the “NewZletter” news sign-up page. You don’t have [...]

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All eyes are on Mars tonight. The latest rover has officially landed, but as I type these words we haven’t heard yet whether he’s taking phone calls just yet. I was poking around the JPL Mars Rover site tonight, and I’ve been impressed that the pages seem to be loading quickly. Either nobody cares or [...]

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