Wallhogs Rock: Where were you in the seventies?

What are Wallhogs and why do they rock? Read on gentle reader...

Recently I got an email from an enterprising young man I happen to know from a previous enterprise of my own, ePrivacy Group. His name is Kendall Schoenrock and he is one of those young people who were born to do business. I think he became a licensed real estate agent when he was 18 or something crazy like that. I know he still owns and maintains various residential and commercial properties. He worked a Budweiser delivery route in college, got his MBA from Villanova at an early age and, despite several other opportunities, chose to join, and invest in, ePrivacy Group. And this was at a time when it was the very definition of "a long shot."

When I watched him work ePrivacy Group's booth at ISPCON 2003 [I think it was that year] you could tell he was a natural pitch man, cheerfully engaging prospects in conversation, happily enthusing about a technology--SpamSquelcher--in which he believed [with good reason as it turns out, given that Symantec paid $28 million for it about a year later].

After selling SpamSquelchers for Symantec for a while [under the name TurnTide and later the Symantec 8100] Kendall struck out on his own and mucked around for a while seeking a fresh challenge. That's when he found Wallhogs.

Wallhogs are basically big plastic pictures you can put on a wall then later peel off and put on a different wall, as in dorm room wall, apartment wall, office wall. Check them out at wallhogs.com.

A variety of images are already available from which to choose, but one of the coolest features of the site is the ability to upload your own image and have it not only blown up, but cropped. So your photo of young Timmy making that great catch in softball can be cropped to just Timmy, then printed five feet tall if you like (presumably with some clever interpolation algorithm).

Of course, the basic technology of "apply to wall then remove and apply to some other wall" is also very cool. I could have used this back in the day when I was at university. I had about half a dozen posters that got moved from flat to flat in Leeds, serious expressions of my personally at the time, which got tattered at the corners from frequent application and removal of tape. Whether you want a blissful four foot wide sunset above your bed, or a funky art photo above your sink, Wallhogs has you covered. Even if you have to switch dorm rooms in a hurry.
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Cardiologists Using MP3s for Training

In the same vein [nice pun, eh] as my posting about the $30 heart monitor comes this Newsweek story about medical students using iPods to learn the sounds of unhealthy hearts. "Rocking out to 'aortic regurgitation.'"

Which reminds me, if anyone knows what is up with the heart in this clip my friend would love to get a second opinion.

Treo 650 Dying? No shift! Treo 680 review coming soon

Alas, my beloved Treo 650 is sick. Apparently, a recent fall injured the Shift key which jams in the shifted position. This has had a ripple effect on the keyboard and functionality. I am off to England to do some consulting and will have to manage with the 650 until I return, by which time my 680 should have arrived. As they say, shift happens, sometimes too much.

Terabyte Storage Slips Under $400: Western Digital on sale at CompUSA

I blogged about the domesticated terabyte a while back, and now you can buy one for under $400 at CompUSA. As I understand it, there are two drives in the box and you can use them as a single volume or have a 500 megabyte volume drive with RAID backup/redundancy on the other. Maybe the Easter Bunny will bring me one.

No seriously, this is a test...

...of the image wrapping ability of this theme, using a shot of the rear of my Jeep as an example.

For some reason, many of the WordPress themes show an example of an image in a post that does not wrap text. This could lead a newbie [like me] to think that particular theme was incapable of doing this wrapping, which is a pity because wrapping text around images is one of the things that makes blogging with pictures in Blogger so much fun.

But I have now solved my own problem: wrapping the text is just a click away. You select the image and click the alignment button and Voila! This seems to work in themes that show no wrapping in the WordPress Theme Browser.

Now I need to re-browse those 500 themes again, with a different perspective.

BTW, the picture on the left was selected mainly because it is tall and thin. It shows my Florida license plate: 1NFOSEC. Actually, my wife registered this plate in 2001, at which time someone had already taken INFOSEC, so she cleverly got 1NFOSEC then handed it on to me. (I am noticing that typing out this license plate is a good font test--can you see the difference between the 1 and the I?)

The logo at the bottom is on a plate that covers the towing hitch receiver. It says Browning. I am not what you would call a 'gun nut' but I do happen to own a couple of Browning firearms, and I think the logo is very clever.

Stephen

Every blog has to begin somewhere...

Welcome to Cobb's Blog, the blog, at cobbsblog.com, the site.

This blog uses WordPress and at some point it will incorporate most of my other blogs, in one common blog space, with content distinguished by categories.

The look and feel (theme) will also be changing, as soon as I have chosen something suitable and figured out how to install it.

I hope you find it worth dropping by from time to time.

When Law and Politics Don't Mix: Weasel words from Gonzales

Did anyone else see Attorney General Gonzales saying to CNN, in an attempt to brush aside questions about abuse of FBI security letters, that the letters had been around "long before I became AG" ? Then shortly thereafter I see in the Denver Post that use of national security letters has grown exponentially since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "In 2005 alone, the audit found, the FBI issued more than 19,000 such letters, amounting to 47,000 separate requests for information." Here's more about what these letters are:

The letters enable an FBI field office to compel the release of private information without the authority of a grand jury or judge.

The USA Patriot Act, enacted after the 2001 attacks, eliminated the requirement that the FBI show "specific and articulable" reasons to believe that the records it demands belong to a foreign intelligence agent or terrorist.

That law, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed national security letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

Now the bureau needs only to certify that the records are "sought for" or "relevant to" an investigation "to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

Amid some pretty credible claims that these letters are being abused under Gonzales he has the nerve to say they were around long before his watch. A classic case of weasel words.