Bitshift

The folks over at LifeHacker have been running a series exploring the contents of readers' daily bags. It's fascinating, and very worthwhile to look through, to see what items others use to get through the day. I took notes while reading through them all, and came across several items I really should carry with me, but don't. Here's Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. Click on a photo, and you'll get a larger version with a detailed inventory and explanation of the contents.

If you're really into this sort of thing, there's a web forum just for you! The Everyday Carry Forums.

Folks who use Moleskine notebooks (e.g., everyone over at The Moleskinerie) rave about the quality of the Pilot G2 pens. Myself, I prefer the G2 Minis.

The pen is a joy to write with, the ink flows smoothly and evenly, plus it's water- and chemical-resistant, which makes it fairly tamper-proof (very important when writing checks, as check-washing is a common tactic used by forgers). The Minis cost as little as a normal replacement cartridge for the full-sized G2, so I just buy a bunch and keep them everywhere. They're small enough to toss into a bag or a pocket comfortably.

I'm not a huge fan of Second Life. As MMOs go, it just holds nothing compelling for me. Because, you see, I'm not into anonymous cross-species wankery of the lowest order. However, a lot of people are, and I say more power to them. But this goes a bit too far. You see, you can now get baby unicorn pets in SL. However, to acquire one, you have to breed with an adult unicorn. You read that right: You'll need a unicorn chaser, you unicorn chaser.

I fear for the future of our children.

Believe it or not, finding good-quality, relatively inexpensive goggles isn't as easy as you might think. Whether you enjoy living out your Easy Rider fantasies, or just do a bit of metal- or woodworking around the house, you may want to look into (get it? Look into! Hah! I kill me!) these Bobster goggles, as reviewed by Cool Hunting.

I may have mentioned at some previous point that I own a tricked-out Apple //e. I really love it, and am proud of my collection of original boxed software for it. However, I've got nothing on this guy: he built a a parallel computer from a cluster of Apple //e motherboards.

Word Search Wallpaper. Not for your computer, for your house. When you absolutely, positively, aren't quite ready to cover your dwelling in psychopathic ramblings, conspiracy theories, and obsessively-repeated phrases. But you're working up to it.

Just because I'm in a retro mood, I give you RatherGood's Spongmonkey Moon Song.

You may have gathered that I've become an instant fan of Zero Punctuation's game industry reviews. His latest review, of BioShock, is now available. Anyone with any interest whatsoever in videogames should check it out, then watch the rest of his reviews. They're all breathlessly hilarious!

Sony has put together a nicely-organized PS3 compatibility database, so all you PS3 owners can check to see whether or not your old PS1 and PS2 titles will work with your 60GB, Emotion Engine-equipped model, or the newer (or European) model without the Emotion Engine hardware.

It's a shame they took out the EE hardware, whose purpose was to deal with the backwards compatibility, but at least Sony's owning up to and detailing any problems you may have with your library of games.

And now, for an avalanche -- nay, a tsunami -- of iPhone info. Brace yourself! First, as I'm sure everyone heard Wednesday, Apple lowered the price of the 4GB and 8GB iPhone models by $200, and has discontinued the 4GB model. Now's a great time to get a great deal on an iPhone. If you've already got one, the following iPhone-hackery links may be of interest: iPHUC, a tool to allow command-line access to an iPhone. iNdependence provides a nice GUI interface in OS X to jailbreak the iPhone, install SSH, activate the phone, and install wallpaper, ringtones, and 3rd-party iPhone-native applications. MobileTerminal is a Terminal.app-like application for the iPhone. MobileTerminal requires the installation of the BSD subsystem package from NateTrue's site. However, it's much easier to install the MobileTerminal app, SSH, the BSD subsystem, and pretty much most other 3rd-party native apps using a slick little tool called Installer.app. Installer.app will not only jailbreak your phone, but it'll install a native app on your phone. From that app, you can download and install most of the current native 3rd-party iPhone apps with a single finger-touch. There's also a very nice, native instant messaging (AIM, Y!, Google, etc.) app called Apollo IM.

For sites, there's Mod My iPhone, which has a great forum as well as a well-maintained list of iPhone apps. Insanely Me keeps a collection of library and app ports that're useful to the more in-depth iPhone hacker. iPhone Alley is another excellent iPhone hacking resource, with current news, apps, and forums. iPhone Atlas has a great collection of iPhone guides and howtos, and a wonderful troubleshooting section. In the howto vein, Hack The iPhone also has an excellent collection of guides for hacking your iPhone in various ways. iPhoneApplicationList.com also collects info on all the latest iPhone apps.

As for cases, I highly recommend Waterfield's iPhone Smart Case. Waterfield is a local company to me, and I've bought hundreds of dollars of notebook sleeves from them over the years. They are very responsive, the quality of their products is absolutely top-notch, and when you deal with them, you're dealing directly with the guy who runs the company. I even bought a nice leather case for my Nintendo DS from them. They've earned all my future case purchases. If they're not to your liking for some reason, the iPhone Leather Folio from InCase may be more your style.

Finally(!), if you bought your iPhone within 14 days prior to the price drop, Steve Jobs himself has said you'll be getting a $100 Apple Store credit.

I've always admired people who make super-complex LEGO builds from scratch. This LEGO Transformer is no exception. It even supposedly transforms! Now that's some master-level work! Bravo!

Got a Prius? I do. Got an iPod? Who hasn't? But I really dislike the cassette iPod adapter, and despise the FM transmitters. Never fear, however. This week, Toyota announced that they were launching an iPod kit for all existing Toyota and Lexus models. The kit should run about $300 (not including installation), will connect your iPod directly to your stereo system and integrate the existing stereo controls and display, and would allow you to store your connected iPod in your glove box. Frabjous day!

After spending a weekend in Lake Tahoe at a small social event that happened to include a significant fraction of the top World Series of Poker players, as well as several members of the MIT Blackjack team, my interest in card and chip manipulation was rekindled. If you've ever wondered how to shuffle poker chips like the pros, the vlog 5min has a quick video tutorial.

While in grad school, a friend introduced me to juggling, both balls and clubs. It took me a while to get into it, but I got fairly decent before putting it away for some time. Recently, I've started practicing again, and it's a great stress reliever. If you're at all interested in juggling, there are three books I can highly recommend: Beyond the Cascade : Step-By-Step Guides to 88 Classic 3-Ball Juggling Tricks, which will teach you all sorts of 3-ball tricks; Charlie Dancey's Encyclopaedia of Ball Juggling, which will teach you innumerable tricks with various combinations of balls, and also teach you a great deal about juggling in general; and it's companion Charlie Dancey's Compendium of Club Juggling, which is as the title says, all about club juggling.

Great article about Tidbinbilla's 30 years of tracking Voyagers 1 and 2. Voyager 1 is currently the most distant man-made object, at almost 10 billion miles from the sun. These diligent folks maintain museum pieces just to ensure ongoing contact with the Voyager probes. And remember, it's a two-way communication. We're still able to send messages back to them.

I was in the control room at Arecibo when the last signal from Pioneer 10 was received, working with SETI (they used to use it as a reference signal to calibrate the antenna before an observation run). At that time it was 7.5 billion miles from home, and was putting out a signal of under 20 Watts. To get some feel for this, imagine the light in your refrigerator. Now imagine trying to see it a mile away. Ten miles. 100 miles. Across the country. On the Moon. On Pluto. Further. Further.

Now you get the idea.

Being there when that signal was heard stirred something in me, though I still can't quite put it into words. It made me feel part of something large and timeless, and it made me stop and marvel at our ambitions and achievements. Not just in putting these objects out in space, but in our ability to maintain contact with them over such vast distances.

Yet, it's important to remember that as vast as these distances are, Voyager 1 still hasn't crossed the heliopause -- the point at which our own star, the Sun's energy is overcome by interstellar winds. All these years, and all those billions of miles, and our most distant creation still hasn't even left the Sun's influence. It's still just a child playing near the sidewalk at the edge of home's green grass. Our universe is littered with such stars. Untold billions of them. It's humbling to consider the scale, both of our achievement and of the universe in which it's occurring.

So, take a moment and consider our furthest ambassadors, Voyagers 1 and 2, as they speed out into the universe, testament to our existence, if nothing else. Think about their past, and their future, and imagine their fates. Perhaps they'll collide with some random object and be destroyed. Perhaps they'll be captured in the gravity well of some larger object and become an unbidden satellite. Perhaps they'll stray too close to a star and be incinerated. Perhaps one day they'll rest on alien soil, mute witness to countless sunrises we may never see, featuring a star we may never name. And perhaps one day someone else might discover them, and take a moment to consider us.