The following was posted by Brian Heater over at Gearlog :

“One of the best things about Google is, for better or worse, the company seemingly has no sense of technological limits. Be it sending people into space for the X-Prize or offering rural Wi-Fi via weather balloons, the company is not afraid to test its own limits. 

Back in early 2007, the company filed a patent application for barge-based data centers, which use the water both to cool and power themselves. The application, which was granted on Tuesday, outlines datacenters based three to seven miles off shore in 50 to 70 meter deep water. The ocean’s waves generate electricity that powers the data centers. There seems to be a good deal of doubt whether the company would ever actually utilize the technology, but heck, it’s Google, so you never know…”

Google  never ceases to amaze me and continually makes me go Hmmmmmmmmm! — usually(but not always)  in a good way

Posted by DRHamp as Hmmmm! at 10:29 AM GMT-0500

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This post will be an exception to that.   Beginning in the late 60’s , I became interested in and studied wine – eventually falling in love with the whole subject.   Having said that, I’m not an expert by any measure.   I’m not in the business, I’m not a professional wine critic/reviewer.
I am seldom able to describe a wine by identifying specific tastes and/or aromas.   Based on the mouth feel,the balance, and yes the aromas and flavors that I can’t adequately describe;  I either like the wine, or I don’t.   So, if I like a wine – then it’s a good wine and if I don’t like the wine – it’s not a good wine.  What I’ve found over the past thirty odd years of dabbling in wine is that I’ve come across very few “not good” wines, very few exceptional wines, and a whole lot of good to very good wines which were basically pleasant but not memorable.

Along this wine path that I’ve traveled, I’ve come across a few wine producers who, in my opinion, make consistently excellent wines and who I count among “My favorite wineries”.    Among them are: Tablas Creek and Phillips Hill in California, and Chehalem in Oregon.   I have said before that I’ve never had a wine from Tablas Creek that I didn’t think was excellent — the same could be said for these other producers – consistently producing

outstanding wines that really suit my taste.  There are a few other producers who would be on this list but for a single wine that didn’t suit my taste or fell short of my very subjective “exceptional and memorable” designation.

So, back to the subject at hand – the wine / wine producer that generated my, again very subjective, Rave.    Scholium Project is a low production, “Cult” winery in the Suisun Valley of Northern California, just east of Napa.  By low production, we’re talking about less than 1000 cases and often less than 100 cases.  I first heard about the Scholium wines as I followed the wine chatter on Twitter.  I signed up for their mailing list to see if I could get my hands on a few bottles to try.  The mailing list effort was successful and I was able to directly order a few bottles from the 2009 release (wines produced in 2007 & 2008).

The first bottle I opened was the 2007 Dulcissima Camilla California White — a blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Verdelho, and Chardonnay.  The wine just blew me away — one of the most enjoyable white wines that I’ve had in many years.   A night or so later, I opened a bottle of the 2008 Lost Slough Vineyards Naucratis, a 100% Verdelho varietal.  Again, I was blown away — for my taste and for my preference, maybe the best white wine I have ever had.

I have a couple of bottles of the 2008 Lost Slough Vineyards Riquewihr a 100% Gewurztraminer varietal.  I haven’t tried it yet, and can’t wait.  I have also since ordered the 2007 Farina Vineyards La Saverita Di Bruto – a 100% Sauvignon Blanc Varietal.  They also have made several red wines and I’m very anxious to give them a try when the opportunity presents itself.

All of the above only represents my personal opinion and nothing more.  As far as wine goes, If you like it – it’s good and if you don’t like it – it’s not  — and then on occasion it’s “Exceptional & Memorable”!

Posted by DRHamp as Wine-Wine-Wine at 12:30 PM GMT-0500

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Well after many, many years of using exclusively Microsoft applications for office and email;  I’ve finally started making the break-away.

I’ve used MS Outlook as my email client for years and it has been an excellent product.  It had some great features, but became cumbersome and extremely difficult to migrate to a new pc system when that became necessary.  There was no intuitive, automated way to backup and restore the outlook installation when that became necesssary.  Outlook over time also became a significant resource hog and began to contribute to the erosion of  overall system performance.

I began to look for alternatives and finally settled on Mozilla Thunderbird.  After three months of exclusive use, I have found Thunderbird to be reliable, fast and with virtually all of the functions of MS Outlook.  It’s not quite as professional looking and polished as Outlook, but with a number of third-party addons, can look pretty good.  It’s clean, lean, easy to backup and restore —- I like it!

Now, I’m asking myself the question:  “Why didn’t you just transition all your email to GMail”?  GMail is the excellent browser-based email application from Google.  I’ve used it for years, as a supplement to my PC based email client.   I still use Gmail and really like that it’s an anywhere, anytime email capability and only a web browser is required.   I’m still struggling a bit with some of the functionality that I’ve grown accustomed to in Outlook and Thunderbird that is lacking in Gmail.   One example is Folders — Outlook and Thunderbird have them, and GMail doesn’t.  I really like to organize my email into folders, or categories like:  Family, Friends, Finance …… etc.

I’ll keep playing with GMail functionality and suspect that one day Gmail, or some other Browser-based email application will be the only one I use exclusively

Office applications are next — hello Open Office!

Posted by DRHamp as Hmmmm!, uncategorized at 9:02 AM GMT-0500

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