Just another nerd.
The Unofficial World of Warcraft Papercraft has plenty of amazing papercraft projects from the world of Azeroth. Each papercraft has a downloadable PDF so you can give it a try, and ranging from the extremely simple to the mind-boggling “how did they do that” like this Illidian Stormrage,
That is some awesome nerdcraft right there.
First heard about Millenniata’s M-Arc archival DVD system when the Long Now blog mentioned that the product was actually shipping.
Millenniata claims its M-Arc DVDs are backwards-compatible with existing DVD technologies, but rather than using a laser to heat up a photosensitive dye, the M-Arc uses a mechanical process to make scratches in a physical layer that M-Arc claims will last potentially for centuries if stored properly. According to a brief summary on the manufacturer’s site, the M-Arc:
Preserves data for centuries with physical changes in data layer Constructed with rock-hard materials known to last for centuries Backwards-compatible on all standard DVD drives Functions like a standard DVD with a capacity of 4.7 GB Exclusively written by the M-Writer™ Drive
The Millenniata site doesn’t list any prices, but Long Now reports $1,700 for the writer and $16-$25 per 4.7gb disc depending on the quantity.
GTD Timer is a Windows application that does one thing very well — it is a countdown timer.
As the GTD Timer website freely admits, these folks are hardly the first to create a countdown timer for Windows, but they have easily created the best countdown timer for Windows.
The software is free to use for personal use, and $19.95 to register (which eliminates a nag screen among other things).
From my experience with trying numerous countdown clocks, this does the best job of actually looking half-way decent in an overlay so I can focus on my work while also keeping the occasional eye on how much time of the allotted time remaining I have to finish a task.