11 Jan 2004
Year in review

A review of computing technology in 2003 (a bit late). We still haven't upgraded our Macs to Panther, but last year was the year I finally went to WinXP on the Windows box.

Microsoft talked up the Tablet OS and Media Center, while dreaming Longhorn. Meanwhile, Linux moved ahead, despite SCO threats, and Apple unleashed its latest big cat, Panther.

(link) [CNET News.com - Front Door]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Doom 3 Vaporware no More

I wonder if it'll be any good? I stll play Doom and Doom II, in my opinion they are the finest FPS video games of all time. Despite the limitations on game geography, I like them better than more modern games (even the Quake series).

So I wait ... ready to be disappointed, but waiting nonetheless.

(link) [Slashdot]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Sir Mix-A-Lot Using Weed To Distribute Music

Amway meets the RIAA ... this is just strange stuff.

(link) [Slashdot]

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

The Future of Cattle

The New York Times Magazine has a great article today entitled Cattle Futures?.

For tens of thousands of years, we have been eating the flesh of ruminants that live on grass. The rightness of that picture -- a bovine grazing on grassland -- goes way back, maybe all the way to the savanna. And while that picture has recently been eclipsed by nauseating images of modern meat production, the grass-fed ruminant and the vegetarian herbivore are not extinct yet.

For several years now, an alternative, postindustrial food chain has been taking shape, its growth fueled by one ''food scare'' after another: Alar, G.M.O.'s, rBGH, E. coli 0157:H7; now B.S.E. Whatever science told us about the risks of these novel industrial entrees and sides, something else told us we might want to order something more appetizing: organic, hormone-free, grass-finished. It might cost more, but it's possible again to eat meat from a short, legible food chain consisting of little more than sunlight, grass and ruminants. Back to the future: a 21st-century savanna. If, as seems probable, this landscape should now expand at the expense of the feedlot, then something good -- even beautiful -- will have come of this poor mad cow.

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Baby Bunnies and Burros

Well, we have 12 baby English Angora rabbits on our back porch! Technically, they're the first livestock of ours born here at Hammerstead, although Wolfie (one of our Highland heifers) had her calf Chip when we owned her, she was still over at Kevyn's, and not here. And although we had lambs last spring here, they were from Kevyn's meat sheep flock - we didn't own them. So, technically, the bunnies are it!

In other farm news ... we have a new boarder. A burro named Grayson has taken up residence in our barn until his owners can secure their own place. I look for him to be here for a while. Nice looking donkey, and a sweet disposition to boot. Maybe he can teach Mouse (our other resident donkey) some manners. But I doubt it.

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link