The wedding frenzy is upon us. I’m taking a needed break from updating here. I shall return in a week or so. Until then, make sure to enjoy some time away from the computer with someone you care about. Or a good book. Or both.

Personal news: My honor attendant’s mother passed away today. It was sudden, unexpected, and therefore a complete shock to everyone. I feel a bit disrespectful plastering the news here on my weblog, but this is the best place for me to express, in public, my dismay and sadness. And writing has always been a part of my healing process.

Needless to say, my honor attendant and I were best friends for the longest of times. We don’t see each other much now and our paths have drifted apart, but our friendship was so tight and close that we were each a part of the other’s family. So her mother’s death has ripped me into two sides. First side: if this had been any other week, and I mean any other week, I would be on the plane home to be there with her. But I’m getting married on Sunday and, even if I wanted to, there’s no way she and her mom would allow me to derail our wedding. Second side: I am hating that my best friend from childhood is not going to be able to share our wedding day. But, again, there are just too many people and logistics involved to do anything about that.

Ultimately, the beautiful gift her mother has left us is the importance of perspective. What life means and what love means. The wedding itself means little. It is the marriage, family, and community that truly matters.

NASA’s Helios may be the next new-fangled solution for “last-mile” broadband. At 1,850 pounds it can take off at an amazing 30mph, fly at an altitude of 100,000 miles, and recharges with solar power. Subscribers would use a satellite dish for access. Most surprising? “Helios’ ‘brain’ is an Apple Computer Macintosh computer.” Our skies could be layered with all sorts of transportation and telecommunications equipment soon.

What a revelation: pink was once a masculine color for boys and blue for girls. Take a look at this pink-trimmed sailor suit from the Smithsonian’s online exhibit HistoryWired. “…the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy; while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Have we flip-flopped back yet?

The Seattle Opera is in the midst of their ambitious Ring Cycle performances. Their Siegfried injured his leg, so his understudy lip-synced the role while the hurt tenor sang from a chair. That’s Wagnerian drama for you.

There are services that will watch a domain name registration “around-the-clock” and snap it up for you if it becomes available. For a nice fee of course. There are probably some rather decent ones coming up for renewal nowadays. If only we could make money off of them.

The Classic Gaming Expo was this past weekend. Take a look at the speaker list for a trip back to how things used to be done. The Wired News writeup makes the interesting point that while modern games can take days to master, the classic games take just minutes to learn and are just right for a quick diversion. I dunno about that. It’s true that you can easily pick up an older game, but it’s the addiction factor that is the true time sink, not the ramp up time.

I bookmarked Curl Corporation over a year ago because I noticed some high profile MIT types were involved with it. At the time, I didn’t know what they were up to, but they are starting to get some press. It involves a new language and a different business model (charging companies for each byte of it downloaded). I haven’t looked closely at the language, but it aims to combine the best of hypertext markup capabilities and the object-oriented ease of Java. And application download time is supposed to be fast. At least they are being realistic about having a business model, but the results have got to be extremely compelling for companies to sign on for that type of payment and a new technology to ramp up with.

I’m only linking to The Google Store to point out that the link in it says “Take me to the store. I’m feeling shoppy.” “feeling shoppy??” That just doesn’t work as well as their “I’m feeling lucky” slogan.

Paint the Moon, an incredibly optimistic project to get millions of people to point their laser pointers at the moon at the same time to create a visible field of color. It probably won’t work, but that’s not the … point. (via memepool)