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This is awesome. It’s a simple device that uses burning wood (or similar) to generate not only heat for cooking, but simultaneously cooling for storing food, and electricity. That’s pretty amazing. It’s aimed at developing countries and is a very specifically targeted device that to me seems like it could actually make a difference. Who needs a $100 laptop when you can’t even feed yourself?

I ran across this amusing blog post the other day and it made me chuckle. It involves me as a focal point of the narration, primarily due to my connection with DreamHost. I don’t know either of the two people involved in the story personally and there are several incorrect facts that show that they don’t really know much about me, either.

This is not the first time someone has tried to leverage some knowledge of me to gain something, but I think this is the first time when it’s something that’s completely unconnected to me. Just dropping my name is apparently now a way to persuade someone else to do things for you. It didn’t actually work in this case but who knows if it’s worked other times?

I think from here it can only be a very short walk to being recognized on street corners, right? Yeah…

Anyway, it’d be a funny story even if I wasn’t involved.

I’ve been seeing a lot of these compact Dodge A100 vans from the 1960s around town and increasingly I’ve been finding myself staring at them as I pass. There’s something just so… beautiful… about the way they sit there. The round headlights and taillights. The way the body hangs over the tires just a bit. The large windshield and steering wheel… mmmmm.

This is weird because I’m not really an old car kinda guy. I appreciate the beauty of the machinery but I usually ultimately prefer the modern convenience and technology, and even the aesthetics, of newer cars. I also am very definitely not a car fixit person. I don’t like to get dirty.

So, just what is it about this icon of the American past? Is it just that I always wanted to be able to ride along in the Mystery Machine with Scooby and the Gang? I just don’t know. For now I’ll just have to be content ogling them as I pass in the street. Maybe someday I’ll have one of my own, though!