scottobear | 6435 Key west, Antarctica dollars, new matter, noting some filter styles for the heck of it.

I'm pooped. I'll sleep quite well this evening, methinks. Lovely long dreams of being snowed in with my beloved, telling stories that I can't remember the plots to, but entertaining, and being entertained nonetheless.

Another nifty "Universal translator" - Translate this Page! (Nice thing about PHP referencing... it'll translate whatever page this is pasted on.. a friend's page, my journal, my homepage... whatever.) 49 languages, not including dialects.

The Orgulator - cool website manips in MSIE ... Load a URL into this window using the entry field above and then click the buttons at left to flip, blur, invert or otherwise muck about with the look of the page. via

waxy_org (Lots of other toys/tools here, too.)

See also - http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/filter/reference/reference.asp

Investment banker vacationing in Key West reports theft of marijuana from his hotel room
KEY WEST - A disoriented man with slurred speech called Key West police to his seaside hotel early Monday to report that his high quality Bahamian marijuana had been stolen.

Jim Devlin, 33, an investment banker from East Meadow, New York, told police that his ''weed'' was missing from his bedside drawer at the Hilton Resort & Marina, adding that his girlfriend's $1,800 watch and a $50 bill were gone too.

Devlin said he called police because hotel management laughed at him when he reported the theft, but the hotel manager countered that he advised Devlin to wait until the morning when he was sober.

The investigating officer said Devlin reeked of alcohol, and was asked to sit down because he was swaying badly and speaking incoherently. A report was filed for the missing watch.

''I only want to report the watch, not the money or the weed, because I don't want to tell you how much weed there was,'' Devlin told police.

New Form of Matter Created in Lab

Scientists have created a new form of matter saying it could provide a new way to generate electricity.

The fermionic condensate is a cloud of cold potassium atoms forced into a state where they behave strangely.

The new matter is the sixth known form of matter after solids, liquids, gasses, plasma and a Bose-Einstein condensate, created only in 1995.

"What we've done is create this new exotic form of matter," says Deborah Jin of the University of Colorado.

Strange brew

To make the condensate the researchers cooled potassium gas to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero - the temperature at which matter stops moving.

They confined the gas in a vacuum chamber and used magnetic fields and laser light to manipulate the potassium atoms into pairing up and forming the fermionic condensate.

Jin pointed out that her team worked with a supercooled gas, which provides little opportunity for everyday application. But the way the potassium atoms acted suggested there should be a way to turn it into a room-temperature solid.

It could be a step closer to an everyday, usable superconductor - a material that conducts electricity without losing any of its energy.

"If you had a superconductor you could transmit electricity with no losses," Jin said.

"Right now something like 10% of all electricity we produce in the United States is lost. It heats up wires. It doesn't do anybody any good."

Superconductors could allow for the development of magnetically levitated trains. Free of friction they could glide along at high speeds using a fraction of the energy trains now use.

Hitting PT midday, and I'll be home around 4ish.

Until later, dear journal.