GNU units is a simple command line tool for doing units conversions. You know, inches to centimeters and the like. The sort of thing you can also do in Google. But GNU units is even smarter and more insane than Google. Here are a few of my favorite conversions:

First, how to read units output. Here is a typical invocation:

% units
2438 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units

You have: inch 
You want: cm  
        * 2.54
        / 0.39370079

The "*" line is the answer. It's phrased that way because if you have any number of inches, you can multiply it by 2.54 and get centimeters. The "/" line is if you want to go the other way. This is all needlessly clever for our purposes, so I'll just quote the "*" line, which is almost always what you want anyway.

In a Simpsons episode, Grandpa Simpson mentions that "My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!" So what's that in miles per gallon?

You have: 40 rods per hogshead
You want: miles per gallon
        * 0.001984131

Not so impressive, since even Google can figure that one out; although a few years ago it couldn't.

How about the novelty unit "attoparsecs per microfortnight?" Google doesn't even try.

You have: 1 attoparsec per microfortnight
You want: inches per second
        * 1.0043268

Finally, and my favorite, how big of an explosion would you get if you smacked a kilogram of matter into a kilogram of antimatter? Google offers 1.79751036 × 10^17 joules, but that's not real helpful. Google can't convert into a useful comparison. So let's ask units:

You have: 2 kilograms*c*c
You want: megatons tnt
        * 42.961529

There you go!

Go play Chronotron!

It's a cool platformer/puzzle hybrid where you control a time traveling robot. All of the levels require traveling back in time, sometimes repeatedly, to work with yourself to retrieve the missing part for your time ship.

Video walkthroughs are available. It doesn't look like all of the levels have walkthroughs yet, but I expect he'll be adding more.

Disclosure: The creator is a friend of mine, and I helped playtest it. But it's still a cool game and I highly recommend it.

(2008-05-07 edit: spelling.)

(Via Pete Keller.)

(Via Workbench.)

Best personalized license plates ever. Even better than "dev car".

(Via Chuck4's blog.)

Hooray for science!

(Via Pete.)

Mark Evanier created and runs the game "There's No Such Website" off his blog news from me. Here's Mark's description:

Yes, it's time for a great new game which we just invented. It's called There's No Such Website! and your mission, should you choose to accept, is to spot the fib. Below are links and descriptions for five websites. Four of them actually exist on the Internet. One is a phony that we made up. Study all five and see if you can guess which link won't lead you to the website in question. There is no prize for this except that you get to visit four weird websites and to feel smug if it doesn't take you five clicks to find the phony. Enjoy.

Now I think Mark's blog is great reading anyway and recommend it. Mark's a writer of just about anything. His work includes comic books, television shows, material for stand-up comedians. It seems like Mark's met everyone in the movie and television industries and his blog is full of amusing anecdotes about people he's met. He's also taken it upon himself to write obituaries for various celebraties that Mark feels are important, but won't get much coverage elsewhere. Add on top some healthy, open minded political discussion and you've got a great blog.

But if you're not tempted to read his blog, or you just missed a few games, I now maintain an index to all of the There's No Such Website! games Mark has run. Go play a few!

The Grizzlies and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts have teamed up to create "Baseball's Best Burger." The burger, which was debuted at the Grizzlies' December 10th sale, consists of a thick and juicy burger topped with sharp cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon. The burger is then placed in between each side of a Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut.

It was apparently so inevitable that such a burger was a key plot element in one of this season's The Boondocks.

"Troublemakers: What pit bulls can teach us about profiling" is a fascinating article. It spends lots of time showing why profiling as most people understand it ("Let's just search the middle-eastern young men at airports") is a bad idea. That by itself is worth the read, but I found a snippit about New York City's crime reduction fascinating. New York's crime continues to go down, the article gives a compelling reason why:

he N.Y.P.D. has a computerized map showing, in real time, precisely where serious crimes are being reported, and at any moment the map typically shows a few dozen constantly shifting high-crime hot spots, some as small as two or three blocks square. What the N.Y.P.D. has done, under Commissioner Kelly, is to use the map to establish "impact zones," and to direct newly graduated officers—who used to be distributed proportionally to precincts across the city—to these zones, in some cases doubling the number of officers in the immediate neighborhood

That's just cool. It's a smart use of technology. I'm strongly in favor of increased police presence as a way to reduce crime. This system does exactly that while being more efficient at the same time.

(Via Schneier on Security, who focused on the profiling aspect.)

(Via Mark Evanier's news from me 1 and 2)