Beens' Blog

A Canadian inventor has won a patent from the United Kingdom for a motorcycle seat he says blocks electromagnetic radiation from the engine that could cause health problems, not the least of which is cancer. Read more here .

Now this is really cool! This engineer at CMU demonstrates a head-tracking system he developed that uses the Wii remote control. There's an excellent video that shows how the head-tracking could potentially work with games and "view portals". Check it out at http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9858728-39.html .

Hah! This was the only way they could arrest the guy! Amazingly though, he could get 10 years for it. "A Japanese man suspected of creating a computer virus had to be arrested on a copyright infringement charge, police said Friday, in a case that highlights the nation's lack of laws to crack down on the sometimes malicious computer programs." Read more here .

Does anyone know of a good website tracking service? I now use changedetection.com which does a good job of sending me email notifications, but I'd also like a summary of what the specific changes were to the page.

For safety reasons, there's been a lot of discussion lately about forcing new motorcycle riders to learn on a smaller bike. New riders are generally encouraged towards bikes like the Honda Rebel, the Ninja 250, or the hot new Honda CBR-125 (not yet available in the US).  Learning to ride on a big bike can be very dangerous, often with tragic results. Well I have an idea! What about a DL 250 V-Strom? The V-Strom 650 and 1000's are great bikes, so why not make a smaller one for beginners?  I personally think it's a great idea. (Are you listening Suzuki?) If Suzuki ever makes this happen, remember that you read it here first!

Here are some pictures from the Toronto motorcycle show in December.

I've just discovered a service that let's you send faxes up to 3 pages for free. The only glitch is they put an ad on the cover page. If the fax is longer than that, it's $1.99, payable from your PayPal account. I won't use this service regularly, but in an emergency, it's not a bad idea. https://faxzero.com/