Woman Inside Out

There's a pretty cool Flash animation that shows a drawing of a woman from inside out. I've played with similar processes before as well, except it was before I started using computers for art at all (and I still really don't, as I don't have a stylus), so I could never erase any part. In any case, it's a pretty cool animation. You'll need to have Flash installed, of course. Enjoy!

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

SBC and B&N

I was at Barnes & Noble last night with Derek, and he suggested that I use B&N's wireless network. I was hesitant about it. Although I had connected to their network before, when I had then tried to access the Internet, I'd been redirected to a sign-on page.

Well, it seems that if you look carefully, there's a drop-down menu in the login area, and it includes "sbcglobal.net", which is the domain that SBC DSL subscribers log on to. I entered my information, and sure enough, I was in.

It was pretty nice getting to surf while at the bookstore. I think I'll take more advantage of it!

Tax Goof Up

Seems I messed up on my taxes for the year 2003, the first year I did any significant stock trades. So the Internal Revenue Service sent me a letter, a CP2000. Here's a tip for anyone out there who's done stock trading for the first time, and is preparing their taxes: Report everything, because if you don't, your broker will report the gross receipts on only the sales, and the IRS assumes a cost basis of zero when dealing with stock sales that you didn't report. For me, for example, they assumed that I paid nothing for stock sales amounting to over $36,000, when in fact I'd paid over $34,000 to acquire those stocks to begin with.

Lesson learned.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Google Satellite

Google Maps has now added a new function where you can see a satellite view of your query. For example, here is a view of the White House. Not sure if it works overseas, but I suspect not, since certain countries prohibit satellite pictures being taken of locales under their jurisdiction. But for the United States, it works pretty darn well. Have fun!

(Hat-tip: Brian Maguire)

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]