Ink Spots

Meredith sent me some key lines, and not all of them triggered my experience, but the one that certainly did was the Java Jive, Ink Spots. I ended up with that, and a few more of their tunes in the 78rpm collection. I finally got around to transferring a few of those to MP3 a while back, from the only old turntable I have that will play them, but I must confess I found these better, clearer, cleared up versions on the web.

If you want to listen to the classics, here are a few you can enjoy.

1. Java Jive, Ink Spots, 1940 - - - short clip
2. Java Jive, Ink Spots, 1940 - - - 2.8mb
3. If I didn't Care, Ink Spots - - - 2.9mb
4. Till Then, Ink Spots - - - 2.7mb
5. Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall,
Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald - - - 1.4mb
. . . . . . .

Home of the TWO FOOT long hotdog

The rumor mill can stop now. Photo evidence has been turned in that Doogie's restaurant in Newington Connecticut actually specializes in 2 foot dogs! Other hand made seafood and fattening specialties are there too, but here is the evidence!

Low-tech solution

I solved a problem that had been annoying, but I just ignored for years. That pesky CAPS LOCK key that is so close to the shift key that I LOOK UP AND FIND . . .oops thats how it happens. My fat finger taps it. I actually am a pretty adept but self-taught keyboard user, but I often look at my fingers especially when typing fast , so when I finally look at the screen, I find the reversed case mess! How many time has that happened! Arrrghhhh. I remember now that I think about it that years ago I had solved it with a utility that made the caps lock beep high and low for a warning. That didn't follow me with new operating systems, etc. I was reading about a utility that disabled the caps key, and I almost downloaded it, but got a better idea! I NEVER EVER need the caps key actually, so why have it? Here was my low tech solution:

Lydia, The Tatooed Lady

This is from a Groucho tape that I got years ago, and it probably doesn't click unless you hear him sing it or know the melody, but I ran across the thing, and just felt compelled to post it since it makes me chuckle:

Lydia, The Tatooed Lady

Lydia oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia,
Lydia, the Tatooed Lady.
She has eyes that folks adore so,
And a torso even more so.
Lydia oh lydia, that encyclopedia,
Oh Lydia the Queen of Tatoo.
On her back is the Battle of Waterloo.
Beside it the wreck of the Hespherous, too.
And proudly above waves the Red, White, and Blue,
You can learn a lot from Lydia.
La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la

When her robe is unfurled, she will show you the world,
If you step up and tell her where.
For a dime you can see Kankakee or Paris,
Or Washington crossing the Delaware.
La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la

Oh Lydia oh lydia, say have you met Lydia,
Oh Lydia the Tatooed Lady
When her muscles start relaxing,
Up the hill comes Andrew Jackson
Lydia oh Lydia, that encyclopedia,
oh Lydia the queen of them all!
For two bits she will do a mazurka in jazz,
With a view of Niagara that nobody has.
And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz.
You can learn a lot from Lydia.
La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la

Come along and see Buff'lo Bill with his lasso.
Just a little classic by Mendel Picasso.
Here is Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon.
Here's Godiva but with her pajamas on.
La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la

Here is Grover Whalen unveilin' the Trilon.
Over on the West Coast we have Treaure Island.
Here's Najinsky a-doin' the rhumba.
Here's her social security numba.
{whistles}

Oh Lydia, oh Lydia that encyclopedia,
Oh Lydia the champ of them all.
She once swept an Admiral clear off his feet.
The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat.
And now the old boy's in command of the fleet,
For he went and married Lydia.
I said Lydia {He said Lydia}
I said Lydia {We said Lydia}
La La!

I know I'm a relic of the boomers, but when I see a otherwise nice looking person with excessive tatoos or piercings, it makes me instinctively wince, then I think of Lydia.

Here is a mp3 of Groucho singing Lydia the Tattooed Lady.

That 8 pound hammer ball bearing.

I heard a while back about development success in repairing dents in musical instruments, particularly larger ones like sousaphones that have to be thinner brass due to the large size. Apparently school systems with a lot of instruments, dented by parades and halftime shows spend thousands annually to have dents removed, or replacement instruments dented beyond economic repair. Traditionally. repair techs have developed special hammers and tools and sand bags and all kinds of methods involving taking horns apart to fix, a very artistic and skill-intensive, time consuming process. Well somebody found using special "Rare Earth" electromagnets and huge dense ball bearings work quickly and smoothly!

Regular magnets won't work. These magnets are STRONG. Way beyond anything normal. Warnings say to keep knives and tools 10 feet away for fear they will fly through the air, not stopping for body parts in the way. (Make a visual image of that!) The ball is selected for best size, and from the inside, rolls along at enormous pressure and simply irons out the dents! Doesn't fatigue the metal much, either, like hammering out would, so a horn can be repaired more times without ruin. The kit costs about $900, so isn't for casual buying, but a few repairs could make up for that in schools, shops or the like.

Temp Art

Talk about temporary art! This artist, Kurt Wenner, paints most of his masterful 3D paintings in chalk on the streets or sidewalks. It is worthy of the term "Awesome". In the picture below, it is hard to grasp that the walkway is flat and the art is drawn on the surface.



You can visit his impressive on-line gallery here. - Awesome..

Kinzua Viaduct

As a boy I was taken on a special trip to Kinzua Viaduct by train. I was either with my Mother or my Grandmother. Through my fuzzy memory, I seem to remember that Grandma arranged for or at least paid for the adventure. The wonderful train tressel is in north eastern Pennsylvania, although it is nowhere near Mercer, Grandma's home town. I don't think all of my family was along, since I know I felt special to have the privilege of being chosen to go. I felt very grown up, though I probably was only 14 or so. I really don't know. I bet older sister Meredith can remember more about this. The tressel was extremely old and vaulted across the sky, like an Erector set, it seemed, part of the early rail system in Pennsylvania. I bet I can narrow in on the time of trip because they certainly stopped traffic over the structure not long after my visit. Anyhow, I can remember I was in my Sunday suit, and had an overcoat on. I can remember moving between cars, the sound of clicking tracks, and pressing to the window to see the valley and remember the scary feeling looking down at the green valley as we went over the Viaduct.

This memory came back because I ran across the following item:

On July 21, 2003 the Kinzua Viaduct, located in Mt. Jewett, Pennsylvania, was struck by an F-1 tornado. This act of nature resulted in the loss of 11 of the 20 towers that have supported the Kinzua Viaduct in its reach across the sky for over 100 years. Internationally recognized as an architectural and engineering marvel, the Kinzua Viaduct was one of Pennsylvania's most visually recognizable landmarks. The Kinzua Bridge Foundation is dedicated to the restoration, renovation, preservation and site interpretation of the Viaduct and Kinzua Bridge State Park.

Seems like last week

March 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland wrote a paper called Information Management: A Proposal. The proposal suggested a way of managing information that uses a "hypertext" process to link related documents together over a network.

Features he proposed:
Remote access across networks,
Cross-system platform compatibility
No centralization - allowing nodes anywhere
Access to existing data
Bookmarks (called "Private Links")
All basics of the Web today.

In October 1990, Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau created a working prototype of "WorldWideWeb", with Hyperlinks and HTML, file transfers, and web features galore, but in text.

In February 1993, the Web finally went from text-only when Marc Andreesen with NCSA wrote the Mosaic browser.

March of 1994, Marc Andreesen and some colleagues left NCSA to form "Mosaic Communications Corp." (later renamed Netscape Communications).

In some box somewhere I still have my Mosaic disk I used when I ditched Compuserve and the went on the internet using a free dialup connection, probably 1994. It was kind of techie, I had to write a batch file to set modem baud rate, parity, etc, and a linked text file index for outside viewers and players to be able to see most things, since viewers were not built into the browser.

Oh, by the way, Burners-Lee was a Brit, and one story said that like Mickey Mantle, whose parents put baseballs in his crib, Burner-Lee had intellectual computer nerd parents who played games around the breakfast table like "What is the square root of -4?" So inventing HTML must have been a piece of cake. He is now at MIT, directing the W3 consortium, helping set standards and protocols to keep the internet non-propriatary and open.

Great lyrics

BY THE TIME I GET TO PHOENIX (Jimmy Webb)

By the time I get to Phoenix, she'll be risin',
She'll find the note I left hangin' on her door
And she'll laugh when she reads the part that says I'm leavin',
'Cause I left that girl so many times before.

By the time I make Albuquerque she'll be workin',
She'll probably stop at lunch and give me a call
But she'll just hear that phone keep on ringin',
Off the wall, that's all.

By the time I make Oklahoma, she'll be sleepin',
She'll turn softly and call my name out low
And she'll cry just to think I'd really leave her,
Though time and time I've tried to tell her so
Oh, she didn't know, I would really go,
I would really go...

It is hard to really read it without emotion.

When I saw it was by Jimmy Webb, I did a search because my memory is so bad when it comes to musicians and celebrities, as I read, it got better and better-- wow, what a range this guy has. He wrote songs I recognized in all sorts of styles. He is still performing, too. He has a resume from "left the cake out in the rain" to . . .
well, If you want to read and read about him, here is a link, worth checking out.

Microsoft complaint of the year:

Somebody at MS-land has an agenda that may have been well intentioned to simplify things for for totally ignorant users, but it actually hurts the average user. Bill must want future users look at icons instead of extensions for file types. The power user changes this right off, so is just an irritation. It is a headache on phone support. MS hides extensions to the file name as in .txt for a text file, .doc for a word file, .xls for a spreadsheet. These were essential in DOS and early windows versions for applications and the system to recognize their own associated files, and for the system to open the right application if the file is called on first. These extensions are still used extensively by all the system and programs, and users need to see them to operate beyond toaster level. However, since Windows ME forward, systems come with extensions hidden by default. The icon method? Who knows what those cryptic things are anyhow? They can sometimes be a good visual clue, but should not replace having all the information you need to control your computer.

Go to tools|folder options|view and uncheck Hide extensions for known file types to fix. While you are in there you might want to check the Show hidden files and folders, especially handy if you are trying to find and delete a virus file, but the operating system is slowing you down by hiding it from you.

"Amendment I
clause 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
clause 2: prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . ."

I take that to mean that if Corgress passes a law ordering Podunk High School to put up a Christmas Tree, that would be unconstitutional. (clause 1) But if they passed a law telling Podunk High School to take one down, that would also be unconstitutional. (clause 2)

The trend in America has been to greater tolerance and diversity, and of course that is the proper thing. However the trend to eradicate Christian customs in the process, especially those that have become close to secular like Christmas Trees and carols, is not right. Look at the growth of the other faiths in the country that didn't have a hold years ago. Were they dissuaded, hurt or their faith damaged by the Christian tradition of putting "Merry Christmas" in some classrooms? I tend to say no, but even if so, we should strive to have an equal footing for these other religions and faiths, not stamp out the traditions of Judeo-Christian heritage. That is equally unfair, unconstitutional and unwise. And this is coming from me, who has not been a part of organized religion most of my adult life.

There is some good news, though. I just save a bunch of . . No, No. . Here is a link to The Liberty Legal Institute, which funds lawsuits for those defending religious freedom from attacks of this kind. They have some cases that have gone in the direction of protecting freedoms against this anti-religion trend.

Spider Holes?

When they first reported Saddam was found in a "spider hole", I heard a commentator say he had never heard the word, and Martha hadn't either, but those of us who were in Vietnam had no trouble at all in visualizing it immediately. Of course the news shows have pretty much changed it to "rat hole" now for the masses who hate rats to better understand, I guess.

The spider holes and tunnels like those in Cu-Chi were infamous to those of us in Vietnam in 1968. The VC could pop down into these invisible holes and hide without a trace, and Americans finding them could scarcely believe a man could exist in a hole that small. The false entrances to some of them were horrible traps with sharpened barbed bungee sticks waiting.

I laughed when I looked on the internet for a picture or reminder of this, because they have made a real tourist attraction out of some of the Spider holes and tunnels. Come to tropical Vietnam, a wonderland and see actual spider holes and tunnels! Travel agents take notice. This link shows a map where the tunnels come within a couple of miles of where I was stationed near Ton Son Nhut.



I can see the souvenir shop now: Reclining GI Joe, Hanoi Jane Barbies, ant farms to simulate the tunnels?

Digital Zoom

I had to replace the Fuji camera (2mp,no zoom) I have had for a few years because it croaked. It had been a great one for me because it was easily slipped in my pocket, and I consequently almost always carried it, which I would not have done if I had to have the tourist camera around my neck routine.

It just died, and the regional repair center wanted 150 min just to look at it. Wow! As a consequence, I got a chance to study the market to see what was what at this point in time. I was either going to get (a) the best small one available out there with digital zoom that I could afford, or (b) the cheapest acceptable straight replacement I could get to replace my old one, exept add optical zoom.

I ended up getting (b) for budget reasons, (I cheaped out on Ebay, but got a great camera cheaper than a repair) but I had narrowed down high-end (a) quite a bit due to some new ideas. See below.

Sony has FINALLY, without as much fanfare on their part or reviewers, put some sense into DIGITAL ZOOM.

They have "Smart Zoom" that revolutionizes the digital and optical zoom. If they haven't patented it somehow, I predict all digital cameras will work this way soon, like they should have all along.

Regular digital zoom is no zoom at all. I will illustrate:

1. Suppose a whole house appears in your viewfinder, and you take a digital picture 1000 pixels across.
Then you use digital zoom to zoom in on the doorway, 300 pixels across.
That's all you get! A 300 pixel image, wasting all the other pixels.
It is as if you took the big picture and cropped off the fringe after you got it in the computer.
And that's what most people do, not using the digital zoom feature at all.

Enter "smart Zoom"

Simplified, this method can give you a zoomed image of the doorway packing all of the 1024 pixels into it, in reality expanding the cropped image area to fit the larger space instead of trimming off unwanted fringe.

The way Sony has implemented it, you need to have one resolution setting level above your present one to make this happen. If you have a 3mp camera, smart zoom happens at 2mp using the available ram from the higher res for the work. However, it is seamless between digital and optical - you don't have to choose - it uses the most available pixels for your picture possible based on the max setting you choose.

Talk about smart! That is the way I thought they worked when I first looked into cameras, and now, it is available, at least.

Everybody has different needs in cameras, but what was my choice for (a)?
These were MY criteria:
1. pocket sized
2. name brand
3. optical zoom
4. innovative, state of the art.
5. Best available without having features that run the price up without corresponding benefit.

Best camera available: Sony Cyber Shot DSC-V1 5.0 Mega Pixel Digital Camera (cheapest internet price 429)

I did a little searching and found out, as usual, more than most people want to know. Here is some edited info from megaone.com, who shows some old Yellowstone stereo images on their site.

At one time, Underwood and Underwood was the largest publisher of stereoviews in the world, producing 10 million views a year. The company was founded by two brothers, Elmer and Bert Underwood. The brothers developed a selling system of thorough canvassing using college students. They distributed stereographs for some other companies, and by 1887, they outgrew their original office in Ottawa, Kansas, and moved to New York City; By 1897 the company had a number of full-time staff and free lance photographers, and were publishing twenty-five thousand stereographs a day by 1901. The firm still canvassed and sold its own stereographs. Around 1900 Underwood & Underwood introduced boxed sets, with specific themes such as education and religion, and travel sets depicting popular tourist areas of the world. By 1910 Underwood & Underwood had entered the field of news photography. Due to this expansion stereograph production was reduced until the early years of World War I. Altogether Underwood & Underwood produced between 30 000 and 40 000 stereographic titles. In 1920 stereograph production was discontinued and Underwood & Underwood sold its stereographic stock and rights to the Keystone View Company. The negatives passed to Keystone which issued them with a "V" prefix.

The Keystone View Company was an early competitor to U&U, founded in 1892 by B. L. Singley in Meadville, Pennsylvania. This might not sound like an auspicious location, far from the photographic centers of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and originally the operation did indeed have a "backwoods," quality, turning out distinctly second-rate stereoviews and barely making the founder a living. But it rapidly improved and eventually became not only the world's largest but also the best view company. In the formative days Singley took all the images; later there were dozens of staff photographers, and was smart enough in the early 1900s, when stereoviewing was declining and other companies were in trouble, Keystone bought their stocks and incorporated them into their own holdings. Notable amongst many such purchases were the huge and varied inventories of B. W. Kilburn, the H. C. White Company, Underwood & Underwood.

By the 1920s the Keystone Company was the sole surviving major producer of conventional card-mounted views anywhere in the world. They had offices in London, Paris, Sidney, Capetown, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo. Part of this prominence was derived from the sale of World War I stereograph sets, as Keystone was one of the only publishers to secure permission to photograph battlefields and military operations. Unfortunately, permission was not granted until the end of 1918, just before Armistice, so many of the photographs depict scenes taken after the end of the war.

I have an old stereo viewer nicely made of wood and metal, you know the kind. We had always called it a Stereoptican, and I had thought, just from the folklore, it had been manufactured in Meadville, PA where my father grew up, and I went to college, but some of this is not right. I just read the metal stamped info on the viewer, and it says Underwood and Underwood, New York, Patented June 11, 1901. I see printed on some of the stereo picture cards that I have "Keystone View Company, Manufacturers, Publishers, Meadville, Pa, etc." so either they were competitors, or something. I will investigate this. Any input?

I do like stereo pictures. Early on, my eyes seemed to synch into viewing stereo fairly easy, for instance when viewing aerial photograph pairs in Geology, sometimes I could do it without a viewer. I have some pictures I took in Germany in 1970 in the Army where I took two pictures side by side in quick succession, then pasted the photos on a card to read in the viewer. They look pretty good, and have exaggerated depth because the distance between the pictures is more than the eyes expect. I thought I had lost the ability to do this, since I could never make those silly design hidden picture things work, even after staring and staring. Since then, I found that It was an eyeglasses thing, since I have a prism type difference between my eyes. These days I can look at a stereo pair like the one below and usually make it work with my bifocals. You have to get the right distance or zoom factor, and relax the eyes so they look at the images separately. The size below works for me.




These are from the Cheeney Co. in Manchester Connecticut in 1914, very interesting in themselves. This was reported to be the largest silk manufacturer in the world for years. The silk industry was hot, and was stealing business from Japan because Japan was still doing it manually, while U.S. industry started up industrially, able to rethink methods for volume and efficiency.(roles switched after WWII?) It says on the back that the big "ferris wheel" was used for "beaming off" the silk warp from this wheel to the loom roll at the bottom. It took very watchful eyes and skill to make sure no threads were dropped or crossed.

Save it, they will rise again?

I managed to escape Richmond with some currency.


For regular green (or angle-changing colored) currency, check out "WheresGeorge.com" I have had a couple of bills found and tracked.

A friend of mine, Paul, forwared one of those emails that at the end begs and tries to shame you into sending it on to other people. It is an interesting mentality there that I have not got a handle on yet. The assumption of the do-gooders writing these emails is that there is a virtue in the mere act of forwarding some message to many others. This virtue is separate from the content of the message. Just the act of forwarding to help others is assumed to be a good thing. I must be evil, 'cause I usually don't send them on.

On a separate theme, the email mentioned above was a long one lamenting the way everything has to be mandated safe today and noting that we all grew up with lead paint, bad cribs, had fights and accidents, didn't lock our doors, etc., and we came out O.K. I wrote him back the following email that I share with this blog;

Paul,
I just got a chance to read the email you fowarded to me all the way through. What a shame that our society has come this far, isn't it. They are trying to make it so safe and risk free that nobody will learn the hard knocks. I'm sure you were like me and had a classic risky childhood. I remember setting rat traps when I was in 1st grade! I mean those nasty wire ones that will snap your finger off. I remember climbing in the trees in back of our house as a kid, so high and on the tippy top of the tree when the wind was whipping me back and forth. . . I was loving it. I remember us three boys jumping on the tailgate of our station wagon (fake wood paneling on the sides) maybe on Friday afternoon when Dad drove down town about a mile to do his banking or whatever. We would dangle and drag our feet and the dog would be either following us or up there with us. I remember catching all kinds of snakes, A couple of us braver kids climbed up the rickety iron loop ladder inside an abandoned smokestack outside of town (The Saltblock) . Of course it was condemned and posted and our parents would have killed us if they knew. Some of the loops were loose, and the thing was a real tower. When we got to the top, the view was like you were in an airplane, we thought. You could see for miles. And it was so scary! You could actually see and feel the stack sway about a foot from side to side. Just an example, but the risky and sometimes stupid things that we did as kids made all the difference in the world at becoming independent and more resistant to the world's thorns that may pop up later in life. If we continue to sanitize and round all the dangerous corners to try to make everything risk free it will be a shame.

Desktop ink jet printers.
They have come down in price partially because the manufacturers can make more profit by selling the cartridges, which they thought they had a lock on. If they get more printers out there, they can sell more cartridges which have the real markup. I won't go into the whole debate, but I have always steered clear of the HP, Lexmark, and selected models of the others which build the print head into the ink cart. This forces you buy a new print head - cart combo each time, and they can patent or uniquely build the printhead so third party (read as cheap) replacements are not easily made, so the OEM will more likely sell the bulk of the ink, and the price will be in the stratosphere. So the understandable trend in all manufacturers is now to make as many models with proprietary carts as they can get away with. My advice is not to participate in this. Don't buy into those messy refill syringes, or trade in schemes either. Just get a printer that uses separate carts that have cheap replacements available. I know there is an ink chemistry element to this as well, but in practice, it doesn't seem to matter as long as the new one matches.

I mean really, I have two Epson printers. One is a ColorPrinterFaxCopierScanner thing and one just a printer, but they both take the same carts and I pay about $3 black; $4 color for ink carts that Epson sells for $25-$30. I have paid as little as $1 - $2!! see ad clip below. Of course they are from China, like everything, but I have been using this kind of ink with few glitches for years and years, and I am a high graphics and photographic user. This is the real cost of a printer, and there is a backlash going on rebelling against these higher than reasonable prices. If others want to zip down to the computer store and get a Black HP cart for $32 and a color for $43 (=$75!) and get no better value for that than I get for mine at $7, that's O.K. by me, but it's not right. The marketplace is bit by bit testing to see what threshold the users will put up with, and it will shake out, but I hope the users win, not the manufacturers.

Example actual ad:
Free Shipping Avail., Epson compatible black ink cartridge S02... $1.00
Free Shipping Avail., Epson compatible black ink cartridge S020189 for model(s) Stylus Color, 740, 760, 860, 1160 Epson compatible black cartridge for model(s) Stylus Color, 740, 760, 860, 1160 ref # S020189 SHIPPING IS 4.75 PER ORDER, ... CARTRIDGES FOR $49.00 AND GET FREE SHIPPINGWHOLESALE INQUIRIES WELCOME epson S020189c ...

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If you haven't discovered RSS feeds, to get interesting things from the web quicker, you should try one of the feeders or aggregators. It is more in "real time" and you can focus on your interests so much quicker; the proverbial fire hose vs eyedropper story. I use the free one, Feed Demon. This thread on Optical illusions was a link from a feed. Am I nuts, or are these almonds rotating?



Actually there are a gaggle of illusions here that are worth the loading time to see. Note to Leah: The expanding cushions might be an idea for a Mosaic pattern.

Now for the segue to Segway?

I have to revisit the good ole Segway. Martha and I saw a demo of the thing at a local fair here, it was actually a glorified book signing tour for Steve Kemper, the guy whose book proposal leaked and prematurely exposed "IT" or "Ginger" to the world. My "personal transporter" arguments all started in my mind again.

I keep hearing myself saying what a terrific device it is. It makes you root for Kamen because it is a manifestation of the technology that is supposed to be our savior and master. I have a flash of the personal backpack flying men in a futuretown zooming to work in a kids' book I had in the '50's, and somehow I think if that didn't come to pass yet, at least people could be on Segways.

I overheard someone saying how expensive they are - $5000 on Amazon! Even the new "P" series just announced is going to be under 4K. These are not pocket change prices, but they certainly are not show stoppers if people decide that they need or want them. I have seen ads for racing bicycles for over 4k! We all know people who have sunk multi multi thousands in boats, PC's, pedigree dogs, so if people need or want it, people will but it. There is the rub.

Even the people who believe in it don't seem to be convinced yet that we can adapt our lives to IT, or that it fits a big enough need. Even the author Steve Kemper, while demo-ing the Segway to us at the fair mentioned that he didn't have one, "This belongs to my publisher, who lent it to me". Well this guy knows Bezos and Steve Jobs professionally, was one of the invited first group of people flown in to the Kamen Factory to preview it before it was even leaked to us common people, wrote a major book about the Segway, and doesn't have one. That tell us anything? I still want one.

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P.S. Kamen's Ibot, the fantastic rearing, stairclimbing non-wheelchair, which was one predecessor project for the software and gyros in IT is finally on the market, and deserves to be a success perhaps oven more than the Segway. Actually, I want one of those too.