Software views

A cargo ship arrived at the space station with food and water,
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/06/26/russia.space.dock.ap/index.html
and the shuttle is due to lunch on the first of July. My hope would be that this is planned as a fresh food supply could feed a number of crew members if the shuttle was damaged.

Another note is
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/06/27/shuttle.risk.ap/index.html
someone is complaining about how the shuttle is just not perfect and it should be before it is launched. Well if you try to make something prefect you make nothing at all.

My opinion is so long as the crew are willing to take the risk, then go for it. At the same time if it was too high of a risk another loss to the space program would also be very damaging to NASA image as well.

Good thing is commercial space tourism is just around the corner

The other day the big news for software was Bill Gates stepping down, my question is, did he all ready step down years ago and now is just making is public ?

Me and about 20 % of the rest of the population have an allergic reaction Polyester. Most people don't notice and might just scratch every once and a while. My skin does not get along with it well which results in me being unable to wear any Polyester. So here is my list of fabrics I can not wear. My cycling habits require me to have good fitting shorts, tights, and jerserys which are typically made of Polyester. Finding non Polyester clothing is not an easy task. Wool jerseys are often not wool but a blend, if they main part of the jersey is wool often the cuffs are Polyester.

Here is the fabrics used by Castelli

Strange
Lenpur - made from cellulose ? Do you mean ground up news paper, has any one tried this stuff ?

yes
Polypropilene - though rough, very similar manufacturing process as polyester though typically does not cause an allergric reaction.

Maybe
Some times spandex contains polyester.

kiss reported as 80% nylon/20% spandex
Urano Lycra maybe same as kiss 80% nylon/20% spandex
Lycra 44
Supplex nylon - made by dupoint which I have found to make the lease reactive fabrics

unlikely
Hotflex - 17 % lycra + fleece layer, other unknown,
Stratosheer - uses lycra + a fleece layer like hotflex, fleece is often polyester of some sort but some fleeces I have managed to not react to.
resistex / carbon - said to be made from carbon and natural fibers.

no
Micro
coolmax
MicroSpitech
MicroSpitech Plus
Welly
Thermo

unknown
GORE WINDSTOPPER
warher
five y
compact

Here is a forum link on polyester allergic reactions, most of the postings I can relate to.
http://www.herc.org/discus/messages/28/110.html?1148157076

I seamed to fairly often get a bad reaction to mentioning a polyester allergy, Maybe the public is heavly influnced by Seinfeld and George. Seinfeld: The Chaperone suppositly has an episode on switching from polyester to cotton.

Buck Showalter and Danny Tartabull - After giving Tartabull some tips on his swings, George convinces manager Showalter to switch from polyester to cotton Yankees uniform ("The Chaperone"); George, on his way to a public television fund raiser with Danny Tartabull, delays Tartabull's promised appearance in order to take a detour to chase down a driver that he (wrongly) believes gave them the finger. ("The Pledge Drive")

What happens is Georges gets the uniforms changed and one game goes fine. Then the next game the clothes has srunk resulting in a not so good game. This most likely discredits cotton for any sports related thing just by the fact that people only remember cotton + sports = bad.

Slowly like a turtle I am starting to get back into developing sites for the internet. Sense my war chest has been all most emptied I am taking less risks with cash and more with my time. This resulted in me taking a look at how google.com does it indexing and searchs. Basically for google, if the site is liked by other people and is of quality they will give it higher rankings.

See http://www.google.com/technology/

With this in mind I am going to create a small network of sites and see what happens.

I am starting a Tour De France web site for voting on who you will think win the tour. With rider and team lists. Perhaps a news section for day to day rider updates during the tour.

Tour De France Startlist 2006