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Alexei Karpenko does a near-space high-altitude balloon launch with a camera payload. This is an awe-inspiring display of amateur science. [link]

The objective of this game is to keep the cat on the board. [link]

And thus, we see that it is as difficult to herd a cat in a game as it is in real life.

There’s a non-profit running a fun game online that donates 10 grains of rice per correct answer on a vocabulary test. [link]

I’ve been playing it here-and-there throughout the day today, and I’ve racked up about 1,200 grains thus far.

I’m pleased to announce that my long gestating book on adapting Joomla to business needs will be publishing on October 25th, 2007. “Joomla! Cash” will give the reader a quick read on how to rapidly establish a money-making Joomla! website, and how to adapt this powerful CMS to a variety of other business uses. [pre-order]

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ArsTechnica has a great write-up of the aftermath of Google’s acquisition of Urchin, which made log-analytics software for the ISP/HSP/ASP industries. [link]

Speaking as someone who has used both the older, standalone version of Urchin and the Google Analytics it was forcibly evolved into, I can safely say that I strongly prefer the older version, because it’s more quickly accessed on my own private server. It’s a shame Google doesn’t see things the same way I do.

I certainly don’t want to act like attacking the crooks themselves is the whole solution to the problem, but I do want to take a moment to offer a brief thumbs-up to all the national law enforcement services that took part in this international crack-down on fraudulent checks used in online scams. [link]

We all need to continue educating our friends, family, clients, customers, and users about how to spot such scams. We can’t count on Uncle Sam and his multi-national friends to take care of this problem entirely by themselves.

Well, my Joomla! presentation at Ohio Linux Fest went off as planned, with some minor technical glitches arising from my unfamiliarity with my fiancee’s laptop. (I’ve never owned a laptop, and plan to avoid owning one as long as I can!)

In total, 141 people attended my presentation. I had a drawing, as planned, to give away two sets of both Hagen Graf’s “Building Websites with Joomla!”, and “Joomla! Cash”, co-written by myself. Congrats to Sherif Rashad and Alan Phillips, who will be receiving their copies of the books via Royal Mail from Packt Publishing, as well as twelve and six-months’ free website hosting. (Sherif will also be receiving a free Joomla T-shirt.)

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