Author Archives: Bradley Froehle

Tontie

I stumbled across Tontie a few weeks ago. Let me tell you it is one addictive flash game. The general premise is that you use the numberpad to in a “Whack-a-mole” fashion, however it rapidly gets much harder than that. I never got past level 8 or so, although Dave managed to get to Level 11 a couple of times.

ieCapture

Daniel Vine came up with a remote browser-testing service so that those of us without Windows PC’s can test to make sure our websites look ok.

I checked this webpage out and while it’s not necessarily the prettiest thing (I forgot how horrible font handling was in Internet Explorer), it at least works.

Update: I just found out that this is the same guy who made the ever-so-cool iCapture, a similar program that shows how webpages look under Mac browsers.

Putnam

I got the results from the William Lowell Putnam Competition I took back on December 6. I blogged my initial thoughts after the test and predicted a score somewhere in the 20’s.

I’m happy to announce that I outdid myself, scoring a 30.3 (out of 120 possible points). This puts me at 200th place nationally, which I’m happy with for my Freshman year. Next year I’ll have to work on getting a little higher up on the charts.

Tilt. Twist. Redeem.

I mentioned this before in one of my Link Dumps but I had to bring it up again.

I mean, how cool is this:

Tilt. Twist. Redeem.

A guy went and spent a good portion of his $2500 meal plan on bottles of Pepsi just for the free songs that Apple was giving away in their Pepsi iTunes Music Giveaway.

It’s too bad that he didn’t drink any of the Pepsi either. I’d at least go for the Diet—it’s definitely drinkable.

Pharmacology

The Department of Pharmacology here at the U of M is offering a new course next fall called Mechanisms of Drug Action. I’ll have to admit the topic fascinates me and I’m really thinking about signing up for the class. It meets for 1 hour twice a week, which is very manageable. However, it would be at the same time as Sabre Fencing (so I’d have to drop that one). That wouldn’t be the end of the world because I’ll still have Ballroom Dance (maybe Fencing wasn’t for me anyway).

I don’t quite meet the prereqs for the class (Biology/Biochemistry classes), but I’ve had Organic Chemistry II which they said would be sufficient for understanding what was going on. The class looks like it will be pretty small as well—maybe 20 students.

If nothing else, it might spur an interest for me to consider medical school again—something my parents have been pushing for but I’ve been rejecting.

iChat Slowness

I can’t figure out why iChat is so slow nowadays. The window is unresponsive and takes a couple of seconds to do anything like scrolling or focusing the window. This is unacceptable to me. I’ve tried rebooting with no avail. It might be because I have a large number of contacts, but even so this is unacceptable given that I own a top of the line PowerMac.

Does anybody have any idea, or will I be forced to switch to Adium which is looking quite stable and feature rich at the moment.

Orkut Geomap

I while back I wrote about a new website called Orkut created by some Google employees that aims to be a social service allowing you to list your contacts and create a web of people you know and their contacts.

Anyway, I’ve got about 20 friends signed up with the service right now. Yesterday I came across a website that would create a visual map of your contacts by locations and their friends.

Orkut Map
If you want to see your locality added to the map (ie, sign up for the website and add me as a friend) please send me an email and I’ll send you an invitation. (Just a note, the site is invitation only so the only way you can get yourself added is by having a current member invite you).