The trial of bittorrent “tracker” Pirate Bay starts today in Sweden. What’ scary is if they lose, half of all the torrents out there will need to find a new home. If they swamp the other trackers out there, most of them will fail. Pirate Bay tracks 50% of all torrents according to Torrent Reactor.

Now’s the time to get into a private BitTorrent network and get above the minimum share levels :)

UNIX Time, is used by UNIX machines to track as an integer. A 6:31:30PM ET this afternoon it will officially be 1234567890 UNIX Time.

In the Globe yesterday there was an article about muzak – the horrible elevator music that you used to hear. What I didn’t realize is that muzak is the property of Muzak – a real company. Muzak Holdings LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday. Competition from everything including iPods, videoscreens and public distaste has ruined the demand for their product, it seems.

I love a good font (favorite is still Verdana) but I was surprised to learn that someone has converted President Obama’s handwriting into an OpenType font. The result is a font named 44th President. I wonder if I can convert my own handwriting into a font? I should look into this.

What happened to Facebook Poke? Noone uses it anymore. Did it really have any purpose but to remind people to check Facebook in it’s infancy?

I’m pretty surprised by the way that Nissan has chosen to price the new Nissan 370z. Starting at only $39,998, it represents a much cheaper entry point than the previous 350z did when it debuted in it’s last model year.

The 2008 350z had the Grand Touring model as it’s lowest price point at $49,948. The 2009 370z Touring comes in at $39,948. Equipping the 370z with the Sport Pack includes better brakes, spoilers front and rear, and 19″ forged rims, bringing the final price to $43,948 before taxes – still $6,000 cheaper than the outgoing car!

The 370z car configurator is available on their website.

Today I made a recipe from Jamie Oliver’s show, Oliver’s Twist: Cellophane Noodle Salad

• 4 oz Cellophane Noodles
• olive oil
• 8 oz minced pork
• 1 large pinch five-spice spice
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 handful prawn, peeled, and, deveined
• 1 handful plain and skinned peanut, roughly, chopped
• 1 bunch spring onion, finely, sliced
• 1 bunch coriander, chopped
• 1 bunch mint, chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
• 2 red chili, finely, sliced, with seeds
• 2 lime, juiced
• 1 tbsp soy, sauce

1. Soak the noodles in boiling water and drain.
2. Heat the oil in a pan, and cooking in batches, lightly brown the pork with the five-spice powder.
3. Add the garlic, sugar, prawns, and peanuts. Mix the rest of the ingredients for the dressing.
4. Add the drained noodles and the meat with the prawns and season with a little extra soy and a drizzle of olive oil.

The laptop I bought last fall has a Solid State Drive (SSD) – a hard drive made of solid state memory rather than a rotating disc. It’s quiet, very fast and energy efficient. Because my desktop drive is full, I’ve been investigating my desktop SSD options. SSD’s come in two flavours, the multi-level cell (MLC) and the faster, more reliable single-level cell (SLC) variants. I opted for the SLC variant on my Dell e4200.

There’s many announced products, but very few actually available in the stores to buy. Products from OCZ, Patriot and Super Talent seem to be the only ones available despite drives made by Intel, Samsung, Sandisk and Corsair. You have to do your research to find out which ones are MLC and SLC, but SLC are generally the higher priced ones.

The one that has gotten my attention is OCZ’s “Apex” line. It combines MLC technology in a RAID-0 configuration, making it able to get almost the same speed as an SLC design SSD, but at a lower cost. These don’t seem to be in stores yet, but I’ll keep an eye out.

I prefer the cookies soft and chewy, rather than crispy and crunch. The best chocolate chip cookie recipe that I have found so far appears is below:

• 3/4 cup shortening
• 1 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 (6 oz.) package semi-sweet chocolate chips (1 cup)

1. HEAT oven to 375ºF.
2. COMBINE shortening, brown sugar, milk and vanilla in large bowl. Beat at medium speed of electric mixer until well blended. Beat in egg. Combine flour, salt and baking soda. Mix into shortening mixture until just blended. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.
3. DROP by rounded measuring tablespoonfuls 3 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheet.
4. BAKE 8 to 10 minutes for chewy cookies, or 11 to 13 minutes for crisp cookies. Cool 2 minutes on baking sheet on a cooling rack. Remove cookies to rack to cool completely.

This video shows the production process for the Audi R8, which is completely built by hand.

Audi R8 – Piece By Piece from iamaudi on Vimeo