“Severe sinus infection”
My sympathies. My first and only severe sinus infection was about 12 years ago, but it apparently never quite cleared up, so more recently I had some surgery to remove one of my turbinates and rotor-rooter all the ancient calcified infection crap out. Fortunately, my large semitic nose and flaring nostrils meant that they had all the access they needed.
Afterwards, long after the anesthetic wore off, I experienced some pretty trippy and disorienting moments for about a week or so while my head healed from being cored out and my brain seemingly expanded to fill previously unavailable regions of skull. Then they removed the internal splints, and I went through a long period of ginormous boogers. Now, months later, things are probably about as ‘normal’ as they are going to get, but things still don’t quite ‘feel right’.
Assuming that grue and bleen are two separate colours, wouldn’t they take up two bullet points?
– Chris
I find “lime” to be a somewhat implausible shade of yellow too.
— Pete 
After several years of owning a PowerMate and using it only as a pulsing nightlight and occasional volume control, I finally got around to trying it with ’spinner’ based arcade games in MAME. Needs some tweaking of the sensitivity settings but mostly works.
— dave
For the lapsed emacsolics among us:
$ grep PapayaWhip /usr/share/X11/rgb.txt
255 239 213 PapayaWhip
Thanks for your postings, best wishes.
— A.B.Leal
“PS/2 to USB converter”
I have started throwing out usb to ps/2 converters. I have about 10 now, and I have only two uses for them (the two windows machines in the company)
I just stumbled on this website. Love it. Thanks for an hour’s worth of laughs wasting time when I should be working! ;o)
— Tina Smith
I too have a Griffin Powermate that provides no function in my home. If you come up with a good, regular use for yours, please blog about it so I can get some idea of what (non-eBay-related) uses to put mine towards.
Re: The big USB knob.
I thought this was intended to control things like playback speed of tracks for DJ mixing, but the only MP3 player that has variable playback speed I’ve seen is on Linux – does Linux support the PowerMate.
Amazon reckon it is like a mouse wheel – you could use it to zoom/magnify, scroll, etc.
”
Manufacturer’s Description
The PowerMate universal audio controller is a unique USB device that can control the volume of your computer and your audio applications, and that’s just the beginning! The PowerMate is the ultimate USB peripheral, one with almost limitless potential. Assign it any task that has keyboard equivalents. Close windows or empty the Trash in the Finder, fast forward or rewind in audio programs, undo typing in Word, etc. Not only is it capable of controlling the sound volume on your computer, but it also supports soft power on and can also be used as a universal input device and game controller. The PowerMate has a programmable button that can support every conceivable task from muting your audio output, to marking your in and out points in iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Premiere, After Effects, etc., to replacing your missing power button, and it even supports your favorite games as a truly unique game controller.”
— Robert Forsyth
I find that lists are better when they’re shorter. Like George Carlin said in reference to the Ten Commandments, “10 makes it sound official!”
Best wishes.
Mark, check out Gizmo Daemon, “a userspace utility that makes it easy to control applications, and devices based on input events.” Has support for the PowerMate and all scripting events are in Python.
— Shawn Wheatley
Ah yes, PowerMate – the glorified volume control nob. I’ve found it most useful in Flash, Final Cut Pro, Quicktime, etc for scrubbing through the timeline. But here’s my favorite use that made the 50 bucks worthwhile:
Partnered with Balance Jr 2.5 for TextMate, I use it to navigate code in Textmate to select various scopes. As is true with other PowerMate settings, the key is to fiddle with the repeat-rate to make it feel right.
— France
Ah, the friendly PS/2 to USB converter. Is it for plugging obsolete mice/keyboards into new-fangled PCs or obsolete PCs into new-fangled mice/keyboards?
If the former, I feel your pain as my lame work laptop fails to adhere to the USB-for-everything approach. Which means at my desk, my USB-everything is useless.
If the latter, I feel your pain as Sun have (with their x86 boxes only) moved suddenly to USB-for-everything. Which means at co-lo, all the crash carts (USB-nothing) are useless.
And so, rating myself “experienced” in PS/2 to USB devices, the former device is usually a “stub”, and the latter is more “dongle” in shape. The stub is more fun for idle flipping during meetings, the dongle lends itself to more prolonged sessions of “if I balance it just right, it will look like a person before it topples”.
HTH, HAND.
— David
Re: List of shades of yellow which do not appear to be at all yellow 1. Olive
This was a surprise to me that I learn about when I took my first art class, but it’s easily demonstrated. Take yellow paint and black paint, and slowly add the black into the yellow, mixing thoroughly. You will start getting different shades of olive.
— Shard