IBM has managed to make a stop-motion film using - wait for it - individual molecules. Yes, you read that correctly. They have managed to not only capture, but control, the movements of molecules to create a short film. This is blowing my mind. They provide an explanation of how the movie was made, which is nearly as cool as the film itself. It apparently took 10 days of working 18 hours a day to create the frames for the minute-long video, using microscopic magnets and sound waves.

Twenty years ago today, on April 30, 1993, the World Wide Web went public. Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist who proposed and developed the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) upon which the whole of the Web operates, published a web page explaining what this project of the World Wide Web is and what it strives to be. The page was taken down at some point over the years, but today CERN put the page back in its original location, exactly as it appeared when it was first created.

This has indisputably been one of the wildest weeks in recent memory. In the afternoon of Monday, April 15 two bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing 3 and injuring over 180 people. In the days that followed a whirlwind of events transpired that reads like an episode of 24, culminating in the killing of one suspect and the apprehension of another. Now that the ordeal is over and the long, arduous process of investigation and prosecution really kicks off, it’s amazing to think back on how this whole thing was wrapped up.

Earlier today the House of Representatives voted to pass CISPA. While this is certainly an unfortunate and disappointing outcome, CISPA is far from becoming law. The bill now heads to the Senate, so once again we’ll need to rally together to defeat this onerous legislation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation set up a bunch of great tools for fighting CISPA with the House, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they do the same for the Senate.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, more commonly known as CISPA, is scheduled to go to the House floor for a vote as early as this afternoon. CISPA would broaden and streamline the sharing of internet traffic information between the federal government and technology providers and manufacturers, without safeguards for personal privacy protection. It endangers the free and open Internet, and if passed could have significant negative impacts on free speech, innovation and even the security of the very infrastructure it’s supposed to protect.

A few months ago Twitter finally turned on the ability for users to download their entire archive of tweets. It’s been a feature many power users have been longing for, and Twitter did a nice job with implementation. Rather than simply giving the user a JSON or XML dump, they build what amounts to be a self-contained web app of your entire tweet history. It actually doesn’t even need a server - it’s just a bunch of HTML, CSS and JavaScript files that your browser can handle all on its own.

Today marks the twelfth anniversary since my family and I moved to Annapolis. I was 12 years old when we moved here, which means that I’ve now lived here for half my life. Being a military brat it’s still hard to imagine that I’ve really lived in one place for that long. Staying in Annapolis was not originally part of my plan. When I was in high school my goal was to attend the Coast Guard Academy, commission as a Coast Guard officer and live anywhere & everywhere.

This week the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a number of cases relating to same-sex marriage & marriage equality. To show support for those affected by the decisions on these cases, many people have been displaying an image of a red square with a pink ‘equals’ symbol in the center as their Facebook, Twitter, etc. profile picture. This being the Internet, a number of riffs off the original image have been created which run the gamut from jokes to social commentary.

It’s here! After months of waiting and numerous delays, my Pebble smartwatch has finally arrived. Even though I’ve only had it for about an hour, I can already tell the wait was worth it. It feels good to wear, it looks good, and the interface is pleasantly simple. This post isn’t a review though, so let’s look at what we’re here for: the unboxing. Pebble’s product box is also its shipping box, reducing the amount of packaging required.

At this point in the year, I’m convinced the meteorologists in the Annapolis-Baltimore-DC area are playing jokes on us. This morning I woke up to the first actual snow we’ve had so far this year, despite a number of predictions that resulted in nothing but some rain. By the time I left my house there were already 2-3 inches on the ground, and it’s still falling steadily - all this despite a prediction of some wintry mix at worst for today.