Flutterby™! From 2007-02-01 to 2007-02-28

Interesting. Might spend a moment tracking down the source of this article tomorrow: Scented Oils Tied to Boys' Breast Growth

Lavender and tea tree oils found in some shampoos, soaps and lotions can temporarily leave boys with enlarged breasts in rare cases, apparently by disrupting their hormonal balance, a preliminary study suggests.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

I started to write a longer intro for this, it's over in Of Woodworking And Airplanes. I talked with my Dad yesterday, and he mentioned the link to Tom Plamann.

So I mentioned turning the base to that building a Jupe Table that I mentioned, which isn't perhaps as dramatically huge as I remembered but still looked like an awful lot of wood spinning around, and...

The next tool coming to the U.S. from Festool is something called the Domino. Kind of a biscuit joiner on steroids. A few people have them. Among them are Per Swenson and his father, and they build bars. Here's a note on using the Domino to butt-mate two 12 foot 60 lb rails, some pictures of their work off of their site and some pictures of their work off of WoodShopDemos.com. Not quite as dramatic as Tom Plamann's work, but still some impressive alignment and finishing.

[ related topics: Photography Aviation Sociology Work, productivity and environment Archival Furniture Woodworking Festool ]

Molly Ivins: 1944-2007

Yesterday, apparently Boston officials went completely bonkers over some Cartoon Network promotional devices. Favorite quote: reported in Gizmodo and the Boston Globe:

"It had a very sinister appearance," Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley told reporters. "It had a battery behind it, and wires."

My god. Batteries *and* wires? As s388 (910768) said in the /. thread:

The police apparently learned what bombs look like from hollywood movies and comic books.

The MPAA should definitely foot the bill.

While I'm not a fan of littering, which this promotion clearly was, I think one of the perpetrators puts it in perspective:

"I find it kind of ridiculous that they're making these statements on TV that we must not be safe from terrorism, because they were up there for three weeks and no one noticed. It's pretty commonsensical to look at them and say this is a piece of art and installation," he said.

Or, as Jay said: "It's over. The terrorists have won." Good $DEITIES, people, can't we expect just a little bit of basic intelligence and awareness of the world from our law enforcement and public officials? I'd hope that various public offices today are flooded with calls calling for the resignation of the aforementioned Ms. Coakley and the members of the Boston police force who screwed this up so badly, but, alas, I know better.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture moron Law Enforcement Television ]

Normally I'm not a fan of reciprocal links or link farming, but Caustic Truths ("Louder! Harder! Heavier!") is a Canadian print magazine that seems like they might actually be a legit operation, if you're into heavy metal.

[ related topics: Music ]

Snicker: In fight to keep out Hooters, Troy Michigan ends up with two:

Critics are concerned that the restaurants' scantily clad servers don't fit the image the city seeks to project in its Big Beaver commercial district...

(emphasis mine).

[ related topics: Food Current Events ]

The deck at this place might be slightly flat, but even when I've used 4 sawhorses on it when I'm cutting up large sheet stock, I always end up dropping something. Here's a plan for a lightweight portable 4x8 sheet platform that sits on two sawhorses. Obvious from the pictures. Might send him his $3 just 'cause the idea is worth a few bucks, but next time I buy a sheet of melamine or plywood I'll be buying a few 1"x6"x8's to build one of these.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

The Reverend Hasty is at it again with stuff that's cool but I don't want to admit to my self why: Monkey Tuesday - Flinging Simian Dung Since 2007. All things that are both monkey and newsworthy (although that tells ya something about the state of journalism these days).

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

I have a 6' long piece of bowling alley that I want to turn into a table. This is a collection of trestle tables that I'm keeping around for reference material:

• Wood Store Trestle Table plans
• Cherry Trestle Table handmade in Vermont
• Popular Mechanics: how to build a trestle table.

And if anybody has suggestions for dimensions for comfortable chairs, I like "Craftsman" style with a little bit of curves, and that'd go well with a tenoned and pinned trestle table, holler.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Furniture Woodworking ]

This evening we're going over to Mill Valley to see Fast Freddie Rodriguez. I have to admit that I'm not totally enthused about this, and am going partially from a "I'm one of the guiders of Marin Cyclists and I should be there" feeling of obligation.

I tried to figure out why organized sports leave me so cold, and was coming up with some notions of how organized sports encourage obsolete traits, at some point they boil simply down to genes, because at the highest levels, if you remove the drugs, you're just testing to see whose genetic make-up is faster or whatever. Somehow that ties into m's comment in the Boston bomb scare thread:

Most of us don't have much to fear on a physical basis any more. Bears, large cats, etc are not much of a problem these days. But the adrenalin response system is there, quite eager to be put into use.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Bay Area Bioinformatics Sports ]

Other notion that's been with me recently has been pondering the value of labor. In many cases, you can buy ready made goods in this country for less than the cost of the parts to assemble them yourself. That implies that labor has a negative value: Put these parts together and they're worth less.

Actually, it doesn't, it says that inventory management and capital costs override the costs of raw materials and labor, but everybody in a white collar job who isn't doing engineering is involved in streamlining those former two attributes? That's where the economic value of management and sales comes from. Isn't it?

[ related topics: Economics ]

Alas, I don't have good pictures of it, but there was a house installed (and I use that term deliberately) down the road recently, using a crane tall enough that they had a blinking light on the top. Lifted the sucker up (in two parts), swung it up the hill (probably 30 feet above the road) and set it on the bottom story. So it comes as no surprise to me (and this kind of ties in to some of the value of labor musings) that there are specialized tools for modular home installation.

The CSI House Tug is a remote control bulldozer/tractor specifically for dragging manufactured houses into place.

[ related topics: Machinery Real Estate ]

Worthy reading: Glenn Greenwald: Little Churchills, on what Churchill did when his ability to lead was questioned, contrasted with the actions of the current administration.

[ related topics: Politics War ]

I don't know if you've run into this "Burn Lounge" (I'm not going to link 'em) thing that's floating around, I've had at least on person ask me to take a look at their "store" on it, but Nancy has a fantastic response from Mike on what it is and why friends don't approach friends with MLM schemes.

[ related topics: Music Net Culture Economics ]

Teen girl charged with posting nude photos of herself on the Internet (via Genehack):

She has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture moron Nudity ]

Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance:

... This decision, given in July 2006, declared that a “legitimate state interest” allows the Legislature to limit marriage to those couples able to have and raise children together. Because of this “legitimate state interest,” it is permissible to bar same-sex couples from legal marriage.

The way we are challenging Andersen is unusual: using the initiative, we are working to put the Court’s ruling into law. We will do this through three initiatives. The first would make procreation a requirement for legal marriage. The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Sociology Law Marriage ]

QOTD:

This pot is just so goddamn ugly, it’s got to be art.

Woodworker James Krenov, in an oral history interview conducted for the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art. The transcript is an interesting look at the "art scene" and the opinions and opinionations that seem to get one regarded as an old master, both in the art world and in the subset that is woodworking. Krenov's work is inspiration for a lot of people, and even though I find his style somewhat ungainly and spindly, I want to take a look at his books.

[ related topics: Quotes Books Art & Culture Woodworking ]

This Film Is Not Yet Rated, trailer 1, and This Film Is Not Yet Rated, trailer 2. It is imperative that we all go see this movie when it comes out. I was waiting for this to show up at the local theaters, and never saw it. I guess I'll have to buy it on DVD. Sigh. Thanks, crasch.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Almost makes me wish I were better at math.

[ related topics: Books Mathematics ]

Why you should not trust GoDaddy with your domain registrar services.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

Web 2.0 comes to the logical conclusion: UselessAccount.com (thanks, John).

[ related topics: Humor Web development John S Jacobs-Anderson Net Culture ]

Washington Post: A Game of Magical Thinking Leaves Reality on the Sidelines, about ways that humans delude ourselves:

"Rationally, you should not feel responsible at all for the outcome of the Super Bowl," Pronin said. "But the more people perceived themselves as having thought about the game, the more they thought themselves responsible for the game's outcome."

Sent me off in search of Emily Pronin whose web page has few interesting things on how we make some absolutely bogus leaps of... well... logic ain't the right word.

[ related topics: Games Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Sports ]

Interesting bill before Congress... Go to the Thomas search engine. Change "Enter Search" to "Bill Number" and search for "H.R.25":

H.R.25

Title: To promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national sales tax to be administered primarily by the States.

Sponsor: Rep Linder, John [GA-7] (introduced 1/4/2007)

Cosponsors (46)

Latest Major Action: 1/4/2007 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means.

[ related topics: Politics Civil Liberties Economics Taxes ]

After struggling with Skype for conference calls, we've broken down and switched to TeamSpeak. $5/month gets us 25 simultaneous chatters from a server at Coldyne, we use the allegedly beta but we've only found one bug in it TeamSpeex client for the Mac, and the quality of our voice chats has risen dramatically. Well, okay, the audio quality.

Skype is still fine for one-on-one, but this seems to be a much better solution for conferencing.

[ related topics: Microsoft Macintosh ]

If you haven't seen Steve Job's thoughts on music, be sure to check it out. Basically, he rails on the music publishers for requiring DRM and hindering cross-player acceptance, citing stats that 90% of music is sold DRM-free in the form of CDs.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Music ]

Hey, over at Pursed Lips, Debra's getting back into the posting habit! Welcome back! Today she writes Sukebu Otaku: The Aging of Porn, Visibly So., which references The New York Times: The Greying of Naughty, which had this quote:

The market for beautiful, airbrushed young women “is oversaturated,” he says. “This is more normal people, more meat on the bone, like what you have at home.”

Which I thought was interesting because it seems like so many producers who've tried to make a go of porn with "normal people" have failed. Columbine talked about this a few weeks ago in More Fun with Smut, which looked at the tremendous sameness of modern porn performers, and in the comments I posited that there's a "mainstream porn fetish".

I don't know that I have a conclusion here, just that different people are saying tremendously different things about the porn market, and I'm not sure who's right, or what those different things say about the culture at large.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology California Culture Economics ]

More special case hardware: Semi-submersible ships for hauling oil platforms and other ships.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

More pretty pictures of beautiful woodworking: Rocking Chairs by Bill Kappel. He does seminars, kits and plans on building your own rocking chairs, and if you figure out the magic incantations he'll mail you a 37 page document on how to build your own.

Note, among other things, the shaped everything (from seat bottoms to back slats) and the hidden doweling.

[ related topics: Furniture Woodworking ]

And Phil Edwards has notes on building a "Sam Maloof" style chair, a curved table formed with a vacuum system, and lots of other beautiful work.

[ related topics: Furniture Woodworking ]

I thought I'd ask this over here so I'd get a faster answer... I'm about to write C++ code to implement two very basic algorithms in C++. As a PhD student, I probably should just roll my own because I'll probably want to play with modifying them later. But for now, it might be nice to play with someone else's implementation. I am looking for 2D convex hull routine and a 2D Ramer-Douglas-Peucker (RDP) routine. I've done the basic search but would like personal recommendations because what I've seen out there either costs $$ or is implemented a little weird.

(An aside here, the Peucker in RDP is Tom Poiker and was my advisor's PhD advisor)

Got together with a friend this morning. Those of you who can read between the lines will probably figure out details, but I want to talk about this in abstractions for a moment. A lot of the discussion was about software process, and one of the things we talked about was why a particular monolithic and very popular application in his problem space wasn't appropriate to the tasks he had to deal with.

And the problem was that it was monolithic. A project existed in a single file that this application opened. There was no good way to do simultaneous development on that project, because that one app had that resource locked up.

He likened it to building a subdivision where each person goes to an address and builds a house, rather than having the foundation people go from location to location pouring concrete, to be followed by the framers, then the roofers and the interior folks can work simultaneously, meanwhile the foundation folks are on the third or fourth lot working on that problem.

I've also been musing recently about the trade-off between one-size-fits-all product, and custom parts, and how customization reduces value in general even while it increases value to a particular person.

So the room in product development, be that software or hardware, is in modularizing so that interoperability works better. I believe that consumers are finally waking up to the notion that lock-in removes value, and I think that this is one of the reasons that so much interesting software development these days is happening in web browsers, because those are a tremendously flexible environment.

Need to clarify these thoughts a bit, because most likely your response to this entry is "duh", and that it's either a set of obvious or stupid realizations, but I think that the next big layer of opportunity involves finding ways to scale customization, to undo some of the mass sameness that the assembly line and the industrial revolution imposed upon us and rework products into vertical slices that allow more personalization.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Software Engineering Space & Astronomy Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Community Real Estate ]

I think I coded myself into a box. I created this great hierarchy of classes to mimic my SQL database. It looks something like this:

Forest->Grove->Tree->Strip->ConvexHull

With each step being a one-to-many relationship except for strips and convexhulls, which are one-to-one. My actual vertices live in an array that's part of "grove". Everything below grove consists of subsets of the array of vertices and each grove has it's own array of vertices.

My problem is that I'm way down in ConvexHull and want to access my array of vertices. Is there a way in C++ to say "I want a pointer to the 'parent' Grove of this class?"

This gets really confusing because I'm talking about 'parent' in terms of a hierachy of classes but not the typical OOP meaning.

I know two brute-force ways to do it. One, I could make my Forest a global but that'd really suck. Two, I could pass the pointer to Grove down through Trees and Strips to ConvexHull. But there's got to be a more elegant way...

[ related topics: Software Engineering Databases C++ ]

Just helped a friend who's into randonneurring hook up a bridge rectifier, a 7805 voltage regulator and a capacitor to a USB plug so that they could run their GPS bike computer off of the hub generator on their tandem, so the computer would actually run long enough to log a full bike ride. 7805s take all the fun out of circuit design, I tell ya.

[ related topics: Graphic Design Maps and Mapping Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

Backless Earrings - When you see these, you'll go: "Duh - What a simple idea" - But if so, why didn't they already exists? Note: Ray has a patent on the basic post design and variations, and has them licensed by some major jewelry chain suppliers for mass production.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Interactive Drama Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Graphic Design ]

One of my recent acquisitions for woodworking is a good ruler marked out in 64ths. My tools are largely metric, so what I'd really like is a ruler marked out in tiny metric increments, but here we run into a problem.

A millimeter isn't accurate enough to do much of anything. Well, okay, you can do carpentry with millimeters, but not woodworking. So here's the problem: A tenth of a millimeter is at the limits of human perception. What you're really looking for is maybe a third of a millimeter, perhaps even a quarter of a millimeter, but as soon as you start subdividing by things other than 10 you start to show up the silliness of the metric system.

And that silliness is that the metric system uses scales that aren't useful to human physiology. A quarter of the circumference of the earth (and Eric can tell you how dubious a measurement that is) divided by some power of ten is arbitrarily stupid, but using base 10 as the basis for all other measurements is immediately dated. It makes no sense in computer terms, and it makes sense in human terms only because we've gotten used to base 10 arithmetic, but not because dividing dimensions (or anything but currency) by 10 makes any sense at all.

I suppose I could just get a vernier caliper that measures tenths of a millimeter, but rulers are handier than calipers. So I'll continue to get close, and then do conversions from my measured units to metric and adjust the tools that way for the fine tuning.

Tell me again why we're abandoning something God gave the British for a system invented by a Frenchman?

[ related topics: Religion Mathematics Currency Woodworking ]

The whine about metric is brought to you by the meeting up of my FestoolOF 1010 router with the el-cheapo Woodstock International dovetail jig which, after some tinkering and assembly and noting that the entire stamped steel frame is slightly twisted, worked rather nicely. Yeah, it's a $70 dovetail jig and not a $350 one, but when we want to do the fancy dovetails we'll be doing them with variable spacing anyway, and the standard jigs won't work for that. I need to play with my technique a bit, but I knocked out a box for the side of our work table with some nice little half-blind dovetails. I'll try to do something more worthy of pictures in the next few days.

[ related topics: Woodworking Festool ]

This is why we mustn't give "the American Taliban" an inch: No Room For Contraception. They're after Griswold v. Connecticut, not Roe v. Wade. (via Medley)

Wow. Drove past the police picking up after the driver of a BMW hit a cyclist yesterday, and am amazed to see "cyclist injured". That car looked like it had rolled over, the top was so caved in. I'll be watching this one, I ride that stretch a lot, the shoulders are huge, the traffic is fairly fast, but it's near a sweeping turn and close to a reduction in speed limits, so I want to see more about what the circumstances were.

[ related topics: Bay Area Law Enforcement Automobiles Bicycling ]

Here's one for the Pixar fans: a shot by shot live action remake of Geri's Game.

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Movies Graphics ]

The U.K. has the Terrorism Act of 2006, which bans the "glorification of terrorism". In response, Farah Mendelson asked science fiction writers for stories glorifying terrorism, and published the result. From the press release:

Subsection 1.3(a) criminializes statements which glorify the commission or preparation of such acts or offences, `whether in the past, in the future, or generally'. Under this provision, the teaching and documenting of the history of resistance or revolutionary movements could become subject to restrictions. This might include, for example, teaaching and writing on the American War of Independence, the Irish Easter Uprising, and/or the suffragette movement.

Looks like it'd be worth tracking down. Stolen from More Like This.

[ related topics: History Writing Law Civil Liberties ]

QOTD:

Schadenfreude is chocolate for the soul. That's why ours are full of cavities.

The character "Davan" in Randy Milholland's Something Positive.

[ related topics: Quotes Chocolate ]

Police accuse bar of being "an open air drug market", owner hires security guy to help keep out drug sales, security guy is undercover cop who sells drugs in sting operation to close bar. More over at The Agitator.

[ related topics: Drugs Law Enforcement Economics ]

Got a silly question with no immediate application, but... Anyone know anything about the flexible "PEX" (cross-linked polyethylene) tubing that Europeans have been using for plumbing and that has started making inroads in the U.S. since its adoption in the Uniform Plumbing Code? I'm having trouble telling if scare press releases and plumbing industry opposition are simple protectionism (the stuff is allegedly much simpler to install and cheaper than copper), or if there are actual valid concerns there.

It seems that there are various volatile organic compounds that leech from the PEX plumbing, including MTBE, and there are additional anecdotal reports (including possible rodent problems(!?)) but I haven't seen anyone back that up against, say, what additional copper we may take in our diets from copper pipes.

As I look around it seems like a lot of the data out there, pro and con, is being heavily pushed by opposing economic interests. I've no desire to be an early adopter of a technology that was, despite what people claim about its record in Europe, clearly faulty as of six or seven years ago, but I'm interested in this as a "how information flows" sort of issue.

[ related topics: Health Consumerism and advertising Economics ]

C++ sucks. What's the reason of the moment? Well, imagine you have a global array of strings (std::string, not char *), and imagine that you have a static object, and imagine that as your program exits the destructor gets called on that static object. What happens if the destructor has been called on the strings in that global array of strings, and that static object uses the strings in that array?

Especially given that destructor execution order seems to move around a lot depending on whether you're, say, compiling for debug or release modes. Half a day of digging through compile options to in XCode, Apple's abomination of a layer on top of the GNU tools, trying to figure out how to get it to output an executable that'll both give you hints and the right destructor order, and an hour or so of "sigh, where's the destructor order dependency this time?".

[ related topics: Apple Computer Software Engineering Macintosh C++ ]

Violet Blue: Kink.com and Porn Hysteria: The Lie of Unbiased Reporting

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Journalism and Media ]

Bwahahahaha! Okay, so follow this eBay auction item, note what it is, then click on the seller, and click on the most recent feedback item.

I laughed out loud.

Stolen from this Sensible Erection entry.

If you've got some spare cash lying around: Lisa's doing a Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Team in Training event, I haven't looked at the L&LS-TnT in terms of what they actually do about their stated goals, but they were great in providing support to the Marin Century/Mount Tam Double, and Lisa's cool.

And on a different note: Scarleteen is looking for donations.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

I never, ever, (ever!) thought I'd be linking to Gizmodo, but Horseshoes and Hand Grenades: Joel Johnson Returns...to Spank Us All for Supporting Crap is worth a read:

Then you had the audacity to complain about broken phones, half-assed firmware that bricked your gear, and winner-takes-nothing arms races between the companies whose gear your bought and the hackers who had nothing better to do than try to fix it. Do you realize how ridiculous that is? Programmers with free time did more to help you get quality products than you ever did by buying the broken gear in the first place.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

There's a site called Rescue On Everest which I'm not completely sure about, but looks like a way to publicize a product of TGR Helicorp. The product is an unmanned rescue helicopter, and one press release says:

"The pilot sits in a virtual reality environment and could effectively be considered to be sitting astride the bulbous nose with a wide angle of view forward and down. Once a stranded climber has been located, the Alpine Wasp communicates with them using an 8.5-metre extendable proboscis with a camera and a small speaker attached to its end," New Scientist quoted Rogers as saying.

Which, to some extent, brings me to a question: At what point does climbing Everest become so much like a theme park ride, with lots of perceived dangers, but with most of the actual dangers mitigated, that the experience loses all meaning? Already, in my perception, at least, there's more of a cachet to someone saying "I climbed K2" than "I climbed Everest", because it implies that there was more personal involvement, it wasn't just "I got in really good shape and followed my guide's instructions".

My opinion in this matters not a whit, I'm sure, but I find it amusing that there's so much energy, even if it's only media energy, around the notion of mitigating risk in an assumed risk situation.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Consumerism and advertising Aviation - Helicopters ]

Senator Dodd introduces the "Restoring The Constitution" act, to...

...restore Habeas Corpus protections to detainees, bar information acquired through torture from being introduced as evidence in trials, and limit presidential authority to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions.

[ related topics: Politics Law Civil Liberties ]

I'm happily grinding forward at the current startup, and have no plans to change that, but two people have approached me recently with coding work. One of those wants what I think it was Frederick P. Brooks called a "language lawyer" for his group, someone that the people who write code because they have to, but aren't programmers by history, can go to for the details of why something should or shouldn't happen a specific way.

I was happy that he thought of my work in that way, but realized that I haven't been that person for quite a while. So I've been diving back into thinking about the details of stuff again, if only as a good exercise. Whence my exploration of copy constructors and increment operators.

Over at Brainwagon, Mark had some links on regular expressions that are worth following up on.

And I've only paid cursory attention to what people have said about the software development process in the past decade or so because, frankly, when Ed Yourdon was shown to be entirely loony in his response to Y2K issues it confirmed my beliefs on the credibility of the things he said in Modern Software Engineering. And most of them seemed to be a response to "tell people what they want to hear", back in the early days of my software development experience we (hi Frank and Eric!) came to the conclusion that the best thing you could do for programming productivity was give programmers doors, but in the "it's cheaper to slap them in cubicles" world, managers wanted to hear what the "agile development" evangelists were telling them.

So I've been listening to some "Extreme Programming" and "Agile Development" and "Crystal Process" (sounds more like something the FBI would be trying to crack down on) downloadable audio shows, and I'm just looking for what's going to be to this community what the exposé of the value of a PhD from San Rafael's "Columbia Pacific University" was to the self-help book genre in the late 1990s.

Man, what a bunch of telling people what they want to hear, but make it nebulous enough that you can't blame your failures on their recommendations when the project fails. And if the project succeeds (and it'll likely do so independently of whatever these practices recommend), then they can take credit.

[ related topics: Books Bay Area Software Engineering Sociology Work, productivity and environment ]

I forget where I first picked these up in the past few days, but... some interesting composite images of women's faces off of Hot Or Not, Miss Universe 2005 composites by region of origin, or a few breakdowns of Hot or Not by age.

Maybe someone else will take this away in the context of my ramblings that the blond surgically altered mainstream porn look is a fetish unto itself.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology ]

If you have a jar of Peter Pan peanut butter on your shelf, don't eat it, it has partially hydrogenated oils in it, which are most likely not good for you despite industry PR obfuscation and claims to the contrary. If that jar also has a batch number that starts with 2111, then it may also contain salmonella. Either way, don't eat it.

[ related topics: Food ]

Back Wednesday. Computer's staying at home.

I did a brief search but I don't think anyone actually makes this... I want a cable that I plug into a USB port on my laptop and, at the other end, plug into a USB port (or PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports) AND VGA port on a headless box that I want to work on. Then I run an app on the laptop that gives me an RDP-like session on that box. Why doesn't anyone make one of these?!?

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Watches lose ground to cell phones - I have not worn a watch in years, for this very reason. - I relate to the 'watch as a handcuff' comment in this story as well. Are any of you wearing a watch for practical reasons?

[ related topics: Movies ]

Not sure what's going on, but Meuon has graciously come up with some server space, and I'm in the process of moving Flutterby and associated other stuff over to that machine. It'll likely be a few days before the IP address changes, and I'll try to be as up-to-date as possible on that, hopefully y'all won't really notice anything.

This does mean I have to go re-write some of my website rules for Apache 2...

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta ]

Two movie recommendations from my dad that I want to put here so that I can close the browser tabs: Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is a German film about resistance and the Third Reich, and The Ground Truth: After The Killing Ends is about U.S. soldiers and how they're assimilating back into our culture after having been in combat.

[ related topics: Movies Sociology War ]

Wow. I don't have an exact date for the first post to Flutterby, but it was sometime in late February of 1998. Happy Birthday, Flutterby. Thank y'all for reading and contributing.

Notes from last weekend's road trip.

[ related topics: Travel ]

More long-distance touring: Ryan McKee is planning on biking across the country on a tandem with his Dad.

[ related topics: Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

If you're interested in software development process, Good Agile, Bad Agile is worth a read.

And the notion of "agile development" with everyone in the same room is... well... like a perpetual meeting. Meetings make you dumber (The actual Journal of Consumer Research article, from an entry on /.).

[ related topics: Software Engineering Consumerism and advertising ]

I watched the recent movie rendition of Phillip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly. I found the graphic effects to be a little annoying but I was pleasantly surprised by the adaptation. It was much clearer than the original novel - which was more in Robert Arctor's head - which was more than a little screwed up.

[ related topics: Drugs Movies ]

Among this afternoon's projects: California Code of Regulations, Title 8, Section 3214: Stair Rails and Handrails. Detachable, 'cause the stairwell is really narrow and we'll want it wider when we're moving stuff in and out. But still have to get that "200lbs in any direction" solid...

[ related topics: Law Real Estate Woodworking ]

Over at Entries in Life there's an entry worth reading (actually, several, but we'll concentrate on this one): Smarts don't mean much (and expensive running shoes ruin your feet).

[ related topics: Children and growing up Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Sports Shoes ]

http://www.beerlauncher.com/

[ related topics: Robotics Beer Cool Technology ]

A little Scientific American squib pimping the forthcoming book The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know about Food Is Wrong says that people absorb more nutrients from foods they enjoy more (via Rebecca Blood).

When it comes to healthy absorption of nutrients, taste matters. Glassner cites a study in which "Swedish and Thai women were fed a Thai dish that the Swedes found overly spicy. The Thai women, who liked the dish, absorbed more iron from the meal. When the researchers reversed the experiment and served hamburger, potatoes, and beans, the Swedes, who like this food, absorbed more iron. Most telling was a third variation of the experiment, in which both the Swedes and the Thais were given food that was high in nutrients but consisted of a sticky, savorless paste. In this case, neither group absorbed much iron."

[ related topics: Books Food ]

Drawing Figures used as "how to" examples are barely noteworthy, but for some reason this guys bad sense of humor makes it so. Sure it's a lead to his 'buy stuff' sites, but read the captions.

[ related topics: Humor ]

Objectum-Secuality - an odd word, and an odder, yet understandable relationship:

Bryan, my cyberboyfriend, was in a lot of ways, my PowerMac G3, webcam and telephone," Mark wrote on his website. "He literally lived inside of this machine ... that I myself could control like a light switch. The perfect boyfriend."

h Exploring links from the article lead to: How to make love to a car.. and Soft Core Linux Desktop Themese. The article notes a lack of Windows fetishism. Perhaps because it is it's own innate form of BDSM: Whip me, beat me, make me write big/bad checks.. And it carries a lot of STD's.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Open Source Bay Area Current Events Macintosh Automobiles Phreaking ]

Support our troops! Take the time to give them proper training before you send them overseas. (Thanks, Jeff)

[ related topics: moron War ]

In that restoring the Constitution discussion that started to talk about the Israel-Palestine issue, I posited that the Israeli government had nothing to gain from "victory". Here's a piece on the Democrat-Republican conflict that makes a good argument the same way.

I don't know if y'all have been following this, but apparently there's been some froofurrah over some webloggers hired by the Edwards campaign who... well... weblogged. Rafe had a link to someone who turned down such a commercial weblogging opportunity, but why would anyone be supporting a campaign at this early date? None of these schmucks have any principles, they'll suck up to whatever set of interest groups has the most votes, so the thing we webloggers need to be doing is promoting ideas.

Because promoting candidates is idiocy.

[ related topics: moron Law Civil Liberties ]

Evidently a suicide bomber in Afghanistan blew himself up with Dick Cheney as his target. I won't comment further because I think just about anything I say might be considered conspiracy to kill the VP... But in the search for a new article, I came across Duck Cheney with a slew of haiku:

Bush practiced on frogs.

Dick got his fill of tame quail.

Big shots shoot wide...duck!

Of course, I've been saying since 2000 that with a Dick and Bush in the Whitehouse - someone's gonna get screwed...

[ related topics: Politics Conspiracy ]

The Boston Diaries had a link to Steven Levitt's TED talk on the economics of crack cocaine, which is the same thing you probably read in Freakonomics. Two notable things:

1. He ends with a crack about the need for the gang leader to appear strong, but I think the dismissive tone he takes is wrong: That's the purpose of leaders in organizations, and humans play the pack animal to the alpha wolf quite well.
2. It was a reminder that quite a few jobs, especially computer programming, have aspects of that feeling of deferred reward that fast food jobs and crack dealing both carry.

[ related topics: Drugs Movies Food Software Engineering Economics ]

I built a cord organizer.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Woodworking ]

Dynamically balancing walking humanoid robot - Sure walks and moves differently from Asimo and others I've seen. Much more fluid. I grew up readng I Robot and other sci-fi robot stories, it's a fascination of mine. I wish the reportedly 3-4 guys at Anybots much success.

[ related topics: Robotics ]

I'm not sure that I like some of the harsh color contrasts that Andy Sanchez uses in his furniture, but he's got some great ideas for working within the dictates of the wood.

[ related topics: Art & Culture Woodworking ]