Flutterby™! From 2007-07-01 to 2007-07-31

Undercover, under fire: The Washington press corps is too busy cozying up to the people it covers to get at the truth. (thanks, Lyn).

[ related topics: Current Events Journalism and Media ]

Saw Ratattouille yesterday. I don't know if I'm as gaga "oh my you must see this film" as everyone else, but I thought it was strong, and, as others have noted, the shot where the reviewer Anton Ego takes his first bite is tear-jerking.

Two things pulled me out of it:

1. The several scenes of the rat in danger, with the frantic rats-eye view camera, felt overdone to me, the over-the-topness of the first big inciting incident, involving the shot gun, felt forced.
2. If anything, the gorgeous visuals separated me from the story. This was most pronounced with Skinner's moustache, but I felt like there were four or five different art direction styles, all competing for attention, and that competition too often overran the story. I'd almost have rather seen it doen in a fairly plain hand-drawn style.

However, it blows the doors off of Cars, visually and especially story-wise, and was worth seeing in the theater.

On that note, since most theaters these days are going DLP, maybe Pixar could do a little bit to pander to that technology? In the credits roll and one vertical pan there was some artifact (maybe interlacing?) that was causing some eally annoying flicker that I'm sure could have been reduced or removed with a little image pre-processing.

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Movies Graphics ]

On Friday evening we went over the hill for dessert. Dropped in at Fairfax Scoop, but Charlene was wanting something non-dairy and non-soy, and though they do have a sorbet there, we decided to search further. We ended up at the San AnselmoCafe Grattitude, where we had an awesome coconut lime "cheesecake", and a decent peach "cheesecake". Sunday afternoon we were bouncing around the San Anselmo area and went there for a late lunch, and weren't disappointed, the "lasagna" I had was really more of a veggie torte, but the flavors still worked out pretty nicely.

And the staff pulled off the cheesey theme (Everything on the menu is an affirmation, my dish was an "I Am Fabulous") masterfully.

[ related topics: Food Bay Area San Anselmo Food - Cake ]

Argh. Yet another freakin' social networking application. It looks like I need to join Facebook, so I go fill out my stuff, it says it'll send me an email, two hours later, no email. Try again, it doesn't say anything about my previous attempts to sign up, 45 minutes later still no email.

If you have something important, don't store it in a safe deposit box in a B of A in California...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bay Area California Culture ]

I know I can go tweak it to not be so frustrating, but I'm keeping a M$-Vista laptop as close to factory default as possible so that I can see what most people see when they use it. Why? Because I have some pretty complex web apps that I have to test on as many OS/Browser combos as possible, including Nintendo Wii (Great Stuff: Opera on Wii) and Mac OSX (mystifying, but not frustrating). Vista and MSIE 7+ is an exercise in pop-up window frustration. Yes, I want to accept that page with mixed safe and unsafe content.. Yes, I want you to run the [embed] call to WinMediaMangler^tm, Yes, I want to run that JavaScript.. No, I don't want to see the latest internet access offers, I've checked the "never again" box the last 423 times you have popped up. Yes, allow that pop-up window from a signed page and code I already said "yes" to allowing pop-ups for, yes I want to run Adobe Reader, Flash..

Dispite all of that "security", dang thing automagically connects to just about any open WiFi access port no matter what I tell it (unless I use the switch to disable the WiFi card, but it gets bumped on easily).

And the most interesting recent development: I'm getting physical USPS junk mail addressed to the slightly bogus name (and my address) that I registered Vista with just to see what would happen. So far, just junk magazine offers, Vonage, and 1 credit card offer, but that name has been "sold" or given away by either Microsoft or HP. Next time I'll use different slightly names for each part of the registration processes.

As I seldom turn it on in Vista mode, when I do, I make sure I have enough time and bandwidth for it to do it's update thing before I need it. Because no matter what, it sucks updates from home like a crack whore sucks [deleted].

Ubuntu is working the way I want.. unobtrusive, stable. Like WinXP before an infection.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft broadband Bay Area moron Work, productivity and environment Macintosh Net Culture ]

My credit card company sends along a little "customer thank-you reward" slip of paper with the bill. The little slip gives you 7 items, from a cordless screwdriver to a pedometer to wireless headphones, the kind of thing you'd expect to see for $10 at a dollar store. It lets you choose some number of each, and says "Each is yours for just $9.97 charged to your account and shipping and handling is included", but over on the left it says that the "Maximum Reward Value" is $112.00, and that:

Maximum reward is based on selecting four each of the three highest valued items...

Sooo... let me see if I've got this right: If I manage to choose right I'm still out $7.64? They even tell you what the game is.

Wow. Just wow.

[ related topics: Games ]

I finally not only got my login emails from Facebook sometime late yesterday afternoon and got my account somewhat setup, shortly thereafter I got a happy friendly email from a Facebook employee telling me that he'd helpfully reset my password.

I went and fixed that, and was faced with yet another stupid blogging tool that had lock-in notions of identity.

xunker - Super Crossposting Power is looking for the same thing I am, a tool that lets those of us who don't want to let someone else own our data manage this crap better. He points to WriteToMyBlog, a web based tool that doesn't support my web browser and that doesn't give me enough confidence to entrust them with my user name and password, and SwiftPen, a similar service that's still in beta, but I'd be super happy for something that just took a text file and posted it to all of my haunts and would-be-haunts, and ecstatically overjoyed for something that converted all of the stupid markup rules between the various sites and got that crap right.

But really I want one of these sites to let me get some sort of syndication process so that I can know when one of my friends updates a status and open up their identity systems so that I can let users on their service have access to particular entries of my own and to get the hell out of my way otherwise.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Archival ]

Spec ops leaders want return to fundamentals:

"The emphasis will be on, 'If you have to kill someone, then for God’s sakes, kill the right people,'" Macgregor said. "In most cases, you’re not going to have to kill people and that's the great virtue of special operations. That’s been lost over the last several years."

Via Danger West.

[ related topics: Current Events War ]

Peter Hartlaub wants to re-legalize fireworks in the Bay Area:

Let's look at the pros and cons of making fireworks illegal:

Pro: Fireworks can cause serious injuries and property damage, generate noise and air pollution and infringe on the rights of those citizens who choose not to celebrate with pyrotechnics.

Con: Fireworks are totally sweet.

Pro: Fireworks place an unnecessary burden on already tight resources of the police and fire departments, creating overtime expenses while diverting attention from more important cases.

Con: Fireworks are wicked awesome.

As they say in high school forensics competitions, the Pro side just got served.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area Law Enforcement Civil Liberties California Culture Pyrotechnics ]

Politics in Nigeria is finally returning to a level of quiet for the first time in a while, and we can prove it. How? The Price of Machetes has dropped on the open market. Apparently the thugs on both sides won't need them until the next primary season

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Economics ]

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies

[ related topics: Archival ]

Goodman's Marinara Recipe.

[ related topics: Food ]

Just to confuse Eric's attempts to avoid selling out to "the man": Is it ethical to encourage students to go to grad school in science? (via Lyn).

[ related topics: Ethics Education ]

The ePanorama page of links to motor control topics, including this page on microstepping and how to get 1/8th to 1/16th step resolution out of your stepper motors (and make them run quieter) from Stepperworld, and an article on current control in stepper motors.

[ related topics: Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Okay, this one goes on for a little bit too long, but the punchline got a genuine laugh-out-loud from me: Worst job ever (profanity, might not be cool in an office environment...). Thanks to Dave Goodman.

And a week ago a reader (I should probably send email, if you don't have a blog of your own but want to be identified, tell me...) linked to footage from an old TV show or something of people doing the Charleston, with a soundtrack from daft punk. I'm not sure why it was compelling, maybe it's just that dancing hasn't changed nearly as much as people would sometimes like to tell us...

[ related topics: Humor Music Work, productivity and environment Television ]

71 Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena.

[ related topics: Physiology ]

An "electronic stamp" built from an inkjet cartridge and a microcontroller, including some notes on reverse-hacking a modern inkjet cartridge. If lower resolution is acceptable, Parallax has a 96 DPI inkjet printer kit, complete with schematics and source code, and it seems like the critical thing is to hit the nozzles with 20-25v for 3 microseconds or so (probably less for the higher res cartridges and heads).

[ related topics: Open Source Embedded Devices ]

On my family visit to to my sister's place outside of Toledo, we stopped in at a house in downtown that my sister and her husband were selling. I think it was $48k or so, and the deal could be structured so that there was no down payment. Minimum wage in Ohio is $6.85, if money costs $700 per hundred k per month, then minimum wage is 20 milliHouses.

Out here in the Bay Area, effective minimum wage is roughly $12/hour, and we'll be optimistic and say that in a similarly rough neighborhood in Oakland or Richmond you could pick up the same sized house on the same sized lot for $350k. I think that's way low, but that means that minimum wage is 5 milliHouses.

On one of Eric's visits out here he quipped that "the currency looks the same, but I can't figure out the exchange rate". As I started to think income not in terms of dollars but in terms of what it'll actually buy, I think I'm starting to get a handle on the exchange rate.

Toledo's economy sucks, and it sucks partially because paying people 20 milliHouses for minimum wage jobs is more than most service jobs will bear. So what about manufacturing jobs, real productive labor? After all, Ohio's closer to, say, California than China is, right?

I'm guessing it isn't. I'm guessing it costs about the same to get a shipping container from Toledo to Oakland as it does to get one from China to Oakland.

I wonder what China's low-end labor costs in milliHouses. I don't know, but given that in my visit there I saw the laborers building a factory living in bamboo shanties, I'm guessing that not only is it less in U.S. dollars (partially because we have a "strong" economy with an overvalued dollar), but it was less in terms of goods.

This starts to tumble us into the whole discussion of service economies versus goods based economies, but since manufacturing is dead in this country, I wonder if there's a minimum wage number in milliHouses that it takes to have a working service economy?

[ related topics: Bay Area Sociology Work, productivity and environment Currency Economics Real Estate ]

I've been fascinated by made-up statistics ever since Marc Klaas lied to congress about the alleged "50,000 annual non-custodial child abductions" (the real number is a few hundred). So what do we find when scientists debunk the "women talk more than men" myth? That, once again, the bullshit numbers are made up by the governmental control freak types:

That's because no original scientific sources exist for such a claim, said Mark Liberman, a professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania.

His own inquiry found the earliest use of the figures by James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, who employed it as a "guesstimate."

"My current belief is that this started as someone's idea of a plausible estimate, and was turned into a false scientific factoid by writers who like to misuse the authority of science," he said.

Relatedly, on a drive down to a party yesterday, Charlene was reading a book on child psychology and we both got to taking apart some of the both obviously bogus claims, and the claims that couldn't be internally supported by the argument of the book. Damn, there's a whole lot of intentional fuzzy thinking out there.

[ related topics: Politics Books Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Sociology Writing Mathematics Education ]

Illegal immigration is one of the ongoing debates on Flutterby. There does seem to be some consensus that Mexico has a fairly corrupt government and a dysfunctional economy. Either the Mexican economy has some bright spots or it's a serious indictment of our assumptions: Mexican telecom tycoon, Carlos Slim, just passed up Bill Gates as the world's richest man.

Well a hush fell over the pool room
Bill Gates come boppin' in off the street
And when the cuttin' were done
The only part that wasn't bloody
Was the soles of the big man's feet
Yeah he were cut in in bout a hundred places
And he were shot in a couple more
And you better believe
They sung a different kind of story
When big Bill hit the floor now they say

You don't tug on superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off that old lone ranger
And you don't mess around with Slim

[ related topics: Humor Economics Immigration Mexico ]

A new way to tap equity without going into debt: Homeowners can sell a share of future appreciation. I'm already confused by people buying buying Bay Area rentals with negative amortization mortgages (because rental prices won't support a real mortgage). This seems like a smart hedge for homeowners, but I wonder at how they're selling this to investors.

[ related topics: Bay Area Economics Real Estate ]

Is it wrong that I saw an article on a shooting at the Las Vegas "New York New York" casino and wondered if they were just trying to be authentic?

[ related topics: New York Gambling ]

I'm sure I've linked to this before, but The Quick and Dirty B-Movie Plot Generator

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Movies ]

Sex Panic: An Interview With Debbie Nathan. Which reminds me, I have "thinkofthechildren.org" which I got to mirror some guy's site in the UK, but his site's long gone. It's coming up for renewal in a few months, anyone want to do anything with it?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Law Law Enforcement Civil Liberties ]

Making Tetrahydrocannabinol, or at least a specific process for it, is "Patent Pending". with lines like: "..Thus there is a need for a short, practical, high-yielding synthesis of .DELTA..sup.9-THC that can be practised on an industrial scale. "

My college chemistry is extremely oxidized, but the processes described at the bottom of the patent application look "do-able".

If the economics and associated risk factors of the process are favorable, there could be a lot of "pot" on the streets from this.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Interactive Drama Weblogs Education Economics ]

Terrence is coming out with a new version of CG101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference, and was asking for browser test help (as well as shilling his book).

[ related topics: Books Graphics ]

So y'all have undoubtedly seen LOLCats, right? Anil Dash deconstructs the grammar of LOLCats. Even though the silly captions for pictures of cats meme has spawned a programming language, I haven't linked to it here because... well... I guess I was kind of hoping it would just go away. I almost took note of it with LOL metal, misspelled IM code captions for metal bands, but it was I CAN HAS FAULTLINE, or LOL geology that finally pushed me over the edge.

[ related topics: Humor Photography Software Engineering Net Culture ]

Disguise Your Browser as a Google Bot and Get Free Access to Pay Sites.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

I recently said "40 years after the play and it's still a political statement", but perhaps it's time to come to grips and say that "I do not want what I haven't got" (sorry, Sinead). So, as much as I want to believe:

Oh say can you see

My eyes if you can

Then my hair's too short

it seems like it's a week to be open to new possibilities and trying out different things. Or maybe...

Don't be afraid, I'm part of the family.

[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama Politics Photography Movies Invention and Design moron Sociology ]

Chris pointed to a video demonstrating the world's smallest camper van. This is really cool!

[ related topics: Cool Technology Video ]

I never thought this would happen, but I have gadget lust for a cellphone and may have to get one.

Joseph Epstein reviews Karen Abbot's Sin in the Second City, a history of brothels in Chicago in the early 1900s.

When a blue-ribbon commission on vice published a report called "The Social Evil in Chicago," which also argued for getting rid of prostitution completely, it was roundly greeted as "a contribution to the cause of morality and decency," according to the local press. But not by the young journalist Walter Lippmann, who noted that those who composed the report were naïve in thinking that "sex must be confined to procreation by a healthy, intelligent and strictly monogamous couple." The commission, Lippmann wrote, ignored "the sexual impulse in discussing a sexual problem . . . yet who that has read the report itself and put himself in any imaginative understanding of conditions can escape seeing that prostitution today is organic to our industrial life, our marriage sanctions, and our social customs?"

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Health Sociology Journalism and Media Marriage ]

You know you've been geeking too much when:

You are creating/updating complex HTML web pages (tables, css, images and/or javascript) served from MySQL via PHP, from a MySQL prompt. And it works.

(add your own.. )

[ related topics: Open Source Databases ]

Via RC3, Jason Kottke says Facebook is the new AOL, and then elaborates a little bit more, but the overall message is simple: Facebook wants you to build applications for their platform, not for the web in general.

I'd long forgotten about SMS.ac, but I'd talked with them a while ago and had looked at what it took to build on their platform, and had signed up for them, and recently got yet another "I am lonely girl looking to chat" spam via my account with them and realized that while I've signed up for all of these "social networking" services because someone else has and it seemed like a good idea at the time, the vast majority of them have just become sources of spam. The only two I actually use are MySpace so that I can read my sister's blog, and LiveJournal so that I can comment on various people who publish there. But from Friendster to Orkut to the (apparently defunct) Tribe, even to eBay, I've had made and maintained better connections by having a strong web presence that I own than by using anyone else's tool to try to mediate between me and my friends.

[ related topics: Weblogs moron Sociology Social Software ]

November 2006, I volunteered for what should have been an easy two or three day "build a real e-commerce site for the NSS".. July 2007, the National Speleological Society Bookstore is finally on a real server (aSmallOrange.com) with a proper SSL certificate and proper e-commerce..

And I'm never volunteering web-work for another good deed for a good cause again. Period. Ever.. Ever! Well, until next time anyway.

I need to plug: RapidSSL.com for SSL Certificates as well as ASO Good Cheap Web Hosting.

and I have nothing nice to say about 1and1, where is was hosted.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Oh lord, now the Exchange team is doing it:

BAAAHAHAHAAHAHAHA...wait, IMAP doesn't allow you to search the server store separately from the client cache? Wow, Exchange/Outlook's piss-poor IMAP performance makes sense now: The devs behind them don't know the friggin' protocol specs. I suggest they take a look at a Microsoft product that actually gives a rat's ass about IMAP, namely Entourage, talk to the E'rage team, and learn what IMAP actually does. See, this is what happens when you really want to rag on the iPhone, but are pretending to rag on IMAP. Focus guys, I know Microsoft has no clue about what "focus" means, but go look at your own dictionary, it'd be a start.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Software Engineering moron iPhone ]

I've written and deleted one entry here on this, but... anyone with insights into my abilities to manage and guide people, and how my personality might mesh with a job that required no programming, please email me. I'm doing a little self-examination.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Software Engineering ]

I've tried with many employers in the past to view computer hardware like stationary or pens. The problem is that the IRS allows depreciation of computer hardware as assets - so no one ever listens.

But think about it - even if you are a software developer, your computer actually just the media that you use to get your work done. If you are in IT support, you probably know that computers are relatively cheap compared to the cost of supporting the users.

Google is the first company I've heard of that treats computers like office supplies. Supposedly, if you work for Google, there is essentially a "supply closet" on every floor where you can take your computer and exchange it for another - no questions asked. Evidently, there is a rule that if the support guy can't fix your computer in X minutes, they just do a swap.

I mention this because Dan brought up the idea that there's no such thing as a free computer when we were talking about ISPs. ISPs are just getting to the point where they are cheap enough and good enough that the difference between host X and host Y is like the difference between a Bic and a Papermate. Sure, there's the occasional person with the $500 Montblanc but that doesn't really do anything more than the 19 cent Bic. Let's just hope the rest of the biz catches on!

[ related topics: Politics History Work, productivity and environment ]

Dang, it's not the first iPhone link on Flutterby: iPhone: Will it blend?

[ related topics: Movies Archival iPhone ]

Cartoonist Doug Marlette dead in a car crash at age 57. Unlike Columbine, I liked his strip "Kudzu" (at least in its earlier years, it wasn't one that made it to my currently followed list), I thought he captured the essence of Southern culture in a way similar to Lewis Grizzard, of an insider who understood how it looked from the outside. But his political and editorial cartoons also had the necessary level of nastiness and bite.

[ related topics: Politics Humor Sociology ]

Buy Back Alaska! proposes that, since it seems like you can buy a state legislator for about a quarter of a million dollars a year, the citizens of Alaska would be better served if they were buying the state legislators, rather than the special interest groups.

[ related topics: Politics Humor Economics Alaska ]

McDonald's to run trucks on 85% waste oil mixed with 15% virgin rapeseed ("canola") oil. Says Matthew Howe, Senior VP of McDonald's UK:

As we get better at the refinement we will be able to remove virgin rape from the process...

[ related topics: Humor McDonald's ]

Giggle. From some source or another, Charlene stumbled across The Energetic Matrix Church of Consciousness, LLC, EMC2 program, and for giggles she asked for their additional free literature. It's hilarious:

Here's how it works: A huge bank of computers sends about five hundred thousand subtle energy balancing frequencies to metal trays that hold the photographs of AIM program participants, which act as stand-ins for their bodily presence, and the energy is transmitted directly to the participants, no matter where they are at the time. ...

Damn. Does my cell phone company know about this? Because it'd be really cool if I could get coverage via those half a million frequencies, and if they can send it anywhere from just one location near Las Vegas, that'd make infrastructure build-out way cheaper.

And it just gets funnier. They'll cover you for a grand, for two grand they'll throw in your family and pets.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Wireless moron Sociology ]

Evidently Republican presidential hopeful and successful dieter, Michael Huckabee, has been lashing out at Michael "Sicko" Moore. Yesterday he said something along the lines of:

"Michael Moore is an example of why the health care system costs more in this country."

His implication is that overweight people have more illness and are thus a burden on the health care system. Fat jokes and soap-box preaching aside, it seems to me that most news outlets are missing Huckabee's real gaffe.

Simple economics of supply and demand support Huckabee's argument - more demand for health care causes an increase in price assuming a fixed supply. But is the problem on the demand side or the supply side?

Economics also teaches us that with increased demand can come greater efficiencies and lower cost. It would appear to me that the problem lies not on the demand side but on the supply side. People aren't benefiting from greater efficiencies in the health care system. Instead of trying to convince the huge numbers of the American populace to live healthier lifestyles, we need to convince the minority of Americans who are in the health industry to better convey cost-reductions from efficiency.

A great example is how the Soviet Union perfected Radial Keratotomy. Instead of buying glasses for the millions of Russians who needed them, they refined the RK process to the point that a technician, not an M.D., could do the procedure and then setup a massive program. Granted, I'm not encouraging everyone to have their cornea sliced by a Soviet tech...

[ related topics: Health Software Engineering Theater & Plays Current Events Economics Archival ]

An interesting pictorial: What the World Eats.

It's also a lesson in modern global economic divisons. There is about an order of magnitude different in the amount spent per week by families in the Core vs. Semi-Periphery vs. Periphery. They don't normalize for GDP or family size.

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs Economics ]

Since we're talking about healthcare: Hoover Institute: Dollars to Donuts, examining healthcare and obesity from the Homer Simpson perspective. Among other things it notes that the obesity wage gap seems to roughly parallel the additional healthcare costs incurred by being overweight.

[ related topics: Health Work, productivity and environment Economics ]

Release of tape in teen sex case may violate child-porn law. A tape used in the prosecution of Genarlow Wilson who's serving time for having consensual oral sex with a 15 year old girl when he was 17, has been distributed by the DA:

Douglas County District Attorney David McDade has estimated he has given the tape to about three dozen people -- including reporters, lawmakers and members of the public -- after receiving open records requests, according to The Associated Press. He told the AP Georgia's open records law requires him to do so.

However, since posession of child pornography is a crime, presumably the federal prosecutor who's disturbed about this, David Nahmias, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, should at least be able to go after everyone the DA's office gave the tape to...

Dang, I love it when knee-jerk laws start tying each other in knots.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law ]

From Borklog: The Frou-Frou Menu Generator.

[ related topics: Food ]

Jim Mitchell dead at 63.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Organic farming techniques could feed the world's population:

Ivette Perfecto of the University of Michigan in the US and her colleagues found that, in developed countries, organic systems on average produce 92% of the yield produced by conventional agriculture. In developing countries, however, organic systems produce 80% more than conventional farms.

Perfecto points out that the materials needed for organic farming are more accessible to farmers in poor countries.

(Via Red State Green, via PlasticBoy)

[ related topics: Nature and environment Food ]

I finally got out Sunday for a group bike ride. The bike shop in the town I live in, Niwot Cycles, hosts regular rides. I went out with the group that's supposed to be a step above the "stroll in the park" level. I was the only fat-tire rider but I was confident. My bike is outfitted for commuting with combo-tires. We were going about 40 miles, so I took it easy on the way out at about 15mph. On the way back, I tried to keep up with th e faster rides at about 22mph. I found an interesting scale of sensation:

At 15mph, I feel pain in my ass from the saddle.

At 18-20mph, I feel pain in my quads.

At 22mph, I feel pain in my chest.

I'm going to try to make it a regular ride. It's very convenient for me and they do a barbeque after everyone gets back. I might also look into renting a road bike!

[ related topics: Food Bicycling ]

Hey, this looks cool: Can't justify a Sherline desktop milling machine? The Acra Mill Plus is a little milling machine that uses your Dremel or similar rotary cutter as its power.

[ related topics: Machinery Model Building Woodworking ]

We're actually seeing various real estate agents admit that the market is softening out here, and prices getting reduced, and although we've been saying that we're going to wait two years before we buy (for various personal financial reasons), we ran across a relatively small house with huge curb appeal in a neighborhood we love, that also happened to have a ginormous garage, and that put us in a "learn everything we can" mode. The take-away from that, which is the right one especially given that there are some work issues that'll be shaking themselves out over the next few, was "back to the original plan". So this one's here so that when I see that "perfect house" sometime in the future I can go back and get a shot of reality: Marin Real Estate Bubble: What is due diligence when buying a house?, a list of things to beware of when buying.

[ related topics: Bay Area Economics Real Estate ]

Drive By Shooting

Thank you for not breeding

(editted to avoid copyright issues)

[ related topics: Photography ]

Over on Lumber Jocks, one of the participants started a series called This Old Crack House, about how a bus driver with a bad left hand ended up in over his head in real estate and remodeling deals, and how he dug himself out, but the final episode where he puts up the pictures of the house he finally ended up with is pretty spectacular, even more so in light of some of the intermediate stages.

[ related topics: Weblogs Real Estate Woodworking ]

I actually saw this one a while ago, but Chris had a link to a surprisingly difficult little test, count the number of passes between the players in the white shirts.

[ related topics: User Interface Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

I'm in the process of sending out 378 emails in my final coordinating for the Marin Century/Mt. Tam Double. If you'd like a fun day in the sun without all the sweat of pedaling, we've got plenty of opportunities to be a part of the team.

And if you want to drive SAG we'll even provide the vehicles!

If you're riding, wave to us at the Bolinas-Fairfax Road and Highway 1 rest stop in the morning, or see us driving SAG or hollering that you should watch the left-hand turns on the descent down Big Rock.

[ related topics: Bay Area Bicycling ]

Eric's selling an Atari 400 with games and controllers.

[ related topics: Games Video ]

According to several sources: The Register and ArsTechnica (and many more), Microsoft is patenting adware using context data from desktop applications and displaying adverts.

While part of this hits my funny bone: doing a home budgeting spreadsheet and adverts for bankruptcy lawyers pop-up, or maybe: while doing a powerpoint presentation for your company, your competitors adverts pop up.

I still find it an abomination, and invasion that just really hits me wrong. What it really means to me, is that we must have alternative operating systems. Linux, MacOSX, Solaris... It's not real yet. But somehow, I am sure that Microsoft will bring this patent/technology/revenue stream to life. Slowly at first, in limited ways. And then, everywhere.

On the other side of the coin, I've embraced that same idea for FOSS developers as a way for them to realize some income from their hard work. It's an interesting model, and they often have a "Pay me $25 for a license key and the adverts stop" button.

I fear Microsoft applications will require us to pay for the software, and opting out of ads will be an expensive and recurring option.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Free Software Humor Microsoft Open Source Software Engineering moron Current Events Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Currency ]

Bush: "We're Making Progress" In Iraq, four years of the phrase.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Remember the xkcd comic about sneaking a chess set on a roller coaster for the souvenir picture? People have taken up the challenge.

[ related topics: Humor ]

I have a fairly new HP Pavillion laptop that I use for my work. It's running the stock install of XP Pro and has most of the crapware still installed. It has these buttons across the top of keyboard to play DVDs and music. They are these touch-sensitive things (like the iPhone) and my cats activate them all the time, causing Windows to go into Hibernation. Anyhow, I was running HP's system updater and it wanted to download an update for the driver for these buttons: 18MB worth!

Dan mentioned that I'm selling an Atari 400. This computer has a total of 8KB of memory but still can handle simple button-pushing operations. I can't imagine why this driver could be more than 1MB in size, even if it includes a DVD player!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Games Microsoft Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Sports Video Economics iPhone ]

What happens when power tools meet Luc Besson? La Femme Makita.

[ related topics: Humor Movies Woodworking ]

Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, warned that the housing market's going to get worse before it gets better. He described sub-prime lenders with the terms: "abusive lending practices and outright fraud". He also is warning there there won't be a Federal bail-out of sub-prime lenders.

[ related topics: Economics Real Estate ]

Maybe I read too much sci-fi, or maybe I'm still watching out for errant gorillas, but I miss read this headline as "Mandela turns 89 and launches 'a robot force for good'". After reading into the article that I started to wonder if maybe Jimmy Carter and Kofi Anaan were robots and maybe Mandela knew something we didn't. Of course, he did give his Superteam a title: The Elders.

For the next question, will The Elders have a robot army at their command? Or maybe they'll direct some Superheros. Nah... Probably just a boring squad of zombies...

(Soundtrack by Peter Gabriel on the Virgin label by Peter Branson)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Robotics ]

To quote Micheal Bloomberg:

"There is no reason to believe whatsoever that this is anything other than a failure of our infrastructure."

[ related topics: Community Conspiracy ]

Two for Eric: High Earth Orbit is the weblog of a guy into geography, computers and all that stuff, and that lead me to the Geowanking mailing list.

Oh for unlimited time...

[ related topics: Weblogs Maps and Mapping ]

Worse Than Failure: I'm Sure You Can Deal, talking about a disaster in an server room...

They worked day and night to order new equipment, build new servers, and restore everything from back-up. Countless overtime hours and nearly two hundred thousand dollars in equipment costs later, they managed to bring everything back online. When the Exchange servers were finally restored, the following email finally made its way to everyone's inbox, conveniently answering the “why”

Via Hack The Planet

[ related topics: Humor Technology and Culture moron ]

Interesting: The Global Flat Tax Revolution talks about the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development attempting to build a cartel of high tax countries to keep international tax competition at a minimum.

Which gets me thinking about the function of so many services being provided by the U.S. federal government rather than states or local municipalities and the function that has in reducing competition...

[ related topics: Politics moron Economics ]

Whoops, that's two spoofs today that I've apparently fallen for. At least according to the source I originally got this from.

Baptists for Brownback attempts to use "Unplanned Sexual Event", or U.S.E., instead of "rape", in their anti-abortion rhetoric.

Sam Brownback is the inspiration for this grassroots campaign called, “Cry USE not RAPE”. We have concluded that the acronym U.S.E. (Unplanned Sexual Event), when used regularly to replace the word “rape”, will remove the stigma associated with this sometimes unpleasant situation. It is our mission to protect the innocent lives of the babies that are part of His plan and eliminate the excuses given by many women when a precious baby just isn’t convienient.

Via Gloria Brame.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture moron ]

This one's for Nathan: Bacon Salt: Everything should taste like bacon.

[ related topics: Food - Bacon ]

Awesome! Checkers has been solved, if both players play perfect games it's a draw.

[ related topics: Games ]

Scott Adams (of Dilbert) has some funny things to say about politicians and haircuts:

Third, anyone who can't afford a $400 haircut doesn't get my vote. While it's theoretically possible that the guy working the French fry station at Burger World would make the best president ever, it's not a chance I'm willing to take. That guy has a lot of explaining to do. No, I want a president who is so rich he can pay $400 for a haircut and pay another $300 to the pedicurist to fluff him while he's there. I want a president who knows how to make money and isn't afraid to use it.

[ related topics: Politics Weblogs ]

So I got a spreadsheet emailed to me in Microsoft's new "Office Open" file format. I went searching around and discovered that since Microsoft Office on the Mac doesn't support it, Microsoft supplies a converter that's supposed to convert this file format to the older XLS file format, and OpenOffice.Org will read that. So I download the converter, and it doesn't recognize the file format.

Hey, great "open format"s, Microsoft. The two readers you supply for them don't work, and apparently they're not even readable on the Mac.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Invention and Design moron Work, productivity and environment Macintosh ]

Owner sales via a web site make at least as much money as Realtor enabled sales via an MLS, although the MLS sales go faster.

[ related topics: Economics Real Estate ]

One last attempt to find the WMD.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Weekly World News shutting down.

[ related topics: Current Events Journalism and Media ]

Yes, for Eric: Advice du Jour: Do Whatever Gets You Tenure

Now more than ever, I want an email client that will interface with an SQL database such that as I add records to, say, keep track of what rest stop a volunteer will be working at or what sized T-shirt they wear, I have references back to the email messages that lead to that decision.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Clothing Databases ]

Looks like all of those "abstinence only" sex ed classes have finally had their desired effect: Teen pregnancy rates stop falling:

The long decline in sexual activity among U.S. teenagers, hailed as one of the nation's most important social and public health successes, appears to have stalled.

And, of course, teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. are still horrendously high relative to other industrialized nations.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Health ]

The headlines and summaries out there are slightly misleading, things like "One or more soft drinks a day raises risk of heart disease, diabetes -- even if it's diet, study finds.", because all the quotes in the articles have the researchers saying "it's probably correlation with other lifestyle choices". But the upshot is that if you drink soda and soft drinks, even if they're "diet", you may want to look at your lifestyle...

[ related topics: Health ]

Rather apropos given the earlier notes on tenure:

Colorado Regents Vote to Fire a Controversial Professor

I will add links to some of the source documents later in the comments.

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics ]

Charlene found a desk, "free if we could figure out how to get it out of the house" (it had been brought in through a patio door, but a fence had been built in the probably forty years since it was put in the house), and we picked it up, thinking that it was decent wood and we could use it for some projects. We unloaded it from the roof racks this evening, looked at it a bit, and now we're wondering if it might have value to someone.

It's got a typewriter lift, the warning of which says "Please see Decalcomania for further instructions on operation and care", but searching on "Decalcomania" only brings up stuff related to a printmaking process. Much of the desk is solid wood, and even the veneer is this huge thick stuff. The blind dovetails on the drawers appear to be hand-cut, there are saw marks on the base of the tails that look inconsistent with a router cut dovetail, and the spacing is almost but not quite even.

It's not our style and we don't need a desk, but there's something about this that makes us ask if it'd have value to some retro furniture geek somewhere. It'd need some refinishing, maybe some new veneer on the drawer fronts, but for a factory built piece (that's not necessarily in a style I like, not shown in these pictures are the very 1950s-60s pedestals that it rests on) it's nicely constructed piece that could look decent with some love.

Anyone know anything about it? At the very least I'd find a cool project to do with the awesome heavy-duty typewriter lift, which slides out and then rotates up with a force that might launch, say, that neighborhood small yippie dog into the next county.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Handicaps & Disabilities Dogs Real Estate Woodworking ]

Why Germans Supported Hitler.

[ related topics: Privacy Civil Liberties Dictators ]

Charlene and I were further poking around assorted places yesterday. We popped up the Wikipedia page for Davis, California and saw that as of the 2000 census, the median household income was $42,454. So account for inflation and that's less than $54k now, and yet we pop through to some of the real estate pages and everything in the town is at $500k+.

This morning I read that foreclosures in the Bay Area have hit a 20 year high, and Medley pointed to this blog entry on a conference call with Countrywide Financial Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo.

... Stated that the "definition of prime may not be as high as some people think.

Given current interest rates, a household income of 50k/year should be able to support roughly $150k in mortgage if you use a reasonable number like 25% to 30% of gross income for PITI (Principle, Interest, Taxes and Insurance) on a 30 year fixed. Anything more than 30% and you're starting to play games with buffers, at 50% of gross people aren't likely to have reserves that would let them weather unexpected financial events.

So, yeah, the real estate crash isn't going to be limited to just the "sub prime" markets, there are a lot of people playing the game foolishly.

Speaking of which, Marin Real Estate Bubble pulls up some cute numbers from 1994 and 1995.

[ related topics: Bay Area Economics Real Estate ]

The blogosphere is currently ruffled by the questions of Scott Thomas, the pseudonym for the author of a controversial article in The National Review. His descriptions of various misdeeds by US forces serving in Iraq (deliberately running down dogs with a Bradley fighting vehicle, for instance) have engendered demands that the TNR reveal the author's name, or to provide other, named, witnesses to the events. So far the editor has not come up with much.

However, this essay puts an interesting spin on the question. John Barnes is an experienced editor and a semiotician, and while he has no insight into "Scott Thomas'" real identity, he does suggest the kind of person he is, and even his educational background. This is based on the people who write essays or stories in this style, and how they are in real life. He says that guys who write this sort of thing are MFA students with a certain macho swagger and a penchant for bad Hemingway pastiches. It will be interesting to see who Thomas really is (and you know we will), and if TNR has gotten Glassed again.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Weblogs Writing ]

QOTD, Mark Atwood on body hacking:

Body hacking sounds like a neat idea. But I would really like to have revision control.

Meuon and I used to muse about a DB-9 jack in the back of our necks, that became an ethernet jack, and that, of course, brought up the question of what the upgrade path looked like...

[ related topics: Quotes Databases ]

My sister rants about NWA (That's Northwest Airlines, not the rappers). When I flew out to visit her a month or so ago I must admit that one of the things that pushed me towards flying into Toledo rather than Detroit was that Detroit meant flying [the airline] With Attitude...

(Bonus: Check out Nina Gordon's cover of Straight Out Of Compton, lower left)

[ related topics: Weblogs Aviation ]

Yeah, I suppose I'm just trolling: Wendy McElroy: SlapHillary is back. Now SlapRonPaul?:

But this embarrassing gush over and financing of the man only means that a real libertarian position is unlikely to get aired during the election; it means the term "libertarian" will become further confused by being associated with Paul.

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Current Events ]

Freddie Mercury may be gone, but Queen guitarist Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics:

The 60-year-old guitarist and songwriter said he plans to submit his thesis, "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud," to supervisors at Imperial College London within the next two weeks.

[ related topics: Astronomy Current Events Education ]

Uncyclopedia - where disinformation is the rule...

I'm not sure who introduced it into our circles, whether it was Bill or Phil or Dave, but I just finished Guitar Man, by Will Hodgkinson. Hodgkinson is a writer with some connections who sets himself a goal, play a guitar in front of an audience in six months. In the process he ends up going from London to Florida to Mississippi and points in between, searching for knowledge from guitarists from Roger McGuinn to T. Model Ford to Davy Graham, spinning a fun tale of the energy of youth recaptured.

Not a transcendent tale, but one that had me laughing out loud, and was a fun romp through interesting bits of musical history.

[ related topics: Music Writing ]

Hmmm... I'd long known that "thyme" was an oft-used euphemism for virginity, back in the day, but here's a tale that gives the old song even more meaning...

Oh the Summer time is fading,

And the leaves are swiftly turning,

And the Wild Mountain Thyme,

Blows around the blooming Heather,

Will you go, lassie, go?

Apparently winter flowering heather has a similar effect to Viagra:

From the limited amount of information available, it is suggested the Viagra-analogue is best extracted by steeping the detached small flowers in neat alcohol. An infusion of about 20g of flowers in 100ml of fluid liberates the active principle. A quality full-strength vodka (at least 40 per cent) is also effective. Mr Bennell added: "There is some confusion whether oral consumption or topical application is more effective."

Stolen from Susie Bright.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Health Current Events Wines and Spirits ]

The "Californians for Obama" organization is run by a Republican, and the Obama campaign has seen no proceeds from its fundraising. Check out those organizations closely before you donate, folks...

But a Chronicle examination of the latest Federal Election Commission records on file for the organization for the reporting period ending June 30 shows that while Cash has raised nearly $10,000 this year, not one dollar has gone to the Obama campaign -- or any other political candidate.

Indeed, nearly two thirds of the group's 2007 funding has already been paid out either to Cash himself -- for listed expenses such as salary and travel and snacks -- or to his organization's accounting firm, Burbank-based Durkee & Associates. Other expenses include U.S. postage and signs, the records show.

[ related topics: Politics ]

William Lobdell, religion writer for the LA Times, describes how he lost his faith and why he's changing jobs, via this entry at helmintholog via Medley. His complaints are mostly those of someone who's looked at churches and wondered how a loving god could let organized religion happen.

[ related topics: Religion Writing ]

New York Times reports on porn star turned priest, weblogger makes the calls that NYT reporter apparently didn't, discovers overblown breathless tabloid journalism.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Journalism and Media ]

FBI helped frame 4 men for a 1965 murder and witheld information that could have exonerated them.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Tempering my criticism of Ron Paul a little bit: a big table of 2008 presidential candidates on the issues.

[ related topics: Politics ]

An Englishman is leading the Tour de France... by one day, with his mum as his support team, and unlike the professional riders, it appears that he's likely not taking drugs:

"Oh no, Luke doesn't take drugs at the best of times, not even an aspirin if he has a headache. He does take some cod liver oil tablets, but apart from that he's doing this largely on Coca Cola and jam butties."

He took up cycling a year ago, and it looks like he'll actually complete the entire 2,200 mile route. Screw the doped-up money chasers, this is the sort of athletic endeavor I can get behind and cheer on.

[ related topics: Drugs Sports Bicycling Luke Bream ]

Say what you will about the confluence of PG&E and flawed generator management at Live365 causing net outages, nothing beats Comcast for intermittent internet with no discernable pattern. Comcastic.

[ related topics: Net Culture Archival ]

UDreamOfJanie has a roundup of yesterday's space news: A Horrible Day For Space Flight. Summary:

• Drunk Astronauts
• Apparent sabotage on ISS computers
• NASA employee embezzled $150k

But that's all roughly what we've come to expect from NASA. The kicker was:

• An explosion at a Scaled Composites facility killed 2 and injured 4.

[ related topics: Aviation Space & Astronomy ]

So by now you've undoubtedly seen the news that all previous reports were apparently lies, Pat Tillman was killed by 3 M-16 bullets in the forehead at about 10 meters. Assorted sources say 3 bullets is a standard M-16 burst mode. Speculation runs rampant, at one end this is still a "friendly fire" incident, at the other the vast international conspiracy, but I did note something from the "atheists in foxholes" department:

The chaplain said that O'Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman's side, "crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, 'Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God's not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling ..."

[ related topics: Religion Guns Conspiracy War ]

The Blendtec blender "will it blend?" video series is okay, I guess, but at some point iPods and marbles seem... well... kinda small. So what if you did this on an adult scale, like with a full sized car? a video of a Pri-Max shredder versus a BMW, or some rather mundane engine blocks reduced to bits. Should you need to purchase one (and who doesn't?), that's from SSI Shredding Systems.

[ related topics: Automobiles Machinery Video ]

Ingmar Bergman has died at 89 in Sweden. In the mid sixties, while in high school, a young teacher started a film society, and he showed our english class the first reels of The Seventh Seal, which he was showing that evening. I had never payed much attention to serious films, but I did to this one. There is a scene where people sitting in a tavern are discussing the evil portents of their disintegrating world, and their hysteria builds like an avalanche. Then suddenly the 16mm reel ran out, and I looked around and discovered that the teacher and I were the only ones left in class. I had not heard the final bell, so engrossed was I in the film. It was, I believe, the first time I had ever been moved by a work of art. And since then, everything has been different. Play well, Ingmar.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Forbes has an interesting piece on affordable housing - or the lack thereof - in certain cities. It includes a good way to standardize what housing costs (like down payments, tax and insurance, etc). By the stated figures, in 2001, over 42% of houses sold in Los Angeles were within the affordable range for earners making the median income for LA. In 2007, that figure has dropped to 3%.

There's also a nice piece on the Riskiest U.S. Housing Markets. Their statistic in this article is basically the percent of ARMs issued by banks.

[ related topics: Real Estate Housing Bubble ]

A fascinating little interactive infographic on obesity in America from 1985 to 2005 (via a couple of places, most recently this MeFi thread), and obesity spreads to friends (original study: The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years).

[ related topics: Health Sociology ]

Not only has my net connection been absolutely "comcastic" for the past week or so (and by that I mean intermittent in ways that Lucas switches can only aspire to), Cingular/AT&T/whatever they're calling themselves these days (gotta keep changing names to keep the brand ahead of the reputation...) managed to drop my cell phone connection twice during a five minute call. And since I was on foot and a "redial" made the connection again, it was clearly not a coverage issue.

Sigh.

[ related topics: Wireless ]

Sky News has a follow-up on the Tour de France, including a little interview with the winner, Luke Bream (previously).

[ related topics: Bicycling Luke Bream ]

A few days ago, Jay linked to this deconstruction of the retouching in Redbook cover featuring Faith Hill, and this page on retouching portraits.

To see the whole retouching thing taken to it's creepy extreme, check out the series on retouching kids "beauty" pageant contestants that starts here (From this Sensible Erection link).

I'll leave it to you to make the commentary on what this says about cultural standards of beauty, age, and realism.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Sociology ]