Flutterby™! From 2009-10-01 to 2009-10-31

http://www.shortyellowlights.com puts some money where their mouth is. Good clean informative website with some proposed standards about light timing.

Wish they could help me with the short yellow light and intersection I hit in St. Louis last month. I got mailed pretty pictures of my truck and a bill for $90. I had a truck full of people and I was not driving fast (40mph according to the picture), but I could not have stopped safely in the time of the yellow light. I hate St. Louis, this is just one more reason.

[ related topics: Photography Machinery Currency ]

Tim Suess: Chernobyl Journal.

The Epson R200 started dropping nozzles and making weird noises, so I just installed an HP Photosmart C6350. Plug in. Go through wireless configuration. Fire up Ubuntu 9.04 printer dialog, it finds and installs no problem. Open GIMP, open the SANE dialog, there's the scanner.

No more dicking around with CUPS to find the right settings on my server or any of that stuff. Color me happy. Now to see if its as easy with Windows. Somehow I doubt it, but hope springs eternal...

And just to celebrate a scanner that works quickly and easily, here are two from my glory days. The first is a beat up print that started on 110mm film possibly even in a disposable camera, although more than likely one of those waterproof ones with a plastic lens, of me running the put-in rapid of Short Creek in Alabama, the second is me catching air at Double Trouble on the Ocoee with one of my favorite crews (I ran 'em down the river at least twice, and remember them fondly):

And, yes, I probably owe Craig or whoever bought his photo company some royalties from using that image. If anyone has a reasonable claim on the copyright for that, I'm happy to work with you.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Photography Microsoft Nature and environment Work, productivity and environment Chattanooga Sports Pyrotechnics Copyright/Trademark ]

So I'd asked about building a generator that ran off the pressure drop from water mains to the pressure we actually use household water at. Turns out Sylvania has just released a shower light that runs off the water flow. Found this Via ToolMonger's entry on the Sylvania ShowerLight.

[ related topics: Cool Technology ]

Continuing the large format and different processes discussion with CJ, Mark Sink does wet plate photography.

[ related topics: Photography Community ]

The scanner mania continues: In August of 1983 I paddled the Allagash Wilderness Waterway for the first time.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Travel ]

My dad called last night and said "We're watching the credits of Food Inc., you have to go see this movie". We missed it when it was in the theater out here, although it looks like it's playing in the city, but I've no idea when we're next going to have time for a movie on our schedules, so I guess we'll end up catching it on DVD, but...

This New York Times article on ground beef is making the rounds (thanks, Lyn!). We spend a lot on food. Its easy to wonder why, and wonder why we put so much effort into food prep. This is why: We don't know what's going into our food, and we, collectively, need to start being more aware of it, because the disincentives to risking our health with bad food practices don't nearly outweigh the incentives of food companies taking risks and hiding and passing those risks on to us consumers.

Come to think of it, this has a lot in common with the financial bubble/scam that's been perpetrated on us: By slicing, repackaging and relabeling products, producers are convincing us that those products are better than what they really are, and taking the risk that we've then accepted because we don't know what those products really are as profit for themselves.

[ related topics: Health Movies Food Consumerism and advertising ]

I have linked to Matthias Wandel before, but further discussion with CJ has reminded me that Woodgears.ca, Matthias Wandel's woodworking site, deserves another perusal. Among other things, I should have set up better jigs for gluing up my mitered cabinet doors recently, here are some suggestions on ways to clamp.

And I know I've seen this page before, but adding it here: a big collection of large format camera builders.

Aaaand, The Old Crankee Workshop - Episode One, "a little dorky, but if you watch the Real Norm, is amusing.....". I'll have to watch when I have a moment for video.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Movies Community Video Archival Woodworking Home Improvement Matthias Wandel ]

Last weekend we went to our Family Connection kids' football games, and yesterday I ended up volunteering for "MPR" duty. This is where they send you off to the other team's side with a roster and you're supposed to keep track of which kids are in for each play, because there's a rule about every kid has to get some minimum number of plays per game.

About the end of the third quarter every kid had had his play, and their MPR spotter (who was there to help me) and I had exhausted our basic conversation, so I wandered back around and made a FaceTwit entry that read:

Now painfully aware of how American Football is an expression of everything I think is wrong with the human condition. There for the kids...

Here's why:

• The team runs out between two lines of cheering chearleaders, making it clear that a woman's role in this sport is simply to stand on the sidelines and look pretty while urging the men on.
• Weight matters more than conditioning. At least at this level, but I'd much rather see these kids playing soccer or something that requires them to be able to run consistently and get some cardio strength.
• The focus is as much on physical violence as it is on the ball handling. "Flatten him" is a far more compelling rallying cry than "move the ball forward".

Now some of this is biased by the particulars of the teams. In taking kids to practice I've overheard more discussions of parole and sentencing and prison terms in a few hours of hanging out in bleachers than, frankly, the rest of my life. Hanging out with the opposite side yesterday was a good counter to that, those parents said "yeah, not my scene, but the kids want to play". On the other hand, yesterday's opposite side also got stomped in a blowout.

Oh well. Our Family Connection mom agrees with my assessment of football, my assurance to her has been that we'll expose the kids to as much of what the world has to offer that we can, hopefully when they hit adolescence football culture will be what they rebel against.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games Sociology California Culture Sports Currency ]

Fear of Cycling: An essay in 5 parts (Via MeFi, whose comment thread descends into silliness. First thing: Bike paths are very rare, and they're only bike paths if pedestrians are prohibited, otherwise they're multi-use paths. And even then pedestrians are often found on them and will holler about unsafe cycling.)

[ related topics: Sociology Bicycling ]

47% of households will pay no income tax this year. Actually, that's kind of misleading:

When considering federal income taxes in combination with payroll taxes, the percent of households with a net liability of zero or less is estimated to be 24% this year, according to the Tax Policy Center's estimates.

Uh. Yeah. We're solidly in the other 53% of households.

[ related topics: Business Politics Currency Government ]

Proggy Fonts aka Programming Fonts: After blowing a couple of hours finding that period I thought was a comma, I have found and installed "Proggy Clean w/ Slashed Zero and Bold Punctuation". The difference is subtle, and yet, remarkable. The difference between ; and : as well as , and . is quite clear.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Graphic Design Race ]

Rare photo of me smiling at 18, more grist from the scanner, this one's from my Outward Bound trek in and around Linville Gorge and Table Rock North Carolina, near Asheville.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life ]

A recent debate was held by the Memphis TN NAACP between mayoral candadates. What was different about this one was that it included 3 professional wierdos who were running. They actually make more sense than some of the regulars running.

I do have more knowlege about Prince Mongo Hodges, perennial candidate and local crank. A few years ago I was attending a seminar in Memphis, and our hostess was a relative of the Prince, who she always knew as Uncle Mongo. He is related to a wealthy family and has owned some bars in Memphis over the years, and is always running for something. She said that some of his suggestions for city policies were actually pretty good. I wish we had somebody like this in Chicago, although Blago is coming close.

[ related topics: Sociology Civil Liberties Community ]

In the "You have to be kidding me!" department, Yoram Bauman has pointed out that Douglas W. Elmendorf, recently appointed to be head of the Congressional Budget Office, was co-author on a 2005 paper titled Can Financial Innovation Help to Explain the Reduced Volatility of Economic Activity?

Great. Meanwhile, that bailout's doing pretty well, no? Greenwich still has its mansions? Hamptons pretty much booked this summer? Good.

Yoram Bauman also has a new book coming out, The Cartoon Introduction to Economics: Volume One: Microeconomics, Amazon link with his affiliate code intact, Barnes & Noble similarly, though you should order it from your local book store.

And he's putting together a tour in which he'll be in the Bay Area in April or May of 2010, and, Atlanta area folks, he's doing a show with a number of other economists on January 3rd, the humor session of the American Economic Association that will be free and open to the public. In a remarkable showing that he's not afraid of competition from the public sector, he's even invited Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee

[ related topics: Humor Books Economics ]

Violet Blue on filmmaker Anna Span's evidence presented to the British Board of Film Classification that female ejaculation exists.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Physiology ]

Cockeyed: How much is inside a sandwich?

Word for Word: Paul Roberts and "The End of Food" at The Commonwealth Club (Thanks, Mark).

"If we're going to give food the priority it deserves, we're going to have to stop watching other people cook."

[ related topics: Food ]

Previously, I mentioned a site that asks "did Glenn Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990?". Presumably aware that that pesky First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allow for free speech, Beck's legal team is appealing to international law and going to WIPO. Eiland-Hall's lawyer Marc J. Randazza responds:

We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion. We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of imbeciles that his members are blankly staring at the Respondent’s website wondering “where did all the race baiting content go?” We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent’s website shut down. He wants it shut down because Respondent’s website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck’s very rhetorical style. Beck’s skin is too thin to take the criticism, so he wants the site down. Beck is represented by a learned and respected legal team. Accordingly, it is beyond doubt that his counsel advised him that under the First Amendment to the United States’ Constitution, no action in a U.S. Court would be successful. See, e.g., Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988). Accordingly, Beck is attempting to use this transnational body to circumvent and subvert the Respondent’s constitutional rights.

Via MeFi.

Glenn Beck himself has written:

Once we sign our rights over to international law, the Constitution is officially dead.

Nice to know where Glenn Beck stands on that particular end.

[ related topics: Law Civil Liberties ]

Mark Evanier on, among other things, the Dungeons & Dragons animated TV show:

We weren't allowed to teach any of that.  We had to teach kids to join gangs.   And then to do whatever the rest of the gang wanted to do.

What a stupid thing to teach children.

Ahhh, the Reagan years...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Animation Television ]

DIY Rotomolding.

[ related topics: Fabrication ]

Charlene's flying into JFK and bussing up to Sheffield Mass. on the 2nd of January, and leaving there the 30th. Current plan is that I'll fly in to somewhere (NYC or Albany?), rent a car, and we'll spend a week bouncing around the northeast.

Problem is it's winter there: Skiing, and... well... We've done the basics in NYC and will probably be avoiding the cities, it'd probably be cool to stop by the two places I used to live in that area (West Lebanon, New York, and Newtown, Connecticut) and the little community where I went to elementary school (Harlemville, New York), but what should we do in the Northeast U.S. in the first week of February. Drive down to D.C. and meet the folks down there? Stay in the Berkshires? I'm guessing western New York isn't exactly hoppin' that time of year.

What say y'all?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Invention and Design Aviation Theater & Plays Sports Automobiles Community New York Public Transportation ]

Women, Magazines and Plywood. Christopher Schwarz presents three current woodworking magazine covers with women and plywood on 'em.

[ related topics: Weblogs Woodworking ]

Okay, solved my bug, have procrastinated long enough on going back under the house, here's a bunch of links:

• A bunch of people have been pointing to I like Unicorn because its Unix. Nothing new here, just another voice saying "hey, we don't have to use threads just because Windows is broken".
• English Russia has a car made of wood. Pretty, although like Sean says, I'd rather have it be one or the other, rather than the half-and-half.
• Abstruse Goose on the problem I run into whenever I try to explain things to Charlene.
• CJ forwarded along Wall Street Journal: A Young Tinkerer Builds a Windmill, Electrifying a Nation, about a young man in Malawi who figured out how to electrify his house. He's got a blog.
• Fantastic Contraption: Prius Edition. Adds the kind of goofy concept of "efficiency", which basically rewards building with a "solar panel" stick, but new levels for the same Fantastic Contraption that you already know and love.
• Jeff fowarded along this bicycling video that I haven't had a chance to watch yet.
• Andrew Sullivan adds his voice to the "why Human Rights Campaign won't get any more of my money" chorus. As I noted, Viv said similar things.

Now under the house to finish sealing the edges of the vapor barrier. The dirt seemed pretty dry under the house when it wasn't covered, now that I've put plastic over it there's an awful lot of water down there.

[ related topics: Games Weblogs Microsoft Movies Invention and Design Writing Civil Liberties Sports Automobiles Currency Pedal Power Video Bicycling Economics Archival Marriage Real Estate Woodworking Photovoltaics ]

The first Ephemerisle just happened. I've been aware of it because of updates that Chris has been sending around, and have been having trouble finding a link that sums what I've seen all up. It looks to me like a nascent Burning Man, but a few links:

• James Hogan's Ephemerisle thoughts.
• Chris recommended a general introduction to seasteading, but as I wrote back to him, I've never been enthused by the theories put forward by seasteading proponents, I'm much more interested in the reports from actual practice.
• Chris was quoted in a Declan McCullough/CBS News report. (Chris's entry)
• Danny O'Brien gives the first mainstream coverage. (Chris's entry).
• And the Ephemerisle 2009 coverage Seasteading.org Wiki page.

[ related topics: Burning Man Quotes Books Current Events Journalism and Media Boats ]

Juggling for brains - While it doesn't say if it actually makes you any smarter, it does say that learning to juggle increases gray and white matter, and that it "sticks". I can almost juggle (simple 3 ball), perhaps I should work on that, and riding a unicycle.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment Education Race Clowns Bicycling ]

A new theory explains why the the Large Hadron Collider at CERN broke down on the first day of operation: creating the Higgs Boson is so abhorent to the natural order that the very fabric of Space and Time turned back on itself and disabled the device so it couldn't produce the particle. I expect to see this same explanation in the next warranty card with a home appliance.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Mathematics Bizarre ]

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn.

Ars Technica: 100 years of Big Content fearing technology—in its own words.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Technology quiz: If you were to travel 2000 years in the past, how useful would you be in recreating modern technology?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama History ]

Chartgame picks random historical data for an S&P 500 stock, lets you buy and sell and advance a day, and sees if you can outperform buy and hold. From Matthias Wandel, who's now been linked enough to get his own topic.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Economics Archival Matthias Wandel ]

Creating Lichtenberg Figure sculptures. Via Sensible Erection.

Been a while since we've had some woodworking porn here:

• The Top 10 Unusual Chairs over at Industrial Shape and Form
• KM Cook Woodworking
• Domino made handles.

[ related topics: Furniture Woodworking ]

Note to all those still buying mortgage backed securities: When the company that nominally holds my mortgage is going out of its way to get me to take a lower interest rate, despite neighborhood price adjustments on my property that have negatively impacted my LTV, it's clear that the people who are selling the mortgages have not yet been dictated a reasonable set of incentives by those holding the mortgages.

In other horrendous economic news, the DOW is already over 10k. Which means we're gonna have another harsh painful crash, which means we haven't seen the worst of this recession yet.

[ related topics: Current Events Economics ]

Eric Wagoner is having problems with the State of Georgia seizing raw milk.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

On the ALE List, Aaron is a well respected zealot. Especially about electronic voting systems. It's a long rant, well summarized in one quote:

"In essence, the judges of the Georgia Supreme court have now ruled that no Georgia citizen can challenge the legality and constitutionality of a voting system that produces no evidence and provides no accountability because the voting system produces no evidence and provides no accountability which would show just cause for a legal challenge."

More issues on VoteGA.org, many other states have similiar issues.

It's a real problem if we are to maintain the perception that we are a representative democracy. I can think of low-tech (back to paper ballots), extra step ("vote" again with an outside auditing agency[do you remember who you voted for dog catcher?]), and high tech (digital keys) solutions with printed receipts (hmm,. paper again, eh?). But none really work better than counting chad laden paper ballots or electronically scanned paper ballots.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Work, productivity and environment Dogs ]

I'm reading Terry Pratchett's latest, Unseen Academicals, and it's living up to expectations. In one passage, The Patrician, some say dictator of the city of Ankh-Morpork, is musing on watching a family of otters feast on a freshly killed salmon and her roe:

One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

When I was younger I had a friend who proclaimed that she didn't read fiction. At some point, I realized that I didn't read non-fiction, and it was often the novel that educated me the most on humanity and the world. Pratchett's most recent books have been that way in spades, and Unseen Academicals, a foray into the world of sports (and how they serve the needs of the citizens and the state), doesn't disappoint on that front.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Books Ethics Nature and environment Sociology Terry Pratchett ]

"For any problem in a system, in which the programmer brings up as "might happen" and requires some serious effort to code against/around, and the system designers (customer) declares in writing that it will never happen in the real world on a production system and don't spend time/money worrying about it, creates a natural condition in the universe in which the first real world use of the system will cause that "impossible" condition to naturally occur."

It's just a tighter defined verbose version of: "What can go wrong, will" But I feel as code-monkeys this version is a good reminder.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Theater & Plays Writing Work, productivity and environment Currency ]

Philip Greenspun points out that the current Wall Street profits are being made by borrowing from the U.S. government at 0% and using that money to buy Treasuries at 2%.

[Edit: Ben Williams points out that I should have done the simple math, so be skeptical.]

[ related topics: moron Currency Economics ]

CJ continues taunting me with cool photography things to do: Alternative Photography processes.

[ related topics: Photography ]

There's a new movie in town. Well, in limited release and not in San Francisco, but: Black Dynamite is Shaft, Superfly and all of those rolled into one.

But even if the genre or a film that honors it while parodying it doesn't impress you, it might be worth reading through their blaxploitation history page.

[ related topics: Movies History ]

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, has been using a made-up law citation, “8 USC 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv)(b)(iii)”, as justification for some of his actions.

He claimed the LII as the source of that law. There is no such sub-section in the US Code. No such text appears on our web site, or ever has — a fact easily discovered by reporters who went to our site.  Instead, the text in Arpaio’s presser was made up by an anti-immigration group in Connecticut.  It looks awfully official, though.  You can read this story in newspapers and blogs here, here, and here — and you probably should, because this is the Internet, and who’s to say I’m not making things up, too?  I thought Stephen Lemons’ story in the Phoenix New Times gave a good account of the legal-information side of the story.

[ related topics: moron Law Current Events Law Enforcement ]

UK government inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution.

Current and former ministers have claimed that thousands of women have been imported into the UK and forced to work as sex slaves, but most of these statements were either based on distortions of quoted sources or fabrications without any source at all.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture moron Law Enforcement ]

Vulva Portrait Pendants on Etsy.

[ related topics: Erotic ]

Welcome to iWatch, LA's new user friendly link to the Thought Police.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Enforcement Conspiracy ]

Further later edit: Sequoia Voting System Witch Hunt ... err ... Study Project.

Later edit: Okay, I'm gonna leave this here, but it seems like there's a bunch of flying off the handle over issues that aren't really there with these guys.

Sequoia Voting System study project

In light of the conversation about the new super-sensitive digital SLRs and astrophotography, CJ sent along this article on the Sloane telescope, an 8 foot mirror with a fairly wide field that's done the automated Sloan Digital Sky Survey:

The SDSS used a dedicated 2.5-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory, New Mexico, equipped with two powerful special-purpose instruments. The 120-megapixel camera imaged 1.5 square degrees of sky at a time, about eight times the area of the full moon. A pair of spectrographs fed by optical fibers measured spectra of (and hence distances to) more than 600 galaxies and quasars in a single observation. A custom-designed set of software pipelines kept pace with the enormous data flow from the telescope.

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Astronomy ]

Every time I have to do something with a web site that uses a third party domain name for some of its dealings, like every bank I've ever done business with, or AT&T, or... well... pretty much every big company (usually the smaller companies get this right) I scream because they're just adding to the confusion that makes it easier to do phishing.

Case: I'm getting a lot of spam suggesting that I log in a sub-domain of capitalonebank.com to verify and set up my account. Actual domain is capitalone.com. When my credit union's online banking is "rcuconnect.com" and AT&T reroutes me off to who knows what when I go through password recovery, knowing that the extra "bank" in that domain name is wrong is something I don't expect from the average consumer.

[ related topics: Spam Consumerism and advertising ]

YouTube tear-jerker video of the day, testimony for Maine's marriage equality:

The woman at my polling place asked me "do you believe in equality for gay and lesbian people?" I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that. It made no sense to me. Finally I asked her, "What do you think I fought for on Omaha Beach?"

Via Mefi.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Marriage ]

Interesting: Dive Into Mark: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you, on his reaction to someone publishing a competing dead-trees version of Dive Into Python based on its GPL license.

[ related topics: Free Software Python ]

A number of politically active musicians have filed a FOI request with the government to discover the list of musical numbers used to torture prisoners at Gitmo. I'm not sure if they want to stop it, or if they're just afraid they're on the list. I would expect to find something by Bono on the list, to say nothing of anything by Clay Aiken...

[ related topics: Music War David Hasselhoff ]

Classically Liberal: There is a fury and and sadness inside that I cannot express:

The explosion of “youthful sex offenders” is not the result of our kids becoming perverts. It is the result of the law criminalizing what is a normal part of growing up.

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

Twitter feed: FakeAPStylebook. Too many for a simple excerpt, but I'll try:

@FakeAPStylebook is it preferable to refer to the country as "Burma" or as "Myanmar"?

.@kpich If accuracy / Is what you crave / Then you should call it / Myanmar Shave

And

While it's tempting to call them "baristi," because of the Italian roots, plural of "barista" is "journalism majors.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Humor Journalism and Media ]

LA times reports that the 2010 California Protection of Marriage amendment is cleared to gather signatures to appear on the ballot. Help save marriage. Stamp out divorce.

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture Marriage ]

Yet another review of Shop Class as Soulcraft, which I've bought but haven't started yet. Via CJ.

A number today from CJ that I'm splitting up: an article on Galloway Forest Park in southwest Scotland being recognized as a "Dark-Sky Park" and therefore, despite the regular rain, good for astronomy.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Astronomy Current Events ]

Photographer's Formulary, a source for chemicals for DIY photography. Via CJ.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Interesting article about the health care debate and the responsibility of the federal government in it, back in the Revolutionary War era.

[ related topics: Health History ]

In defense of children behaving badly. Reasoning with preschoolers doesn't work in the short-term, but does work better in the long term. Via Medley.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Interesting little NPR story on the history of the U.S. health system, you might want to have this table of life expectancy by age from 1850 to 2004 open while you read it.

[ related topics: Health ]

If you need a giggle this morning, check out the Parts Express reviews of the Wattgate 381 Audio Grade Duplex Socket, at a mere $147.72.

[ related topics: Humor Music moron ]

I'm going to write up something more, including a few pictures, but my mom's been visiting, our neighbor works at Amy's Kitchen and he'd offered a tour last time she was here, so yesterday we went up to take a tour of their Santa Rosa plant.

I've been reading a bunch of the local food stuff recently. We spend most of our time on the periphery of the store, and we eat very little processed food. I have toured processed food production lines in the past, and that's contributed to my "do it all at home" ethos. I've seen a number of recalls for soup and such that involve bits of metal because something fell into the choppers. We also read ingredients labels, and I'm prepared to be extremely cynical, so I was ready to come away from this thinking "there's an interesting set of industrial processes", and spend some time looking at their production lines trying to understand Larry's world a little bit.

However, I was pretty damned impressed. I'll go into detail later, but they run batch production on a set of repurposeable lines. They hand-chop chunks, use some awesome industrial strength food processors for grating and slicing, and the cooking and assembly is set up such that it really is all processes that you'd do in your own kitchen, except maybe for the jar and can filling, which run from the cooking kettles into pistons that accurately measure and fill the jars, but even there the jars get filled, the tops get put on, and they're transferred to canning cookers that are clearly related to the processes I use in my own kitchen.

And I'm now inspired to make my own tofu!

It didn't automatically turn me from being a "cook it myself" person, but I was quite impressed, both that the processes of Amy's Kitchen really are just scaled up versions of what I'd do in my own kitchen, and that the work environment was pretty friendly and happy; there's a good sense of people enjoying the place and happy to be there, and I think that's got to translate into attention to detail.

Despite my general aversion to processed foods, we do have a bunch of canned stuff we use anyway for disaster preparedness, and I'm now okay with adding Amy's canned soups and such to that stash, and we'll also occasionally buy frozen convenience foods, for that "too lazy to cook tonight" time, and I feel pretty good about Amy's there too.

Which surprised me.

Full disclosure: We got a few coupons for free products at the end of our visit, and our neighbors who work there are good folks.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Food Work, productivity and environment ]

A few months ago we were down in Pacific Grove, hanging out in the coffee shop there, and ended up talking with the folks behind the counter. One of them was working on a web site for all things Jade. He's launched now. One of the things he'd mentioned, and I hope he gets up there shortly, is information on finding jade in the wild. That's an expedition I'm looking forward to.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment California Culture ]

SpatiaLite is a geographic database extension to SQLite

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping Maps & Mapping Databases ]

A month or two ago I was kicking myself for not having implemented a little interpreter and environment to drive some embedded prototyping I was doing. I had a bunch of primitives, all accessible by a basic command line, but no control structure or way to write sets of commands back to disk.

I think Itty Bitty Tiny Basic is exactly what I was looking for.

[ related topics: Embedded Devices ]

The governator rises to the occasion:

http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/2286742.html

I was up at Alembic last night, and this beautiful pair of bookmatched Cocobolo boards was waiting to be turned into a guitar. Both images at reasonable size.

[ related topics: Music Photography Woodworking ]

Dr Bill and I shared an office at Pixar, a lifetime ago.

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Graphics ]

From the New Scientist: "Seven questions that keep physicists up all night". What is interesting is that many of the basic mysteries of physics when I was in college in the late 60s-early 70s have been far surpassed by the meaty mysteries of today. We discovered that the universe is way stranger than we thought when the Uncertainty Principle was the prime question. We even have a scientific blood feud going on between the stringologists and those who think stringology is sheer nonsense. Cool!

[ related topics: Cool Science Invention and Design Education Flying Spaghetti Monster ]

Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time - It's got a lot of science in it, but it never mentions of the receiving bat's eyes roll up and flutter while they moan.

At some point, I think it was attempting to uninstall the "Lite" versions of Visual Studio C# or C++ after I'd installed the full version, attempts to install various software on my Windows Vista 64 machine started complaining about installs in progress. Today I decided I'd really like Python on Windows, so I tried a couple of times, and kept getting a message about another install in progress. A few reboots, a couple of web pages suggested some registry keys to delete, but the failures still happened.

Eventually I tracked down the Windows Installer Clean Up Utility on the Microsoft support site, so I downloaded it and tried to install it:

Yep, it says "Windows Installer Clean Up Setup", and it has failed because "Error 1500. Another installation is in progress. You must complete that installation before continuing this one." Which, of course, is exactly why I was trying to install the stupid thing in the first place.

I didn't think it was possible for me to dislike Windows more than I already did.

[ related topics: Humor Photography Microsoft Software Engineering moron Monty Python Python ]

Homeland Security Watch: "Do I have the right to refuse this search?" (Google cache of article). A police officer looks at TSA policies.

Had I actually intended to move contraband past the screening point, my best strategy would have been to refuse secondary screening.

I am also forced to conclude that the purpose of the “pat-down” was not to actually interdict contraband. In my case, I believe I was subjected to a haphazard response in order to effectively punish me for refusing secondary screening and to encourage a different decision in the future.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Movies History Law ]