Flutterby™! From 2011-02-01 to 2011-02-28

Charcoder. A little bit of stupid JavaScript to stuff into a file so that you can easily generate those ü sorts of characters.

If you only listen to one performance of John Williams' theme to Jurassic Park played by two percussionists, a cellist, and a whole orchestra full of guitarists today...

Via this MeFi entry which has more from the Shiba Guitar Club.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Movies Theater & Plays ]

No need to read further: "Maine To Legalize Switchblades for One-Armed People."

[ related topics: Law Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Back of the Bus: Mass transit, race and inequality. As I've said before, if you start to look at actual energy costs of mass transit a lot of places we've implemented it in the United States make no sense, but if you look at it as a matter of income redistribution and social engineering the blocks start to fall into place. This piece looks a bit at the intersection of urban planning, race, and bus routes.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Public Transportation ]

Java Hangs When Converting 2.2250738585072012e-308. And So does PHP. Perl and the GNU C library seem to be okay.

[ related topics: Language Books Perl Open Source Software Engineering ]

Shadow forwarded along Wired: Frame of Mind: Inside the Lost Art of Building Handmade Bikes. I'm not sure that it's a lost art, I know of a couple of custom frame builders, but then SyCip bikes, the ones profiled in the piece, are "handcrafted in Sonoma county".

[ related topics: Art & Culture Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Golden Gate Bridge tolls to go all electronic:

Those who don't use FasTrak will have their license plate numbers recorded by cameras that are already installed at the tolls, and a bill will be sent to the address of the car's registered owner.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area moron Automobiles ]

In keeping with the Bay Area bike theme today, JWZ posts a spotter's guide to the bikes of San Francisco, and a direct link to Tor Weeks' Flickr page with the Bikes of San Francisco image, and a link to the page where you could buy the Bikes of San Francisco poster before it was sold out.

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs Bay Area California Culture Douglas Adams Bicycling ]

Over on Facebook, one of my contacts linked to Cracked.com: 5 Complaints About Modern Life (That Are Statistically B.S.). The first one is:

"The corporations and the government have us all living like slaves. I can back it up with numbers, too -- in 1950 you could buy a brand new nine-room brick home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for the whopping sum of $11,500. A decent family car was about $500, and the gas for it was about 25 cents a gallon. A large loaf of bread cost under 15 cents. A large coffee was a nickel, with a free refill. I could go on and on. But now between greedy corporations and the government confiscating our income with sky-high taxes, you have to work two jobs just to survive."

Which they then attempt to rebut with "A low-end job in the service industry paid a dollar an hour in 1950.". Okay, so, let's look at their numbers then. These days, a low-end job in the service industry pays what, $8, maybe $10 an hour? So let's multiply all that by ten.

Can't buy a nine-room brick home anywhere near me for $115,000. Looks like you can buy an older home in Pittsfield for that. A decent family car for $5,000? Okay, it's apples and oranges, cars these days have 6 or more digit odometers, not 5 digit ones, and safety in modern cars is a completely different world than back then, but... Gas for $2.50? Hah! I don't buy pre-sliced bread, so I probably don't see the low end of the spectrum, but I expect to pay at least $3.80 for a loaf of bread, not $1.50. Fifty cents for a cup of coffee? Not for a while.

They do point to a couple of cost-of-living calculators, but to go back a bit... I went to High School in Fairfield County, Connecticut. A pretty upscale area, I'd definitely compare the economics of that area to Marin and Sonoma. Most cost of living calculators say between the mid '80s and now we've seen 2 or 2.5 times inflation multiplier. As I think I've mentioned before, for every price I can remember, from gasoline to a large soft-serve ice cream, things are about four times more expensive now than they were then. So I don't know where these lower numbers that the cost of living calculators are using come from, but I'm skeptical.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Bay Area Sociology Automobiles Economics Government ]

There's an old Jordan Shelbourne story called Virgin (On The Ridiculous) that has this exchange:

Cliff was sitting there on his bed, propped against his wall, surrounded by three empty mickey bottles of rye. He was staring at a MASH rerun on a little color television. I turned it off. "Hey!" said Cliff.

"You've seen it," I told him. "It's the one where Hawkeye complains about the inhumanity of war."

And it got me to thinking about the modern equivalent to MASH. Is it The Simpsons? Friends? Or are we beyond that?

YouTube

"You've seen it," I told him, "it's the one with the cute kittens."

Wikileaks

... "it's the one where the State Department needs to grow a spine, and the resulting revolution puts an unfriendly government in power because of the U.S. government's lack of principles."

a 4chan channel

... "it's the one where the people trading unspeakably disgusting porn turn out to be decent human beings who pull together for the betterment of humanity."

Facebook

... "you hung out with them in high school, and they've got kids now. And getting back together with her would be a bad idea."

Huffington Post

... "it's the one where they're outraged about Fox news."

Or maybe it's not net based at all. What's your take?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Technology and Culture History moron Current Events Television Furniture ]

Eric Goldman: Free-to-Consumers Ad-Supported Website Isn't Illegally Priced--Cammarata v. Bright Imperial:

Kevin Cammarata ran subscription-based porn sites until he sold his business at an allegedly depressed sales price. The defendant runs an ad-supported porn site, RedTube.com, one of many porn websites with the suffix -tube.com as an homage to YouTube. Nothing about any of the websites implicated by this lawsuit is office-safe. The court, apparently with a straight face, sets the context by saying "the formerly profitable subscription-based websites 'have been brought to their knees' by the tube-based sites." (Once again reinforcing that the Internet is really just a series of tubes...?)

Basically, Cammarata was pursuing the case that free porn sites were distributing content below market cost in order to drive him out of business. Since the free porn sites are basically advertising for pay porn sites, that's a hard (sorry) case to make. Wired's summary of Goldman's article. MeFi thread.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Bay Area Law Consumerism and advertising Net Culture Economics Archival ]

A Guide: How not to say stupid stuff about Egypt. (Via Medley)

[ related topics: Douglas Adams ]

Wolfire Games: Counterfeit Lugaru on Apple's App Store (developing). They released the source code as GPL as part of the Humble Indie Bundle, but the assets are still licensed. They also put the game up on the Apple App Store, and Steam, and a few other places, as a $10 download. Someone recompiled their source, ripped off their assets, and is selling the app on the Apple App Store for $.99.

It's kinda weird that the app store with the most draconian review and licensing procedures around seems so amazingly slow to respond to something like this.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Games Weblogs Open Source ]

Business Insider: LEAKED: AOL's Master Plan. On how AOL wants to use content farming to take over the web:

"AOL is the most f-----up, bull---t company on earth," says one, who joined AOL in what he calls, "the worst career move I've ever made."

Others are more positive, but asked not to be quoted.

[ related topics: Quotes moron ]

He said he was surprised to see engineering-quality work in a report that was not signed by a licensed professional. "When you start applying the principles for trip generation and route assignment, applying judgments from engineering documents and national standards, and making recommendations," that's technical work a licensed engineer would do, Lacy said.

Getting in trouble for being smart is just part of being a good programmer. Queuing, routing and traffic analysis is basic stuff to a programmer or network admin... apply such to to vehicle traffic patterns should not be a misdemeanor.

[ related topics: broadband Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Travel ]

Sacramento Bee: 'Death by GPS' in desert.

"It's what I'm beginning to call death by GPS," said Death Valley wilderness coordinator Charlie Callagan. "People are renting vehicles with GPS and they have no idea how it works and they are willing to trust the GPS to lead them into the middle of nowhere."

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

NY Times: Paul Starr: A Health Insurance Mandate With a Choice:

There is another way, however, to accomplish the same purpose: let individuals opt out of the new insurance system, without a penalty, by signing a form on their tax return acknowledging that they would then be ineligible for federal health insurance subsidies for a fixed period — say, five years.

I think you'd also have to tune a few other parts of it, a little more notion about pre-existing conditions, maybe have a 1 or 2 year period for new sign-ups for health insurance during or after that period, but that seems like a compromise that could help us move towards a health insurance system that takes care of the huge gaping issue we have with preventive medicine right now that gets around the primary complaints of those against compulsory insurance.

[ related topics: Politics Health Invention and Design ]

A few years ago, shortly after I built the quadricycle for Burning Man, I thought about building a prone pedal vehicle of some sort. Someone else did: Shadow passed along OhGizmo!'s note on the StreetFlyer, which dangles the rider. StreetFlyer.info isn't responding for me right now, but should be the manufacturer's site.

[ related topics: Burning Man Pedal Power ]

One of those things that incomprehensibly still makes me giggle is Sandra Boynton's "Hippo Birdies Two Ewes" card.

Medium Large has a take on this.

[ related topics: Humor Heinlein ]

Russian scientists are about to drill into Lake Vostok, a body of water sealed beneath the Antarctic ice cap for 15 million years. Why am I suddenly reminded of most of the cheesy SF movies of the 50s and 60s, where the unwary scientists accidently revive some Jurassic creature? Or even earlier, what Lovecraft wrote about in At The Moountains of Madness? Apparently a movie is to be made of the story, but now it might end up as a documentary. Beware!

[ related topics: Movies Current Events Bizarre ]

A few pictures from this morning's walk out to Pierce Point: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-02-06_Pierce_Point

[ related topics: Photography ]

I thought this was cogent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZaLipDgFZQ

I, for one, welcome our mobile hexapede exoskeleton wearing hamster overlords. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3iP0NGDDao

[ related topics: Movies ]

Oooh! Cool idea! JPEG canaries: exposing on-the-fly recompression.

Our algorithm works by adding a high-frequency pattern to the image with an amplitude carefully selected to cause maximum quantization error on recompression at a chosen target JPEG quality factor. The amplitude is modulated with a covert warning message, so that foreground message blocks experience maximum quantization error in the opposite direction to background message blocks. While the message is invisible in the marked original image, it becomes visible due to clipping in a recompressed copy.

What's also cool is how their sample images look as you scale 'em on the iPad.

Hat tip to MarkV.

You know who else had graphic design standards? Steven Heller: The Master Race’s Graphic Masterpiece

[ related topics: History Graphic Design ]

The "Chrysler - Imported From Detroit" ad with Eminem would be so much more effective if it were from an American company.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Glued up 4 of the 8 dovetailed drawers that are destined for my Curly Maple and Camatillo toolbox.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Speaking of Super Bowl ads: Many have approved of the Motorola Ad which features Apple robots wandering around with earbuds attached, a gentle satire on the justifiably famous Macintosh 1984 ad. However, there is a strange backstory, where Apple cultism collided with literary cultism.

According to the Chicago Tribune, in 1984 the guy who owned the film and TV rights to Orwell's novel (and who produced the well-received 1984 remake with Richard Burton) actually sent a cease-and-desist letter to Apple for violating his copyright. Apparently Apple never bothered to reply, and since the ad was never officially re-aired, nobody ever followed up. It now appears that the lawyers for the estate of the owner were carfully watching Sunday's ad to be ready to pounce on Motorola if need be. Its still wonderful that the company that did the original ad has ended up as the most closed-end, anal defender of their prerogatives since IBM in its heyday.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Technology and Culture Television Civil Liberties Sports Macintosh Copyright/Trademark ]

Flickr: Isaac Kehimkar's photostream. As the MeFi entry says: "...is devoted to butterflies, because he's an "ardent butterfly lover"."

[ related topics: Butterflies Photography ]

Reading "Reality Is Broken". Know there's some truth here 'cause my mind is trying so hard to figure out why her assertions are wrong.

OkCupid: The Best Questions For A First Date

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Especially apropos because I'm in the midst of reading Jane McGonigal's Reality is Broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world and thinking about games and time (and puzzling over how some of these notions of empowerment and small achievable steps hark back to TQM and Continuous Improvement and any number of other management crazes): WoW left me for a younger player.

Hat tip.

[ related topics: Games ]

Fort Wayne Indiana is looking to name a community center. The front-runner in the online poll is to name it after Fort Wayne's longest serving Mayor, one Harry Baals.

... The former mayor pronounced his last name "balls." His descendants have since changed it to "bales."

These are presumably the same sorts of descendents who pronounce "Boehner" as "Baner".

[ related topics: Community ]

http://www.malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com/

Truth: The Oatmeal: What I want from a restaurant website.

[ related topics: Food Comics ]

I'm reading The Proceedings of the European Conference of Ministers of Transport: Communication in Road Safety, Warsaw, 2-3 October 1997 (pdf). The paradigms listed on page 24 and 25 make for interesting reading on how we view the framework of a substantially similar set of technologies through the lenses of different eras. Safety and traffic management went from viewing control of the vehicle being the problem to control of traffic situations, to management of traffic systems, to management of transport systems and social attitudes being as important as intersection management.

But I was particularly impressed by this quote from page 78:

Thirty years ago a quarter of all drivers killed in road accidents had more than 0.8 grammes/litre of alcohol in their blood. The British Government tackled the problem by introducing a legal drink/drive limit enforced by roadside screening (the ‘breathalyser’) in cases where police had reason to believe that a driver had been drinking. This strategy led to an immediate one third reduction in accidents involving alcohol.

As a result, drivers adopted strategies to avoid the, albeit low, likelihood of being stopped, and over the next ten years the alcohol factor in fatal road accidents rose even higher than the proportion existing before the breath test.

Beware the radio buttons, know that when you mash one down another one will pop up...

[ related topics: Sociology Law ]

I'm not generally a "law and order" kind of guy, but can we give the FTC Do Not Call enforcers carte blanche w/shotguns and no-knock warrants?

[ related topics: Privacy ]

Retweet @Time via @NowThis:

"Hey, I thought she was mine! I was gonna do her!" Thanks TSA, for validating our reporter's opt-out | http://ti.me/gC5Niq

un-shortened link

Jake Gackenbach: Research Status Update and Dreams for Comment:

We wondered if this combination of less misfortunes and more aggression, when it occurred, would have an impact on nightmares. The answer seems to be yes. We found that gamers reported either fewer nightmares or, if no difference in incidence, they reported that their nightmares were fun.

And other interesting observations, summarized here as "video gamers can control their own dreams", likewise here.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Video ]

Facebook update of the day: Christopher Moore wrote:

I just replaced my Iphone screen with a mirror. Now, instead of checking Facebook, I just look and go,"Yeah, I'm fine."

and

The mirror screen also works for GPS. Instead of Google Maps, I just look at my phone and I'm all, "There I am, at the center of the universe."

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping iPhone ]

An Oakland (CA) school cut its last AP course, but teachers are teaching it anyway

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area ]

In the midst of a sales tax dispute with Texas, Amazon decides to pull out:

"Texas retailers collect and remit sales taxes every day - whether the sale happens in a store or online," said Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the group. "Amazon.com was asked to play by the same rules, and has responded by eliminating hundreds of Texas jobs. Amazon could have chosen to collect the sales tax as Texas retailers do, but instead they opted to protect their special sales tax loophole to the detriment of hardworking families."

I chose that particular pull-quote not because I believe in all of the sentiment, but because I think it accurately sums up the feelings from all sides. And it seems to me that at a state level we should be thinking about ways to give regions ways to raise money aside from sales tax. Sonoma County has a bunch of levies that get collected through sales tax, and much of our local Petaluma funding is decided by how much sales tax gets collected here, but as we move to online purchasing being simpler and easier than brick-and-mortar retail, if we want to encourage local commerce maybe we shouldn't be taxing it...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Books Consumerism and advertising Currency Government ]

It is because of Ayn Rand that I survived my '20s. In an era where I had a tremendously skewed risk/reward view, a belief in right and wrong and non-violence bolstered by her philosophies helped me stay alive, out of jail, and from all sorts of other horrible bad ends.

And I could compare her epistemology with _Karl Marx_'s, and despite the strong similarities (they're both staunch materialists), at the point where they diverged her reasons for diverging made a hell of a lot more sense than his.

Eventually that faded. The first cracks came with reading her letters on patents and the space program, and at some point I realized that externalities and a world with finite resources meant that if we could conceive of real estate ownership then having children was an act of violence. Enough of my peers had children, and between that and just looking at history and the human condition, eventually I was worn down to the point where I accepted that, in fact, humans couldn't be rational, and violence was a normal part of the human condition.

So I started voting Democrat. [rimshot]

As Charlene started exposing me to the stuff from Barry Kaufman and the Option Institute, I was also able to see that some of my discontent stemmed from the feeling that that many Objectivists, and Libertarians in general, used their philosophies as excuses, rather than as an empowerment.

But I still have enough of a soft-spot for Rand and that when I heard there was an Atlas Shrugged movie coming out I was kind of excited. However, I have now seen the new Atlas Shrugged trailer.

Uh. Yeah. Trains 90210. Apparently it's like a Paul Verhoeven movie, only without the special effects. Be nice if they could have included some acting.

Sigh.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Objectivism Movies Robotics Invention and Design Bay Area Software Engineering Space & Astronomy Machinery Embedded Devices Trains Real Estate ]

Children are our future... which is why I'm prototyping Family Build Night projects that'll cull the weak ones. http://flutterby.net/YNNOXO

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sociology ]

Pictures from yesterday's hike in the Marin Headlands http://www.flutterby.net/2011-02-13_Hill_88_Hike

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Bay Area ]

Wondering if it's significant that automated freeway incident detection appears to have peaked in 2004. Bad data, or not useful tech?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

The last remaining traffic signal mounted in the middle of an intersection in Arkansas is in Smackover, AR. Surprised that hasn't happened yet.

All these people whining about the Bieber movie: How quickly they forget about Hannah Montana, Spice Girls, Monkees, Hard Day's Night...

[ related topics: Movies ]

Great Gatsby for the NES (Really, for Flash), The Great Gatsby re-imagined as what it might have looked like back in the days of 8 bit games and the Nintendo Entertainment Center.

[ related topics: Games ]

Best Practices for Shopping High at Costco:

As you enter the bakery section, be wary. Between these doughy walls lie the secrets of the universe. In fact, they're definitely baked into one of those sheet cakes the size of Texas, so buy as many as possible because you're a fucking scientist. Also: FROSTING! Next, throw 55 loaves of Semifreddi's ciabatta (smallest quantity available) in your cart and let's roll!

[ related topics: Food - Cake ]

I was going to upgrade the RAM and replace the battery in my primary laptop, but this deal at the Microsoft Store on an ASUS K50IJ was about the same price as upgrading my 4 year old laptop. However, I'm having trouble checking out. Click. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Don't know if it's overloaded because of demand, or just that they're using Microsoft technologies to host the web page.

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Dick Move, TSA (R.I.P. Rand’s laptop):

Boy, did he. As I noted before, once you opt-out, or are selected for additional screening, you can’t touch your own possessions. TSA has to move them. Rand offered to help with his stuff, because there was a lot of it, but the agent insisted he could carry it all. He couldn’t. He dropped Rand’s laptop, cracking the plastic case, knocking off keys, and irreparably damaging the screen and it.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Nemo Gould's Kinetic Art of Robots and Squid and more with incredible woodworking, machining, recycling, and a fun whimsical sense of design. Inspiring.

[ related topics: Robotics Art & Culture Graphic Design Woodworking ]

I have been somewhat aware that this was coming, but since the winter rains finally came back out here, I wasn't paying attention as my chances of actually seeing any aurora are pretty much nil. But Chris passed along the biggest solar flare in years is headed for earth. So all you tech support people can use "cosmic radiation" as your excuse for the next day or two...

[ related topics: Astronomy ]

Shadow reminded me that Rick Santorum has a past that's coming back to haunt him: Santorum Talks About Longtime Google Problem:

“It’s one guy. You know who it is. The Internet allows for this type of vulgarity to circulate. It’s unfortunate that we have someone who obviously has some issues. But he has an opportunity to speak,” Santorum told Roll Call.

No, Mr. Santorum, it's more than one guy. We are legion, and we are here to call out your bigotry and hate and to keep that evil from spreading further in our national politics.

[ related topics: Politics History Net Culture ]

Yeah, you've probably already seen it, but it's way cooler than I thought: Phantom of the Flopera (YouTube). Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, arranged for two 3½" and two 5¼" floppy drives.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Calamities of Nature proposes Jelly Beans to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

David Chess on trying to identify which MacBook product you have:

Sadly, when I enter the serial number of one of these, it tells me that it's a 13-inch Macbook. Woo woo! I knew that; I need to know if it is the Mid 2007 one, or say the Late 2006 one, or perhaps the Mid 2009 one, or for all I know the "Macbook (13-inch, made that day when Lenny came in smashed)" model.

The other method on the page instantly disqualifies itself from usefulness by starting with "If you still have the box or receipt from your MacBook...".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Privacy ]

Apropos of nothing, I was getting annoyed at some of the performance problems I was having on my (soon to be replaced, old) notebook computer. So I tried switching to XFCE as my desktop and window manager, rather than Gnome (+ Enlightenment?). Holy cow! Night and day performance wise. A few things are a little clunky, but overall I'm blown away and no longer have things like the power manager showing up as using hundreds of megabytes.

Also impressive: Switching from Mozilla to Chrome for my primary browser.

[ related topics: Open Source Theater & Plays ]

Need to brush up on my statistics: Looks like Americans are sensitive to 2nd derivative of gas prices (or some other correlate), not absolute price.

[ related topics: Mathematics ]

Eben Moglen on, among other things, Facebook:

The human race has susceptibility to harm but Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record. He has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age. Because he harnessed Friday night, that is, ‘Everybody needs to get laid,’ and turned into a structure for degenerating the integrity of human personality and he has to remarkable extent succeeded with a very poor deal, namely ‘I will give you free web-hosting and some PHP doodads and you get spying for free all the time.’ And it works.

[ related topics: Privacy Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Weblogs Heinlein Civil Liberties Net Culture Government ]

From the current snapshot of the Wikipedia Talk:Fuel_cell page, a little commentary on a "new energy" data source:

From a cursory look at the Keshe Foundation's website, it seems like they have a lot of new physics which if true would be all over PRL, Science, Nature, and the popular press. Since it isn't, I can only conclude that they're full of shit. eigenlambda (talk) 01:18, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Nature and environment Invention and Design ]

mcwolles' Escher Waterfall, YouTube video.

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

Tweet of the day (@maudnewton via @thebookslut via @spara):

Put down the Ayn Rand. The grown up replacements for embarrassing books you loved at 16

Flavorwire has a great list of books that provide deeper perspectives on concepts from your favorite young-adult novels.

[ related topics: Objectivism Books ]

How technology destroyed Border's Books.

[ related topics: Books ]

How did the Chilean miners survive 69 days trapped underground? Marijuana and porn.

[ related topics: Drugs Sexual Culture Current Events ]

Utiliflex is moving to a new space, with a beautiful open room with 14' tall windows on one wall (lots of natural light). The open space for 3 to 8 programmers in is approximately 30' by 30' with the windows on one side. I've been reading a lot of crapola about XP/Agile/Scrum programming spaces, but have found some truths. I'm looking for more.

So far:

• Cubical Bad
• Windows natural light good.
• Good chairs important
• Tables/desks on wheels good
• Sound absorption important
• Nice Dual-screens good

If you had a chance to redesign a workspace for 3 to 8 programmers, working on the same (or related parts of) a project, what would you want to have?

I'm looking to balance: "Where work will get done" and "Where you would want to work".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Microsoft Invention and Design Software Engineering Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Furniture ]

Okay, next time I decide that carving a handle in a maple side is a good idea, someone stop me. The sanding, it doesn't ever end.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

A new toolbox for my shop: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-02-20_Maple_and_Ziricote_Toolbox

[ related topics: Nature and environment Invention and Design ]

Life with ADHD: This afternoon's semi-successful attempt to duplicate a raw vegan lasagna we had at Cafe Gratitude led to a discussion about trying to do ravioli without grains led to making aburaage (the fried tofu shells of inarizushi) on the stove top led to "hey, the oils hot, I should make myself onion rings!"

[ related topics: Food Community ]

Reading through Nine traits of the veteran Unix admin and thinking of Meuon: For #2 substitude "joe" for "vim". Via genehack, who observes

I think it would be interesting to see somebody do a comparison/contrast of these with a similar list for a “devops” admin.

[ related topics: Children and growing up John S Jacobs-Anderson Invention and Design ]

Oh, PDF, how do I loathe thee? I've got a PDF that crashes the HP print drivers on both Windows and Linux. Grrr...

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Open Source ]

One of the topics of conversation on my morning walk for coffee with Phil was how none of the new tablets that are coming out are as cheap as the low-end iPad. We meandered around a few of the things that that might mean, one was that Apple was willing to commit to a tens of millions manufacturing run, that the market in smart phones is such that for iPhone there's one device in production at any one time whereas there are a plethora of Android phones, and sales seem about even for iPhone and Android. so the Android market is split over more devices.

But really I think the issue is this: Apple's making so much money from iTunes and the app store that they could give away the hardware. They've found a way to bring the printer/ink model to computer hardware, and people are diving into it. Hard.

Bryant linked to Pattern Recognition: Apple intentionally hurting eBook stores, in which you can see that they're further consolidating the "only Apple ecosystem paid for through Apple's payment mechanisms with Apple's 30% cut" business model.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Economics iPhone ]

Awesome: New laptop! Less awesome: A few hours of burning Windows recovery disks and figuring out what I can safely nuke off.

[ related topics: Microsoft Invention and Design ]

Tatara Project : Guy makes blade out of homemade steel (125 Pics) (Via MeFi).

[ related topics: Cool Science ]

Via Elizabeth Dulemba: O'Reilly TOC 2011: Margaret Atwood, "The Publishing Pie: An Author's View" (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies ]

Okay, Microsoft has made it too hard to have Windows coexist with Linux on this new machine: Buh-bye, Windows!

[ related topics: Free Software Humor Microsoft Open Source Invention and Design moron ]

Segway? Lame, and so (almost) last millenium (December 3^rd, 2001). Here's the Solowheel. YouTube video of the Solowheel in action. Via Coolhunting via TC.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Graphic Design Embedded Devices Segway/Ginger/IT Video ]

Reading "Traffic" by Tom Vanderbilt. One subject expresses surprise at getting a finger when honking to express affinity with another driver sporting a "Green Day" sticker.

I realize that Green Day is pop pseudo-punk, but isn't "Fuck You" how punks say hello?

New York Times reports on a con man who's made millions selling software that purports to be able to find hidden messages predicting terrorist attacks in Al Jazeera news reports. Via Tech Dirt: US Paid Millions For Bogus (Patented) Intelligence Software; Now Trying To Cover It Up Claiming 'National Security'. (Via SE)

In unrelated news, testers have repeatedly shown that they can get handguns undetected through the TSA full body scanners.

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design Aviation Software Engineering Current Events New York ]

Leo says that Nokia is explaining that they're doomed when they talk about how they chose to compete in the Windows Mobile device space rather than the Android space. Amazing to see the mighty fall.

[ related topics: Microsoft Space & Astronomy ]

EEG controlled car. Drive an automobile by meditating, concentrating and relaxing.

[ related topics: Robotics Software Engineering Automobiles ]

In Seattle, in 1940 grocery stores averaged .46 miles from a house, in 1990 .79, and the number of trips to the store doubled.

[ related topics: Seattle Real Estate ]

Fabulous Adventures In Coding: What would Feynman do? On the stupid "interview questions" style of job interviews.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Heinlein ]

All my recent arrogance about our weather vs the east coast seems misplaced: There's a chance the SF Bay Area will have snow at sea level on Friday evening: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/...f=/c/a/2011/02/22/MNB81HS40O.DTL

[ related topics: Bay Area Heinlein California Culture ]

Happier, more prosperous and educated nations drink more.

Hey, anyone out there got a ballpark timeframe for a manufacturer obtaining a type certificate for an aircraft? 6 months? 6 years?

[ related topics: Aviation ]

Similarities between The King's Speech and the gay porn film Snookered? Both shot on the same set.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies ]

Another lost dream of the Soviet Empire: in the 1980s, the Russians began digging a huge ring for their own version of the Supercollider. Although never intended to be as big as CERN in Switzerland, it would have been a monster. As the pictures from English Russia Show, the ring itself had a bigger cross-section, since they only digging equipment they had was borrowed from the Moscow Metro. Now it lies rusting underneath Dubna, near Moscow, dripping into the infinite.

[ related topics: Photography Technology and Culture History ]

Churnalism.com is a web site offering tools to help find rehashed press releases in the British Press.

We see this a lot. A good indication that an article is simply a rehashed press release with misspellings and inaccuracies introduced is finding "AP" on the byline. Or "New York Times" in pretty much any story about Iraq.

And occasionally it'll be blatant enough that I feel compelled to go find the original. The first that comes to mind is the Nemo vs the Muffin Monster story.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Invention and Design New York Archival ]

If you haven't read Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic: Why we drive the way we do, I highly recommend it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

This is way more awesome than it has any right to be: A sequence of lines traced 500 times (Vimeo video) (Via Sensble Erection)

[ related topics: Video ]

Self-inflating tires. We already have tire pressure monitoring on cars, why aren't they inflating themselves too? (Yeah, there may be some issues here with knowing when you've got a leak)

Per Adam: Google is God complete with Theological Proofs.

[ related topics: Religion ]

Oooh: Cool 555 contest entry video talking about servo control and analog robotics with a 555.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Video Model Building ]

QOTD: Marsh Ray

A cipher is a device for converting a plaintext distribution problem into a key distribution problem.

[ related topics: Quotes Cryptography ]

AbiWord, I would love you so much better if you didn't silently throw away valuable OpenOffice data from my .odt files.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

CHP alert tells me that there's snow from Cloverdale to Healdsburg, but it's still clear and gorgeous down here.

Wait? Online security training has disabled "print to file" for the completion certificate? Now it has become a moral imperative!

[ related topics: Ethics Handicaps & Disabilities ]

In the early 70's there was no stranger celebrity on the world scene than Bobby Fischer, the chess genius. We saw him for a bit as a triumph of the US over the hated Reds, but shortly therafter public sentiment derided him as a nutcase, perhaps driven to madness by the board itself. His eventual descent into rabid anti-semitism, weird crankiness, and business deals with shady Serbian arms dealers only confirmed our suspicions. However, chess encourages cool analysis of the reality before us, and Fischer's strange life deserves at least that much. Retired world champion and political activist Garry Kasparov offers such in a review of a new biography of Fischer. This elegantly written piece refuses to "diagnose" Bobby from afar, and brings an interesting perspective to Fischer's life. In particular he suggests that chess didn't drive the man mad, but may have kept Fischer's mind stable for longer than his life might have suggested.

[ related topics: Politics Books Games Archival ]

The license plate said "YESVCAN", I parsed it as "Yes v. Can" and decided that the 9th Circuit would probably make the definitive ruling.

2011 Southeast Linux Fest deserves a plug and I might even be able to make it. The last one I went to was very educational and fun. The best parts are those random conversations with interesting people. It is in June and Spartanburg NC.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

B&W Artful Comic: Supermassive Black Hole - I'm not sure which is more impressive, the artful monochrome design, or that it is not covered with adverts. I've been enjoying reading it while a long data import routine runs.

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

Started on next cabinet for kitchen. Lugging yesterday's Craigslist score of cherry doors for the office built-ins to the attic for storage because I don't want them to intrude in the "new workshop" schedule...

[ related topics: Invention and Design Home Improvement ]

Out to the shop to cut some book ends for Charlene out of scrap aluminum. Was filing it, thought "oooh, thermite!", but too tired this P.M.

[ related topics: Books ]

Put that spare tire to use! Videos: 1950s fifth wheel car parking device, called the "Park Car", and also implemented in a more modern vehicle.

[ related topics: Movies Automobiles ]

Google working on retrieving lost gmail messages. Alt version of the story. /. thread.

Careful about relying entirely on that cloud, folks...

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Facebook status update of the moment, a teenager of my acquaintance: "... i am on facebook cus my mom made me!!...". Facebook, the MySpace of 2011.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]