Flutterby™! From 2015-01-01 to 2015-01-31

Practicing... Still not reading quite right...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Future Persimmon fruit leather

[ related topics: Photography ]

So apparently the Uber surge pricing got so out of hand last night that people who'd only downloaded the app got charged >$100...

Microcontrollers NOT ALLOWED (Or how to subtly troll your college instructor), in which a couple of guys in an electronics class are asked to build a circuit using discrete components, and...

I figured it'd be fun to mess with the instructor's sanity by hiding a microcontroller inside one of the logic chips, and having it briefly flash (occasionally vulgar) messages onto the seven segment display when left idle

Also worth thinking about in terms of what you trust, it's especially interesting to see how they hid the microcontroller inside the 74LS193.

[ related topics: Embedded Devices Education ]

"AI" is another term for "magic". If you can't specify the algorithms being used, you likely don't understand enough to claim "Intelligence"

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Artificial Intelligence Clowns ]

Hey, anyone up for pupusas? Noon, W. College & Marlow, Santa Rosa. Holler if so, lest I decide to bail 'cause nobody wants to...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Education ]

RT Jason Scott ‏@textfiles:

Transgender Teen leaves heartbreaking suicide note, about lack of support from family. Family deletes the entire blog, tries to hide it.

RT Jason Scott ‏@textfiles:

Was it archived? What the fuck do you think. http://web.archive.org/web/201...m/post/106447705738/suicide-note … - grab a copy, mirror, and remember.

I will paste it into the comments here. Leelah deserves to be remembered.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs Sociology Pop Culture ]

Dear Google: STOP BREAKING MY ARROW KEYS FOR SCROLLING! It's not "cute", it's not good design, it's just freakin' annoying.

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

Playing more with etching

[ related topics: Photography ]

Abstract shapes on tempered glass

[ related topics: Photography ]

Doh! This is the picture I meant for the abstract shapes

[ related topics: Photography ]

Charlene practicing etching

[ related topics: Photography ]

Charlene is trying to make this Sequoia root read.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Other view of Charlene's Sequoia root etching

[ related topics: Photography ]

And learning about blasting grit has introduced me to "tribology", which has nothing to do with fluffy Star Trek creatures. Or tribadism.

[ related topics: Star Trek Space & Astronomy Education Aviation - Helicopters ]

PostgREST: Simple REST client for PostgreSQL databases written in Haskell. It does depend on the database security rules, which means you have to have a very well adminned Postgres installation.

[ related topics: Open Source Databases ]

Wood porn! Shadow sent a long Milling, late 2014, some pictures from milling various trees in Australia. Via this Reddit thread.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Nature and environment Woodworking ]

RT Violet Blue ® @violetblue:

Just a casual observation. If my post has words "Iggy Azalea" in it, it's shown to more than usual. With "misogyny", shown less than usual.

RT Violet Blue ® @violetblue:

Been monitoring my Facebook post views for 6+ months: FB shows my timeline post to more 'friends' if it has clickbait words, negatives less.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Television ]

Dear @HomeDepot: You know that I just bought a $700 shower door, why are you sending "Why Wait? Update Your Bath Today" emails? #crmfail

Floor in. Fixtures caulked.

[ related topics: Photography ]

So I'm thinking that it may be time to go solar, but dayumn all of the solar providers seem to be one step away from selling MLM memberships

[ related topics: Photovoltaics ]

It is interesting that the solar provider I accidentally gave my personal info to is suggesting that energy costs will lag inflation.

[ related topics: Economics Photovoltaics ]

Journal of Communication: Does Media Violence Predict Societal Violence? It Depends on What You Look at and When.

Long-term US study finds no links between violent video games and youth violence: The researchers concluded that the current media narrative may "distract society from more pressing concerns such as poverty and education".

Yep. You wanna look at violence, look at poverty.

[ related topics: Games Journalism and Media Education Video ]

Visconti Mechanical Pencil Pen Homo Sapiens Lava Bronze Age $345.00 $175.00.

Many good LOLs there, I particularly liked:

Flame-proof: Visconti lava has a resistance to heat of over 100°C

But the bit about the "obviously kept secret" resin is also funny.

Having said that, I would love to $25 on a mechanical pencil that:

• Will survive in my pocket (ie: no thin little metal tube at the end).
• Will not lose its eraser at inopportune times.
• Will reliably feed new lead.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Pyrotechnics ]

Ages ago, Charlene and I saw some breathless thing about autism rates, went tracking down those rates vs overall disability rates, saw that the overall rate wasn't changing nearly as much as the autism rate changes would suggest, and chalked it up to changes in diagnosis.

Every once in a while I see yet another confirmation of that conclusion, although it's interesting that this one says "the majority".

Forbes: Majority Of Autism Increase Due To Diagnostic Changes, Finds New Study, the study is JAMA Pediatrics: Explaining the Increase in the Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Proportion Attributable to Changes in Reporting Practices.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Woodworking ]

Charlene is hosting a co-worker party this afternoon, so I made some finger food

[ related topics: Photography Food ]

Laughingsquid has the run-down on that awesome jaws shark eating boat themed cradle.

[ related topics: Boats Machinery ]

Weld porn, some pictures of gorgeous welding seams and beads.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Fabrication ]

RT Parker Higgins ‏@xor

I'm opening an academic-publishing-themed restaurant. You bring the ingredients and get volunteers to cook and serve. Now pay me $10,000.

[ related topics: Food ]

I love Petaluma Freecycle, but the 'exchange several mails about pickup and then "Oh, BTW, I'm in Cloverdale"' thing...

Wall is obviously in progress, but I needed a picture of a towel bar...

[ related topics: Photography ]

And a picture of the other towel bar

[ related topics: Photography ]

Yesterday, the NAACP office in Colorado Springs was bombed. Let's not mince around with "improvised explosive device" and "outside the NAACP office". And why should we not mince around?

This morning, gunmen claming to be from Al Qaeda killed 12 people at the headquarters of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. What is Charlie Hebdo, the provocative satirical magazine attacked by gunmen in Paris?

Back in 2012, White House spokesman Jay Carney pulled his punches:

"We know that these images will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential to be inflammatory. But we've spoken repeatedly about the importance of upholding the freedom of expression that is enshrined in our constitution," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

"In other words, we don't question the right of something like this to be published, we just question the judgment behind the decision to publish it."

Don't fucking victim blame. Don't pull your goddamned punches when defending rights.

[ related topics: Privacy Political Correctness Theater & Plays Law Current Events Civil Liberties Race Real Estate Government ]

Where did the tax base go? Pictures of cities before and after freeways; how our automobile subsidies are destroying economies: http://www.vox.com/2014/12/29/7460557/urban-freeway-slider-maps

[ related topics: Politics Photography Automobiles ]

Rare testimonies of Armenian Genocide to go online:

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education is readying at least 40 of the nearly 400 Armenian testimonies it has secured from the Armenian Film Foundation for its Visual History Archive.

The USC Shoah Foundation and the Armenian Film Foundation signed an agreement in April 2010 to digitize the interviews of the late J. Michael Hagopian, recorded on film between 1972 and 2005. The entire collection is expected to be integrated with the archive by the fall.

[ related topics: Current Events Education ]

Actually makes the Internet of Things look interesting: Keen Home smart vent lets you customize heating in individual rooms. The company is Keen Home, it's unclear to me how the vent integrates with thermostats, but looks like a good way to retrofit zoned heat control.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

I know Stephen Haywood from the CHUGALUG mailing list, he's just released his beginner's guide to penetration testing book for free. Looks pretty elementary, but I'm gonna read through to see what I haven't thought about, and if you know any folks in charge of IT-ish stuff for small enterprises who aren't thinking seriously about security, might be a good place to get 'em to start.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Douglas Adams ]

OH: "No! Zip ties are not for German cars. Zip ties are for American cars." (yes, there are some motor-heads in the office)

The purpose of the Paris attack was to galvanize French against the moderate Muslims, thereby radicalizing those moderates.

Whoah: Perl Jam: Exploiting a 20 year old vulnerability.

PDF of the slides, but....

The short version: $cgi->param(...) can return an array. Nothing you didn't know there. Here's the scary bit:

$dbh->quote(...) can take an additional type argument, which will make it skip quoting(!).

This means instant SQL injection vulnerability for code which does $dbh->quote($cgi->param(...)).

Gulp.

Flutterby code has been patched, will push

[ related topics: Politics Perl Open Source Journalism and Media Video Databases hubris ]

OH: "I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying. It's super nice out."

ArtLung: “I wonder if anyone is reading this”.

This is a strange culture, isn’t it? We’ve created such a highly engaged and interactive array of systems that we are now afraid to use them. We’re afraid because we don’t have the option, usually, to “secretly” like something. When I’m reading your instagram I’m conducting surveillance. I’m gathering sensitive information about you. Even when I’m posting to instagram I’m conducting surveillance. If you reply or like my photo I know you’re on your phone. Same thing on Facebook. There’s no latency to take time and think.

On the decline of RSS, and with it, the rise of the culture of not controlling how our presence in the social media space is observed by those around us.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Content Management Weblogs Space & Astronomy Sociology Journalism and Media California Culture ]

Christiana Ellis ‏@christianaellis:

Excuse me, just because I am inquiring about whether or not you carry the little rubber paw covers for dogs does not make this a booty call!

[ related topics: Dogs ]

Mitch Hedberg and GIS, using Python and PostGIS to determine if "La Quinta" really does mean "Close to Denny's".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Monty Python Python ]

Mosca is a NodeJS MQTT broker.

Well, San Francisco dodged a bullet there. Sympathies to Boston on "winning" the 2024 Olympic bid.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Sports ]

I so want to read these books and see these movies: Pulp Adventure by Chris Appel, a collection of pulp books that never were covers. Because the world needs more heroines with crashed flying boats in front of volcanoes battling dinosaurs, or battling gorillas while dangling from zeppelins.

Via and here.

[ related topics: Books Movies Aviation Boats Machinery ]

Apparently YikYak is for anonymously worrying about the appearance of your Tinder profile picture.

Among the reasons to live in California: Dinner tonight involved two avocados, and a spoon.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays California Culture ]

Via Shadow: Key&Peele Steampunk (YouTube):

I'm steampunk now.

Yeah, I don't know what that is.

Jules Verne and shit.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Totoro Cream Puff recipe, Via

[ related topics: Current Events ]

The Formula Works - a mashup of 6 top-40 Nashville country songs (YouTube).

Via MeFi, which includes observations like "...musically I tend to think of modern Nashville as Nickelback with a banjo." and a link to Robbie Fulks — Fuck This Town (YouTube)

[ related topics: Music Movies Machinery ]

Signed up for this sucker: Close Call Database, a place for bicyclists to share reports of belligerent or careless drivers as warnings to other cyclists.

From Outside Magazine: Database Tracks Driver on Cyclist Hate, brought to my attention by Tara Calishain.

It's starting small, but given the quantities of driver on cyclist hate out there, this could become big data very fast.

[ related topics: Current Events Databases ]

For the record: "foo" is not a sufficient version control commit comment.

Also, if you're choosing a password that's going to be hardcoded into a URL, using "%" in it is just sick.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Confidential to the somebody in neighboring cube or office, whistling off-key: Normally, I'm against autotune, but in your case...

[ related topics: Law ]

OH: "You can't WD40 your Rubik's Cube, you have to use silicone lube for that."

[ related topics: Personal Lubricant ]

NY Times: Skip your annual physical:

The unequivocal conclusion: the appointments are unlikely to be beneficial. Regardless of which screenings and tests were administered, studies of annual health exams dating from 1963 to 1999 show that the annual physicals did not reduce mortality overall or for specific causes of death from cancer or heart disease. And the checkups consume billions, although no one is sure exactly how many billions because of the challenge of measuring the additional screenings and follow-up tests.

[ related topics: Health ]

Brother MFC-9340 laser printer and full duplex scanner acquired. So long to the old HP.

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Any good Linux OCR systems? gocr is producing garbage, tesseract is barely better...

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Got a Brother MFC9340CDW. Installed the drivers on my Ubuntu 14.10 laptop, worked awesomely. Set it up to FTP scans to the house server, so we can scan documents for archive by dropping them into the feeder and mashing "go". So far so good.

Installed the drivers on to Charlene's laptop, same OS, set up the printer, tried printing, nothing came out of the printer. Turned the CUPS error logging up to Debug2, everything reported success.

Struggled, wiped Charlene's laptop and reinstalled Ubuntu, still nothing. Started installing every package from my laptop, then started screwing around with printing from the house server. Same problem as Charlene's laptop.

Started chasing the CUPS tool chain, eventually ended up at /opt/brother/Printers/mfc9340cdw/cupswrapper/brcupsconfpt1 which said "No such file or directory" when I tried to run it. "ls -al" showed "-rwxr-xr-x"... Okay, let's try ldd: "not a dynamic executable". And yet on my laptop, it is. Copy that file over, diff it, same file.

Slow dawning.

"apt-get install libcups2:i386" to get 32 bit binaries on the server. Printer works.

Fuuuuu.

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

Argh. 32 bit printer drivers just cost me a few hours getting Charlene's computer printing. Other than that I love this printer.

At , scale of systems with important credentials to keep track of is becoming an issue. I've been doing this very very old school, keeping an encrypted text file on one internal system for a master list, updating and printing out a couple paper copies for sharing. I don't want this file being shared. My personal ability to memorize credentials is astounding, even to me. But the quantity of systems to manage and credentials for them is becoming large enough to consider doing it some other ways. I've spent much of today updating credentials and systems getting ready for a personnel change, and updating the master file.

What do ya'll use to manage credentials on scores of mission critical systems each with different passwords?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Work, productivity and environment Cryptography ]

Tub side and toilet grab bars, ready for shaping, but another project has wet paint, so they wait...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Don't know what brand "titanium"coated but this was, but the paint is wearing off...

[ related topics: Photography ]

It's a place that makes intimate undergarments from toast, kind of a boulingerie...

http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-god-login/

Good rant on logins/identity, very apropos to most of the web.

[ related topics: Religion Weblogs ]

This Japanese building joinery is what I *think* my final assembly is going to be like... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1pvUlQgYtk&feature=youtu.be

Edit: The Metafilter link.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Keysweeper

... is a stealthy Arduino-based device, camouflaged as a functioning USB wall charger, that wirelessly and passively sniffs, decrypts, logs and reports back (over GSM) all keystrokes from any Microsoft wireless keyboard in the vicinity.

All keystrokes are logged online and locally. SMS alerts are sent upon trigger words, usernames or URLs, exposing passwords. If unplugged, KeySweeper continues to operate using its internal battery and auto-recharges upon repowering. A web based tool allows live keystroke monitoring.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Wireless Microsoft moron Theater & Plays ]

New Brentwood park bans trail running over safety concerns:

While hiking is permitted within Marcella Vivrette Smith Park, park visitors are currently prohibited from running at the 400-acre park, which opened in November and is on Wilson Pike south of Split Log Road.

On Facebook, a friend of mine commented:

Problem: Tennessee

Solution: California

and once again I wonder how much idiocy like this contributes to the geographic difference in economic opportunities.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Invention and Design Current Events California Culture Chattanooga Sports Economics ]

Emily Badger in the Washington Post: Let’s talk seriously about why cyclists break traffic laws.

[ related topics: Government ]

Craigslist job ad: "Ability to create secure web sites with IIS" Bwahahahaha! Oh, wait, they just mean installing HTTPS certs.

[ related topics: Heinlein ]

Thank you, AT&T guy who insisted I cross when I was waiting well back from the crosswalk for traffic to clear.

RT Pascal Hartig ‏@passy:

Vim from 1993 where you'd have a 486 with 1MB of RAM vs Atom from today opening a 104MB text file:

[ related topics: Photography ]

The new Golden Gate Bridge movable median barrier "zipper" process is pretty cool (WebM Video)

[ related topics: Invention and Design Bay Area Video ]

Home built scanning tunneling microscope:

This project is my attempt to build a low-cost scanning tunneling microscope (STM) capable of atomic resolution imaging in air. The piezo scanners typically used in STM typically cost at least hundreds of dollars. Some time ago I came across John Alexander’s simple STM project, in which he used a cheap piezo buzzer element with one of the electrodes cut into quadrants to enable XYZ motion. This type of scanner is less rigid than what is usually used for STM, but I decided to give it a try and see how far I could get with it. Turns out I was able to image highly-oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) with my STM with atomic resolution! The image below shows the hexagonal lattice structure of graphite.

Via Hack A Day.

[ related topics: Television ]

I really wish white leaders would speak out about this violence: http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...fan-reaction-20150113-story.html

[ related topics: Current Events Race ]

Why MySQL is not my favorite database introduces the concept of the WTF-8 character encoding.

Excerpted and cleaned up from a HackerNews thread.

[ related topics: Open Source Current Events Databases ]

LumberJocks user bushmaster repurposed an old food processor into a a chisel sharpener, kind of a poor man's Work Sharp tool sharpener.

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

Danish Activist Emma Holten Is Sharing Nude Photos To Combat Revenge Porn

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Nudity ]

What does the abyss look at when you're not staring into it?

Too many choices for this evening: Hack Sonoma, or IndieWebCamp/Homebrew Website Club?

Frank Deford on the Boston Olympics: "It's like bidding to host an epidemic." http://www.npr.org/2015/01/14/...cked-smaht-bostons-olympic-hopes

[ related topics: Ziffle Sports ]

Google unit conversion can't tell me how many horses in 1 hey. (Apparently it's 4)

Department of Homeland Security oversight report: DHS is a terrifying failure.

QOTD "When a man owns a house he is a bird in a cage whose captivity pain is sweetened with age." http://www.choralnet.org/view/133642

[ related topics: Quotes Birds Real Estate ]

That previous quote brought to you by a coworker's Junior Recital: https://m.soundcloud.com/rodri...stillo-junior-recital-dec-6-2014

Colleges Issue Official Colognes For Unique Branding. Smells like two decades of debt and disappointment.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Marketing Education ]

Wrote 2015 on the first check of the year: Achievement Unlocked!

If you're in Sonoma County, make stuff, and not a member, it's the best $35/year you'll spend: http://www.sonomawoodworkers.com/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

RT Bill Budge ‏@BillB:

Give a designer some code, they add a feature for a day, teach them to code, ... nope, just give them some code.

For some reason this label seems a little ominous

[ related topics: Photography ]

Built for fun EVs: Mini garden tractor, a little electric vehicle for towing a trailer around the garden, built from plywood and bike parts.

Via Hackaday.

[ related topics: Bicycling Gardening ]

This week has left me wanting better foregrounds for these sunsets

[ related topics: Photography ]

Interesting, my phone thinks I transferred 2 gig over the cell network in the last billing period, my T-Mobile account info says < 700 meg.

[ related topics: broadband ]

Shawn brought this to my attention: Underground and on rooftops, farms take root in big cities. I'm still trying to make peace with our living roof, having a garden up there is novel, I appreciate the strawberries, but I think the value there is really more about the cultural changes it engenders than the economics of food.

On the other hand, as the article points out, if we stop subsidizing and biasing the economics of transportation so hard, maybe it starts to make more sense, especially since it allows for more variety and fresher produce close to the point of consumption.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food Sociology Economics Gardening ]

Interesting to read a thread about how difficult it is to pick up information from lectures, and compare that to how schools teach...

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

I want to do something different for the Bodega Bay Wooden Boat Challenge again this year. Any motivated high school kids I can coach?

[ related topics: Children and growing up California Culture Boats Machinery ]

This is a good first step: Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police:

Holder’s decision allows some limited exceptions, including illegal firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography, a small fraction of the total. This would eliminate virtually all cash and vehicle seizures made by local and state police from the program.

While police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, the federal program was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police departments. Many states require seized proceeds to go into the general fund.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Software Engineering Law Enforcement Government ]

The thing about BYOD policies is that with the proliferation of hardware hacking devices, we can't trust our networks anyway.

Ted Mielczarek commented on JWZ's blog:

We've moved on from "pornographers will be the driving force behind new technologies" to a future where it's advertisers instead and now I made myself sad.

[ related topics: Weblogs Current Events Consumerism and advertising ]

I've been hanging out with the Indie Web Camp folks, and as such have been exposed to other people who feel as I do about social media, about owning our own content, managing our own backups, maintaining our own web presences, things like that.

The arguments are nothing new, we've all seen photo hosting and blogging sites go away and take their archives with them, we've all seen repurposed content, changes in terms of service, communities painstakingly built up over years disappear with a student graduating a college and losing mailing list privileges.

Or so I thought.

A few weeks ago, I was involved in an email exchange with someone who's technically savvy, and he questioned my use of trimming and interspersed posting, rather than top posting. I was kind of taken aback because I figured he was steeped enough in tech to be a 'net native, but I suddenly realized...

Facebook has, at this point, been around for almost 11 years, and is really the first place that most modern net users have actually built some sort of web presence. We talk fondly of ~username on our home ISPs back in the day, and then GeoCities and Tripod, and of watching Orkut and MySpace and Tribe and whatnot crash and burn, but this is a sort of history that most people haven't dealt with.

Similarly, we have 3 decades of files that we've moved from machine to machine, and had to organize and curate and have directories of stuff that we've just copied and hope are still okay. Images that we had scanned to PhotoCD back in the days of film. Raw files from digital SLRs. JPEGs from early point-n-shoots.

Most people have the slides their dad took back in the day of SLR film cameras, and selfies from the camera in their smart phone acquired in the boom of the last half a decade.

There is an experience here that I think mirrors the same way that we who'd been on BBSs back in the '80s saw the coming of the net: In the same way that we saw the early 'net from adapting to the lifestyle, of email and online forums spread into (and be taken over by) the mainstream culture, the problems of personal data and online presences are about to become a deal to the culture at large.

I don't know how we profit from it, yet, but I think there will be huge opportunities in the next few years, because I think most people need it, but don't yet know that the do.

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture Invention and Design Sociology Journalism and Media California Culture Community Education Archival Woodworking ]

Smart Trash Can catches trash, wins awards (YouTube):

The probability that the trash will go in is not very high, only 10-20%

On the other hand it is kinda silly fun.

[ related topics: Movies ]

An Open Source Tool for Easier Database Testing

rdbms-subsetter is a tool for extracting subsets of a database with referential integrity.

[ related topics: Free Software Databases ]

Shaping the grab bars

[ related topics: Photography ]

New York Times: For better crime control, a dose of science. Or how intervention in teen years can reduce crime.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Pop Culture New York ]

QOTD: "Someday robots will joke about humans the way that tech people joke about buggy whip manufacturers." Mefi User "fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit"

http://www.metafilter.com/1462...e-alive-and-they-are-not#5897699

[ related topics: Quotes Robotics ]

Background a mess, but the stain is on the grab bars

[ related topics: Photography ]

Fantastic discussion on 2 decades of social media, and how the net changed sex and how we relate: http://whyarepeopleintothat.co...20-melissa-gira-grant-cam-girls/

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Erotic Sexual Culture virus Journalism and Media Community ]

random blog exploration has reminded me that we've had 3 completely different USDA diet recommendations (w/expired domains) since I started

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Batteries not included: Meet the 28,000-year-old siltstone ‘dildo’, a little teaser article for the Institute of Sexology exhibit at the Wellcome Collection in London.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

If you've ever looked at a Tesla coil throwing sparks and thought "what made that dude think wireless electricity for lighting was a good idea?", ElectroBoom builds a Slayer Exciter Circuit, Using a Tesla Coil.

I LOLed a few times, and learned a few things.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Cool Science Movies ]

Johannes Ernst points out that we have gone from vendor-customer relationship to overlord-subject relationship.

[ related topics: LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

Drove 2 hours each way last night for tech discussion. Like my 20s when I regularly drove from Chattanooga to Atlanta or Birmingham...

[ related topics: Chattanooga Community ]

Chris Christie, Port Authority Official Abused E-ZPass Data For Their Own Ends.

I'm at least as concerned about Port Authority official attempting to strong-arm Senator Frank Lautenberg as I am about the Christie involvement:

"Respectfully, Senator, you only started paying tolls recently," Baroni said, according to a transcript of the exchange. "In fact, I have a copy of your free E-ZPass," he continued, holding up a physical copy of the toll pass Lautenberg had received as a benefit from his tenure as a Port Authority commissioner. "You took 284 trips for free in the last 2 years you had a pass."

Playing "I know where you live and travel" seems like kinda high stakes for an appointed bureaucrat to be playing with an elected official...

[ related topics: Ziffle Politics Movies moron Theater & Plays Current Events Guns Gambling ]

German word of the day: "Datenkrake", "data octopus" with "lurking horror of the deep/kraken" undertones.

Actually, it's about ethics in computer games journalism: Here are my impressions of Infinifactory, please trust them.

(If you've not been following tech culture, this is about GamerGate, not about Inififactory.)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Ethics Sociology Journalism and Media California Culture ]

Frank Lloyd Wright is a great example of how the design narrative you construct is way more important than functionality or fitness to task

[ related topics: Ziffle Graphic Design Architecture - Frank Lloyd Wright ]

Teach your kids about floats:

perl -le '$a = 0; $a += .01 for (1..230); print $a; $a += .1; print $a'

[ related topics: Children and growing up Perl Open Source hubris ]

So apparently Betty White's racy streak isn't just something put on to get laughs as she got old: Betty White Vintage Nude Photos Emerge, back in her early 20s she posed for playing card decks...

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Nudity Race ]

slop is a command-line script that lets the user select a screen region, and then outputs that to stdout.

In case like me you're tired of firing up GIMP, doing "File->Create->Screenshot..." and then fumbling through what window is where, you can easily do things like tie this to ImageMagick or ffmpeg.

[ related topics: Law ]

RT Полный песец @qDot:

If nothing else, hanging my work in the show myself means I get to have sex with the hot up and coming artist that's hanging my work.

RT Stay Puft ‏@staypuft

Been fired from a job? Shut down by the government? Thrown in jail?

Congrats, you're just like the Ghostbusters.

Now.

Go save the world.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture moron Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Heinlein ]

I don't do much CSS (or JQuery), but I when I do I have to look this crap up: The 30 CSS Selectors you Must Memorize.

Impatience: Wondering how many weeks 'til the wood for the bathroom vanity comes in, check the receipt, it's only been a week.

[ related topics: Woodworking hubris ]

Tonight's recommended short story: Max Gladstone's "A Kiss With Teeth", from "Some Of The Best Of Tor.com: 2014"

Tonight's shop listening: Rish Outfield's "Birth of a Sidekick", cheesey pulp western that made me smile while I worked on prototypes..,

Anyone who's watched enough Top Gear knows that "supercars" are basically silly, but they sure appeal to the 11 year old boy in all of us. I think this is pretty much the right way to go about them: 1989 Ford Scorpio reworked with an Audi twin turbo V8 to look like a Pagani Zonda (YouTube).

Photobucket pictures here. Some shakey video of it. eBay listing for it.

[ related topics: Language Books Photography Movies Automobiles Video ]

SkyMall files for bankruptcy. But... but... what will we do now while the airplane is below 10k feet?

MeFi thread.

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events ]

Santa Rosa: Pupusas. Strip mall at Marlow & W. College. Noon. Be there.

[ related topics: Education ]

Anna Mirer: Let’s Talk About Intentional Weight Loss and Evidence-Based Medicine.

Or Weight science: evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift, Bacon, Aphramor, which is available as an article here.

... Concern has arisen that this weight focus is not only ineffective at producing thinner, healthier bodies, but may also have unintended consequences, contributing to food and body preoccupation, repeated cycles of weight loss and regain, distraction from other personal health goals and wider health determinants, reduced self-esteem, eating disorders, other health decrement, and weight stigmatization and discrimination. ...

[ related topics: Health Food Food - Bacon ]

• http://www.taskcoach.org - open source cross-platform task management.
• http://bitbooks.cc/ - turn a repository of markdown files into a formatted book
• https://letsgettechnicalblog.w.../2014/07/07/systemd-on-raspbian/ systemd on raspbian for the Raspberry Pi
• http://diveintohtml5.info/ because I really should learn this HTML 5 stuff

[ related topics: Free Software Books ]

Zoë Keating: What should I do about Youtube?

Really good read on how music licensing and the Google octopus are impacting media creation.

[ related topics: Music Journalism and Media ]

Twilight below the Cotati grade

[ related topics: Photography ]

Eucalyptus on the way to Tomales

[ related topics: Photography ]

Four some reason, these Victorians caught my eye today

[ related topics: Photography ]

Western Sonoma county

[ related topics: Photography ]

First time on the bike in many many months. 41 miles rolled by easily, but... that most terrible of dinosaurs: megasoreass.

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Snerk: After some of the disasters Shadow has forwarded to me, I get kinda nervous when I click on links from him, like: My exercise bike crashed.

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Among today's accomplishments: I actually have eaten the plums that were in the icebox. At Charlene's urging.

Huh: environment in which "let's go talk about Waldorf" is the "step outside and get high" phrase. See also "safety meeting".

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Working from home today. Actually productive. Meanwhile: The Economist on why cubicles suck: http://www.economist.com/news/...src=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/insidethebox

[ related topics: Current Events Work, productivity and environment Economics ]

Demographics of Sexual Fantasy: Analyzing the authorship of 290K erotic stories.

A deep dive into http://www.literotica.com/

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Marketing ]

Riding the ferry into the city, and was reminded of where Charlene and I met

[ related topics: Photography Bicycling Public Transportation ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

Golden Gate, Alcatraz and Mt Tam

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area ]

The sky line has changed since I made this trip regularly

[ related topics: Travel ]

The sky line has changed since I made this trip regularly

[ related topics: Photography Travel ]

Sky starring to show colors, lights starring to come on

[ related topics: Photography ]

So is text email really truly dead? Because even companies I thought of as clueful are only bothering with the HTML version. Sigh.

Jessamyn has some great notes on unraveling systems after her dad died: https://medium.com/message/deathhacks-b767903b7c15

Gasket applied to a sink strainer to make a better bathtub hair trap. Fixing a broken world...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Bwahahaha! https://github.com/tylertreat/Comcast :

Testing distributed systems under hard failures like network partitions and instance termination is critical, but it's also important we test them under less catastrophic conditions because this is what they most often experience. Comcast is a tool designed to simulate common network problems like latency, bandwidth restrictions, and dropped/reordered/corrupted packets.

[ related topics: broadband ]

RT Rick Gualtieri ‏@RickGualtieri:

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Me? Let's just say those gopher demons had better honor the treaty this time

Why Cuckoo for cocoa puffs? The surgical and neoplastic role of cacao extract in breakfast cereals was accepted into 17 medical journals

Muskogee police department releases police video in wake of shooting of black suspect by officer. This is why it's important to have cameras, and why it's important to release the video. Exonerates the officer, shows the community how the decisions got made.

[ related topics: Photography Law Enforcement Television Community Video Marriage ]

Shadow passed along: Lawmaker proposes tolling cyclists on new 520 (Seattle area) bridge.

I am a proponent of charging for used infrastructure, because that's the way the market can make decisions on what to use. However, I suspect that State Sen. Curtis King (R-Yakima) hasn't fully understood the macroeconomic impact of encouraging cyclists vs cars, especially in light of the cost to recover the toll for users of different modes.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Pedal Power Bicycling Seattle Economics ]

Wanted: an IPv6 ADSL2+ modem that doesn't want to control IPv4 DHCP on the local network.

[ related topics: broadband ]

OH: "load bearing server", as in the server box is actually holding up part of a shelf that other things are on.

Just puttin' it out there now: Pupusas, Marlow & W. College, Santa Rosa, Friday at Noon!

[ related topics: Heinlein Education ]

Hey Sonoma County Transit: where the $&_):!#/? is the 48x? This is what makes riding the bus such a crap shoot. Grrrrr.

[ related topics: Bicycling Public Transportation ]

Stringtown Ambassadors at Sleeping Lady in Fairfax

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area ]

Stringtown Ambassadors at Sleeping Lady: http://youtu.be/Xsl1fCAdSiA

Stringtown Ambassadors perform Nine Pound Hammer: http://youtu.be/ZJ7BWmI02qA

Stringtown Ambassadors perform Flexible: http://youtu.be/o8vzC8h2KMA

RT Kieran Snyder ‏@KieranSnyder:

"We've mostly built with a number of technologies that don't work across browsers. Like HTML."

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Shadow forwarded along pictures of this awesome gazebo. Whenever I build something outdoors I'm always worried about longevity, but.... want!

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]