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August 30, 2002
Da da dum dum dum...
Da da dum dum dum... another one bites the dust...
"Due to the high cost of offering this free service, we regret that BeSeen services have been shut down as of August 26th, 2002."
So much for my guest book... [thanks, Justine, for calling it to my attention] Well, the list of dead links and defunct services continues to grow, so it's about time for another overhaul anyway.
Posted by John at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2002
Cold Enough to Freeze the
Cold Enough to Freeze the Balls Off a Brass Monkey? Well, I got this one by email yesterday, and it looks familiar - I think it's been around for awhile. But since it fits in so well with the keelhauling theme, I thought I would include it here:
Subject: Cannon BallsIn the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters carried iron cannons. Those cannon fired round iron cannon balls. It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck? The best storage method devised was a square based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on four resting on nine which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of thirty cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon.
There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding or rolling out from under the others. The solution was a metal plate called a "Monkey" with sixteen round indentations. But, if this plate was made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass Monkeys."
Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!"
Posted by John at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)
For the past five years,
For the past five years, I've been hearing a sound in our yard with absolutely no idea what it was. I doubt I can adequately describe it, but here goes: it sounds halfway between someone whacking a high tension line with a stick, and somebody hitting a block of solid glass with an icepick. Tink, tink, tink, tink. Short, sharp, repetitive sounds, incredibly loud -- I'd guess they could easily be heard a 1/2 mile away. I was pretty sure it was an animal of some kind, but couldn't tell if it was a bird or an insect. Puzzling.
Today, I found the culprit. A hummingbird darted across in front of the house, emitting that sound as he went. Once I had seen that, I did a little web research and found a sound clip on www.naturesoongs.com. The little guy with the loud voice in our yard has a slightly shorter, sharper note than in the sound sample, and it's more regular and repetitive too, but there's no mistaking it. Sometimes he keeps it up for an hour at a time.
Posted by John at 01:45 AM | Comments (0)
My valuable word of advice
My valuable word of advice for today: Thwart Not the Librarian.
Posted by John at 01:12 AM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2002
It's 1:30am, and I'm busy
It's 1:30am, and I'm busy flying my Sopwith Camel around in Red Ace Squadron (download the free demo, it's worth checking out), when Matt stumbles out of his room, eyes at half-mast.
Dad: "Hey, Matt. What are you doing up?"
Matt: "Well, two reasons. I had to go to the bathroom, and I wanted to ask you a question."
Dad (realizing that Matt is dazed - no way did he get up at 1:30 to ask me a question): "OK, what's your question?"
Matt: "What do you do when you're lying in your bed, but your bed is all covered with bees?" (Matt got stung yesterday - just once - when he and a friend were turning over some rocks and disturbed a beehive. One of the bees got stuck inside his shirt.)
Dad: "Well, it's just a dream, Matt, so tell them you don't have any honey and they'll go away."
Matt: "Oh, OK. Thanks, Dad."
Dad: "No problem, buddy. Sleep tight."
I doubt he'll remember the conversation in the morning. Just one of the many little pleasures of being a Dad.
Posted by John at 02:15 AM | Comments (0)
Turns out that toast does
Turns out that toast does indeed have a tendency to land butter-side down, and it's integrally related to some of the fundmental constants of the universe. I've come up with this explanation on my own before -- the gravitational torque induced as the toast slides off the plate or the table, combined with the moment arm of the buttered toast and the height of the table results in a preponderance of buttered-side down landings. I did not, however, extend my thinking to encompass the limitations on the height of homo sapiens and the resulting typical table height which is inconveniently at a level to induce about 1/2 a toast rotation. Kudos to science journalist Robert Matthews for posting it. [An old post, but one I had not seen before, and I like it.] Next up: Why String Gets Tangled, and Those Odd Socks in Your Drawer.
Posted by John at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
I'd never even heard of
I'd never even heard of machinima until I saw this article on CNN. I'm still sitting on about 12 hours of videotape from our trip to Africa that I need to edit and condense down to 20-30 minutes. But this technology looks like fun -- real time animated movie-making complete with all the tools of regular filmmaking, such as actors, sets and lighting, bundled together in easy-to-use software. According to John Carmack, id Software co-founder and game graphics guru, "the graphics quality of movies like "Toy Story" should appear in home computers by the end of 2003."
Posted by John at 12:31 AM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2002
BTW, Google's running a quiz
BTW, Google's running a quiz now if you're interested in testing your trivia knowledge and/or your Google search engine prowess. Don't worry, it's a open book test.
Posted by John at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)
Along the same lines as
Along the same lines as the previous post, the most frequently cited article on the Internet right now is Slate's piece, "Hit Charade - the music industry's self-inflected wounds," which turns a critical eye to the music industry's excuses for the slump in recorded music sales over the years. The tendency has consistently been to blame extraneous technology - cassette taping, video games, the Internet, file-sharing - when the root cause may more accurately be that the music sucks. It doesn't always suck, but it certainly goes through cycles, and the current crop of Britney Spears lookalikes is, well, uninspiring at best.
Posted by John at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)
As if I need another
As if I need another reason to get pissed off at the major record labels, it seems they are now engaged in spoofing music files, downloading repetitive loops of short samples from songs filled with static on to the music boards at Napster-like sites that facilitate file sharing such as Morpheus and KaZaA. As this article from the Washington Post points out, any strategy for combating piracy that directly targets your customers in the process is a risky one. I don't patronize the file swapping boards myself, but I do appreciate the change to check out songs from a CD online before I go out and buy it. As I've pointed out here before, the more I can do that, the more CDs I will buy. (I have a staggering collection of one-hit-wonder albums and CDs, and no desire to grow it any further!)
The massive public sentiment against the RIAA is going to have repercussions for the industry, and I think the backlash has already started. For an interesting counterpoint to the RIAA's allegations about the impact of file-sharing on music sales, see this article in the San Jose Mercury News interviewing singer Janis Ian. She's made copies of her songs freely available on the Internet, and sales of her CDs shot up 300%. And I, for one, never buy a CD anymore without checking to see if it's on the list.
Posted by John at 01:31 AM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2002
Lessons From Nothing is an
Lessons From Nothing is an interesting perspective on software design, putting the process into a perspective I'll bet you haven't seen before [link swiped from gaijin.com]. I really enjoyed reading this, particularly the economics of producing really high quality, bug-free software like that used on the space shuttle.
Posted by John at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2002
You start a little project,
You start a little project, and then you decide maybe you could improve on it just a little bit, and six months later you're deep into your new obsession. Or maybe that's just me. Anyway, I completely sympathize with this dad and the little "fort" he was going to build for his kids. <= ( By the way, check out the navigation on the menu on the left side of this web site. Very slick! ) Of course, once he decided to build a BattleMech, it had to be a MadCat. Now he's going to have to build an Atlas on the same scale, facing the MadCat head-to-head in the backyard. Or maybe a Mauler. Hmmm.
Posted by John at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2002
What would you call it
What would you call it if Hooters bought Vanguard Airlines? I don't know, but I hope they honor Star Alliance miles in their frequent flyer club. That is all.
Posted by John at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)
Ever read any William Gibson?
Ever read any William Gibson? Neuromancer? Burning Chrome? Well, the future is here.
"I see that the wires plug into Patient Alpha's head like a pair of headphones plug into a stereo. The actual connection is metallic and circular, like a common washer. So seamless is the integration that the skin appears to simply stop being skin and start being steel."
It's called a percutaneous pedestal, and it is hooked up to a small digital camera and some software and a powerpack. This article in Wired magazine seems almost surreal, like a science fiction story, five pages long and chronicling the first "success" at helping the blind to see. I put success in quotations, because the initial gear that Patient Alpha is wearing seems pretty limited in terms of resolution and the frame rate (initially one per second) is way too slow for it to be characterized as normal vision. The author spends some time discussing the metrics of success in this quest for sight. In my opinion the acid test is whether the patient can read. Obviously a person blind from birth won't be able to read without learning how, but for someone who was blinded later in life reading would be one of the main goals as far as I'm concerned. If the resolution can be improved enough to allow a person to pick up a book or a newspaper and read it, I'm prepared to call that victory.
This is tremendously exciting stuff, and as the author notes, makes you wonder how far away the Gibson future might be. After all, it's a camera that's wired into his brain. Why couldn't it be a microscope? Or a telescope? Infrared? X-ray? Or maybe a wireless connection to the Internet... FYI, the whole issue this month is a good one with a bunch of interesting articles: gene therapy, mapping Mars, hacking Las Vegas... worth checking out.
Posted by John at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
I've been watching the evolution
I've been watching the evolution of home television recording systems like TiVo with great interest. But I'm a cutting-edge technology buyer, not "bleeding edge", and TiVo and ReplayTV simply aren't there yet. I have wondered though, from time to time, how hard can that be? I mean, the video cards to take in the signals from your cable are already there, so basically all you need is a good program and some hard disk space, right? Well, the New York Times was apparently thinking along the same lines, and this article reviews some of the technology options for the gadget freaks among us. I love functional improvements, like the one represented in this quote from the article:
"A channel-surfing feature filled my screen with 72 constantly updating images from each of my TV channels. Forget picture-in-picture; it was like staring at a wall of televisions." Cooooool.
Posted by John at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2002
This article, Homeland Insecurity, in
This article, Homeland Insecurity, in The Atlantic Online is perhaps the best I've seen so far in explaining the central issue behind data security -- the people and the computers at either end are the weakest links, and stealing someone's password is much easier than breaking into an encryption routine. The Parable of the Dirty Web Site is a good example of this principal in a scary scenario, and I like Bruce Schneier's thought that "the most critical aspect of a security measure is not how well it works but how well it fails". This should be required reading for every employee of a major corporation that uses "hello", or "password", or the name of their pet as their password to the internal systems at work. You know who you are.
Posted by John at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
The history of Michael Jackson's
The history of Michael Jackson's face. I've seen a few of these pictures before, and wondered from time to time exactly what "look" he was going after with all that plastic surgery, but seeing the timeline evolution of his face is actually quite shocking. It's clear he not only made some bad decisions, but changed his mind along the way several times, which I don't think is a good idea when you're going under the knife. WARNING: Site contains pictures which may be disturbing to viewers. May scare small children. Large children too. Pets. Do not view after eating.
Armchair psychologist that I am, I look at Mike, coming from a large family, very successful at a young age, and wonder... where did this massive self-esteem problem come from?
Posted by John at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)
Steady Eddie Headrick, who at
Steady Eddie Headrick, who at least stabilized if not invented the modern Frisbee, died this week at the age of 78. Not that noteworthy, you might say, and I would agree if not for the fact that he's going to be cremated and have his ashes made into Frisbees. No, it's not a joke.
Posted by John at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2002
It's like the newsletter from
It's like the newsletter from Conspiracy Theory, on the web. The Memory Hole, rescuing knowledge, freeing information. [via MeFi]
Posted by John at 07:48 PM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2002
Dave Parker kills the 100
Dave Parker kills the 100 lb. cougar that attacked him from behind, using his 3 1/2 inch pocket knife. The whole Parkerfamily.net clan is proud of you, Dave.
Posted by John at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)
