Monthly Archives: December 2005

Dad sells son’s XBOX 360 Xmas Present for 100 Bucks.

Didn’t we see this story last year, and the year before, and probably the year before that? I mean it was a Nintendo DS, or a PS/2 last year. It probably goes all the way back to the stone age, where the new ovoid wheels were all the rage, and Grog sold his son Unk’s new granite wheels to teach him a lesson.

Honestly, can’t we all pretend this story doesn’t exist?

Additional: what’s really amazing is how seriously all the comments on DIGG are. “He deserved it!” “No way he deserves it!” Have IQs dropped sharply while I was away?

It’s a Colorful Life!

It's a Wonderful Life

Okay, I know this is an atrocity, but you might still find Recolored to be an interesting program for adding color to black and white images. You basically scribble hints into the image, and it propagates the color to nearby pixels that it determines should be the same color. At right, you can click and get my version of It’s a Wonderful Life, appropriate for the holiday season, if somewhat garish overall.

Okay, I’ve goofed around enough this morning. Off to Christmas shop.

Audio player WordPress plugin

I was looking for a nifty gadget to embed audio players inside WordPress posts. This was a nifty Audio player WordPress plugin that uses flash to play audio files. You can create simple links, and it creates a nice little Flash gadget to stream and play them.

Here’s one that links to my last podcast (which sadly occurred over a month ago):

[audio:http://brainwagon.info/audio/brainwagon-20051117.mp3]

Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover School District

The 137 page decision in the Kitzmiller case in Dover Pennsylvania has been handed down:

Kitzmiller Decision: Plaintiffs Prevail

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

Read the entire decision.

Mistake Number…

Well, the last 48 hours has been fun. I am taking a few day off before Christmas to go visit my mom and brother up in the Portland area, and I flew in Sunday night. I thought that I might document the few mistakes that I made during the trip so that others might be better prepared for their holiday. Mistakes will be documented in red so that others may learn.

I actually began promisingly. While still at the airport in Oakland, it was announced that due to inclement weather in Portland, we wouldn’t actually know if we were landing in Portland until after we were airborne. It was conceivable that we might have to divert to Seattle-Tacoma. I called my brother to tell him to not bother meeting me at the airport, that I’d rent a car when/if I got in, and I’d drive out to see him. This was the appropriate decision, and not a mistake. But don’t worry, they will come soon enough.

I thought to myself, gee, I could either rent a car, or I could take Max (the Portland light rail) to a location close to my brother, and he could pick me up there. Uh huh, you guessed which one I took. The next decision was to either rent a 4 wheel drive vehicle or save money by renting a little Camry. Yep. I did at least get the damage waiver. Leaving the airport I tried to decide how to get to my brothers house, after getting on 205, I decided I could either go through downtown Portland, potentially crossing many icy bridges, or take 205 south and then get on I-5 northbound. I’m not marking either one of these choices as a mistake, since I suspect either was bad. Initially I-205 seemed fine, and an appropriate choice. The temperature climbed to a balmy 37 degrees, and in spots the roads were almost dry. I began to get cautiously optimistic. Then I got on I-5 northbound. A parking lot. I watched as the guy behind me lost control of his car at one mile per hour and did a nice 180 spin in slow motion. The road was very slick, particularly in the exit lanes. Net result: nobody could/would exit. I then made a smart choice, I realized that I had a friend Jeff who

  • lived in the area
  • was freshly back from his vacation in Maui
  • was in possession of a 4WD Explorer
  • and liked driving in crappy weather

It was about this time that I realized my cell phone batter was really low and I didn’t bring my car charger. I called him, he was home, I told him to meet me at exit 289 (which I was approaching at 0.02mph), and I’d park my car somewhere safe, and we could come pick it up in the morning. This was also a very good idea, and not a mistake. Still, as I approached the exit 289, I saw a truck pulled off to the right of the exit lane, and a matching one just opposite on the left side, leaving a space about two car widths wide between the two. I watched as three different individuals in front of me tried to thread the needle. I watched as each spun out slowly, nearly crashing into one of both of the other two cars as they went sideways.

I decided not to run the gauntlet, and to try my luck at the next exit. In retrospect, I found this also not to be a mistake. Creeping along at a snails pace, it took me the better part of an hour to reach the next exit. I watched my precious cell phone battery usage, hoping that Jeff would call me back soon, especially since I hadn’t bothered to get his cell phone number. This was a mistake, but a harmless one. He did call, and said he was approaching exit 290. I told him he should exit, and wait to see if I could get off at that exit. A half an hour later, I managed to shift lanes over, and by driving in the gutter and slowly, slowly slowly creeping accross the exit lane, managed to get my car off the highway. Jeff was waiting for me at the Taco Bell.

The mistakes were over. We parked my rental in a residential neighborhood well out of harms way, and his 4WD Explorer and his DVD navigation system plotted an excellent non-I5 course back to my mom’s house. I picked up the car today, none the worse for wear.

Someday, I’ll have to relate the story of freezing rain that didn’t end so nicely.

For now, my thanks are with Jeff, and I’m having fun visiting with Mom and Kevin. Still, it will be good to be back to Carmen and Adam for Christmas.

Happy Holidays everyone, keep your cell phone charged and stay out of the freezing rain!

Microsoft Moves Graphics out of the OS

Techworld.com – Microsoft to move graphics outside OS kernel
Microsoft will move the graphics for its next version of Windows outside of the operating system’s kernel to improve reliability, the software giant has told Techworld.

This also in: temperature dropping in hell.

It only took them fifteen years to make the change. Ironically, it’s not done for things like “it makes our software cleaner, more straightforward, more modular, more useful”, but instead “our graphical subsystem is buggy enough that it will often bring down the entire system, and if we make this change all those annoying blue screens and freezes will merely be annoying application restarts”.

Ah, progress.

Floam, Floam on the Range

Actually, you don’t need a range.

This recipe has shown up in my inbox twice today, so I guess I have to blog about it. Ellen Spertus has a nice recipe for making your own Floam on her website. What is Floam you ask? (I apologize in advance to linking to the annoying Flash infomercial). Well, it’s kind of like clay, except that it is colorful and full of tiny beads, so it is pretty lightweight.

Ellen’s recipe basically calls for a mixture of homemade slime with expanded polystyrene beads. The slime is basically a mix of glue and a solution of borax, so it’s not like this would be expensive. I made a cup full of the stuff awhile ago as an experiment, and it was oh so fun to play with.

Golly Game of Life

I remember playing around with xlife and thinking it was a pretty good implementation of Conway’s cellular automata, but it’s got absolutely nothing on Golly, a stupendously fast version. Using hashing, it can run patterns for 1060 steps in just a few seconds. Amazing.

Make Your Own Copy-Protected CD with Passive Protection

While not as openly hostile as the kind of stuff that Sony was doing with their active-rootkitting stuff, it’s actually not that hard to create a CD which many applications find unrippable: wander over to Ed Felton’s Freedom to Tinker blog for instructions on how to Make Your Own Copy-Protected CD with Passive Protection.

Note: this really only works for Windows. You can rip these CDs using Macs or Linux just fine. Way to go Microsoft!

Photo Fraud on Survivor!

Last night I watched the final episode of Survivor Guatamala (yeah, I know, reality television is the opiate of the masses, so sue me) and I spotted something that made me stop the TiVo, rewind, and note something to my wife.

The particular video shot is one of their classic “night vision” pictures of one of the Mayan pyramids, obviously meant to be a timelapse, with the Milky Way whizzing around and a lovely full moon. But there is one big problem:

The full moon and the stars weren’t moving in the same direction!.

The moon will visibly move against the background of stars since the moon take about an hour longer to go around the earth each day than the stars do, but the difference is pretty small (about 45 in rate) so in a shot like this, the moon will mostly look like it tracks the background stars. This shot was assembled from at least two different and possibly three different video layers.

For shame!

Game Time With Milton Bradley

The Oakland Athletics announced that they acquired outfielder Milton Bradley and infielder Antonio Perez for top prospect Andre Ethier.

It can’t really fault Beane for making this trade: Milton Bradley has talent, both as a line drive hitter with some pop that lets him get extra base hits, and he’s a pretty fine fielder, but the guy has been kind of a basket case when it comes to the mental game.

Actually, I understate the case. He’s a complete basket case when it comes to the mental game. I think it was a good trade, but I’ll be holding my breath for the first month of the season to see what kind of trouble we’ve really bitten off.

Check out Athletics Nation for commentary and fan reaction.

Dare we hold our breath for Frank Thomas?