Monthly Archives: February 2006

Intelligent Design the Future: Make Mine Ham and Pineapple

The perversion of intelligent design can be seen in Cornelius’s Hunter’s title and opening paragraph on ID The Future:

The main problem with our red state-blue state culture today is that good pizza is only available in the blue zones. As Harold Hubis, moderator of last night’s evolution vs. ID debate had warned me, last night we were not merely in a blue zone, but a Navy Blue zone. And it showed–the pizza was great.

Dear lord, is there a more perverse collection of pizza toppings than ham and pineapple?

His treatment of his debate seemed no better than his choice of pizza toppings.

Pencil Drawing

Josh over at tinyscreenfuls is digging some of the fancy “pencil sketch” effects that the Mac can do with its internal camera.  Back in 1998, I experimented with writing some filters that did much the same, with some examples that I generated shown on the right.   Macintosh?  I don’t need no steekin’ Macintosh. 🙂

And now, for your next project, render an entire feature length film.   Beneath your desk, you’ll find a pencil, a yellow pad, and a C compiler…

1001 things to do with liquid nitrogen

I was a little bit disappointed when I found out the total was a bit short of what the header proclaimed, but you should still check out 1001 things to do with liquid nitrogen

LN2 also works great for sweeping and cleaning hard floors such as concrete or wood.
Get a couple liters in a container, and dump it on the floor in the direction
you want the debris to travel. It picks up everything in it’s wave and if it hits a wall,
the wave will boil off and deposit the junk there. Now all you have to do is go
around the perimeter and sweep up the clutter.

Ten reasons Microsoft thinks I should buy Vista…

Michael Desmond, writing for PCWorld, wrote this article called Ten Reasons to Buy Windows Vista. Me? I’m completely unconvinced. Let’s walk through what he thinks are the strengths of Windows Vista:

  1. Security. The funny thing is, I expected all the previous versions of Windows to provide security, and for the most part, I’ve been cruelly let down. There is no bigger indication that Microsoft has fumbled the security ball than to look at the entire industry (with players like Symantec, McAffee, Network Associates, and literally dozens of others) that have sprung up solely to shore up the inadequate defenses of Windows against the attack of hackers.
  2. Internet Explorer. Yawn, you mean the browser that doesn’t even implement the box model properly, making it virtually impossible to design portable css layouts for webpages? I’ll stick with Firefox, thank you very much.
  3. Eye candy. Honestly, who cares? Especially since Microsoft thinks its reasonable to force you to upgrade your video hardware to provide this extra ocular saccharine.
  4. Desktop search. Sorry, tried it, but never really use it.
  5. Better updates. I’d like it if they didn’t make me reboot everytime I change a network setting. Updates never really bothered me the way they are.
  6. More media. Too bad they are adding more DRM to keep you from using more media. It kind of balances out.
  7. Parental controls. More features that only serve to keep me from using the computer. Yawn.
  8. Better backups. Might be nice. Worth $180 for the upgrade?
  9. Peer-to-peer collaboration. With other Vista users. Yawn.
  10. Quick setup. Here’s an idea: how about an operating system that doesn’t force you to reinstall often enough for the hour install to matter?

To be fair, Desmond lists five things that should give us pause:

  1. Cost. $100. Again.
  2. No antivirus software, likely to be made available as a paid subscription. If Vista is so secure, why continue to tax us for security updates?
  3. The upgrade carousel. You might be able to run Vista on your old hardware, but you won’t want to.
  4. The learning curve. That doesn’t particularly concern me.
  5. Lots of stuff is just warmed over. Well, yeah.

But the real problem is that Windows just doesn’t deliver very much. With Fedora, I can turn my PC into a document preparation system, a VOIP pbx, a webserver, a database server, a rich program development environment running literally dozens of languages, and dozens of other things. It’s just a better buy for the buck, allowing me to make better use of my available computing hardware.

So, why should I pay for Vista?

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Alcohol Breath Test Pen

The Only Pen a Drunk Could Ask For – Gizmodo

So you’re at your favorite sports bar watching the big game with your friends. Before heading out and driving home, perhaps it’d be a good idea to make sure you’re not legally intoxicated. At this point, it’s just a matter of whipping out the Alcohol Breath Test Pen, blowing into the top and hoping that the green LED doesn’t turn red. If it’s red, hail a taxi, buddy, because you’re in no condition to drive. Also included in the pen is a UV indicator, letting you know whether or not you should be wearing sunscreen. Yes, this $35 little pen can help save your life and prevent a nasty sunburn.

What you really need is such a pen which prevents you from writing checks, signing contracts, or most importantly, posting to your blog when drunk.

Gutenberg Gem: The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved by William A. Williams

Well, “gem” is perhaps not the right term. Perhaps I should start a new category: Gutenberg Coal.

I’ve been interested in (and have from time to time posted here about) the seemingly never ending conflict between science and creationism. I found this book to be an interesting glimpse 80 years into the past, to see how people argued against evolution even before the famous Scopes trial.

The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved by William A. Williams – Project Gutenberg

It contains gems like this exchange:

The population of the world, based upon the Berlin census reports of 1922, was found to be 1,804,187,000. The human race must double itself 30.75 times to make this number. This result may be approximately ascertained by the following computations:

At the beginning of the first period of doubling there would just be two human beings; the second, 4; the third, 8; the fourth, 16; the tenth, 1024; the twentieth 1,048,576, the thirtieth, 1,073,741,824; and the thirty-first, 2,147,483,648. In other words, if we raise two to the thirtieth power, we have 1,073,741,824; or to the thirty-first power, 2,147,483,648 Therefore, it is evident even to the school boy, that, to have the present population of the globe, the net population must be doubled more than thirty times and less than thirty-one times. By logarithms, we find it to be 30.75 times. After all allowances are made for natural deaths, wars, catastrophes, and losses of all kinds, if the human race would double its numbers 30.75 times, we would have the present population of the globe.

Now, according to the chronology of Hales, based on the Septuagint text, 5077 years have elapsed since the flood, and 5177 years since the ancestors of mankind numbered only two, Noah and his wife. By dividing 5177 by 30.75, we find it requires an average of 168.3 years for the human race to double its numbers, in order to make the present population. This is a reasonable average length of time.

Can you spot the problem? Let’s imagine that he’s right. 5077 years ago, there was only Noah and his wife. It takes them 168.3 years to produce two children, and double there numbers. If we allow for 3000 years to pass, bringing us roughly up to 2000 years ago, around the time of Christ, the world population would have almost 18 doublings, bringing the total world population to about 260,000. Worldwide.

Inappropriate extrapolation is one of the silly errors that creationists use to argue using mathematics. But as they say, creationists use mathematics like a drunk uses a lamp post: for support, rather than illumination.

Read the entire thing, it’s really quite astounding.

A Complete Plan for DIY VoIP

I must admit, my experimentation with VOIP phones using my new Sipura SPA-3000 is going a bit slower than I like.  Still, I hope to document some cool VOIP stuff over the next couple of months.  To whet your whistle about what is possible check out this link on the SipBroker Wiki.  They outline an interesting plan where you use NuFone to supply you your own 800 number, and then anyone can call you for no charge to them, and only 2 cents to you.  Also, if you set them up with VOIP hardware, you can easily eliminate that 2 cent charge for you.  This means even though you are paying for incoming calls, it’s likely that your overall charges could drop.

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Happy Birthday Eric Byrnes!

Well, even though he’s no longer an Athletic, I’d like to wish Arizona Diamondback Eric Byrnes centerfielder a happy birthday. I loved to watch Byrnes’ flat out style of play. The last game I saw him play in Oakland, I had seats out in left field, right above where he was playing in left field. I remember a ball hit to the gap between left and center, and just seeing the bottom of Brynes’ shoes as he streaked almost directly away from our position, his cap flying off, and him making a spectacular horizontal flat out dive to rob the batter of what surely would have been an RBI double.

Best birthday wishes Eric!

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How you can be popular!

It’s been some time since I mocked Robert Scoble, mostly because I’ve mostly stopped reading him. I guess i just don’t find seesawing between promotion of the A-List bloggers and apologetics for the sins of Microsoft all that compelling. But today I must have had more free time than usual, so I found myself reading his Tips for joining the A list. Surf on over there and read it, and then come back for the question I think you should be asking…

Ready?

Why don’t his tips on how to become an A-List blogger include any hints on making compelling content?

His tips are basically:

  1. Use lots of graphics and screenshots.
  2. Use lots of tags.
  3. Link to other bloggers, even other Z-listers.

It’s not that these are particularly bad ideas: I use these techniques as much as the next guy. I just think they just should not be the meat and potatoes of your strategy in trying to attract readers.

Here’s my idea: let the A-List do whatever the A-List is doing, which is apparently standing around, patting one another on the back. Write about what you want, and let the popularity contest do what it will.

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Addendum:  Jeremy Wright gets it.  Quoting:

Blogging is just like high school. And, just like high school, who is cool right now doesn’t really matter. What matters is who is still cool in 10 years, and you are much more likely to get there if you don’t listen to Scoble’s advice than if you do.

Amen, Z-list brother.