Monthly Archives: July 2005

New Meme/Flickr Tag: Sign of the Apocalypse

Deer god!

I had a brainstorm while picking up groceries at our local Raley’s grocery store. Sometimes, you encounter something so bizarre, so strange, so downright wrong that you just have to shake your head and wonder if the Apocalypse can be far off.

Today, I had one of those moments, and checked to see if signoftheapocalypse was an actual tag on Flickr. Nobody else seems to have tagged a photo with it (except, now me) so I hereby propose that anytime you see something that qualifies, snap a quick picture phone picture, upload it to flickr, and tag it with signoftheapocalypse to share it with others.

Today’s entry is of course Buck, the Singing Deer Head, a pricier expansion of the infamous Billy Bass meme. I embarrassingly admit: I have one of the basses in my office. In my defense, it was being liquidated at something like $3, long after the craze was dead. Here, we have the true bargain though: a lifesize deer head that sings Rawhide. The package apparently includes a Karaoke microphone, so your trophy can go all Ashley Simpson for you. And, of course Raley’s has them at the bargain price of $99.99.

Honestly, can the battle at Armageddon be far off?

What’s truly amazing to me is not that a store would actually carry such a thing, but that they would carry dozens of them. They had these things stacked up like they were cartons of milk.

What’s your sign of the oncoming apocalypse?

Doesn’t anyone test anything anymore?

I snapped a picture of my Pac Man t-shirt using my Motorola MPx220 cell phone in its “self portrait” mode: where the viewfinder is echoed onto the screen that is on the outside of the flip phone. Thinking about it for a second, I had a moment’s inspiration and took another picture.

Reversed photos

This error apparently only occurs in the mode where you use the phone when closed, but for God’s sake man. Doesn’t anyone test these things at all?

Addendum: Oh, the phone doesn’t seem to have any way to flip the image left and right either.

Cell service shut off indefinitely in 4 NYC commuter tunnels – UPDATED

Boing Boing documents the quick imposition and then reversal of a cell phone ban in the Lincoln and Holland tunnels in NY. Apparently they were concerned over the risk that remotely detonated devices presented, but (as the NYPD apparently pointed out) the idea of having a place where people cannot use their cell phones to inform fire, police or other agencies of emergency situations inside the tunnel is not not without its risks either.

The Incredible Edible Egg

Courtesy of lifehacker, here is the account of one intrepid hacker attempting to learn the secrets of egg poaching. Interestingly, he comes up with a solution that I’ve never heard of before.

The Egg, Courtesy of MorgueFile.com

I did have a couple of thoughts though. His attempt to use the conventional method (simmering water bath) was flawed by something simple: his pan was boiling, not simmering. Simmering occurs below the boiling point. You want to minimize convection to keep the yolks tight.

While I am far from poached egg perfection, I have made a few of them that seemed okay. I suspect that if my diet could suffer the assault that is Eggs Benedict (among the three or four perfect breakfasts in my estimation) then I’d probably get better at it. Here are my tips for a slightly more conventional approach to poached eggs:

  1. Use fresh eggs. This should go without saying, but it really does help. Older eggs tend to have looser whites, and you want nice tight dense whites.
  2. Use a wide pan, with about an inch of water. Bring it to a simmer, not a boil.
  3. Add a small amount of vinegar to the water. To be honest, I’m not sure how important this is, but the idea is that the acids help keep the egg whites together.
  4. I usually also lightly salt the water.
  5. If I really want a perfect poached egg (like, say for the aforementioned Eggs Benedict, where such an egg must sit serenely atop a toasted english muffin) then I take my egg rings (usually used for frying eggs) and spray them with nonstick spray and then put them into the water and gently slide the egg into the circle after them.
  6. Don’t overcook them. For the aforementioned Eggs Benedict, you really want the yolks to be rich and creamy, not solid.

Damn, wish I could have an Eggs Benedict right now.

Maybe next time I’ll describe my recipe for scrambled eggs with smoked salmon.

Today’s T-shirt

Pac Man T-shirt

Today’s T-shirt comes from a simpler time, a time when computers had only eight bits, and all colors were simple primaries. It is just beginning to dawn on me that things which are retro are actually the stuff from my teen years.

Blogs seen as powerful new tool in U.S. court fight

Yahoo is carrying the following Reuters’ article: Blogs seen as powerful new tool in U.S. court fight which talks about the role that blogs could play in the upcoming Supreme Court nominations. Pretty standard stuff, but I thought the following paragraph was interesting:

Not all blogs are created equal. Many will become “ideological echo chambers” that people read to reaffirm their beliefs, Clemons said. Others will fuel passions on both the right and the left sides of the political spectrum. A few will rise above the pack and become sources of information and not just an advocacy forum.

What I would like to know is which of the traditional, brick and mortar media outlets rise to this high standard?

Home Improvement, Round 2

Not content with merely screwing up one minor job, I had to go back to the well of human despair for a second time today. One of my larger popup sprinkler heads was apparently stuck: spraying water in only a single direction rather than circulating back and forth in the 90 degree arc that it should.

Have you ever tried to figure out how these things work? They are truly diabolical in their construction. First of all, the gizmo is spring loaded so that it only pops up when water pressure is being applied. The manufacturer’s preferred method of examining the interior mechanism is to lever a screw driver under the lid to pull the mechanism up. Of course, it is spring loaded, so you can’t really let go of it, so now you’ve got one of your hands entirely committed for the rest of the operation.

Careful examination of the mechanism revealed that the sprinkler head existed in one of two states, separated from one another by a spring about the same strength as you might find in a ballpoint pen. When the sprinkler head hits its limit of travel, a small lever arm flips the sprinkler head into its opposite state and it reverses direction.

But mine didn’t seem to do that, for reasons which seemed inexplicable. Even though I powered it up, and withstood the watery blast of its malfunction in some vain attempt to figure if something minor had been jammed.

Oh well, think I. I’ll just replace the entire mechanism. Off to Orchard I go. The heads aren’t particularly cheap ($16.99) but what the heck.

Now comes the really fun part. Extracting the old one, and installing the new one. These sprinkler heads are roughly four inches in diameter, and are roughly cylindrical. They screw (without any kind of adhesive) into the underground plastic piping that forms my automatic sprinkler system. In principle, you merely have to dig it out, unscrew it, and rescrew the new one in.

But here’s where more diabolical design features conspire to promote profanity. First of all, the surface of the sprinkler isn’t smooth: they have a fair number of vertical notches along the outside. These, of course, conspire to actually increase friction, and make it very difficult to twist one of these things out. Add to that another clever design feature: a plug which comes out the side. This is for some poor saps who desided to feed their sprinkler heads from the side rather than from below. Who these people are, I don’t know, but I’d like to smack them for ruining it for the rest of them. My old sprinkler head (probably dating to the construction of the house fifteen years ago) is of course now surrounded by a network of inch thick roots coming from the nearby tree. Can’t really blame the tree: that’s where the water is. The side plug of course catches on every single one of them, which I proceed to cut, tug and swear at. I stripped out probably six individual pieces of root, varying in length from six inches to three feet. I also tore a good chunk of skin off my palm, and hurt the tips of three fingers. Each chunk of root removed allowed the old sprinkler to twist a little more, and after a half hour of excercise resembling opening an infinite row of mayonnaise jars, I managed to get the old one out.

Of course, now the fun really begins, because getting the new one backin is even more difficult. Dirt from the extraction of the previous one falls into the sprinkler mechanism and gums the threads, and of course, the same annoying side plug catches on everything. I haven’t yet completed this phase of the operation: I’m stopping for a diet coke and to think.

It’s just one of those days.

Sh*t metal screws…

Mangled Screw

I, of course, meant “sheet metal” screws.

Ever notice how the simplest tasks can become annoying because of abject stupidity? Consider this mornings tiny project: one of the fans in my server box has become noisy, so I decided to go out and replace it with a new one. I bought a spiffy Antec fan (lit with three different color LEDs no less, cool!) and decided to power down the server and give it a try.

The fan comes of course with four Phillips head, self tapping sheet metal screws, made of some really shiny looking metal.

Metal that is of course considerably softer than the metal in the case that it supposed to tap into.

Net result: I’ve managed to tap the four holes, but mangled two of the four screws irrevocably in the process. The picture to the right? That screw is supposed to be round. After stripping it badly, I had to grab it with vice grips and twist it back out. Sigh.

Why can’t these things just be made out of stainless for god’s sake? I’d spend $0.50 for that. Really, I would.

Fantastic 4

Yesterday I went out and caught the newest Marvel movie release Fantastic Four, the story of four (well, five really) individuals who are, who guessed it bombarded with mysterious radiation and given superpowers.

I’m a big fan of the superhero genre, and will generally go out to see almost anything, regardless of what the critics are saying. According to Yahoo’s movie guide for the film, the critics are averaging a C rating, while people who are generally watching the film are giving it a B.

Having seen the film, I can understand why. It’s definitely an okay film. It has cool action sequences, nice effects cool superheros. But unfortunately, it has very little else. In the words of the critic from the Seattle Post Intelligencer, William Arnold:

instantly forgettable as it is momentarily enjoyable

It is movie snack food, not a meal. When one compares it to nobler entries in the genre such as Spiderman, there is simply no comparison at all. Spiderman granted us a rich background, full of characters that we understood and became invested in. We saw ordinary individuals become heros and villians, and conflicts between people become conflicts of, well, superhuman proportion. It was good stuff.

Fantastic 4 has nothing of this. You know who the villian is. He has no backstory. There is no conflict more than “I’m going to get Mr. Fantastic” and ultimately, you just cheer for the nice people and boo the bad people.

Go out and see it, but I suspect you won’t be looking back on this film very often in the future. It’s just not that good.

Why can’t camera phones become better cameras?

I really like the convenience of having a camera phone for taking snapshots, but unfortunately, there is a vast gulf in capability between what a modest digital camera can do and what is standard on camera phones. My Motorola MPx220 (despite it’s quoted 1.3megapixel capability) is just pathetic. Witness the following two pictures, the first taken with my MPx220:

Photo from my MPx220

The second with my Nikon 4500, a 3.2 megapixel digital camera:

Photo From My Nikon 4500

Click through to look at the originals. There is no comparison. Yes, the Nikon has a good quality, high resolution sensor and a reasonable lens, but can’t anyone make a decent camera phone that takes decent, honest 640×480 images. I’m not asking for megapixels here…

Brainwagon Radio: Terror in London, WiFi arrest, and Two Movies

I almost didn’t upload this podcast. I did twenty minutes in my car this morning, and then (as I usually do) played it back to see how it sounded. Today’s topics began with some thoughts on the role that the Internet, camera phones and the Wikipedia can play in helping us learn and understand about tragic events like yesterday’s bombings in London. I do think the point is interesting, but I also think that I may have given the impression that I am using the tragedy of the event as a flimsy pretext to muse about the cool technologies like the blogging and Flickr and the role they have in helping us learn about events. I also strayed into politics more than I think was truly tasteful given that there are people planning funerals and waiting in hospital waiting rooms. I apologize if anyone turns out to be offended, and give my best wishes and/or condolences to all who are dealing with the real human aftermath of these tragic events.

Does anyone have any links to podcasts regarding events that happened yesterday? I did some sweeps, but didn’t turn up any.

Les Tremayne as General Mann

To lighten the mood, I rambled a bit about the case of a Florida man arrested for unauthorized access to a computer network, and gave my impressions of the Australian movie Undead and Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds. I thought the effects were great, but the overall arc of the story was kind of disappointing. I prefer Haskin’s 1953 version better as a story. Great stuff from the post WWII. (I incorrectly cited the year of this as 1958 in my podcast, apologies). I particularly like actor Les Tremayne in his supporting role as Major General Mann. Sitting in a bunker covered in radioactive dust from the A-bomb just dropped by the Flying Wing, he delivers the classic line:

Guns, tanks, bombs — they are like toys against them!

Great, great stuff.

To all Londoners, our hearts go out to you. To those responsible, stay where you are. I’m sure someone will be with you shortly.

People helping people…

DURING EMERGENCY Please feel free to come in and stay as long as you like. Join us for tea, soft drinks, coffee, soup on the house.

What doesn’t get reported in the media enough is all the little kindnesses that people can pay to one another when trouble unites them. I found this Moment of London Zen linked by Xeni over at BoingBoing to be a good example.

In the shadow of the monstrous there gleam hundreds of tiny lights. Good job, Richard.

Man Charged With Stealing Wi-Fi Signal

This story of a Florida man arrested for using an open WiFi router has been making the rounds, and I’ve been holding off on posting about it because on the face of it, it seems completely absurd.

And yet, if I were charged with a third-degree felony, I might take it more seriously.

Articles like this one go on and on about how unsecured wireless networks can be used by all sorts of criminals and pedophiles. All of that is probably true, but they can also be used by people like you and me to check our email, get our latest baseball scores, or check our blogs for new comments. Because WiFi is so useful, many people set up access points without passwords as a courtesy: to build a better wireless community. On such systems, nobody needs authorization: they just use DHCP to request a new IP and the gateway information , et voila!

This guy was using a wifi connection from the street. As far as anyone can tell, he wasn’t sending email threats, or engaging in trafficking of kiddy porn, or doing anything at all. He was just using a WiFi connection that someone (either through carelessness or largess) left open and accessible to passers by. If anyone is guilty of anything, it would probably be the homeowner who is breaking his customer usage agreement by providing passers by with free internet.

Honestly, just how stupid have we become? Don’t our police have anything better to do? If this guy really objected to having a guy use his WiFi, why not just add a password? The guy would almost certainly take it as a hint that he shouldn’t use the connection and would move on.

Pathetic.

Four London Blasts Kill 40, Injure 300 – Yahoo! News

Eesh. And I thought I was having a bad week.

Four London Blasts Kill 40, Injure 300 – Yahoo! News

Is it al-Qaida? Response to the G8 summit? Craziness over the Olympic announcement? Who knows, but it isn’t nice, that’s for sure.

Update: Flickr photo pool.

Addendum: The link above is dead (shame on you Yahoo! news for not maintaining permanent links). The final death toll reported was 52, and two years later, the case is still active. Wikipedia maintains a page about the incident which seems pretty comprehensive.