Morally Inferior, Politically Superior
March 12th, 2008
News has been rattling around the web about the governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer being “linked to a prostitution ring.” And that’s putting it lightly - the executive summary version of his offense reads like the note your principal sent home with you when you got caught smoking in the boys bathroom.
I suppose it’s not too often that I’m going to link something as banal as a screen saver. But this screen saver is special. You see, I’ve got a predisposition to this particular style of graph, data visualization, or whatever technical or mathematical moniker you want to give it. And it’s cool enough to support dual monitors and draw two instances. Rock on!
I give you The Polar Clock
But what’s this? You want to hear about the preexisting fetish? Perhaps you expect to see llamas stacked in outlandish geometric fashion, each one wielding an exquisitely decorated placard bearing similar data to the above clock? You’ll have to keep reading to find out.
The Portal: A Day in the Life of a Turret is something that you should watch if you’ve ever played Portal. Or even if you haven’t, you just to imagine what life would be like for turrets assigned to kill everyone, but only if they were sarcastic and hated each other. It’s brilliant!
The Alternate Truth
February 15th, 2008
Deep breath, roll with it. Alegro! Nota Bene: the following is fiction, hence the title!
Here I sit in ABS vent, pulse quickened, heart racing, stomach singing a song of discontent. I was disconnected, but now I’m back down on terra firma. Shaking, skin aflush. Sweaty, and my face leaving no doubt as to my state of mind; eyes half-open, lower lip still quivering and a bloody nose to boot. I think about how I must be so incredibly subverted from my original purpose, and stress induced nosebleeds — why is this happening to me?
Breath out, slowly. Don’t hold it in. More after the break.
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As you’ll remember from First post on this subject a while back, the DMV liked to jerk me around. And there was much hilarity in my analysis of the conundrum set forth before me. Let me now present Part II — there’s no conclusion yet.
The day after my first run-in with the harpies at the DMV, I estimated that the situation would be fairly easy to resolve now that I knew that all they really wanted in life was a copy of my wretched PA automobile title. To that end, I phoned PSECU again and delivered a lengthy discourse to the customer service representative on what was going on. Because they’re PSECU, they’re helpful - the CSR informed me that the easiest course of action would be if Clerk of Courts office faxed a request in for a copy of my PA title. I informed the CSR that “there’s no way those grumpy old women would actually comply with that request”, and I am 100% confident that still holds true. These are people there for a paycheck, nothing more - truly the bottom of the state service barrel — Like worse than DOT workers, except without the shovels and watching 1 of their coworkers do their job while 3 others stand around mining their noses for gold.
As most of you know, I’m a fairly new resident of Cincinnati. I came from State College, PA and Penn State a few months ago. Of course, the State of Ohio has to have their fingers in my business (as if Ohio State wasn’t pain enough) in the form of registration required for my four-wheeled child, the 4Runner. No worry, I figure - I’ve got proof of insurance, a passport and a birth certificate in my war chest for this particular sortie. Boy was I wrong.
Technology and macro-patterns in society
December 27th, 2007
I’d like to ask you all to take a few moments of your day and take time to watch this. It’s worth it.
Good, now that you’ve watched Chris Anderson’s talk on the long tail of technology, reflect with me a moment.
The DVD player killed the VCR. MP3 is slowly killing (and it’s almost dead) traditional music distribution. We’re running out of oil and we’ve already succeeded in frying our own planet. These are, if you’ve not had your head buried in the sand, facts. If you don’t believe me, there’s plenty of scientific data out there you can research (but if you don’t believe me already, you probably never will.) Yes, I’m preaching to the choir.
Now stop for a moment to think about the patterns of change outlined in Chris’s talk. Cycles, up and down, waves. So let us venture for a moment that societies, their quality of living, their numbers, and pretty much everything else about them moves in cycles as well. We’ve got war in Iraq, Darfour, Columbia and Palestine as well as many other places around the globe. War. Not get up and go to work, come home, watch TV and go to bed, but War. And yes, it’s terrible and in many cases we should do something about it (what motivates that is an entirely different thing, “world cop”?) But stop a moment and think, back to history and gradeschool. We’ve all been here, Civil war in the US. Napoleon and various other empires blazing a trail and killing millions in the name of some chosen ideal. Was it wrong? I’d flinch and say yes until you realize that our very way of living was built on these actions. So was it wrong? No… was it right? No.
A blow-off valve, in short, allows the turbocharger in a turbocharged engine (forced induction, the pushing of air into the intake) to relieve pressure inside the turbo. Normally this pressure is vented back into the intake, but sometimes it’s sent out into the atmosphere as a noise maker. Some think it sounds cool, and I’m one of those people… Too bad it’s apparently illegal. Note that I think this is cool for high end use, not for you and your turbo civic or jetta. Humbug!
So what happens when someone stuffs a duck call on the end of valve, and that valve opens and vents pressure? You’ll have to watch below, I had a hell of a good laugh with this. Apparently so did variable! Courtesy of MDK!
Oh crap, OCAP!
December 12th, 2007
So I’d just gotten out of the tub, watching CSI, having a libation or two and relaxing post-chiropractor appointment. I go to turn on the TV and notice that strangely enough, it’s stuck on PBS-HD. While entertaining, this is not terribly useful when what I want to do is catch up on heroes. So I power toggle the box at the plug, shortly after the box goes through it’s usual boot process. Good, so far. It hits the screen first screen OCAP Middleware load screen, the progress bar fills, then the box goes to PBS-HD again (utoh) and finally to the Mystro countdown screen. It hits L-13… and stops dead, turns to E-13. I sat for a moment and thought: I could say screw it, and go play WoW — and I nearly did. But against my true nature to leave anything broken alone… I had to fix it.
I call up time warner cable and after about 5 minutes of wading my way through various voice menus and having my phone number read back to me after I’d input it… The CSR answers the phone and I told her what was going on. The box is stuck on E-13. She’s never heard of that error. She says did I leave it off for a minute… I think not but of course I say yes… That couldn’t possibly be it (it was in the end.) The box came back up just fine and I’m watching PBS-HD (Nature) now as I write this.
So what the hell is OCAP? And what do Mystro and OCAP have to do with the fact that my cable box (and possibly yours) lock up? Well, here’s the gist of what the CSR and I discussed on the phone while the torturously long proccess of an Explorer 8300 HDC damned boot sequence trundles along like an overweight crippled oompaloompa. Remember that description, it’s important for later.