June 30, 2008
The HAL Project
I'm in heaven! The HAL Project is a website with many simulations of the HAL-9000 computer from 2001:A Space Odyssey. I've installed the screen saver on all my computers -- it turns your drab and pointless post-2001 desktop computer into one (or more) screens of HAL's console. You have to see it to believe it! There's also a simulation of a full HAL console, and links to other digital artifacts.
Joe Bob sez, "Check it out! It's a moral imperative!"
Posted by Steven at 03:40 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2008
Cat and the Engineer
Charles Forsythe pointed out this hilarious video featuring "calculator-fu" at the intro.
Joe Bob sez, "Nerds! Check it out."
Spoiler Alert: look for the "cat yodeling".
Posted by Steven at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2008
Daicon 4 Anime
One of the most amazing pieces of fan anime is the 1983 Daicon IV animation produced by the fans, which features ELO's two songs ("Prolog" - the voice over, "Twilight") from the 1980 album Time. There are so many hommage pieces in this it's hard to list them all, but at one point Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet is shaking hands/clamps with Huey from Slient Running, an obscure mashup that few people would even spot. Be on the look out for the multiple destructions of the Yamamoto, home of the famous "wave motion gun", too.
Joe Bob sez, "Check it out!"
Posted by Steven at 12:05 AM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2008
Fun With Your Oscilloscope
This goes out to my Dad, who collected used oscilloscopes from his employer in the '70s:
I'm stunned to see the beauty in this display demo. Incredible.
Posted by Steven at 08:19 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2008
Upgrades
I finally upgraded the hard drive in my MacBook Pro. Turns out it wasn't all that difficult. The screws are precision (all twenty-three of them) so they came out and went back in without too much fuss. I used SuperDuper! to clone my 100 Gb SATA internal to a new 250 Gb SATA (using an external NexStar 3 case), and I booted the MBP with the new drive before buttoning up the machine (just to make sure). Everything was cool except for Lil' Snitch, which complained about a rule change -- I think it was from changing the hard drive name.
Now instead of 3.98 Gb free, I have 149.88 Gb. Much better!
I'm going to use the 100 Gb drive as Anne's Time Machine backup disc when I install Leopard on her Mac.
I also got the Garmin C320 GPS and Beltronics V955 radar detector hardwired into the Rabbit (Caerbannog) at Circuit City today. It only cost $25 plus tax! They did an excellent job and now I have no cables running anywhere in the cabin. Park Cities is saying my monster mats aren't in yet ... so I probably won't have them until I do the whole license plate/splash guard install visit. Almost got the new car fully rigged.
Posted by Steven at 02:09 AM | Comments (1)
September 24, 2007
Some Simpsons hommage to 2001
Click here to see a great collection of The Simpsons scenes based on 2001:A Space Odyssey.
This guy needs to get the snippets where Homer is the Earth orbiting space station (eating a chip representing the Pan Am shuttle) and the HAL 9000 reference in the automated house episode.
Posted by Steven at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2007
Star Trek Bloopers
Turns out that the classic TOS blooper reels live on at YouTube:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtQzPo5veVY
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-jSguNi5x0
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c-wpZgZ4kI
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4jQ_AWl3gs Infamous Angelica Pettyjohn sequence
Posted by Steven at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2007
Boot To The Head: Anime Style
Alanna found this gem, an anime version of The Frantic's Boot to the Head.
Enjoy.
Posted by Steven at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2007
Deltos, An Etymology
• deltiology
(noun) The study or collecting of postcards. [From Greek deltion, diminutive of deltos (writing tablet) + -logy.] Usage: Floyd Jerdon is one of those people who would never confuse deltiology with scrutinising college Greek week or studying deposits at the mouth of a river. - Barbara Dempsey; Postcards Send Him Back to Another Time; South Bend Tribune (Indiana); Feb 2, 2003.
I thought I had made this word up, whole cloth, in 1977. Imagine my surprise these thirty years later!
Update
Wikipedia gives this expansion on the meaning:
The Greeks inherited the folding pair of wax tablets, along with the leather scroll and the Phoenician alphabet, in the mid-eighth century. Their word for the tablet, deltos has even retained its Semitic designation, daltu, which originally signified "door" but was being used for writing tablets in Ugarit in the thirteenth century BCE (Burkert 1992:30). In Hebrew the term evolved into daleth.
Sounds like the word Dalek has some phonetic derivation in deltos, too. Is that a pun, too?
Posted by Steven at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2007
Happy Towel Day
Posted by Steven at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2007
3D Desktop Prototype
This is simply amazing:
I hope Apple eventually adopts something like this!
Posted by Steven at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2007
HP Calculator Manuals on DVD
I got my copy of the Museum of HP Calculators DVD of all the manuals (v5.00) today.
This is an amazing collection of literally every HP calculator product documentation since the '60s. Most of the manuals are scanned at 150 dpi in harsh black-and-white, but they are all there and all the text is clearly readable. It's an amazing library of information about the greatest calculators every made.
Joe Bob sez, "Check it out!"
Posted by Steven at 12:23 AM | Comments (2)
January 31, 2007
HP-41C
I added the HP-41C to my collection this week.
I actually have all the upgrades to make this an HP-41CX thanks to the Quad Memory and Time Modules. I also have a Math I and Extended Functions Module, which boosts memory to over 600 registers. The unit is rounded out with a restored magnetic card reader, which works great. I used it to store a Quadratic Function solver, which I was able to use when helping Alanna with her math homework tonite.
This was another "original owner" unit that was lovingly maintained -- no corrosion and the facia is in great shape. It's just an amazing calculator.
Current HP Collection:
- HP-15c w/User and Advanced Manuals
- HP-16c w/User Manual
- HP-48GX w/Intro, User and Advanced Manuals, Serial cable and IR Printer
- HP-35 w/Manual
- HP-41CX w/User and Advanced Manuals, four modules, mag card reader
Posted by Steven at 12:30 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2007
HP-35
Today I received an HP-35 calculator I won in an eBay auction last week.
The last generation of the HP-35 "Electronic Slide Rule" calculator
This is a very collectable machine that has a long and famous history. It was the first scientific calculator ever sold. Originally conceived by Bill Hewlett, with the goal of producing a portable computing device that fit (literally) in Bill's shirt pocket (legend has it that the engineers at HP measured Bill's pocket before they started laying out the calculator), the machine was first intended only to be made for internal HP use. The marking department estimated a demand of a few thousand units.
Like Thomas Watson of IBM, they were off by a few orders of magnitude.
This calculator was in a class all to itself for many years, even as expensive "four-key" models sold by TI and Commodore came crashing down in price, thanks to the relentless price reductions of Sharp, Toshiba and Sanyo. Anyone doing real engineering work appreciated the design of the HP-35. The keys had a solid feel, and the machine was built to be repaired.
Need proof? I have in my hands a thirty-five year-old unit that works perfectly well. What other thirty-five year-old electronic devices do you have in your home? The only devices I have that are in the same ballpark are an Apple ][+, and my collection of Minolta SR-T camera bodies (which have the most trivial of electronic parts in them).
This is the calculator that Stephen Wozniak sold when he and Steven Jobs began building Apple I motherboards for sale in 1976. It probably was the most important advance in personal engineering technology in the 1970's. Yes, Hewlett-Packard shipped many more advanced calculators in that era (25, 45, 65, &c.) but the HP-35 was the first, and as such, changed the paradigm.
I'm still amazed by the leaps-and-bounds of that era. Read more about the HP-35 at the The Museum of HP Calculators.
Posted by Steven at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2007
RAW is Dead
Robert Anton Wilson passed away on Jan. 11th. Fnord.
Posted by Steven at 01:27 AM | Comments (1)
January 03, 2007
Live Action Space Invaders
Thanks to Tom White for finding this:
I don't care if this drives your browser crazy ... enjoy it.
Posted by Steven at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2006
Top Astronomy Photos of 2006
From Slashdot ...
Here's a webpage featuring the Best Astronomical Photos of 2006. Here are two that just blow my mind ...
Space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station silhouetted against the Sun.
The Planet Saturn eclipsing the Sun.
Posted by Steven at 06:06 PM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2006
The Chemistry of Limerence?
From today's New York Times (Select):
A radio interviewer in Dublin recently asked me why, in my view, people in Ireland were no happier now that their booming economy had brought them a sudden tide of prosperity. In answering, I cited well-known data showing that once people leave poverty and are able to satisfy their basic needs, there is little to no correlation between earnings and happiness. Or as the Beatles put it, “Money can’t buy me love.”Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-winning psychologist at Princeton, has explained the paradox of the unhappy rich in terms of “the hedonic treadmill”: as we earn more income, our material expectations ratchet inexorably upward, so there’s never enough money. The chase for ever more expensive pleasures never ends. As a result, the rich end up needing more to be as satisfied as the poor are with less money and lower expectations.
Like many friends (and boomers) I've experienced this. Some of my treasured tools and toys are really, really pricey. I like to think they give me more bang for the buck, but there are two exponential curves are work here. The first is the curve of cost, which the article points out (and needs no repeating). (It's also worth pointing out that a lot of manufactured items become exponentially inexpensive over time.) The second curve is the perceived emotional value of things from the past. Money cannot by the most treasured thing (once one is old enough to appreciate it): time. The value of something goes up exponentially as it passes away at the speed of time.
So things you once had are worth less, but more intrinsically more valuable, if you don't retain them. And if you do retain them, they become inordinately valued, relative to their actual value. My collection of old Apple ][ computers is a good example. As modern computers go, they are worthless. As heirlooms, they are nearly priceless to me.
In 2004, Kahneman reported data from a survey of 2000 women showing that good personal relationships – far more than money – determine how satisfied people are with their lives.The emerging field of social neuroscience, which studies how people’s brains operate during interactions with others, is beginning to explain Kahneman’s conclusions. Satisfying relationships, it seems, have powerful effects on brain function, particularly the neural centers for pleasure.
Consider, for instance, research that has been done on attraction. Neuroscientists scanned the brains of men while they looked at photos of various women. Only when a man looked at a woman who was attractive to him and appeared to be looking him straight in the eye (as if she were interested in him, too) did his brain secrete a dose of dopamine, a brain chemical that delivers pleasure. If the man was not drawn to the woman, or when her eyes looked elsewhere, there were no molecules of joy.
At University College London, researchers recruited men and women who were “truly, deeply and madly” in love to have their brains imaged while they looked at photos of their romantic partners. As the subjects gazed at the pictures, their brains lit up neural areas that also activate during another kind of euphoria: narcotic addiction. Apparently, the intense happiness of romance owes much of its ecstasy to the same brain receptors that respond to opiates. Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University, in Ohio, proposes that a couple falling in love go through the neural equivalent of forming an addiction – to each other.
These findings are old news to me. I've experienced this first hand for a long, long time. I called it limerence (the word was coined by Dr. Dorothy Tennov) but it amounts to the same thing. The longing and the sight of a limerent object drives a limerent person crazy with addictive neurostimulants. I think limerence and bi-polarism go together, too. The mood swings are stronger, more pronounced and triggered by the psychology of limerence. Another stimulant in this equation is hearing -- music triggers the emotions and the stimulants, too. I suspect they'll find similar results with music.
So why did you get into music, performing or doing radio?
Posted by Steven at 05:18 PM | Comments (1)
December 06, 2006
Hardware Wars
I found this gem on YouTube.
It's an interview with the "producer" of Hardware Wars.
Posted by Steven at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
December 05, 2006
Traveller Wiki
Someone's created a Wiki for Traveller, the Games Designer Workshop RPG I used to play back in my LHHS and RPI days.
Sadly, GDW protects their copyright so well, very little of the actual game info is here.
Posted by Steven at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2006
Guy Kawasaki Interviewing Steve Wozniak
As part of his book tour, the Woz was interviewed by former Apple Evangelist Guy Kawasaki.
Joe Bob sez "check it out."
Posted by Steven at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)
November 30, 2006
Dr. Bussard's Fusion Reactor
Thanks to Glenn Vanderburg for this link ...
Check out this video link of a lecture given by Dr. Bussard (of "Bussard Ramjet" fusion spaceship fame) of an electric fusion reactor his company (EMC2) is designing. It's amazing to watch ... he really knows this material and delivers it with wit and detail.
Posted by Steven at 11:30 AM | Comments (1)
November 25, 2006
The "Dungeon Master of the Rings"
thanks to Randell Jessup for posting on the Ilk Mailing list...
Check out this web comic. If you've ever sloughed through playing classic Dungeons and Dragons (aka "D&D"), you'll find this cross over hilarious.
Posted by Steven at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2006
Simpsons meet Star Trek
Alanna found this. It's cute.
Pay close attention and see if you spot the Theremin.
Posted by Steven at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2006
And Now For Something Completely Trekkie
Fair Warning (to Trekkies and Python fans) -- this is almost fatally funny:
Posted by Steven at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2006
Nintendo World Store
Believe it or not, the reason I took Leo to Manhattan today was because he wanted to visit the Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller Plaza. Since we'd be within 180 miles of it, I figured, "why not?" (besides, I could visit the Fifth Avenue Apple Store). So here we are.
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| Way-cool Nintendo World Store sign. | |
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| Leo speaking into a voice-recognition DS | First floor Pokémon Center |
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"Most excellent" egg-chair or total game immersion ovoid chamber. These are really stunning to look at and I didn't even try to find out what they cost for fear of finding out they are affordable afterall. I doubt we could have placed it in the RocketBox for the drive home. Wives -- take note of the womb-like nature of the chair and beware. Any husband who goes into this device will not come out willingly. |
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| Another view of the egg-chairs. | The Nintendo clothing area. |
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| Second floor gaming zone. | |
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| Early Nintendo 8-bit computer with cassette tape storage. | Customized Gameboys. |
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| Happy camper! Found his Nintendo World t-shirt. | A Boy and His Store |
Posted by Steven at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2006
Ithaca Sagan Memorial Planetary Walk
When in downtown Ithaca, it's not hard to find the first five planets of the Carl Sagan Memorial Planetary Walk. It starts in the Commons, right next to Anne's favorite art store, Americana Crafts. Jupiter is next to the famous Moosewood Restaurant.
Posted by Steven at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2006
Dershstock 2006
The whole family went to Dershstock 2006 this year (if only for a day).
We drove out of Albany around noon and made it to Phonecia in good time. We stopped at Brio's for lunch, and despite the flies, had a really good lunch. Anne went shopping at a local Tibetian store (Tibetian in NY, go figure) and found an interesting shirt. We went back to the Jetta and started trying to find the compound.
I made a couple of bad starts, and then went down Fawn Hill Rd. (all the way), but we eventually found our way there.
The Dershstock House
For the most part, the building and facilities were the same. When I arrived in 2004, it was at the beginning of the event, before everyone and their kids arrived. At day three, when folks were actively leaving, it was evident that a lot of folks had come and gone (and someone had a lot of cleaning to do!)
Charles' friend Bretch
The oddest thing about this Dershstock was the absence of my friend Charles. Everyone was talking about it ... this is the first Dershstock he's missed. Apparently, he's the "spice" in a lot of the more infamous Dershstocks of the past. No surprise there!
Another shot of the big room and majestic view.
Leo had a great time in the pool most of the afternoon, swimming around with his noodle and being chased by the dad with the sharkfin googles. The water looked cold, but was fine "once you got in it." Sure. Sure.
After we said our goodbyes to the Dershowitz family, we headed out Rt. 28 to Rt. 206. We passed through Walton, NY, which was nearly destroyed by the weekend floods on the Susquehana river. It was about two and one-half hours drive to return to Whitney Point.
Posted by Steven at 05:40 PM | Comments (1)
June 23, 2006
Why Don't I Buy Dell? Here's Why
You can read the story here, but the bottom line is that this Dell laptop randomly exploded. Imagine this happening in an airplane. Now imagine what Homeland Security will do when this happens in an airplane. You may not be able to fly your Dell lapmine after that. Keep this in mind when you buy a Dell.
Dude, you're getting a landmine!
Posted by Steven at 05:22 PM | Comments (1)
June 12, 2006
Article about Ed Catmull at Pixar
If you are into animation, read this article about Ed Catmull at Pixar (and now, Disney Animation Studios). It will give you some hope that Disney will be back, and stronger, in the coming decade. The back-story on Ed is really interesting, too (I just prickled when I read the incorrect bit about Jobs creating Pixar -- Lucas created Pixar and sold it to Jobs!).
Posted by Steven at 06:29 PM | Comments (0)
June 10, 2006
Project A-Kon 17
Another June, another A-Kon. Number seventeen, in fact. Seeing as how I was in Ft. Worth most of the weekend, it's a wonder I saw any of A-Kon, but I did.
For the second weekend, Chloe came up on Southwest Air from Austin to visit with us. She and Alanna were largely on their own this year at A-Kon, and Chloe let us know that she plans on driving herself up in future conventions, so I guess the "stay all weekend at the hotel by themselves" is coming up, too. Oh boy.
I didn't get to take many photos as I didn't make it to A-Kon until after 6pm today, but I did catch this guy dressed as Alanna's favorite character from Full Metal Alchemist, Maes Hughes. She told me there were five Hughes' altogether this year at the convention, so I guess he's well represented.
A number of Alanna's friends also attended, including Kathleen and the giggleizer herself. Victor Manuel was there promoting AnimeFEST, but I never ran into him (he is a big booster of the MNHS Band). I didn't see many adult friends, however I was surprised by the sudden appearance of an old friend whom I see less and less of (of late) ... Melanie.
I did hook up with Melanie Fletcher and an author friend of hers whom I met at another smaller con that we all attended several years back. We had a good time eating dinner together, making jokes at each other's expense, and attending their reading. I bought a copy of the friend's novel as the opening chapter was so fascinating, I knew I had to read the rest of the story.
Anne spent much of the day with Leo, who managed to surprise a panelist on gaming with his knowledge of the panelists' company's plans for a new game. When he's in his milleu, Leo can be devistating. He focused on software panels that either showed off new products for making or rendering games, or on the game designers. Gotta admire his focus.
The hardest moment in the convention came when I passed on the $50 40th Anniversary Edition of Nuclear War in the gaming huckster's booth. I love playing the game, but not that much.
Posted by Steven at 11:00 PM | Comments (1)
May 11, 2006
Blast From the Past
Way back in early 1980, shortly after my friend Matt Bailey recieved an Apple ][+ with a floppy drive for Xmas, my great uncle Harry Wassall offered to buy me a personal computer. You see, he had invested in some small computer storefront in the Washington D.C. area, and they could "get him a system at cost". That system, it turns out, was the infamous Ohio Scientific Instrument's Challenger II 4P MF.
The model I received was not unlike the image above, except it was a dark blue color with sheet metal sides (not the nice wood you see here). It also included a nice big dent on the top of the case, which probably didn't help the quality of the circuit board. The floppy drive sat in a low box that was as wide and deep as the top of the CPU case, so it was rather a large box for a single 5 1/4" disc drive.
The really tragic thing about this is that the $1695 my great uncle spent would have bought almost the same Apple ][ that Matt received. As it turned out, I spent more time on that Apple than on the Challenger C2-4P. In fact, about the only thing I did on the Challenger was learn 6502 machine code.
Yes, machine code. Why? Because the system was such a staggering piece of shit that all I could really do with it was either write small BASIC programs (I remember doing a Chemistry lab on it using the RND() function to simulate real data) or to type in raw binary 6502 instructions and tell the monitor program to "jump to" the code. My first working program drew a little spinning arrow on the screen (a single loop writing a different ASCII code into the screen buffer did the trick).
The machine had a floppy drive but no disc operating system. This was probably an after-thought ... but I read in a review of the history of OSI that they just shipped the machine with a disc monitor program and sort of hoped that someone would finish the filesystem code for them.
One very questionable thing I do recall about the model I had was that my Dad (upon investigating the motherboard) discovered that it had a UART chip already soldered to the main circuit, board and a single jumper (if cut) would activate it. OSI wanted $295 to "install a serial port" ... and the installation was simply cutting the jumper. What a bunch of scumbags to sell me something I already had.
I ended up selling the machine to a music store in Denton, TX in late 1980, favoring Matt's Apple ][+ in the end. Sometimes I wonder if I still had the C2-4P, whether or not I could get it to work, but then I think about all the time wasted on it back when the Apple ][ was so clearly the right machine and I lose all that nostalgic feeling for my first PC.
A more complete history of the Ohio Scientific Instruments company is a good read if you want to know what they did wrong (in spades).
Posted by Steven at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2006
Jittlov Shorts
I was futzing around on YouTube last night and I stumbled across the Mike Jittlov short films (The Wizard of Speed and Time, Time Tripper, and Swing Shift). These shorts were the highlight of many a 1980's Boskone SciFi Convention.
Joe Bob strongly recommends you check them out.
Posted by Steven at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)
Biodiesel Just Got a Little Closer
The Dallas Morning News has an article about a new biodiesel fuel station opening in Denton, TX. Denton is 25 miles west of McKinney on US-380, so it's not super convenient, but if I do find myself out there, I will seek out the biodiesel station for a tank of less smelly fuel.
Posted by Steven at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2006
Where Were You at 01:02:03 4/5/2006?
I was working on my iBook at the magic moment: 01:02:03 04-05-06.
Even the Dallas Morning News covered the un-event.
Posted by Steven at 01:02 AM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2006
Musings on Dolby
Thanks to Randell Jessup!
Posted by Steven at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2006
VW and Google Plan Car Nav System
VW and Google are preparing an in-car navigation system using Google's Keyhole software system running on nVidia display chips.
The partnership of Google, VW, and nVidia proposes a concept that will jump ahead of existing systems on two fronts: it will offer actual images showing terrain, roads, buildings and foliage, and provide real-time information on services; for example, gas stations that are open currently, not just 18 months ago when the car's DVD disc was manufactured. By seeing the roadway in the context of nearby buildings and landmarks, drivers will have a better sense of where they are and whether they're on course.Other nav-system vendors are working on the timeliness issue too, with hard disks that replace or supplement the map DVDs. Updates would arrive either wirelessly (via satellite downloads or cellular data), by WiFi to the car when it's parked at home, or (the least likely method, because it would require user intervention) removing the hard disk and docking it to a USB-connected PC.
A prototype of the Google-VW technology at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in January gave attendees a taste for what may be possible in a couple years. Using cellular wireless such as EVDO or other high-speed wireless (WiMax is a possibility), the system calls on Google online maps, Google Search, and Google Earth capabilities. The route, other key roads, and POIs (points of interest) are overlaid on the images. Since there's a wireless link to the Internet, the driver could check on gasoline prices or determine if a restaurant is still open.
But photorealistic views may not always be better in a moving vehicle. Some drivers might find it a challenge to orient themselves quickly with the image, even when it's facing in the direction they're traveling. For one thing, the images are shot from overhead. Also, images shot in winter, for example, may not resemble those shot in spring (less of a problem in urban areas where skyscrapers look the same all year).
I hope this comes out in time for me to get it in my next VW!
Posted by Steven at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2006
Star Wars Valentines
I gotta admit, this is hilarious.
There are more.
Posted by Steven at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2006
Roving Mars
An IMAX movie is opening featuring the Mars rovers of the last decade in Roving Mars.
Propelled by the yo-yo minimalism of another phoned-in Philip Glass score, the movie chronicles the production, launch and triumphant success of Spirit and Opportunity, nicknames for a pair of wildly complex gadgets designed to explore and analyze the Red Planet. Read no more if you want to grow up to be an astronaut; here are 40 minutes of nonstop robots, spaceships and bright-eyed NASA geeks enthusing about tangles of circuitry and nifty hydraulics. Sample line of voice-over: "It's going to another planet for real!"For the Kennedy Space Center set, "Roving Mars" is sure to prove a rocket-science riot, but others may grow perplexed and dismayed once the journey takes off into space. Computer animation takes over where cameras can't go, so that the whole spectacular Rover adventure ultimately plays like an extravagant cartoon. If many of the scenes are fake, however, the thrill of the project is not, and what we do see of the surface — hyperclear photographs on the scale of 100-by-180 feet — is out of this world.
Sounds cool, I hope I get a chance to see it in an IMAX theater.
Posted by Steven at 02:18 PM | Comments (1)
January 18, 2006
Just for Alanna
O'Reilly Books has a webpage showing hilarious send-ups of their bookcovers. This is the one that Alanna will like the most.
Posted by Steven at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)
Coolest Toy This Year
Imagine owning your own roller-coaster. Now you can.
CoasterDynamix has been formed to produce high-quality, easy to assemble, realistic amusement rides. Scorpion, the newest product from CoasterDynamix, is an extremely twisted, outside-looping roller coaster modeling system.In pushing the envelope of what is currently available for modeling roller coasters, CoasterDynamix has focused on the best way to design and produce a high quality roller coaster model that is infinitely modifiable, visually accurate, easy and quick to assemble, expandable and just plain fun! Click here for more info on Scorpion.
Posted by Steven at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2006
Oz Man Recites First 4,400 Digits of Pi
Australian Chris Lyons spent 150 minutes reciting the first 4,400 digits of 
. Scary.
Posted by Steven at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2006
Father of LSD To Turn 100
I caught this story in the New York Times about the father of LSD, Albert Hoffman, who turns 100 this week.
His work on ergot produced several important drugs, including a compound still in use to prevent hemorrhaging after childbirth. But it was the 25th compound that he synthesized, lysergic acid diethylamide, that was to have the greatest impact. When he first created it in 1938, the drug yielded no significant pharmacological results. But when his work on ergot was completed, he decided to go back to LSD-25, hoping that improved tests could detect the stimulating effect on the body's circulatory system that he had expected from it. It was as he was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it became famous. "Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I had had as a child," he said. "I didn't know what caused it, but I knew that it was important."
I've never taken LSD, but I'm fascinated by the chemical ever sense I read Storming Heaven. It's really annoying that the CIA and Timothy Leary screwed up LSD for the rest of us. Read the book, and you'll understand.
Posted by Steven at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)
December 25, 2005
Computer Geeks Save Christmas
The Washinton Post published a story about how computer saavy family members are increasingly being conscripted into fixing their extended family's computers over the holidays.
Stan King is going to Pittsburgh and then Los Angeles to visit family for the holidays; he has already gotten word that he needs to fix computers belonging to his cousins, his nieces and nephews in both places. District resident Laura Maschal needs to load Apple's iTunes on her dad's computer during her Christmas break. Robert Clemenzi, meanwhile, will be trying to fix his sister's broadband connection during his holiday jaunt down to Asheville, N.C.For many folks like them, having a family reputation for tech savviness means that going home for the holidays has become the time for connecting printers and figuring out why mom's e-mail software stopped working a few weeks back. As computers have found a place in nearly everyone's home, the annual computer checkup has become almost as much of a tradition as dad putting together the new bicycle or sister-in-law getting dragged into the kitchen to make gravy or eggnog.
"It used to be that grandma wanted you to put in a new light bulb in some hard-to-reach place," said Maschal, who works for a local Web company, though in a non-techie capacity. "Now you have to come over to take spyware off her hard drive."
If there is a tech professional in the family, that is the person who gets the job of configuring that new wireless network connection or figuring out why a computer is acting "funny." Otherwise, it's the young guy, the one who is into computer games or uses an iPod or who packs cutting-edge gadgets like a Treo smart phone. After that, practically anyone who uses a computer at work might wind up appointed to the task.
Sometimes, though, you just have to draw a line. When Timothy Shey, an executive at a local Web applications company, found out that his parents were deciding on a new computer a couple of years ago, he offered to give them free and unlimited tech support, on one condition -- they had to buy an Apple MacIntosh.
For Mac fans such as Shey, having to do maintenance on a rival Windows computer is a galling experience. Shey said he knows one guy who took his parents' Windows system when they were out of the house and replaced it with a Mac: Tech-support problem solved.
But the Sheys ignored their son's advice and bought a Windows-based computer. So a year later when the machine started acting up, he kept his word.
"I cut them off," he said with a laugh.
This year was pretty light, only rebuilt my sister's PC, and helped two neighbors with their routers. It could have been worse! And take the advice in the article -- toss your #$%#$% PC and get a Mac!
Posted by Steven at 11:15 AM | Comments (1)
December 15, 2005
Bird's Eye View of Home
Microsoft has a competitor to Google's Google Earth (both of which went into beta this month for the Macintosh). Here is the MS "Bird's Eye" view of my home (center of the image, with the black car in the drive way) from Microsoft's Local View:
I can see the trim on my roof line. On the lower right of the image you can see the yellow slide of the playset I built for Alanna and Leo, that I gave to the family across the street. I think this image was taken last winter, around January, as that is the earliest my red oak tree is leafless.
I was able to locate Anne's brother's house, but not the homestead on Timberleaf Dr. (the Bird's Eye view is not available everywhere). MS seems to be focusing on edge cities, I guess, with this. It will be a powerful tool for anyone doing regional activities like block walking.
Posted by Steven at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)
December 08, 2005
The Perfect Toilet Paper Dispenser
I'm told this is a real product:
Good God.
Posted by Steven at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2005
Weird USB
Sushi USB, anyone?
That's right, sushi USB "thumb drives". Or if you prefer, just plain thumb "thumb drives".
Leave it to the Japanese to tweek the USB disc drive concept by encasing them in interesting plastic shells. Westerners don't always appreciate how important sushi is to Japanese culture. These drives and the others are clever and also very popular.
I guess the wasabi versions are USB 2.0.
No info on pricing or availability, however the webpage is in English, which is a good sign for use Westerners.
Posted by Steven at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)
December 06, 2005
More on Biodiesel
The New York Times has a story on biodiesel cars that makes it sound pretty attractive to switch. Not that I have to do anything, really, since I can buy biodiesel on the highway driving to Austin from Willie Nelson himself at Carl's Corners.
Biodiesel only works in diesel engines, and while many people find it attractive, it is not an easy fuel to use. Because drivers usually can't pull up to a pump to refuel, most people who have converted their cars have to make the fuel themselves, which is not a simple process. And using the fuel could also void a new car's warranty."It definitely takes up time to make biodiesel," said David Henri of New Hartford, who burns biodiesel in his 1999 Volkswagen Jetta. "You have to be a dedicated person."
Because vegetable oils congeal in cold weather, biofuel vehicles start up using standard diesel in the winter, then switch to biodiesel after the car has been heated (either by electric heaters or the warming engine). Mr. Zemola's Mercedes can also run in sub-zero temperatures because the biofuel lines are encased in heater hoses to keep them warm. The Mercedes does indeed occasionally smell of French fries, and other times like popcorn or barbecue.
In a report issued this year, the federal Environmental Protection Agency said that biodiesel is better for the environment than conventional diesel. The agency said that burning B100, which is 100 percent vegetable oil, in a car reduces particulate matter by 47 percent, unburned hydrocarbons by 67 percent and carbon monoxide by 48 percent, but is dirtier in nitrogen oxide emissions.
Posted by Steven at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
December 01, 2005
Lego Vikings!
Wow, this combines my employer and my favorite childhood toy. I wonder if it comes with the horned-helmet? I can just imagine the enormous Iceland® and Greenland® expansion sets for this starter kit.
Will there be Eric the Red figurines?
I'll have to check with my Icelander and Norge co-workers to see if the Danes (makers of Lego) have some kind of grudge against them.
PS. Me want Viking Lego ;-). Especially the horned-helmed figurines.
Posted by Steven at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)
AirPort Express
How can Apple cram so much goodness into a such a small brick?
The Apple Computer AirPort Express is a miniature wonder. It's just a small brick that plugs into a wall socket. If you attach an Ethernet cable (or can bridge it to a WiFi router), it becomes a WiFi hub. And if you use iTunes and plug in an audio or optical cable, you can use it to play your digitally stored music out of any stereo hooked up to it. And if you plug a USB printer into it, it becomes a wireless printer hub. It's "brilliant" and easy to configure and use, plus the portability means that it is painless to add to the laptop bag and take it everywhere. Don't mind if I do!
What is really cool about this is that when I come visit you ... I can plug this in and finally get WiFi regardless of your actual Internet setup (assuming you have some kind of broadband connection and a NAT router).
I used it today when I went into the Maskina office in Irving, which has no WiFi. Ten seconds after plugging it in, my iBook was on the network. Voila! Now that's awesome, Apple goodness.
Posted by Steven at 08:17 PM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2005
PepperPad Dissed
PC Magazine's Jim Louderback listed the "10 Worst Tech Products of the Year", and #3 was the PepperPad computer. I worked on this product last year from Sept. until Nov., when I stepped down from the contract job and came back to Dallas. It was really cool working on a real Route 128 startup product, but I have to admit, many of Louderback's comments rang true.
3. PepperPad: Following in the footsteps of the Audrey, Netpliance, and NIC, this is an Internet bubble failure five years too late. More expensive than a laptop, with a battery life measured in minutes, and a tiny 8- by 6-inch touch screen, this home Internet tablet has few redeeming features. Unless you're a fan of freaky keyboards, opt for a cheap tablet PC instead.
It doesn't help that laptops with much higher screen resolutions sell for well under the price of the PepperPad. It's a neat idea, but it needs at least 1024 x 768 screen and Bluetooth.
Posted by Steven at 04:38 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2005
Zero Wing Rhapsody
Either you get it, or you don't. I'm NOT explaining it!
Posted by Steven at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2005
15 Years of Web Pages
The World Wide Web began fifteen years ago as a single web page on a NeXT Cube (hey, I got one of those!) in Geneva, Switzerland (hey, I lived there once!).
There are a few more pages today ... in much the same way as there are more McDonald's hamburgers sold.
Posted by Steven at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2005
Porkins Is Dead
Red Six died Sunday of pancreatic cancer (a particularly nasty cancer).
Born William Hootkins on July 5th, 1948 in Dallas, TX (my home town!), he was only 57. Made famous for participating in The Battle for Yavin in the first Star Wars movie, his role, though brief, was popular (as Red Six, he was one of the first Rebel X-Wing fighters shot down on the Death Star).
In a busy career, Hootkins worked regularly on both sides of the Atlantic. His first film role was in 1977, playing Jedi fighter Jek Porkins in George Lucas' Star Wars. Though the part was small, it had a big impact. He joked in a Whatsonstage.com interview two years ago (See 20 Questions, 28 Jul 2003): “In a sense, my career's been downhill ever since. Fans still come to greet me at the stage door with action figures of my character and embarrassing photographs for me to sign.”But such recognition did have its upside. As he also told Whatsonstage.com: “I still didn't realise what power would come from that job until a year later I received my first fan letter. In it was a drawing of my scene by a little boy, and it was actually a clearer and more understandable version of the scene than George Lucas'! He asked if he could have an autographed photo. When I checked the return address, it was the leukaemia ward of a children's hospital. It's a blessing to me that I have any power to make even the tiniest difference in other people's lives.”
All these years later, I'm stil amazed at the amount of fandom that bit players from Star Trek and Star Wars have. Rest in piece, Porkins.
Posted by Steven at 01:21 PM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2005
Departing Earth
Here's what it really looks like to leave Earth (in a chemical propellant rocket).
Joe Bob sez, "That's just what it looked like when I got abducted!"
Posted by Steven at 12:10 AM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2005
AnimeFest 2005
The whole family (and Collin) went to AnimeFest 2005 today.
Here are the photos.
Posted by Steven at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2005
The Fellowship of the Submarine
Bought this print at ArmadilloCon 27 and I just have to share the image:
Posted by Steven at 01:00 PM | Comments (1)
August 11, 2005
Star Trek Business Cards
Paul Claerhout sent this link to "Star Trek Business Cards".
Live long, in laughter.
Posted by Steven at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2005
One Man Star Wars Show
The New York Times has done a review of the "One Man Star Wars Show", an act that I saw last year at the Noreascon Four (World Science Fiction Convention). It's a great piece of theater, and some of the ad libs are hilarious (e.g. Luke removes Darth's helmut and says, "I thought you'd be blacker?"). If you get a chance to see this guy do his thing and you love Star Wars then this is a treat.
Posted by Steven at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)
July 29, 2005
Planet X
Astronomers (what, you think theologians can do this?) have found another Pluto-sized world 97 A.U. away from the Sun.
You got it ... Planet X, about 3000km across, three times as distant as Pluto.
The New York Times has a better story about a world some call Xena after (yeah) her.
Posted by Steven at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2005
In Honor of David Miller
 | My friend and former co-worker from Matrix Instruments, Dave Miller, is a large LCD fanatic. I should send him one of these shirts for every 23" or 30" Apple Cinema display he's returned due to bad pels or color. Here's to you Dave, and your supernatural abilities! |
Posted by Steven at 05:06 PM | Comments (1)
July 26, 2005
Math Nerd Dream Girl
Remember Winnie from The Wonder Years? She was the oh-so-cute girl that the main character pined over. It turns out ... she's brilliant, too.
Ms. McKellar, now a semiregular on "The West Wing" playing a White House speechwriter, Elsie Snuffin, is probably the only person on prime-time television who moonlights as a cyberspace math tutor.Her mathematics knowledge extends well beyond calculus. As a math major at the University of California, Los Angeles, she also took more esoteric classes, the ones with names like "complex analysis" and "real analysis," and she pondered making a career move to professional mathematician.
"I love that stuff," Ms. McKellar said last month during a visit to Manhattan after a play-reading in the Hamptons. Her conversation was peppered with terminology like "epsilons" and "limsups" (pronounced "lim soups").
"I love continuous functions and proving if functions are continuous or not," she said.
She may also be the only actress, now or ever, to prove a new mathematical theorem, one that bears her name. Certainly, she is the only theorem prover who appears wearing black lingerie in the July issue of Stuff magazine. Even in that interview, she mentioned math.
This woman could have any man she wants at RPI (I know, not exactly the Ferrari dealership of men). Jesus, the power she could wield! But I digress. Hat's off to a beautiful woman who also has a beautiful mind.
Posted by Steven at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2005
Google Moon
My Dad will love this. You can surf the Moon on Google Maps' lunar database. They list all the Apollo Landing sites, which all feature Ray Staton's lunar seismograph.
Hint: Try maximum zoom for an amusing annecdote.
Posted by Steven at 04:19 PM | Comments (0)
New Look at the Elements
Check out this new layout of the Periodic Table of the Elements:
Not your Daddy's Periodic Table
Among the cool things about this new chart is that it includes neutronium, which is a kind of non-element (zero protons makes it the zeroeth element). Another is how it shows a continuum of elements so the alkalais are alongside the nobels.
Joe Bob sez "click on the image" for a larger view.
Posted by Steven at 04:13 PM | Comments (0)
James Doohan, 1920-2005
 | With a heavy heart, but with plenty of warning, the Star Trek community mourns the death of James "Scotty" Doohan, the Canadian actor who played Lt. Scott, chief Engineer onboard the mythic starship Enterprise. Last year he announced his last Star Trek convention (in August), and with the onset of Alzheimer's disease, the end of his life. This news shocked me, but in retrospect, he was lucky that he was able to say goodbye to the fen and not to linger too long in the fog of Alzheimer's. Everyone break out the good Scotch tonite for the Enterprise's only Chief Engineer. |
A clever tribute to Doohan's character's influence is here.
Posted by Steven at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2005
E-Paper Almost Here
Some of you may recall my ranting about the "end of paper" a decade or so ago. Well, now e-paper is here.
Joe Bob sez check it out.
Posted by Steven at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2005
pinocchioPod
And you think I have a lot of time on my hands! Check out this wooden iPod case mod that some dude did.
Perhaps the strongest evidence, yet, of "not having a life" we've seen.
Posted by Steven at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2005
Lost Newton Manuscript Found
The Royal Society has found a Sir Issac Newton manuscript thought lost for all time, and apparently on the subject of Alchemy. Since this is the theme of Neal Stephenson's latest trilogy I find this rather a convenient coincidence.
A collection of notes by Sir Isaac Newton, thought by experts to be lost forever, have recently been rediscovered during cataloguing at the Royal Society and go on display to the public for the first time next week at the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition.The notes are written about alchemy, which some scientists in Newton's time believed to hold the secret for transforming base metals, such as lead, into the more precious metals of gold or silver. Much of the text consists of Newtons notes on the work of another alchemist of the seventeenth century, Frenchman Pierre Jean Fabre. But one page of the notes presents a more intriguing prospect it offers what may be Newton's own thoughts on alchemy, written almost entirely in English and in his own handwriting.
Although the notes were originally uncovered following Newton's death in 1727, they were never properly documented and were thought to be lost following their sale for £15 at an auction at Sotheby's in July 1936. During the cataloguing of the Royal Society's Miscellaneous Manuscripts Collection the notes were discovered and, with the help of Imperial College's Newton Project, were identified as being the papers which had disappeared nearly 70 years before.
Posted by Steven at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2005
My Car Can Run on Vegetables
NPR did a story about bio-deisel from restaurants. This guy runs his TDI on Chinese Restuarant discarded veggie oil.
Posted by Steven at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2005
My Cat Made Me Bipolar!
I don't know what to make of this story:
THEY may look like lovable pets but Britain’s estimated 9m domestic cats are being blamed by scientists for infecting up to half the population with a parasite that can alter people’s personalities.The startling figures emerge from studies into toxoplasma gondii, a parasite carried by almost all the country’s feline population. They show that half of Britain’s human population carry the parasite in their brains, and that infected people may undergo slow but crucial changes in their behaviour.
Infected men, suggests one new study, tend to become more aggressive, scruffy, antisocial and are less attractive. Women, on the other hand, appear to exhibit the “sex kitten” effect, becoming less trustworthy, more desirable, fun- loving and possibly more promiscuous.
The findings will not please cat lovers. The research — conducted at universities in Britain, the Czech Republic and America — was sponsored by the Stanley Research Medical Institute of Maryland, a leading centre for the study of mental illness. The institute has already published research showing that people infected with the toxoplasma parasite are at greater risk of developing schizophrenia and manic depression.
The study into more subtle changes in human personality is being carried out by Professor Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague. In one study he subjected more than 300 volunteers to personality profiling while also testing them for toxoplasma.
He found the women infected with toxoplasma spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive. “We found they were more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends and cared more about how they looked,” he said. “However, they were also less trustworthy and had more relationships with men.”
By contrast, the infected men appeared to suffer from the “alley cat” effect: becoming less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight. They were more likely to be suspicious and jealous. “They tended to dislike following rules,” Flegr said.
He also discovered that people infected with toxoplasma had delayed reaction times — and are at greater risk of being involved in car accidents. “Toxoplasma infection, could represent a serious and highly underestimated economic and public health problem,” he said.”
Holy snapping arsenals! Ye gods, what next?
Posted by Steven at 05:37 PM | Comments (1)
June 08, 2005
Female Orgasm Genetically Driven
CNN is running a story about recent discoveries regarding human female orgasm. It appears to be genetically driven, that is, you inherit the ability or inability. Like homosexuality, it doesn't appear to be selected by culture as much as by genes.
Like heart disease, anxiety and depression, scientists discovered in a study of 1,397 pairs of female twins that there is a genetic basis to female orgasm."We found that between 34 percent and 45 percent of the variation in ability to orgasm can be explained by underlying genetic variation," said Tim Spector, of the Twin Research Unit at St Thomas' Hospital in London.
"There is a biological underlying influence that can't be attributed purely to upbringing, religion or race."
...
"There is something biological that explains some of this large variation between women," he said, adding that many genes could be involved.
If scientists could discover which genes and how they function, it could potentially pave the way for future therapies to treat women who cannot reach orgasm.
But Spector said orgasm is a very complex process which is poorly understood. Little research has been done because it is still a taboo subject.
Anatomical and biological features and psychological factors may all play a part.
Posted by Steven at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2005
A-Kon Photos
I'm posting my 138 A-Kon 16 photos here. Enjoy.
Posted by Steven at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)
June 04, 2005
A-Kon Day #2
Leo and I returned home last night, and so we had to drive back down this morning. We were up around 8am, and on the road at 8:50. I was able to drive downtown in twenty-five minutes ... a third of the Friday drive time. What a difference rush hour can make.
We met up with Anne, Alanna and Monse at the Adam's Mark Cafe, and had breakfast brunch. Leo wanted to attend a two-hour NewTek seminar at 11am on their 3D rendering system (a $1500 application for making 3D movies), so Anne agreed to take him to that. I wanted to attend Melanie's panel at 11am titled How to deal with Writer's Block. Alanna and Monse wanted to find everyone else and continue their pursuit of Full Metal Alchemist events.
Melanie's panel was on the same floor as the NewTek seminar, so Anne, Leo and I hung out on the third floor until everything started. I photographed fen dressed as characters from Inuyashi. Melanie's panel was interesting, and it reminded me that I hadn't done a damned thing towards our shared vision of a SciFi short story. She dutifully pointed me out as her "con beotch" to the amusement of the other panelists.
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| Melanie and her panelists discuss the "perfect man". | Fen dressed as Sango, Kagome, and Kikyou. |
After the panel, I caught a fan dressed as Alanna's favorite FMA character, Lt. Col. Maes Hughes.
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| Lt. Col. Maes Hughes. | Have you seen my photos of Elicia? |
When I next saw Anne and Leo, they reported that the panel was fascinating, and that they stayed for the entire two hours. Better yet, Leo was the winner of two complimentary DVDs of animation produced by the DAVE School in Florida (Batman: New Times and Spoonman). He was a buzz over getting a copy of NewTek's software and learning how to animate. Who knows? If he sticks with it ... he might be the next John A. Davis.
Some other fans I bumped into (including Alanna's friend Alicia).
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| Dapper Copper. | Alicia as Rikku from Final Fantasy. |
More fan costumes, including two different Marcos (Porco Rosso).
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| Tim, the Enchanter. | The second Porco Rosso. |
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| The third Porco Rosso. | "Silent Bob" made an appearance. |
The highlight of the day came when Vic Mignogna (of Full Metal Alchemist fame) showed the fans his semi-professional fan movie Full Metal Fantasy. This is a short film that Vic brings to the conventions he attends, to show only to the dedicated fans. It's not supposed to ever be sold, or posted on the Net, and he begged the fans not to film it or redistribute it.
The plot is pretty simple: he, a voice actor, gets a magical replica of a watch the charcter Ed carries, and this turns him into Ed. He then faces off all the enemies from the show (namely, the Seven Deadly Sins, all anthropomorphized), played by the voice actors who work with him at Funimation. It's a surprisingly good production, and the audience loved it. The girls were screaming like they were at a Beatles concert -- it was the highlight of the weekend for them.
Alas, no photos were allowed at the event.
While we were waiting for Holly to arrive, the girls all decided to play "Truth or Dare". One thing led to another, and the dare became "lick Alicia's ankle". So be it!
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| Playing Spin the Bottle (Truth or Dare). | Licking Alicia's ankle. |
Some group photos, including the promised picture of Erica and Matt.
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| Alicia, Kathleen, Alanna and Monse. | Erica Reis and her boyfriend Matt. |
Posted by Steven at 10:09 PM | Comments (3)
June 03, 2005
A-Kon Day #1
No battle plan survives exposure to the battlefield.
This was the first major convention that my entire family attended, and so it exposed everyone to my and Anne's different styles of planning. For the most part, we are in sync, but she's never been to a monster convention like A-Kon, either.
We had discussed and agreed to leave around 9am today, with Holly Werth driving the girls in her minivan and I driving the adults and Leo in Anne's Jetta Wagon. We weren't sure if the Snell's were really going to come, because of mother-daughter conflicts that rage like wildfire, out of our control. We asked Monse's folks to drop her off before 9am, and they agreed to do so. We had packed everything and got an early rest (well, except for me).
Morning broke, and so did the plan. Everything we expected to go wrong did. The Snell's had a big row (between mom and daughter) and for a while it looked like they weren't coming. Monse arrived well ahead of schedule and was no problem, bless her folks. Holly was late getting to McKinney, and Christy took ten minutes to come to the car after we arrived at 9:15am. By this time, I'm in that male state of mind called "full speed ahead" and I'm getting frustrated.
The drive down was a navigational disaster. Holly followed me down, but kept such a large distance between our cars that rush hour drivers constantly cut her off and I had to hang back, waiting for her to catch up. Then I ignored my own advice on avoiding the High Five and we drove right into a thirty minute delay thanks to an accident on the LBJ ramp. We took over an hour to drive downtown when it normally takes me a little over half an hour. To top everything off, I took the wrong exit because I couldn't change lanes at the last second lest I lose Holly, and as a result I led us on a tour of the Ross St. area downtown before finally arriving at the hotel, whereupon we "stood" illegally until I got everyone out of the Jetta and could go down the street to park. At this point, tempers are flaring and I'm fearing a bad day.
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| Some of the T-shirt Vendors. | Wide shot of the dealer's room. |
The first order of business was visiting the Dealer's Room. Anne set a meeting time that forced us to abandon the room half-way, so we went back several times during the day. Alanna found a copy of Full Metal Alchemist Vol. 3 (she also brought Vol. 1 of the DVD series because it had "Ed" on the cover), and had it signed by all of the voice actors attending, including Mike McFarland and Vic Mignogna.
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| Mike McFarland and Alanna. | Chloe waiting for autographs. |
I kept bumping into Erica Reis and her boyfriend Matt. I'll take a photo of them tomorrow for everyone to see. I'm looking forward to Alanna's other two friends (Haley and Kathleen) showing up tomorrow.
Leo had a great time. His costume is well made (by Anne) and he looks great in it. He has a "pose" which he readily assumes when asked for a photo. We found a couple of other people dressed as his character, but he had little competition. During the autograph wait, he was able to wrangle a lightsabre (like the one he wants to buy) from a kid and duel him on camera. He's a real trooper and has got his convention chops down (all the training at Six Flags has paid off).
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| Leo got to battle with a "real" lightsabre. | Anotehr person in the costume Leo was in (Lloyd). |
A lot of zany stuff is going on, and there are some great character costumes to be found. This pair from Full Metal Alchemist was quite good. A chap goes to A-Kon calling attention to "Tentacle Sex", and he asked to take my photo. I asked if I could hold his squid, and the result speaks for itself. I had no idea Leo was posing behind me (no, he's not popping out of anything!).
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| Two characters from Full Metal Alchemist. | I meet "Mrs. Tentacle Sex" herself. |
We had some problems at lunch, unfortunately. We went over to the Plaza of the Americas, and were stopped at the door. Alicia's costume was too risque for us to enter the mall, it turned out. We covered her up and went to J. Pepe's. The food was ok, but the service was slooooooow, and Christy knocked over Leo's sprite drink, which washed over my pant leg. Too much excitement for me.
Anne and I ate dinner together, and alone, at the hotel Cafe, which was nice. She and Christy stayed largely to themselves in our hotel room, or in the main convention room. Our cellphones were barely working in this environment, so we had to run into each other rather than rely on the phones. Our rooms are on the second-to-the-top floor of the North tower, which is a chore to get to.
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| Alanna's birthday cupcake. | A piece of hotel art Anne would like. |
The Snell's gave Alanna a cupcake "cake" before we dispersed for the evening. She's fourteen today!
Posted by Steven at 10:14 PM | Comments (1)
June 02, 2005
A-Kon Day #0
This evening I went downtown to the Adam's Mark Hotel to pick up everyone's A-Kon badges. I drove down to the Plano Fry's, and took DART to the Pearl St. station, across from the hotel.
I had three kinds of badges to pick up. First, my own pre-registered badges for my immediate family. I figured this would be the easiest to get since I had all the paperwork and just had to wait a bit in line. Was I ever wrong. Second, I had to buy two weekend badges for Alanna's Austin friend (Chloe and Sofia). This I figured would take the longest, as it was sure to be a long slow line. Finally, I was meeting Melanie Fletcher so she could give me three complimentary badges for Monse, and the Snells.
 | This was the pre-registration line. It took over an hour to wind through this to my prepaid badges and swag bags. That's just nuts. Meanwhile, Melanie comes straight down from the 4th floor with the Comp. badges within minutes of arriving, so those were hanging from my neck when I got the other badges. The line for the for-pay badges was almost non-existant by the time I got around to buying, so that was a no brainer. |
I took the train back to McKinney, stopping at Fry's and getting myself a decent Japanese sushi meal on the way home. Total time was around five hours, just to get the "stinking badges".
PS. Thanks again to Melanie for offering comp. badges. Monse is most grateful, as are the Snell's.
Posted by Steven at 10:07 PM | Comments (1)
May 31, 2005
Coming Soon: Project A-Kon
Just a reminder, I'll be at Project A-Kon 16 this weekend with my family, dressed as Porco Rosso again. We've got Anne CosPlaying as "Gina" from the same movie, so the entire family will be wearing costumes. Incriminating photos yet to come.
Posted by Steven at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)
Scientific Evidence of Limerence?
Everyone who knows me knows I throw the term limerence around a lot. Now the New York Times is running an article that appears (to me) to describe a scientific basis for limerence.
New love can look for all the world like mental illness, a blend of mania, dementia and obsession that cuts people off from friends and family and prompts out-of-character behavior - compulsive phone calling, serenades, yelling from rooftops - that could almost be mistaken for psychosis.Now for the first time, neuroscientists have produced brain scan images of this fevered activity, before it settles into the wine and roses phase of romance or the joint holiday card routines of long-term commitment.
In an analysis of the images appearing today in The Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers in New York and New Jersey argue that romantic love is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal.
It is closer in its neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug craving, the researchers assert, than to emotional states like excitement or affection. As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural activity associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases primes areas deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term attachment.
The research helps explain why love produces such disparate emotions, from euphoria to anger to anxiety, and why it seems to become even more intense when it is withdrawn. In a separate, continuing experiment, the researchers are analyzing brain images from people who have been rejected by their lovers.
"When you're in the throes of this romantic love it's overwhelming, you're out of control, you're irrational, you're going to the gym at 6 a.m. every day - why? Because she's there," said Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and the co-author of the analysis. "And when rejected, some people contemplate stalking, homicide, suicide. This drive for romantic love can be stronger than the will to live."
Man, this is exciting. I've experienced this so I know it's real, and now there seems to be a region of the brain that doles out dopamines to the limerent in a very powerful way. No wonder I was addicted to love ... I was literally addicted.
Posted by Steven at 12:29 AM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2005
What Leo Wants
 | I took Leo to Willow Bend Mall today, to visit the Apple Store. On the way out, we stopped in at the Sharper Image. Lo and behold, they have a "working" Star Wars light sabre that made me look twice. It's got all the sound effects, and perhaps the best looking glow I've ever seen in a simulated light saber. It occurred to me that it'd make a spectacular Halloween light for any kid to use to be seen in the dark. He wants to get it for all the obvious reasons, but also because his friend Mike and he are working on a Star Wars fan film and it would make a substantial amount of special effects much easier. Anne and I are going to encourage him to save his allowance towards buying it, and so we hope to get some "learning experience" out of it in addition to satisfying his fan boy tendencies. |
Posted by Steven at 06:11 PM | Comments (2)
Eleven Steps to a Better Brain
Found this article in New Scientist describing eleven techniques to keeping one's brain fit.
Music may tune up your thinking, but you can't just crank up the volume and expect to become a geniusA DECADE ago Frances Rauscher, a psychologist now at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, and her colleagues made waves with the discovery that listening to Mozart improved people's mathematical and spatial reasoning. Even rats ran mazes faster and more accurately after hearing Mozart than after white noise or music by the minimalist composer Philip Glass. Last year, Rauscher reported that, for rats at least, a Mozart piano sonata seems to stimulate activity in three genes involved in nerve-cell signalling in the brain.
Ouch! I happen to enjoy writing programs while listening to Philip Glass, so I think this assessment is a load of Dingo's Kidneys. But the effects of music (and sleep, another item listed) are certainly there.
Heck, this list should be in Not the Rensselaer Handbook's Chapter of Lists.
Posted by Steven at 12:15 AM | Comments (1)
May 23, 2005
Das "Boot to Head" Keyboard
I guess this was inevitable. A keyboard with no markings on the keys.
I know I can use such an animal, but I also know how much I like to see the letters on the keycaps. Some might argue this is a great way to go "Dvorak" but I doubt it ... not seeing the keycaps will make it much harder to use a "non-standard" keyboard.
Never mind the fact that at $80US, this is a major rip off.
Posted by Steven at 04:25 PM | Comments (1)
May 20, 2005
Mars Global Surveyor Photographs Mars Odyssey
For the first time, a spacecraft orbiting another world has photographed another spacecraft.
Mars Odyssey (twice) in frame.
Posted by Steven at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2005
Darth Yoda?
I found this gem of an essay on Salon today, about a man my age and how he's coping with his personal experience with Star Wars, Legos™, and his seven year-old son (who comes across as mildly autistic, but aren't most Star Wars fans?).
 I can totally see Leo coming up with Darth Yoda. | My 7-year-old son's eyes aren't yet fully open, but he is already mumbling something about "Star Wars" and Lego. His voice is still rough with sleep and almost incomprehensible, but I can tell he's clearly troubled. |
Posted by Steven at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2005
Alcohol Damages Women's Brains More Than Men's
The BBC is touting a study that claims that women suffer greater brain damage from drinking than men.
Women are far more vulnerable to alcohol-induced brain damage than men, scans have shown.CT pictures of the brains of more than 150 volunteers revealed how women come to more harm and quicker than men when they drink heavily.
Scientists have suspected for some time that men might be more resilient to booze than women. The German research gives visible evidence of this.
The University of Heidelberg team published their findings in Alcoholism.
Women who were heavy drinkers lost the same amount of brain volume as the drinking men, but over a much shorter period of alcohol dependence.
Lead author Professor Karl Mann said although men generally drink more alcohol, women probably develop alcohol dependence and adverse consequences more readily.
Other alcohol-related disorders, such as heart problems, depression and liver disease, also occurred earlier in women than men, he said.
"Women typically start drinking later in life, consume less...and one could reason that women are less affected by alcohol.
"But there is evidence for a faster progress of the events leading to dependence among female alcoholics and an earlier onset of adverse consequences of alcoholism.
"This suggests that women may be more vulnerable to chronic alcohol consumption."
Yikes.
Posted by Steven at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2005
Memory Upgrade Day
Fry's ran a special today, offering two 512 Mb PC3200 DDR chips for $70 (after rebate) total. I double checked on the web to make sure it would work with my iMac, and I found the manufacturer's stuff is rated for Macintosh PowerPCs (Kingston), so Leo and I went out and bought it.
I put both 512 DIMMs into the iMac G5, so now it has not only 1G of RAM, but matched memory DIMMs. The PowerPC is a 64 bit processor and if you install matched RAM modules into the two DIMM slots, the system bus does 64-bit instead of 32-bit fetches instead, which speeds memory access by almost 50%. Faster memory access is a fundamental speed improvement in gigahertz processors, and it will most likely show up first when rendering video to MPEG.
 | I pulled a Kingston 512 Mb DIMM (I installed) and a 256 Mb Micron DIMM (which shipped with the original machine) out of the iMac G5, and after some soul searching, put the 512 Mb into the Mac mini server (deltos.com). What an experience was taking apart the Mac mini. The key thing is to get as wide and thin a putty knife as you can find, because you want to release as many of the snaps on the inside of the case as you can, all at once. I broke one snap, but it didn't seem to impact the reclosing of the case. The single DIMM (fortunately) is right on the side (inside) and is easy to swap. Booting the Mac mini with 512 Mb was a delight. After I started up all the services I currently run on it, it quickly went to 312 Mb of core in use ... 50+ Mb more than it had this morning. I expect this will ease congestion on IMAP and on web services, as well as the Samba traffic in house. |
| My Mac mini opened (DIMM on left). |
I also ditched my brand new ($30 from Fry's) Netgear WiFi 802.11g NAT router (WGR614 v5). It kept locking up (possibly from overheating) and I could not get it to talk to a neighbor's PC laptop's 802.11g card at all. It turns out that Linksys has upgraded their firmware on the 802.11g w/Speed Boost to support port triggers, which is why I bought the Netgear in the first place. I'm still trying to get iChat AV to work across two NAT bounded subnets ... anyone had any luck with this?
Posted by Steven at 05:29 PM | Comments (2)
May 08, 2005
Author of The Calculus Dies in LA
Louis Liethold died this last week. What was he? Well, I'll tell you ...
It was rare for Louis Leithold to miss a day at Malibu High School, where he taught Advanced Placement calculus for the past several years.He had been pounding theorems and proofs into the heads of his teenage charges for eight months straight. He had humored them into a homework load — two hours a night — that could incite rebellion in most other classrooms. He made them memorize and recite complicated rules of calculus until the theorems ruled their brains. And he moved them with his own mantra, which he recited daily. "We go step by step by step," he would say as he covered all the dry boards in the classroom with equations.
As if that weren't challenging enough, he scheduled two marathon study sessions at his house on Sundays — the last two Sundays before the Advanced Placement exam May 4. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., his 17 students willingly set aside surf, sun and IPods for polynomials and Riemann sums.
"Dr. Leithold," as his students called him, was clearly no ordinary teacher.
First of all, he was 80 years old, a UC Berkeley graduate who earned his PhD in math education long before his students' parents were born. He started teaching high school in his 70s.
But he was revered not only because he had spurned retirement for the rigors of the classroom: He literally wrote the book on his specialty.
He was the author of "The Calculus," a widely used college and high school text praised for its thorough, lucid and logical presentation of one of the most demanding of subjects. Originally published in 1968, it is now in its seventh edition.
He also was a sought-after trainer of calculus teachers. His presence at Advanced Placement seminars could send a wave of excitement through the room.
So when Leithold was found dead at his Pacific Palisades home April 29, the loss was felt not only at Malibu High, where he taught for the last seven years, but across the country.
"Louis is a legend in AP calculus circles," said Trevor Packer, executive director of the AP program for the College Board, the organization that sponsors the exams taken by thousands of high school students every May. The Advanced Placement program offers high school students the opportunity to take college-level courses and earn college credits.
"A lot of his fame is not just due to his textbook," Packer said, "but to his impact on other teachers and students. That's where he left his mark — in classrooms across the country, through their teachers."
He influenced one of the most famous calculus teachers in America, Jaime Escalante, the former Garfield High School instructor whose success with inner-city students in Los Angeles was told in the 1988 movie "Stand and Deliver."
There's more, but it's in the LA Times obit.
Posted by Steven at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2005
Land of the Lost News
Will Ferrell has signed on to do a big screen release of the TV show. No word on whether or not it's a spoof.
Also, today the 3rd (and final) season came out on DVD. David Gerrold and Larry Niven worked on this show ... so it's weird and Dr. Whoish at the same time.
Posted by Steven at 04:57 PM | Comments (1)
April 21, 2005
TV-B-Gone
 | Check out this new toy from ThinkGeek: TV-B-GoneEnter the TV-B-Gone, a small television remote that hangs on your keychain and turns off virtually any television with the press of button. "Now, what would be the purpose of such a device?" you may be asking yourself. Well, without revealing too much of our devious nature we can think of a few things. Imagine sports bars or annoying talking head shows that appear on monitors at the airport. Add to that your own creativity and we're pretty sure you'll come up with some ideas. All you need to do is press the button and keep pointing it at the TV until it turns off (which may take up to 69 seconds). The next 69 seconds will be spent quietly, or not so quietly, enjoying the perplexed expressions of the TV automatons. |
Posted by Steven at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2005
It's Limerent Season
it's limerent season again. The middle of April, which in the Northern Hemisphere signals the beginning of Spring, is when the hormones and libidoes kick into high gear. The LA Times has a story about this time of year, but they don't call it what I do. Nonetheless, it's the time of year when young geeks dream of their fantasy lovers.
Forget about odes to spring. Neuroscience has taken the magic, not to mention the mystery, out of the poetry.That surge of optimism? Merely the serotonergic response to increased daylight. The distraction and dreaminess? The neurotransmitter dopamine is responding to light and warmth. And what about the "gathered fragrance" of romance in the air? Hardly poetic, since the sensitivity of the olfactory system has been proven to directly relate to pheromones, the essential chemical ingredient of sexual attraction.
And here the poets thought the "untaught harmony of spring" was inexplicable.
While a formal scientific study of the delightful disorder known as spring fever is yet to be undertaken, the serious work of scientists looking at other maladies and other biological phenomena goes a long way in explaining why this particular season makes us feel the way we do.
For example, the study of seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, whose sufferers are morbidly depressed during the winter months and less so during the spring and summer, has shown how responsive our mood-defining neurotransmitters are to light. The intricacies of olfaction are intimately tied to human social, sexual and emotional responses. And the various chemicals involved in coupling, or what biologists call pair bonding in the aching world of singles ads, the grimly unromantic "committed relationship" seem to have special intensity in the spring.
In other words, the season's temperature, light and orgy of scents seemingly conspire to create a trifecta of feel-good stimuli. Interacting with those environmental stimuli, our hormones and neurotransmitters mix a heady cocktail for nearly everyone as the rain, chill and dark of winter give way to the warmth, sunshine and fecundity of spring.
"Anything that is novel and exciting drives up dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain," says Helen Fisher, author of "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love." "In the spring we are more impulsive; we leap up and go into the park rather than drive. The novelty of spring, the warmth and the light all drive up our creativity, our impulsivity, our sex drive. And that sounds a lot like spring fever. "
This next week is the 28th anniversary of my one and only date to a school dance, when I walked on air for a week solid and saw 2001: A Space Odyssey for the very first time. Oh what a week that was ...
Posted by Steven at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2005
Fans of Napoleon Dynamite, Rejoice
I can only assume this piece of legislation in the Idaho Statehouse is real. Joe Bob probably doesn't say, "Check it out". But I do.
Posted by Steven at 08:11 PM | Comments (1)
April 17, 2005
35th Anniversary of Apollo 13
Read this story in the IEEE Journal about the other problems that were overcome during the Apollo 13 mission. It's quite an eye opener.
Posted by Steven at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2005
Google Eye in the Sky
Google's high resolution satellite image of my home.Check out Google's new Maps tool.
The New York Times did a story on it, too. This is spy quality photography, which when combined with Photoshop, gives one about the same capability that the U.S. government had in the mid-eighties ... on your PC.
Posted by Steven at 03:25 PM | Comments (3)
March 28, 2005
NetHack at 1000 FPS
 | I always wondered if this game could be optimized for high resolution, 3D accelerated video cards. Now I can say (with confidence) it has. |
Posted by Steven at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)
Evolution Through Lego Mindstorms
Check out this website that explains how to build Mindstorms robots that mate and evolve. How long before the Thumpers start burning Legos?
Posted by Steven at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
Another Skype Story
 | Interesting story in The New York Times about Skype. Give it a read. Then download the software, sign up, and add me to your contacts list so we can talk. |
Posted by Steven at 09:39 AM | Comments (1)
March 23, 2005
Einstein and Gödel
Salon reviews a new biography on Gödel.
By now, most readers have learned that when a creative writer becomes enamored of quantum physics, the results are usually bad news for literature. This kind of intellectual infatuation often leads to gassy, shapeless explorations of the uncertainty and unknowability of pretty much everything. Mystery, in one form or another, is what art is about, but when an artist suddenly believes that mystery has been validated by science -- that hardheaded arbiter and high priest of the modern world -- he or she is likely to go nuts with the verbal fog machine. (And anyone who's read Jeanette Winterson's "Gut Symmetries" knows just how dire the consequences of that can be.)It turns out that these intellectual romances can be disastrous for science, too, as Rebecca Goldstein shows in her masterful new book, "Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel." The book is part of the Great Discoveries series, in which each volume is dedicated to a single important scientific breakthrough. The designated breakthrough in this volume is the revolutionary demonstration, by the Viennese logician Kurt Gödel, that in any formal system complex enough to handle numbers, there inevitably exists at least one formula that is both true and unprovable, and that, by extension, no such formal system can prove itself to be consistent or complete.
Gödel, on the other hand, was a Platonist. Like the ancient Greek philosopher, he believed that there exists, in objective reality external to the human mind, an ideal realm. Plato called the objects in this realm "the forms," and described the physical world as we experience it as consisting of mere shadows of the forms of this ideal realm. Where the positivists would argue that mathematics is merely a system of symbols created entirely by human beings, Gödel considered it an apprehension or understanding of some transcendent objective (if not necessarily material) reality. For the positivists, the number "2" was an idea and a symbol; for Gödel it was an actual, and very beautiful, thing.
Joe Bob says "Check it out!".
Posted by Steven at 03:43 PM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2005
Fischer Joins Björk
Kudos to Iceland for granting cit