Bill:

“…how you get the comic pitch. Well, obviously a lot of it is rhythm. And as often as not, it’s the surprising rhythm. In life and in movies, you can usually guess what someone is going to say—you can actually hear it—before they say it. But if you undercut that just a little, it can make you fall off your chair. It’s small and simple like that. You’re always trying to get your distractions out of the way and be as calm as you can be [breathes in and out slowly], and emotion will just drive the machine. It will go through the machine without being interrupted, and it comes out in a rhythm that’s naturally funny. And that funny rhythm is either humorous or touching. It can be either one. But it’s always a surprise. I really don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth.”

GQ:

“Is the third Ghostbusters movie happening? What’s the story with that?”

Bill:

“It’s all a bunch of crock. It’s a crock. There was a story—and I gotta be careful here, I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. When I hurt someone’s feelings, I really want to hurt them.
…
I got into it one night with a bunch of younger people [at SXSW] who were like, Oh, I love Peter Venkman! I grew up with Peter Venkman! We got to talking, and the more we talked about it, the more I thought, Oh Christ, I should just do this thing.”

GQ:

“Everyone says Danny [Aykroyd] is the nicest guy on the planet.”

Bill:

“Danny is…Canadian. [laughs] No, he’s the only one I see much of. He’s great. And I owe him…”

Who you gonna call?

A couple of notorious car models are the 1960 something Ford Mustang with it’s “exploding” gas tank in the rear of the car and the Ford Pinto with the similar if not the same tank design. Side note: I was unaware of the Pinto being one of Ford’s vehicles. However, I love the idea of BMW’s counter balance of the driver’s weight as long as it remains safe.

Front, mid, & back they seem to  all have a sense of err in safety. I’m not a car gal or a mechanical engineer so please take my opinions with a grain of salt. But, I do know that the concept of  “unintended consequence with desirable results” is rather intriguing. I’m going to chew on that notion for a while.

Anyway, differences are good, they keep us entertained, even small ones such as this.  Some of us are more easily amused than others, however, regardless of genuine interest I’m guessing this is answering a few peoples’ question of gas tank placement.

But at least we’re getting something more modern. The original and previously envisioned designs were even less inspiring. Some essentially called it a 1970s architectural abomination requiring travel by car exclusively which, among others, alienates key concepts from the city’s General Plan.

This is precisely the platform the Petaluma community coalition (PCC) folks are standing on with the lawsuit and appeal filed against the city for Regency’s East Washington Place. It created a sort’ve trifecta of inaction with the City, PCC and Regency occupying corners and preventing ground-breaking of the project.

The latest is a deal involving all three that meets some each’s criteria requested; I imagine it as a precarious compromise at best. First off, Regency will drop their “unjustly delays” lawsuit and pay for the city’s legal fees required to defend itself against the suit. PCC has also agreed to drop their lawsuit contingent upon a few design changes.

Though they are minor, a step in the right direction away from abomination. The changes include: more solar panels, more windows for natural light, a tree-lined berm along the freeway side of the new strip mall, and “traffic fixes” to encourage pedestrian safety and offset the added congestion certain to be created by the shopping center.

But it’s not over yet, as there is no legal agreement in place. And if it isn’t been drafted by July 26th, the PCC has said it will continue with their lawsuit and appeal. Even though it is widely believed the City Council will not approve it and it will ultimately be ineffectual. Which is why the PCC has got behind the rather petty changes agreed upon by the developer, Regency.

[info source, the press democrat]

“Under Pressure” is a 1981 song recorded by Queen and David Bowie. It marked Bowie’s first released collaboration with another recording artist as a performer…

“…the song’s primary musical songwriter was Freddie Mercury — though all contributed to the arrangement. The earlier, embryonic version of the song without Bowie “Feel Like” is widely available…”

“The September 2005 edition of online music magazine Stylus singled out the bassline as the best in popular music history.”

“There has been some confusion about who created the song’s famous bassline. John Deacon said … that David Bowie had created it. … Queen guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor have credited the bass riff to Deacon; Bowie also said on his website that the bassline was already written before he became involved.”

It’s fun to think about how this confusion may have happened. Deacon and Bowie in his studio in Switzerland, chatting, with their lush English accents, about the song and sounds. Deacon, has his trusty bass guitar, Bowie, is singing or just bustin’ out some crazy-cool 80s synth-pop sounds. They’re jammin’ back and forth and suddenly, they strike rhythmic gold.

Bombombom bada bombom

Whoa! So they roll with it. Deacon plays the jam with the rest of Queen in a collaborative session with Bowie. History was made in a matter of minutes. Perhaps it was an epiphany of musical sorts, or maybe even an accident.

Both men involved credit the other out of modesty and respect. Likely, one was particularly more instrumental in the creation than the other. But without two, it may have evolved into something entirely forgettable.

[quoted material sourced from wikipedia]

Hell, I bet you’ve had some strange aching pains in your shoulder, arm, elbow, wrist, and or hands at some point.  An early warning of what could come and enough to motivate you to make some positive, preventative changes. Let’s assess the basic ergonomics of a healthy desk:

• Screen is at arms length from your face and at eye level.
• Keyboard is parallel or slightly lower than where your arms rest on the desk. Your wrists should not be higher than your elbows.
• Mouse easily accessible, moves effortlessly, requiring little to no movement of your arm.
• You’re sitting up straight.  Shoulders back and not hunched over.  If it hurts, you probably need a better chair – get one with good lumbar support. Or, baring the new chair option, one of these inflatable cushions.
• Feet flat on the ground or better yet, on a foot rest that promotes upright sitting (not slouching!).
• Check this out for illustrations of an ideal workspace configuration.

Now, on to the meat of the meal: taking breaks.  

Going to the bathroom doesn’t really count unless you have a bladder the size of a peanut.  You need to get off your ass and out of the chair every 15-30 minutes.  Each and every interval, no exceptions.

Deeply involved in some code, game or writing? Stand up and shake it out. You can keep looking at the screen but give your extremities a good waggle.  Don’t make a habit of this as this micro-break is insufficient in the long haul.

To force the issue, I recommend utilizing a simple timer application that provides a countdown and notification. All of the following software is freeware and or open source:

• In Windows 7 (or Vista), I use a sidebar gadget I developed called, wait for it… Countdown Timer.  Get it here, it’s really great.
• In Linux, I use the gnome-timer applet.
• For Mac, mind you I don’t use the OS, the Apimac Timer looks good.
•  
• If a simple timer doesn’t cut it, give Workrave a try. It is a full featured RSI-prevention app that monitors keyboard and mouse activity. Its alerts can be very intrusive (both a good and bad thing) and some of the animations are cheesy. Overall it is a great application that also suggests many rest-break exercises.

Speaking of which, here are some simple techniques to do on your breaks:

• Stand up and reach for the sky; look up and rise up to your tippy-toes.  Take a deep breath while you do it.  Feels great, right?
• Pull an arm across your body with your other arm above the elbow.  Switch.  Do these two or three times.
• Arms straight behind your back, interlock your fingers and pull up.
• Touch your toes, well, as low as you can go anyway.
• Do a couple leg lifts.
• Sit back down and use the arm rests of your chair to lift and lower yourself.  Don’t use your legs.
• Stretch your wrists against a wall or the side of your desk.
• Open your hands as wide as they’ll go, flexing your fingers ‘til they start to go backwards – hold for 5-10 seconds. Then, make a tight fist and hold.  Do these a few times.
• Stretch the neck by turning your head all the way to one side, hold for five breaths, then do the other side.

This two pronged attack – software and exercises – to the problem of Repetitive Stress is crucial to maintaining your body’s full mobility as you age. And that’s certainly how I want to go.

As you adopt some or all of this, please post any suggestions or questions about either prong to help fill out what I’ve shared here.

5 minute countdown underway

The concept is very basic – countdown from a preset time (in minutes) and alert when time is up. This gadget is more akin to a kitchen timer than a countdown-until-my-birthday type timer. However, the gadget will happily countdown 135971947923 minutes in case that amount of time happens to be of value to you.

the settings dialog box

As with any quality gadget or applet, this one is configurable. The Custom Countdown setting (in minutes), if set, will override the default of 30 minutes and any Preset Timers selection (also in minutes). Lastly, the Number of Alarm Sounds option defines how many times the audible alarm will sound when time is up. Putting a 0 in this option field disables it.

The Countdown Timer gadget was designed to work with Windows 7 but there should be no problem running it in Vista. I’ve committed the code to my github account where you can follow along for nitty gritty details.

Download it now

See the included README for installation instructions and additional info. Post questions and comments to this entry and I hope you find it as useful as I have.

Last Updated: July 1st, 2010

I owe a great deal of my professional success to this language, it is the one that truly sold me on programming.

<?php
/**
* June 9, 2010
*/

echo<<<HAPPY15THBIRTHDAYPHP
* May your future be full of fantastic features and ever greater efficiencies.
* You've powered the dynamic web from yahoo to facebook.
* May you continue to enthrall and encourage programmers young and old.
* You've come a long way, be sure to have lots and lots of cake today.
* May your full fledged Unicode support be your gift to us sooner rather than later.
* You've got your problems, but then don't we all.
* May you survive and thrive another 15 years.
HAPPY15THBIRTHDAYPHP;
?>

Bonus: here’s some cool PHP usage statistics and trend graphs.

The solution is called a (DIY) ViDock (Video Dock). Subtract the DIY portion and you’ve got a commercial product made by villagetronic. After seeing how outrageous the price was – it was ~$400 – I dug a bit deeper. It turns out that the components that make up the ViDock are pretty simple and easily obtainable.

To guide me throughout the quest I utilized a vibrant DIY community on notebookreview forums spearheaded by a diligent fellow by the alias of nando4. His knowledge hsa allowed the DIY’r spirit to flourish in many, myself included. Plus, the current form in which the technology now exists, it doesn’t take a genius to do what we’ve done.

Interested in using a 3d graphics card such as one produced by ATI or Nvidia? Then read on for a step-by-step account how.

1. Attempt to determine if your laptop can host the DIY ViDock.
This means scouring the forums. Read It All. RTFM, if you will. If, after you’ve read the forum, and searched it, you’re still unsure about the capabilities of your laptop, post a question. Your question should contain a couple key ingredients.
  1. An Everest screenshot of your PCI ports, like this
  2. Screenshots of your device manager’s I/O and Memory mappings, like this
  3. Additional info such as your system’s specs, the GPU you plan to use

2. Order a PE4H or PE4L from hwtools. This is the key piece of hardware that will permit the connection. My experience with the hwtools company was good – decent communication and good product. While the shipping is a bit steep it arrived very quickly considering the distance it traveled (from Taiwan). It cost $108 and about 7 business days from order to a PE4H+EC2C at my door.

3. Choose and get a video card that meets your bang-for-buck ratio. Pay close attention to the amount of power the card will need to draw (TDW). I choose a Nvidia GeForce GT240 because it does not require an additional power supply adapter. Specifically, it requires less than 75W at maximum and does not have an additional power plug on the card itself. And because it was only $50 after MIR – I wanted to keep under $200 for this project.

4. While waiting, you may want to prepare by making a USB bootdisk. Chances are good that you will need one in order to do the PCI resource reallocation. It is necessary if when you plug in the DIY ViDock rig a windows yields error 12: cannot allocate resources. Here are detailed instructions how to do this. This is by far the hardest step that requires at least knowledge of how to read hex-byte memory addresses in order to find a vacant space.

5. All the instructions, pros/cons, possible enhancemets such as x1E or x2 PCIe connect, are all laid out by on the first post of that thread and should answer all questions. If you have any, folks including myself are generally happy to assist, especially with specific inquiries.

6. ENJOY! And do share your experience with the notebookreview DIY ViDock community as well as this blog.

Nothing finer in computing prowess than a ultra-powerful ultraportable like my Thinkpad X200 being equipped with a desktop caliber GPU.

X200 Totally Docked

DIY ViDock

The latest episode of This American Life takes an act to investigate the book’s colorful descriptions and quite effectively establishes solid facts contrary to billionare Mr. Poizner’s published perspective. When confronted about the lies, including city & police statistics as well as quotations from those he worked with at the school, Poizner blindly sticks to his own account. He places blame on unmotivated kids and an imaginative neighborhood full of crime.

The only hopeful moment comes near the end of the TAL act in which Ira interviews the school teacher who oversaw Mr. Poizner’s class. This teacher says that inspite of Poizner’s inaccurate interpretation of the setting, he seemed to genuinely care about the kids future.

Even so, Steve’s unwillingness to concede even the slightest admittance that he may have gotten it wrong, is a frightening reflection of his inability to produce objective judgement. His narcissism is so thick it’s suffocating. He squirms and flakes off in his answers to Ira’s straight – are you sure you got it right – questions.

A person unable to concede mistakes and misuse facts to self-serving ends (to get elected) is not someone we want heading our State.