codyg1985's real and internet life

DOMAIN CHANGE GOES IN EFFECT

2006-02-23T10:03:00.000-06:00

From now on, my blog will be posted at codyg1985.com.

This will be left open for reference, but please update your bookmarks to reflect the change.

Toilet paper dispute between roommates ends in murder

2006-02-21T18:15:00.000-06:00

What do you do if you run out of toilet paper? This guy beat his roommate to death with a hammer.

The roommates were fighting, and one pulled out a shotgun. The other roommate then pulled out a sledge hammer and beat the other roommate to death.

Open source internet TV platform

2006-02-21T18:08:00.000-06:00

For those of you with the internet connections to handle it, these folks have developed a media player that aggregates streaming video into one source:

Download and watch all the best internet TV shows and videos in one powerful application. New channels arrive daily in the built-in Channel Guide.

Stop squinting at tedious web videos-- sit back and watch big, high resolution videos one after another. It's so easy to use that you'll be watching interesting videos in moments.

Features: subscribe to video RSS feeds (including podcasts, video blogs, and BitTorrent feeds), watch fullscreen, share with friends.

New York state implements tax to extort money from tourists on an annual basis

2006-02-21T17:51:00.000-06:00

New York state will tax out-of-state drivers that get ticketed in the state. The tax charges cited motorists $100 per year after the ticket has been issued and paid.

Michigan, New Jersey, and Texas also dock drivers with this tax, and Virginia will soon follow suit.

Computer error stops Times Square electronic billboard in its tracks

2006-02-21T17:47:00.000-06:00

It's another branding from Microsoft. A billboard in Times Square had a application crash message on it...the very dialogue box that torments users on a day-to-day basis.

Cheney's got a gun

2006-02-21T09:15:00.000-06:00

It has been so easy to make fun of the Dick Cheney hunting accident. Here's a flash video that parodies both Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun" with Dick Cheney.

[blog] Domain change

2006-02-19T21:14:00.000-06:00

With the recent problems that have occured with Blogger lately, I have decided to purchase hosting for my blog and personal items. In a few days, I will post the link to the new blog on here, and at that time all posting on this blog will cease.

I will try and import all of my posts on here onto the new blog for crossreferencing.

[personal] I hate having diabetes

2006-02-19T16:11:00.000-06:00

I am so sick of having diabetes. It is rare that my body feels good and I feel good. Most of the time I feel tense and ill as a hornet. That's the way I feel right now. The slightest thing pisses me off, and it takes a lot for me to feel better. Nobody can realize how bad I feel somedays, and I can't put it in words beacuse half the time I can't put anything in words when I feel that bad. Maybe I should make an attempt to eat better, but if I try that I will be as miserable trying to count carbs and make healthier choices.

Oh well, here comes another week of rain, classes, and inferior-quality cafeteria food.

Mozilla programmer responds to Firefox memory leaks

2006-02-17T10:25:00.000-06:00

Ben Goodger, a lead engineer for the Mozilla Firefox web browser, acknowledged the memory issues that hasve plagued the browser, but also said that the memory leak is the consequence of a caching feature that stores previously-viewed pages in memory. From Goodger's blog:

To improve performance when navigating (studies show that 39% of all page navigations are renavigations to pages visited < 10 pages ago, usually using the back button), Firefox 1.5 implements a Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last few session history entries. This can be a lot of data. It's a trade-off. What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web.

Users can change this feature, as noted in the article:

Type about:config in the browser address bar.

Scroll down and find the browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers entry

Double-click on that line, and change the value as follows:
- -1 (default entry based on memory on system)
- 0 (no caching)
- 1-8 (number of pages to cache)

[blog] Firefox and Blogger don't agree with each other

2006-02-16T09:53:00.000-06:00

For some strange reason, when I tried to publish one of my blog entries this morning in Firefox, I got an error which said permission was denied to one of the archive files. I found that odd, but then I took at look at the Blogger help group and noticed a a post that mentioned problems publishing with Firefox.

So, I fired up Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, and the blog post published without a hitch. Same went for another story I posted that I tried posting in Firefox before it froze up on a PDF file. These may be two reasons for me to switch back to IE, but I am not going to make up my mind yet.

Antigravity propulsion system proposed at space conference

2006-02-16T09:43:00.000-06:00

A proposal to achieve near-luminal propulsion speeds was unveiled by Dr. Franklin Felber at Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque, NM. The system works by propelling a secondary spacecraft to a little more than half the speed of light. Felber's paper argues that in front of this secondary spacecraft a narrow "antigravity beam" would form that would repel anything in front of the spacecraft away from it. A primary spacecraft would be placed in front of the secondary vessel, and according to the paper the primary spacecraft would move at near light speeds, assuming its initial speed was the same as the secondary spacecraft.

The paper also argues that this method of propulsion would not involve strong tidal forces which would rip the spacecraft to shreds.

[personal] Light at the end of the tunnel

2006-02-16T07:26:00.000-06:00

Today is the day where all of my work is either due, or it has already been due at some earlier time. As I sit here eating away at my candy I recieved for Valentine's Day, I realize that this is really the first day this week I can sort of relax; that is after my Engineering Economy class. Assignments due in every class, I have not had as much free time this week as usual, but the assignments do keep me busy, and I have finished them. What a week this has been!

There may be icing problems here in Huntsville over the weekend; the entire state will have rain throughout the weekend (tired of rain during the weekend), but up here it may be cold enough for ice to form on bridges, overpasses, and power lines. If the power goes out, World of Warcraft will be a bit out of reach for my roommate, and Call of Duty will be out of reach for my other roommate. It will be interesting to see how everyone acts if the power is out for a prolonged duration.

Valentine heart inspired by woman's bum?

2006-02-15T12:42:00.000-06:00

That heart on that box of candy that you got for Valentine's Day could have been inspired long ago by the shape of a woman's butt, according to a professor of psychology:

Galdino Pranzarone of Roanoke College in Salem, Va., told Discovery News that he analyzed "essential literary and speculative evidence from mythology and secondary sources," which led to his theory. He believes one rather obvious bit of evidence is that the heart symbol does not directly duplicate the heart human organ.

"The twin lobes of the stylized version correspond roughly to the paired auricles and ventricles (chambers) of the anatomical heart," Pranzarone said, but added that the organ "is never bright red in color" and its "shape does not have the invagination at the top nor the sharp point at the base."

[personal] Tuesday's life by the numbers

2006-02-14T19:58:00.000-06:00

Here is a little list that was inspired by these blog posts:

2 is how many hours it took to finish an Excel spreadsheet detaling a payment plan for a class project

10 is how many minutes it took for my hands to almost turn numb this morning defrosting the car for class

3 is how many Valentine's Day candy packages I received

1 out of the 3 was from my mother given to me last Sunday

9.768 is the acceleration due to gravity in Huntsville, AL (in meters per second)

28 is the number of friends I have online on Trillian

14 out of those 28 are away and/or idle

14 is the amount of homework problems assigned during today's Calculus lecture

1108526400 is the Unix time when my Chapter 6 Physics homework is due

[personal] Busy week ahead...

2006-02-14T18:18:00.000-06:00

Whew, this week is shaping up to be a busy one. A lot of assignments are due within the generous space of a few days. This includes two Physics lab reports, the Chapter 6 Physics homework assignment, and a case study for Engineering Economy. There is also Calculus C homework that I need to do to get practice with partial derivatives, although that homework is optional.

Thursday will be a load off of my shoulders because after Thursday most of the work will have been due.

I also need to begin work on the second NL History article, for those of you interested in my first article.

Machines will take over the world! We are doomed! Wait a minute...

2006-02-13T13:17:00.000-06:00

The folks at Wired Magazine are looking at a day where machines will perform tasks autonomously and human skill will be rendered obsolete. Fully self-sufficient robots and machines will stay in the realm of science-fiction because, well, science-fiction has taught us that if made autonomous, robots will take over the world, leaving everything, including their creators, in the dust.

Robots will get smarter, and eventually will be semi-autonomous. However, robots will only be self-sufficient in the tasks that they are to perform. The robots are not going to gain knowledge on how to perform other tasks they are not designed to perform. Moreover, robots won't be programmed to replicate themselves by gathering the materials to build copies of themselves, much less improved versions of themselves.

Most important, new robots will need to be designed and built, and humans will still be up to the challenge of that.

High school student arrested for serving brownies...laced with pot

2006-02-12T19:28:00.000-06:00

A senior at Munford High School, northeast of Talladega, AL, was arrested for serving brownies laced with marijuana to his classmates. The drugged desserts caused the twelve students dizziness and nausea.

The student has been charged with distribution of a controlled substance.

Alabama still will not play a role in presidential primaries

2006-02-10T10:21:00.000-06:00

Thanks to a defeat of a bill to move up the Alabama Presidential Primary, the state of Alabama will still vote for the Republican and Democratic candidates for President--long after it has already been decided by the majority of the country. The reason for the defeat: it would cost $3.4 million to move the primary to an earlier date.

Alabama would receive more national attention, including from the candidates , if the primaries were moved up. Candidates would spend money in Alabama, which would probably pay for moving the primary, and then some. Instead, thanks to a few state house members, we remain at the bottom of the list, as we do in almost everything else.

And we all wonder why Alabama is the butt of so many jokes?

Neat trick for desktop backgrounds

2006-02-09T20:59:00.000-06:00

Courtesy of this Digg submission:

This collection of images show off some pictures of computer monitors whose backgrounds are set so that they match what would be behind the monitor.

[blog] New Theme

2006-02-09T19:06:00.000-06:00

I have decided to forego the cookie-cutter theme that I have been using for this blog in favor of my own creation. My main thing is to make the blog brighter-looking and to remove all of the images that were in the last blog design.

If I find hosting for images I may do my own custom logo to replace the text at the top.

If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to comment. BTW, I have turned off comment moderation, so that the only trial by fire that one has to go through to comment is word verification.

Islamic response to Danish cartoons only strengthens stereotypes

2006-02-08T20:49:00.000-06:00

The situation that has arisen from the Danish cartoons has spiraled out of control. The way the Islamic extremists are reacting to these cartoons is uncalled for, and is in no way an appropriate response to those sketches. The cartoons, no matter how offensive they are, are not worth starting a conflict over. Although the actions of a small percentage of Muslims certainly do not speak for all of Islam, those actions only reinforce the violent stereotype that taints the religion's image and meaning, and unless the majority does not speak out against these actions, the image of the Muslim world will only continue to sink in the eyes of the world.

Was it appropriate for Flemming Rose, the cultural editor for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, to authorize the publication of those cartoons? Probably not. Two wrongs do not make a right, so just because the Christian and Jewish faiths have been persecuted in the past by Islamic fundamentalists does not mean that it is right to go the other way and persecute Islam. However, by responding to the cartoon by going out and proving the very point that the cartoon makes only causes people to condemn the violence instead of the person holding the pencil.

I know that the Qur'an does not teach to kill people. Given the action of Islamic extremists, however, many people believe otherwise. If Muslims want their religion to have a better image, believers should step up and voice outrage over this violence. They should voice outrage over previous actions taken by Hamas and Al Qaida. A large number of these people should do this all over the world. A campaign, if you will. Positive actions make a lasting impression, and those actions could lead to some good press for Islam.

Materials retrofitted with nanotubes found to vibrate less

2006-02-08T12:20:00.000-06:00

Research suggests that materials that are retrofitted with nanotubes vibrate less under intense heat. The reason for this is because the nanocomposite materials experience better damping--the characteristic of a material to correct itself after undergoing vibrations, thereby reducing the resultant vibration of the material.

NL History: The Beginning

2006-02-07T20:58:00.000-06:00

The following is the first of a series of articles about the former technology community Next L3vel that I was administrator/owner at for two years. This article talks about how Next L3vel got off the ground.

Next L3vel had some humble yet unfortunate beginnings.

In the second half of 2002 a website known as Windows XP Stuff was making a small scene in the technology news arena. Unfortunately, the website was plagued with hosting problems, and the owner of the website was not around to maintain order. Most of the staff of Windows XP Stuff did not complain too much and went about their duties at the website. I decided to purchase a hosting plan for the website so that it would have reliable hosting. After doing so, I proposed that Windows XP Stuff be moved to the new hosting that I bought. Most of the staff agreed to do this, but the owner did not agree to move the website, but instead opted for the hosting to be used for file hosting. The final straw came in late October 2002 when it was discovered that the website owner had a drug addiction problem. As such, the new website had its beginning.

Initially the hosting was not ready until the end of November 2002, so one of Windows XP Stuff’s staff members (and new admin at the new website), known then as DigitalFreedom offered to provide temporary hosting. The name of this new website was still undetermined, so many of the staff at Windows XP Stuff that decided to make the move to the new website collaborated through an IM conference to discuss the name. A staff member that went by elw3irdo coined “Next L3vel” as the name of the website, and the name stuck.

The website drew members from Windows XP Stuff due to one of the staff members, Chris Holmes (a.k.a Chris123NT) posting a news item about the owner of Windows XP Stuff and his drug addiction. The news item also invited people to go to the new website created by the staff of Windows XP Stuff. Initially the community was very small, but everyone for the most part got along, and the forum content was interesting and entertaining.

I am not proud of how Next L3vel got off the ground, in reference to the problems of another website. Despite that, the move that was made was for the better for the members most involved at Windows XP Stuff, and the foundation was laid for a community that I am proud to have been a part of.

Star Trek fan goes bankrupt transforming house into Starship Voyager

2006-02-07T14:24:00.000-06:00

How much of a Star Trek fan are you? Enough to max out 14 credit cards to transform your home into the Starship Voyager? Well this person was. Now he's bankrupt.

[link] SimMcDonalds coming to a browser near you

2006-02-07T10:16:00.000-06:00

Take a look at this parody of McDonalds where you get to run your own fast-food franchise.

Looks a lot like The Sims doesn't it?