Idiotsyncrasies

It’s… Magic

2009-11-04T11:29:00.001-05:00

Behold, the PrintBrush. A hand-sized printer that prints by manually “brushing” the printer back and forth on a surface.

Here’s to hoping this device is real and becomes available in the not-too-distant future.

The Bay Bridge Crack

2009-10-31T13:11:00.001-04:00

For the nerdophiles, an article explaining the issue with the San Francisco bay bridge, the kludge put in place to fix it, and the resulting failure.

My Wife the DBA

2009-09-26T12:07:00.001-04:00

My wife received an ad email yesterday to which she is subscribed. The first line was:

Lori, you asked to be reminded about ERROR: Invalid row index '1' for SQL 'data' function on tag 'offerlist'.

I did not know she was moving in on my territory.

Confucious Say...

2009-08-11T17:22:00.001-04:00

...pahaps you like reconsiduh yoosing new search enzhine.

Why You Should Be Watching Big Bang Theory, Part I

2009-05-09T23:34:00.003-04:00

For those who don't watch, Sheldon is the tall, skinny, nerdy guy who is smarter than everyone on the planet and knows it. He has a superiority complex and is a germophobe. Did I mention nerdy? Star Trek, Star Wars, comic books, computer games, etc.

Leonard (aka David from "Rosanne") is Sheldon's room mate. He is also very smart but a little more street smart than Sheldon. Sheldon and Leonard work together in the science laboratory at the local university.

Penny is the girl who lives across the hall from Leonard and Sheldon in the apartment complex. She is an aspiring actress and is very much NOT a rocket scientist. She works at a Applebees-ish restaurant. She and Leonard dated briefly.

In this episode Penny has made it known that she has bought Christmas gifts for Sheldon and Leonard. Sheldon has a fit because of the implied reciprocity and has dragged another two of his pals (Howard and Rajesh) to a foofy store to buy a gift for Penny. Not knowing what type of gift Penny is getting for him he is unsure how much he should spend on the gift.

He devises a plan that should allow him exchange a gift appropriate and commensurate with the gift he will receive from Penny -- he will purchase several gifts of varying value. Once he receives his gift he'll feign intestinal difficulties... when he returns from his business he'll bring back the appropriately valued gift for Penny.

The Internet Inside An Operating System Inside the Internet

2009-04-14T07:27:00.001-04:00

G.ho.st, an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a spinach tortilla.

New Tech Blog

2009-03-11T18:06:00.001-04:00

Howdy.

I've fired up another blog to cover my fabulous adventures in nerdville. The ramblings there will be related to stuff I'm doing for my business, so it's hosted on my business site -- http://www.lpsol.com/blog. It's called PathLight, and I'll probably start off with moving some nerdy posts from here over to there when I get a chance. For the three people who read this, if you are technically inclined please consider bookmarking me over yonder.

Scott and I have been discussing the method by which this blog will be blown up and reconstituted. Me not having a science degree and all, I'm thinking dynamite because I can understand the process of lighting a fuse with a match. Scott is probably considering something involving the splitting of atoms.

In any event, eventually I'd like to post stuff here (for myself) that is more substantial and essay-like than stupid stuff -- like blogging about blogging.

Something I Had To Read Twice To Believe

2008-12-22T23:03:00.001-05:00

Officers at the Phoenix police department have been requesting permission to purchase and carry their own semi-automatic weapons for use in the line of duty. It seems that budgetary issues kept them from keeping up with the firepower on the street. You'll never guess who stepped up to the plate to help out:

An unexpected Christmas donation from actor David Spade is expected to provide Phoenix police with enough money to buy an additional 50 semi-automatic rifles for patrol officers in 2009.
The $100,000 gift announced Monday means as many as 300 officers could soon be armed with Bushmaster AR-15s, even in light of recent debates between police and union officials about the availability of the high-powered weapons during the city's ongoing budget strife.

That brings a tear to my eye -- a member of the entertainment elite materially contributing to the cause of improved weaponry for law enforcement. David Spade, you are the man.

A Stimulus Idea For the Economy

2008-11-23T20:11:00.001-05:00

I just watched Andy Rooney kvetch about retailers wanting to skip right over Thanksgiving so they can get the retail Christmas season going, noting that some retailers realize about thirty percent of their annual sales during the Christmas run.

May I suggest to president-elect Obama that he install a quarterly Christmas in the calendar year to shake dollars loose from consumers into the economy?

FIX IT -- Oscar Rogers for Finance Czar

2008-11-01T22:39:00.007-04:00

Well, I can't say this is an official endorsement of this blog since I haven't spoken to Scott about it, but I'm confident he'll agree. Maybe.

Anywhoo, this election season please consider writing in Oscar Rogers for finance czar. I think you'll agree that his straight forward, no-bs plan for fixing our economy speaks for every person who has been victimized by our recent economic downturn.

RIP: Global Warming

2008-10-20T23:12:00.001-04:00

Now, on tap, 30 years of global cooling:

An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ... This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."

A Picture Worth A Trillion Dollars

2008-10-10T08:01:00.000-04:00

This cartoon sums it up just nicely.

One Simple Request For Google Calendar

2008-10-08T13:39:00.001-04:00

Activate the letter "g" on the keyboard. A little window pops open like when you hit the letter "q" for Quick Add. There's one little field in the popup, and that's to enter a date. When you hit return, the calendar goes to that date.

You're welcome, google. Now get on it.

The Bailout Isn't Really A Bailout?

2008-09-29T17:19:00.003-04:00

I just read this blog post [1] by somebody who sounds like they know what they are talking about [2] and... well, the fundamentals of the original "bailout bill" do not sound as poisonous to libertarian ideology as I thought it would. In essence the bill was supposed to act like a giant "reset button" and doesn't actually bail anybody out. In fact, the institutions holding on to sub-prime mortgage securities will actually still take a (major) hit selling those securities to the US Treasury. The question, I guess, is how does the Treasury figure out what to pay for these crap loans?

The ultra-crapified version that is failing in the House right now is the one with all the contingencies attached to it -- the ability for judges to rewrite the terms of a loan so the mortgage payer can keep the house regardless of who gets stuck with the bill, government ownership of banks, caps on executive pay, etc. You know, socialism [3].

[1] Tilt your head -- the author leans right a bit.
[2] It was published on the internet and therefore has to be true. Right?

[3] You know the saying -- first socialism, then communism, then alchoholism.

Good Riddance

2008-09-08T09:04:00.001-04:00

Wow, Olbermann and Matthews are gone as news anchors from MSNBC. I guess we'll no longer hear about anything furrowing up anybody's leg when Obama gives a speech.

Al Gore On His Mission In Global Warming

2008-09-02T08:44:00.001-04:00

From the department of redundancy department:

"One of the many complexities that complicate the task I've undertaken is complexity."

First the Nobel, and with eloquence like that a Pulitzer is sure to follow.

hellotxt: I Recant

2008-08-27T10:47:00.001-04:00

I tried hellotxt for awhile and for the first week or so liked it, until I really started trying to use it and found it to be quite buggy. Wouldn't connect to Facebook after being able to previously. Wouldn't remove services after I told it to. Wouldn't send the status via email. Would not interpret a line break from email with a space (so your update looks like it was typed by a fifth grader). Sorry, but my attention span is just too short to put up with that.

My new status-updater best buddy is ping.fm. You can sign up for the beta and receive an invitation within a few days. It updates all the major social networks and works fairly quickly. It has an AIM bot you can route your status updates through. It updates your statuses/statii/whatever within seconds. It even has command directives where you can send different updates to different services by prepending the sentence with a code corresponding to the particular service. Sweet.

The only thing it's missing is direct SMS support. You can get around this by sending an SMS/MMS to your assigned email address for updating on ping.fm, but it would be nice to have direct support.

Hank Hill on Christian Rock

2008-08-26T10:55:00.000-04:00

"Can't you see you're not making Christianity better? You're just making rock n' roll worse!"

Notes from the Mall

2008-08-24T19:06:00.001-04:00

Since I've been working from home I go almost three weeks between tanks of gas and hardly ever go anywhere else. I had to go to the mall today, though, to replace the battery in my watch. I haven't been there in eons and had a handful of observations.

The Apple store was jam packed with people and wreaked of BO. I didn't get past the front counter.
Victoria's Secret. Is not.
The last record store there closed. I'm sure the last place you'll be able to buy CDs soon is Best Buy, Wal-Mart, or some other box-shaped store.
The lone book store there had a whole section for manga.
It's hard to find high-tops at the Foot Locker that are purposed for playing basketball in them.
Is it me or is there a serious shortage of fabric for women's clothing?
There were two shops which had blackened windows where you couldn't see what they were selling unless you walked inside. Loud music was blaring out of both of them. I'm probably too old to go inside. That and/or my wife wouldn't appreciate it if I did.
I did have to go to the Best Buy nearby and noticed they are now selling albums in the store that you download from iTunes. The album art is resized so it fits on the card containing the redeem code. The mp3s are 320kbs. No surprise the record stores are going out of business.

Biting (And Accurate) Observations On Blab-It-And-Grab-It Theology

2008-08-16T13:30:00.001-04:00

Over on YouTube.

"Arctic Ice Refuses To Melt As Ordered"

2008-08-16T12:50:00.002-04:00

You don't say.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado released an alarming graph on August 11, showing that Arctic ice was rapidly disappearing, back towards last year's record minimum. Their data shows Arctic sea ice extent only 10 per cent greater than this date in 2007, and the second lowest on record.

Other data sources show Arctic ice having made a nice recovery this summer. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center data shows 2008 ice nearly identical to 2002, 2005 and 2006. Maps of Arctic ice extent are readily available from several sources, including the University of Illinois, which keeps a daily archive for the last 30 years. A comparison of these maps (derived from NSIDC data) below shows that Arctic ice extent was 30 per cent greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on the August 12, 2007.

Savory Savior?

2008-07-30T10:06:00.001-04:00

Who says salvation can't be crunchy and crisp? Some chick found Jesus in her Cheetos, and given Catholic ritual cannibalism ("This is my body, this is my blood, this is my appetizer"), I can't believe she didn't chow down on the miniature Christ incarnate.

A messiah munchy, if you will.

He's Now a Teen Spirit

2008-07-25T08:49:00.002-04:00

NPR has an article online about Spencer Elden, the guy whose private parts may very well be in your record collection.

TotallyLooksLike.com

2008-07-17T08:16:00.001-04:00

The makers of ICanHasCheezburger? (the site that dragged the LOLCat meme into the spotlight) has a new site which looks like a soon-to-be-never-ending list of separated at birth photos. Enjoy.

A Modest Proposal

2008-07-14T18:43:00.003-04:00

Please, somebody, I'm begging you.

In javascript and C# (and probably C, although I haven't touched it in years) an if statement looks something like this:

if ( i == "one" ) { blah blah blah }

If you need to compare that variable against multiple values, you can do it this way:

if ( i == "one" || i == "two" || i == "three" ) { blah blah blah }

Or you can do it this way:

switch ( i ) case "one": case "two": case "three": { blah blah blah break }

How about doing something like this instead:

if ( i == ( "one" || "two" || "three" ) ) { blah blah blah }

Similarly when assigning a variable using this notation (I forget what the notation is called):

test =
( i == "one" ) ? "number" :
( i == "two" ) ? "number" :
( i == "three" ) ? "number" : "not a number";
// note -- don't know if this works in c# exactly like that, but it
// does in javascript.

How about doing it this way:

test = ( i == ( "one" || "two" || "three" ) ) ? "number" : "not a number";