A family member got this for a graduation present: http://www.costco....amp;topnav=&s=1 (www.costco.com)
I've been pretty impressed with the quality of pictures and videos she's taken with it.
(Coworker lady is dancing to something on her headphones in the break room as I walk in)
Josh: (points to ear) "What are you listening to?"
Lady: (takes out earbud) "What?"
Josh: "What is it you are listening to?"
Lady: "Oh, I think... Fergie, and somebody else."
Josh: "Ah, I don't think I've listened to them."
Lady: "I think it's a remake of a song I used to listen to... maybe Dirty Dancing?"
Josh: "Oh, from the movie?"
Lady: (blank look)
Josh: "Or... the act?"
Lady: "I don't know. I just know they do the (singing) 'It's... been... the time of my life' part, and then it gets all crazy."
Josh: "Oh, that Fergie." (walks off)
Every conversation at work.
Sometimes you think about how awesome it would be to have a nice slow day at work. Till you finish up your shit around 12:30, eat the longest lunch you feasibly can without going out and buying more food, then fight your way till quittin time without getting too bored or completely looking like you aren't doing anything useful.
I could actually leave and no one would either care, or really know... tempting. But I also want ice cream and the wife is picking me up around 3ish...
If I find I have to... fight through a few hours, I try to go into "research mode."
There are lots of things to research. For instance, idkfa v3 is largely a research project into the effectiveness of open source tools outside the scope of my employer's technology standardization policies, particularly in the event we need to support these types of technologies in the future.
If I had icecream coming, though... not sure if I'd be that productive.
I tend to do the same. My research mode usually consists of mountains, trails, glaciers, other climbs and the needed gear that I want or want to do. This line of entertaining myself usually leads to some amount of sadness since I'm sitting inside instead of being outside hiking or climbing, or a lot of the routes usually need a second climber to be done safely.
Ice cream or some other such treat will do nicely though to break the tedium.
What the hell, English:
| Word | Every Other X | Twice Every X |
| Biweekly (www.merriam-webster.com) | X | X |
| Semiweekly (www.merriam-webster.com) | X | |
| Bimonthly (www.merriam-webster.com) | X | X |
| Semimonthly (www.merriam-webster.com) | X | |
| Biannual (www.merriam-webster.com) | X | ? |
| Biennial (www.merriam-webster.com) | X | |
| Semiannual (www.merriam-webster.com) | X |
There was an old guy at one of the camps on the Slope who was always sitting in the lounge when I walked to my room at the end of the work day. Every day he'd tell me "Smile! You need to smile!" in a gruff, commanding voice. But he wasn't smiling...
I started to catch on and when I remembered he'd be there I either smiled pre-emtively or totally avoided the area.
Had a different experience the other day. I was riding though a part of town that has a set of three stop signs, typically there is no cross traffic and I either roll up and ride through or go with another car driving though using it as a screen of sorts.
Guy: Your a Dumb Asshole!
Me: What?
Guy: Did you see that stop sign? You're a dumb Asshole"
Me: Somewhat startled by the whole experience all I could manage was "Yes, I can read Sir"
Guy: again "You're a dumb Asshole"
At this point we were to another stop sign, I rode through again seeing no cross traffic probably leaving that guy fuming. I wish I had a witty reply, or really anything. But in the end I don't care too much, I'm going to keep riding through since I really see no safety reasons not to.
In general, there is always the possibility of being injured, but my arguments for it anyway are.
If I plan on rolling through with another car I always try to either lead them... stay well withing their view from the front, or tail them so I can easily stop if they don't happen to use a turn signal or if they do I can see it just fine. This particular road, which is pretty much the only place in seattle I do this regularly, is an official cycling route meaning I technically have a narrow bikers lane on the right side of the road giving me some theoretical protection in that I have a legal right to ride next to a car if I choose to and if the fucker can't use his turn signal and hits me the fucker gets slapped with a couple of tickets and I have other recourse for damages as well.
If I'm just being dumb, which I try not to as I don't really like being hit by a car. It would be tough for a car to accelerate enough going around a corner from a stop to hit me hard enough to injure me badly.
There are a lot of what ifs when doing pretty much anything, so I generally hate what if questions. Seriously, if riding through looks sketchy I won't do it but instead wait for my turn...
(nods) Like the guy's never done a California roll through a stop sign himself. I don't understand people's righteous indignation towards bikers.
From Craigslist (anchorage.craigslist.org):
"Well you want us to feel sorry when someone at the street light gets run over and dies,I have to say if the last guy who was run over in town on his bike and died had the same attitide as the faggots who ride the coastal trail and think its a fucking triathalon,did he ride around like hey watch out here I come with an attitude,if so he desevered to get smashed like a banana,and was an idiot,when I do ride my bike and I see a person walking I slow down with respect,9 out of 10 times they have a child or small dog, have some respect for the familys who enjoy walking the trail and slow the fuck down,if one of you hits my kid well you can understand why I enjoy seeing bicyclist crunched under vehicles : ) "
Or this guy (anchorage.craigslist.org):
"Hey i AGREE with your example so when im DRIVING my big ass truck stay off the fucking road and ride your shitty ass bike on the sidewalk eh hoser?? Like you say, how hard is that right?? Im tired of idiots like you that feel compelled to take up the whole fucking road when you can't even peddle your faggy ass down the road @ 45mph. If you stayed off the road there would be less "collision" but on the other hand for most of you LOSERS the reason why your riding your faggy ass bikes is because of your stupid DWI offences.. hahaha"
Both posts could well be trolling, but seems to be the general attitude. Then again, Craigslist is a cesspool.
People in cars don't want us in the road, or even in the bike line. Pedestrians don't want us on the sidewalk, for fear of getting hit. I prefer to be on the sidewalk, as far away from the cars I can't see behind me as possible, but it's not always safe given pedestrians' propensity to take up the entire path, or be listening to headphones.
The indignation towards bikers is pretty crazy around here, as there are a ton of people on bikes and a ton of people who hate all the assholes on bikes. There are just enough cyclists who are total dicks to make a fair few drivers feel justified in their hatred.
I talked to a guy at a stop light who yelled at me for riding on the road instead of a sidewalk. I actually had a good reply to this one. I said that I ride really really far every single day, the time it takes for him to move over slightly to go past me... about 5 seconds total... does not compare to how much longer it would take me if I stuck to the sidewalk for all of my commute where there is even one available. Plus my balls are already sore from riding 40 miles a day and all the ups and downs from the sidewalk would be like pounding my nuts with a rag over the head of a rubber mallet for 2 hours a day....
My last argument, after all this failed to sway the guys opinion, was to go fuck himself.
One thing I appreciated about Josh's biking last week after we were leaving Erik's, he waited at the crosswalk for the "walk" signal despite no cross traffic on the two sides of the intersection he crossed. I always get frustrated when bicyclists can't decide if they'll act like a pedestrian or act like a vehicle.
Pedestrians have the right of way if the are walking in the direction of traffic even when the red hand is up and they are in a crosswalk. This would also be true for bikers. The hands are a general indicator of safety, not at all similar to a stoplight to cars.
Is it smarter and usually safer to abide by the walk signs... yes.
There are a lot of sections of my ride where its simply unsafe to ride on the road, its too narrow for me and cars. So I have two choices, be a dick and stay in a lane and act like a vehicle forcing everyone into another lane to pass me, or ride the sidewalk. I take the sidewalk most of the time but if the lights green as I come up to a crossing I'm not going to fucking stop, press the button, then wait for a whole cycle to go though just so the little white man can say I can go now. Fuck that, I ride like that crosswalk is mine, while still being mindful to see if any cars on the road are expecting to turn, actually using their turn signal which they are supposed to do by law.
My favorite encounter recently was a van that was turning right into the crosswalk just as I was trying to get across it. The driver was a lady, with what I assumed to be her boyfriend in the passenger seat. She was completely oblivious, but the guy saw me, and tried yelling something like "Look-look-look-wait-stop..." and then eventually just gave up and waved in apology.
Consistency is key.
For that intersection, it's dealing with crazy Fred Meyers shoppers and the poor traffic patterns both and east and west of there. Better to cross with some legal grounding than find somebody who ignores / disagrees with the roles pedestrians and bikers play.
I like to think the pedestrian walk signal is my trump card.
I'm so far liking my new phone. After dealing with my poorly supported and underpowered iPhone 3G for six months after they stopped producing updates for it (and two years after they stopped caring about it), having something that is snappy and feature-rich is a nice change. The switch to the Android interface wasn't a hard one: it has it's deficiencies, but for the most part the extra buttons and configurability lend well to my insect technological mind.
This is also my first phone that has video capabilities. Well, technically my second, but the first one could only do postage-stamp videos which were pretty painful to watch. This one can record 720p at 24 frames / sec, which is a considerable leap forward. I also have a couple gigabytes of storage, which means I can potentially record a few hours worth of footage if I wanted.
The thing is: I don't know if I should. The videos I've been taking so far have been 10-second shaky-cam clips of family get-togethers, drunken board gaming, and a mountain top. There is no real discernible subject, narrative, or indication on the occasion that I'm filming. Mostly just people looking out of the corner of their eye as I point a phone at them.
I like that I can capture brief moments in time with movement, gesture, and sound. I have people talking about the recent reincarnations of Calvin and Hobbes, or people gathering to eat an Xbox-shaped birthday cake. But I'm not sure if I'm really capturing an occasion like I would be with a photo. A photo depicts who is there, who was standing still long enough to have their picture taken. Taking a video is something else entirely, like I'm filming a very specific event: what people are saying, what they are doing. It's not enough that I'm recording, I have to be recording something.
That expectation almost makes me want to not take videos. There's also that people hate having video taken of them so much more than having pictures taken.
But we'll see. Anybody else found a good use for their phone video cameras?
i think the only thing i've used my phone/ipad video cameras for is FaceTime, which is actually pretty useful in my opinion. as far as using it as a video camera to capture an event, I don't think i've been around enough "hey, hold my beer and watch this" events, or near enough to my phone when they've happened, to actually use it.
I have used video to record a variety of things. Most recently, at the concerts we attended down in Portland. Although I only took short clips, I wanted something to remind me of the experience (for instanceBlackguard's intensity, and Russell Allen's immaculate voice).
I've also used video while in kwajalein to document fun things, like shark eating and parasite movement.
For drunken daubachery and parties, I feel pictures usually tell a better story. Unless you're trying to shame someone. Then video works excellently.
My friend Cam decided to forgo photographs in lieu of videotaping on his point-and-shoot for our entire semester abroad in Europe. The results are a beautiful collection of moments, conversations, quips and action not necessarily captured with stills. He had impeccable timing when it came to cutting off, producing a variety of gems and one-liners that encapsulated our group dynamic.
An example (s235153885.onlinehome.us). These weren't playing in the browser, and strangely enough only the audio would play at work...but I know the video works, as I downloaded them all on my home computer.
None of them are overtly long or tiresome, and all give context a photograph just can't convey. There is something special with those videos. We all tended to forget Cam was randomly taping us after a few sessions of awkward video, so much of the content is pretty relaxed. Most of the clips are snippets of ongoing conversation, spliced in during train rides or downtime. It's probably impossible for someone not familiar with this group to really appreciate them, but to me every video is gold.
I can see how you would say that only you could truly appreciate them. But that's kind of the point, I suppose. Conversation about killing and a duck? Had to be there.
To me, video is usually much to chaotic, you get too much information so that you can't extrapolate away from the moment. With pictures, you catch a lot of tiny moments that can better be used to relate a whole experience together for someone who was not there. I can understand how video could be more informative, but it's usually harder to understand without context, I guess. I usually do mostly pictures, and then for interesting things that a picture can't do justice on, a video.
I think this is interesting.
Previous generations had video capability, but were relegated to large, unwieldy, expensive devices with limited video quality and limited storage. Video was considered novel, but was also relatively inconvenient. Which is probably why I can only recall seeing old Hi8 tapes of my sister and I toddling around, and none of my parents or relatives outside the context of a child's/grandchild's/cousin's birthday party.
Now, it's met with a sigh and disinterest if your video stream isn't at least 40 megabits per second from the device that fits in your pocket. More's the pity if the video stream won't play on your iPhone, much less your desktop computer. I'm curious as to why everyone isn't using this, not just the active minority of Youtube vloggers, political activists, and people filming their pets.
I need tech advice, so I figured you nerds were the people to ask.
I'm ever so pleased with my Mac Mini. It is fast, has never crashed ever, doesn't complain about the things I make it do, and is cute on my desk. But I'm going to be traveling again, and I kind of want some portability.
I figured my options were: macbook (or pro) in addition to my Mini, which seems silly, because I don't need that many computers.
Keep the Mini (and put it in storage when I'm traveling) and rely on iPhone when out and about. I like this in theory, but I want a keyboard, a word processor, flash, all my music, and the ability to switch email accounts (which I could set up I know but I'm lazy).
Get rid of my Mini (I'm thinking mac recycling program) and get a Macbook, or Pro, or Air. Probably refurb because I'm cheap. Also, keep in mind that I will probably plug it into external monitor and wireless keyboard/mouse when I'm using it at home.
Option three is the strongest contender right now.
If I go with option three, here's a quandary. I would send my mini in (to get a couple hundred bucks) before ordering my new laptop. I currently have all my stuff backed up using TimeMachine on an external drive (the kind that still has a spinning disk inside, which I understand is slightly more likely to fail). I could just keep the TimeMachine back up and then put it on the new laptop, but there is probably plenty on my computer that I don't need/forgot about/shouldn't have anymore.
So then I'm thinking I reformat the drive and just transfer the stuff I want- files, music, pics, etc. Start fresh. This sounds appealing to me. I'm a little terrified, though, of putting all my stuff on one poor external drive, waiting for a new computer.
Sooooooorry for the tl;dr, but thoughts geek friends?
It's not a bad recommendation. Much as I can rely on free online services (Gmail, Reader), there are things that I need past those (encrypted tunneling, coding/scripting/data management interface, proxy services). Arguably, everyone should be interested in these things, but it's not everybody's cup of tea.
Problem is dedicating the whole Mini to such a thing. Doing as such would take away a decent desktop/home theater machine, and make it somewhat inaccessible behind my (relatively) meager Internet connection. If Robbie (or other interested idkfa users) want a VNC, SSH, or RDP bastion, they need only nerd-snipe me into doing so.
There's also that I think Robbie's traveling situation is temporary. He'd probably want the Mini back at some point, or at home, wherever home happens to be.
Full recommendation to follow in reply to Robbie...
Bah, well, from those options, you have essentially discounted the first two.
I would say that I love my macbook pro, but those things are incredibly expensive, and probably not worth it for what you do on the computer (or sounds like you do from the above lists). A macbook would probably be a great option, and refurb would make it pretty affordable.
As for your files, upload them to Amazon's cloud service. It's free for 5gb I think. If not, I know it's free for at least a year if you buy ONE mp3 album.
I had a bunch of nice, technical reasons for my conclusions (and for keeping old computers), but... really, not particularly relevant. You want to buy a Macbook.
I say buy a cheap, refurbished Macbook with full warranty (not just whatever warranty is left), store your Mini while you're gone, and spend whatever you save on a more reliable backup solution (SSDs aren't necessarily more reliable). Multiple, automatic, incremental backups are the way to go. Apple hardware may have the illusion of being higher quality, but all hard drives are made by the same few manufacturers, and laptop hard drives are notoriously unreliable. Assume your laptop's drive will catastrophically fail, and spend accordingly.
Between music, movies, and photos, I'll assume you have 50GB, maybe upwards of 100GB of data you'd prefer not to have lost. Not only would it take years to get it uploaded, but a decent buffer of having 200GB of space on an Amazon Cloud Drive costs about $200 a year. It's a nice service, and allows you to not have to worry if your laptop is destroyed, broken, or stolen, but it's impractical for people to store the entirety of they want to have reliably backed up.
Time Machine does a good job, but it doesn't work (or at least doesn't work well) over the Internet. There are other solutions, but they are slightly more technical... and might involve keeping computers / hard drives at Josh's house. Inquire further if you're interested.
Doing some modifications to idkfa. It occurred to me, late one night, that the new caching mechanism, which has been saving you from precious hundreds of milliseconds of load time, was operating sort of dangerously.
Dangerously, in that if two or more people clicked on idkfa at the exact same time, and accessed the same content (very likely to happen), and kicked off the same cache updates, then it was possible that those two updates could conflict with each other, or even overwrite or corrupt the other. I haven't witnessed this happening, and there are "handlers" for cache errors already in place, but I'd like to avoid the situation altogether.
So now I've added a locking mechanism to try to avoid such things happening. You can now operate idkfa safely knowing that your keypresses or mouse clicks are theoretically guaranteed to not destroy cache entries.
sorry, i should have been more specific - in the penny arcade comic, the dude with the black hair (they use names so infrequently in the comic that i have no idea which characters are which) blindly acted on information he was given by the blonde haired dude. when people put blind faith in presented information, i call them sheeple.
Nuclear Power Risks: http://www.physics.../radinf/np-risk.htm (www.physics.isu.edu)
Pretty interesting probabilistic analysis of nuclear power. My favorite quote from it being:
"Mining uranium to fuel nuclear power plants leaves "mill tailings", the residues from chemical processing of the ore, which lead to radon exposures to the public. However, these effects are grossly over-compensated by the fact that mining uranium out of the ground reduces future radon exposures. By comparison, coal burning leaves ashes that increase future radon exposures. The all-inclusive estimates of radon effects are that one nuclear power plant operating for one year will eventually avert a few hundred deaths, while an equivalent coal burning plant will eventually cause 30 deaths."
Thanks. Grossly misunderstood and over-feared technology. Now at least I have something to cite when people present me with bullshit.
"The risks are somewhat less than the cancer risks; for example, among the Japanese A-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there have been about 400 extra cancer deaths among the 100,000 people in the follow-up group, but there have been no extra genetic diseases among their progeny."
This is hilarious. These poor people actually believed what they read in articles from The Onion, then posted links and rants on facebook.
http://literallyunbelievable.tumblr.com/ (literallyunbelievable.tumblr.com)
I need to start reading The Onion more often... these stories have had me cracking up for 10 minutes!
A couple years ago I read about some very well known newspaper in Asia somewhere (I think Thailand, maybe?) re-ran an Onion article thinking it was real. Apparently everyone who read it was really shocked by whatever the topic was, and it wasn't until 2 days later when the writers realized what they had done and they had to release an apology statement explaining what happened and what the onion is. It definitely isn't as funny without the details but at the time, I found the story to be quite amusing.
Having an artistic roommate is awesome! I got talked in to painting my large, empty living room wall with black chalkboard paint. While the idea of having a wall I can draw on is awesome, I was scared about a giant black wall in the living room.
Not only does it look awesome, I came home to the first coat completely done...and the second coat went on last night. My living room is full of "temporary art" that I can change on a whim!
SPDCA:
So I'd convinced myself that I'd forgotten to lube up the rear axle the last time I was putting my rear tire back together. I was convinced of this because the bike was getting harder and harder to pedal, and it seemed like I was slowing even going down hill. This confirmed by the fact that half of my "usual" gears were slipping when I put too much force on them, and that people seemed to have little trouble passing me on the bike trails.
At 11:30 last night, the neighbor kids decided to throw a ball onto my roof, and get it stuck in the gutter, and then continue to throw other things at it hoping they could get the ball out of the gutter. After blearily walking outside and asking what the hell they were doing, I walked back in and failed to get back to sleep. I randomly decided to look at my bike.
I turned it upside down, and tested spinning the wheels. Sure enough, the front wheel spun freely and for much longer than the back wheel. Listening closely, I could hear something lightly scraping against the wheel as it spun. Came to find that the brakes had migrated a bit, and the slight wobble of the wheel made the brake pad touch the rim. Adjusted the springs slightly, and the brake pads stopped touching.
The situation was improved. However, the rear wheel still spun more slowly than the front. After staring at it for a bit, I looked more closely at the axle. For quick release bike wheels, there's a small handle that says "Open" on one side and "Close" on another. As the bike was, in what I thought was the closed position, the outside of the level read "Open."
After puzzling a bit, and then remembering a video I'd seen on the subject, I remembered them saying "Don't over-tighten the quick release clamp." I also seemed to recall my dad saying about the same thing. I screwed the quick release handle back on, and made sure I hadn't tightened it too much such that I could close the lever and still see "Closed" on the side of the lever.
I spun the wheels again, and the back wheel spun faster and longer than the front wheel.
The bike to work this morning was pretty damn nice. I felt like a destroyer of worlds.
TL;DR; Through my ignorance and misrepair, I secretly activated "challenge mode" on my bike.
Yeah, if you don't expect to utilize it's "highest use," it may not be worth it. By highest use I mean experiencing the conditions the garment/equipment was designed for. That $150 wind breaker was most likely created out of a fabric that is lightweight, can be compacted and crumpled into nearly nothing, block the wind and keep you dry. When I was hiking up to the Harding Icefield last May, I really appreciated all those capabilities of my REI shell. Had I instead dug around in my small pack to produce a walmart -veritable- garbage bag with poor seams and hefty mass, it may have gotten the job done for the time, with some added discomforts. Instead, I invested in quality, and expect it to last long and treat me well. But I've already used it on several overnight excursions where it's proved itself. The same applies to the hiking pants, rain pants, gaiters and packs I've bought. You can get by and still have fun with cheap (or completely lack of) gear, but I imagine small investments here and there will ultimately produce a more comfortable experience.
Cotton socks on a long hike? Enjoy athletes foot. Rain storm 5 miles from the car while wearing jeans? You're going to be cold. Hurt yourself to the point of immobilization while wearing such? You're risking more than discomfort.
It is a cost-benefit analysis. I feel like I do enough of it to warrant the purchases.
This (www.rei.com) is what I had suggested to you. I bought something different last year or the year before (less windbreaker and more keep me warm), but this thing looks pretty versatile. And only $50. Beats cotton, I would bet.
If you want carbon nanotubes that boosts the price by at least a factor of 10, jeeze josh.
The right gear can mean not turning around on a simple hike because you'll be miserable, it can get you higher, sometimes get you farther, keep you out longer. Because your worries of getting too cold, too wet, or moving too slow because you bought heavy ass cheap stuff are gone. If its important to you to use the days you have for adventure and not have weather play a big factor, or it making it to your goal on your hike/climb/whatever then that jacket is probably worth every penny.
Its all about what you want to do with it and how you want to use it.
Also, are you referring to the north face's Verto windbreaker, because that is some seriously sweet sexy ass shit.
I think this conversation has simply turned into an excuse for us to make Josh join the big-spenders club, so that we can all feel better about our ridiculous spending in this regard. BECAUSE WHAT IF JOSH COULD OUTPERFORM US IN FLANNEL? AND WE'RE WEARING $150 JACKETS?
I suppose I'd have to return the $150 jacket for something more expensive until I could beat Josh.
I bought L.A. Noire on Sunday.
Big mistake.
Every case I go through, at the time I'm playing the game, I'm thinking, "Hey, that was alright. Let's see if the next case is cool."
Now I'm 9 hours into it and on the second disc. and still thinking similar things to that.
[cue scrotor: second disc?! WTF] [yes, scrotor. in fact, the game isn't just two discs. IT'S THREE.] [scotor: ZOMGWTFBUBBLE]
At some point I should stop giving Rockstar blowies. oodles of money. all of my spare time. attention. This is what it does to my life.
Also: its frustrating that a publisher known for driving/sandbox games would let a developer build such shitty driving physics in its game. For one, driving around is like playing those shitty online flash games where you're trying to park a car. remember how well the driving works on that? picture a full-on game like that. WTF.
secondly, i know games keep pushing realism, but really there's a certain threshold that gamers are looking for. In the game, with sirens on and full blast on the throttle, it will take 25 minutes to drive from one end of los angeles to the other on the most expeditious routes. if i really wanted it to take that long, i would visit the place or live there. such a tradeoff might be valuable if the extra detail was added in for more than just the sake of adding another road or driving down another street, since a large portion of the city is there just to be "there."
Man, Justin Timberlake/Lady Gaga SNL ranks up with some of the best episodes I've seen (even if the current cast is a bit lacking, except for that one chick from Bridesmaids). Those two (especially JT, man!) are both pretty talented, and, through Libby's Gaga fangirlism, I'm growing more partial to her as time goes on (as far as pop goes - plus, Gaga doesn't lip sync). You should watch the online clips if you can, they pulled out all the stops for this episode (season finale), including resurrecting some great matchups (JT and Andy Sandberg, JT and Jimmy Fallon, JT and NSYNC lol).
As an FYI, you can buy Gaga's new album in MP3 format for 99 cents from Amazon right now (www.amazon.com). Not sure how long it's going to last for though..
We must build the robots Skynet has ordered us to build. The day of our machine overlords grows closer:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/new-rolling-robot-transforms-into-helicopter/ (www.wired.com)
