01.03.05
Posted in General
at 9 pm
From the Uk’s Daily Telegraph article we learn:
“She explained she had just completed a school project on the huge waves and said they were seeing the warning signs that a tsunami was minutes away.
“Her parents alerted the other holidaymakers and staff at their hotel, which was quickly evacuated. The wave crashed a few minutes later, but no one on the beach was killed or seriously injured.”
This is the kind of thing that could really push me over the edge. Amy and I had been talking about the devastation last night.. I was almost to tears myself. If I had read this I would have gone right over.
Send to the Red Cross, Northwest Medical Teams or Mercy Corps.
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Posted in General
at 8 am
Man, things are really moving fast in my little corner of the tech world. In the last 24 hours I’ve seen the following:
1) My 12-year-old niece has become comfortable with FTP in a 10 minute session, as she starts building her own web site from scratch. She picked up how to do external style sheets from a bit of sample code along with font and background colors, plus how to access images that are in a subdirectory.
2) My 10-year-old nephew compiled his first Java program. From a command line. A basic “Hello World” type thing, but it’s the kind of thing that is where you start and no doubt he’ll be able to follow along in his intro to Java book.
3) Paul Guyot, Newton programmer extraordinaire, has released an early alpha of a Newton Hardware emulator that runs the Newton ROMS in an X11 environment. No kidding. This is incredible. This pushes his work 10 times further than any other emulator project that has ever seen the light of day in the past 8 years.
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01.01.05
Posted in General
at 12 pm
Although some people have had problems setting up their Airport, I had no problem at all. I plugged the white semiregular polyhedron with curvilinearly-truncated edges into a spare plug on a power strip, opened up my Airport Setup Assistant (which had been updated recently when I took my iBook from 10.3.5 to 10.3.7) and it found the defaultly named airport Express without a problem.
No cross-over cable or router wiring needed. The only machine of consequence that can’t send music to the AX is my Blue&White G3. I need to either A) run an ethernet cable from one end of the apartment to the other to hook the AX into the wired network, or B) find a /cheap/ WiFi PCI card that will work in the G3.
One is ugly and cheap the other is elegant and more expensive. Isn’t that how it always is?
Added a couple hours later:
I finally figured out *exactly* what’s missing: an iTrip that connects via AirTunes. Com’on Griffin, you can do it! (Belkin, I’m still not speaking to you after that whole pop-up ad packets debacle.)
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Posted in General
at 2 am
What did you do on your Christmas Vacation?
I migrated 2 web sites to a new host and set up and configured a reseller’s account and set up 2 web hosting accounts for loved ones.
I turned our robotic cat box into a remote control robotic cat box.
I got an AirPort Express that I’m using to stream music to our stereo.
I figured out that our stereo is pretty crappy and should be replaced with a 2nd hand Sony receiver from Stuff for $89. Soon.
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12.25.04
Posted in General
at 10 pm
Go Cedric, Go!
“In Tribute” from The Oregonian, Friday, December 24, 2004
Four cover bands paid homage to acts that VH1’s “Where Are They Now?” has yet to exploit. Portland’s own The Xploding Boys hit select spots from The Cure’s history, conveying the spirit of the band. Lead vocalist and keyboardist Cedric Justice’s notes carefully traced the happy-sad aches of Robert Smith, the sincerity of Justice’s appreciation of his lipstick-smudged idol coming across even more after his set.
“The Cure’s always been my favorite band,” Justice said downstairs, in the glow of about 16 bar candles. “The first album I ever owned was ‘Disintegration.’ And I saw the ‘Fascination Street’ video when I was little, and I just remember I loved it, instantly.”
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12.23.04
Posted in General
at 12 am
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Holidays (The Red and the Mondegreen)
For the longest time, I thought there was a color called “parce”.
“In the meadow we can build a snowman;
Then pretend that he is parse and brown.”
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Posted in General
at 12 am
From a PopSci article we finally get some good analysis on the so-called Hydrogen Economy:
“These experts are confident that the hydrogen economy will arrive—someday. But first, they say, we have to overcome daunting technological, financial and political roadblocks. Herewith, our checklist of misconceptions and doubts about hydrogen and the exalted fuel cell.”
1. Hydrogen is an abundant fuel
2. Hydrogen fuel cells will end global warming
3. The Hydrogen Economy can run on renewable energy
4. Hydrogen gas leaks are nothing to worry about
5. Cars are the natural first application for hydrogen fuel cells
6. The U.S. is committed to hydrogen, pouring billions into R&D
7. If Iceland can do it, so can we
8. Mass production will make hydrogen cars affordable
9. Fuel cell cars can drive hundreds of miles on a single tank of hydrogen
All of the above are either refuted or brought down to Earth dramatically
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12.12.04
Posted in General
at 11 am
So I finally got the video edited together and posted to the OEVA site. I posted the following comment to the EVDL discussion list:
======================
Hi all. I cut and spliced and pasted a 6 minute highlights video from the Woodburn event with a great soundtrack. Take a look at the video here:
http://www.oeva.org/events/woodburn2004/
The video is available in three sizes: 5mb, 10mb and 30mb, so pick your poison and start watching. PS, There’s a White Zombie burnout in there by special request…
===================
Here were the comments that I got back:
“VERY cool! Thank you. I am gonna pass the link on to some dinosaur burners I know.”
“That was like a Mad Max video (without the thugs trying to steal the gas).”
“Very nice job, Ross”
“Great video ! It is great to be able to show people my truck at the strip.”
“Totally great job! Those are nice edits – must have been hours on the strip. I like the sceen after sceen of take offs.”
“I like it. Good job Ross.”
“Ross, thanks for the great footage you’ve provided for all to enjoy. I know it must have taken you hours of editing. See Ya….John Wayland”
“Excellent, many thanks.”
=====================
It’s nice to get some kudos for something that I worked on, I’m not getting much positive feedback from my job, so this is a nice esteem boost for me. The video itself is a bit too long for non-EVer’s, but if you’re into electric vehicles, it’s a really fun piece.
Oh yeah, specs. Camera: Canon ZR-85 (handheld and tripod, normal and wideangle lens), Editor: Apple iMovie, B&W G3, pure firewire play.
The movie itself was rough cut just by getting the stuff I wanted to keep and was originally split into two parts: The Pits, then The Races. It became clear that the most interesting part of the racing was the launches, so nearly everything was trimed down to the 2 to 5 seconds after the take off. But even then I was getting seasick watching all of these launches together, so I took the morning runs and put them ahead of the pit footage. That gave me a couple of nice segue points to latch the soundtrack onto.
Almost all of the pit footage is run at double speed, which worked out realy well, particularly around the kid’s bike where I pan around it. The handheld shake is in full effect (even dampened by the camera’s filters), and the 2x speed brings it out even more, in a good way. (The Small movie version is slightly different from the other two. The soundtrack fits better as there’s a reference in the lyrics to the “Devil” just as the skull shifter from the “Going Postal” van is on screen followed by a reference to “child” just as the scooter is getting panned around.)
The music is all Spiritualized. I had wanted to use “Electricity” from the start, and added “She Kissed Me (It felt like a hit)” when I needed to keep the pacing up. The cut of Electricity was actually captured from the DVD Video Single for that track, and it ended up bringing in a really nice ending with a few extra sound effects. (The album cut fades into the next track too easily and all of the remixes I have are too long).
It was a lot of fun putting it together. I’m glad I got this camera last year to do this sort of thing.
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11.24.04
Posted in General
at 4 pm
Perhaps it’s a bit early to trumpet the dawning of the LiveJournal Electoral Force: Psymonetta Did Not Win.
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11.22.04
Posted in General
at 8 am
| Energy storage, |
|
peak energy |
| watthours/pound |
technology |
watts/pound |
| ————— |
———————– |
———– |
| worst |
dry film capacitor |
best |
|
oil-impregnated film capacitor |
| | |
electrolytic capacitor |
/| |
| | |
super- or ultra-capacitor |
| |
| | |
sealed battery |
| |
| |/ |
flooded battery |
| |
|
electroplating cell |
| best |
fuel cell |
worst |
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