Interesting take on the butter/margarine history

This morning I came across this well-written historical analysis.

TIL the Millennium Falcon was in Episode III

Foster the People Vids

Call it what you want



Call it what you want live

The lead singer looks like Craig Kratcha



Pumped up kicks



Warrant

New Font for 2012 Development

I saw this when looking for a new favorite, fixed width font. Seems very rounded and square, with a little retro nostalgia for 1980s computers.

seekingprofont

CoffeeScript: one week review

These are the lessons I've learned so far with CoffeeScript.

1. JCoffeeScript works well in a Java environment.

2. If you are using eclipse, make a shortcut key (I use all the control + w), to show/hide whitespace.

3. Make sure if you cut and paste code, you consistentize it -> I prefer switching all spaces to tabs. Coffeescript indentation is based on the quantity of whitespace, not the type, so what appears as a 4 char tab really is just one whitespace to CS. Keep them all in a row.

4. I don't really have a good plugin yet for eclipse to understand coffee script.

1989 - Transvision Vamp

OOCSS Article

This article, OOCSS, does take CSS to a place I've been trying to get to. I like to that the author refutes the idea that ids have no place in CSS. CSSLint, however lists that in its rules.

What inspires you?

What do you look to for inspiration in UI?

• de stijl design


• Russian Konstructivism


• Macintosh User Interface Guidelines


• LukeW


• a list apart


• smashing


• Next


• Classic Apple plugins


• Lawson Self Evident Applications


• Fireworks


• Sony Vegas


• Mazda 6 interface


• Northfield, MN campuses


• Western Wisconsin geography


• Lego space kit instructions


• Apple Packaging


• HP Calculators


• Make Magazine


• Le Corbusier


• Kiss Principle


• Knockout JS website


• Bubblegum Crisis


• Cricket Graph


• Mac Keyboard Lighting

So no Veto then, Obama?

The branches of the US Government should be following. Due Process, the Geneva Convention, no indefinite and arbitrary detention, but instead Obama signs this bill, in a battle over Executive or Congressional power of arbitrary detention instead of the debate, which believers in rights, freedom and the Bill of Rights want is that there should not be indefinite and arbitrary detention. In creating is the same rights-less environment that despotic regimes exhibited, every country with detainees held, uncharged, without due process of law will have their own MIA/POW flags representing their nationals held by the USA (though not necessarily in the USA).

It's also alarming how many of the steps enumerated by Naomi Wolf are already checked off her list/blueprint for turning a democracy into a dictatorship. The only hope now is a rights-respecting congress removes the provision in a future bill (not likely except for a few intellectually strong individuals), or the Supreme Court gets to decide the Constitutionality. Specifically, the Sixth Amendment is of concern here:

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense."

Which makes no distinction of citizenry, the form of accusation, etc.

Buzz Aldrin has some Sweet Rocket Designs

http://buzzaldrin.com/space-vision/rocket_science/

So true

why can't congress pass a budget


pizza a vegatable? Not so true

The Freshmaker

Real - Heels:



Real - Suit:



Real - Party:



Fake - Demolition Man:



Fake - Indy:

Death Space Music

Dylan was playing this at cool math games... Which i can only assume is death space.

Space Wumpus

The game you've been waiting for... it's SPACE WUMPUS. Using jquery and skeleton boilerplate.



Update (12/17/2011): Added score, new game button, plasma packs, player aten, wumpus blinking.

Eclipse Phase: Artwork

• Google images
• Inspirational art thread on rpg.net - 5
• Inspirational art thread on rpg.net - 19
• superb map of Saturn and Beyond

Esperanza Spalding - Melodic Electro Jazz

Istanbul (Why they changed it I can't say.)

Electronic Istanbul (Not Constantinople) - They Might Be Giants - Official Video from They Might Be Giants on Vimeo.

HTML5 canvas layering

We were talking about HTML5 canvas and I remembered I had this layer experiment: Orbital.

Starhunting

Picked up Starhunter, it was just $5 last week for the whole series on DVD at Wal-Mart. Interesting similarities to Firefly, and since it predates it I wonder if Whedon copied some of the concepts. The cheap set doesn't come with translations or subtitles.

Here are the similar characters from Starhunter (2000) to Firefly (2002). Since there is less of a budget, there are fewer characters in Starhunter, but the ones that are there carry over pretty well to Firefly.

• Dante Montana - Malcolm Reynolds


• Lucretia Scott - Zoë Washburne


• Percy Montana - Kaylee Frye


• Badger - Rudolpho

Look here for a comparison of the two.

Queen Anne's Revenge in ST:TWOK era

Starhunter

From Starhunter, TIL: don't fight in an airlock unless you're wearing a spacesuit.

The Tulip:

Seen in the Rag Tag Fleet

Better in German:

Tombstone

Doesn't quite have the impact of Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (Black God, White Devil).

Launch of Curiosity to Mars

That was a beautiful launch - minimal cloud cover, though the rocket pierced though one strata early on.

I had to force the kids to watch.

They are four lightening towers at the Cape Canaveral Launch complex 41, the first clean pad.

The Atlas V is the primary booster. The centaur rocket stage boosts the upper payload to a Geosynchronous orbit.

Robotic Bodyguards

Robotic guards for inmates, courtesy of BBC news. Not created by OCP.



How long before the AD police are called in to prevent Rogue boomer mishaps? Bubblegum Crisis is not far away. (C. 2040.)

TEDx Talk for Thanksgiving

I wish you to have a good day.

Target Eggs from MS?

Last night I was perplexed what market conditions would cause Target in Hudson (WI) to sell eggs from Mississippi. Now I'm even more glad I didn't buy any.

I'm not sure if they usually got them from Iowa, or they usually get them from Mississippi.

Ist SOAP!

Saw this a few years ago, but this is pretty funny.

Tom Jones and the Cardigans take on the Talking Heads

Say what you will, but I now know some lyrics I never heard through David Byrnes mumbled speaking.

Acoustic Waiting

Take that autotuned vocalists.

Saruman

Is?

Also if you lose your nose, you are in slytherin.

And here's the one I submitted.

This one cracks me up everytime, I know, it's...

Perepiteia

Perepiteia is a new generator developed by the Canadian inventor Thane Heins.

What version is which MacOS?

Mac Forums from 10.4 is Tiger. 10.5 is Leopard. 10.6 is Snow Leopard.

Crush

Orange Crush, second only to Rondo...

Political cycles

All I can hope for is that the cycle will not consume all effort of politicians, after all there seems to be plenty of work left to do. But please people why are you still considering entertaining people from the BACK of the class? No one that has trouble understanding the existing government structure should even be in the running at this point.

Demolition Man was Duplication Man

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolition_Man_(film) read under plagarism.

Microbes to Phobos [rev] Bummer

This Article was much more rosy yesterday, now the same URL is showing that the Russians may have lost contact with the mission probe.

All Shook Up

Last night we went as a whole family to see All Shook Up at the River Falls theatre. It had great singing and acting. There were a few twists in the storyline that were unexpected and the humor was pretty good though a little mature (gender twists), but not too far out of the line of 1920s humor. The kids mostly made it all the way through. And the term roustabout is firmly established in my available vocabulary for a short while.

Elvis vs JXL and a Paul Oakenfold remix are the most Elvis I'd heard in a while.

Seed banks are up and running

Already, the seed banks are up and running. In The Windup Girl, there are several in the world. The Svalbard: is already containing 1.5 million seeds but can hold up to 4.5 million.

Quitewrite

I like how everything glides in and out on this site, quietwrite.

I'm still alive

Current trends in web JS/CSS tools

I'd heard of a bunch of these tools, but not yet using most of these.

Galaxy Express 999

Just started watching Galaxy Express 999 on Crackle, some of it has some Eclipse Phase potential in terms of metaphysics, transhumanism. The concept of a space train is somewhat ridiculous the way it is portrayed as an actual steam engine in space, though if they just drew it with more realism and some kind of magneto cannon it would be believable. Everyone in the show is trying to save up money for a new body.

Here is a list of episodes.

Crackle has some repetitious and odd adds though.

More new tech to assess

Angular JS

JS-Test-Driver

Appcelerator

Ontwik.com

JSClass

Created a new SourceForge CSS project

I create a project to scan CSS files, sort the z-index values and create a plot of the results. Check it out here: CSSTC - Css Traffic Control.

Setting up Sass in a Java Tomcat Environment

Collecting info on putting this together. Stack overflow there are several options:

1. Jruby
2. Filter
3. Compass + Sass

New Sites

These are some new sites I heard of this weekend at TCCC:

• Litmus: For testing how different emails appear to different browsers.


• Rails Wizard: For putting together a package.


• Pragmatic Programmer Magazine: a free magazine about recent programming topics like clojure, CoffeeScript, etc.


• Backbone: a return to structural javascript models like I used to advocate more, tip to tail. This is real object oriented programming, not just DOM-attachment like jQuery promotes. But with models connected to the server, tools for list and maps. Look at all of the clients using it, quite a list.
  
  I like this site for it's smoothness and calming look: QuiteWrite
  
  


• Underscore: jquery-complimentary javascript methods



• Guid: Creating a guid in javascript

TCCC11 - Day Two

2.1 Introduction to Design Patterns by Brian Gorman. Bizarre take on the Star Wars Universe characters from a patterns perspective. I truly think if he had played Starships Unlimited or looked at damage from an energy perspective, he might have implemented the Decorator pattern differently. Good early morning talk to get you going, but a little on the light side in terms of GoF patterns.

2.2 Knockout JS by Judah Himango. Data bind your way to dynamic HTML UIs with clean maintainable code. I think this is pretty neat, it uses a lot of what XForms could have been, seems consise, and powerfully cleans up the code. This contacts editor shows the hierarchical data case I have been looking for.

Great talk, great examples. Every question from the audience was answered in the next section.

2.3 HTML5 Canvas by Kevin Moot. Good summary and examples for each of the canvas features. Learned a bunch of tricks I did not know you could do in canvas5. Great examples at moot-point.com. Though the video examples did not run at work.

2.4 Web Development with Sass and CoffeeScript by Brian Hogan. http://www.webdevelopmentrecipes.com
Learned the term hoisting, which is how local variables are hosted to their most local scope. In function variables hoist up to their functions. You can see this by watching the debugger. Upon entry to a function, that variable is hoisted to the visibility of the function, as opposed to languages which treat scope between curlies more stringently.

2.5 Writing Closure Macros by Kurt Christensen. I think I've heard this talk before. It was fun watching the translators trying to keep up with his off-the-wall vocabulary.

I won a T-shirt which was ironic because I already had ordered one of the TCCC t-shirts from their cafepress site earlier this week (and wore it to the conference today).

TCCC11 - Day One

At first I was unsure about some of the presentations at #TCCC11, but the ones I went to today were actually highly relevant.

1. The first talk, Essential Database Performance for Developers brought up several ways to look at performance in SQL Server and Oracle before going to production. At the end, David Berry had a number of SQL queries you can use to summarize metrics queries in a live environment, information which might help with performance improvements. I'd like to see if I can find the Oracle equivalent of these examples as they seemed very helpful!

He also mentioned several free books from Redgate software:
• SQL Server Execution Plans by Grant Fritchey
• Mastering SQL Server Profiler by Brad M McGehee

Also, redgate makes data generation tools. I often wonder if StochUnit would help someone with data generation for testing purposes.

Still part of me is saddened, that where I work, we've done the work to find out where the indices are needed, but because the database DDL and DMLs are not checked into SVN for most projects, and physically part of the release we end up re-finding those issues in INT and PROD as well. I've suggested a system to keep those in check with the sourcecode but that doesn't seem to have been accepted by that group.

2. The second talk by Jon Stonecash, HTML5 Graphics: Pretty Pictures for Practical Processes was a look at providing graphics using JPG generator, an HTML5 generator, and an SVG generator. It was interesting to note the comparison of that same process to what we've been working on at work recently. It was a lot of code for the amount of output it showed, but it gave me a chance to finish a few tasks this morning like getting TextMate installed finally on my Mac. Some people showed some ignorance and seemed more ready to challenge the speaker. I'm not sure I agreed with them, there are some reasons to at least investigate the SVG technology. Becoming familiar with both the positive and negative aspects of any technology is part of understanding its benefits and limitations.

The Nerdery put on lunch, thanks Nerdery! Even though I had pizza last night, it was nice to not have to spring for every meal today and save a bit. They sound like a fun workplace. They put on a number of volunteer and seminar pieces throughout the year, unfortunately have not been to one yet. It'd be interesting to try the volunteer competition where you come up with a website in 24 hours for a non-profit. One of the UI employees said the groups get to meet with and research the group you'd be working with before the time starts.

3. The third talk I went to, Implementing Messaging Patterns in JavaScript Using the OpenAjax Hub by Kevin Hakanson, was something I was unsure if I would like. But Kevin's talk was timely look at using OpenAjax + his own $hub jquery plugin to help manage and create message events. It was timely because we are at the point in some of our applications where chaining of events is starting to become problematic, we could benefit from Idempotence, message id'ing, and parallel distribution chains. OpenAjax has some message channel based tools which his code adds behaviors onto, and adds functionality like guid ids, timestamps, etc to the message header. I really like that though he addressed the message patterns at an architectural level, he also had qunit tests to demonstrate and test the behavior for the different patterns. I also learned about the deferred object which is how jquery handles the event delay at startup.

Code
Twitter

4. Nothing really grabbed me for the next session, so I spent the time getting ruby on rails, aptana's toolkit installed. Sorry Steve nothing on line on the microsoft site really told me what Metro applications were, and being a Microsoft technology, I'd rather not slip down that dark path.

5. The last session was an interesting hybrid of 4 person peer programming to get a simple site up and running with a number of technologies, some of which I've been researching recently (Sass). To create the structure, rather than boilerplate or Initilizr the Skeleton Framework. Tonight I tried out the skeleton site on several mobile pad devices at Best Buy. Some of the Android tablets don't respond to a rotate, and I don't seem to understand just what is that browser some of them have installed, that looks like a lame google chrome?

Asked a question to the panel and asked if you wanted to start a ruby on rails project, which github would you start with, and they suggested railswizard which I said was the best answer ever.

Didn't win any prizes, but I think Aravind, a co-worker won a book.

How many US Pilots have shot down a satellite?

One, USAF Major Wilbert D. "Doug" Pearson

Nature article on human cloning

In this article in Nature, there are several points mentioned which explain as to why you have not seen real human cloning yet.

Science Fiction and Caprica

What stories represent the first Cylon war between the twelve colonies and their Cylon creations?

Here is a pretty neat map of the twelve colonies.

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)

Apple says goodbye.

"My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people." - Steve Jobs

At least once a day, this happens in Eclipse

Here's the meme I created for it.

email 被盗

Scary stuff if you keep you private email at yahoo, now it could be owned by China?

Time to get a more secure email address.

It's h-t-t-p firefox.

To get your browser HTTP protocol back (it's part of the address). Unfortunately Firefox 7 jumped with the trend of chrome in showing less and less information to the user.

here's the fix.

Sass

Finally, Sass allows you to use variables in CSS.



It was something similar to an XML structure I had written at Lawson for a Style/Theme Editor, and reexamined as a possible templating/substitution architecture in XMPP. Similarly too, is Sass's ability to adjust colors. At one point Scott McEndree had a library for doing color manipulation in javascript for Lawson as well.

I'll see if Sass fits into our current spring/content library. It might save a bunch of time on some projects.

Knockout JS

Getting strangely dizzy researching Knockout JS. It makes a lot of sense. What XForms could have been, what jQuery is missing.

Worth 20 songs today - I promise you

Happens a lot

Is that word misspelled?

History of Rev105 radio

I remember Kevin Cole DJing a lot at First Avenue in the 1990s, but I didn't realize his connection to the radio outlets as well. Here's a good writeup of Rev 105's history.

Typewriter

Did you know the QWERTY typewriter, and the typewriter itself were invented by a Milwaukee resident, Christopher Latham Sholes? Unfortunately he sold his share for only $12,000 to Remington, while his partner James Densmore insisted on royalties and made $1.5 million.

Since the o and the 0 keys were just one key might be why a lot of people say "Oh" for "zero".

It's amazing how many variants of the keyboard there are. I've never use any of them, but it would be interesting to try ones like the Maltron.

What is the most widely used character in English. The Space.

Don't be so proud

That droid you called a near-sighted scrap pile,
just delivered the Death Star plans to the rebellion.
That smuggler you called a scruffy looking nerfherder,
is marrying the Princess of Alderaan.
That protocol droid you called a mindless philosopher,
is fluent in over six million forms of communication.
That hermit you called, "just a crazy old man,"
was once a general in the Clone Wars.
That wookie you just called a walking carpet,
just received a lifetime achievement award.
That crop-dusting farmboy you call wormie,
just destroyed the Death Star with a proton torpedo.
That technological terror you've constructed,
is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Dubstep video Pumped up kicks

Dylan really likes this.... Calls it robots ate my brain... Marquese Scott Popping maybe some Locking, too.



Turns out this guy was in RemoteKontrol which I vaguely remember from SoYouThinkYouCanDance...

Remote Kontrol Reel 2011 Xcel Talent Agency from Xcel Talent Agency on Vimeo.

Use encodeURIComponent over escape

Why?

Page Navigator

Having worked on a few gallery metaphors, page navigation, here is one that combines them all... I expecially like the jump to end track button like a DVD player.

Click on the picture in the middle to get to the NYT Navigator. (This link might change or go away, not sure if it's a true PURL.)

The gallery jump at the bottom grows/shrinks as you hover, there are other navigational tools like for/rev +1/-1, also for end/rev beg. Grid view is a little awkward for a large number of pages - Mac finger scrolling not working here. Email, print, buttons.

Jackson Util Polymorphism Problem

Here's a forum post about the problem. I'll take a look at the jackson code this weekend, maybe I can contribute a fix. It seems it is just the way in which the class to descriptor relationship is looked up that is the problem.

Color Blind Visualization Tool

Need to see what your site looks through someone else's eyes... check the Color Oracle.

Antikythera Mechanism: Ancient (Physical) Computer

This is fascinating device... Never heard of this before today. From the 2nd century BC! The Antikythera Mechanism . Nature did a video of the mechanism.

Really Rosie

Still some of my favorite music as a kid kid.

Pride Seeing Your Products in Public

Last week at Wal-Mart, picking up a backup drive for < $100, a man commented on how all my boys were wearing packer shirts. I mentioned somehow in the conversation, how I got to work on the Packer's fan ring site, and he showed me he had a ring ordered from there, ordered by his wife for his birthday.

Facebook fb:friendSelector broken

I went to demo my old trusty Planet Gifts app yesterday. But now, you can't send planets.

Here is the ticket #19634, if you'd like to vote on it. Sounds like it has been broken for a few weeks, taking down multi-friend selector with it.

Doesn't work from the test page either.

SpaceCollective

Interesting design theory for future environs.

JavaScript Performance Presentation

Here's a quick javascript presentation with examples I put together for the Jostens Java[script] User Group: js-perf.

I tried it out later that evening at the Apple store, and it runs ok on an iPad 2!

CSS Lint ANT Task

I’ve been adding the JSLint ant task to several projects, it helps make sure the JS is tidy and follows some conventions.

It looks like there is a CSS Lint codebase out there, but no ANT equivalent…

This sounds like a good nice to have.

John Elliott

Went to see John Elliott at the Bookcase in Wayzata. He went to high school with my wife at Wayzata over a decade ago, as he put it during the Clinton Administration. None of these videos compare with the energy he delivers in person.

Here are some videos of his songs

Teenager in love:


National Anthem: which our kids love because they can shout out, "Superman, Spiderman!" in the middle.



Yesterday some roses: one of my favorite songs so far by John:



Feet to the fire a close second:

TED Talk on Self Assembling Machines

On TEDtv

Chephren Blake feat. Meighan Nealon - Year After

Just part of the reason DJ Doboy 26 Vocal Edition is one of the most perfect mixes ever...




Is that an EVO?

Victim of Webdings

"Of course, my favorite font is Papyrus because it makes me feel like an avatar of Amu-Ra!" - onion video

Mtn Biking in British Columbia

I couldn't seem to track down the exact track for Kranked Revolve:




biking video:






closest match:






related, interesting:

jquery.tuberiframe.js plugin

I keep getting requests for YouTube video players for which the start and end image are customizable.

I created jquery.tuberiframe-1.0.js, a hybrid tool using the YouTube api and jquery, lets you set an initial image, which the user must click to play the video, and an after image, to display when the video ends. Alternatively, you can skip either image.

Check out a demo depicting different scenarios here.

Update: jquery.tuberiframe-1.1.js has a loop feature. I added looping examples to the same demo location.

Eclipse Phase: Your mind is software

Cool video promoting Eclipse Phase.

Also speaking with the authors of the system, which uses the creative common licensing

Sting's Arch-Enemy

An American with a hobby of finding bottled messages... messages in bottles.

Ramp optical illusion

Sometime you need a change of perspective to see things right.

Leds in models

So I've been playing around with adding LEDs in models and lego kits... Ran across this guy today, who really takes LED lighting to the next level. I'm not there yet.

BTW have you had the tour of the falcon?

Israel IZ somewhere over the rainbow

Good song to relax to, simple and sweet.

Dash Berlin feat Emma Hewitt - Waiting

Best parts about trance: arpeggio synths, strings, and female vocals. Plus stormtroopers.

New Yorker story on the Osama Raid

here

Moore/Harsdorf Recall Election

There was a local election today. I don't feel really great about it either way. No matter who wins the vote, Wisconsinites have lost.

If Harsdorf wins, the Republicans will see it as a repudiation of the objections to their anti-labor stance. They will return to Madison with more pro-wealthy, pro-bank, and anti-Wisconsin rhetoric. They'll strike down police and firefighter's rights to bargain. Isn't anyone else concerned that corporations are treated as having individual rights while actual citizens are stripped of their rights? They'll axe healthcare and parks, diminishing the quality of life so that a few rich cats can keep their wealth and escape with their (Swiss) accounts.

If Moore wins, the democrats will spend their entire effort fighting Walker on unions, having spending parties that bring money into the schools, unfortunately these will be spent on administrators, benefits, and everything else except the student body and its environs.

Meanwhile, the real focus of attention in this education/spending reform should be getting more use of this infrastructure. It requires bringing USA schools in line with the most advanced countries in the world. It requires increasing the school year, focusing on fundamentals instead of burning money on technology and infrastructure resources, paying for expert teaching staff that is seen as professionals on par with doctors and lawyers, then we can drive international trade.

I don't think either of these candidates care enough about the future to look at the real issues though.

Lastly, the fact that we have this recall election shows that we don't really have enough compromise in government to achieve beneficial results. It's operating more like a free-for-all giveaway, where the elected groups try to run out with as much stuff as they can before they take a recess. That's not government for the people.

Fall of the Soviet Union - Rerelease in the USA

In our Modern Russia class, we looked at the top ten reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union. It is sad to say every year the US government is trying to re-execute these event/policies.

What concerns me is that as a nation, the government continues to progress one-by-one down the list of reasons the Soviet Union collapsed, sometimes in double-step (two wars in asian instead of one). The war in Afghanistan in point: the Soviets spent 10 years in their own Vietnam type war. It demoralized their country, weakened their military reputation, and cost $ billions of rubles. Did we learn from their Vietnam? No, not even from our own Vietnam. Government continues to response to crises instead of proactive solutions. Reform is postponed until it is too little; too late.

The two-party process of selecting candidates continues producing whackadoodle contenders, while the media (left or right) is content to delve no more than 1-5cm into any story. Even NPR/MPR, which pride themselves on delving into the story, don't execute more effort than restating the diatribe fed to them by the spinner/spokespeople. Only a few journalists, like John Stewart compare what people have said recently to their past, factchecking, and learning from history what is meant when this happens, or how this is the same path followed previously in history and here's how that ended up. Every day they are happy to report whether the stocks are up or down but without even an industry-wide level of analysis expected from any almanac.

Regarding the whackadoodle Bachmans and Pawlentys: seriously Democrats, if you can't product anyone capable of contending with Michelle Bachmann, we need a new alternate Party to the Republicans. All you have to do is demonstrate intelligence without overconfidence (the Al Gore problem), and it should be easy enough. Show that no taxes while compelling in the short term actually means more debt and devaluation of your existing and future money. Someone should be able to come forward, pull out of countries we have no business staying in, and in exchange swap those never-ending expenditures with investments in infrastructure assets.

Today there was an airplane that flew around NY with a banner complaining about the S&P downgrade. If that single prop plane landed on the mall today without a shot or missle fired at it, it would suggested that our defense system is a sham. All the money, none of it on actual defense, is spent overseas as either offense or peacekeeping. This approach was demonstrated in 1987 by Mathias Rust. I don't want to have this happen here; I wish there were actually surface-to-air batteries ready to defend our cities. I just don't believe they exist. They weren't used in Sept. 2001, and I don't think they're there now either.

The plethora of foreign wars, doesn't benefit our military might, it demeans it. We have the best trained personnel, vehicles in the world, but all it takes it trying to fight guerilla warfare with mobs to bring our status to that same level

Award-winning artist?

Award-winning doesn't cut it as an adjective. Maybe they found a category with noone else in it that year. Please never call me award-winning.

Domestic terrorist drivers tailgate. Using the mass of their probably unstoppable vehicles they want to go as fast as they can until they reach the next vehicle in their path. If you're going to speed that's one thing, but endangering others through irresponsible behavior and less-than conceptual level understanding of physics. I'd like to see the speeding ticket fines be rates proportional to the kinetic energy of the vehicle, as that is the potential for damage the driver is creating.

Modern is a poor adjective to use in a publication title. Assuming your publication will stand the test of time, it's not going to be modern pretty soon. Then you'll have readers looking at your book in a garage sale, laughing to themselves, "Yep, modern deck construction".

Passing if you're not passing in the passing lane, you're failing.

Wave Plugin (jquery.wave.js) using jQuery

First stab at a jQuerywave plugin for creating a wave effect across your images.

You need two images, the original, and a brighter version of the same. Then with a few lines of javascript code, jQuery, and this plugin, you can have your own shimmering shiny wave effect.

Updates: Version 1.1 uses a 45 degree angle. Version 1.2 allows any arbitrary angle.

Displays evidence of spoiling for rumble

One of my favorite quips from Red Dwarf...

Fallacies

A good analysis and summary of fallacies.

Stage Lighting

As stage lighting is important to film and the theatre so too is the focus of the media on events. When the media continue to focus their ellipsoidal reflector spotlights on personalities not deserving of primary attention at any time, they demean the readers and consumers of media. Caricature personae that stand out in the performance such as the Glenn Becks, the Bachmann/Pawlentys, and the Harry Reids should be dimmed and working aspects of government and political momentum should be brightened, either by increasing the ambient flood illumination on the rest of the cast, or by simply turning off the focused lamps.

Every time one of these people who lack fact checking is reported on, it is as if handing the microphone over to an interupting P. Diddy, taking away from history that could have been. There are plenty of sane, well-spoken actors who could be given their due time, but the media is not responsible enough to gather those. The media does not report on the content of meetings about the deficit, just regurgitates soundbites. Where is the article about... if you want to reach an agreement between bills in the House and the Senate, how about trying to bring a LAPTOP or a CLERK with a LAPTOP to work out the rearrangement. Even an actual pad of paper would help. None of the outlets report how the meeting was obviously just set up for continued posturing. "See, they won't budge."

Especially in need of some stage lighting apprenticeship is the public radio stations. They eagerly give just as much airtime to the whackjobs and vomit mouths, supporting. They snidely report the soundsbites as in-depth as a microfilm, then tell you how they report all the news and convey a valuable service. Nevermind in-depth comparison - oh this soundbite from personality X sounds the opposite of what this person said on this date. Or, we'll report what the spokespeople comment without going back and holding them accountable when they were clearly lying to attempt damage control.

FizzBuzz!

Saw an interesting article in thedailywtf that referred to FizzBuzz in the comments section. There is a test called FizzBuzz, based on the UK math book of math story problems.

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100.
But for multiples of three print "Fizz" instead of the
number and for the multiples of five print "Buzz". For
numbers which are multiples of both three and five print
"FizzBuzz".

Here's my javascripted solution. It took all of 4 minutes using TextWrangler and Safari, including limited HTML. HTML4 only sorry, another 10 minutes to get validated HTML5! (That should be part of the requirement!)

Yes, I realize if you were concerned about the number of rows, I'd make the output into an array and join("") on it instead of the slower string concatenation, but this has the "less than 256 bytes" or so feel to it, so I'm not going to spend time on string manipulation.

3 books

Harry Potter's crew could have finished off their dark lord in three books too if they'd only had Dwarven allies.

Bloomington is my personal gravity well

Usually I try to get far away from work on the weekend. Typically, that fails and I end up back in Bloomington for one reason or another. This weekend, Quincy's family reunion was down the road from work on France and the hotel was only two buildings over.

Robot Drawing

Yesterday's drawing was a robotic humanoid.

U. S. Federal Tax Spending

A flash app that depicts the US government's use of your tax during the year.

MN Painter: Scott Lloyd Anderson

Scott Lloyd Anderson's work in a PBS special.

I like the geometries and perspectives he finds in modern MN suburbia.

The kids like the waterslide.

MST3K - Mystery Science Theater 3000

Found a posting (109 - Project Moon Base) where my letter was read on Mystery Science theater 3000. According to their mailing list program index, I was number 12 of the fan club.

Tom: Right you are, Slappy. This one comes from a Jeff Conrad in, uh, Bloomington, Minnesota. "Greetings. I've been a long time fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Goober, friends and I watch it every week on videotape. Hey tell me, will the new shows be in color or all in black & white? Sincerely, Jeff Conrad."

At first they don't seem to respond to the question, but at the end,

Joel: All right. I guess that ends the experiment, Sirs. Uh, when are we gonna get some color movies?
(Switch to Deep 13)
Dr. Forrester: "Color"? You want color, talk to Ted Turner! (handing Dr. Erhardt a clipboard) Here, file this.
Dr. Erhardt: Consider it filed!

04/02/2012: Here's the wierd thing: I would not have said "Goober," so whoever first quoted this misquoted me. It should be "A group of friends and I (meaning John Thielges et al). Here's a link to the actual video on youtube.

Visibility plugin for jquery - jquery.vis.js

;(function ($) {

$.fn.hideVis = function () {
 return this.each(function () {
   $(this).css("visibility", "hidden");
 });
};

$.fn.showVis = function () {
 return this.each(function () {
  $(this).css("visibility", "visible");
 });
};

$.fn.vis = function (bool) {
 if (bool) {
  $(this).showVis();
 } else {
  $(this).hideVis();
 }
};

})(jQuery);

Old School Games

Started up some old school games this week. Angband (google: angband) - played on the mac or PC, not getting very far. I seem to remember a mode where you could let it roll overnight based on some constraints.

Space War - the game John Thielges and I played on a PC-AT compatible. To run, use D-Fend at 500 Hz. Interestingly, based on the Lensman series for which a script is in the works for start in 2011?

Flightmare - a three-d flight game using two perspectives to coordinate - requires multiple key blocks for the different dimensions. To run, use D-Fend at 500 Hz.

Odd this site didn't have the Ancient Art of War series.

2d Playground

Playing around with box2d. Is it a good library for use in AutoDuel? Not sure yet.

playground03.html

It requires prototype.js, not jquery.

Sometimes crashes firefox (this is not good).

Fun to watch in random mode.

Lenticels

Those lines on birch bark and the freckles on apples, are lenticels.

TheFraction - Awaken

RIP Zack Allen

Was watching a little Babylon 5 this past month, since hearing about Jeff Conaway put into a coma. Sad that most of the obits don't discuss his Babylon 5 work. Zach the character and Jeff the actor coincided on personal issues.

The Heartometer

The heartometer! (Probably should go to 11).

Adynaton vs. Hyperbole

Hyperbole: "I had a ton of homework."

Adynaton [ah-DYN-ah-ton] (impossibilia): "когда рак на горе свистнет".

Bathos: "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

Meiosis: using "the pond" for the Atlantic Ocean, "It's just a flesh wound".

Sinusoidal Jquery effects

Nice effects from weepy: jquery.path

Plural forms in i18n

When looking at plural forms, remember to take in account the different locales, not everyone has just two plural forms. Some have more, some less.

One api

GNU plural forms

We < 3 Atari and VCOs

Voltge Controlled Oscillators are what gives an analog synth its power.

Facebook Likelight

Looking back, the Facebook LikeLight is another arduino idea I've debated about doing for a while.

[Update on 05/11/2011] Unfortunately it appears that the lego store removed this design because of potential trademark issues. But don't expect them to notify your order is cancelled. I received no emails, no response to my inquries, and had to track it down myself in "My Gallery" to see the reasoning.

Lego Physical Model Indicators

This is an idea I've been playing around with for a while. Remember the stacked architecture diagram you are used to seeing on powerpoint presentations? What if you could make that diagram come alive - make a physical model that ties into the actual software to depict/describe, the flow of data, whether processes are operating or deficient?

Here is a lego prototype for these modules that could be hooked up to LEDs, an Arduino, and a network.



Server Monitor Network

The EMF FTL classifications

This page, StarForce Alpha Centauri, has an interesting examination on different types of FTL capabilities. I've been thinking about FTL theory a lot since reading this article on FTW (faster than the wind).

We: Current Layout

I made up some page numbers, but I'll wait on adding them until I'm sure we're going to use them.

Here's the current layout:

Update: Here's the final layout:

Don't just post responses willy nilly

"What is your royal wedding guest name? Start with either Lord or Lady. Your first name is one of your grandparents' names. Your surname is the name of your first pet, double-barreled with the name of the street on which you grew up."

Please do not answer these type of facebook chain messages. If you understand, many sites have alternative password "recovery" entry points using the answers to questions posed by these quips. All it takes is someone who is a friend of a friend with slightly open Facebook security settings, and now a poser or stranger has access to your alt questions, meaning they have your authentication credentials, and access to your websites.

We: Current Progress

After completing a few pages, I decided to stick to one background color for the scheme.

I think there are likely to be only a few more image pages, and the rest of the pages will feature Large Quotes, as I originally proposed for the project.

We: Distopian Worlds

Here is another dps (double-page) spread for the We book.

We: Entropy Plot

Spent most of the afternoon and this evening building a plot of the story entropy for several characters (ciphers) and the One State, using flot.

Added axis labels (04/26/2011):

And added this complementary page (04/26/2011):

We: Building inspirations

Guangdong Museum, Guangzhou, China

Biodome, Montreal

We: Audio Inspirations

0 - DVD Title look

9 - intro

1 - when he's at peace in the beginning / O-90

2 - the music produced by their music machine / maybe more 8-bit?

2.5 - more popcornesque music

3 - when he's growing more confused

4 - relating to I-330s attitude/rebelliousness

5 - D-503s obsession with I-330

6 - Traveling in an aero

7 - after the wall falls (intro reverb)

7.5 - outside the green wall

8 - the glass jar (mind wiping I-330)

9 - empty streets after the Operation

10 - closure

We: Book Drawing Sketches

Here are some more thoughts on the "We book" It's going to be a book expository, the kind that puts the source book into a variety of contexts. A historical, politico, scientific assessment, performed visually at the expense of narrative. As book, the layout of a single page is someone tied to the layout on the next page. They can complement or deviate, but too much of either concept might look forced. It will have some drawings, but somehow try to keep them looking futuristic without looking like a Captain Sky album cover.

Colors


Personae


Math


Integral site


Timeline


Glass jar


City


Authors/Related authors

We: Book Specifications

According to the ourhubbub link for scrapbookers, these are the required image sizes:

Cover: 3580px x 3025px

Pages: 3325px x 2651px

Pentacular measure selection from Kuler:

More colors:

Saffron

We Mind Map: