Uncategorized – Page 9 – A Jaunty Little Blog

July 29, 2010

Well That’s Just Dandy

Friends,

If I understand this article in the New Scientist (and that’s not assured by any means), Nikodem Poplawski of Indiana University has suggested that not only could every black hole contain a universe, but that our very own universe might reside in a black hole. and since our universe contains black holes, those black holes would also contain universes, etc. ad absurdum

This explains some weirdness that happens with neutrinos, says Nik (can I call you Nik?), including a “preferred direction”—a spin imparted on particles, if you will—caused by entering the black hole to begin with. Kind of a curveball, if I’m reading it correctly.

The really messed up part of this is that if it’s true, the event not only put a topspin on space but also on time. Could this really be why the seconds hand on the clocks at the DMV move more slowly than they do while you’re dangling your feet in a creek on a warm summer’s day? Is the Minnesota Fats of the universe banking the dreary moments of your days off the left bumper of time to sink the joyous moments down into the right corner pocket? Could this analogy be even more tortured? (not really. -ed) What would Nik think?

Can I call you Nik?

– bob

July 23, 2010

The 25th Anniversary of Amiga

Friends,

On this day in 1985, the Commodore Amiga 1000 was first introduced to the public (although some say it was actually on the 24th, who are we to pick nits?). As personal computers go, it represented simultaneously a stunning a achievement with its multitasking operating system and custom chips while also being pretty low rent with its whopping 64 kilobytes of RAM.

I had a long and mostly happy time with my Amiga 1200, incompatibilities and slow development from Commodore and later the subsequent flaky owners of the brand aside. I even convinced my friend to purchase an Amiga 2000 for some R&D work many moons ago. With the custom chips Denise, Agnes and Paula serving up sweet for the time video, seeming unlimited memory, and eight bit audio; there was nothing these machines couldn’t do.

Except connect to cheap PC hard drives, or this world wide web thing. Or send decent output to a laser printer.

Thankfully, there are still weirdos out there selling parts and software for the old girl. There are even folks willing to, for nostalgia’s sake, invest a little time to open up the case to peek inside.

I still have my old 1200 stored in a place of prominence in a milk crate in the garage. It’s a great idea, of course, because you never know when the hackers will bring down your internets and your shiny multi-core ordenadors. Maybe we’ll fire up the Amigas and our 14.4k modems to get it all put back together again. And we’ll call our new service Delphi…

– bob

July 14, 2010

A Quick Question In Which I Ask About Emergency Communications

Friends,

There’s a nifty article at physorg.com about turning existing mobile phones into their own network during emergencies when the local infrastructure has gone down. Apparently, it can be as simple as turning on the WiFi radios in smartphones and allowing them to find each other to set up an ad hoc network automatically. These guys would definitely be interested in something like that, but it remains to be seen if these guys would.

Would you be up for installing a bit of software on your phone (even if you had to pay for it) to enable it to be a node in an emergency communications network? How much would you be willing to pay? A buck? Five?

– bob

July 9, 2010

What Will You Do When The Ducks Come?

Friends,

While in San Francisco, we thought it’d be fun to Ride The Ducks™.

This may have been a foolhardy mistake, had we been in Philadelphia. First, I’m profoundly sad that there were holiday makers like us who were lost on what was supposed to be a fun outing. Second, who knew it was a chain? Third, I’m now afraid of amphibious vehicles. I know this isn’t a common fear and there’s clearly no Latin equivalent but it’ll surely be quickly coined. I won’t suggest ridetheducksaphobia, but it’s as good as any.

Yikes.

– bob

July 7, 2010

Photo Blort! – A Week And A Half

Friends,

I’ve been away from this thing for a little while, but busy. Busy annoying the entire state—from north to south. There’s photographic evidence…

Went to San Francisco the weekend before last and you’ll be pleased to hear that some of the streets are still steep. They haven’t leveled the place out since you’ve last been there, so I’m sure that’s a disappointment, but we managed to get a room at this fancypants place…

It’s one of those joints that has a restaurant on the top floor that has a pretty decent view. Let’s say that the hotel was called Mark-something-something. What would you call the place on top? Anybody?

Some residents of San Francisco like to lay about, of course. You’ve certainly heard of the problems with immigrants there who do nothing but live off the largess of the state. It’s a sanctuary city, after all…

Then, of course, we happened upon Bay Area dorks. It’s a little scary to see, especially if they get too close. Wouldn’t want that stuff to rub off on you…

After the dorks, I was hoping that we could find a way to get rid of them. Nothing much more diabolical than a jellyfish sting, don’t you think?

…or maybe your random sardine swarm…

…or since the locals are summoning my little puppy dog, maybe a nice dog bite!

On the third of July, my little town held a little parade to celebrate the day after the third of July. [rant mode engaged] The parade was organized by people who thought that a commemoration of America’s independence would be inconvenient to church goers on Sunday. That, or they may not know how to work a calendar. There are adult education classes for that. [/end rant]

Another thing that happened on the third was a barbecue at my Mom’s friend’s husband’s house. Mom’s friend’s son brought his pet opossum to the barbecue. Naturally. Not weird at all. Stop looking at me like that.

No, really. Perfectly normal. Nothing to see here. Move along people.

Your pal,

-bob

June 23, 2010

Tech Blort: In The Future, Things Will Occur Tomorrow!

Friends,

It’s time to throw a bunch of random bits together and call it a legitimate post. I know you’re excited about this, so let’s not delay one more second…

Stuntbook! – A couple of years ago, my dear friend was told by the geniuses at the Apple Store Genius Bar that the hard drive in her Powerbook was toast. Beyond repair. Nothing they could do but try to salvage as much data off of the thing as possible. “Horrors!” she thought, and wondered what to do. The geniuses suggested that the best course of action would be to buy a new, faster Macbook. So she did.
Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. She offered the dead computer to me. “If you can fix it, it’s yours.” I issued two commands (guess what they were for ten bonus points and a chance at the lightning round!) and restored the existing hard drive in about an hour. Didn’t really matter though, since I’d already purchased a great big new hard drive. Installation took an hour or so, migrating the everything from the poor little iBook took half the night, sharing a year of photographs with the big machine took half a day. This brings us much closer to podcastville.

Entourage stinks – Let’s say that you were going to use Microsoft Entourage 2008 to read your mail on an Exchange server. And let’s also assume that had to synchronize somewhere around 8,000 messages over a T1 line. How long should that take? A half hour? Maybe one whole hour? Try twenty hours. Cripes.

Too bright! – Some people say that staring at a bright screen late at night disrupts your sleep rhythms and causes other weird health problems, like vampirism and unnatural attraction to exposed lightbulbs. F.Lux is a little utility for Mac, Windows and Linux to automatically dim and change the color temperature of your display during evening hours. I’ve installed it, but I haven’t had it running long enough to see if it works. If you have, please drop a note in the comments.

Google Maps for Android now includes transit times – Why do I care? I’m going on a little vacation this weekend and have opted to not rent a car. This very act makes me kinda nervous (because, you know, no car), but I’m going to try to rely on public transportation. Maybe Google can help me get around. Maybe it’s all still in beta. Sigh.

Back in a couple days,

– bob

June 21, 2010

Somebody Got A Campaign Contribution…

Friends,

California State Senator Curren Price has put forward a bill to allow the DMV to study the emerging technology of digital electronic license plates. The technology being developed by a company in the Bay Area (without an actual working product or website that I could find—see: flags, red) called Smart Plate, would appear as a normal plate while the vehicle is in motion, but display ads while at a stop for over four seconds. That, or display Amber Alerts and other information that the DMV thinks you need to see.

To suggest that Senator Price is a brain-dead jackinape for even considering this idea dishonors those currently in a vegetative state. Can anyone seriously contend that an ad revenue stream can compensate for the loss of life caused by distracted drivers and fellow travelers driven to distraction in the first place? That the vehicle tracking mechanisms required to make this scheme work wouldn’t infringe on a driver’s privacy? That they couldn’t easily be hacked to display someone else’s number…

Hey, maybe they’re onto something.

– bob

June 16, 2010

An Amateur Audiologist’s Lament

Friends,

Now that you’ve been enjoying the World Cup for about a week, I presume that you’ve been caught up in all of the Vuvuzela hysteria. Are the plastic trumpets too annoying? Should they be banned? Are they simply part of African culture?

Thankfully, German geeks have stepped up to help. Via , a German “hacker” (*cough*) has isolated the frequencies occupied by the Vuvuzela on television broadcasts and has devised a scheme to clamp down on those frequencies in real time. While this gives one a quieter game, I’m not sure I’d want it. My ears had been stuffed up for a couple weeks, finally clearing last evening and this morning I’ve realized that this world is a very noisy place.

I’ll give the Vuvuzelas another chance during today’s South Africa vs. Uruguay game. If it doesn’t work out though, I might be inclined to hang some ugly audio equipment on the teevee in the breakroom.

– bob

June 9, 2010

Happy Birthday, Deniglefritz!

File photo: The birthday girl enjoying a brisk afternoon.

Friends,

Today is my sister’s birthday and to celebrate, I will share with you a new feature we’ve been working on up here in our Secret Alpine Laboratory. We call it Song to Text© and it’s sure to revolutionize the internet. All I have to do is sing a few lyrics of a song and they show up here as text. For instance…

Happy birthday to you,
happy birthday to you…
Happy birthday, dear Denise!
Happy birthday to you!

Pretty amazing, don’t you think?

– bob

June 8, 2010

A Jaunty Little Election Guide**

Friends,

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again. The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing their sweet song, and candidates will finally end their ad buys. Yes, it’s California Statewide Direct Primary Election Day! As a service to you, the voter who hasn’t voted yet, I offer analysis of the propositions from The Best Political Team on this Blog™. Like to hear it? Well here it goes…

Prop 13 – Limits on Property Tax Assessment. Siesmic Retrofitting of Existing Buildings: First off, no, this isn’t that Prop 13. This one fixes a loophole in the tax code that currently allows property value reassessment if you do something crazy like enhance the structure of your building so it doesn’t fall down in an earthquake. My question is, which tax assessors were doing this in the first place? (see: tar, feathers) We’re suggesting you vote for this.
Prop 14 – Increases Right to Participate In Primary Elections: In what seems like a good idea on first blush, Proposition 14 was essentially a sop to Abel Maldonado to secure his vote on last year’s budget. The legislature really don’t like it because they claim it diminishes the role of traditional party structures in the state. I’m not sure that’s not an idea worth pursuing, but I’m also not sure that the legislature hasn’t poisoned this thing before placing it on the ballot. Arnold is for it, all of the parties are against it. We’re guardedly suggesting a vote in favor.
Prop 15 – California Fair Elections Act: If you were looking for a reason to throw out the initiative process, this proposition might be a leading exhibit in your case. It’s narrowly focused on a problem nobody knew we had, it’s artfully worded to draw a yes vote even though that might not be a good idea, and it plays on anti-politician sentiment. If nothing else, we think it’s too cynical to be worthy of your consideration.
Prop 16 – Imposes New Two-thirds Voter Approval Requirement for Local Public Electricity Providers: This is also known as the Pacific Gas & Electric Self-Preservation Act. PG&E is interested in making it harder for municipalities to start their own public electric companies and who can blame them? Well, everybody. Their ads for this make happy noises about consumer choice and reigning in government spending. What we all know is that two-thirds approval is an awfully high bar to set. They want this too badly, outspending the opposition by over 400-to-1. Because of the insidiousness of their motives, and that this is going to amend the California Constitution, we’re strongly urging a no vote.
Prop 17 – Allows Auto Insurance Companies to Base Their Prices in Part On a Driver’s History of Insurance Coverage: Mercury Insurance would like for you to overturn existing law so that they can charge higher rates to first-time policy holders or those with lapsed coverage. Pretty neat, huh? We don’t think so either.

Well, that’s it for the guide. We’d like for you to go out and vote today. I mean, how can you pass on sticking one of these jokers with the worst job in the country:

Accepted Prop. 34 Spending Limits	Candidate Name	Party
*	Richard William Aguirre	Democratic
	S. Deacon Alexander	Green
*	Stewart A. Alexander	Peace & Freedom
*	Carlos Alvarez	Peace & Freedom
	Mohammad Arif	Peace & Freedom
	Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown	Democratic
*	Bill Chambers	Republican
*	Lowell Darling	Democratic
*	Vibert Greene	Democratic
*	Douglas R. Hughes	Republican
*	Ken J. Miller	Republican
*	Lawrence “Larry” Naritelli	Republican
*	Robert C. Newman II	Republican
*	Chelene Nightingale	American Independent
*	Dale F. Ogden	Libertarian
*	Charles “Chuck” Pineda, Jr.	Democratic
	Steve Poizner	Republican
*	Markham Robinson	American Independent
	Peter Schurman	Democratic
*	Joe Symmon	Democratic
	David Tully-Smith	Republican
*	Laura Wells	Green
	Meg Whitman	Republican

Your pal,

– bob

** WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE: It looks like we’re batting 1.000 this cycle with all of the propositions we supported going on to victory and those we didn’t, going down to defeat. Thanks for doing exactly what we called for, California! Now, about that million dollar check you were going to send our way…

*** WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE II: According to the Secretary of State, only 16.5% of registered voters in Riverside County made the effort yesterday. To say that’s a pathetic turnout is a little like saying BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an “oopsie,” or that King Kong was a monkey who was irritated by aircraft. Dear 83.5% of Riverside County voters who opted out yesterday, you stink.

June 7, 2010

Your Humble Car Service

Friends,

My brother Stinko is flying in this morning to Ontario and I’ve signed on to pick him up. Tussling with airport traffic in Ontario seems like a more pleasant proposition than taking in the 110° promised for the Festival of Dirt today. Don’t you think?

– bob

June 2, 2010

Battle For The Sexiest Car In The World

Friends,

I may have mentioned a couple days ago that I thought the 1956 Volvo Sport was the Sexiest Car in the World. Clearly some have taken notice, as not two days later, my Miniature Racecar™ decided to stop running while I was down in the land that everyone but festivals and dirt has forgotten. Were the little car’s feelings hurt and do little cars even have feelings? This is surely becoming a sibling rivalry amongst the cast off children of the Ford Motor Corporation.

Will even more mechanical drama present itself if I dare mention the death of Mazda and Volvo’s long lost club-footed aunt Mercury today? Isn’t this just too much to take?

May 27, 2010

The Sexiest Car In The World

Friends,

I used to think that the Volvo P1800 was the prettiest car ever built, and when you look at this it’s hard to argue… However, when the Swedes wanted to build their own Corvette, they came to the left coast of America in the mid-1950s and tapped Glasspar to fab up some prototypes. What you see at the top is the product of this weird two-year experiment. It’s gorgeous, it’s terrible, it sounded to the president of Volvo at the time that it was falling apart. It was called the Volvo Sport or the Volvo P 1900 depending on who you ask (on which continent). They made 68 of them (the chassis numbers go up to 67, but they made two number 20s because they’re stark raving loonies) between 1956 and 1957.

I’d like to have one, please. Thank you.

– bob

P.S. And to think, all this started from a poster of Volvo wagons on Jalopnik. The internets are one big rat hole, aren’t they?

May 23, 2010

Snow!

Friends,

Today is the 23rd of May and it’s been snowing here in my delightful Alpine village all day. It snows, it sticks, it melts, it snows some more, repeat. It’s chilly, of course, but it’s absolutely lovely.

The Highway Patrol is requiring chains or snow tires from Pine Cove to Lake Fulmor this afternoon, which seems like an alarmist reaction, but I guess it weeds out the kids on racing slicks? Hard to know.

– bob

May 21, 2010

From The Alternative Fuels Desk

Because Oscar Mayer has a way with b-o-l-o-g-n-a.

Friends,

I don’t know what’s going on with the last 1,000 meters of my mountain commute, but after the skaters had cleared out I thought that was it. Not so, dear readers. This morning, I got stuck behind a large truck whose exhaust fumes reeked of bologna. Or, rather, baloney.

This only raises one important question: has the Pacific Slope Tree Company stumbled upon a way to convert deli meat of questionable provenance into fuel for their vehicles? Why are they keeping it such a secret?

Okay, that’s two questions.

– bob