Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Quick and the Dead
I split one of my fingernails this evening. It started to bleed because the crack extended down into the quick. Which made me wonder: why do we say "into the quick"? A quick search turns up that the word originally meant living or alive. So it's the living part of the nail. Makes sense. And the phrase The Quick and the Dead wasn't originally applied to gunslingers. It was meant to refer to the living and the dead.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Sushi Bullies
Sushi Bullies — the Japanese equivalent of the Soup Nazi.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The eyeballing game
The eyeballing game shows you series of geometries that need to be adjusted a little bit to make them right. I got a couple of them "spot on" but it takes concentration to get below 3.0 as an average score.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Smoking Cat
Earlier this evening the kids and I were in my office playing a game. We didn't notice when Murka the cat jumped up on the desk. As she weaved between the computers on the desk, she slid under a halogen desk lamp. My son noticed smoke coming from under the lamp. Murka's tail was right up against the bulb getting singed. A second or two more and we might have had feline flambé. She was blithely unaware and seemed to enjoy the sudden attention. It took over an hour to get rid of the acrid smell of burning cat hair. Yuck.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
World of Goo
Remember Tower of Goo from Experimental Gameplay? The same folks have built World of Goo, a full-fledged game. It's currently available for Windows and Wii; eventually for Macintosh and Linux as well. You can download the demo here.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Flickering Lights
I watched Flickering Lights on DVD last night. It's a Danish film from 2000 about four small-time gangsters from Copenhagen who steal $4 million krones from their gangster boss and try to escape to Barcelona. Along the way they're forced to hide out in the countryside, in an old, wrecked building. If you like Tarantino, Coen Brothers and the like, and don't mind reading subtitles, it's worth checking out. The writing and cast are terrific.One cast member seemed very familiar (the second from the left on the DVD cover). I couldn't remember where I'd seen him before. It's Mads Mikkelsen who played the evil Le Chiffre in Casino Royale.
I borrowed the DVD from a co-worker (Thanks Henrik!). It's available on Netflix.
My only complaint about the DVD is with some of the translations in the subtitles. It's tricky to translate slang and cultural references but a few of them here took away from the film. For example, in one conversation two characters talk about theme parks and refer to Disneyland and Six Flags complaining that the latter had "too many Canucks". Huh? According to a comment on IMDB, the conversation was about two Danish parks "Tivoli" and "Bakken". And rather than complaining about Canadians (which makes little sense in the film) they were complaining about Swedes.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Doesn't Just Work
As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I bought an Airport Express to wirelessly share a printer. Setup was easy and everything seemed to work smoothly. But my wife started having problems printing. The job would get accepted and get stuck. The Airport Express was dropping off the network. Looking at the device log, it was dropping off and then trying to reconnect every 20 minutes or so. I found Volker's post from 2005 with the same symptoms as well as a fix. Problem solved. Hard to believe that in three years Apple hasn't fixed the issue or at least released a KB article on it.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Pearls Before Swine
My son enjoys reading Pearls Before Swine. I recently started reading it as well. The strip revolves around a group of generically-named animals (Rat, Pig, Zebra, etc). I especially liked this one:
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Not So Extreme
All the laptops in our household now support 802.11n but our current access point only supports 802.11g. This is plenty fast for Internet access but I wanted to see if I could improve the speed of backups to our NAS. So I bought an Apple AirPort Extreme. (Yes, this is the third Apple product I've mentioned in a row).
The AirPort Extreme supports both 2.4GHz or 5GHz so my plan was to use 802.11n over 5Ghz and plug our existing router into the AirPort and run it at 2.4Ghz to support the other WiFi devices in our house. Setup was quick and easy. When I was in the same room as the AirPort, the signal strength was excellent. But when I moved from room to room, the signal would sometimes drop precipitously. In some rooms it was substantially worse than the 802.11g access point. This wasn't looking too good.
So I tried a different approach. Use 802.11n at 2.4Ghz. Although not as speedy as 5Ghz, it's still a decent speed boost over 802.11g. Initially it seemed better but I got the same signal drop offs in some rooms. And it wasn't consistent. Sometimes it would work fine for a bit and then drop off. I made all of these changes late at night so I don't think it was cordless phone or microwave interference. And our existing 802.11g access point doesn't exhibit this type of behavior.
So back to the Apple Store it went for return. I still like the idea of going 802.11n at 5Ghz but looks like I'll have to try another product.
The AirPort Extreme supports both 2.4GHz or 5GHz so my plan was to use 802.11n over 5Ghz and plug our existing router into the AirPort and run it at 2.4Ghz to support the other WiFi devices in our house. Setup was quick and easy. When I was in the same room as the AirPort, the signal strength was excellent. But when I moved from room to room, the signal would sometimes drop precipitously. In some rooms it was substantially worse than the 802.11g access point. This wasn't looking too good.
So I tried a different approach. Use 802.11n at 2.4Ghz. Although not as speedy as 5Ghz, it's still a decent speed boost over 802.11g. Initially it seemed better but I got the same signal drop offs in some rooms. And it wasn't consistent. Sometimes it would work fine for a bit and then drop off. I made all of these changes late at night so I don't think it was cordless phone or microwave interference. And our existing 802.11g access point doesn't exhibit this type of behavior.
So back to the Apple Store it went for return. I still like the idea of going 802.11n at 5Ghz but looks like I'll have to try another product.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
One less USB cable
I have a Canon printer in my office at home. If I need to print something I plug the printer's USB cable into my laptop. But I'm not always in my office. And it's a hassle when we have multiple laptops sharing the same printer. So I bought an Apple AirPort Express.
Setup was easy and printing for both OS X and Windows works fine. The only issue I had which took a few tries to get right was setting up the printer in Windows. You need to install the latest version of Bonjour for Windows and run the Bonjour Printer Wizard. The installer insisted that Bonjour had already been installed but the Printer Wizard wasn't there. I'm not sure if Bonjour had been installed by Boot Camp or iTunes but the fix was to uninstall and then reinstall it.
Setup was easy and printing for both OS X and Windows works fine. The only issue I had which took a few tries to get right was setting up the printer in Windows. You need to install the latest version of Bonjour for Windows and run the Bonjour Printer Wizard. The installer insisted that Bonjour had already been installed but the Printer Wizard wasn't there. I'm not sure if Bonjour had been installed by Boot Camp or iTunes but the fix was to uninstall and then reinstall it.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
New Laptop
My wife's Thinkpad T43 has reached retirement age — we bought it in early 2005. She's run out of disk space for all or her photos and music. I tried to install a larger drive but Lenovo made it nearly impossible to upgrade.
What to buy as a replacement? We've had good luck with Thinkpads so I considered the new Thinkpad T500. It's pricey but a comparably configured Thinkpad T500 is about $200 cheaper than my other option, a MacBook Pro. My wife relies on several Windows-only applications but the MBP is solid running Windows too. And, if you consider the $200 to be the Apple Tax for being allowed to run OS X, it's not so bad.
We ended up going with the MBP. I installed Windows under Boot Camp and then moved all of her data and applications over. She's been using it for about a week and is happy, especially with the speed — and all of that free disk space! Her only major adjustment so far has been the Backspace/Delete key.
What to buy as a replacement? We've had good luck with Thinkpads so I considered the new Thinkpad T500. It's pricey but a comparably configured Thinkpad T500 is about $200 cheaper than my other option, a MacBook Pro. My wife relies on several Windows-only applications but the MBP is solid running Windows too. And, if you consider the $200 to be the Apple Tax for being allowed to run OS X, it's not so bad.
We ended up going with the MBP. I installed Windows under Boot Camp and then moved all of her data and applications over. She's been using it for about a week and is happy, especially with the speed — and all of that free disk space! Her only major adjustment so far has been the Backspace/Delete key.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Yearbook Yourself
Yearbook Yourself lets see what you might look like as a teenager through the last few decades. Here's me in 1952:
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Death Star over San Francisco
It's Imperial Fleet Week in San Francisco.
Friday, August 08, 2008
Donut Peaches
We have a membership in Tiny's Organic Farm which gives us a steady supply of locally-grown organic fruits and vegetables each week. This week's bag included a box of Donut Peaches.
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