Visible Proper Motion of Stars at Galactic Center

Amazing! Visible proper motion of stars at our galactic center!

CHARA Measures Size of Exoplanet

The CHARA array was used to measure the diameter of the planet's primary star HD 189733 and thus infer the diameter of the orbiting planet!

Interesting QM Interpretation

This is an interesting interpretation of quantum mechanics. Hm. My first reaction is to be old-fashioned and think that our traditional explanations are good enough, however there may be something of value here.

Shuttleworth Talks About Granny's New Camera

This is an insightful, brief post on Mark Shuttleworth's blog about hardware support on Linux.

Shuttleworth's blog: Here Be Dragons.

Who is Mark Shuttleworth?

iPhone and Beyond

Okay, I actually watched the entire MacWorld keynote about the iPhone. It's the first time I've ever watched the whole thing (that I can remember). I have to admit, it's the coolest thing I've seen in a while.

I think they are getting closer to a converged, single, personal device that does all of what you want to do. There is amazing technology built into this device. Apple has raised the bar to a new level and I think others will quickly follow (as they did the iPod) and as closely as they can without violating the 200 patents Apple mentioned.

The biggest question for me is, How well does the touch screen keyboard actually work? It looks pretty good, but I'd have to actually hold one in my hands and try it. For pointing (not typing) I personally don't mind the stylus approach. It's very precise, cleaner (not rubbing my greasy fingers on my display!), and is using a familiar tool in a familiar way. (BTW, I don't mean that my fingers are abnormally greasy, but all human fingers are. Thus the fingerprints made famous in crime fighting…).

The next question is the browser. It's fantastic to have a full-featured browser on that platform. But I wonder if the little zoom feature would become tiring and bothersome after a while. There's no question that an iPhone for on-line web work and browsing would be **great** if you had nothing else available. That's not the same as having an alternative that you happily use all the time.

Also, IMHO the iPhone is too expensive to buy, but it will bring interesting things to the market that are significantly cheaper. Look at all the MP3 players that follow the iPod and Windows Vista's GUI chasing after Apple's OS X.

Here's one fascinating project that's already in the queue: Moko. The really interesting news here is that's it's an open platform that developers can, uh, develop on. Now that will be interesting.

Comet McNaught C/2006 P1!

Comet McNaught C/2006 P1 is getting very bright! It's low in the dawn sky just before sunrise, and a little tricky to see. In spite of that, recent predictions have it as bright as Venus!

(The top picture is by P-M Heden and was published in skytonight.com. The below diagram is from January's Surprise Comet by Roger W. Sinnot, skytonight.com).

6174

Amanda sends a link to this article about the mysterious number 6174. Hah.

What Really Happened on Mars

This is a story about troubleshooting a system-level computer problem.

This is a fascinating article by Mike Jones about the Pathfinder system resets that occurred. The problem was a race condition around a mutex. The article is a quick read and interesting story. It also describes a very typical system problem and what it's like to figure it out.

The Lessons Learned section is the best part!

Goodbye Pegasus Mail

It looks like development of Pegasus is coming to an end. Pmail brought desktop-friendly email to many users as our campus evolved to desktop PCs, connected by LANs and file servers (Novell) which were then connected into a campus-wide internet.

As time went by, Pegasus (actually Mercury probably), became a source of annoyance with issues like only being able to forward email to an IP address and not a host name (and thus not being able to take advantage of our DNS round-robin balancing and DNS fail-over processes at the time).

How To Survive the First Week At Work

This interesting article popped up on my Gmail web clips.

Mozy On-line Backup

Jim told me about Mozy Friday evening. Here's an article pointed to by Tech Web. The offer on-line storage that is free up to 2-GB and then $5/month after that. Very interesting. Your files are encrypted.

Map an IP Address!

Wow, use this site to map (on Google maps) an IP address. It works pretty well. It was off by several buildings at Emory but did get the campus (for my desktop system).

Realistic Android

Here's a pretty realistic android. I also found this video.

D Programming Language

I read an article on this new programming language, D, by Walter Bright, the main developer of the original Zortech C compiler.

Falling Sand

For a lot of fun (and wasted time) try Falling Sand.

Text To Speech

Okay, this is a pretty good text to speech translator.

Here Come Plastic Chips

The Financial Times reports on plastic electronics. Quoting from the article:

By using a cheap and simple set of processing operations to build up layers of circuitry on plastic “substrates” – the material on which circuits are formed – rather than silicon wafers used in conventional microchips, the developments promised to slash the cost of making semiconductors.

The initial products from the factory will be pieces of plastic about A4 size. The basic plastic substrate will be polyethylene terephthalate, a form of plastic used to make drinks bottles.

By 2009 the Dresden plant should be producing 2.2m units of A4-size semiconductor sheets a year. They will initially be used as flexible “control circuitry” for large displays the size of a piece of paper that can hold large amounts of information – equivalent to thousands of books.

Tidal Power

I've always been fascinated with the rotation of the earth as a source of energy. There is a lot of energy stored there that we could use. Of course the environmental impact, eventually, could be quite huge. I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation one time and there was indeed an immense amount of energy to be had if you only slowed the earth enough to extend the length of a year by one second! The earth is already running that much slower than our standard time as illustrated by the leap seconds we now have to add sometimes twice a year!

The easiest way to use the earth's rotation as a source of energy is based on tides. Tidal forces extend the water surface of the earth into an oblong, extended shape which in cross-section looks like a big cam. Let something float up and down on that cam to drive a generator and you're done!

Most real-life approaches more efficiently use the in- and out-flow of water during tides. The New York Times has a video of a recent installation of such generators. Wikipedia also covers tidal generators quite well.

I'm still curious about the details of the energy transfer here. During normal tides (see the Wikipedia article) energy is transferred from the earth's rotation to the moon's orbit. The moon slowly moves to a higher, longer-period orbit and the earth slows down. So the earth is already slowing.

Thus the question is, when we steal tidal energy, where does it come from? Are we slowing down the earth more than normal, or are we just stealing some of the energy that would have been transferred to the moon. I suspect it's a combination of both.

If we are just stealing the energy that would have been transferred to the moon, then I think the environmental impact is inconsequential. Who cares if the moon's orbit doesn't get larger! If that's an important natural process, then I suspect no human has discovered what it is yet.

If we are slowing the earth down more, then that's a different matter and my opinion is that we just use caution and don't get carried away to the point that we end up with a 48-hour day. That might be a problem.

Figuring out where tidal energy comes from is an interesting problem to think about. I'll have to dedicate some cycles to it from time to time.

Where does the energy we use end up?

I suspect that most of the energy that we “use” ends up being radiated into space as electromagnetic energy of one form or other. Some of it goes into chemical changes on earth, including, unfortunately, in the atmosphere in some cases (but with questionable significance).

We increase the entropy of the universe in this way, particularly since much of that energy is thermal in nature.

However, as has been pointed out, the entropy of the universe is already nearly maximum due the cosmic microwave background. These other changes are insignificant, tiny steps closer to the max.

(The illustration above was drawn by me using Windows Paint).

Moon over Andromeda

From the Astronomy Picture of the day here's a wonderful composite of the moon and M31, the Andromeda Galaxy by Adam Block and Tim Puckett.

Most folks don't realize the immense apparent size of this galaxy, i.e., how big it is on the sky! Note how much larger it is than the moon!

Sadly, this also points out that galaxies are simply dim. Really dim! We can barely see our own and we are inside of it. The same goes for more distant galaxies.

The space scapes with bright galaxies glowing in the sky or the space craft view port simply don't exist in real life.

HDTV Resolution Explained

I was looking for a simple mapping of HDTV resolutions to screen/pixel resolutions, and found this excellent summary of HDTV resolutions at Cnet.

Here's the Wikipedia article on HDTV which has plenty of information, I think.

Then there is this nice list of LCD misconceptions at the LCD Buying Gude.

A Major Award

It's a major award! Maybe a bit late for this Christmas, but maybe next time.

Google-NASA Partnership

From CNN: Google Teams up with NASA

MOFFETT FIELD, California (AP) -- Google Inc. and NASA Ames Research Center said Monday that they have finalized an agreement to deliver more of the space agency's imagery and information through the Internet's leading search engine.

The collaboration marks another step in a partnership announced 15 months ago when Google unveiled plans to build a 1 million-square-foot campus at the NASA center, located a few miles south of the company's Mountain View headquarters.

Linux Memory Allocation

This is a very nice article on Linux memory allocation at O'Reilly.

Snowflake Magnified 36000x

This image, purportedly of a snowflake magnified up to 36,000 times takes a long time to load but is quite fascinating.

Raising Skinny Elephants is Utterly Boring!

Nice! Here are a couple of ways to reboot (as gracefully as possible) a hung Linux system. Just remember, Raising Skinny Elephants is Utterly Boring!

Patents On-Line!

Google has now put the US Patent collection on-line! When I was at Ga Tech, I used to enjoy looking up patents in their collection. One of my favorites was 3,359,678.

Music Video Amateur by Lasse Gjertsen

Here's the music video Amateur by Lasse Gjertsen made entirely by editing. He says he can't play. I think there's an interesting philosophical argument there…

Interview About Steve Wozniak

In this webzine interview with Gina Smith who co-authored Wozniaks recent book, here's an interesting excerpt.

GS: When I first started interviewing Steve, I said to him, “What should this book say?” And he’d say, “I hate reading anything about Apple. It’s all wrong. It’s all wrong!” And I’d ask what was wrong, and he’d just kind of brush his hand and say, “It’s all wrong! Everything ever written about me is wrong.” So I did a lot of research and I’d bring him stories and articles from throughout the years — “Is this wrong? Is that wrong?” And, in fact, a lot of the stuff out there that had been written about him was wrong. One common myth is that he was kicked out of the University of Colorado. He wasn’t kicked out. He’d run up so many fees from computer usage that he was afraid to tell his dad. So he chose not to go back the next semester and instead went to De Anza community college… With his 200 IQ and the perfect college board scores…

Another misconception that bothered him was the idea that he and Steve Jobs had designed the Apple I and the Apple II together. The sole designer of both those computers was Steve Wozniak. The sole designer. And that’s not to say that Steve Jobs isn’t an engineer in his own right; he may be. But he had nothing to do with the design of those two computers. He was the business guy there.

RU: And then there’s the myth that it was developed in a garage.

GS: It wasn’t done in a garage — that was HP. HP was started in a garage several decades earlier but not Apple! Steve Jobs worked in his bedroom of his parents’ house and Steve Wozniak was on the kitchen table.

RU: I guess some final tweaks were done in a garage.

GS: I think at the very end, when they have their first order of a hundred some units; they were actually just popping chips into sockets — some of that was done with Steve Jobs’ sister, and Dan Kottke, an early friend. Dan Kottke is a good example of one of the early employees who had everything to do with the success of these first computers — the Apple II, the first personal computer with color and sound.

Gmail Can POP Mail From Other Accounts

Now Gmail can POP email down from other accounts.

NASA World Wind 1.4

A video demo of NASA World Wind 1.4 on YouTube.

Here's an official link that seems to only feature version 1.3.

Servers, Hackers and Code in the Movies

This is another Slashdot pointer to an article on Servers, Hackers and Code in the Movies. It's mildly entertaining and a couple of nice lists. They certainly are not complete (e.g., the Colossus from Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) is missing) . There are no computers from Star Trek.

Frybid

An interesting article on Slashdot, RV Processes Own Fuel on Cross-Country Trip.

I have to say, the very top picture in the article does look a little like a flux capacitor…

Quoting the Slashdot quote:

“Frybrid has realized the dream of Dr. Emmet Brown's Delorean: putting garbage directly into your vehicle, and have it be turned into directly into fuel. This past fall, Frybrid installed a system into a 40' luxury RV that sucked up waste vegetable oil from the back of restaurants, removed the water and filtered it, and then burned the dry and cleaned vegetable oil as fuel. The family drove their converted RV from Seattle to Rhode Island on $47 worth of diesel fuel. Plans are underway for a smaller version of the system to fit in the bed of a pickup truck.”

Email Ideas

Here is a smattering of ideas (not originally mine!) on email approaches that avoid spam and offer other advantages.

White list only

I've used this for years now with great success. You only receive email based on a white list. Period.

Sender stores email

All that is ever emailed is a link and the email client/recipient retrieves the email from the sender at the time they read it. There's no (or not necessarily) local storage of messages and sender validation is inherent. Also you have the added benefit of being able to modify (including fully retracting) a message after sending it. Storage is also ultimately efficient, only one copy in the universe. (Of course recipients can save their own copy). Downloading attachments integrates nicely and easily with pretty much no need for a size limitation.

Security is also nearly trivial! To secure the email, make the retrieval channel SSL. You're done.

If you want to limit delivery to authorized individuals, require authentication to retrieve the message. This could be made “invisible” in the background by employing certificates and doing the authentication on the fly.

Fully closed systems

For an organization's internal email (which I propose accounts for a large percentage of work-related messages), use a closed system like a forum/BBS with no connection to the outside world. Messages are stored once, organized into topics, security is inherently (approaching) perfect. Messages can be edited and retracted after sending. There is no spam, at all, ever. This is what LearnLink would be if it was disconnected from the Internet. I've been using a forum in this way for more than a year or two and have found it works extremely well.

I like the idea of a closed system for internal email and a separate email system for external messaging, perhaps Google- or Yahoo-based.

Also note that MySpace is exactly such a system on a vast scale, combining also the above white list idea with their implementation. I've noted that my kids, and their friends and family are using Myspace for communication more than email.

Update on James Kim

Alas, he didn't survive.

http://news.com.com/2009-12-6141617.html?tag=cnetfd.ld1

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/16180700.htm

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-na-family7dec07,0,471422.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Ubuntu Groff A4 Paper Size Problem

This gets me every time! (Well, it did twice). By default, groff on Ubuntu is configured for the A4 paper size. This means that printing man pages, e.g.,

pod2man mydoc.pod | groff -man -l

prints out pages that are missing the top header line. The solution to this is to make sure the string “letter” is in the file /etc/papersize.

echo letter >/etc/papersize

It's just that simple!

Disk Stats and Utilization

Here is an excellent article by Adrian Cockroft, “What does 100% Busy mean?” regarding disk stats and utilization.

Fantastic Solar Videos

Here are fantastic videos of solar surface activity including developing prominences. If you look carefully, you can actually see how the plasma in the prominences is moving down toward the sun along magnetic field lines.

More on prominences.

http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/filaments.html

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/sun/prominences.html

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/sun/prominences.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_prominence

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040725.html

James Kim Missing

This is disturbing news that Cnet senior editor James Kim and his family are missing. I only know of him because he did the video review on the Sansa e250 MP3 player that we bought.

Super Hi-Res Mars Pictures

HiRISE, Noted on the Bad Astronomy Blog.

Swiss Army USB Knife

In case you need more USB flash memory:

http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/victorinox_swiss_memory_knife_review

Hidden XP Goodies

Cool, Sixteen hidden XP goodies.

I like this one: The XP installer music is at:

Start > Run > "C:\Windows\system32\oobe\images\title.wma" > Ok

First Gamma Ray Clock

This story of the first gamma ray clock found keeps popping up in various places, so it finally got my attention.

Quoting astronomy.com:

Astronomers using the H.E.S.S. telescopes have discovered the first ever modulated signal from space in Very High Energy Gamma Rays -- the most energetic such signal ever observed. Regular signals from space have been known since the 1960s, when the first radio pulsar (nicknamed Little Green Men-1 for its regular nature) was discovered. This is the first time a signal has been seen at such high energies -- 100,000 times higher than previously known — and is reported November 24th in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Sniffer Bees!

Here's an article about the new (bomb) sniffer bees. This is incredibly clever and fascinating but also hilarious!

Unlike sniffer dogs which require three months training, it takes 10 minutes to train the bees.

After training three or four bees are put in a shoebox-sized "sniffer box", held in position on plastic mountings. Air is sucked by a fan into the box via plastic tubes and wafts gently over the bees.

If they detect explosives in the air, the trained bees all stick out their proboscises together.

A miniature video camera in the box is trained on them and is connected to a computer programmed with movement recognition software. As soon as the movement of the proboscises is detected, an alarm sounds to alert the security operator.

To avoid false alarms from rogue results, a single bee sticking out its tongue does not set the system off.

Google Using Domain Key Signatures

I just received an email message from Google (since I signed up for Google Base yesterday) and noticed it was signed with a DomainKey-Signature header entry.

DomainKey-Status: good (test mode)
Received: from zps36.corp.google.com (zps36.corp.google.com
[172.25.146.36])
by smtp-out.google.com with ESMTP id kAT49pg2026142
for ; Tue, 28 Nov 2006 20:09:52 -0800
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; s=beta; d=google.com;
c=nofws; q=dns;
h=received:to:from:subject:x-mailer:message-id:date;
b=TP7wvOxr2uytSzFXTNxFV3qDCWXlmhYZHx189gsyc/q2VtyAE4e
NBSPLE4PgveOe37/IE/11kQXrGNexE8G6ig==

In the “extended header” it said:

Sent by: google.com
Signed by: google.com

The “test mode” designation is interesting, too.

Well, looking further at Wikipedia, Google has been using Domain Keys since 2005 and actually went live with them shortly before Yahoo (who developed the concept).

Cool, so here's show you look up the public key to verify (the above) message. The s=beta is the selector. You prepend that to the _domain subdomain, and that to the sending domain d=google.com.

nslookup
> set query=any
> beta._domainkey.google.com
...

Non-authoritative answer:
beta._domainkey.google.com      text = "g=\; k=rsa\; t=y\;
p=MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBAMs93oc95ObA7OEQEbqjIy6YvR
j1u3yVGTzQ3wkwRQTWx1fhvNQenPNFklaL+Tw9XFYUc3f8eY0hs3WUNQ+t+I0
CAwEAAQ=="

Here's a nice slide show from Eric Allman.

Install MythTV on Ubuntu Edgy Eft

Supposedly the best guide for installing MythTV onto Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft according to Digg.

In the Digg comments, people list others, too.

http://www.parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php

http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php

Thanks

These are all about Thanks. There are two interesting links here. One is the link to a Thank-you from Phil Plait on his Bad Astronomy Blog. Then he, in turn, links to this really cool video thank you by Ze Frank on his blog.

Okay, Ze Frank's video blog is funny. I just watched the 27 November entry about Scrabble. Hah!

(But caution, there is some PG-17 language and maybe more).

Python Tutorial

I am first and foremost (these days) a Perl programmer. Nonetheless, here is a nice Python tutorial pointed to via Digg.

Update on Leonid Meteors

I didn't enter an update here regarding the Leonids. I watched the sky from about 23:30 to 0:00 EST and didn't see a single meteor. Granted, I was standing and looking up (the worst mode for observing meteors) instead of lying in a lounge chair.

Actually the time period was early for meteors since the radiant had barely risen at that point, i.e., we had barely rotated around to the side of the earth that would encounter the meteoroids.

NanoSilver

This story on Slashdot about nanosilver prompted me to read more about it. I've never heard of nanosilver which apparently serves as a disinfectant, even in antibacterial socks! Fascinating.

Leonid Meteor Shower

Don't forget the Leonid meteor shower.

http://skytonight.com/observing/home/4663951.html

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/061117_leonid_guide.html

http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/

http://skytour.homestead.com/met2006.html

From space.com...

In North America, for the Maritime Provinces of Canada, New England, eastern New York and Bermuda, the Sickle of Leo (from where the Leonids appear to emanate) will be above the east-northeast horizon just as the shower is due to reach its peak. But because Leo will be at a much lower altitude compared to Europe, meteor rates correspondingly may be much lower as well. However, this very special circumstance could lead to the appearance of a few long-trailed Earth-grazing meteors, due to meteoroids that skim along a path nearly parallel to Earth's surface. Seeing even just one of these meteors tracing a long, majestic path across the sky could make a chilly night under the stars worthwhile.

Unfortunately, for the central and western United States and Canada, the Leonid outburst will likely have passed before Leo rises; at best, nothing more than the usual 10 or so Leonids per hour will likely be seen.

Keep in mind that for New England and U.S. East Coast, the peak is due locally on the previous calendar day, Saturday, Nov. 18, at 11:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (For the Canadian Maritimes and Bermuda, the corresponding time is 12:45 a.m. on Sunday, the 19th. For Newfoundland it is also on the 19th, but at 1:15 a.m.).

Sun BME and HME Interface Names

Where did the names BME and HME for the Sun interfaces come from?

Amanda says:

Actually, it *is* a Sun engineer joke. The 10 Mbps predecessor was a chip called the "Big MAC Ethernet" -- in this case, it was a mere pun, since MAC stands for Media Access Control, i.e. the Ethernet data-link layer. When they designed the 10/100Mbps chip later on, they decided to turn the pun into a full-out joke, and they called it the "Happy Meal Ethernet."

On a Solaris machine, the interfaces are named by the driver type, so instead of "eth0" you'll see something like "hme0" instead.

http://kerneltrap.org/node/542/2085

China Responds

More about the submarine incident has surfaced. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu says, “China has always had a defensive national defense policy.”

Nice Chinese Surprise

Here's a nice little surprise from China (from the Washington Times).

A Chinese submarine stalked a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected, The Washington Times has learned.

The surprise encounter highlights China's continuing efforts to prepare for a future conflict with the U.S., despite Pentagon efforts to try to boost relations with Beijing's communist-ruled military.

Machine Gun Robot from Korea

Also on Slashdot this morning, a machine-gun bearing robot in Korea. And you thought Samsung just made things like cell phones.

As far as I can tell from the video, they've developed a robot that will shoot Big Foot.

Dolphins Sing Batman

From Slashdot, scientists teach dolphins to sing the Batman song…

Video4Linux2 Series at LWN

This is an interesting series of articles at Linux Weekly Newsletter on Video4Linux2. This master page links to subsequent articles as they are published.

Your editor has recently had the opportunity to write a Linux driver for a camera device - the camera which will be packaged with the One Laptop Per Child system, in particular. This driver works with the internal kernel API designed for such purposes: the Video4Linux2 API. In the process of writing this code, your editor made the shocking discovery that, in fact, this API is not particularly well documented - though the user-space side is, instead, quite well documented indeed. In an attempt to remedy the situation somewhat, LWN will, over the coming months, publish a series of articles describing how to write drivers for the V4L2 interface.

V4L2 has a long history - the first gleam came into Bill Dirks's eye back around August of 1998. Development proceeded for years, and the V4L2 API was finally merged into the mainline in November, 2002, when 2.5.46 was released. To this day, however, quite a few Linux drivers do not support the newer API; the conversion process is an ongoing task. Meanwhile, the V4L2 API continues to evolve, with some major changes being made in 2.6.18. Applications which work with V4L2 remain relatively scarce.

V4L2 is designed to support a wide variety of devices, only some of which are truly "video" in nature:

• The video capture interface grabs video data from a tuner or camera device. For many, video capture will be the primary application for V4L2. Since your editor's experience is strongest in this area, this series will tend to emphasize the capture API, but there is more to V4L2 than that.

• The video output interface allows applications to drive peripherals which can provide video images - perhaps in the form of a television signal - outside of the computer.

• A variant of the capture interface can be found in the video overlay interface, whose job is to facilitate the direct display of video data from a capture device. Video data moves directly from the capture device to the display, without passing through the system's CPU.

• The VBI interfaces provide access to data transmitted during the video blanking interval. There are two of them, the "raw" and "sliced" interfaces, which differ in the amount of processing of the VBI data performed in hardware.

• The radio interface provides access to audio streams from AM and FM tuner devices.

Buying a DSLR

Here's a slashdot article on buying a digital single lens reflex camera. Here are my comments on their main points. Granted, they suggest that a DSLR is not for everyone.

My experience is based on my Olympus D-40. (Not a DSLR).

Also note that I write this as a former SLR user for more than 25 years. I loved my Olympus OM-1 and miss it in many ways. (I still have it, I just don' t use it any more). Still, I think the digital medium has advantages that don't require going back to the old SLR format. I

Creative Control

My camera has all the controls mentioned, aperture, shutter speed, in camera sharpening, white balance, flash sync. I'm not sure it has a contrast setting. These all require using menus so I bet a DSLR may make some of these easier, but I can do them.

Superior Sensors

I'm not sure that I buy that a larger sensor (CCD?) is necessarily better. It will inherently have more pixels, but I definitely have enough pixels already with my 3.8 Mpx. My smaller sensor means my lens and camera can be smaller. Larger might be better but I'm not convinced.

Less Noise

I'm not convinced of this one either. I would need to see an objective spec on what the noise actually is. I have not experienced noise as a problem except in very low light situations. My camera does have a low noise setting.

Accessories

I concede this point. I really wish my camera at least had a way to attach and/orat least synchronize a flash. (I know you can sync with a slave of some type). I don't really feel the need to have lenses outside my zoom range (which is roughly equivalent to 35mm camera 35mm–100mm). A longer zoom range on a camera would be nice.

No shutter lag

This is huge and my greatest complaint about my camera. Newer, non DSLR cameras solve this problem though. A lot of it, I believe, has to do with the time it takes to unload the CCD and write to the memory device. So I don't think this is an advantage exclusive to DSLRs, but just to newer cameras.

Instant Startup

Maybe. This isn't that important to me. My camera starts up in three our four seconds. That's probably equivalent to taking a D/SLR out of a bag and removing the lens cap. (My camera fits in my pocket).

Higher Build Quality

Maybe. My camera does have a lot of plastic. It probably wouldn't withstand some abuse a more professional camera would. Still, it's pretty sturdy.

Viewfinder

My viewfinder zooms to match the lens. I grant that it's not perfect. The LCD provides a perfect match and I think the LCD is very useful as a viewfinder (though I typically don't use it unless I need to). An D/SLR viewfinder is a beautiful thing, but mine works pretty well.

Ergonomics

You need to learn my technique for holding a small digital camera. Thumbs up with your left hand. This creates a very stable platform with your left hand to support the camera. It also keeps your fingers from blocking the lens. Control the shutter, etc., with your right hand.

Price

No way. DSLRs are cheaper that DSLRs used to be, but always more expensive than the other digital cameras.

Diet Coke and Mentos: The Domino Effect

Diet Coke and Mentos: The Domino Effect from the Official Google Blog.

500 l of Diet Coke and 1500+ Mentos.

Wii Inventory Mapper

This is kind of cool. Find where the Wiis are.

Steampunk Jetpack

Steampunk Jetpack

Enough said.

Another Angle on the Web as Desktop

No sooner do I publish my own descant on the web OS, desktop, etc., than Digg points to an article that expounds a similar view from a different angle.

The Next Big Thing

I remembered! I think. The other day I thought I had an epiphany of what the next big thing would be. Maybe it's not that big but I think this may have been it:

With LEDs becoming absurdly bright, with high-resolution display technology becoming absurdly small and cheap, and with more powerful devices in our pockets, I expect that in the near future, the device in our pocket will become quite powerful video projectors.

Imagine that you take out your pocket device (assuming you ever actually put it away), check your email and voice mail, make a call, and then it's time for the meeting to start. You tap on a couple of spots on it's interface, set it down on the table and a large, bright display is projected on the wall. It's corrected for the geometry of the projection and the wall so there's no distortion. You don't have to worry about all the tilting, propping, focusing, and repeatedly pressing a keystone button.

You advance your slides, control your movie, or perhaps live video feed from another conference room with either someone else's hand-held device, or a remote of some kind that's IR or BlueTooth. Or with voice commands.

Parakey Web OS

Hmm. Parakey Web OS. Interesting at Slashdot. Reading the Slashdot comments on this one is interesting because Blake Ross, the young guy the article is about, is fully engaged in the discussion there. (Or at least someone that says they are him). Fascinating!

BTW, I think this is on the right track. From using Google apps (the word processor and spreadsheets) I can see this. Your world is on the web and is accessible from anywhere. Folks that say “Bah!” to the idea of a Web OS are missing the point. Yes, it's true the Web OS is not about interfaces to hardware and interrupt handlers. But this is about what's on the screen in front of your face. What's on the screen moves from being housed in the box on or under your desk to the cloud that's the web.

That's initially a fearful thought, but consider that the box on your desk is already part of that cloud, so it's not that much of a shift as you might think. With easy encryption of data, it can be protected and just as protected as it is (and should be) on your desktop computer.

With Google and Microsoft rapidly converging on this idea of a web-based OS, the idea of network computing and the network as the system is about to happen with a vengance that exceeds the wildest dreams of Sun Microsystems.

With Google apps I've already experienced the one-click sharing of stuff and it's very cool, along with the capability of collaboration.

Whither the desktop computer? I think the desktop computer may be soon on it's way out. Maybe not the screen and keyboard. The screens will probably get bigger (wider and taller) and flatter (thinner). I guess they'll ultimately just be “paint on the wall.” But the thing the screen and keyboard talks to will become portable. We'll carry them in our pockets and they'll connect to the screen and keyboard when we need them to. They'll handle phone calls, news articles, Slashdot, blogging, picture taking, music and movies, etc. They'll also project our images (movies, whatever) on any reasonable white wall or surface we can find—large screen anytime!

Based on this article, if they pull off Parakey, it will be open-source Parakey vs. cool Google vs. the dying Microsoft (trying to hang on as the world changes underneath it) in this so-called Web OS world. Microsoft will be too old and unable to change quickly enough to keep up. Microsoft will hang on to it's entrenched corporate user base for a while as Google and Parakey invade from the bottom up the way Linux and Firefox have.

In that future, I imagine that (sadly) Google will become the giant, evil corporate entity that we love and hate, (“No one ever lost their job by choosing Google”) , and someone, perhaps Parakey, will be the cool, new open source solution that competes.

GConf configuration system

GConf configuration system

This is a configuration system for user config data. It's probably worth keeping in mind. Apparently there's a daemon running on one of my Sarge boxes, at /usr/lib/gconf2/gconfd-2.

Google for My Domains 2

I signed up for Google Apps for My Domains a second time (for another domain). This time the process was different I think. Instead of waiting for (presumably) human review, it asked me to validate I owned the domain by adding a CNAME.

That was the second option and was easiest for me to do. The first option was to put a particular web page on the domain web site.

I've pointed the domain's MX records there and I'm now waiting for them to update in DNS.

I had immediate access to the domain manager panels at Google and was able to set up the login page, accounts, etc.

Upgrading Ubuntu to Edgy Eft

Approach with caution. Some folks are reporting problems upgrading from previous versions of Ubuntu, e.g., Dapper Drake, to Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft. Others are reporting no problems.

Since Dapper Drake is Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (long term support), I will probably stay with it for a while on systems that I rely on.

I may experiment with Edgy Eft for fresh installs and systems that aren't critical.

• Slashdot
• Ubuntu Forum

EdgyReleaseNotes - Ubuntu Wiki

Ubunu 6.10 Edgy Eft is released!

EdgyReleaseNotes - Ubuntu Wiki

Fedoraproject.org

Right now, the home of Fedora is fedoraproject.org, which is mainly a wiki.

Fedora Max Spevack Interview

I'm reading an interview on Slashdot with the project leader of Fedora, Max Spevack. Here are some interesting excerpts.

Red Hat retains legal liability for the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is not a separate legal entity or organization. The Fedora Project receives a tremendous amount of resources (people, money, infrastructure, etc.) from Red Hat.

I'm really glad this question was asked, because it gives me a chance to try to bust the NUMBER ONE MYTH about Fedora -- that Fedora is "just a beta for RHEL" or that "Fedora only exists to make Red Hat money" or "Red Hat doesn't care about Fedora, it's just a dumping ground for half-tested code". I hear all of those things from time to time, and *none* of them are true.

Let's back up for a moment -- the Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core split took place in 2003. And while I wasn't at Red Hat during that time, I think it's fair to state that there were some unfortunate choices made internally about how Fedora was positioned, and because those statements were made with a Red Hat voice, it helped to create a very strong perception that Red Hat abandoned the community, and that Fedora wasn't "good" for anything, or was a rejected part of Red Hat. Many mistakes were made by Red Hat with regard to the "birth" of the Fedora Project -- there is absolutely no debating that.

I think there were some people within Red Hat who were afraid that the "admission" that Fedora was production-quality, or that Fedora was anything more than beta-quality, would cause difficulty for the people trying to sell RHEL. Three years later, and that perception is still very strong in certain places -- without fail there are a few comments about that in every Slashdot story that mentions Fedora.

And that's fine. Red Hat had a part in creating that perception, and so Red Hat will have to work particularly hard to undo it. We have been, and we continue to do so.

The real story of Fedora, of course, is entirely opposite from the "beta code only, not production worthy" stance.

Our mission statement is clear, and is one that I think any open-source developer would appreciate.

Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free and Open Source software.

That's it. We strive to produce a quality distribution of free software that is cutting-edge, pushes the envelope of new open source technology, and is also robust enough that it can be relied on for server or desktop use. One of the terms that I really like, and that I think we're doing better and better of making a reality is that of Fedora as an "open development lab". As a user, if your priorities are cutting-edge technology (without the nicks and cuts of a blade) and freedom, Fedora is a great disto to use.

The second half of the story, as it relates to Red Hat's desire to make a profit, is equally simple in my mind. Fedora is upstream of RHEL. Fedora is also upstream of various other derivative distributions.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DerivedDistributions

So when someone says "Fedora is beta for RHEL" they are stating only a very small part of what Fedora is. Fedora is the best of what works today. RHEL is the best of what will work for the next seven years. And the users can decide what is best for their needs.

Saying that Fedora is the beta for RHEL, and that Fedora is *only* a beta for RHEL, is to take a purposefully narrow view on the truth. Fedora's upstream relationship to RHEL is simply one aspect of the Fedora Project, which stands on its own as a distribution.

I feel very strongly about this particular question, and I will state my opinion bluntly:

Anyone (Red Hat or non-Red Hat) who tells you that Fedora isn't suitable for a production server is wrong. If someone tells you that Fedora is "just a beta for RHEL", they too are wrong.

Either the person is insufficiently informed about what Fedora is (and it's our job within Fedora to do that), or the person is purposefully misrepresenting Fedora and neglecting to tell the whole story, in which case it's our job within Fedora to call them out.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives

Quote of the Day

I saw this in someone's signature on Slashdot:

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.

Earthquake Shakes Telescopes

Astronomy magazine reports that the earthquakes in Hawaii shook the telescopes on Mauna Kea. I didn't even think of that!

Fixing a RealOne Player Database

My RealOne player database is corrupt. Here is one site I found with instructions on blowing it away and rebuilding it.

Error Message:

RealOne has detected a corruption in the RealOne database and needs to restart.

Translation:

The RealOne player maintains its own database regarding the songs on your PC. This database may, in some instances, become corrupt and require some repair.

Solution:

According to Real, you can normally click the Fix It button to solve this problem. If, however, you receive this error message regularly, you may want to create a new database from scratch. To create a new database, close RealOne and open My Computer and navigate to the proper folder below:

Windows XP: C:\Documents And Settings\username\ApplicationData\Real\RealOne Player.
Windows NT: C:\Winnt\Profiles\username\Application Data\Real\RealOne Player
Windows 98/ME: C:\Program Files\Real\RealOne Player.

Replace username with your Windows username. You should see a folder labeled RealPlayerDB or DB. Rename this file RealPlayerDB1. Start RealOne and select Scan Disk For Media from the file menu to repopulate a new database.

To salvage your playlists, copy Playlist.cdx, Playlist.dbf, Playlist.fpt, Playtrax.cdx, and Playtrax.dbf from the RealOneDB1 folder to the newly created database folder.

For more information, see answer 3179 in the customer support FAQ area on real.com.

Storytelling

This article in Slashdot points to an interview with Chris Crawford about his new computer game/computer story telling development environment.

Chris now has a company (Storytron), a business model and a business plan, a creative team, and three key pieces of software in varying stages of development. There is also, of course, a web site (www.storytron.com) where anyone interested in interactive storytelling can join the forum, read the tutorials, and download the current version of the Storyworld Authoring Tool.

As I neared the end of this article, it started looking like it could be more than a way to write new computer games. The business about errors not crashing the program but being handled in an interesting way, and the statistical approach to testing that's built in both caught my eye. This looks interesting on the surface. Similar things have probably been done elsewhere, but this may have some potential.

OpenID

LWN has a nice article on OpenID.

Here's the main OpenID site.

Technology Epiphany!

Sometime in the past 24 hours (maybe last night or yesterday some time) I had an epiphany about one of the next big things in technology and maybe computers. Of course I can't remember what it was now. Maybe it will come back to me…

World On-line Web

Wow! Since I'm overusing that word in this blog (I just realized) it also occurred to me that it would have been nicer had the web been called the World On-line Web. Then URL's would all have looked like wow.google.com which is easier to read, write and say!

Animating Facial Expression

Wow! Mike sends along this interesting story about capturing facial expressions in computer animation.

Royal Society Journals from 1665 Online

Wow!! The Royal Society Journals, dating from 1665, are online and free though November 2006!

The Royal Society Digital Archive is easily the most comprehensive archive in science and contains some of the most significant scientific papers ever published. The development of the digital archive means that the Society's online collection now contains every paper ever published in the Royal Society's journals - from the very first peer-reviewed paper in Philosophical Transactions - to the most recent interdisciplinary article in Interface.

Seminal research papers include accounts of Michael Faraday's groundbreaking series of electrical experiments, Isaac Newton's invention of the reflecting telescope and the first research paper published by Stephen Hawking.

The Archive provides a record of some key scientific discoveries from the last 340 years including: Halley's description of 'his comet' in 1705; details of the double Helix of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1954; and Edmond Stone's breakthrough in 1763 that willow bark cured fevers, leading to the discovery of salicylic acid and later the development of asprin.

It also contains papers documenting the discovery of new planets, the first descriptions of organisms through a microscope, and the first account of photography. Early papers contain fascinating descriptions of how Captain James Cook preserved the health of his crew aboard the HMS Endeavour and the astonishment of 18th century Society at the performance of an eight year-old Mozart.

Lunch Box Linux Cluster

A lunch box Linux cluster.

Linerider

I can't remember when I've enjoyed something as much as this.

http://joplan.com/digg/linerider_hacked.html

Nintendo In Your Browser

Fascinating. You can play Nintendo games in your browser at http://vnes.thatsanderskid.com/.

Two important hints.

• Click “English Language Games” to get the menu of games.
• After selecting a game, double-click the screen to make the keys work.
  

Great Programmers Answer

Great programmers answer a young programmers questions. He basically emailed a set of questions to some fo the most famous programmers of our time and collected their answers. It's an interesting read.

Hm, I don't do surveys' much but I thought I'd answer these myself.

- How did you learn programming? Were any schools of any use? Or maybe you didn’t even bother with ending any schools :) ?

I first learned to program by reading a brochure on an HP-25 calculator which had a program for something, maybe parametrically plotting a circle. Later, as a college student I owned an HP-25 and later HP-25C, calculators and learned to program them. I also took FORTRAN and a number of other programming classes in undergraduate school.

- What do you think is the most important skill every programmer should posses?

I think it's the ability to figure out an algorithm for solving a problem, then converting that algorithm into a program. Over time, one builds up a collection of learned algorithms which can be applied over and over.

I also think being able to break a problem into manageable chunks is important.

- Do you think mathematics and/or physics are an important skill for a programmer? Why?

I personally think both are since almost all of my education is in physics with the accompanying math. I use them both on a regular basis in my work. Solving systems problems is very often a matter of collecting and analyzing data. Knowing how to manipulate data, and plot it, and how to do things like integrate over particular variables, etc., are important in getting to a picture of what's going on.

- What do you think will be the next big thing in computer programming? X-oriented programming, y language, quantum computers, what?

I think computers may change in a very fundamental way, in the way the personal computer somewhat changed our world. I'm not sure what the next thing will be, but I suspect it will have to do with being small, portable and ubiquitous. Cell phones, MP3 players, PDAs and UMPCs all seem to be sort of moving toward something. I think what they are moving toward may be the next big thing.

In actual programming itself, I'm not sure. OO programming was a major shift in how to think about things for me. Something along that line would be big but I'm not sure what it would be. Some new paradigm.

- If you had three months to learn one relativly new technology, which one would You choose?

I might learn more about the world of Java and the endless variety of tools that surround it.

- What do you think makes some programmers 10 or 100 times more productive than others?

I'm not sure about this, really. Probably things like having a good set of patterns in their head that they can draw on, familiarity with a number of tools, knowing their environment and tools well—being skillful at using them. Having good collections (libraries) of reusable code!

Once you have all of these things in place, you can assemble new programs by just putting the pieces together and you can do it reliably and quickly.

- What are your favourite tools (operating system, programming/scripting language, text editor, version control system, shell, database engine, other tools you can’t live without) and why do you like them more than others?

• OS: UNIX, Linux, currently Ubuntu
• Programming lang: Perl
• Scripting lang: Perl
• Text editor: GNU Emacs
• Shell: Bash
• dB: MySQL

Ubuntu gets the desktop right and it's built on Linux which is a form of UNIX. I've never enjoyed a programming language as much as object-oriented Perl. GNU Emacs is the most wonderful editor.

- What is your favourite book related to computer programming?

The book that probably had the greatest impact on me was Niklaus Wirth's original book on Pascal, User Manual and Report. I fell in love with Pascal reading that book, and with structured programming in general. Years later, Turbo Pascal on an early PC was a wonderful programming environment.

Another book that had a great effect on me and my career was Kernighan and Ritchie's C book. I actually read it twice before ever writing a C program, because I didn't have access to a UNIX system or C compiler.

- What is Your favourite book NOT related to computer programming?

There are many. I always liked 2001: A Space Odyssey.

- What are your favourite music bands/performers/compositors?

I like all kinds of music ranging from classical to jazz to progressive and popular rock and pop music. My favorite band of all time is Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I also like Pink Floyd and Yes, the great progressive rock bands of the 70s. In the classical genre, my favorite is Baroque music, e.g., J.S. Bach as composer. Also Aaron Copeland. Many, many others.

Free Technical Books Online

I found the below Java Intro book via a web site that has Free technical books online!!

http://www.freetechbooks.com/

Introduction to Computers, Programming and Java

Here's a free intro to programming and Java online:

http://math.hws.edu/javanotes/

What I read was pretty well done. This is written as an introduction for an undergraduate class for non CS majors (I believe). I have some doubts about starting right into object-oriented programing and about using Java as a first language. However, I'm sure that Java is a better choice than C or C++!

Emergency in Apex, NC

Okay, there was a very serious fire and cloud containing chlorine in Apex, NC forcing evacuations earlier this morning. However, is it just me or is there something terrribly wrong going on here…

“Authorities had to move their command post three times to get downwind of the explosions and gas plume.”

Holy Hand Grenade

Dano's newsletter quotes are always entertaining. From Monty Python and the Holy Grail...

Arthur: [holding the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch] How does it, um-- how does it work?

Launcelot: I know not, my liege.

Arthur: Consult the Book of Armaments!

Brother Maynard: Armaments, chapter two, verses nine to twenty-one.

Cleric: And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy.'

And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and large chu--

Brother Maynard: Skip a bit, Brother.

Cleric: And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once at the number three, being the third number be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.'

Brother Maynard: Amen.

Knights: Amen.

Arthur: Right! One!... Two!... Five!

Galahad: Three, sir!

Arthur: Three!

History of Apple, NeXT and OS X

I'm almost surprised at how many folks have never heard of NeXT and how many (particularly Mac fans) are oblivious to the exsistance of NeXTSTEP roots in OS X. To us old-timers, logging into a modern Mac is just like being right there back in 1991 on a NeXT machine.

Here's a nicely written, brief history of the evolution of Apple, NeXT, and OS X and how they all tie together. One minor warning: This is really a commercial for a book. Since I was a witness (as a user) to all of this, it's good to see it explained reasonably well. This is just an overview, not a deep exploration of history.

Google Word Processor

I found the Google word processor. It's called Writely and is at http://www.writely.com/. (Actually it's another product purchased by Google).

A Wireless Hacking Computer

Wow!

A small security firm has made a portable computer that is capable of scanning 300 networks simultaneously. Dubbed the "Janus Project", the computer also has a unique "Instant Off" switch that renders the captured data inaccessible.

3-D Wiggle Pictures

After seeing a cool 3-D picture of a dinosaur made with a “wiggle effect”, and talking to Mike about it, I tried it with my cell phone and The Gimp on my office cube. Well, everthing takes practice I guess.

Lost Windows Admin Password?

If you lose the Windows admin password, here's one way to fix it (there are others) by making this bootable disk.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

I think this works with XP (but I admit I haven't tried it).

Autumnal Equinox

The autumnal equinox this year will be Saturday 23 Sep at 0:03 EDT.

History of Java

Hearing Gosling speak last night at Atlantic Station Regal Cinema inspired me to go back and read some of the history of how Java came to be. I think I've read much of this before, but parts of the story are still fascinating.

• Java Technology: The Early Years at Sun
• A Brief History of the Green Project by James Gosling
• The Java Saga by David Bank, Wired. (Long but filled with engaging details).

Here are some interesting excerpts from the last one on the birth of the Green project…

Thus, McNealy was more than ready to listen when a well-regarded 25-year-old programmer with only three years at the company told him he was quitting. Patrick Naughton played on McNealy's ice hockey team. Over beers, Naughton told McNealy that he was quitting to join NeXT Computer Inc., where, he said, “they're doing it right.” McNealy paused for a second then shrewdly asked Naughton a favor. “Before you go, write up what you think Sun is doing wrong. Don't just lay out the problem. Give me a solution. Tell me what you would do if you were God.”

Also this one on the development of their hand held prototype…

The team wanted a working box, small enough to hold, with batteries included. To build one, the members trotted out what they call “hammer technology”; as Naughton describes it, this involved finding “something that has a real cool ‘mumble’ (a neat piece of hardware). Then you hit it with a hammer, take the mumble off, and use it. We got a consumer-grade Sharp minitelevision, hit it with a hammer, and got an active-matrix color LCD. We put a resistive touch screen on the front, making sure there'd be no moving parts on the system, no buttons, no power switches, nothing,” Naughton explains. The team then wanted to add stereo speakers inside, but couldn't find any to fit the case. “We went to Fry's and bought a dozen Game Boys, played like mad for about three hours, then broke them open—that's where the speakers came from.”

Gosling on Solaris as Blunder

I found this to be an interesting excerpt from an interview of James Gosling by Eweek, in answer to the question “What would you say has been Sun's biggest blunder in terms of software?”.

As for blunders, boy, one of the ones that has always gotten under my skin is the whole BSD [Berkeley Software Distribution] versus [UNIX] System V Release 4 merge that we did. That marked the transition from SunOS to Solaris. That set our whole OS [operating system] story back like two or three years.

That was a really tough one to do. There were a variety of business reasons why we wanted to do it, but it was really hard for me to believe that the two or three years that it cost us were worthwhile.

But it's the kind of thing that at the time just felt really dumb. Now that we have a bunch of new perspective on that transition, it's worked out reasonably well. But also it sort of worked out to be somewhat pointless because the BSD side of the universe has survived pretty well, and the whole System V universe has pretty much died. And we were trying to make peace between those competing camps.

At some level what we didn't know was one of those sides was going to die, and it was pretty hard to predict which side was going to die. So we tried to do this other grand, unique thing. And we mostly succeeded at that. But in retrospect technologically it was somewhat pointless, and we would probably have been ahead of where we are now. But interestingly we're still pretty far ahead. We lost a bunch of ground, but we gained a lot of ground.

CAPES

I wasn't sure what a CAPE was, but I could tell from the units it was energy per unit mass of air. Here's a definition from typing “define:cape” into Google.

Convective available potential energy (CAPE) is the amount of energy a parcel of air would have if lifted a certain distance vertically through the atmosphere. CAPE is measured in joules per kilogram of air (J/kg). Any value greater than 0J/kg indicates instability, and the possibility of thunderstorms.

From today's weather forecast discussion:

INSTABILITY LEAVES SOMETHING TO BE DESIRED THOUGH...THE FRONT MAY MOVE THROUGH BEFORE CAPES EVEN MAKE IT TO 1000 J/KG. BEST AREA WOULD BE IN OUR SOUTHERN ZONES IN THE AFTERNOON...WE WILL SEE HOW THE MODELS RESOLVE THIS OVER THE NEXT FEW RUNS.

Analyzing 20k Passwords

This was an interesting article called Analyzing 20,000 MySpace Passwords where the author takes passwords from a site that collected them by phishing MySpace users. The author then analyzed the passwords and email hosts.

An interesting side effect of this was seeing what email service people used which resulted in the above plot.

Astronauts Lose Another Bolt

Hmmm.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060913/D8K3V9A00.html

Zoho Word Processor

In a recent review (which, alas, I can't find the reference to, but I read it via Digg) of AJAX office applications, Google's Gmail, Notebook and Spreadsheets received the highest marks.

However, the best of breed word processor was Zoho Writer. Try it out, it's amazingly capable! The main thing I noticed so far, is that it seems to be geared toward producing HTML more than printed pages. Maybe I haven't tried it enough.

The Steves

Jobs and Wozniak in 1976. This is from Silver Mac.

Quote for the Day

From today's AWAD:

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

—Andrew Tannenbaum,
computer science professor (1944– )