Fringe

David Jones (from Fringe) sounds just like David Attenborough.  That is all.  (Yes, it is a little creepy.)

Veeam One Free Edition

Veeam One Free Edition is awesome.  Or at least the installer is awesome.  I keeps telling me I have to reboot to complete the install, which I do.  I've done this 5 times.  It's great.  I keep having to reboot and then the installer runs and tells me I have to reboot again.  I wonder what else it does.  I will never know.  Too bad.

VMTurbo Community Edition on the other hand installed as an OVF.  But, apparently it wants to talk to a vCenter server, and not an ESXi host.  Argh!

Windows 8

Installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview by following the VM setup guidlines at http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2006859.  Complete snooze, everything just worked, no issues (once I had ESXi at the latest level).

Turned on Remote Desktop via http://blogs.technet.com/b/digital_musketeer/archive/2011/09/14/how-to-enable-remote-desktop-on-the-windows-8-ctp.aspx.  Run CMD.exe and SystemPropertiesRemote.exe to turn on.

Tech Gripe

Grrr.  Stupid Sony DCR-HC30.  I had 3 tapes left to convert and now it's decided it can't do DV Out, only DV In.  DOH! DOH! DOH!!

Patching ESXi

Now that I have a shiny new VM host, decided to try some stuff out.

Windows 8 consumer preview.  Started the install and got a dreaded "Hal_Initialization_Failed".  After googling around and getting nonsense (seriously, it only works as a VM on a windows 8 host?!), found a VMware post (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2006859) saying to upgrade to the latest level of ESXi.  But I just downloaded it last week!  Evidently they don't rebuild the installer each time so upgrades are in order.  Upgrading is easier said than done.

If you've paid for vSphere, there's a nice management interface for this.  With plain old ESXi hosts, you have to do things the old fashioned way.  I guess that makes sense and they only want the cool tools in their paid product.  It's a big jarring when the trending of software (I'm looking at you Firefox, Chrome, Thunderbird) is to have the app be self aware of new versions and have it update itself.

Here's a post explaining how to do ESXi updates - http://communities.vmware.com/people/vmroyale/blog/2011/09/15/updating-esxi-5--single-use-esxcli-how-to

• Download VMware vSphere Command-Line interface (CLI).  It's free.
• Install, and hey, you get ActivePerl.  I already have a perl, but whatever.
• Next, go to http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal and download the latest patch (hint, it's first in the list).
• Upload it, via vSphere Client, to your favorite datastore.
• Set your ESXi host to be in maintenance mode (the VMware KB on upgrading tells you how to query the patch to determine if it requires maintenance mode).
• Use esxcli to see existing system patch levels:  "esxcli --server=[your ESXi host] --username=root software vib list
• Use esxcli to install the updates: "esxcli --server=[your ESXi host] --username=root software vib update --depot=/vmfs/volumes/[datastore]/[path]/update-from-esxi5.0-5.0_update01.zip"    (your patch file may be newer)
• Wait 5 minutes until it's done then reboot the host.

Done, worked nicely.  Since the vSphere API is all open source, it should be straightforward to put together software that issues these commands for you to allow you to upgrade from a GUI.  Another project for another day.

 So I continued the Windows 8 install.  No more "Hal_initialization_Failed" error and the install progresses.  Unfortunately I get an error later.  After saying "Preparing" for a little while I get "The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error.  Windows installation cannot proceed.  To install Windows, click OK to restart the computer, and then restart the installation".  DOH!  Next post on installing Windows 8.

ESXi

Putting together an ESXi box out of some spare parts.

ASROCK Extreme3 Gen3 Motherboard
Core i7 2600 (supports VT-d, newer CPUs 2600K and 2700K do not)

Onboard VGA and nic supported by ESXi 5 right out of the box!

Future Shock

Worried about our declining resources, and the sorry state of the world?  Then you're really going to need to see this TED talk.

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_diamandis_abundance_is_our_future.html

WARM - War Against Recorded Music

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture/2012/02/musicians-wage-war-against-evil-robots

VM on the cheap

Playing around with VMware on some old hardware.

The box, an old P4 collecting dust:

• Dell Dimension 5400
• P4 2.26GHz
• 1.5GB RAM
• 20GB Disk

10 years old?  My how time flies.  Funny how clock speeds haven't gotten that much faster although density/cores have increased, more work possible per cycle.

It's a 32-bit processor so I'm limited to ESXi 3.5.  Last level to support 32-bit.

VMware

https://www.vmware.com/go/getesxi

Register, download the .iso, burn to CD, etc.  (Note to self, throw away freecycle those 128MB and 512MB flash drives and just buy a few 4GB ones).

Boot the installer.  First up, it doesn't see my hard drive.  Probably because 20GB is too large and it's refusing to believe it's actually a real disk.  Or maybe it just doesn't like IDE.  Great post here - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_install_to_IDE_drive/ESXi_install_to_IDE_drive.php.  Got to the install console, edited /usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core/TargetFilter.py, continued installing.  Installed just fine.

Next up, rebooted, ESXi came up but complained about "Failed to load lvmdriver" and the networking was set to 0.0.0.0.  Going into the networking settings on the console gave the option of doing a reset of the driver, but no options to set things.  Turns out my white box network card isn't supported out of the box.  The card uses a Realtek 8169 chip.  To find this out, on the ESXi host console, I did alt-F1 to get the console, typed in "unsupported" (nothing echoes, just type it in) and then you get a login prompt, which lets you do things like lspci to see the devices.

Open source to the rescue, the good guys at http://vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/customize_oem_tgz.php have drivers.  I rebooted the ESXi host with Knoppix, mounted the system partition, then downloaded the mymods-0.1.gz from vm-help.com and saved as 'oem.tgz'.  Rebooted back in to ESXi, reset the network interface, and magic, DHCP started working, and I'm on the net.

I went to the ESXi host via http, logged in, and downloaded the VMware Infrastructure client.  Technically ancient management software, but looks and behaves surprisingly similar to the vSphere/vCenter stuff I'm using at work.

Storage

OK, pretty good, but what about augmenting that 20GB disk space?  I tried iSCSI.  I've set up a Linux iSCSI target before, but I was just lazy and didn't feel like wrestling with my old linux box.  So, I googled around and after discovering that Windows Server 2008 does iSCSI out of the box, but not Windows 7 (WTF?!), settled for the free www.starwindsoftware.com option.

Registered (what, no public e-mail, only corporate?  Hello, 1998 calling.) and downloaded the free version. It installed a bunch of drivers and services and other PC slowing crap that I will probably regret later, but I also have an iSCSI target.  Started the console, activated the free license, and created a test 10GB "device" as an image file and exported it as an iSCSI target.

Back over on ESXi, under the configuration tab, I enabled the iSCSI storage adapter, and defined a new datastore using exported LUN from the iSCSI target.  Schweet, was pretty simple.

VMs

Next up, create a couple of VMs.  I decided to create one on the iSCSI partition, one on the local disk.

First error, on powering on, I get "Admission Check failed for Memory Resource".  Turns out on 1..2 GB systems, the ESXi Hypervisor RAM reservation is too high.  Good page at http://ittechnikt3.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/vmware-esxi-admission-check-failed-for-memory-resource/ on how to change the VIM System Resource Pool advanced setting so that the reservation is no longer 1024MB but 192MB.  Did that and the VM powered on OK.  Installed Ubuntu.

Network


ttcp, from a windows7 box to the VM over gigE I was able to get at most 10MB/sec burst, but sustained things dropped off to about 2MB/sec.  Rebooting the ESXi host to Knoppix and running TTCP, I get about 48MB/sec burst, sustained 43MB/sec.  Unfortunately I can't run ttcp directly on the ESXi host, so it's not apparent if the lack of perf is due to the network driver in ESXi, or virtual server inefficiencies.  Since the guest VM CPU spikes when I do the test, I suspect it's probably the latter, namely that the hardware lacks instructions/support for passing through the network traffic directly and instead has to go through the hypervisor stack.  Old P4.


IO


I installed iozone on both boxes and monitored with iostat.  The local disk VM was about to write about 30MB/s, whereas the iSCSI system wrote about 48MB/s.  The local disk is Ultra DMA ATA 100 (so 100MB/s max bus rated) but the drive is XXXXXX which can only do about XXX MB/s (probably something like 33MB/sec).  The iSCSI system is gigE connected, SATA 6Gb WDC1002FAEX which will do about 126MB/s maximum.  Coincidentally, iSCSI on gigE can do 125MB/s maximum.

Ran another test, with "zcav" just reading.  Local disk got at most 46MB/s iSCSI about 2MB/s.  Yack.  The iozone test was much better (random I/O).  Maybe sequential reads like this have nasty overhead with iSCSI?

Bonnie++ had to say:

Local Disk:  Read about 37MB/sec block input
iSCSI Disk: Read about 20MB/sec block input

Note during the iSCSI disk test, I saw the network use up to about 25 MB/sec.

Time Calculator

Handy Time Calculator if you need to add and subtract hours, minutes, seconds.

Time Calculator

BodyPump

BodyPump, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Just wanted to point out actual photographic proof that I was indeed featured on the poster of the recent BodyPump release.

TurboTax Marketing Fail

TurboTax Guides You Like a GPS

Recalculating... Recalculating...  Recalculating...   Whenever possible, make a legal U turn.

Was the Marketing department that hard pressed to find something good to say?  How about some of these better alternatives?

• TurboTax brews your taxes like an awesome single cup instant coffee maker!
• TurboTax speeds up your tax return like a pair of high performance running sneakers!
• TurboTax saves you money like a really super coupon!
• TurboTax is accurate like a NASA Scientist!

The dangers of wind power

http://greenliving.nationalgeographic.com/positive-negative-wind-energy-2715.html

Killer Blades

Wind turbines blades batter birds, killing 20,000 to 37,000 a year in the U.S., according to a 2007 National Academy of Sciences study, "Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects." In contrast, at least 90 million birds die annually by flying into buildings, more than 130 million die in collisions with power lines, and millions more are killed by pesticides and domestic cats, according to the study. (See References 5)

National Academy of Sciences: Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects

FIOS Speed Test

FIOS awesomeness!

Frustration

Honestly, A.C. Moore should be ashamed of themselves for selling junk for kids with instructions like this.  And then poor Dads have to try to interpret it without the benefit of any education in these matters.  I seriously thought about standing outside the store with a sign warning others of our plight.

That "diagram" is just completely useless.

zero history

Just finished "zero history" by William Gibson.

The book left me with:

Ekranoplan

Vegas Cube

Secret Brand

Reality Distortion

From the WSJ (1/17/2011):

Helped by the fact it only faced competition from the iPhone on the AT&T network, Android accounted for 34% of North American smartphone sales last year, compared with Apple's 23%, Strategy Analytics estimates.

In the rest of the world, where Nokia is dominant and Apple is available more widely, Android's 16% market share was only slightly bigger than Apple's 14%.

Fruitcake

Fruitcake, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Being apparently the only person who actually likes fruitcake, and being in posession of a bunch of near expired bananas and some chopped up fruit bits, I decided to make some banana bread fruitcake.

Turned out quite well. Was of about the same consistency of regular fruitcake. The only issue (minor) was that the bits of fruit got a little dried out and hard. I'd made some banana bread with some Maraschino cherries and they had stayed soft. (There were cherries in the fruit bit mix.)

All in all, not bad. I think I liked the Maraschino cherry version a bit better.

set-buffer-file-coding-system

Thanks very much to this guy: http://mike.kruckenberg.com/archives/2004/08/replace_m_in_em.html for how to get rid of the pesky ^M and put unix newlines at the end of MS-DOS and MAC encoded files, while in emacs.

ESC-X set-buffer-file-coding-system RET unix

Works like a charm. Thanks very much indeed.

Captain Crunch

Captain Crunch, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

As I sat enjoying my 4th or 5th pomegranite martini (or perhaps it was 7th or 8th, dunno, lost count after 10), it crossed my mind, why do drink recipes say garnish with an olive or an onion or some such thing? And why not, say, a piece of Captain Crunch cereal? Why not indeed.

Perhaps this question could be answered with Science? Science indeed! Science will set us free!

So, behold. An experiment. On the right, a piece of Captain Crunch suspended in a glass of water. On the left, a control, a similar piece located within plain old fashioned air. Note that the glasses are the same. These are the rigors of sciencing. (Note to reader, ignore that child in the picture; somebody who is normally camera shy just couldn't stay away from the scientific process!)

After 25 minutes, a quick taste test showed that the Captain Crunch suspended in water was indeed still a little bit crunchy. Soggy yes, but still possessing crunch. The control piece remained crunchy.

And so you have it. I submit unmistakeable proof that Captain Crunch could indeed be used as a garnish. So, as you settle back with your Vodka Giblet or whatever, and as you compose your next bartending tome, keep in mind that Captain Crunch has been proven to be a viable garnish for a fruity beverage, worthy as a companion to a piece of fruit on a plastic sword or perhaps a fancy little umbrella.

Dunkelweizen

Dunkelweizen, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Dunkelweizen is Bavarian for, "When you open this sucker up, it's going to foam up like it's Mt. Vesuvius and that foam is going to get all over the kitchen counter."

In other news, the beer tastes quite good. Good enought that I'm willing to put up with the foam and will open it in the kitchen sink to avoid serious messes.

DANG IT!

OK, so I've been holding Verizon stock for a little while.

Today Apple announces the iPhone will be available on Verizon. So then Verizon stock drops. WHAT????!!!! ARGH!

Safety first guys!

You know, they really should be wearing helmets.

Mac Mail vs Thunderbird

OK, so I upgraded to Snow Leopard. And that included an update to Mac Mail. Dunno, I can't see much different. What is different though is that this requires extensions to be updated. No big deal, except that my favorite extension, MailActOn, at the level of Snow Leopard, is now no longer free and is $24.95. I'm not against anybody making any money, and MailActOn is a really good extension. However, my use for MailActOn was to define keyboard shortcuts so I could file incoming messages into 4 folders. Hardly worth $24.95 for something that should be possible in Mac Mail to start with! Gargh!

I've been using Thunderbird on windows for a while and have been happy. I've been using keyconfig() to define keys to file my messages after I've read them. So, time to try this on the Mac instead of using Mac Mail.

First up, Add-ons. I found:

• keyconfig
• Lightning
• Provider for Google Calendar

Keyconfig lets me configure keystrokes for filing my mail:

I define things like:
MsgMoveMessage(GetMsgFolderFromUri('imap://account@server.bu.edu/saved-messages'));
and then assign to a key. Let's me run through my inbox quickly and file messages to various folders. (Note that the Uri account@server *MUST* match the name in the Thunderbird profile. I'm an admin for some mail servers and they have at least 3 or 4 names that all work and end up at the same server. If I don't have the exact name that I used when setting up the account originally then it won't match the thunderbird profile and it will be ignored. To see the profile, look at http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/Profiles. (You don't know how long it took me to figure that one out!))

The GUI on the Mac needs a bit of tweaking. For example, deleted messages don't look different visually - they just have a little gray circle with a line through next to them. Much better would be if the line was gray or had a line through it or something like that. Here's an article on how to change the GUI - http://eriwen.com/css/tweaking-thunderbirds-chrome/

Basically, create a folder "chrome" in your profiles folder and then create a file called userChrome.css with the following content:

/* set default namespace to XUL */
@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");

/* Change color of deleted messages */
treechildren::-moz-tree-cell(imapdeleted) {
background-color: #999999 !important;
}
treechildren:-moz-tree-cell-text(imapdeleted) {
color: #FFFFFF !important;
text-decoration: line-through !important;
}
treechildren::-moz-tree-cell(imapdeleted,selected) {
background-color: #333333 !important;
}
treechildren::-moz-tree-cell(imapdeleted,current) {
background-color: #666666 !important;
}
treechildren:-moz-tree-cell-text(imapdeleted,selected) {
color: #DDDDFF !important;
}
treechildren:-moz-tree-cell-text(imapdeleted,current) {
color: #DDDDFF !important;
}
treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text(imapdeleted, offline) {
background-color: #DDDDDD !important;
text-decoration: line-through !important;
}

So what am I missing?

• Mac Mail has Quick Look which Thunderbird does not have. Evidently somebody is working on getting that working for Thunderbird - http://grbmozilla.wordpress.com/2010/06/05/gsoc2010-proposal-add-quicklook-support-in-thunderbird/
• Mac Mail has good integration with iCal. Thunderbird integrates with google calendar (which I have integrated with iCal). But, I miss being able to click on dates in messages and create iCal events from them. And have the event in iCal tie back to the original message.
  

So what does Thunderbird do that Mac Mail can't?

• Awesome extensibility.
• "Filter these messages" is awesome. Can filter on various combinations of sender, recipient, subject. Can only do one of those for the search box for Mac Mail.
  
• Way faster. Mac Mail sometimes can take ages to trawl through mailboxes. Thunderbird is really zippy.

What do they have in common that's a bit different?

• Mac Mail's Smart Mailboxes is Thunderbird's "File->New->Saved Search..."

So far, I've been happy with the swap.

Stubbs BBQ

Stubbs BBQ, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

This BBQ sauce I haven't tried yet. I've used some dry rub spices by this guy. The awesome thing about it all is the quote "LADIES and GENTLEMEN, I'M a COOK". The guy sounds really BADASS! I can imagine him walking into some restaurant, the room goes quiet, and he stands up and proclaims "I'M A COOK, DANG IT!" I'd buy this guy's BBQ sauce any day of the week.

I've always thought the idea of getting a boat and sailing around would be a lot of fun.

And then I listened to this story...


http://castroller.com/podcasts/TheMothPodcast/1534043-Deborah%20Scaling%20Kiley%20Lost%20at%20Sea

Not fun, not fun at all.

Genius

Genius, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Why yes, I am a genius, thank you for asking.

Note to haters, the "Genius Opponent" was NOT Mr. Potato Head.

Not reading

I've read Perdido Street Station and enjoyed it, so I picked up "The City & The City". Gave up after about 100 pages. Not really SF, the plot was very slow, and things were mostly dialogue. Not really what I was looking for. Next up, non fiction, "Life Ascending - The Ton Great Inventions of Evolution".

Makers

Just finished reading Makers - http://craphound.com/makers/

Great book, tons of fun. Brings back the feel of wandering old Florida indoor flea markets inside some converted Kmart or Walmart or such.

Also made me want to buy a 3d printer.

Windows 7 Pro

Made the swap from the RC to Windows 7 Pro on the Asus 1005HA netbook.

Install was OK, although couldn't get the ISO onto a USB to do the install that way. Worked fine for the RC (used unetbootin) but wouldn't boot for the Windows 7 Pro.

So, used the download and upgrade install. Upgraded the RC just fine.

The ASUS utility stuff (hotkeys and Super Hybrid Engine), a pain. I needed to upgrade the BIOS to install the hotkey stuff, but the BIOS update utility needed ACPI which ASUS stopped providing as of Windows 7 (evidently there's something more advanced?)

Googled around and found some instructions here. The basic idea is to install the ACPI from the XP download area (in XP compatibility mode service pack 2) and then do the BIOS upgrade and then remove the ACPI. Then everything else will slide into place. Instructions worked like a charm.

Next up is to get Jolicloud back on since the nice W7 installer blew away the grub MBR. Naughty.

The Magicians

Just read "The Magicians" - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670020559 by Lev Grossman (http://levgrossman.com/).

This was what Harry Potter should have been. The book feels like a blatant rip-off of Harry Potter and Narnia, yet because it's so obviously what those books really should have been, it feels fresh, it's readable, and it's fun.

Highly recommended.

Google Maps ads.

OK, so everybody uses google maps to figure out where to go.

How long before businesses realize they could put huge honking letters and banners on their roof so they would show up on the maps?

They could provide confirmation like yes indeed this is the "Hilton Hotel". Or a supermarket could use it as a way to show people that it has the "lowest prices around".

Why that new fangled ...!

http://http//www.salon.com/books/int/2009/09/19/better_pencil/

Historically, when the new communication device comes out, the reaction tends to be divided. Some people think it's the best thing since sliced bread; other people fear it as the end of civilization as we know it. And most people take a wait and see attitude. And if it does something that they're interested in, they pick up on it, if it doesn't, they don't buy into it.

I start with Plato's critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They're not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down -- the ultimate irony.

We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won't have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there's no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant -- it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of "this is going to revolutionize everything" versus "this is going to destroy everything."

So let's keep that all in mind, stop whining about the latest and greatest whatever, and get down to buisness instead.

Luggage

luggage, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Luke you imbecile! Why did you bring so much crap! Now we are going to have to spend hours trying to get this to fit in the suitcase when we could be spending valuable time trying to figure out how to shuffle trash into a trash can that is obscured by rectangles and squares!

Menu

Menu, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Menu errors. Who doesn't get tired of them?

Cookies for less than a penny. Har har har har.

And what is this Cannoli guy trying to sell me?

Conspiracy theory #1

What's up with Pirates being trendy with the kids these days? Obviously it was brought on by the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. But, think about it for a minute. Who is marketing this? Hollywood. The movie industry. They are glamorizing pirates in a big way. Now, who is Hollywood's biggest problem? Yep, people who pirate their movies. Hollywood brings about lawsuits and demands large sums of money for downloading a movie that you can get at the Walmarts for about $5.99. I think this is all Hollywood's big plan to regain their revenue stream of former days since now movies sell for hardly anything and there's no income in that.

unetbootin?

After hours of messing around following borken and complificated instructions trying to get the Windows 7 ISO on a bootable USB, discovered unetbootin. Worked really well, just tell it the .iso and tell it the USB stick to put it on. Bake for 30 minutes. Done. Works just fine on the Windows 7 install even though the site and the utility is focused towards Linux distros.

Dinner, Wednesday

Dinner, Wednesday, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Noodles are the magical fiber that weaves together left-overs and alien crud found in the kitchen cabinets.

Dinner at Kingfish Hall

Dinner at Kingfish Hall, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Wasabi-Crusted Tuna, Sauteed Pea Tendrils, Ginger Carrot Puree & Sticky Rice.

Lobster SAlad Roll, Fresh Shucked Lobster Meat, Toasted Brioche, House Made Baked Beans, Old Bay Chips & Cole Slaw.

Beverage: Mai Tai.

See also their Automatic Fish Roaster.


Not seen, trek to North End where we purchased two lobster tail pastries, mistakenly thinking they were small. We got about 5 desserts out of those...

Upgrade cycle?

Is it just me, or does the new IE8 (I just upgraded) suck memory bigtime? The usual pages now seem to be taking about 1.5G of memory and that's just one instance of IE when I have 3 or 4 up. Wouldn't matter much except my poor P4 with 2G of RAM on XP can't keep up with that sort of usage.

I have this sneaking suspicion that Microsoft is trying to drive an upgrade cycle to Win7. Sad part is it's working; I'm ready to upgrade now.

Saturday Night

Saturday Night, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

The best thing about Saturday Night?

Scott Pilgrim (#3!) and Bailey's Irish Cream. We ran out of ice cream so this was the next best thing.

Good to pass the time while ripping Amy's books on CD to the iTunes. And now, perhaps it's time for the chips.

Chipotle Grill

Chipotle Grill, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

If you're really hungry, you can get 1 lb 2.6oz of Chipotle Grill Steak Burrito. $6.95. The perfect Friday Night anti-hunger dinner.

Walmarts have the weird stuff

Walmarts have the weird stuff, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Water bomb hand grenades. These were in the aisle next to the gummy land mines.

HTML editor

Trawled the web looking for a good html editor. Settled on http://www.w3.org/Amaya which is a bit clunky but does the trick for my limited HTML use.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTML_editors

Sushi

Sushi is great.

Here's a lecture which explains why it's so great:

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/buniverse/videos/view/?id=332

Apple Crumble Coffee

Apple Crumble Coffee, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Yes indeed, apple crumble flavored coffee. Not just apple flavored or apple cinnamon, but apple crumble. The crumble part is subtle. And that's what I'm looking for in coffee. Perhaps they will be coming out with chocolate chip cookie flavor next.

I took one for the team and tried a delicious cup of it. Maybe this batch was bad because it tasted like somebody had taken a bunch of beans or berries, burned them in an oven, ground them up, and then added water. Just nasty.

Hearing Test

Pretty much since day 1 I've been able to hear a whine from TVs and CRT monitors. This has diminished with age, but I can still hear it. I can tell when TVs are on or off with my eyes closed. I can tell if a TV is on but the screen is black (like it's set on video 1 but there's no input source). Very convenient.

The sound is very high pitched, sort of like this:

Created by Train Horns

I also have tinnitus and so can hear a more subtle but similarly pitched sound if all around me is quiet.

Wiki Editing

I'm a big Emacs guy, so having to use a Wiki and edit through the browser was a bit tricky. Luckily Mozilla on the Mac has some emacs edit shortcuts, ^a for beginning of line, ^e for end, etc., but things like ^n and ^p were navigating to other pages. Argh!

I googled around and found a great wikipedia article on text editors - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_editor_support

I installed Mozex which is something that will let you run external commands for certain Firefox things. I configured it to run emacs when I edit in a text area.

Mozex configuration to run emacs as an editor:



Mozex in use:



I also followed instructions on installing Emacs Wikipedia Mode which provides syntax highlighting and edit commands appropriate for wikis.

So far everything is working nicely. I have the same set-up on the Mac and on the Linux desktop.

Software Update

Why, oh why, software update, do you require me to restart my system after applying an update to RAW image compatibility for Aperture 2 and iPhoto '08 neither of which I use, for a bunch of cameras I don't have.

News round-up 01/31/2009

Barron's Feb 2, 2009, pg. 8, Up & Down Wall Street, Randall Forsyth notes that in response to President Obama's indignation at bonuses (something being echoed by most people I hear), it's actually the massive bonuses in the good years that create bubbles and a subsequent bust. Executives take unsustainable short-term short-cuts to boost bonuses in good years. The problems that may cause in the longer-term will just be somebody else's problems.

Barron's Feb 2, 2009, pg. 12, Streetwise, Michael Santoli notes how unwanted DOW Financials are Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and American Express. Also noted money-fund assets are at a historically high proportion of stock-market value, "the fuel is there to move the market fast and far." Also noted micro caps are very cleam now. No sense in buying a random smattering of the stocks; chapter 11 is waiting for some. This could be a good place for an actively managed fund?

Fun Facts!

A medical study found that the slump in air travel following the September 11 terrorist attacks inadvertently slowed the spread of influenza.

* From the Freakonomics 2008 daily calendar.

Electric Car comparison

GM figures that it takes 8 kwh to give the Chevy Volt a 40 mile charge. They say at 10 cents per kwh that's 80 cents, so works out 2 cents/mile. More realistically it's 20 cents per kwh, so $1.60, or 4 cents/mile. At $3.00 for 1G gasoline, a 52 mpg Prius is about 6 cents/mile.

EDIT: 4/23/2009. My prius has been getting 44 mpg recently, so at ~$2.00 for 1G gasoline, that's roughly 4.5 cents/mile.

Barron's 10/13/2008

Michael Santoli, my #2 after Thomas G. Donlan, has some sage advice this week:

• The past 2 months approximates the August 1987 crash, although back then there was a 22% loss in a single session.
• In 1987 44% of people were in stocks, now it's more like 70%.
• 401(k) assets were trivial back in 1987. Now they total about $9 trillion (much in stock funds).
• Investors are now down to ~ 50% stocks, matching 2002 market bottom.
• Irrational prices are showing - InBev (INB) is buying Anheuser-Busch (BUD) for $70 yet the market price is $58.50.

He also quotes Wood Dorsey of Market Semiotics:

"This is not the time to sell. If possible, it is better to just watch
and not act or even better, step away until Tuesday. Purgation can be over
at any time and be followed by a reprieve rally as occurred after Sept. 26,
2001."

Ode to QuickTime

QuickTime, how I love those frequent updates that require me to reboot.
(For long enough, only my Mac required a reboot on QuickTime updates - the PC managed to do it without a reboot. That has now been fixed and the PC has to be rebooted as well.)

QuickTime, how I love that you can't remember the volume the last time I played something and so just assume I want the volume to be at max 100%.

QuickTime, how I love your embrace for closed proprietary codecs.

QuickTime, how I love how you take away the focus from having a flash player in the iPod.

QuickTime, how I love how you register yourself as the default app for a bunch of video file types and then play only the audio for them.

Panoramas

http://lifehacker.com/378490/stitch-photos-into-panoramas-with-free-software

Front Pocket Wallet

The perfect front pocket wallet. Not too thick.

http://www.all-ett.com/products.asp#allett

Florida has weird stuff

Florida has weird stuff, originally uploaded by nikconwell.

Seen in a Publix.

Budweiser and Clamato juice. In the same can. Together. Mixed together. At the same time.

I suppose bloggers of the 1940's had the same reaction when they saw Tomato juice and Clam Juice. Together. In the same can.

Why we banned Legos

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/21_02/lego212.shtml

Showed up on reddit and my knee jerk reaction was WTF! On further reading, as is typical of reddit, the headline is there to provoke reaction. The article was an insightful discourse on power structures as observed by teachers of a grade school age after school program. These are the teachers we need more of, not dispensers of rote.

Free Track

There have been recent hacks posted for the Wii and PS3 that let you do head tracking for immersive VR. Here's some open source PC software to do the same thing using some LEDs glued to a hat. This would also be cool for a window manager to let you see depth of the windows to look behind things.


http://www.free-track.net/english/

In the video, to the right is that mounted LED view from the webcam.

EULA

Anti EULA from http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/26/applyyourself-in-ord.html

READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

http://reasonableagreement.org/