Category Archives: Misc

Tom's Back

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As promised, Tom’s back. (Wearing a NYC subway tee given to me by my brother)

I won’t get into whether it was a well-deserved vacation — I’m a federal employee and I am entitled to it. And now, of course, I’m exhausted. Vacations are restful in one sense, but tiring in another; add to that the drive back, through Pennsylvania’s road construction “paradise” and entering the Washington traffic at rush “hour” on a Friday, with its stress and fatigue. Add to that the toll that eating vacation cuisine puts on you. I’m glad I have the weekend to recover.

I did all the things I promised I would. The reunion had ~150 attendees, and I got to see all of my aunts and uncles and all but one first cousin on both sides of the family (the outlier being a Florida resident, on my dad’s side, i.e. not drawn in by the reunion of my mom’s side of the family), and loads of more distant relatives. Of course you can’t get that many people together without some melodrama, because not everybody gets along (owing to some slight, real or imagined) but I try to stay away from all that. I plead ignorance and apathy, and not necessarily in that order. It’s just so high school.

Even without the reality non-TV, we had an eventful week. Rain early on, peaking with a storm on Saturday that spawned several tornadoes, with damage being done just a mile or two up the road (including destruction at a condo where we had stayed a few years ago). The weather after Sunday ~noon was fabulous, so the lack of air conditioning wasn’t a problem at all. Got out geocaching Monday – Thursday, with the only issue being that I didn’t have time to download the clues, note the size or read the backstories of the caches, which undoubtedly cost me a find or two; micro-caches in the woods are tough without a clue, with a potential search area of up to a thousand square feet (or even more, on occasion). It also helps to know if you’re looking for a pill bottle vs an ammo container.

I also put my cameras to work, and will be processing the results and posting them soon. I’m way behind on internet reading, but did manage to finish two books I was working on (Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre, which had popped up on my radar recently, and Collapse by Jared Diamond, that I’d been working on for seemingly forever)

Falling into The Canyonero

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ScienceBlogs, we have a problem

Much consternation over at the home of science blogging, ScienceBlogs. The forum for the brilliant Orac, Pharynula, Molecule of the Day, and countless other insightful, funny and informative blogs has decided upon a bizarre new strategy in sourcing new posts. As of yesterday, the platform will host a new blog written by food giant PepsiCo, all about the company’s specialist subject of refreshing sugary drinks and their benefits for dental and dietary health.

Sorry, no, PepsiCo’s scientific staff will be writing about nutrition on the new Food Frontiers blog. I’ll give you a moment to get back on your chair.

They also host several of my favorite physics-y blogs, though I’ve only seen action-reaction (as of writing this) from The Quantum Pontiff, who is leaving, but mostly for other reasons and Science After Sunclipse, who is also eclipsing.

I can’t see this as anything but an advertising platform for a corporation. Which raises the question — will Scienceblogs be paying Pepsi to blog there, (as is the arrangement I expect it has with the rest of its bloggers) or is it the other way around? If it’s the former, why would you bother? Is this a Pepsi blogging juggernaut that they’ve assimilated? If it’s the latter, and the article implies that this is the case, then the sellout is blatantly obvious. Krusty, what were you thinking?

Electron Boy to the Rescue

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Local boy with cancer turns into a superhero for a day

Thursday was shaping up to be just another school day for 13-year-old Erik Martin, but then something extraordinary happened: Spiderman called.

Spiderman happens to be one of the few people who knows that Erik, too, has a secret identity — he’s Electron Boy, a superhero who fights the powers of evil with light.

And Spiderman needed Erik’s help.

Erik, who is living with liver cancer, has always wanted to be a superhero. On Thursday, the regional chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted him that wish with an elaborate event that involved hundreds of volunteers in Bellevue and Seattle.

Good thing the evildoers did not know his weakness is a magnetic field, which will limit his orientation options.

What US Currency Could Look Like

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… but it doesn’t.

Michael Tyznik’s US Currency Redesign

Contrary to rumors circulating in chain emails, this design is not the work of or in any relation to the U.S. government. It was my entry to the Dollar Rede$ign contest and is purely speculative.

American banknotes are in dire need of a redesign. Even though the green color of money is deeply interwoven into the nation’s culture, the need for color differentiation between denominations has forced the inclusion of color. The recent redesign of banknotes by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is poorly executed and aesthetically lacking. Because the coloring of the current notes is so subtle, it is still hard to differentiate between denominations by that method alone.

flickr gallery

Is Anyone Listening?

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Maniacal Rage: Photoshop Crash Reports

I changed the canvas size (added 400 pixels to the height while anchoring the existing canvas to the top in case you’re interested in the little details) and everything disappeared. Luckily, I had just saved. I’ve been pretty lucky about that with Photoshop in the past — I’m an over-saver. I save all the time. Probably got into the habit because of applications with terrible stability patterns- You know, like your application. Photoshop. Also, Microsoft Word. Remember that junk? I’m sure you do. You probably refer to that as the ‘Adobe Photoshop of Word Processing’ and laugh and laugh and count your money.

It’s almost like blogging in a crash report dialog window.

Random Thought

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If, back in the day, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon had starred in a murder mystery, but none of them had perpetrated the crime, would it till be a whodunnit?

Programming Your S.O.

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A brief, yet helpful, lesson on elementary resource-locking strategy

I explained as politely as I could that separation of concerns is one of the most fundamental of all the principles of system design, and that for me to reschedule my own tasks and take on other agents’ responsibilities would be a gross violation of encapsulation. I explained that, instead, when she accepted the get-the-boys’-drinks interrupt, she should have relinquished her lock and passed the cheese back down to my end of the table before going swanning off off on the drinks mission.

Sadly, she was COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL and started talking as though I was some kind of selfish jerk who just wanted the cheese.

Live by the programmer’s POV, die by the programmer’s POV.

Take That, DuPont Circle

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Vortex Junction: The Next-Gen Roundabout

Roundabouts work great in low traffic volume areas because the number of vehicles in the intersection at one time is low. They eliminate traffic stops like signs or lights and allow traffic to move smoothly. When they’re installed in high traffic areas, roundabouts can become a nightmare. The trouble with roundabouts, especially big ones, is drivers are always jockeying for position along the outside lane since there are always vehicles entering into, in the intersection and attempting to exit along the outer diameter. This is a problem the Vortex Junction solves.

I don’t know if this is the answer, but it’s an interesting idea.

Traffic circles in and around DC, especially DuPont, should have been mentioned in Dante’s Inferno. High volume, poor signage, modifications that render them even more problematic (through lanes on the diameter and traffic lights) and inconsistent right-of-way protocols (some places people in the circle have the right-of-way, for others it’s those entering the circle. WTF?)

I avoid DuPont circle like it’s made of toxic broccoli.