Monthly Archives: October 2009

Monarch skies

Posted on by

Every year around this time, over 250 million Monarch butterflies migrate over 3,000 miles from Canada to Mexico. I caught some of the early travelers on the way down this week.

Monarch Skies 1

Monarch Skies 1

Most were too high in the sky for my camera to catch in detail. But every little dot in this photo is a butterfly. Hundreds of these little flapping dots were moving across the sky, heading south.

Monarch Skies 2

Monarch Skies 2

This guy was taking the low road. For such tiny creatures, they move pretty fast.

Monarch Skies 3

Monarch Skies 3

As the season gets underway, and as the stragglers show up flying much lower, I’ll be able to get better photos. Sightings and migration maps are available on tracking sites like this one.

What exactly is a Waitting?

Posted on by

One of the more obscure things I can do is program readerboards. Those LED kind of displays you see under a big business sign that scroll images, show what’s on sale, display the time and temperature, and so on.

Problem is, most readerboard software I’ve had to use is complete junk. They’re horribly unstable, crash often, and are not put together in any form of English I’m aware of.

Waitting in progress

Waitting in progress

The thing is I don’t know anybody else who does this. Most of the bigger companies have someone specifically fly out from corporate relations to change their readerboards, and they don’t like to talk about what they use. If they’re a franchise, they just stick a memory card the corporate office sends them into the feeder computer to update the screen.

Bourgeois music placement

Posted on by

So by now I think everybody has seen the new ad for the Ipod nano with video. It’s a catchy little jingle called “Bourgeois Shangri-La” by Miss Li.

I’m guessing nobody at Apple bothered to check the lyrics to Bourgeois Shangri-La.

“Keep you locked in a shopping cart
A Bourgeois Shangri-La”

and

“House, and a boat and a great shiny car
Things just to prove you go far
So’s the streamer watching TV cute little dog
Perfect in your shallow Bourgeois”

And to top it off, Bourgeois is defined as “(1.) A person belonging to the middle class. (2.) A person whose attitudes and behavior are marked by conformity to the standards and conventions of the middle class. (3.) In Marxist theory, a member of the property-owning class; a capitalist.”

So either Apple was intentionally poking fun at itself and its’ rabid fans, or they just went with this song because it sounded pretty. Either way, it’s hilarious.

But the all time winner for missing the point has to be Mercedes-Benz for having the unmitigated balls to use Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz” in one of their commercials. According to Wikipedia,
“Joplin wrote “Mercedes Benz” together with the poet Michael McClure and Bob Neuwirth, as a critical social commentary on how people relate happiness to money and material possessions. The song was originally written as something of a negative commentary about materialistic individuals who place too much value on items like a Mercedes-Benz.”

And what does Mercedez-Benz do with it?

Blasphemy. Blasphemy of the highest order. (Lyrics to Mercedes Benz.)

The full “World of Goo” game – this week only for any amount!

Posted on by

This week only you can get the World of Goo game for PC and MAC and Linux for any amount you want to pay. $1. $5. $20. Anything works!

Just go to the 2dboy game’s website and click on the “Happy Birthday Sale Time” link midway down. From there you can buy the game with any amount you want to put in.

After you complete checkout, in a few minutes a secret link to the game will appear in your inbox to download the full version from their servers. It’s that easy.

The World of Goo game has no copy protection whatsoever. For a game developer in this day and age, that’s unheard of. And pretty spectacular.

You can try the World of Goo demo first at the 2dboy main page for Windows, Mac or Linux if you want. But the reviews for the game are all four and five star, with a 9.0 “devious, intelligent puzzler” review on Gamespot and an “absolutely phenomenal” review from IGN. And for an entry price of $1, you really can’t go wrong here.

RipIt preference for Mac users

Posted on by

Just a quick observation. If you use RipIt for the mac to backup your movie DVDs, you might want to go to RIPIT in the top menu and PREFERENCES and choose NETWORK.

RipIt preference

RipIt preference

From there, unselect REPORT SUCCESSFUL RIPS (ANONYMOUSLY).

This option is checked by default. I’m not a fan of any logfiles like this, and am quite surprised this is on by default.

T-Mobile Sidekick users – do not power off your device!!

Posted on by

I usually don’t post on Sundays, but this is really important.

If you have a T-Mobile Sidekick, do NOT power off your T-Mobile sidekick or let it lose its’ charge over the weekend.

According to several tech sites, “T-Mobile [is] reporting that ALL personal data stored on Sidekicks… has been lost.” Any contacts, photos, calendars, or to-do lists that haven’t been locally backed up are gone. And anything that is still on a sidekick from T-Mobile will be lost if the phone is turned off and on again.

So, again, do NOT power off your T-Mobile sidekick or let it lose its’ charge over the weekend.

A big post on T-Mobile’s site has the details. And it’s bad with a big red capital B. “Regrettably… we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger… The likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low.”

On a related note, all new T-Mobile sales have been suspended on the T-Mobile site. And T-Mobile isn’t going to say anything official until Monday the 12th.

Nice. I wonder what idiot at T-Mobile did a major server upgrade without a full local backup and a backup of that backup? And no contingency plans for a complete server failure? And no off-site data mirrors? And no 30 day deep storage backup?

Hey T-Mobile. If you survive this, you might want to hire someone who knows more about computers than the ones you got now. Just sayin’.

News stories the mainstream media missed 10/10/09

Posted on by

Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.

* FBI Director Robert Mueller, the head of the one of the most prominent law enforcement agencies in the US, had to be stopped from falling for a simple phishing scam…. by his wife. Sad. Sad. Sad. The NSA and Air Force must be laughing their asses off right now. [CNET]

* Ever have one of those “ten year” curly bulbs blow out on you in a month? Turns out they’re really not designed for being used “upside down” from the ceiling. To last for a long time, most of these bulbs need to have the screw-part pointing down ad the bulb pointing up, otherwise “they overheat the electronics in the base and burn out early”. Did you know these bulbs also come in different color temperatures? There’s a flowchart to show you how to select the right ones. Oh, and they’re full of mercury and need to be disposed of in a Haz-mat manner. Throwing them in the trash is devastating to the environment. So now the act of purchasing a simple lightbulb has gone from zero thought to very complex. A great example of the cure being worse than the disease. [TREEHUGGER and EPA]

* The CDC has “continues to receive reports of an unexplained skin condition which some refer to as “Morgellons”. Persons who suffer from this condition report a range of cutaneous or skin symptoms including crawling, biting and stinging sensations; granules, threads, fibers, or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin; and/or skin rashes or sores. In addition to skin symptoms, some sufferers also report fatigue, mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, and changes in vision. At this time, scientists and doctors do not know what causes this condition”. Um…. damn. A link to the investigation is here. A link to the disease is here. [CDC]

* A study by the British Psychological Society confirmed when someone anticipates an interaction with an obese person, they automatically feel socially superior to them. The study says this is probably “based on the activation of obese people’s status in American society today.”  Somebody needs to go watch Shrek and Shallow Hal again. [BPS]

* A Hawaii company in the sugar business for 119 years has had to close its’ doors. Companies go out of business every day, but none I have ever heard of “offer housing for its retirees and employees affected by the shut down.” Epic levels of awesome here. [FOOD BUSINESS NEWS]

One old WireRope brand lock – two perspectives

Posted on by

My gorgeous wife and I were out and about a few days ago when this old lock caught our eye. It’s a rusty WireRope brand lock on a door that looks like it would fall over with a strong breeze.

I took out my camera and took this photo, mainly focusing on the lock itself…

Wire Rope Lock - My photo

Wire Rope Lock - My photo

My brilliant wife took a step back and got more perspective, colors and framing and took this photo…

WireRope photo - my wifes

WireRope lock - my wife's (much better!) photo

Funny how two different images can come so easily out of one little thing.