It's a blog.
What is it with American auto companies and so utterly failing with hybrids? Gas it $3.50/gallon and up right now as I post this. There’s a big green movement. In short, people really care about getting halfway decent gas mileage. So American auto finally got with the program and offered a couple hybrids. The Ford [...]
A long time ago I coined Wagner’s Law: “While driving, the probability of encountering a bicyclist is exponentially higher when approaching a blind curve.” Why this is, I have no idea, but the world’s bicyclists always seem to be entering blind curves when I’m driving. I very rarely get to pass a bicyclist on a [...]
Fast Company has an interesting article talking about how the human race seems destined for laziness. Presented two choices, one the “default” (as in, it’ll happen if they don’t do anything), the other being far superior but requiring that they do something, most take the inferior default. The main example is the “Save More Tomorrow,” [...]
In: Computers|Cool Links|Ideas|Living|Programming|Rants & Raves
20 Apr 2008Trying a different style for this post… # # # We held our “Rock Band Night” event tonight. The turnout wasn’t that great, but it’s a long weekend and gorgeous, so we were happy with the people we got. I brought my Xbox VGA cable, so we ran the Xbox into a projector at 1280×1024. [...]
One thing I can’t stand is meetings where people have no sense of purpose. Today we had a group meeting for the final project for one of my classes. No one was really going anywhere with it. We discussed a few ways we could split the assignment up. So I did something that worked even [...]
Every now and then I find that I need to do something that seems remarkably obscure, and am surprised to learn that PHP has a function to do it. I found myself cleaning up a really sub-par Wikipedia article, where someone had entered a massive list of things in ALL CAPS. It’s easy enough to [...]
A huge amount of the stuff I do here involves working, online, with other people. I’m surprised at how technology really isn’t where I expect it. Here are some things I do often, and how technology helps me–or fails me. Communicating with persistent groups. I’ve got a board of people who are taking over the [...]
In: Business|Computers|Ham Radio|Ideas|Living|OCD|Rants & Raves
6 Apr 2008There are a few different technologies commonly used in two-way radio. One is digital voice, a la Motorola ASTRO / Project 25′s CAI (IMBE), which is a 9600bps (9.6kbps) digital stream. Another interesting technology is trunking: a city might have 12 talkgroups (think “virtual channels”), but only 4 frequencies. One frequency is designated as a [...]
Fark.com reports that a group of people in San Francisco have started a petition to, well… I’ll quote them. Kennedy had a stadium named after him. Reagan has an airport. Where will George W. Bush have his name emblazoned? In San Francisco, it looks like that honor will go to a sewage plant. Of course, [...]
I started a blog post about this, but it talked about terabytes NASs, HDTV DVRs, VoIP / SIP, LDAP, DNS caches, NTP strata, and a bunch of acronyms. So instead I’ll be incredibly precise. This PC, seemingly sold only at Walmart, is really cool. It’s not that fast. Its specs are bad any way you [...]