Archive for February, 2005
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28 Feb 2005
This is something that I normally would just put in my links feed (to the right, if you’ve never noticed it before), but it’s just so exciting that I wanted to gush about it here. Not only are there going to be playable versions of all three upcoming next-gen home consoles at E3, but Nintendo might be giving us a little extra to look forward to: a next-gen Game Boy. Plus they may reveal PalmOS-for-the-DS at E3 as well.
(BTW, some of the comments on that link make me laugh).
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24 Feb 2005
The other day, I finally got ahold of a copy of last year’s Franz Ferdinand album. M happened to be in the car when I decided to listen to it for the first time. Thirty seconds into the first track, she says “I want a copy of this.”
That never happened to me before. (Her review, after a track or two, was “This is very Operation Ivy.”)
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23 Feb 2005
The “Alt-Tab Replacement” Power Toy never behaved properly with my text editor of choice, EditPad Lite. So yesterday, I set off on a search for a new screenshot-enhanced program switcher for Windows. I came across (and am extremely happy with) TaskSwitchXP. It’s both more configurable and Open Source. Anyone who often has more than 4 or 5 programs running at a time should try this out.
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22 Feb 2005
A new trigonometry challenge: Given a hexagon inscribed in a square as shown below, what is the
ratio ofrelationship between the length of segment a and segment b? Assume the hexagon’s sides are all of equal length.
Update Feb 26: The solution, props to Brian.
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17 Feb 2005
Dandelions are what’s called an apomictic plant. Apomixis is essentially asexual reproduction. A single dandelion, even in quarantine, will create seeds that are identical to itself. As random mutations happen over time, a microspecies will form, since genetic changes are not contributed back into any gene pool. Some botanists have identified thousands of separate dandelion microspecies, often confined to a single meadow.
Also, dandelions are delicious, and are extremely high in Vitamin A and C.
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15 Feb 2005
The operators of FleetCenter in Boston decided it’d be a good idea to auction off single-day rights to rename the stadium and give the proceeds to charity. Honorable idea. Unfortunately for them, the winner of Monday, February 28, was the crude news site Fark.com. They held a competition this afternoon to decide what the name should be. The winning entry: “Fark.com UFIA Arena”.
(This post cross-posted to Metafilter as my first Front Page Post)
Update Feb 16: Both Waxy links and Kottke linked to my Mefi post. And no one was really anti-Fark in the thread, which I expected from the Mefites. I consider my first FPP a success! Hurrah!
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14 Feb 2005
I switched from a big bookmark folder of blogs to using the great free website Bloglines only about 30 hours ago, but I can already see that it’s changing my surfing efficiency. Instead of repeatedly hitting blogs, hoping to catch an update, I can just keep bloglines open and it’ll tell me when there’s something new. I’m taking the bandwidth off of the little guy’s server.
But it’s got a downside, too. Now, like Jon Rentzsch, I want RSS feeds for everything.
Update Feb 15: Ask Metafilter gave some good suggestions.
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10 Feb 2005
Yesterday, after three months of indecision, we finally decided on a Linux distribution. We’re going, not with the (essentially) industry standard Redhat, but with SuSE. The codebase is obviously virtually identical, and the featuresets are pretty comparable, and Novell (who bought SuSE January 2004) gave us an amazingly good deal. It’ll be an interesting exercise trying to get all of our Dev and QA stuff moved over in the next few weeks, and there are apparently a couple of vendors we’ll have to pressure to hurry up their SuSE support, but it’s nice to have this decision finally made.
Update 3-23: It didn’t go as easily as expected.
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9 Feb 2005
Medical terms for parts of the body that don’t really otherwise have a name:
- Antecubital fossa – Elbow pit
- Popliteal fossa – Knee pit
- Philtrum – That groove in your upper lip
- Natal cleft – Buttcrack
Okay, that last one doesn’t entirely belong, but I like that it has a technical unoffensive name.
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7 Feb 2005
I gave blood today. You should, too. Every two seconds, someone in the US needs blood, and artificial blood is still a ways off. It’s an easy way to lose a pound, plus you get free juice and cookies.
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6 Feb 2005
The information on the next generation in game consoles is becoming more firm. We know that they’ll all be playable at the next E3. We know all about the technology behind the PS3′s Cell processor. And now we’re starting to hear information about official names. Continuing with their tradition of sticking with development names, the Nintendo Revolution is rumored to become the “Nintendo Revolution”. And afraid that X-Box 2 would sound less edgy than Playstation 3, Engadget is reporting that Microsoft’s next console will be the “X-Box 360″.
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3 Feb 2005
Okay, so maybe nevermind on the whole del.icio.us thing. I like being able to keep single links through there, but I don’t like the dialy upload process, and it makes the blog look pretty boring. I’ve been meaning to redesign this page slightly for a while, and this might be a good excuse to do that. It’s harder to put aside time for web development when you’re a Sysadmin than it was when you’re a web developer.
Update: Set aside some time. What do you think so far? Still to do: integrate my flickr photos and some sort of simple del.icio.us links list.
