Archive for July, 2005
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28 Jul 2005
Okay, I’m not sure if this is ridiculous, inspired, or over-the-edge. The surreal webcomic Goats has so-called “extended info” (the grey area below the strip) for each comic. This info includes the dialogue text, locations and props in each panel. Also, for each character that appears in the strip, it lists first appearance and the three storylines the character most recently appeared in.
This information goes all the way back to the very first strip.
Discuss (1) -
22 Jul 2005
Today is π (pi) approximation day. In a large portion of the world, the date is represented as dd/mm, or 22/7. Although 22/7 exceeds π, it’s actually closer to the true value than that of π Day is.
3.14159265358 - 3.14 = .00159265358
3.14159265358 - (22/7) = -.001264489277 -
20 Jul 2005
I’m not entirely sure I’d vote to confirm John Roberts, Bush’s nominee for the Supreme Court. I definitely disagree strongly with his ideological views. On the Court of Appeals, he upheld secret military tribunals for terror suspects. As an attorney, he argued that Roe v. Wade “was wrongly decided and should be overruled.” He’s also argued against environmental regulation a number of times.
On the other hand, this might be the wisest thing I’ve ever heard a judicial nominee say: “Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land… There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent.” How strongly should political views influence Congress’ decision to confirm a nominee? The Left has only a certain amount of power in the current administration, but if Roberts was denied or filibustered, could a different nominee really be any better? I can’t see Bush nominating someone centrist, but there’s always the chance he’ll nominate someone more activist.
Update: More selected opinions.
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18 Jul 2005
Today, I gave an intro to wiki class at work. Ever since I moved the Unix group’s home page from a wad of hand-edited HTML files to wiki, it’s been a far bigger hit than I expected. There are now nine teams using wikis for their documentation or interested in migrating, and I expect there are probably a few more that will be converting soon. It’s great to be able to feel that I’m making a bottom-up difference at work, and that open source (not to mention Wikipedia) is touching a few more people who might not otherwise ever feel it.
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17 Jul 2005
Almost all digital cameras (with the notable exception of all but the newest camera phones) support a JPG comment format called Exchangable Image File Format (EXIF). When you take a photo, a lot of nice details about shutter speed and aperture are saved along with the image (and a lot of confusing and technical data, too). Unfortunately, if you take photos with a film camera and scan in the photos, the data is all missing.
Luckily, there are a number of tools made exactly for such a situation. Exifer is a good freeware option, but there’s also MaPiVi, which is open-source and cross-platform. There are a ton of them out there, if you ask the right people.
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8 Jul 2005
This post is going to be extremely unlike me. I’m going to quote the New Testament, and I’m going to say that it’s an insightful passage that everyone could learn from:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” — Matthew 5:43-48
That’s an insightful passage that everyone could learn from. Strip out the weird “tax collectors” and anti-pagan parts, and you have the core of Jesus’ message: Unconditional love. What’s so damn hard about that?
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7 Jul 2005
Last week, I was reading through some oldish posts on Websnark, and he pointed me towards “Nothing Nice to Say“, a hilariously tongue-in-cheek punk comic. I ended up reading all of the back strips and I liked it a whole lot. I added it to my daily reading, and thought “I should mention this on my blog”. Well, now that he’s done a guest strip for “Joe and Monkey” with Jerry Holkins from Penny Arcade, I thought I’d actually do it.
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4 Jul 2005
Precritic update: Batman Begins has 83% on the Tomatometer. If we had used my fancy scoring for our guesses, Nomad would get 2 points, and Manish would get 1. Chris and I were way too pessimistic.
Time to play again! Fantastic 4: the Tomatometer is here, for reference. The movie comes out Friday 8 July, and scoring will be done about 2 weeks later.