Smart Car (for smart people)

Wow, 60mpg, and kinda cool looking too. Of course, it is tiny, but hey, makes parking easier! Apparently they have been okay'ed for import finally. If I ever get a new car, maybe this will be it. Go check it out. 

Winter refugees..... 

Is it Christmas? Firefox is HERE!!!

Well, despite all the homework I HAVE to do right away, I couldn't help myself... Firefox 1.0 came out today!!! If you are still running Internet Explorer.. you are probably a bad person, but, redemption can be yours for the price of a 5 meg download! Just go to www.mozilla.org. If you are a hard-core individual, or feeling a bit on the adventuresome side, you can also get an optimized build, which will most likely be faster and better. I sometimes use the ones produced by MOOX. Make sure to do a little reading on his web site to find out which build is right for you.
So now that an Open Source browser is completely destroying the closed source one from Microsoft in terms of quality, can we move on to making an open source voting system? From some recent articles, summed up nicely in this Slashdot Post, it looks like the voting system we have didn't do so hot.... Maybe Bush didn't win the popular vote after all?

After days of fighting, the kittens have finally worn each other out....  

Sushi cutting takes a very sharp knife (and a steady hand). 

Sushi night!! 

Still Alive! (contrary to rumor)

Although the almost criminal level of neglect my blog has been subjected to lately might suggest otherwise, I am actually still alive and thriving like a weed. For the last six weeks I've been spending my energy and time on physics, o-chem, and various other academic and sometimes less academic interests. Finally break week is here, but don't let the "break" part fool you. It is really just an opportunity to finish homework for those disciplined enough to do it. So far I haven't been one of those. I've spent the week trying to get caught up on some projects at work during the day and cooking wonderful meals with some friends at night. Monday we had salmon with Dijon sauce and noodles, on Tuesday we made some awesome chicken curry with rice, and on Wednesday we had sushi and miso soup. The curry cooking session was interrupted by a trip to pick up Reuter's kitten which is now staying as a guest and harassing the other cats to no end. (Yes, I'm kitten sitten.)
The "break" week has provided me with enough time to run across some incredible articles however:

1. Nerve cells from a rat have been cultured in a dish, and through interactions with tiny electrodes implanted in the dish, have learned to fly a computer simulated airplane. Basically the nerve cells formed a small network, and became intelligent. Amazing. With a few million more, maybe they could do my o-chem for me?

2. Apparently testosterone/estrogen levels in the womb are closely linked to the length of the index and ring fingers in humans. Using this knowledge, Dr. Mark Brosnan at the University of Bath has determined that men involved with hard-sciences tend to have higher estrogen levels than average, and women involved in social sciences have higher testosterone levels than normal. So, whip out your rulers folks, and participate in the study. Depending on how I measure, I get between 6.6% and 5.1% difference, my brother is around 1.5% difference, no wonder he's always been better at spacial reasoning then me! According to the researcher:
"As the levels of testosterone decrease in males, performance upon visual-spatial measures increase whereas comparable cyclical declines in female testosterone result in decreased performance upon visual spatial measures (Moffat and Hampson, 1996; see also Sanders et al., 2002). Thus those with the greatest visualization skills will be females with the lower male-typical digit ratio (0.98) and males with the higher female-typical digit ratio (1.0)." So, males with low testosterone, and females with high testosterone should be especially proficient at math-like subjects.
Anyway, record your scores below....

3. This article does a nice job of debunking the "Windows is more secure than Linux" myth.

4. If you are horribly allergic to cats, but have always wanted one, genetic engineering might just save the day (hope you brought your checkbook though...).

5. And finally, a major new discovery in Indonesia shows that there were once 3' tall human-like creatures running around making tools, starting fires, and hunting pygmy elephants. Apparently there are lots of legends about these creatures to this day, so maybe they aren't quite extinct? And people tell me not to worry about Yeti....

Homework? Cripes! Lets make some crepes

Yesterday Tshering came over and taught me the fine art of crepe making. They are actually quite easy; eggs + flour + milk + sugar, stir them until they are well mixed, and go heavy on the milk. Then pour a very thin layer on a hot oiled pan. Turn them after a bit so they don't burn. They sort of act like a tortilla shell when finished, you can wrap meat in them, and probably all sorts of other things. We had jelly on ours. Here Tshering demonstrates proper crepe flipping technique.

Gmail File System (for windows this time)

An enterprising fellow by the name of Bjarke Viksoe has written an application which allows one to use their gmail account as an internet harddrive! There are some limitations, like 10 meg max file size, but, it is pretty cool none the less! Here is a page that talks about it.

Nice

"I'm nice by nature, he's nice by nuture"
-Tshering S.

Close encounters with the third kind

Well, life has been an interesting endeavor in balancing huge quantities of work (both school and of the employment variety), limited sleep, and a little social interaction these last few weeks. It is fun and challenging, but good lord, O-Chem is going to kill me.
Yesterday my frantic schedule was broken by an unwelcome intruder. I was home for a quick bite of lunch before physics, and just before I left, I noticed that water was welling up from the drains in the downstairs bathroom. These were not the waters of heaven however, they had a look and smell about them which is best left to your imagination. Needless to say, I skipped physics. After placing a call to the Caldwell water dept (thanks to Beth for clear thought in a moment of crises), and a few hours of bailing furiously (more thanks to Beth for hauling buckets), my basement was mostly saved from flooding. A battery backup got a little damp (but seems to be working), and a small section of carpet also got soaked. I gave everything involved a good dose of clorox water however, so I think all of the bacteria have probably lost membrane potential by now. My parents (bless their hearts) came out the same night with a carpet cleaner, and things are pretty much back to normal. The neighbors got hit much worse. They just moved in a few months ago, and have been working to finish their basement since then. Apparently they had just gotten sheetrock, carpet, etc finished. Their basement must be a few inches deeper because they had about 5 or 6 inches of water sitting in it all day. The disaster cleanup people were there pumping water out until late in the night.
According to the water-guy, the blockage was caused by massive grease dumping somewhere in my neighborhood. Apparently the pipe had been cleaned just 6 months earlier, and usually only needs cleaned once every two years. The school across the street is a major suspect of course. So, the moral of the story is DON'T DUMP GREASE DOWN THE DRAIN!

New Firefox!

Well, almost.. Firefox 1.0 Preview Release is out! It is still not the fully polished version 1.0 that will be along shortly, but, it is getting awfully close. Apparently the install should go pretty smoothly, although one has to disable any extensions from older versions before installing it, as they will cause trouble. I have been running the nightly builds for a while, and I can safely say that the new version has a lot of cool features and seems to start up quicker and run better. Never the less, with a preview release one should expect some odd behavior on occasion.

Budah has very nice markings, and big yellow eyes. 

I have never really posted about the two semi-wild animals that live in my house, so here they are, all 25 pounds of em. The black one with green eyes is Gata, she is older and the more intelligent of the two. You can see the "oh, why is he so dumb look" she dirrects at the spotted one who is named Budah (but goes by Dork for short). His name is Budah because he likes to have his belly rubbed, so I figured it was a good way to get some luck out of the bargain. He follows me around the house like a puppy and is more teddy-bear than cat. 

Getting Closer....

Linux servers I got two!
One's called Black
And one's called Blue! 

Scared Spitless

Project Censored has released their top 25 list. If these don't scare you spitless (and keep you from voting for Bush) there is something wrong with you. So where was this "home of the free" place again?

Mutton Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich

I was slicing a tomato the other day for a sandwich, and was reminded that “true love is the greatest thing in the world, except a nice MLT --- mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, when the mutton is nice and lean, and the tomato is ripe.” As I pondered the truthfulness of this sentiment, I was suddenly struck with a horrible doubt about the basic stability of the plot in The Princess Bride. You see, up until the point where Westley says that true love is what he has in this world that is worth living for, I'm not sure that Inigo could have known or even had an inkling about his connection to Buttercup. Yet, when Fezzik and Inigo hear the scream while looking for The Man in Black, Inigo instantly concludes that it must have come from him.

Inigo: “Do you hear that Fezzik? That is the sound of ultimate suffering. My heart made that sound when the six-fingered man killed my father. The Man in Black makes it now.”

Fezzik: “How do you know?”

Inigo: “His true love is marrying another tomorrow, so who else has cause for Ultimate Suffering?”

Previous to this, Inigo was a drunkard (and probably can't remember much) while Fezzik was unemployed in Greenland. How either of them could know of the relationship between Buttercup and Westley is beyond me. It is possible that in a moment of clarity Inigo reasoned that Westley would only have chased them if he loved Buttercup, but it seems to me that kidnap and ransom would be a more obvious motive for a pirate. Of course, Inigo somehow also knows that Vizzini is dead, so maybe he has a gift for clairvoyance. I always imagined that this discrepancy could be easily explained by Fezzik coming upon Vizzini's dead body after sleeping well and dreaming of large women, but knowledge of Westley and Buttercup's true love would be a bit more difficult to come upon.

Perhaps some Princess Bridge scholar can straighten this out for me? Until then, I'll look for some mutton and lettuce so that I can settle my first question once and for all.

Bush's Acceptance Speech

I had an insight while watching Mr. Bush's acceptance speech the other night. I believe I have made an egregious error in the way I judged him previously. I have always held him up to the same sort of standard I would hold any president. A standard which is heavily weighted towards rational thought, facts, logistics, and rooted in reason. Bush is not this sort of leader at all. He is a religious leader, plain and simple. He is providing all of the mythology and religious fervor that have become so absent in our cynical materialistic society. In the eyes of his followers, he is like a prophet of old, or perhaps even Christ himself, sent among us here in these last days to lead his righteous peoples, against the wicked. He has come to cleanse the world of evil with a flaming sword, and to give us victory and a new world of peace and righteousness; one where he rules with the iron fist of a dictator of God.

The scary thing is that his followers seem to really think this way. In his speech he told everyone that he would increase spending for education, make sure that everyone had medical insurance, and continue the aggressive fight against terrorists. Meanwhile he has also promised to cut deficit spending in half. Everyone cheered, but as far as I can see, the numbers just don't add up. The only way to believe this nonsense is to see Bush as a miracle worker, and we are not talking conjurer's tricks with a few loaves of bread, and a couple fish here. We are talking major economic wizardry on a scale that makes Enron look like a child playing with pebbles. The reality is that all of these promises are empty. He talks big, but just like the tax cut he gave the top 1% of the nation (I believe he calls these people his base), his policies do not help the people who need it most, the bottom 99%. Unfortunately, and probably through no fault of their own, the ignorant hear and believe his words, feel a rush of religious fervor at the wholesome, heart felt sincerity he puts in his voice and follow him like the children of Hamelin. Despite the facts that terrorism was at a 21 year high in 2003, the economy is limping along like a lame horse, health insurance is a rare luxury, the blood of the nation's youth is being poured out in the desert, and God is punishing Florida for letting him steal their votes, it looks like Bush might be our next president. The wolves guarding the sheep I guess. How convenient for them.

So, what did the acceptance speech teach me? Well, a better understanding of how Bush plays the game for one, and a healthy fear of his potential power for another. I will continue to judge him by the numbers, but now I know that his words are what really counts to those who will vote for him.

Wooho!

Well, apparently my good luck is holding, or my bad luck hasn't gotten here yet, because despite pulling them out of a fried motherboard, it looks like my cpu/memory/cards are all a-okay! They are running along happily in their new home and seem to be zippy fast, and pretty stable (although I'll only know this after I leave the system running benchmark things all night).

The ASUS A7V600 motherboard I replaced the dead one with seems to be pretty snazzy. It has a bunch of nice features including BIOS recovery from CD in event of a power failure while flashing, and a nice temperature gauge with logging features. Despite this, it pales in comparison to the huge dual Opteron board we just got in at work (I'll try to post a photo eventually) that thing is AMAZING. It even screams at you if you forget to plug in one of it's hot-swappable power supplies.

Meanwhile, I've been pleasure-reading as fast as I can for the last few weeks, knowing that the storm which is school is coming, and that I might not be able to read for fun again for at least 4 or 5 years. I have been reading a number of books by Ursula K. Le Guin, very possibly the author who has influenced my life most strongly. I read her book, The Dispossessed, when I was very young. Either it fit with who I was already meant to be, or molded me into who I am. I don't know, but when I read it again this spring, it felt deeply rooted in my psyche. About mid-summer I read The Left Hand of Darkness, and over the last few weeks I have finished all but the most recent book of the EarthSea series. Unfortunately I don't have this final book which is horrible because in just 8 days I'll be taking O-chem, physics, TA'ing the bio-informatics part of a molecular bio class, hopefully working in Dr. Ayers's lab a bit, and trying to get 20+ hours of work per week. It has been my experience that school always looks harder going in that it does coming out. Hopefully this observation holds up (and my books get here in time!). At least I won't be bored....

This and That

In the "slip of a forked tongue" department, Stephen Toulouse, Microsoft's security program manager admits to Wired that he uses Firefox. If you haven't switched yet, you should have your head examined.
And for all those conspiracy theorists out there (you know who you are). This guy has put together some pretty compelling evidence that NASA (or someone) is editing the photos from Mars! Amongst other things, they appear to be hiding active volcanoes, water, and life! I have to wonder if this isn't just some MAD Tennis gone horribly horribly wrong.