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February 2nd, 2010
03:08 pm - A Life goal
I have decided on my life goal.
You know those ball pits that are frequently in children's amusement parks?
I want one of those... but filled with Jennifer Connellies.
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January 22nd, 2010
05:17 pm - Grooveshark Widget: Chameleon
From the Thievery Corp. Remix sampler, Versions.
Chill Sounds of the day...
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January 11th, 2010
03:43 pm
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January 7th, 2010
December 10th, 2009
12:18 pm - Tech stuff.
For some time I've been struggling with making a USB flash key.
Currently, my boot means of choice it to use BART's PE on CD. It does what I need to do to get network connectivity on a machine with no OS so it can be imaged, or to virus scan a suspect machine without activating its suspect OS.
I've been hoping for sometime to do this same dealio on USB... #1 because USB keys are easier to carry around than CD's, #2, because minute changes to the setup don't require burning a new CD, and #3, because we're starting to see more and more mini devices that have no drives for boot media other than USB. So, now is the time to dive into it in earnest.
So the last couple of days I've been hunkering down and trying to make it work. I have yet to get a bootable USB key that works on multiple machines. I have gotten a key to work with a specific laptop, but it either blue screens or otherwise fails on other target devices.
Things I have tried / learned:
1) Motherboard chipsets typically only support USB Booting from FAT formatted drives. This means not NTFS, no FAT32... that means no bigger than 2 gigs. Any USB flash drive larger than 2 gigs will fail to format correctly. This seems to have an obvious solution... partition the USB media.
2) Windows partitioning methods don't work on "Removable Media". DiskPart simply does not see it as a drive on its list. The Disk manager dialog does not allow you to partition. I've read at various webisted of a way to fool the OS into thinking that removable media is non-removable via resetting a bit on the key. I downloaded a tool to do so from http://www.lexar.com, but alas, it does not work. I suspect vendor and brand differences.
So, I abandoned getting my big 16 gig stick to work, and have back pedaled to an old 2 gig stick which I can format FAT16. But even this has been failing.
If anyone has been down this road before and can point out interesting landmarks, let me know.
If anyone has gone down this road before, I'd welcome any input.
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November 30th, 2009
01:12 pm - Grooveshark Playlist o' the day.
I was Listening to Pandora the other day and stumbled across something that seemed to fit with my general downtempo world musicy proclivities... J Boogie's Dubtronic Science
Hey.... it's SCIENCE!, so, it's got to be good.
J. Boogie's Dubtronic Science
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November 24th, 2009
05:22 pm - Grooveshark Widget: Chameleon
Wanna listen to what I've been listeng to today?
BE LIKE ME!!! LISTEN TO WHAT I LISTEN TO!!! DO WHAT I DO!!!! THINK LIKE I THINK!!!!
When you die, and go to heaven, and are standing in front of God... how will you react... what account will you give of yourself, when he asks...
"Why aren't you more like Nat? Didn't you even TRY!?!?"
Anyway... The menu of today is Trance and Trancey-ish things.
Trancey Goodness
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November 19th, 2009
12:13 pm - Coffee.
How you know you're drinking too much coffee?
When you walk from your desk too the office pot, you take two mugs so you can make less trips.
How to know you're drinking WAY to much coffee?
When you get back to your desk, one mug is already empty.
How to know you're drinking WAY, WAY TOO MUCH coffee:
Looking at the two mugs, you do the math, and realize you have JUST ENOUGH COFFEE to hold you till you can walk back to the pot.
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November 12th, 2009
03:14 pm - Calling all Physics and Astronomy Buffs
To those interested in the subject...
Read the following article at Space.com:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/091111-sun-star-planets.html
Essentially it's talking about the observed relationship between stellar lithium content and the existence of planetary systems.
If you're interested, please read it.... ( and then give me a reality check! )
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November 5th, 2009
05:25 pm - awesomeness.
Some boffin has made a subtitle file for Expelled!!!
For those not in the know on what a subtitle file is: Many standard video viewers support subtitle files, where you point at a text file, formatted with time stamps, to display certain lines of text (ostensibly translations) at certain times during playback.... like a subtitle in a foreign language movie.
For those not in the know about Expelled, it was the recent "documentary" which set out to demonstrate how mainstream science is suppressing the resurgent, paradigm-shifting, and superior Intelligent Design Theory.
As can be expected, this "documentary", staring Ben Stein, is rife with errors and purposefully misstated half truths. The Subtitle translation mentioned above inserts appropriate corrections at the appropriate times.
Details here!
http://www.bogosity.tv/forum/index.php?topic=27.msg216#msg216
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November 3rd, 2009
09:41 am - The bad and the good
For some reason I woke up with the horrible song "Can't fight this feeling anymore" stuck in my head and leaking out through my lips.
I am the typhoid Mary of bad 80's power ballads.
Fortunately I was able to inoculate myself and now have Supertramp's "Give a little bit" in there... much better.
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October 30th, 2009
12:46 pm
You are here....
This constructed image of the milky way as-seen-from-earth was created from a conglomerate of 3000 seperate photographs from various locations on earth, combined by Dr. Axel Mellinger using mathematical algorithms to translate and connect the different points of view, and using data from the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes to differentiate light pollution so as to allow for a uniform background.
The final image was 648 megapixels... the one above is, of course, NOT! :)
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October 20th, 2009
08:17 am - An Image
I was on the bus earlier this morning than is my wont, to cover for a sick co-worker. Add to that the fact that the weather has been cooler lately, so the bus denizens were rather more bundled than I'm used to.
In front of me, on the left, was a couple... cold... huddling, and still quite sleepy. They both had on comfy looking hoodies, and the gal on the isle had her arm around the guy by the window, their heads together, bobbing with that complex motion that only comes with sleepy-bus-head.
They looked all the world like two tired little Jawas, comforting each other at the end of a long, hard day of droid stealing.
.
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.
The only things that ruined the image were her fuzzy, Christmas Tree covered pajama pants.
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October 15th, 2009
October 13th, 2009
06:19 pm - It seems obvious, but now we have numbers...
The less serious you are about religion, the better liked you are, even by very religious people.
Seems reasonable... but where is it from, and what's the proof?
The past few weeks, the free but very widely used dating site OKCupid has been crunching some numbers and finding some trends. Mostly they are comparing "Match %", a self-created filter that suggests who you are likely to get along with, and comparing it to other self reported criteria, like religious and racial preferences, and the likelihood of message replies.
It begins by using the Zodiac as a control. Essentially there is no "Zodiac effect". People from one Zodiac sign are no more or less likely to have a match % close to other people of a particular Zodiac sign, nor is there much variation between the expected and actual reply rates.
But religion, religious "seriousness" (commitment?, inflexibility?), and race are another story.
The start:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/09/29/how-races-and-religions-match-in-online-dating/#match-discussion
One week later, Race and message replies in detail:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/10/05/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/
Cross posted to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) atheism and my personal journal.
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October 9th, 2009
10:12 am - The Nobel Peace Prize
My feelings on its award....
In a word... Uhg.
Don't get me wrong, I like Obama. I think he's trying to work through a bad situation, though I wish he'd stop trying to play nice and being so conciliatory.
But I routinely have long and irritating discussions with friends who blame Obama for everything under the sun.... and they were blaming him back when he'd only been in office for 6 months. Now its STILL been less than a year, and too many are willing to lay unemployment, debt and foreign wars (the very ugly chickens of the last decade coming home to roost) at his feat.
A Nobel prize now is the same sort of idiocy, but in the opposite direction. He hasn't done anything significant for peace on the world stage, because hey... that's a Sisyphean task. Like an oil tanker, history is a huge and ponderous mass that takes a long time of concerted effort to redirect. Nobel prizes should go either to obvious and effective genius, or long, concerted, and dedicated effort. Not just good intentions.
Know what I think this REALLY is?
It's a little gold star being given by the Nobel committee to the AMERICAN VOTER, essentially saying "Hey, thanks guys. Thanks for not voting in an other unilateral loudmouth cowboy into office. Have a lolly pop."
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September 29th, 2009
04:32 pm - a somewhat less difficult post.
Thanks so much folks.
This much response so quickly from so many friends humbles me.
Various people have promised enough that I am out of the woods I think.
Thanks again.
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September 28th, 2009
11:27 am - Synchronouos moment.
I had a weird moment this morning...
I was walking through one of the Shands waiting rooms, and heard some cool industrial music that was unfamiliar to me. It was also odd to hear that kind of music being played out loud in that kind of setting.
Then I realized, it wasn't industrial music.
It was a combination of one Patron's cell phone ring tone (a synthesized version of some classical music) and another patron talking to their wife... that patron had a trachiotomy and was speaking with a voice box.
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September 18th, 2009
04:12 pm - Livin' in thuh Aye-Tees!
A friend mentioned watching 80's music videos.
Before my productivity concerned brain could prevent it: ( my fingers went youtube-ing. )
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