Mikeys' Journal

2:14pm: Dear Lazyweb, OpenSolaris 2008.11?
Have any of you built a box with this one yet? Have any of you built a 2008.5 box? I'm trying to spec out the motherboard, SATA controller, and CPU requirements, and could use some help from more knowledgeable folks. Here's my base requirements:

+ 64bit CPU.
+ At *least* 6 SATA2 ports. +1 IDE port for boot.
+ Gigabit Ethernet. Two channels would be swell.
+ >4GB RAM
+ Good power management, MUST have drive idle sleeping capability. (Don't remember what this is called in PC land)

Ideally, I'd like what the engineers are using, but barring that, I'd like the most common reliable config. We're going for long term stability. Also, I'm sick of bad drive controllers lying to the OS about write cache flushing. (Fuck you Silicon Image. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.)

Thanks!

12:40pm: Meme-o-matic
For everyone who's ever suffered burningman camp planning, I give you "Hitler's Last Burn":



It comes pre-Godwinded :D

10:02am: Snarkpunk
The NYT posted an article on "What is steampunk?" today. I followed the link from boinboing, and while the article was mildly amusing, some of the comments on boingboing are priceless:

"Renaissance Fair: The Next Generation" --Karlgustav
"So would this gypsy-goth music they listen to be considered Steamo?" -- Ratbus

And with that stroke of the keyboard, Steamo has replaced Screamo as the awesomest music genre name ever ;)

2:55pm: Ah shit.
So far, this month is shaping up to suck.

Leila is moving out at the end of the month. We need a roommate. If you have leads, let me know ASAP.

10:01am: What does Marcels Wallace look like?
These are just awesome. Pulp Fiction, in kinetic typography.

(from my friend netik's lj post, more here. r0x!)

2:13pm: Dear Internets...
Canon released an update to the Rebel series today, it has all kinds of juicy high end features. I'm torn, now I've got the 40D, the 450D, and the possibly some as-yet-to-be-announced 5D replacement to choose from for my next kit. Is it worth waiting, or should I cycle my XTi for the XSi (450D)? I mean, the XSi has remote live view for studio shooting direct to disk. CR2 14bit RAW. 12 megapixel. On screen Speedlight control.

In a word, hawt. The only thing it doesn't have is the wireless option, but whatever.

What to do, what to do. I shoot a lot of photos, but I also like the lightweight nature of the Rebel series. Go full frame, or stick with APC?

I wish there was a good measure of Noise/ISO to compare cameras with. I shoot in low light a lot, so a larger sensor would be nice, but I've got no way to compare the various HW at the moment.

2:11pm: Links & Things
Google has a fancy new trip planner. here's the route I used to take from the house I grew up in hillsboro to Powell's City Of Books.

Oh, and the best victorian slapping game. Ever.

8:08pm: Merit Badge Time
From Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique:



There you have it. All the badges I qualify for.

What badges do you qualify for?

7:26pm: Outside The Box
After you've been someplace long enough, it starts to feel like home. I am home, this is where I belong, at least for now. The Yuti's Night party last night at Ames drove this point home. I'm fairly certain I ran into almost everyone I knew in the bay area there last night.

The party was wonderful, it mostly went off without a glitch, and folks seemed well behaved. I spent the first part of the night wandering around just running into people and taking pictures. (Mental note to self: make an ultra light carbon graphite tripod for night shooting soon...) The music was awesome, but as one might guess an aircraft hanger has a few acoustic problems so unless you stood in the right spot it was pretty mangled.

The art projects where okay, but I've been here a long time and seen a lot, so I'm sure others might have found it more interesting. The science, on the other hand was very cool! Especially the seismic electric waves project, more on this later.

I hung out with some future dear old friends, and some current ones. I stayed up till the party closed early on nothing but good intentions and cat naps beneath jet engines. If they stated gaol of Yuri's Night it is to interested people in space research, it worked on me. I'm interested.

11:27am: For my spooky friends...
Kermit D. Frog covers "Hurt".

:p

6:29pm: Bored Now.
My two day stomach ache is finally over, thank some-imaginary-god. I really dislike spending time at home. Fortunately, I have this (via) to distract me this evening.

weeee!

3:52pm: Ouch.
Last night, just after finishing my book and settling down to fall asleep, my stomach started tying itself in knots. Rather suddenly. Normally I would just write this off as something I ate, but I've recently been taking this stuff called naproxen. One of the side effects is ulcers, internal bleeding, heart attacks, and other nastiness. This kinda has me worried, because its now a full 12 hours later and it hasn't stopped yet.

Naproxen is an anti-inflammation drug that's supposed to help with my arms. It more or less works as advertised, but the hole-in-the-stomach thing is kind of a deal breaker.

8:26pm: Woa.
Found this while browsing the web today. It's a piece of software which using a large number of prescans of faces, can extrapolate new faces from 2D data.

http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/03/a_morphable_mod.html

Watch the video, this is just stunning. What makes it impressive is that it's doing reconstruction with an automated algorithm, as opposed to a tuned set. I wonder how fast it is...

4:25pm: I Hate This Government
This sums up nicely how I feel about the shiney new torture bill Bush just signed into law:

George W. Bush got what he wanted, ostensibly as a tool in his unfocused "war on terror": By signing into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Bush has made it legal for the C.I.A. to continue operating torture facilities in undisclosed, foreign countries, and for the writ of habeas corpus to be suspended for individuals who are designated "enemy combatants" against the U.S. (Designated by whom? That question remains unanswered.) The law also "establishes military tribunals that would allow some use of evidence obtained by coercion [that is, torture], but would give defendants access to classified evidence being used to convict them." (Reuters)
The provisions of Bush's new torture law mean that Americans have lost the key, constitutional right on which Anglo-American criminal law (and criminal-law procedures in true democracies in general) is founded; that's the basic right of an individual to know why he or she is being apprehended and detained. Now, technically, as in Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, Mao's China or Pol Pot's Cambodia, anyone labeled an "enemy combatant" - again, by whom; by Bush? - can be whisked away and never heard from again. That kind of authority, in the hands of corrupt or untruthful politicians, may or may not be an effective tool in some kind of "war on terror," but it certainly can be a useful tool when it comes to silencing their opponents.

(from here)

10:28am: And from the double standards department...
Apparantly kissing on a plane is forbidden, who knew?
  http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060925ta_talk_collins

Their customer relations fax number is here:
  Fax: (817) 967-4162

Or I guess one could just call the worldwide reservations phone number and see if they have kissing vs. non-kissing flights:
  1-800-433-7300

Flying is such a jack-booted-mockery of all thing free and good these days that I wonder if it might reintroduce us to a golden age of highspeed trains? Most likely, no, but I can dream eh?

10:38am: Almost There
The campout this weekend was an absolute blast. Unfortunately I came home and promptly caught a cold. Not one of those, "I feel under the weather" kind of colds, but the full blown sneezing and coughing and everything-seems-fuzzy and oh-my-god-what-just-came-out-of-my-nose kind of colds.

I stayed home for two days, and in an effort to keep from spiralling into depression and boredome I took another go at trying to finish my brass goggles.

They're almost done, just some dichroic filters from an old cyberlight (who uses cyberlights? no one apparantly...) and some black rubber strapping.

I'd like to brag for a moment here, I think these came out beautifully. I had never done anything like this when I started, and didn't really have any idea how they where going to get finished, but somehow I pulled it off.

Go me :)

8:18pm: Screw On Head!
http://www.scifi.com/amazingscrewonhead/

so awesome. dark, spooky, weird, funny, ridiculous.

i love it.

9:57pm: Ultraviolet
I have seen the worst. movie. ever.

impossibly bad.

incomprehensibly bad.

inconceivably bad.

in fact, i present to you the following challenge:
What movie, in all of cinema, is worse than Ultraviolet?

discuss...

9:29am: John Stuart vs Bill Bennet
John Stuart, ripping Bill Bennet to shreds on gay marriage.

If he ran for president, I would so vote for him.

12:07pm: stich!
https://www.stitchlounge.com/

how cool is that?

1:57pm: Rights
My rights arrived today. They came in a little brown shipping pack. Over all I would say the quality of my rights are pretty good. They're a little rough around the edges, but I like 'em.

(I have five, if you're flying anytime soon I'd be happy to lend you one)

8:51pm: Hello Cthulhu
dear intenets,

i love you, 'k? keep doing your thing.

sincerely,
me.

8:36pm: Soundtransit
A friend sent me this today (thank you thank you thank you!), it's a collection of field recordings from all over the world. There's amazing stuff in there. Try frogs, Buenos Aires, or perhaps lighting strikes in Fukuoka, Japan. (this one is stunning...)

(There's even some quadrophonic stuff in there, it's under the US listing)

There's not a lot there yet, so browsing by country and hitting search is probably the best way to look. Prior to seeing this today I made a stereo spreader bar for my russian oktavas. If anyone wants to go collecting with me, let me know and I'll make time :)

4:01pm: ti couz too
I went looking for bar tartine today, somewhere in the vicinity of 16th and valencia. I ran into the same problem I usually run into while cooking. I get too hungry to think straight, and I keep forgetting what it was I was doing in the first place. I have a word for this, "spin cycle".

I ended up next to ti couz too, and the smell of freshly made crepes wafted through the meandering mental haze and tickled the you need food, now trigger.

I'm getting better at this game, the self preservation instinct is slowly being moved from the shaky and unreliable frontal lobe down into spinal cord where it can become reflex. Or something like that, biology wasn't exactly my strong suite.

Now I have a sausage crepe, and all is right with the world. After this I think I'll walk down to the hattery and see if I can find a nice wide-brim hat.

1:18am: Welding
I was a manly man and went to the ranch to weld today. Welded a modular synth stand. Welding is hard. I *heart* the auto-dimming mask.

Now to weld a stand for the umpteen odd drum machines...