Yarrrr! ‘Tis Me Picture!

Posted by Void on 09/19/2006

Pirates of Engineering

Ho Hee Harrr! Musta got me parrot!

Click for larger picture.

Categories: Humor. Tags: , .

Sept. 19th – International Talk Like A Pirate Day

Posted by Void on 09/18/2006

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html
Arrrrgh! Avast, ye bilge rats, I’m already shipshape. Call me Captain Bess Flint, me hearties!

Additionally, I draw your attention to the Pirate Name site:
http://www.piratequiz.com/

My pirate name is:

Captain Bess Flint

Jolly Roger

Even though there’s no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you’re the one in charge. Like the rock flint, you’re hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you’re easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Categories: Humor. Tags: , .

A Bear of Very Little Brain

Posted by Void on 09/12/2006

“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain and you think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”
– AA Milne, “The House at Pooh Corner”

Categories: Books. Tags: , , .

dDaylight/dt

Posted by Void on 09/04/2006

The Autumnal equinox is in a couple of weeks, and during this time the days are getting shorter at the fastest rate they will all year, with the biggest change right on the day of the equinox. This graph is intended to compare the rate of change of the number of hours of daylight at two times during the year. At the Summer Solstice, light blue, there are a few days when the length of the daylight changes very little. But at the Autumnal Equinox, shown in dark green, the slope is very steep, showing that the amount of sunlight we get in a day is falling quickly. This has great implications for anyone with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).
Graph of the length of days
I used Juergen Giesen’s Daylight Applet to generate the numbers and graphed them in Excel.

Update 10/28/2006:
Juergen has since added a graphing function to his Daylight Applet. Do go take a look at it.
Thanks to Saheli Datta for adding a blue dimension to the topic.

Categories: Science. Tags: , .

Old Folkies

Posted by Void on 08/20/2006

Greetings from the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
I picked Sunday this year because the lineup was lean on self-involved whiners errrrr hell, I’d better come up with another name for it. But if you’re my age you remember when the best folk music had a political edge or perhaps some biting social commentary. You didn’t hear Phil Ochs making a career of singing about his personal problems, did you?
Anyway, I came today because there was a lot of blues in the lineup. David Bromberg, Shemekia Copeland. The folk fest audience is pretty responsive so Shemekia had us clapping and singing along.
This year they’ve been showing videos of past performances between sets. I had actually seen a few of the original shows which seemed strange until I realized that this is the 20th or 21st of these I’ve come to.
The final set is Hot Tuna. I’ll update when I get home.

Categories: Media, Music. Tags: , , , , , , , .

Blogthings: What English Speaking Country Do You Belong In?

Posted by Void on 08/11/2006

 

You Belong in the UK


Blimey!
A little proper, a little saucy.
You’re so witty and charming…
No one notices your curry breath
Categories: Humor.

Your Cheatin’ Heart?

Posted by Void on 08/10/2006

Cheating Accusations in Mental Sports, Too – New York Times

For some reason it never occurred to me that one might wish to cheat at chess. Eugene Varshavsky sent the NY Times article along to me and as soon as I run into him again I’m going to ask what the heck took 45 minutes in a men’s room stall to uhhhh hide. I’m not going to ask where he hid it.

Do you ever stop and look at the devices you use every day and think, “The Future is here, and I’m still wearing denim?” I do all the time.

The point being that with everything having integrated cameras and being able to connect to everything else via Bluetooth, it’s only going to get harder to keep chess players from cheating. And if the chess club is cheating, what do you think metal shop is getting into?

Categories: Ethics, Philosophy & psychology. Tags: , , , , , .

Windows Vista – Got Crack?

Posted by Void on 08/10/2006

Hacker publicly cracks Windows Vista – vnunet.com

For those of you who aren’t aware that the long-awaited Microsoft “Longhorn” OS has been released for Beta testing under the new name “Vista”… well, they have. Add more memory, clear 40G in your harddrive to run a virtual machine, and buy a new video card if you want to check it out.

The shoemaker’s children go unshod, of course: I downloaded Vista and Office 2007 weeks ago, bought a new harddrive in order to create a dual-boot system, then moved on to other things.

“The fact that this mechanism was bypassed doesn’t mean Vista is insecure. It just means it’s just not as secure as advertised.”
— Joanna Rutkowska

Rutkowska is a security researcher with coseinc. She demonstrated a way to load unsigned drivers into Windows Vista at the Black Hat security conference.

Categories: Comp Sci, Ethics, Philosophy & psychology. Tags: , , , , .

Blogthings – What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Posted by Void on 08/01/2006

Your Linguistic Profile:
40% General American English
30% Yankee
20% Dixie
0% Midwestern
0% Upper Midwestern
Categories: Humor. Tags: , .

Dude, You Got A Dolt

Posted by Void on 07/31/2006

Dell bollocksed up my account information and I’ve been trying for days to get them to correct it. They are very polite, but completely ineffectual.

This latest in a string of ineffectual support people yelled a fax number at me in big red letters. I have no idea what I’m supposed to fax. I printed out the email and faxed that. Hmmm.

—– Original Message —–
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 11:02 AM
Subject: Customer account maintenance request xxxxxxx received 7/27/2006 7:56:00 AM

We were unable to process your request.
For business name and/or address changes we need the e-mail directly from the customer with the BUSINESS NAME in the address.
Please fax to 1-800-727-4000

Thank you,
Customer Account Maintenance (CAM)
DeLL,Inc
ac

 

There is no business name.  I am not a business.  I am a person.  I cannot imagine what part of “Please correct my billing address” you are finding so
difficult.
 
I am so amazingly disgusted with the level of support I am receiving from you people that I am going to send the computer back.  I’m going to buy a Gateway or an eMachines or build something myself.  I don’t care which.
Please give me an RMA number.  I want to send the computer back to you tonight so that I can order a replacement immediately.  I have work to do and I don’t have time for this.
 
 
Leslie
Categories: Humor.
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