Happy Pi Day! · 14 March 07
It is March 14th.
You know what that means!
I gotta get me some pie!
Hurrah!
Related post:
[ File under: Geek & News ]
Shutdown Day · 24 February 07
It is obvious that people would find life extremely difficult without computers, maybe even impossible. If they disappeared for just one day, would we be able to cope?
Be a part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the internet. The idea behind the experiment is to find out how many people can go without a computer for one whole day, and what will happen if we all participate!
Shutdown your computer on this day and find out! Can you survive for 24 hours without your computer?
Luckily March 24th is a Saturday as most of us would likely get fired if we refused to turn our computers on at work! That being said, it is a Saturday right now and I am at work… hrm… this may be harder than I thought.
Get all the info at www.shutdownday.org.
[ File under: Geek & News ]
iTunes vs. Me · 24 January 07
From Monday’s New York Times:
Last year, as Ry Cooder worked on “My Name Is Buddy,” an oddball folk and blues concept album about a red cat that travels through a mythic American landscape, he ran into familiar problems. When he subjected the recording to his usual test — playback in his Toyota, on the factory-installed stereo — the result wasn’t to his liking. “It started to sound processed,” he said. “We were losing the feeling of the thing, and this is not music that can withstand this.”
Then Mr. Cooder noticed something else: When he burned a copy of the album using Apple’s iTunes software, it sounded fine. He didn’t know why until one of his younger engineers told him that the default settings on iTunes apply a “sound enhancer.” (It’s in the preferences menu, under “playback.”) Usually, that feature sweetens the sound of digital music files, but Mr. Cooder so liked its effect on his studio recordings that he used it to master — that is, make the final sound mixes — his album. “We didn’t do anything else to it,” he said.
Ah hell… Well, there goes that portion on my income. Who will hire me to make their album sound better when Steve Jobs does it for free? Thanks Steve. First you make the iPhone really expensive and not available in Cananda until 2008, now you do this? Sigh… why do you hate me Steve? Why?
[ File under: Geek & Irritants ]
iPhone in iCdn · 11 January 07
Being the total nerd that I am, I emailed Rogers Canada yesterday to find out when (if ever) the Apple iPhone would be released in Canada. This is the response I received:
In your recent email you have informed us that you would like to know when the Apple iPhone will be available on Rogers Wireless.
We appreciate your interest in Rogers. At Rogers Wireless we are committed to delivering the highest standards of service and innovation to our subscribers. We regret however, that we are unable at this time to forecast when the Apple iPhone may be available for purchase at www.rogers.com or from authorized Rogers Wireless dealers. We recommend visiting www.rogers.com on a regular basis to keep up-to-date on the latest products and services.
It is a sad email because they do not have a date but it is also a happy email because they acknowledge that the iPhone may be available for purchase sometime in the future. Sigh… and Hurrah!
[ File under: Geek & News ]
Percy Lebaron Spencer · 7 January 07
Shortly after the end of World War II, Percy Spencer, already known as an electronics genius and war hero, was touring the Raytheon Company where he stopped momentarily in front of a magnetron, (the power tube that drives a radar set). Feeling a strange sensation, Spencer noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket had begun to melt.
Following this realization, Spencer (who obtained 120 patents in his lifetime) did what any good inventor would – he brought in some popcorn. Holding the bag of corn next to the magnetron, Spencer watched as the kernels exploded into puffy white morsels.
In October 1945 Raytheon filed a patent for Spencer’s microwave cooking process and in 1947, the company built the first microwave oven, the Radarange. It weighed a hefty 750 lbs and stood 5’ 6” tall.
Culinary experts quickly noticed the oven’s shortcomings – meat refused to brown and french fries turned white and limp. It took decades for the microwave oven to be refined to a point where it was useful to the average consumer. Today, Percy Spencer’s radar boxes melt chocolate and pop popcorn in millions of homes around the world… pass the pizza pops!
[ File under: Geek & News ]
Comments · 18 December 06
On Friday I received an email from my Unnamed Coworker saying that she tried to leave a comment on my most recent blog post and she got this: 403 Forbidden – your_ip_is_blacklisted_by bl.spamcop.net, list.dsbl.org, sbl.spamhaus.org.
That was upsetting to me so I thought I would check into it. Lucky that I did because right there on the Textpattern help page there was an answer.
A bug in Textpattern 4.0.4 can lead to false positives on comment spam blacklist checks in some circumstances. The problem only affects servers and hosting companies that use a wildcard DNS record for the server hostname itself.
Basically I had to add a dot to the end of every blacklist.
The trailing dot is important – it stops the wildcard DNS record from interfering with a negative lookup.
Weird… but easy to fix and now everyone can feel free to comment away without the fear of being accused of being a (*gasp*) spammer!
[ File under: Geek & Me ]
Z-list blogger love · 17 December 06
Getting a “tag your it!” from a fellow designer blogger aialone, I feel compelled to join in! Basically the idea is: Mack over at Viral Garden has started a little pyramid scheme to try and disrupt the technorati rankings. He thinks “the Z-list bloggers need more love” and yes we all do!
The instructions are as follows:
What YOU can do is simply create a new post on your blog, but CUT AND PASTE the list I have below, and then ADD any blogs you feel aren’t getting their due either. It can be 1 blog, or a hundred (or none if you simply want to repost the same list), but the idea is, find those great blogs that, for whatever reason, you feel aren’t getting their due, link-wise.
Then after you leave your post, the next blogger will do the same thing, cut and paste YOUR list, and add THEIR blogs to the list, then repost it. Add the same instructions in your post that the next blogger should cut and paste YOUR list, and add any blogs they feel should be on it to THEIR list. The list will get increasingly long, and all the blogs will get a sort of reverse ‘pyramid-affect’ of link-love.
Here is the original list with a few of my own additions!
daveb, Paul Bellows, Josh Loewen, make a sad face, Design Sojourn, Nick Rice, Uniquely the Epitome, The Viral Garden, Shotgun Marketing Blog, BrandSizzle, bizsolutionsplus, Customers Rock!, Being Peter Kim, Presentation Zen, Dmitry Linkov, John Wagner, Small Surfaces, Africa Unchained, Perspective, gDiapers, BubbleDesign, Accure’s Carpark, Uzyn, Sparklette, Cuteable, Design Milk, Design Asides, Fugly Designs, Geekette, Gem Sty, i-Eye, Bjorn Lee, IDAsia.org, Niblettes, Pluit Solutions, reBang, sgEntrepreneurs, Signs and Wonders, Wifi Cat, Technogad, The Foo Logs, Aen Direct, reBang.
Share the love everyone!
[ File under: Geek & Me ]
Treo oh oh · 14 December 06
So, I am coming to think that my poor old Treo 650 has been dropped a few too many times (is 15 times too many?). Pieces have shot off in many directions and no amount of glue seems to be helping for more than a day or so. It seems to stay alive long enough to make short calls, if I remove the battery for 30 minutes at a time a couple times a day… but that is getting old. Very old.
So, I am in the market for a new cell phone and I am hoping some of my loyal readers (and perhaps some of my not so loyal readers) will be willing to endow me with their cell phone wisdom. Does anyone have a phone they love, hate, feel proud to own, want to throw off the highlevel (a big bridge in Edmonton that separates the north from the south side)? Share with me what you know… please!
[ File under: Geek & Me ]
MySpace useful after all · 13 December 06
Subject: Running from the cops
Mood: Scared
Well, I’m at the library again, hope no one recognizes me… Wait! The cops! WHAT? How did they find me?
PHILADELPHIA – A man who escaped from a Georgia jail over the summer was captured thanks to the Internet and a public computer.
Darren Bates, 35, was arrested in Philadelphia after police learned that he regularly checked his Myspace account at a public library there, said Capt. Chris Spires of the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Department.
Spires said Bates was surprised when officers arrested him at Free Library of Philadelphia’s main branch Thursday morning. “It’s amazing to us the number of people, regardless of their status as far as being wanted, that do get on computers and do use their real names or use aliases that are well known, and they can be tracked that way,” Massee said.
He’s 35, on the run from the law, and spending his free time on MySpace? One would think after escaping from prison he would have tried to disappear… but why do that when you can read sixteen year old emo kids’ blogs? This guy deserves to be thrown back in jail, just on principle.
[ File under: Geek & News ]
I <s>heart</s> Nintendo · 23 November 06
There is a rumor going around that the infrared Wiimote interferes with pacemakers. Apparently signs were posted at the Nintendo World event in Japan that warned folks with pacemakers to stay back. I have googled my ass off and have not been able to confirm this rumor further than with this (crappy) photo of a warning from the Nintendo Wii packaging. It seems to read “Do not operate the Wii console or remote within 9 inches of a pacemaker.” 9 inches… that’s only 22.86 centimeters! That would make it rather difficult to play! I guess this is one more good reason to stay healthy and not need a pacemaker!
[ File under: Geek & Health ]