the art of writing is discovering what you believe
I found a roll of undeveloped film a few months back. This, along with a bunch of others of my son and heir at the same drooly age, was what I found.
Seemed a good image to play with Flickr’s new geo-tagging feature. I actually know where it was taken: in the front room of the house located on the map.
[T]he Internet is already running a surplus on uninformed debate.
— Jordan K. Hubbard
I am conducting an experiment to see what numbers I will get if I ask a bunch of people to pick a random number between 1 and 100. It was important to me that the page be very simple so as not to influence the numbers people entered.
My guess is that there will be preference towards certain numbers over others. Whenever I try to think of a random number, I tend to lean towards 7’s. I decided to also add those extra questions so that I’ll be able to see if different patterns arise in, for example, males and females. Or maybe math-savvy people will generate less random numbers than non-math people because they think too hard about it. Or then again, it may spread evenly across the board, providing the most boring results possible.
Once I have a good number of submissions (I would like hundreds of thousands, but I don’t think I’ll get that lucky) I will gather the findings and publish them on this page. So check back here later!
I used my age.
I got a Canon PIXMA MP150 a week or so back. The seller somehow left out the power cord (one of those ones that ends in a 2 socket plug like an infinity symbol). So I made the acquaintance of Computer System Recycling on Aurora and fished one out of a bin for $2.50. Not the last time I’ll go there.
To test it, I scanned in this old clipping. It’s fast and seems to do a very nice job.
We’re supposed to be fighting Islamic terrorism, and the mindset it grows out of, without speaking or understanding other languages? This works how, exactly?
The only thing they understand is force, from what I gather, so why learn anything like a language? Next thing, we’ll have troops learning folk dances and that’s not too far from community theater.
You see any action items in there?
Crooked Timber » » PowerPoint Corrupts the Point Absolutely:
I see “Military Victory Achieved” in the leftmost third: since I don’t think we’re there yet, looks like a lot of work yet to be done.
from the comments: Anyone who has been in business for any length of time knows only too well that the whole point of PowerPoint presentations is to show commitment to the objective without ever making concrete recommendations for which one might be held responsible at a later date should they fail.
True enough: my most pungent experience with PowerPoint was working for a senior executive who had never met a problem he couldn’t restate as a PowerPoint visual, while getting no closer to a solution. He even used the Rumsfeldism “unk unks” for the unknowns that we don’t know that we don’t know.
We plainly haven’t learned from the Challenger and Columbia disasters, both of which occurred as a result of Powerpoint’s ability to abstract away facts, the basis for decisions.
It seems, though, that it’s his saying “tubes” and “a series of tubes” that’s provoking most of the derision. But network nerds the world over regularly refer to the availability of bandwidth in terms of fat or narrow pipes, which is essentially the same imagery. Odd.
To which I reply:
Imagery is fine but the esteemed senator seemed to really believe that the internet(s) is a modern-day pneumatic tube system, where there are real blockages and other artifacts of the physical world. The idea of packet switching and the reliability that is at the heart of the internet’s core protocols seem not to be understood. The pipes used by net nerds are metaphorical, yes, but I think most of them understand that.
I can accept that some of these people are out of their depth with anything more complex than a TV remote, but surely they can be briefed a little more completely/cluefully?
and
What’s somewhat ironic about this is that the canonical books on TCP/IP internetworking are known as “the Stevens books”: their author was “W. Richard Stevens.” Shame Ted’s staff didn’t know that.
One of the best things about the Holga is that it is the perfect camera from the novice camera hacker. There’s lots of room for improvement and it’s all held together with only five screws.
as easy as it sounds . . .
I didn’t do everything he recommends — I haven’t noticed any light leaks either through the frame counter or inside the body (does this mean my Holga is defective?) so I skipped the flocking step — but the disassembly and reassembly were easy enough.
Interesting that the fine craftsmen at the Holga works keep making incremental improvements to the little gem. Mine has foam inserts for better film tension and a tripod mount, two of the more popular after-market fixes. The meaningless aperture setting is a tough one to understand, but easy remedied. Now, of course, I may find myself needing faster film. C’est la vie.
The new aperture, if you use a 1/8 drill bit, works out to f/16 (fl/a where fl (focal length) = 2 and a (aperture = .125)). Sunny-16 exposures anyone? Looks like 100 speed film is the way to go, after all.
The only think I need to do is add a cable release fitting and make a pinhole insert, since the lens is now easily — too easily — removable.
Some more tips here. Not sure how he gets the aperture numbers he gets. But he offers some more thoughtful, less judgmental tips on fixing up the Best $20 Camera You’ll Ever Own.
AOJ Outdoors Tip – Eliminate Yellow Jackets With This Non-Toxic Homemade Yellow Jacket Trap!:
How It Works: The yellow jackets love fish and will begin to cut off small pieces to take back to the nest. In their “excitement” of buzzing around the bait a few will occasionally hit the water. The soap in the water breaks the surface tension of the waterproof coating on the yellow jacket and it instantly sinks in the water and drowns in a few seconds. Some yellow jackets will successfully haul a piece of meat back to the nest and tell all the other gatherers in the nest where this great food source is. Soon all the wasps from the nest will be working on this fish and over a period of time, all will eventually make mistakes and either fall off the fish and into the water or bump other wasps flying around and knock themselves in the drink, then its curtains for them too. It only takes a day or two to wipe out nearly every yellow jacket in your area.
Put the trap on a table or other high area outside so that kids and pets will not be able to get close to it. A piece of fish with vertical sides works best for having the insects fall off easier.
I knew or suspected yellow jackets liked fish but never thought of something like this.
To borrow a nugget Brad Delong has written repeatedly, we’ll stop referring to this administration as “Orwellian” when they stop using 1984 as an operations manual.
USATODAY.com – NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls:
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
But that means they’re sampling small sets, right? This isn’t a dragnet, is it?
USATODAY.com – Questions and answers about the NSA phone record collection program:
Q: Does the NSA’s domestic program mean that my calling records have been secretly collected?
A: In all likelihood, yes. The NSA collected the records of billions of domestic calls. Those include calls from home phones and wireless phones.
On a completely unrelated note, I got my passport photos made today and expect to have my renewal off in tomorrow’s mail.
