July 2004
Schematic Wall Art!
Check out my new wall art!
The first item is a GIANT printout of the schematic of the logic board circuitry of the Pacman arcade game by Midway.
The next is a slightly smaller and side by side printout of the two main PCB’s for the Galaga. The one on the left is the CPU card and the one on the right is the video card:
I think someone could make a living off producing these ;)
CherryPy sounds neat (and tasty)
CherryPy
One of the main characteristics of CherryPy is that it works like a compiler: You write source files, compile them with CherryPy and CherryPy generates an executable containing everything to run the web site (including an HTTP server).
This results in a very fast website that can be easily deployed (just by copying one file), either on its own or behind another webserver like Apache....
Amazed!
Me and Jacqui are absolutely thrilled that our poll has recieved over 120 votes in its first two days of operation! I never had any idea that I could get that many people to the site for a simple poll :)
Tonight we sold our 11th T-shirt (our first Large size) and I’m pretty thrilled because we’re almost half-way to the point where we break even on the shirts. The sales are coming pretty...
Spice
Jacqui and Will Read talk about what spice they are.
I am saffron!
Though it is the most expensive spice in the world, saffron has also been used as a fabric dye. Traditionally, clothes colored by this particularly luminous dye were worn by the noble classes, giving the plant a ritualized caste significance.
Spain and India are major producers of saffron. Saffron owes its fantastic price to...
New Shirt Voting is Open at Test Tube T-Shirts
We’ve received a lot of neat submissions for our next shirt but we’re having a hard time trying to decide which shirt to produce next! Due to this dillema I’ve created a neat little voting form that will let our patrons vote on which T-shirt idea they like the most!
Check out the ideas, and be forewarned that there might be some adult themes (no sex/nudity) and foul language on these shirts. ...
I forgot what I was going to post
Don’t you hate it when that happens? :)
Edit: I remember now! I present you with the voodie. My vest hoodie! Its my old maroon hoodie but I finally got fed up with the shredded sleeves and cut them off ;D It’ll last a good 5 more years now !!
Wow...just .... wow
Adam was first tipped off about the investigation when the FBI raided his and his fiancee’s apartment in May of 2002 and seized thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment. Adam later received a copy of the affidavit filed in support of the search warrant, and was shocked to discover that this document, prepared by the FBI, contained significant amounts of erroneous and misleading...
Comments were broken, sorry!
Oops. I upgraded to MT 3.01D and it’s fixed all of that ;) The “remember me” cookies should also be working.
Lack of posts this weekend
Sorry about the missing posts from this weekend, we’ve had our friends Greg and Will Smith down for the weekend and we’ve been having a lot of fun.
Jacqui has also been having a lot of back pain and she had to call into work on Friday to go see someone about it. I took off Friday as well so that I could drive her here and there and tend to her.
We spent some of the day on Friday preparing...
The Website, its a changin!
yes, the website is getting a new look.
yes, some of the stuff isn’t done yet. I’m a lazy busy guy ;)
More great places we've eaten
Shanghai Mama’s
The Melting Pot
The Temple
Hooter’s (not impressed. The women in Kentucky must be subpar)
gg pulpfiction lite 1.0.1
I was a bit shy about my previous bad experiences, but this isn’t comforting! I’m willing to delete my db and prefs and try again though ;)
I guess I’ll be waiting for the next version to check this one out. I deleted the pulpfiction prefs, deleted the PF db.
I then exported my subscriptions from NetNewsWire and tried to import this OPML file into PulpFiction. I selected all the feeds...
New Laptop
Looks a lot like the old one, doesn’t it? Well its faster (by quite a bit), has more memory, a slot loading DVD/Combo drive as well as a 802.11g Airport card (56Mbit) and integrated bluetooth!
Me on the big screen
I was the focus of an iSight demo during tonight’s meeting of PUMUG back at Purdue:
Kinda scary huh?
Brent Spiner to star on Enterprise
Spiner to guest on ‘Enterprise’
Spiner, who played Data on the syndicated “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and in several “Star Trek” features, has been tapped to do three episodes of UPN’s “Enterprise,” playing the great-great-grandfather of Dr. Noonien Soong, the creator of Data.
What purpose the great-great-grandfather of Dr. Noonien Soong...
Excitement at work
I came back from Lunch today (I spent it at home) to find a whole mob of people from the building I work in out in the street. Turns out there was some smoke in the building.
It also turns out it happened somewhere on our floor! They think it was a transformer that just got too hot and started smoking, and then set off our alarm which set off the building’s alarm.
The alamr on our floor...
Taiwan -> Cincinnati
Hmmm what could be coming from Taiwan to Cincinnati… hmmmm
Does anyone want to buy a slightly used, and abused iBook G3 900? :)
Speaking of Google Puzzles
I mentioned a similar puzzle that google has poised in the form of a roadside advertisement. The board says:
{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits e}.com
The first step to sovling this part of the problem is to obtain a list of prime numbers and some digits of e. You can obtain digits of e almost trivially on the Internet using Google. Obtaining a list of ten digit prime numbers...
Leonard makes the google puzzles too difficult
combinatorics and permutations
What? I solved this problem a week or two ago when I read about it in a thread on SomethingAwful’s forums. Click the link to see my solution (Python script).
Click here to see my solution
Took about 5 minutes. No books, no looking anything up. Just plain old simple problem solving and a little python. My brute force method takes a little under 2 minutes to...
9/11 Comissions Hearing a Free Download at iTunes...
This is amazingly cool. Apple’s iTMS is offering free audio downloads of the 9/11 Comissions Hearings via iTunes.
Link via MacMinute
Elementary, my dear ... coaster
Link via Gizmodo
New iPod is Coming
Me and Jacqui believe that this incarnation of the iPod may be the perfect iPod. The position of the controls on our current 3G iPods is subpar to say the least. So of course we love how the new iPod’s controls are basically a direct ripoff of the iPod mini.
So I guess the only question is who wants to buy a slightly used 3G 15GB iPod? :)
Dive into Python Paperback
It would appear that Mark Pilgrim has released his awesome Python tutorial as a real book
Link via DiveintoMark
Let the shipping commence!
We’ve had a total 6 orders come in since Friday evening! Woop!
My daily journey!
Its about 4 blocks. It looks a lot further than it really is on this map:
CNN Providers for Effnews
Here’s an Effnews provider module I wrote for CNN headlines.
cnn.provider
Effnews and Fedex Feeds
I’ve been looking around for a decent feedreader for Windows that doesn’t rely on .NET so that I can use it at work to keep up on a few feeds. I’ve not really found one that even comes close to the news reader I use at home, NetNewsWire
So I used “FeedReader” for a while but its got some issues still. I even played around with a few web enabled aggregators, but it just doesn’t seem right for...
Do you like t-shirts?
Hey you! Yeah, you!
You like t-shirts, kid? Snarky t-shirts? Well you’re in luck!
(Warning T-Shirt Might* Contain Sexual Innuendo!)
* - Definately contains
Me and Jacqui have seen some demand for a certain t-shirt she owns so we ponied up some cash, bought some shirts, got a site going and we’re making these cool t-shirts available to the public !
What’s more, if this...
What's going on in downtown Cincinnati today?
Seems that the entire downtown of Cincinnat was shut down around 5pm today due to a “sucpicious suitcase” being found in the elevator of the Hilton hotel.
On my walk home I counted at least 3 ambulences, 2 or 3 firetrucks, at least 6 to 12 police cars and there were uniformed police teams at just about every corner. A whole city block was courdened off as well as about 3 or 4 main city streets...
Curious about Firefox?
Curious about leaving IE for an “alernative” browser? There are some awesome resources out there that make switching from your old browser to firefox a breeze.
I saw this first item in a blog post on Asa’s website.
Switch to Firefox is a site based loosly about the extremely successful Switch campaign that Apple ran a while back. It is a really good guide that answers all your questions...
Are you still using Internet Explorer??
WARNING: Extreme geekery ahead!
You’ve heard of the recent flaws in the browser that didn’t really get fixed ? Right?
You also heard about how the US Govenment recently warned that PC users should avoid using Internet Explorer to surf the web? Right?
They said:
The group warned of “a number” of “significant” vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model,...
New stuff to make me more productive
I hope at least! :)
Yep, that’s an iCurve# and an Apple Pro Keyboard
Google posts a fun puzzle on a billboard to...
If you read a billboard that read:
{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits e}.com
Would you be able to get from there to a secret webpage with an email link to send your resume right to the front of the line with Google HR?
The solution is pretty simple (I found the answer, made it to the secret page, and sent my solution to google, so it can’t be that hard)
All you need is...
T-Mobile #1 in Customer Service!
J.D. Powers and Associates Ranks T-Mobile’s CSRs the BEST in the Industry!
The word is out! T-Mobile has been named the “Highest Ranked Wireless Customer Service Provider” in the most recent J.D. Powers and Associates study, released on Thursday, July 8, 2004.
T-Mobile Press Release
Cincinnati Blogs
Since coming to Cincinnati I’ve been looking around to see if I could find some local bloggers. I’ve found two so far and oddly they both seem to be pretty politically charged as well as pretty divergant in their views!
Cincinnati Blog (left of center, annoyed with the right-wing conservatives who run the local media)
RobBernard.com (Unemployed Computer Programmers for Bush) ;)
Weekend Update
I got let off from work early on Friday (around 3:30) which was really cool. Friday we ordered some Pizza and hung out and caught up on our TV viewing for the week!
On saturday we got up and went to the store to get some Pop and supplies for the Arstechnica meetup later that day. We came back and fried up all 104 potstickers. That didn’t go so well because a lot of our potstickers had become...
A Cookbook is a Cookbook is a Cookbook... right?
Remember how I ordered those programming books from the Amazon marketplace? One of the books I ordered was the Python Cookbook which basically has a whole bunch of practical approaches to common and not-so-common problems (solutions written in Python of course).
Well I got that book and the Advanced PHP book today. When I opened the book that was supposed to have the Python Cookbook inside,...
Potstickers ahoy!
So like I mentioned the other day, me and Jacqui are heading up to Indianapolis to have a fourth of July cookout with our good friends from the ArsTechnica internet forums. We’re in charge of bringing the non-alcoholic beverages, but we thought we’d bring something a bit more tasty!
Me and Jacqui spent an hour or two last night making 104 potstickers! Now, maybe you don’t know what a...
That wacky Saddam!
you, me, it’s time to PARTY
this whole trial is POPPYCOCK!
Cam Dump!
Its officially July, and that means hot weather, fireworks, and hot weather!
I’ve got a few pics off my phone for everyone. First here’s a self-portrait I took earlier this week while walking home:
And for your geeky perusal, here are some shots of my desk-area:
That’s that! The weekend can’t get here fast enough! Me and Jacqui are heading up to Indianapolis to spend...