A geek in the hills

New blog

2008-12-09T10:09:00.001-05:00

I am now going to be doing my blogging over at http://jeremymikkola.wordpress.com/
See you there.

Dried flowers

2008-12-08T09:26:00.003-05:00

Dried flowers
View Large On Black
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Green or blue?

2008-12-07T10:19:00.002-05:00

Green or blue?
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Christmas lights

2008-12-05T20:29:00.002-05:00

Christmas lights
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Sixth Photo Meme

2008-12-04T01:12:00.004-05:00

Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

“It works like this: if you use Flickr, go to the sixth page of your photostream and pick the sixth picture there, then post it to your blog.”

Cranberry sauce

2008-12-02T09:30:00.002-05:00

Cranberry sauce
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Icy porch

2008-12-01T22:28:00.003-05:00

Icy porch
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

I had to walk very carefully to get this shot (-:

Ice on the table

2008-11-30T12:30:00.002-05:00

.
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Christmas lights

2008-11-29T10:05:00.001-05:00

Christmas lights
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

O HAI

2008-11-28T17:39:00.002-05:00

O HAI
Originally uploaded by SilenceofnightI just went to flickr and found this.

Thanksgiving table

2008-11-28T11:35:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving table
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Dry flowers

2008-11-27T13:22:00.001-05:00

Dry flowers
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Leaf

2008-11-25T10:08:00.001-05:00

Leaf
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

CBTS

2008-11-22T20:39:00.001-05:00

CBTS
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Fall today

2008-11-13T19:18:00.003-05:00

Fall today
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Big dipper

2008-11-07T23:33:00.001-05:00

Big dipper
Originally uploaded by SilenceofnightView the flickr page to see the stars as tagged by astrometry.net

this place that I know

2008-11-05T20:57:00.001-05:00

this place that I know
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Fall

2008-10-11T22:38:00.001-04:00

Fall
Originally uploaded by Silenceofnight

Tuesday

2008-08-31T18:23:00.003-04:00

I just thought that I would share a small piece of internet goodness that I found. It's a nice little webcomic called Tuesday. It's just an archive of a few comics; it wasn't drawn for very long, but they're a very pleasant read.

Project euler

2008-06-22T20:23:00.002-04:00

Lately I have been trying some of the problems over on Project Euler. It's a list of interesting programming challenges where the (correct) answer is a number. If you input the right number, it will mark down for you that you have solved that one. So far I've only done 11 out of the 199. If you want to try some, I would recommend that you use python as your programming language. It's very good at these sorts of things.

Sketchup + Kerkythea

2008-05-11T21:55:00.005-04:00

Using kerkythea, I made some renderings of some sketchup models. The links are to the 3d warehouse pages where I got the models from.
Shelby Cobra KC 427 Concept

And this

Spring is here (photo)

2008-03-18T22:09:00.001-04:00

The other day I was taking a walk and saw this tree bud blooming, so I took a few pictures of it. Here's the best one:

Knex wind turbine

2008-03-08T10:39:00.002-05:00

The other day I built this small wind turbine out of knex:

It's just a basic VAWT (vertical axis wind turbine). I'm not sure if this qualifies as a savonius turbine or not.

Rogue Spy Satellite Blast

2008-02-22T09:26:00.001-05:00

Awesome.

New blog: Go Make

2008-02-18T21:33:00.002-05:00

I just created a new blog called Go Make. Over there I'll be gathering projects that I find scattered about the web and showing them to you. Or at least linking to them, which is just as good.

Google analytics on this blog

2008-02-16T12:10:00.004-05:00

I use Google analytics on this blog. When I checked the stats the other day, I found something interesting. People seem very interested in the iTunes license agreement font. Whats with that?

It's my most popular post! (as you can see, this blog does not have a large audience)

Selection sort in python

2008-01-22T12:58:00.000-05:00

I'm learning python, so I decided to write selection sort in it. I converted the CPP code from 24btes.com. Here's the code (the array at the beginning contains the numbers that will be sorted):


a = [90, 96, 74, 10, 44, 53, 61, 77, 37, 52, 25, 60, 9, 14, 20, 93, 5, 59, 29, 86, 6, 64, 4, 38, 51, 24, 11, 16, 85, 69, 34, 62, 50, 87, 55, 92, 98, 47, 46, 91, 57, 36, 23, 97, 3, 48, 83, 99, 12, 31, 2, 76, 28, 27, 39, 68, 49, 58, 95, 21, 17, 79, 71, 45, 65, 70, 33, 56, 43, 35, 81, 75, 72, 26, 19, 13, 30, 22, 1, 15, 63, 18, 8, 73, 66, 67, 54, 100, 40, 89, 78, 7, 42, 32, 84, 88, 94, 80, 82, 41]

def selSort (array):
    i = 0
    listLen = len(array)
    while i < (listLen - 1):
        minat = i
        minval= array[i]

        j = i + 1
        while j < listLen:
            if minval> array[j]:
                minat = j
                minval= array[j]
            j = j + 1

        temp = array[i]
        array[i] = array[minat]
        array[minat] = temp
        i = i + 1
        
    print array
    print listLen


selSort (a)

"Interesting" Quicktime + iTunes license agreement

2008-01-15T22:14:00.000-05:00

I was just updating Itunes and Quicktime on my computer, and I got the following license agreement:

What's up with that, eh? I think that it is in english, but with that font how can you be sure? I would be interesting to know exactly how the bug worked that caused this.

Macworld brings down large websites

2008-01-15T12:30:00.000-05:00

At the time of writing, engadget and twitter, among others, are down. The outages are the result of people trying to view updates of whats going on at the 2008 macworld keynote. No other event brings down sites on such a large scale.

Interesting video about global warming

2008-01-10T15:34:00.000-05:00

Peer pressure

2007-12-14T20:44:00.000-05:00

I was surfing the web and found something I thought was funny:
Q - Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
A - Because it was dead.
Q - Why did the second monkey fall out of the tree?
A - Because it was tied to the first monkey.
Q - Why did the third monkey fall out of the tree?
A - Peer pressure.
(I found it here)

I don't know; maybe this is less funny if you are fully awake.

New flickr feature

2007-12-13T14:22:00.001-05:00

I just noticed a small new feature on flickr: photo stats.

It requires a pro account to use (which I don't have) so I can see exactly what it does.

My favorite XKCD comics

2007-12-13T11:25:00.000-05:00

After watching the video of Randall Munroe (the creator of XKCD) give a speech at Google, I thought that I would post my favorite XKCD comics.

Top 10 songs of 2007

2007-12-12T10:06:00.000-05:00

Jeph Jacques of questionablecontent.net just released his list of his top 10 songs of 2007.

Another picture of the snow day

2007-12-07T12:32:00.000-05:00

So this blog is slowly becoming a photography blog. Oh well, I like photography blogs. Anyway, here's the picture:

Snow day

2007-12-06T14:48:00.000-05:00

It snowed here yesterday (for the first time this winter), so I went out with my camera and took some picture. Here's one:

A note on taking picture of snow: set the exposure compensation to +1 ev or else the picture will be much too dark (the white of all the snow confuses the camera).

HDR of a tree

2007-11-15T13:37:00.000-05:00

Here's an HDR I took the other day:

This was made in Qtpfsgui.

Qtpfsgui

2007-11-13T21:41:00.000-05:00

Qtpfsgui looks like a bunch of random letters, but it's actually the name of a free HDR creation program. I just found out about it today as I was reading the latest popular science magazine. Here's a sample of what can be made with it. For more HDRs made with Qtpfsgui, you can go over to the flickr group.

2 billion photos

2007-11-13T21:39:00.000-05:00

Congrats to flickr on their 2,000,000,000th photo!

DHTML image page

2007-11-13T15:27:00.000-05:00

After my last post I made a DHTML page that switches between the two images (from the last post) depending on where the mouse is. It works by putting the two images on top of each other, and switching the order.

Picture of pencils

2007-11-12T12:57:00.000-05:00

This is an image I took the other day of some color pencils I had lying around.
I started with the picture on the left (see below), and edited it to what you see above. How I made the change is as follows:
I duplicated the image layer, and set layer mode to value (that way the color stays the same, just the luminosity is affected). Then I increased the contrast of the new layer with the levels tool, and merged the layer down. Then I lowered the saturation, and duplicated the layer (I now have two layers). On the new layer, I did a 5PX gaussian blur, set the layer mode to overlay, set the opacity to 20%, and did a merge down. Finnaly that I applied an unsharpen mask with a radius of 5PX.
(If you click on the image you can more clearly see the difference between the two)

What is this?

2007-09-25T10:28:00.000-04:00

I took this picture the other day. Try to guess what this is:

Give up? Select --> A compact florecent blub <-- this text

Must watch video: Internet people

2007-09-24T23:19:00.000-04:00

Sorry, but this video was just too good to pass up posting. The sad thing it, I've seen most of the videos it makes reference to.

Internet People - Watch more free videos

Interesting Links Roundup 1

2007-09-24T22:59:00.000-04:00

This is the first installment of Interesting Links Roundup.
To start off, we have Hiding an Airplane Factory.
An amazing feet of ingenuity, hiding such a massive building.

Then we have Images of extreme Rich/Poor lines.
Incredible contrast between the buildings on one side of a city and the other.

From OhGizmo! comes a silly picture of an ESC key, escaping.
I didn't say it was useful...

I found a story on digg about a CPU a professor created that's 100 times faster than the current best. It's actually 64 processors on one chip.

And finally, from OhGizmo again, there's a story about super image resizing. Trust me, it only sounds boring. It's hard to explain what it does and why it is special here, but the video there will make it all clear to you.

And that's it folks! Tune in next time.

Why not to start a startup

2007-09-24T22:33:00.000-04:00

After my last post, it would be good to mention an article I came across while going through my del.icio.us bookmarks. It's called Why not to start a startup, and it talks about the reasons people have for not trying to start their own business. Apparently the writer is affiliated with a program that helps create startups by means of grants.

Making money from blogs

2007-09-24T22:28:00.000-04:00

If you have spent any significant time on the web, then you know that many people make money from blogs. One of those people's blog is about making money from blogs. He makes money off of a blog that tells people how to make money... I wish I could think of something clever to say about that.
Anyway, his blog is called Problogger. It's the old faithful of blogs about making money from blogs, and one of my favorites.

Where apple should go with the ipod touch and the iphone

2007-09-06T15:55:00.000-04:00

Where apple should go with the ipod touch and the iphone.
Both the ipod touch and the iphone have touch screens. It would be quite logical to give them a note-taking application, like tablet PCs, which would be great for students who do not want to pay for both an ipod and a tablet PC.
Another thing they should have is a place where you can download new software to put on the ipod touch/iphone. Some of the software would be free, others you would pay for using your itunes account. If the software avaliable included document and spreadsheet editors, it could make both devices a good pda replacement (having them function as a pda would also make them seem a like a much better deal).
With the note-taking ability and the software improvement combined with the wifi, music ability, and web browser, the ipod touch could replace:

An ipod (duh)
A PDA
..and possibly even a tablet PC

Given the above improvements, the iphone could replace:

Again, an ipod
A PDA
A cellphone
A point-and-shoot digital camera
..and possibly even a tablet PC

Now imagine if apple gave the iphone and ipod touch 3d gaming on par with a Sony PSP or Nintendo DS...

Toasters should ding

2007-08-23T13:11:00.000-04:00

Ovens and microwaves ding when they are done. Cars ding at the slightest offense, reminding you to correct your operation error. Washing machines ding, dryers ding, even some refrigerators will ding if the door is left open. So why don't toasters ding?
Countless times I have walked in to the kitchen to discover that there was some cold toast sitting in the toaster that I had completely forgotten about (I did that just now). A simple bell or buzzer would make toasters so much more useful to a distractable person like myself. Having a count-down timer on the toaster showing how much time left until you get toast would also help. I would suggest a toaster that e-mails you when the toast is done, but that would be overkill.

Because no one reads my blog anyway...

2007-06-22T18:24:00.000-04:00

Because no one reads my blog anyway, it can't hurt to express my less-than popular political views here. I can't lose readers, right?

Firearms refresher course
1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
Guns have a perfectly legitimate use as defense weapons; they've saved lives.

2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
The response time of a .357 is far grater than that of the police, even if they are next door.

3. Colt: The original point and click interface.

4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.

5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
If you outlaw guns, outlaw will continue using them. If you get rid of all guns, they will just find another way (or make their own guns).

6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
Crime is caused when people choose to do bad things, not when a gun chooses to fire.

7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
I believe we have a right to own and operate any mechanical device, regardless of what it does.

8. If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.

9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

10. The United States Constitution 1791. All Rights Reserved.

11. What part of "shall not be infringed" do you not understand?

12. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the
others.

13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
Guns kill far less people each day than cars. So lets outlaw cars, and see where that gets us, eh?

14. Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians.

15. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.

16. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.

17. 911: Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.
How many times have the police ever prevented a crime in progress, instead of just catching the criminal?

18. Assault is a behavior, not a device.

19. Criminals love gun control; it makes their jobs safer.
If you were a criminal, you would not care weather or not the law says you can carry a gun, you'll carry one anyway. You do care if your target has a gun.

20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.

21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control
them.

22. You have only the rights you are willing to fight for.

23. Enforce the gun control laws we ALREADY have; don't make more.

24. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.

25. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

If you say we should outlaw guns because they are dangerous (or because they can be used for crime), then by that logic you should outlaw matches. You can get hurt with them, and you can commit a crime using them. They have useful purpose, starting fires, and so do guns, shooting things.

Flickr widget

2007-06-22T18:22:00.000-04:00

For fun, I just made a flickr widget:

Flickr badge

2007-06-19T11:46:00.000-04:00

Just trying out the flickr flash badge:

www.flickr.com

Darn. Blogger doesn't let it work.

Passive solar homes video

2007-06-13T15:47:00.000-04:00

This video is about passive solar houses from a company called enertia. They use an interesting design technique described in the video to make the houses provide all the heating and cooling needs from the power of the sun.

Here's a more detailed explanation of how it works.

Interesting videos about energy efficiency

2007-05-31T12:44:00.000-04:00

RMI.org (Rocky Mountain Institute) is an organization about energy efficiency in design. They have five videos of lectures given at Stanford university. The speaker tells how energy efficient designs can actually be cheaper to build in some cases. Add that to the savings in energy costs, you have a very appealing situation.

Best looking photos on the web

2007-05-27T22:56:00.000-04:00

The dude over at XKCD has made a web program that uses user input to find the best looking picutres on the web. It's called thefairest.info. The page of the 'Fairest'.
There are some really great photos there. None of them are mine.....

Makeing a fake HDR in the GIMP part 2

2007-05-22T21:31:00.000-04:00

Last time I told you a way to make a HDR (or an image that looks like one) from a single JPEG.
Since then, I've made a few modifications to the process. This tutorial is for those who are very familiar with their image editor (I used the GIMP, but Photoshop works just as well).

Decompose HSV
Duplicate value layer
Invert new layer, then blur (5 to 20 px is good, depending on size of image)
Set mode of new layer to soft light, then duplicate it.
Merge down the first new layer, then the second (It gets messed up if you do it the other way around)
You are now back down to the Value, Hue, and Saturation layers.
Turn up the contrast of the value layer until it looks bad, then bring it back just until it looks OK.
Re-compose the image. You're Done!

Here is an image I used this technique on:
Before:

After:

Making a fake HDR in the GIMP

2007-05-14T18:57:00.000-04:00

I just was over at digg and I saw these steps for making a fake HDR (Thanks, Elliuotatar).
By doing this, you can make an HDR from a single JPEG, instead of needing a bunch of files (the quality is not as good, though).
1. Duplicate image to a second layer.
2. Image->Adjustments->Desaturate second layer. (Make it black and white.)
3. Image->Adjustments->Invert second layer. (Make it a negative.)
4. Do a 64 pixel gaussian blur on the second layer. (Low pass filter. Prevents loss of high frequncy contrast on surfaces.) Edit: You can just use regular gaussian blur at about 5 to 15 pixels.
5. Set the second layer to soft light.

This works in Photoshop or The GIMP.
And there you have it. If you want to see some real HDR images, Stuck in Customs from flickr has over one thousand of them.

Most diggs ever

2007-05-02T15:34:00.000-04:00

As far as I know, this story has gotten the most diggs of any ever submitted.

Update: The story has passed 30,000 diggs. This is almost twice the previous record.

Spreading the number

2007-05-01T17:52:00.000-04:00

I'm spreading The number (Follow the like to find out why).
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I hope my blog doesn't get taken down..

Age of empires II (AOE 2) tip

2007-04-15T15:59:00.000-04:00

You know when you have been playing an age of empires game for a while, and you are low on gold but there is none left on the map? Try this tip:
When starting a game, always have one or more ally. Then, when you get past the dark age, build a market. In the market build trade carts, with the gather point on your ally's market. The trade carts will go back and forth, bringing you gold each time. More trade carts = more gold per minute. You will continue to receive gold until either your carts, your market, or their market is destroyed, or the way between the two markets is blocked. NOTE: building your market close to your ally's market will dramatically reduce the amount of gold you receive.
This works in age of kings or in the conquers expansion pack.

Last.fm down?

2007-04-02T16:21:00.001-04:00

Is it just me, or is last.fm very broken right now? If I try to get to any page other than 'My last.fm page', the page is blank. There isn't even any HTML in the pages. Very odd.

technorati tags:last.fm, html

The Great Global Warming Swindle

2007-03-31T20:21:00.000-04:00

Watch these videos, they're very interesting.
Part one.
Part two.
Part three.
Part four.
Part five.
Part six.
Part seven.
Part eight.

Land of the free

2007-03-31T11:51:00.000-04:00

I just had to post this...

Webpage of creator

"Artwork" (image)

2007-03-26T21:20:00.000-04:00

Here is my rip-off of a lot of art work:

The first flower of spring (photo)

2007-03-23T20:31:00.000-04:00

I took this picture with a canon SD 600. Lots of detail in the original.

A short story

2007-03-21T16:34:00.000-04:00

A man went for a walk in the woods, like he had done many times before. He took his usual trail, which, winding around a lake, was his favorite. As he walked, he came to a place where there was a path branching off. That path had not been there last time he went this way. On a whim, he decided to follow the new path to see where it went. It was a nice, pleasent path. He couldn't imagine how it had been put here so quickly. It meandered up and around, coming to a view of the lake. The lake seemed bluer, shinyer than it had looked from down on his usual path. As he continued on, he noticed that the trees were getting taller and greener. The whole landscape was greener. There was much more vegitation; ferns here, bushes of some sort or other there. As he went on, he became aware of a hissing, roaring sound. Not a evil sound, just a powerful one. He saw below him that his path had gone from hard packed dirt to soft moss. The light shining through the trees was green and warm. He went on. The roaring sound grew louder untill he, all of a sudden, came out to a mountain streem. Before him he saw a tall water fall. Everything was so magestic. Suddenly he was starteled out of his thoughts by movement near him. Something was moving quite swiftly in the bushes. He became aware of other things moving, all of them hidden form sight. Then he heard a horn. Not a normal horn, but one that had a very tree like sound. In fact he wondered if it were just two trees rubbing togeather. Then he heard something wizz by. It was an arrow. He looked up and saw a small creature standing on a branch in a tree near him. It was holding a bow and had a quiver on his back. It had a green hat that made it look rather like a miniture robbin hood. To him, it looked like and elf or a gnome. Then, out of the bushes, there came a dwarf. Not a kind looking dwarf, but one holding a broad axe and dressed in metal armour. More elfs and dwarfs appered. Soon the place was swarming with both creatures. The dwarfs were marching in, chanting in a language he could not understand. The Elfs were swinging from vines, hopping from tree to tree. Arrows were flying. It did not take him long to realise that the elfs and the dwarfs were at war.
He did not know what to do or where to go. There was a battle all around him. So he logged out, turned off his computer and stepped outside.

Twitter

2007-03-20T10:33:00.000-04:00

I just started using twitter. Its like a mini blog where all posts must be less than 140 characters. The idea is that you just post what you are doing / where you are at that very moment.
The only problem is it takes forever to load (I think they need more servers).

Google talk

2007-03-15T13:08:00.000-04:00

Joost

2007-03-14T21:38:00.000-04:00

Yea! I just got an E-mail saying that Joost is "just around the corner"(I had signed up to, eventually, be a beta tester of Joost).

2 Gigabytes of errors

2007-03-14T21:14:00.000-04:00

I recently installed linux on an old (2001) machine. I left windows installed as a fallback.
Today I was cleaning out the windows partition (about 8 1/4 GB were used). I did the basics, uninstall old programs, delete temporary files (with Ccleaner), get rid of unwanted pictures and so forth. But when I finished, (I got the hard drive usage down to about 4.5 GB) I opened up WinDirStat and found that there were 2 GB of .CPY files. After a little pocking around, I discovered that they were all in a hidden folder (C:/_RESTORE/temp/). This folder is for system restore points. I had previously set the system restore points to only take up 200 MB. So then I googled: 'system restore cpy'. I found out that they are caused by an error in windows ME, the version of windows that was installed. I tried to delete them, but they were "protected". After a few failed attempts to get rid of them, I resorted to linux. I opened up the terminal window (effectively a command prompt for you windows users) and did: rm *.cpy. Guess what. There were so many files, linux would not delete them all at once. I had to section off the files in groups of about 1,000 (fortunately they were named with consecutive numbers) and finally wiped them all away. Now the windows partition only has about 2.6 GB used.

Pandora

2007-02-19T21:11:00.000-05:00

I recently started using Pandora internet radio. It's a music player that choses what to play based on what you've told it you like. The best part is, its free. I like free.
It's helped me learn about some of the current style in music. I have found a lot of good music on there. It's nice to here some of the lyrics of a song and actually have a clue what the song is.

A half million years of video games

2007-02-07T10:50:00.000-05:00

Did you know that video games waste a half million years of time per year?
Given some conservative numbers - 4 hours per week of game play, 25 million people playing - you find that video games are played for over five hundred thousand years annually.
To do the math for you:

4 hours per week * 52 weeks per year * 25,000,000 people playing games

24 hours per day * 365 days per year

To be precise, that equals 593,607.306 years per year (208 hours per year for one person).
Thats a lot of time wasted on video games.
If you multiply that times ten years or so,....
Now factor in TV usage, which is a few orders of magnitude greater than video games....

"Digg this" button

2007-02-06T15:02:00.000-05:00

I'm testing out the "Digg this" button.

Stop motion video

2007-01-31T21:25:00.000-05:00

This is the first video I have uploaded to a video sharing site. Its a crude attempt at making a stop motion video.

Update: I changed the video host to you tube. Metacafe was giving me trouble.

Yahoo site badge

2007-01-30T15:04:00.000-05:00

Just trying out yahoo site badge thingy.

Links to Site

We live in strange houses

2006-11-16T21:18:00.000-05:00

Have you ever thought about how strange the design of houses today is?
I mean, take the roof, for example. Why is it made up of a bunch of little breakable shingles that have to be individually nailed down, when it could be just made out of nice, big, easy panels? You could just have these big - maybe eight by eight foot - sections of generic roof material - some sort of plastic, perhaps - that just bolt or snap into place. Building a roof that way would take maybe just a few man-hours, not a few hundred. After all, who wants little sections of tar paper nailed on to some plywood on top of their house anyway? Its just so inconvenient.
Fixing a leak in a shingle roof takes forever because you have to tear up something that was nailed down with the intention that it wouldn't come up. Then sometimes you have to put down a new piece of plywood, and yours will definitely not be exactly the same size as the one that you took out, so you have to cut it to make it fit. After that you have to nail it down and replace shingles one by one. Not exactly a quick, easy task. If you were using a modular roof system, you could just pop off the right panel (and maybe the ones above it), and put in a new one. done.

And just why do we heat our water in the basement or garage or wherever? That requires two pipes to everything (Hot and Cold), insulation on the hot water pipe, a big heater thing, and lots of energy. If you heated the water right where you use it - say, the sink - then you would not lose energy the whole length of the pipe, you wouldn't need a big furnace, or tank, and you could run hot water without freezing the person in the shower.

Most of the ideas for houses are build today date back to the medieval ages. Drywall is just a replacement for stucco, two-by-fours are really just an improvement over roughly hew planks, and todays asphalt shingles are just an improvement upon wooden shingles. Pluming, electricity, and glass windows may be relatively new, but most of the technology of our houses is still far in the past.

Photo of a... latch

2006-11-16T20:47:00.000-05:00

For a high quality version, click here.

10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

2006-11-15T22:47:00.000-05:00

10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job
A very eye-opening look at how we make money. It really makes you take a step back and ask yourself why are you doing things the way you are.
For an example, reason number five (for not getting a job) is: 'Way to risky'. Reason? Someone else can turn off your income by saying two words: "Your fired".
Ouch.

Let's say I break into your house

2006-09-16T20:03:00.000-04:00

Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely. Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.

Let's say I break into your house. Let's say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave. But I say, "I've made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors; I've done all the things you don't like to do. I'm hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).

According to the protesters, not only must you let me stay, you must add me to your family's insurance plan, educate my kids, and provide other benefits to me and to my family (my husband will do your yard work because he too is hard-working and honest, except for that breaking in part). If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my right to be there.

It's only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I'm just trying to better myself. I'm a hard-working and honest, person, except for well, you know.

And what a deal it is for me!! I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of selfishness, prejudice and being an anti-housebreaker. Oh yeah, I want you to learn my language so you can communicate with me.

Why can't people see how ridiculous this is?! Only in America....if you agree, pass it on (in English). Share it if you see the value of it as a good smile. If not blow it off along with your future Social Security funds, and a lot of other things.

Get FireFox.. on IE7.com?

2006-07-27T21:32:00.000-04:00

IE7.com is just a big FireFox logo. Very funny (IE7 is a direct competitor to FireFox).

An EV as a second car

2006-07-27T09:46:00.000-04:00

When the topic of electric vehicles (EVs) comes up, people always seem to think that they are a decade or so away from being good enough to be useful. They're thought of as interesting, as a good idea, but not something this is practical or that there is a market for right now. The reasons for that are something like this: 'They are too expensive', 'EVs don't have enough range, people need their cars to go farther than that.', 'They won't last long enough', or 'Electric cars aren't powerful enough'.

First of all, electric motors can be made more powerful than needed to move a car. Most diesel trains are actually electric trains with diesel generators. Most every engineer knows that you can get far more torque out of an electric motor than a engine of the same size.

Second, the longevity issue. Electric cars are more simple than their gasoline counterparts, due to the fact that they do not have any of the following: radiator, injection system, ignition system, gas tank, gas pump, timing system, belts, oil or cooling system, ETC. Because there are far fewer parts, lower pressures, and lower temperatures in an electric car, EVs tend to last longer. The batteries may need to be replaced every half decade or so, but thats how long some gas cars are kept anyway.

Third, the range and expense issue. The problems presented in these areas are quite correct, if the electric car is to be your primary or only vehicle. However, if it is a secondary car used for running errands, it would not need more the maybe a one-hundred-fifty mile range. By observation I would guess that, for most demographics, the great majority of the distance they travel comes from trips less than one-hundred-fifty miles long. If you had two cars; a regular fossil fuel one and an electric one, and the gasoline powered car were to be used only on the trips exceeding the electric car's capability, very little gasoline would be used.

Think about this example: A family has a SUV that works fine for everything they need, except for the fuel efficiency.
For the sake of simplicity lets say that the price of an electric minivan is the same as that of the normal minivan. Lets also assume that the price per mile driven in the cars is as follows: $.20 per mile for the SUV, $.12 per mile for the Minivan, and $.04 per mile for the electric car. Lets also say that 10% of the driving distance requires the SUV, 20% requires long range capabilities, and the remaining 70% can be done with the electric car. So, with these numbers let's calculate the cost per hundred thousand miles.

Option 1 (which is all that is currently available):
They buy a minivan seeking a more fuel efficient vehicle that can still fit all of them and their stuff. It works reasonably well; they only use the SUV for rough terrain and hauling large loads. The minivan in now used for almost all of the driving that takes place. Here, the SUV would only drive 10% and the minivan would drive the other 90%.
SUV: 10,000 miles times $.20 per mile equals $2,000.
Minivan: 90,000 miles times $.12 per mile equals $10,800.
Total: $12,800.

Option 2:
They get an electric car with a range of only one hundred fifty miles. They use the SUV for the long trips, such as vacation, in addition to the hauling. The SUV is driven more than in option 1, but the increased use is offset by the fact that it is the sole consumer of gas. In this scenario the SUV would be going 30% of the total distance and the electric car would take the remaining 70%.
SUV: 30,000 miles times $.20 per mile equals $6,000.
Electric car: 70,000 miles times $.04 per mile equals $2,800.
Total: $8,800.
Amount saved verses option 1: $2,000 per 100,000 miles. This figure does not reflect the reduced maintenance cost of operating an electric vehicle over one burning fossil fuel.

Why don't people buy apples?

2006-05-17T13:50:00.000-04:00

Many people - even a large percentage of windows users - agree that the Macintosh is a superior platform to the PC. So why aren't more people using macs?
Some of the major concerns of the windows community pertain to software support: What if I want to do X (EG. record video in windows media 9), but it can't be done on a mac from lack of software?
This is more of a problem to the advanced users, like those who would be willing to use Apple's solution to this problem, boot camp. Boot camp, simply put, allows windows to be installed on a Intel based Mac.
This leads into the next problem: Hardware. Apple has come part way by offering macs with Intel processors. But there is still a big gap between the hardware options of the PC and the Mac.
For instance, there really is no cheap mac. Sure, there is the Mac mini, but once you add a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers you have an almost $800 computer. What apple needs is a computer for $499 or so that has everything you need.
Another hole left unfilled is expandability; to have any chance of getting more hardware into you computer (EG. Hard-drives, Optical drives, TV Tuners) you have to get the huge, expensive G5 tower. Few people have that kind of cash to spend on a computer. Even if they did have the cash, they might not want to spend it on a Mac OSx only computer.
What Apple needs here is a computer that people can afford, in the tower form-factor so you can put your new junk in it, and yet still an apple.

Web Design Trend Obituary

2006-05-09T13:47:00.000-04:00

The Web Design Trend Obituary & Death Clock is about current web design fads the the writer predicts will go the way of the dinosaur (or the way of the 486, or... Oh, never-mind).

Link: AdSense Cheats

2006-05-05T14:14:00.000-04:00

AdSense Cheats
While not actually about cheating adsense, it does have some nice information about using adsense.

Brayton-Cycle Engine

2006-05-01T09:17:00.001-04:00

Green Car Congress: A Compact Brayton-Cycle Engine and Biomass Process for Mixed-Alcohol Fuels
No, I didn't understand the whole article either.

Link: ColorBlender.com

2006-04-29T09:06:00.000-04:00

ColorBlender.com
A very nice color scheme generator.

Link: JoeSchmidt.com

2006-04-28T10:23:00.000-04:00

JoeSchmidt.com - Blog...Rinse...Repeat.
This is a blog about, well, nothing in particular, but it's interesting.

Free SketchUp

2006-04-27T09:26:00.000-04:00

SketchUp - Download
Google has, as you may know, bought @Last software, which is the company that makes sketchup. There is now a free version of sketchup (the normal cost is $495) available for download from google. Some of the features of the paid version have been removed, though that should not be a problem for basic users.

Would you like that round or square?

2006-04-26T18:56:00.000-04:00

Once, a few years back, I went in to a radio shack to look for floppies (CD-RW drives were much more expensive then). The location of the diskettes was not immediately apparent, so help was sought from the clerk. When asked about floppies, she replied: 'Do you want the round ones of the square ones?'
The ignorance of this radio shack employee still baffles me. I mean, how could you work for radio shack and not know?

Link: Linux for human beings?

2006-04-26T16:32:00.000-04:00

Linux for human beings?
A nice blog about a windows user that switched to ubuntu Linux.

Engineer jokes

2006-04-26T16:25:00.000-04:00

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons and Civil Engineers build targets.

Normal people believe that if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it isn't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.

A few geek jokes..

2006-04-26T16:23:00.000-04:00

Why do geeks think Halloween and Christmas occur on the same day?
Because 31oct = 25dec!

If you have to run heating in winter, you don't own enough computers.

Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.

Link: Invention Machine - Popular Science

2006-04-21T11:39:00.000-04:00

John Koza Has Built an Invention Machine - Popular Science
"Its creations earn patents, outperform humans, and will soon fly to space. All it needs now is a few worthy challenges."

Programing joke

2006-04-19T10:37:00.000-04:00

Give a man a computer program and you give him a headache,
but teach him to program computers and you give him the power
to create headaches for others for the rest of his life...

Link: errorwear

2006-04-19T10:36:00.000-04:00

errorwear: blue screen of death T-shirt
A very geeky thing to have...

Wheeee!

2006-04-17T21:00:00.000-04:00

Mozilla has a contest for the best add promoting Firefox, as part of the spread Firefox campaign. One of My personal favorites it Wheeee!

Quote about peoples spending habits.

2006-04-17T20:48:00.000-04:00

"People buy things they don't really want , with money they don't really have, to impress people they don't really like" -Unknown

Making fun of almost every Operating System

2006-04-17T18:23:00.000-04:00

What OS do you use?

Windows
Noob!

Mac OSx
Oh. You're one of those people.

Linspire
Why are people like you even allowed to use computers?

Unix (command-line)
Have you been under a rock for the past 20 years? Is that a slide rule I see in your back pocket?

DOS
You use DOS? Why? What's your problem?

OS/2
Ahhhhhhhh! Moron alert!

Puppy Linux
How dare you call that Linux.

Fedora core 5
What do you use, a main frame? Isn't that a worse memory hog than windows?

Xandros
You actually paid money for that?

Knoppix
What did you do, lose your hard drive?

Windows 3.1
What the heck do you think you can do with a computer that old? It's what, 50 MHz?

Link: OS Airlines

2006-04-17T08:34:00.000-04:00

OS Airlines
...Gives a humorous answer to the question: What if Operating systems were airlines? (Now I'm sure you were lying awake at night wondering this....)

Today's link: Vertical Centering

2006-04-15T10:08:00.000-04:00

Waxpad Article: Vertical Centering with CSS
A way to vertically center a html division using CSS.

Today's link: Spell with flickr

2006-04-14T10:11:00.000-04:00

Spell with flickr
...Lets you have your text be made with images from flickr.