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September 28, 2004
How Not to Feed Spiders
The spiders have returned! Only this time they are covering the entrance way to my outdoor garbage area. As such I'm stock piling garbage on my patio until garbage day.
Taking Chris's suggestion, I've bought another loaf of tofu. Why? Because tofu goes bad quickly and smells rather awful when it does. No need to experiment on this one kids, trust me. Instead of feeding the spider raw tofu, I decided to get a little more adventurous with the tofu and fried it up in flavors of plain, butter+garlic, and hot sauce. Since this has become more of an effort, I decided to maintain a bit more scientific data about the even this time, try multiple variations on the same flavors, and enlist the help of my neighbor who thinks I'm rather crazy now I'm sure.
Regular tofu had a no so spectacular result. The cold version resulted in nothing being touched, but the hot version got wrapped up pretty quickly. It was still there a day later when I decided to try the butter+garlic flavored.
Butter+garlic both warm and cold disappeared. I'm not certain that it was eaten by the spider, I can't see it on the ground, and it's certainly not in the web anymore. My guess is that another animal rather liked the smell and took it.
The hot sauce flavored tofu resulted in some interesting "wrestling" in the web. After the initial toss in, the spider ran down to wrap it up, but did not seem to enjoy touching the piece. Adding in multiple other pieces exacerbated the situation I'm sure as the spider fled to the upper corner to hide. The next day the pieces were on the ground. I guess tobasco is too hot for spiders.
Posted by Dan at 12:54 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2004
Reluctance to Post
I've been reluctant to post anything for about two weeks, due primarily to the fact that my laptop has been missing in action and use of a work computer for personal matters is something I try not to do. Where is my laptop?
At an Apple authorized store trying to fix it. I bought an iSight a while back, and it works well enough when used in standalone mode. The bigger problem arises when attempting to use the iSight in a conversation with another user, the video connection just dies. I now understand why Apple has begun to open their own stores though, thanks to this experience. Here is a transcript of the actual conversation on the phone that I've had with this group:
Them: Yeah hi, we're calling about your laptop.
Me: Great what have you discovered?
Them: The iSight works fine, we tested it with another machine and it's not faulty.
Me: Great, but that wasn't the issue at all ever in this case
Them: No? Oh, well what was the issue?
Two days later...
Them: Yeah hi, about your PowerBook. We are able to confirm that the iSight cannot send video to a receiving iChat user.
Me: Okay, so you've confirmed my initial complaint?
Them: Yes.
Me: Why are you telling me? I knew that this problem existed, hence my asking you to fix it.
Them: Well we don't think it's hardware related, we'd like permission to reformat the harddrive.
Me: Well if reformatting it for the 8th time this year will make you happy, go right ahead.
That conversation was 5 days ago, and I haven't heard back from them. My guess is they realized that reformating the drive really didn't do anything at all.
Since I'm already on a bit of a rant here, let's just finish this off with a few others.
If you, for whatever reason, decide to ever own a car within a city, you should be legally required to take a 3 day intensive parallel parking class. I find it amazing the number of people who cannot parallel park their car! I watched a lady try to pull into a spot with her RAV 4 that a Hummer just pulled out of. It took her five tries! Five times to back in, pull out, and repeat. Each time she still hit the curb, and it's not like there wasn't enough space to nose in with the car. She's not alone in the category, but it just happens to be the most recent incident I can recall.
AVIs are probably one of the worst inventions in the world. I've been having to dork around with the RIFF format a lot over the past few days, and it's awful. It's not that the ODML spec is bad actually, it's that there are so many stupid players out there that it doesn't make sense. Some players use signed and some used unsigned markers for total size. Others won't play if the optional idxl chunk is missing (read: Windows Media Player), or for some other completely wacked out reason that is explained only by VIDEO_NO_COMPRESSOR errors.
Spiders, like all sane humans, don't like the taste of plain tofu. After careful experimentation and the purchase of $3.00 of tofu, I've discovered the really big spider outside my window, really doesn't like tofu. The spider doesn't like it in it's web and it doesn't like to eat it. The experiment ended when the spider went away.
Posted by Dan at 10:28 PM | Comments (1)
September 11, 2004
In Memory...
Posted by Dan at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2004
Failures in Usefulness
It sounds like Eric over at OutOfCheese is having the modern operating system blues. While he's already received a few commentaries on how "right" or "wrong" his opinion is, I don't believe the root causes of the problem have been really addressed by anyone.
Yes end users are a primary point of concern, and are typically the root cause of most problems faced today on operating systems. I can count numerous times that my parents have altered system settings, changed dial-up phone numbers, somehow deleted their primary applications all without even realizing what they've done. And yes, they still accomplishes this using a Mac, I fear the troubleshooting I'd have to do if they had Windows. It's not to suggest that end users are stupid, but to realize that using a computer, even with a GUI, requires a fundamental change in a persons thinking. I believe most younger users don't realize this need, mainly because they were able to seamlessly adapt. Herein lies the first challenge of operating systems; usability. OSes have come pretty far along the way to making themselves more user friendly, but it hasn't been enough. It's pretty obvious by talking with those not raised on computers that they still have a long way to go. The biggest change in end user computing has been the introduction of distributed information better known as the world wide web. This mass adoption was done almost 10 years ago, but the general design and use of web pages hasn't changed since day 1. I firmly believe WinFS will be the first major change in computing that will push OS design into new dimensions, allowing interface designers to finally bring about new means of comprehension.
The next major hurdle with modern operating systems is in the fundamental design stage. None of the modern consumer end OSes have been developed with a proven design document that I know of. By this I mean, the creation of the design document in a formal language that can be used to prove the functionality of the idea both before it's implementation and afterwards. Most operating systems are currently written in C (or some derivation of C) with some sections being written in assembler for optimization or control of the bios. This step itself begins many of the problems found in operating systems. The C language while having a defined standard, is still loose enough that any formal verification based solely on the code cannot be done. Right now I believe the Solaris kernel is the only OS that gets anywhere near the verification route, but if you feel your Linux or Mac OS X support is lacking, wait until you ask for help with a Solaris install.
Some will argue that such formal design is not possible for an operating system, or that it will never work. I disagree, and can only point to the current state of OS bugginess as validity to the argument: there has to be a better way. The fact that, in this case, the computer was able to install and alter it's behavior without the end user being aware that is a problem.
Apple did a smart thing with OS X by starting over from scratch, creating abstracted sandboxes for everything to play in, and then implementing some new forward thinking ideas (i.e. Quartz memory management schemes). Microsoft is doing something similar with the eventual release of Longhorn, and (apparently) the future releases of Windows XP by pulling some of the abstracted sandboxes from Longhorn. Linux pretty much goes through a complete re-write every kernel release, which provides for lots of fun and entertainment in creating support. Hopefully neither Apple nor Microsoft will be afraid to continue these processes of re-writes and continue to do research into verifiable computing.
Posted by Dan at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)
Disclaimer!
This isn't my favorite part of logging my ideas, but I feel it's probably necessary to some extent. Besides that, it's also useful. This is my disclaimer.
When I am writing in this forum, or sending e-mail from my personal accounts, I am speaking only for myself. On occasion I may write about things relating to my employer, Intel Corporation. When I do, I am not a spokesman for my employer, I am not representing my employer, nor my employer's opinons, nor my employer's interests. These are my opinions alone, and do not represent the official position of my employer. I am speaking for me, as an individual.
Because I may link to an article, piece of media, or another posting please do not assume that I agree with the author of said linked concept. Don't assume that opinions I post on any forum are those I agree with. If you don't understand how that can be, please go research the concept of "devil's advocate".
Sometimes I am wrong, and hereby grant myself the ability to change my mind on an issue. I know it's hard to believe as some of you have never been wrong in your life, but I'm not that smart and often don't get it right the first time.
[EDIT: Thanks to Eric and Chuq for the premise, layout, and content ideas. ]
Posted by Dan at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2004
Splatter proof?
Huh? What? You're In Control a new invention by those crazy kids out at MIT. Once again I question if the brilliance here is being missed, or should somebody really be reigning in the creative process a little bit over there.
This does seem like a rather high tech solution to the urinal cake or painted on fly as an "aid".
Posted by Dan at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2004
iMacs, or iTablets
As most people know, Apple released their new iMac today. A really smooth looking flat panel all in one box with everything hidden behind the screen. Basically, I see it as a pre-cursor to a G5 laptop (the internal design can't be THAT different) only a little thicker to make it vent better. What I'm really interested to see is how Apple plays this design out.
Design wise, it's really nothing new and different. Apple has released machines like this in the past, for proof check out the 20th Anniversary Macintosh. The big change here though is that the entire front face of the machine IS the screen. With the stand "floating" this just screams out Tablet Mac to me. We know Apple has the handwriting recognition software (see Newton), and that the 17" screen can be powered by a battery (see 17" PowerBook). Now if Apple were to change the screen to a touch-screen capable system and install a decent battery, we've suddenly got a very competent tablet based computing system. Granted a cover is missing, but thats a minor detail in the long run of things I think (buy a damn Write-Right cover).
None the less, it was neat to see the product released. Not something I'm going to run out and buy as it still suffers from the laptop issue (monitor height not correct).
Posted by Dan at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)
Finally Proof!
The Weekly World News has finally found conclusive proof of what the rest of the world knew: french is a guttural! Check out the article!
Posted by Dan at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)