I choose you… LFS! (RawCode) by RawCode

The urge to play around with linux is rising. Every time this occurs I always get pretty wrapped up in the project since I generally have a specific goal I am trying to attain. This time I want to build Linux; starting from bootstrapping to my end goal of network connectivity with SSH. So I have decided to go with LFS. ] It tries to teach you the role of all the packages you need to get a very basic system up and running.

I want to purchase a separate computer to install this on so I don’t hose my current slackware box which I have servicing my network acceptably.

It is scientific! (RawCode) by RawCode

I swear it is! On my robot dollar!

Chess: Fun but filled with apprehension (RawCode) by RawCode

I have recently taken up chess again. I am finding it to be quite fun, but it also fills me with apprehension and doubt. When I log into my Gmail account and find some Move Notification emails from RedHotPawn, the first feeling I have is doubt. I have no idea why since it is just a casual game between friends (or internet strangers) and neither has anything to gain from the virtual conflict.

Before I log in to check on the reported move, I find myself running through the game, trying to think if there was something I overlooked. A weed growing in a crack of my plan if you will. Once logged in,All the emotion I felt just melts away and are replaced with move analysis, plans, and counters. It is quite odd.

I find myself having those feelings before other games too. In a multiplayer RTS game like Dawn of War, I go through that entire process before the game. Once in the game, again all the emotion drains away and is replaced with mechanical movements, plans, and defense. Could it be a coping mechanism when I am placed under stress? Or am I just afraid of getting beat down?

Declarative lamps! (RawCode) by RawCode

I found this artist’s experiment quite funny. It exemplifies how entrenched fear has become in American society.

Declarative Lamps!

I am not a bomb. lol

Great Column about Apple and AT&T dynamics (RawCode) by RawCode

I just thought I would post a link to a blog post by John Siracusa of ArsTechnica.

Let a Million iPhones bloom

In his post he basically describes how all Apple needed was one thing: a carrier. Doesn’t have to be the best; big will do fine in a pinch. He also theorizes that the iPhone may be the one device (and Apple as the company) to break up the monotony that consumes the American cellular market.

New plugin: Subscribe to Comments (RawCode) by RawCode

The main reason why I updated to the newest version of WordPress is so I could get this new plugin to run.

Subscribe to Comments

So now if you feel compelled to comment on a post, you now have the option to know when other comments are posted. There is also a subscription interface for commentors so they can control their subscriptions to the various posts. Pretty nifty if you ask me. It is hard to keep track of all the blog posts I comment on, and to watch for comments following mine. This solves the issue nicely.

Upgraded to wordpress 2.2.1 (RawCode) by RawCode

I finally decided to upgrade from Wordpress 2.0 to 2.2.1 which was released at the beginning of this week. The upgrade itself went smooth and almost all of my plugins work except for one. My Viper’s Video Quicktags is currently throwing a fatal error when I try to activate it. I haven’t had the time to really read up as to what the actual issue is.

Alaska’s broadband is slowest in the nation! (RawCode) by RawCode

As a state, we have the slowest broadband in the nation. As per a PDF report from Speedmatters.org, which is run by the Communication Works of America Union.

You can also see what speeds were reported in your area via this flash map.

My friend recently moved to Seattle, and he is getting 7Mb down and 1Mb up for 40 bucks a month. It is insane how fast your Internet can be, *if it is available in your area!* I think one of the largest problems in broadband deployment is the sheer amount of surface area we have to cover. Lets look at other countries physical size: Japan has 377k sq km of land, South Korea has 100k sq km, Finland has 340k sq km, Sweden has 450k sq km, France has 550k sq km.

The United states has 9,600,000 sq km of area to cover. It is very difficult and expensive to network such a vast area, especially if you think about how Americans love suburbia and driving hours to work each day.

Now look at the state level. Just the State of Alaska is 1,717,855 sq km and we have the slowest internet. Now look at the fastest State in the report, Rhode Island. It is ranked 50th with a measly surface area of 3,144 sq km.

I think I am on to something.

Even old age hits computer geeks (RawCode) by RawCode

When I first started working with PC’s back in 1999, I would build my own boxes, spend hours overclocking them, dealing with noisy fans and not caring a whit about long term stability.

Now I just want it to freaking work without hassle.]

A lot of Arsians feel the same way too.

I guess at some point, a geek surpasses the stage where he is infatuated with technology. A stage where they will spend all night building a box, tweaking BIOS settings, buying the best HSF, and then more time tweaking windows for it to run as optimal as possible. Eventually, the geek tires of all the work just to get 10-15% faster on his home computer. He just wants it to be reliable and be there for when he needs it for his other hobbies. Like cars, mountain biking, gardening, cooking and so forth. The geek begins to use technology as a tool for other things in life, not as an end in of itself.

Hell my latest computer is an EMachine that I bought at Best Buy when they had a huge sale. The next computer I buy will most likely be a Dell, for HTPC/Living room internet purposes. I don’t spend 8 hours making sure that I have all the crap turned off, or tweaking the registry to make things just right. My time is too important and limited to spend worrying about menu colors, driver versions, and clock speed. Is it fast enough for what I want to do and have the features I require? Sign me up!

I still love computers, but they just are not a hobby for my anymore.

Binary Marble Adding Machine (RawCode) by RawCode

This is awesome. Courtesy of Make, I found this video of a binary marble adding machine.

[youtube]GcDshWmhF4A[/youtube]

I find it simplicity to be awesome. I am not well versed in computer history but I wonder if something like this was used back in the 1800s. I guess the main limitations would be it’s reliance on gravity to provide movement, and that it would not be able to do loops. I imagine that one could build a machine that could do loops, but it would require a vast amount of marbles.

Best to stick to steam, gears and transistors I guess.

I murdered my big toe yesterday. (RawCode) by RawCode

Damn you phouse for getting me to play basketball! And you didn’t even show up yesterday!

We played three games yesterday and it was pretty damn fun. 2v2 21, and even though we lost 2 outta 3, I feel good about my playing. But my big toe is currently filled with woe… and blood and fluid. I went to double back yesterday and totally jammed my big toe into the end of my shoe, bending the nail back. Yeowich! It ended our fantastic 3rd game in a draw, much to my dismay. So now I have quite the limp, and lots of laughter from the gf. Good times, good times.
On the good side, I don’t get sore anymore from playing basketball now. Of course I have been trying to push myself on my mountain bike more with more climbs, or going through a loop 3-4 times in a row.  All in all an active life is much better than a sedentary one. Even if I do crash every now and then. :p

Gecko hair to improve car braking systems? (RawCode) by RawCode

I highly doubt that is the case. I am referring to an article over at NewScientist titled :Gecko’s gravity-defying trick explained. It is a great article that gives a good overview about how the hair adheres to the surfact and how it can be controlled. Really amazing stuff that is for sure.

I know I am being nitpicky, but I really dislike this section of the article:

Gecko adhesive is so effective that he believes it could one day find use in car braking systems. He calculates it could stop a car traveling at 80 kilometers per hour in a distance of just 5 meters, using just one third of a square meter of the substance.

Now I know automobile systems are not the focus of this researcher or the author of the article, but Gecko adhesive would not yield a benefit in car brake systems. We already have brakes that can lock the super grippy slicks that race cars use. Brakes are not the limiting factor of our ability to stop. It is our tires. If they can take this “Gecko technology” and apply it effectively to tires and keep wear to a minimum, then I will really really pay attention.

However that would create whole new issues for the automotive industry. Because of the vastly shorter stopping distance, we would need new restraint systems to prevent injury. Bigger brakes would be required to dissipate the vast amounts of heat the shorts stops would create.

We need Gecko tires!

The Chinese are attacking Capitalism at its core. (RawCode) by RawCode

Or at least The Economist thinks so, I find the idea interesting so I thought I would post about it.

“The Chinese Plot Against Capitalism”

The Chinese company Xinhua Finance bought an American company called Glass Lewis. Glass Lewis’s business is to advise institutional investors and shareholders on various corporate policies. They assist the Board of Directors is what policies to create and how to present them to the shareholders for voting. They are an outside “Third party” brought in to validate the Board of Directors proposals.

So Glass Lewis has plenty of power in corporate America being a a trusted third party.So what happens if that trusted third party is purchased and hence controlled internationally? By say a Chinese company named Xinhua Finance. Would it cast doubt on the credibility of the company’s future research? You wouldn’t think so, as the company would like to stay in business assisting our Kings of Capitalism.

So now, what would you think if the Director of Research, Lynn Turner, left Glass Lewis five months after the purchase? He is a respected member of the corporate world who once served as the chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission and was the principal advisor to the S.E.C. chairman. He stated that he was worried about potential conflicts of interest with other Xinhua businesses, and by “another potentially troubling aspect: Xinhua once had ties to China’s Communist Party”

Ah trouble indeed. So how does Glass Lewis advise now under the direction of a Chinese based financial firm, which has its own investments in Chinese businesses that compete against US based businesses? Do you detect a conflict of interest? I do, and I find the idea troubling.

6×10^-2 Centuries on Arstechnica, Crazy. (RawCode) by RawCode

So I have been a part of the Ars community for six years as of May 8th. Crazy. The only reason why I spent the time to figure this out is this post over in the Ars Lounge about “Your First post!”. So I did a quick (hardly, christ!) search on the forums to see if I could find my very first post on Ars.

“Integration Into American Society”

I remember vaguely posting about that because Keystone was being such a prick in the thread that I HAD to post. And then I promptly forgot about the entire thread, but it is how I got hooked on Ars.

Thanks a lot for giving me a reason to waste hours online you bastards.

I hope High Fructose Corn Syrup goes the way of Trans Fats (RawCode) by RawCode

I love The Economist, I really do.

Especially when they pump out quality articles like this: The Fatness Formula

I have long suspected HFCS to be a horrible thing for the body. When I switched over to diet soda, I lost 15 lbs without even trying. Same for a girlfriend and a few other friends that and quit soda. I have never read too much about HFCS, but enough to understand that it did not satiate your bodies hunger  not matter how much you had.  Now they are starting to learn that it actually increases your hunger while causing your liver to dump fat into the blood stream.

Glad I dropped it a long time ago.

A huge loss to the aerospace community. (RawCode) by RawCode

Liviu Librescu died yesterday trying to save his students from the gunman Cho Seung-hui. Students reported that he locked and held the door shut to the classroom, so they could jump out the windows to safety.

He was a very well known and published researcher for the aerospace engineering field. Contributing to over 1000+ technical books, chapters and other literature. He has been received multiple awards for his dedication to his research, with his most recent being a diploma from the 17th International Conference on Adaptive Structures and Technology.

You can view his sixty-two page resume here. I am deeply saddened by the loss of a person that had such dedication to the advancement of science.

edit: I just found an article on ynetnews.com linked from Liviu Librescu’s wiki, with some quotes from his family.

Ayala said that her father-in-law was passionate about his research and a dedicated family man. “He has been teaching there for 20 years, and was a senior, world-renowned lecturer. He is the professor with the highest number of publications in the history of Virginia Tech. In the past, he taught at Tel Aviv University and the Technion,” she added.

Joe said that his parents were very happy in the United States, where they have been living since 1984. “He and my mom led a simple life, at a pastoral place in West Virginia, between hills and mountains, and he loved the school in which he taught.”

“He is scientist who did not work for money, but for the pleasure he got from his occupation,” he added.