Wednesday, 27 July, 2005. 02:33:32 PM
I've been really getting into Podcasting. Podcatching really, since podcasting
is creating programs, and catching is downloading and listening to
programs. I'm using jPodder right now, but there's some glitches and
missing features, and since I'm partial to Python anyway, I'm writing my
own podcatcher with only the features that I want. It's not a very
complicated program, since podcasting relies on standard RSS and web
protocols. Anyway, I have subscribed to a bunch of podcast feeds, and I
listen to them all day long while I'm working.
/n
Wednesday, 27 July, 2005. 12:00:13 AM
A fluid ounce is 1.04 British fluid ounces. A British fluid ounce is defined
as 1/16th of an ounce at a specified temperature and pressure, so that
means that a US fluid ounce weighs 28.3g * 1.04, or 29.4g.
/n
Tuesday, 26 July, 2005. 09:42:06 AM
Discovery has been launched. The TV's in the IBM building aren't on a
news channel, so I can't watch it. I've tried the NASA video servers, but
they are all overloaded. The KSC video page is serving up still images,
and I can reload those slowly to see what's happening.
/n
Saturday, 23 July, 2005. 09:40:51 PM
We went to Krause Springs with Marie and the Robinsons. Photos in the photo
album.
/n
Thursday, 21 July, 2005. 06:03:48 PM
Forgot to mention that when we were up in Michigan a couple weeks ago I bought
a new digital camera - a Fuji S3100. The vacation pictures from July in the
photo album were all shot with that camera. My old camera took nice pictures,
but wouldn't focus in ordinary room lighting.
/n
Wednesday, 20 July, 2005. 11:58:37 AM
James Doohan died in Redmond, Washington today. He played the chief engineer Scotty on the original Star Trek.
/n
Sunday, 17 July, 2005. 02:21:36 PM
Alex, Kristiana, and I went out to the Target north of town this morning,
and we saw four contestants in the
North American Solar Challenge on 183. They were all moving along at highway speeds (greater than 60 MPH)
on a cloudy day. I had my camera with me in the car yesterday, but today
I didn't bring it with me.
/n
Friday, 15 July, 2005. 02:25:00 PM
This shell pipeline will download an RSS feed for a podcast, extract the
individual enclosures, and print them out. From the bashpodder script.
wget -q http://dawnanddrew.podshow.com/wp-rss2.php -O - | xsltproc parse_enclosure.xsl -
/n
Thursday, 14 July, 2005. 11:00:04 PM
The new server is up and running.
/n
Thursday, 14 July, 2005. 10:02:25 PM
I postponed the cutover to the new server hardware until tonight. The
new system booted up perfectly. Configuration won't take too long, and
it'll be in service.
/n
Tuesday, 12 July, 2005. 10:23:19 PM
Tonight is the cutover to the new server. Hopefully, I'll just swap the
drive, boot it, reconfigure the kernel, and it'll be running.
/n
Monday, 11 July, 2005. 08:50:18 AM
I went to Discount Electronics and picked up a new machine which will replace
the current server hardware. I finally got the current hardware to run
stably, but the built-in network card on the Via ME6000 board isn't well
supported under Linux. The built-in network hardware is based on a Via Rhine
chipset, which will work under Linux, but not without problems. If the
network cable is disconnected, or if the switch that it's connected to
is restarted, the network goes down and can't be restarted without a
reboot. This is obviously bad news for a server, and is the reason that
I've had so many network outages in the past weeks.
The new hardware is a small form factor computer with an i810e based Asus
motherboard and an 800Mhz Pentium III chip. I picked it up for $50, and
the memory cost another $40. It's not much bigger than the Mini-ITX machine,
and it's about as quiet too.
/n
Thursday, 07 July, 2005. 10:09:54 PM
I'm sick of my server crashing, despite the fact that it's adequately
cooled. I think the hardware is at fault, since none of my other machines
have kernel panic problems, but are running the same kernel version. I think
that I'll try a different motherboard, but if that doesn't work I might
have to pick up an old Celeron 450 or something.
/n
Tuesday, 05 July, 2005. 07:02:25 PM
Felons who have paid their debt to society have regained their right to
vote in Iowa, the 46th state to allow ex-felons to vote.
/n
Monday, 04 July, 2005. 01:09:29 PM
Here's an example of the absolutely awful stuff that is supposed to be
science reporting on CNN. My comments on the errors and misinformation
are in italics. The original article is at http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/07/04/eco.car/index.html
Eco-car more efficient than light bulb
Efficiency is the ratio of work to waste heat. This headline is saying
that a eco-car would waste less heat in proportion to useful work than a light
bulb. It turns out that the article isn't about that at all.
Monday, July 4, 2005; Posted: 11:54 a.m. EDT (15:54 GMT)
They got the date right. One point for them.
LONDON, England (CNN) -- An eco-car that can travel the world using a
fraction of the electricity it takes to power a light bulb, has been
unveiled by its British creators.
This makes no sense. A light bulb burning an arbitrary length of time
would use as much energy as you would like. There is no fixed amount
of electricity (measured in kilowatt-hours) that a light bulb will use.
According to the British gas firm BOC, its hydrogen-powered BOC Ech2o
needs just 25 Watts -- the equivalent of less than two gallons of petrol
-- to complete the 25,000-mile global trip, while emitting nothing more
hazardous than water.
25 watts is an amount of power, not an amount of electricity. Another
alternative measurement of power is horsepower. Nobody would say that
two gallons of gas is the same as 25 horsepower, and it's equally ridiculous
to say that two gallons of gas is the same as 25 watts.
/n
Sunday, 03 July, 2005. 04:31:20 PM
Looks like sd_mod is the scsi disk device support. I took it out because I
dropped SCSI emulation for CD-ROM burners, but I forgot that my digital cam
is accessed through a SCSI disk device too. A new kernel is building
now.
/n
Sunday, 03 July, 2005. 04:21:45 PM
I finally got sick of my Toshiba digital cam not focusing when I want
it to, so it's getting dumped. I bought a Fuji FinePix S3100 camera
this afternoon, and it seems to be a nice camera. Right now I can't get
the sd_mod module loaded when I plug it in to the USB port. It says
specifically "sd_mod: can't be loaded (for disk)"
/n
Saturday, 02 July, 2005. 08:38:13 PM
Newsweek says that Karl Rove is the Valerie Plame leaker. It's prison for him, hopefully.
/n
Saturday, 02 July, 2005. 02:05:20 PM
I've been offline for the past couple days because the closed-source
modem driver for my Thinkpad doesn't work with the latest Linux kernels,
and I didn't have the pcmcia-cs package installed so I could use my pcmcia
modem. I found a bar here in Windsor ON called the Brickhouse that has
free wireless access. I've got my pcmcia-cs package, so I'm all set. I'm
not going to rely on closed-source software at all for my modem. Nothing but
open source can really be trusted to work in a pinch.
/n
