The shuttle is coming back on Saturday morning, and the second ground track is only about 40 miles south of Austin, so it should be visible. The first one is just a bit far North to see, but Waco and Dallas should get a good show.
Wednesday, 29 January, 2003. 12:11:25 AM
Today the front page of CNN featured a shot of an A6E Intruder launching off a carrier. If news agencies are going to use stock photos, they should take care to use something plausible. The A6E was retired from the fleet over 2 years ago. None are in service today. The Navy now uses the F-18 for the ground attack role. The S3 Viking and the F-14's also can carry various bombs.
Tuesday, 28 January, 2003. 09:31:51 PM
Update on the Super 8 Hotel Times Square New York City:
I found out that they do indeed charge for local phone calls, at a rate comparable to the expensive hotels. Too bad, I have to knock the place down to a star and a half. Completely unacceptable for anyone who wants to get work done. Good thing I've only dialed in to work on the Lehman project, so I will get reimbursed for the calls I made.
Monday, 27 January, 2003. 10:35:07 PM
This happened to me in the Jollyville Post Office in Lansing, MI, in 1997.
Postman: Number 27, number 27
Me: Hi, Here's my change of address form.
Postman: What's this?
Me: It's a change of address form.
Postman: That's not a change of address form.
Me: Yes, it is. I printed it off the Internet website.
Postman: (loudly) I DON'T KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE INTERNET!!!
Me: It's from the website.
Postman: The only change of address form I know of is the cards right behind you.
Me: Let's do an experiment. Why don't you submit this form to the right people and just see what happens? See if they reject it or not.
Postman: (grumble grumble, takes the form and sticks it in the slot)
Every once in a while I'll yell out "I don't know nothing about the Internet" just to make Alex laugh.
Monday, 27 January, 2003. 03:24:54 AM
After a lot of work this weekend, I got the second phase of the code ported to Linux, and ready to test.
Wednesday, 22 January, 2003. 09:41:05 PM
I'm working late in my hotel room, and I've got American Idol on the TV. I can see why it's become a popular show. The bad singers are really truly funny to watch.
About the hotel now:
Review of the Super 8 Times Square New York City
I've wanted to stay in this hotel since I read about it in USA Today while I was in NYC last year. The review there was good, and I agree. I'm have my own criteria for what makes a good hotel to stay in, and things like doormen, in-room bars, and fancy furniture don't impress me at all. I was sorely disappointed staying at the Helmsley Park Lane and the Park Lane hotels. Travellers interested in luxury would enjoy those places, but I didn't.
The hotel has been open less than a year, and was remodelled recently. Obviously it's quite an old building. There are two windows in my room and both are quite drafty. The room was cold when I first arrived, but once I closed the curtains and the bathroom door, the single radiator heated it quite nicely. My room on the 11th floor (top floor) has a fire escape, and easy access to a very wide carpeted staircase. The stairs are properly set behind glass doors, preventing a fire from racing up the stairs and into the hallway.
The location of the hotel is on 46th Street, between 5th and 6th Ave. This is about 5 minutes walk from Times Square and all the tourist places that crowd the area, and less than that to the subway stations. It's a perfect place to be if you're visiting the city.
Something that always bothers me is crooked handles on the water fixtures. In more places than I can count, when the faucets are off, the handles don't line up. That's just sloppy, because lining the handles up is the easiest thing to do, and it can be plainly seen across the room. This room has a single handle, which sidesteps that completely.
The most important thing about a hotel room is how well I can work in it. The fancy hotels with the fancy furniture in the rooms invariably have chairs that are too high, and the tables have aprons that drop too low. It's impossible to sit with you legs under the table. This Super 8 has a nice low chair, and a modest apron on an actual working desk. Perfect for getting something done.
The very best feature of this hotel is that they don't charge by the minute for local calls. Right now, I'm connected to the computers at Lehman, getting some work done. The 4 hours I've been connected haven't cost me or my company anything at all. In the fancy Helmsley Park Lane, I would have spent a buck for the first half hour, and 10 cents a minute after that. 4 hours of working time would have cost me $22.
To summarize, the Super 8 Times Square New York City hotel is a great bargain, costing about $90 a night - less than half what I paid per night at other hotels. The rooms are plain, but clean. If you know how to cover a drafty window with the curtains, the room will be nice and toasty. The local calls are free, and the staff is courteous and efficient. I give it 3.5 stars, out of 4. It would be a perfect 4 stars if the windows closed tightly.
Monday, 20 January, 2003. 09:09:29 PM
I'm on the plane to NYC right now, until the 31st. The power outlets are not working under my seat, or my inverter is defective. I won't have a chance to test it before the flight back either. I've been working on the Patrol function for the starships and it's working now. Next I need to work on the tactical AI.
Friday, 17 January, 2003. 11:51:03 PM
Rumsfeld and Saddam in the 1980's when they were best buddies.
Friday, 17 January, 2003. 12:20:07 PM
More on the walking sticks with reappearing wings: it seems that the big deal is not that the walking sticks re-evolved wings, it's that the genes for making wings were preserved intact during the time when walking sticks were wingless, and that the genes were reactivated when they were useful again.
Friday, 17 January, 2003. 10:01:24 AM
With regards to the Brigham Young walking stick researchers: I don't understand why biologists have thought that evolution could not repeat itself. Seems like if the environment is A, changes to B, then changes back to A, the organisms would also follow the environment in their evolution. As supporting evidence, consider the large number of completely unrelated but similar appearing plants that live in the desert and look like Yucca. If multiple species can adopt a similar appearance in response to a similar environment, then why can't that happen within a single species?
Thursday, 16 January, 2003. 12:37:04 PM
Headline for today: "Rumsfeld: Lack of evidence could mean Iraq's hiding something". Nice to see such mental giants in our government.
Wednesday, 15 January, 2003. 01:26:47 AM
I just read the phrase "resegregation of the South" for the first time. I wonder if the news stations will pick up on it and run more stories on it. The context was an article on cnn.com about white teachers leaving black schools.
Tuesday, 14 January, 2003. 04:43:53 PM
I read a good book last night, "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect" by Roger Williams. It's published on the web and available for free distribution. The author has a Paypal tip jar so you can send him money if you like the book. I liked it quite a bit, so I sent him $7, which is about what I'd pay for it in the store. The subject of the novel is the Singularity, how it began, and how it ends. The main characters in the book are a member of a subculture called "Death Jockeys", the creator of the singularity, and the AI known as Prime Intellect. The first chapter hooked me quickly with a nicely done introduction to the Death Jockeys. The pacing in the book is just right, with something important happening in almost every paragraph. I haven't read any Singularity fiction before, but this one is going to be a classic.
Tuesday, 14 January, 2003. 03:20:46 PM
When I got to work I discovered that all connections from the outside were being blocked by my router. I went home and fixed the problem. I had turned on the stateful packet inspection which was screwing up the port forwarding. Now it's all working, and the e-mail is starting to roll in.
Tuesday, 14 January, 2003. 02:06:47 AM
Woooooo! I'm up. Everything's working fine now. The whole problem that I had with the Linksys is that I typed a 46 instead of a 47 as the gateway. And I didn't spot it right away. The DNS records are now changed for both my web server and my e-mail addresses, so within the next day or so everything will get back to normal as the change propagates around the DNS system. Sure is nice to be back on the net.
Tuesday, 14 January, 2003. 01:12:03 AM
The network settings for my new DSL line:
IP addresses: 66.141.47.121 - 125
Gateway: 66.141.47.126
Subnet: 255.255.255.248
Primary DNS: 151.164.1.8
Secondary DNS: 206.13.28.12
Tuesday, 14 January, 2003. 12:45:34 AM
Damn this thing is a pain in the neck. Usually figuring out my network configuration is easy, but the DSL is not cooperating with my Linksys firewall. So far, I've got the thing working with a direct connection to either Windows or Linux.
Monday, 13 January, 2003. 12:00:51 PM
Today is the day that SBC promised my DSL line to be active. I'm going to go right home and try to hook it up. Hopefully, all will go well and I'll be back on the net.
Sunday, 12 January, 2003. 07:25:26 PM
>
>Thursday, 09 January, 2003. 04:52:48 PM
I'm not going to NYC next week, it'll probably be the week after. That's good because Alex is out of town this weekend, so the dogs won't have to be boarded. And my DSL line is going to be active on the 13th too.
Thursday, 09 January, 2003. 11:42:54 AM
Dried salted plums are called Umeboshi.
Wednesday, 08 January, 2003. 08:00:07 PM
I plugged in my DSL modem and it found a carrier, but couldn't connect to the configuration server. I called tech support and verified that they sold me the right plan (5 static IP addresses;$65/mo) and they did. But it's not scheduled to be turned on until January 13th, which is when I am supposed to be in New York.
Wednesday, 08 January, 2003. 03:16:34 PM
I was at home this morning because we had a carpenter fix a bit of rotted siding on our house. In Texas, and probably elsewhere, a brick house like mine will typically be brick on three sides only, with regular siding on the back. The stuff they put on was cheap crap, made out of cardboard or something very similar. It was rotting in one spot down by the foundation in the back, and it had let water in, so some of the molding was damaged as well. The carpenter fixed it pretty well so it shouldn't leak any more. We've got to decide whether to get the siding painted this spring, or to just get new siding about a year from now.
When I went to work in the afternoon, I forgot my secureID that I need to get onto Lehman's network, so I had to go all the way home to get it. There was a new DSL router waiting on my doorstep, so it appears that DirectTV finally completed their billing cycle and notified SBC that the phone line was free. I should have my new DSL line up and running very soon.
Monday, 06 January, 2003. 11:59:56 PM
Straw admits oil is key priority
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Tuesday January 7, 2003
The Guardian
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, yesterday pinpointed for the first time security of energy sources as a key priority of British foreign policy.
Mr Straw listed energy as one of seven foreign policy priorities when he addressed a meeting of 150 British ambassadors in London.
The US and British governments officially deny that oil is a factor in the looming war with Iraq, but some ministers and officials in Whitehall say privately that oil is more important in the calculation than weapons of mass destruction.
Monday, 06 January, 2003. 11:27:39 PM
Researchers at Purdue have discovered the source of the biological clock, a protein with two functions that alternates every 12 minute, for a 24 minute complete cycle. I think this is going to be one of the most important discoveries of the year, and maybe even more importan than that. The biological clock has a role to play in almost every bodily function, and understanding it will significantly affect a large part of medicine.
Monday, 06 January, 2003. 12:23:31 AM
I finished taking apart my FirstFlex TLR and found that it isn't fixable. I was hoping that the leaf shutter wasn't broken, but it is. The pivot for one of the leaves is broken and missing. Apparently it caught on a raised edge inside the compartment underneath the camera mechanism and broke off. Too bad, it would have been fun to actually use. The inside of the camera was very crudely made, and ultimately one of those badly fitting edges was where the leaf shutter snagged. So, I stuck all the parts into a bag. I'm cleaning up my Duaflex IV with the Kodar lens too. That camera works just fine, but all the optics needed a cleaning. The lens has a crude focus mechanism that I'll have to calibrate when there's enough light outside to create an image on sheer paper at the focal plane. Not too difficult. After this, I'll get my Argus C3 cleaned out an lubricated.
Friday, 03 January, 2003. 03:03:28 PM
Comment from Slashdot about various 3D modelling programs:
Inexpensive hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
by mhandlon (464241) Alter Relationship on Fri Jan 03, '03 01:27 PM (#5008248)
(http://slashdot.org/)
The problem is that graphics software. Any 3d rendering/modeling application worthwhile is designed and priced for corporate use and finding books on open source/free applications, which usually prove, to have steep learning curves and so so results and shit interfaces.
If she is really "serious" about this I would suggest Lightwave 3d [http://www.newtek.com] and the book Inside Lightwave 7 by Dan Ablan. Overall Lightwave has an excellent rendering engine an easy to pick up interface, isnt over prices for this level of computer graphics software, and she can create anything her imagination can come up with.
But in the area of free, or very cheap, 3d modellers (particularly ones with nice UI's).
Aztec
Cost: Free (opensource)
Features: Mesh-based modelling tools w/ subd's, Full UV support, Skeletal animation, Ray-Traced render engine via Povray.
Interface: Very Max-Like, not hugely intuative, but good enough.
Usability: I picked it up pretty quickly, but I've had experience with max, those who haven't may find it a little confusing initially.
Rating: 8/10
Comments: Support for other render engines coming soon, continually developed, so expect new features to keep cropping up
Wings3d
Version: 0.97.5
Cost: Free (opensource)
Features: Good mesh-based modelling tools w/ subd's, simple render thru OpenGL. There are a lot of features I'd like to see yet (edge/poly creation, ability to do things without having to rightclick up a menu every 5 seconds), but as it's pre-1.0 I won't count this towards it.
Interface: Fairly intuative, not the best overall, but second only to anim8or.
Usability: Easy as hell, everythings pretty clearly labelled. I picked it up straight away.
Rating: 7/10
Comments: Single-pane view can get irritating occasionally, but overall a nice app. Purely for modelling, you won't get any pretty renders out of this, and the UV is limited. No animation capabilities. A lot more features expected before 1.0
Anim8or
Version: 0.8
Cost: Free
Features: Mesh-based modelling tools w/subd's, scan-line render engine, skeletal animation and full UV texturing capabilities.
Interface: Very nice, no tooltips, so can be a little tricky to get used to, but overall - good.
Usability: Odd. The interface doesn't lend itself to good workflow, but not very easy to figure out intially.
Rating: 9/10
Comments: I'd say the best I found overall, espcially for pre-1.0 . Let down slightly by its render engine, but its enough to get the job done.
Metasequoia
Version: 2.1
Cost: Freeware/Shareware
Features: Mesh-based modelling tools w/subd's, no render engine (?), no animation, limited texturing capabilites.
Interface: Can be confusing initially, due to it's extremely high ability for UI customisation. By default it's UI is a turn-off to say the least, but see dhromed's post a few down for information on customising, and a pic showing the possibilities.
Usability: Lots of buttons, quite confusing, but not that hard to pick up.
Rating: 6/10
Comments: Quite difficult to figure out, tools appear to be very unstable (splitting a polygon caused all sorts of havok). Very customisable, which is a plus, but still lacking somewhat in features and stability.
Blender
Version: 2.25
Cost: Freeware (opensource)
Features: Probably the most feature rich of the group. You'll find pretty much anything you'd expect from a commercial program, especially considering the amount of user-created plugins availble for cloth dynamics, fur etc etc. The exception to this is the apparent lack of edge, or polygon modelling. Vertex only, it would appear. You can perform any function you could perform on an edge or polygon, such as extrude, bevel, edge-bevel etc...but it's still one of its biggest downsides. Especially if you're from a box-modelling background, and can't do without your polygons, like me . Another one of its short comings is the render engine, even the best blender3d work, still has that "1995 computer graphics" looks to it. Shame.
Interface: Many peoples first thoughts are "WTF??". Quite rightly so. It's pretty horrendous at first, you can't figure out what in the hell does what, when all you want to do is make a damn box. Bad blender, BAD!
Usability: Despite the above, once you've spent a week or so learning it (it would be a lot quicker if there was actually any decent documentation available without having to buy the manual), things start clicking into place, and the interface is actually very efficient.
Rating: 8/10
Comments: Would be excellent if it wasn't for the steep learning curve. It's really not for anyone who hasn't got good experience in 3d, and a fair amount of time on their hands. However, it's extremely feature rich, and once you've learnt the interface, the speed of work-flow you can achieve is phenominal.
MilkShape3d
Version: 1.6.4
Cost: $20
Features: Your basic box-modeller, no subd's, no render engine. skeletal-based animation, and full UV support. Amazing import/export list.
Interface: Horrible. Confusing to even 3d veterans. Not at all intuative, its click click click every 3 seconds.
Usability: Limited severely. The UI needs a total overhaul, the features are there, but it's just too irritating for my tastes. I use it purely as a format conversion tool.
Rating:7/10
Comments: Good for what its designed for - games. But let down by its interface, makes everything such a chore.
AC3D
Version: 3.4
Cost: $39.95
Features: Mesh based modelling tools. Full UV texturing capabilities.
Interface: Quite bad, menu elements are in odd places, overall - not very intuiative.
Usability: Average. Things were easy-ish to find, but took some searching in odd places.
Rating: 7/10
Comments: Like milkshape, this is intended for low-poly model creation. Also like milkshape, let down by its interface, but has the tools to do the job.
Nurbana
Version: 1.03 (aplha)
Cost: Free
Features: A fully featured nurbs editor (supposadly). Custom-coded raytracing render engine. Support for materials, not sure about UV texturing. No animation.
Interface: Very simple looking, don't be decieved, there are a million keyboard shortcuts. Very confusing overall, despite its apparent simplicity.
Usability: Easy once you get to grips with it, everything is nicely organised for fast workflow, and everything is kept beautifully simple, while still providing nice results.
Rating: 8/10
Comments: It has its problems, I'd say for one that it's too simple. So simple it can be confusing. The interface didn't look like the screenshots for me, so I think it may be customisable, but no idea how. There are a few bugs, but it's only in Alpha, so that's be be expected.
Softy3d
Version: 1.0
Price: $34
Features: Where to begin? Certainly not a conventional modelling tool, but certainly one of my favourite, the results you can obtain are fantastic. let me explain.... this program works in a similar way to "meta-balls". You "sketch" out your object in spheres, and lines (with thickness references at each point you click), then you generate a mesh, which smooths over all these. Imagine the human body, all the muscles underneath, with a "skin" ontop. That's exactly what this program does. No render engine, no texturing, it's purely a modeller, to export into other programs.
Interface: Fantastic; nicely laid out, everything easily accessable. The only thing I didn't like was the white background for the 3d windows.
Usability: I hovered over a few tooltips, and I'd learned the program. It's that simple. Amazing little ap.
Rating: 9/10
Comments: It's certainly not usable for low poly work, its texturing capabilities are none, it doesn't have a render engine...BUT this is one of the most unique, original little programs I've come accross. Try it. TRY IT.
Friday, 03 January, 2003. 10:56:02 AM
A few weeks ago, I restarted, for the umteenth time, my space battle game. I'm going to use OpenGL even though it's not strictly 3D at this point. Worked on the timer functions last night.
Thursday, 02 January, 2003. 01:51:18 PM
Looks like I'm going to NYC for Lehman Brothers next Tuesday. Currently I'm trying to figure out a puzzling STL problem with g++ 2.95.3. The code compiles just fine with g++ 3.2.1. I think there's some kind of namespace confusion going on.