Friday, 30 May, 2003. 02:56:14 AMTests of a space shuttle wing mockup using fiberglass parts borrowed from
Enterprise have caused damage to the seals. A chunk of foam fired at the
wing mockup at 530 MPH broke the seal and left a slit gap in the wing.
Since fiberglass is a lot stronger than the carbon material in a real
shuttle wing, it's looking like the foam could have easily caused the damage
that brought down Columbia.
Thursday, 29 May, 2003. 12:05:21 PMA mail that I sent regarding evidence that the Ashe Junpers (cedars) are
native to Texas:
--------------------------
There's plenty of information out on the web that talks about the cedars and
the myth that they are not native.
The closest that I have come is on this page:
http://juniper1.home.texas.net/cedarstuff.html
It's a guy who was talking to the director of Wild Basin, discovered that
the cedars were native, and decided to write about it. What he's written
is on the web, but it's not done yet. But here's a quote, with a reference
to a pollen study:
"The Undisputable Proof: Ice Age Pollen
In the September 1995 publication of Quaternary Research, Stephen Hall and Salvatore Valastro produced a report on the southern great plains vegetation during the last ice age. A Hill Country site that produced juniper pollens dating back to the late ice age was included as part of the report. This site, located in northwestern Bexar County, is called the Friesenhahn Cave.
It has taken a long time to find juniper pollens because pollens, in general, do not last well in the alkaline conditions of limestone. Peat deposits are typically the places where pollens are preserved best, and peat just is not common in the Hill Country. The pollens at Friesenhahn Cave were found in lacustrine clays, a medium which is moderately good for pollen preservation."
Wednesday, 28 May, 2003. 05:13:05 PMThe SARS outbreak in Toronto continues. 1700 high school students and staff
have been ordered quarantined after a student contracted SARS. That makes more
than 5000 people restricted to their homes for 10 days.
Tuesday, 27 May, 2003. 03:27:08 AMThe Nigerian Bible Scam is pretty simple. Apparently, they target book stores,
so I have no idea why they sent the spam to me. Anyway, I sent them a fake
invoice through the mail for $3700, and if I were to pursue the scam,
they would send me a certified check for $5000 or more. They would ask me
to send the merchandise, plus the difference in cash, as American cash can
be difficult to get in Nigeria. Of course, the "certified" check turns out
to be bogus...
Tuesday, 27 May, 2003. 03:11:43 AMGot a weird spam mail today. Strangely enough, the headers indicated that it
did indeed come from a server in Nigeria. This is the strangest twist on
the Nigerian scam that I've seen so far.
Envelope-to: presidentclinton@pdrap.org
Delivery-date: Tue, 27 May 2003 01:07:35 -0500
From: "hfministry"
Reply-To: h.hfministry@caramail.com
To: presidentclinton@pdrap.org
Subject: order
Good day,I'll like to inform you that i am interested in ordering KJV
Franklin Electronic bible, isbn 1567125336 bibles and also 100 pieces of
KJV compact bibles (isbn:0310911087) from your store ,So now i want the
total prices including the shipping cost to Nigeria via ups courier
+services,after
this i'll remit my credit card informations for the payment.
Thanks,expect to hear from you soonest.
Regards
Tuesday, 27 May, 2003. 12:10:57 AM
In 1933 the Danish writer Aksel Sandemose wrote a novel called "A refugee crosses his tracks". It takes place in an imaginary town called Jante (based on Sandemose's own hometown, Nykbing Mors) in which the Jante Law clearly dictates the social and moral standards. The law has, unfortunately, a larger geographic relevance.
Janteloven (The Jante Law)
1. Du skal ikke tro du er noe. (You shall not think that you are special.)
2. Du skal ikke tro du er like klok som oss. ( You shall not think that you are of the same standing as us.)
3. Du skal ikke tro du er klokere enn oss. (You shall not think that you are smarter than us.)
4. Du skal ikke innbille deg du er bedre enn oss. (Don't fancy yourself as being better than us.)
5. Du skal ikke tro du vet mer enn oss. (You shall not think that you know more than us.)
6. Du skal ikke tro at du er mer enn oss. (You shall not think that you are more important than us.)
7. Du skal ikke tro at du duger til noe. (You shall not think that you are good at anything.)
8. Du skal ikke le av oss. (You shall not laugh at us.)
9. Du skal ikke tro at noen bryr seg om deg. (You shall not think that anyone cares about you.)
10. Du skal ikke tro at du kan lære oss noe. (You shall not think that you can teach us anything.)
Monday, 26 May, 2003. 12:39:40 PM
Four T-38's just flew over my house towards the NE in formation. About
a month ago I was surprised to see an F-4 fly over my house. I think that
it must have been a test aircraft, because the nose and wingtips were painted
orange.
Friday, 23 May, 2003. 04:52:47 PM
New SARS cases in China this week totaled less than 20, but over 100 in the
past two days have been reported in Taiwan. And Toronto has had 4 new cases
that are linked to St. John's rehabilitation hospital in Toronto.
Wednesday, 21 May, 2003. 06:20:12 PM
The Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota is
predicting that when winter comes SARS cases will increase past anything
seen so far, and that it is likely that many American cities will see
outbreaks.
Tuesday, 20 May, 2003. 11:03:22 AM
I've been corresponding with Tom Large, the CEO of Designer Appliances Inc.,
about my experience with the Quill Mouse. He took issue with my
characterization of my example of the Quill Mouse as 'defective' and was
concerned that I was saying that the Quill Mouse as a whole was defective.
That's a fair objection in my opinion, and in the interest of fairness to a
person who seems to be proud of his product, and genuinely interested in
helping people with RSI with his product, I'm adding additional information.
My use of the word 'defective' to describe the Quill Mouse was not meant to
describe all Quill mice, just the example that I ordered through WalGreen's
website. There is no production line in existence that can produce something
perfectly 100% of the time. This is why companies have return policies and
warranty programs. The fact that Tom Large took the time to track down the
person who returned his product to WalGreens to address any problems that
I had with his mouse product speaks volumes about the commitment that he
and Designer Appliances has to customer satisfaction.
As I wrote to Tom, the word 'defect' does not indicate that there is a design
problem with the Quill Mouse in general. The Quill Mouse appears to be very
well designed, both ergonomically and mechanically. I'll be placing another
order for the Quill Mouse directly from Designer Appliances shortly.
Monday, 19 May, 2003. 02:10:13 AM
Alex and I went to Pedernales Falls State Park today, the photos of the
interesting erosion of the riverbed are up.
Friday, 16 May, 2003. 11:50:25 PM
There's a huge storm coming with lots of lightning. My server should stay
up because it's on a UPS, but just in case, the uptime right now is 174 days,
21.5 hours.
Thursday, 15 May, 2003. 07:30:22 PM
There's a lunar eclipse tonight, but the cloud forecast isn't looking too
good, so I might miss it. This year there are two eclipses. The next one
is in November.
Monday, 12 May, 2003. 08:41:24 PM
Alex and I went to an art show yesterday where a friend was showing some of
her paintings. We bought a cubist style painting (not our friend's though)
for the space above our fireplace.
Monday, 12 May, 2003. 02:36:32 AM
I decided to return my Quill mouse today, because it's defective. Out
of the three optical mice that I've owned - a Belkin, the Quill, and a
Logitech, two of them exhibited the same problem. When the mouse moved
quickly, the cursor responded normally. But when the mouse moved slowly,
the cursor didn't move at all. Proper tracking of a slow moving mouse is
essential to controlling the cursor. Only my Logitech tracks perfectly
at all speeds.
Thursday, 08 May, 2003. 11:42:58 PM
I ordered a computer mouse from Quill a
few days ago and it arrived tonight. It's a strange looking mouse that is
designed to be much more comfortable to use than a regular mouse. I've been
having quite a bit of pain in my right wrist from the awkward position that
a regular mouse forces my hand into, and it wasn't getting better very
quickly. This new mouse will take some getting used to, because it keeps
the wrist relatively immobile. That transfers the fine movement of the mouse to
the muscles of the upper arm, which can take the punishment easily, but are
more attuned to delivering force, not finesse. All the reviews of the
Quillmouse note that it takes a couple weeks to get used to the mouse.
Thursday, 08 May, 2003. 02:30:34 PM
The air over Texas is filled with smoke. A thousand miles to the South,
agricultural fires are used to clear fields, and many of them have gotten
out of control. The smoke is blowing North into Texas, causing respiratory
problems in some people.
Tuesday, 06 May, 2003. 11:54:10 PM
Here's some interesting advice on interfacing microcontrollers with USB:
--------------
Re:USB parport (Score:2, Interesting)
by n1ywb (555767) on Tue May 06, '03 08:34 PM (#5897579)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Sun Mar 23, '03 02:56 PM)
I used Microchip's USB PICs. They'll send you free samples, although you'll need to be able to program them somehow. I won't go into the details of getting started in PIC programming, you can google for that and find 1000 pages. They supply USB firmware, which is pretty easy to use. Just define your descriptors (this will require reading parts of the USB spec), and then put copy your data into a buffer and put the number of bytes in W and call their library routine. Data sent.
If you look at the data sheet for the PIC 16c745 and 16c765, you'll find schematics. It's damn simple, you add a cap and a resistor and a USB connector and the thing powers itself off the bus.
--
-73, de N1YWB
Tuesday, 06 May, 2003. 11:28:42 AM
Microsoft is slashing the number of API calls in the upcoming "Longhorn"
operating system from 76,000 to only 8,000. This is a perfect example of
what's wrong with Microsoft operating systems. 76,000 API calls is just
poor design taken to the Nth degree.
Tuesday, 06 May, 2003. 03:00:59 AM
May 5th SARS numbers: 6583 cases, 461 dead, 2764 recovered. Current death rate
is 12%. There are still squabbles about how the death rate is being calculated,
and it is further complicated by the possibility that people are being
infected with SARS, but are not becoming sick. If the quarantines around
the world show positive results, then that possibility becomes less likely.
Thursday, 01 May, 2003. 06:19:37 PM
The World Health Organization is reporting new SARS statistics today. There
have been 5865 cases so far, 391 deaths, and 2563 recovered. Something that
is being reported inaccurately is the death rate. Most sources that I've
seen calculate the death rate from SARS as the (# dead/# of cases) * 100
as a percent. That is wrong. The proper way to calculate the death rate
is (# dead/(# of cases - # recovered)) * 100. This calculation shows the
actual death rate from SARS to be much higher than is being reported.
So, the current death rate from SARS is actually (391/(5865-2563)*100, or
11.8%.
Poland reported its first case of SARS today.