グリソの足跡

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写真付きだ。いろんなところで現れるなぁ、グリソは。

π型人間

今日「π型人間」という言葉をはじめて聞いた。説明として白倉さんはリンクを送ってくれた。自分で見つけたのはこれ。

Corn Syrup is Badness

Yeah, I knew I was right, beeotch! Actually, I probably got the idea reading Neanderthin. Still, I realized that some drinks didn't really quench one's thirst, and from looking at the ingredients I figured out that the common one was corn syrup. That it messes with one's metabolism I didn't learn until later.

PVR

Since I've got digital cable, I've been thinking I need to put together a PC-based video recorder. Subscription-based ones like TiVo just mean another monthly bill, and since I don't watch all that much TV to begin with (the wife does sporadically), it's not worth it. So far I haven't been able to find any Japanese DVR-like devices, so I may have to roll my own.

Hot Deals Club had a blurb about a device called HDHomeRun, which is a networked DVR. The downside is that it requires coax inputs, and with my setup, I'm not sure if it'll work. Furthermore, SiliconDust's website doesn't have any specs or other information that would help me decide whether to buy it, so I'm going to pass.

DVICO, on the other hand, has a product, the Fusion HDTV5 RT Gold, that caught my eye. It at least has an S-Video input, so I could hook up my cable box to it. At $150, it's not too spendy, either. The problem is, it doesn't support Linux. I guess I have to keep looking.

Hide & Go Poop

Joel sent me this one. Crazy vid on YouTube.

PC 'Scope

Following on to the mixer thing, I was wondering how hard it'd be to make some oscilloscope-like hardware that plugs into a PC. Wikipedia has an article on test probes that's enlightening.

Maxim also has an article on designing a low-jitter clock, which can be used to drive high-speed ADCs. 1 GHz should be achievable. Using a USB interface would be too slow to do real-time processing, but by capturing into memory on a trigger and transferring the data, the PC could handle high-speed captures. Real-time could use less bandwidth to approximate the signal to the limit of USB 2.0.

Audio Mixer Circuit

I was looking at building a simple mixer circuit to mux two PCs' 5.1 audio sources to 5.1 speakers. My current KVM switch only has two minijacks, so it can't handle 5.1.

Googling "simple audio mixer circuit" turned up a page of links to mixer projects. Some ones I liked:

Simple Mixer
FET Audio Mixer
Six-Channel Mixer and Amp

Water Guns & The Glock FAQ

Noel sent me a link to a Wired News article about underwater weapons. Interesting, but of limited depth.

The more interesting thing was mention of The Glock FAQ, which has a lot of details about Glock pistols.

Lotus Notes on OS X

If I were really intent on getting away from Windows: There's a version of Lotus Notes for OS X, as well as the AT&T Global Network Dialer necessary to tunnel to the company network. Hmm.

Fading Photos

More on archival of photos. All the more reason to archive important images to film!

lhaca

Just in case I forget where to get a decompressor for LHA/LZH, here one is. The URL is amusing, "buttya" looks like "butt yeah!" Wonder if it's supposed to be "butcher" or something.

Optimus Maximus

The OLED-topped keyboard is finally reaching production in limited quantities.

But who's going to pay $1560 for keyboard, and a non-ergonomic one at that? Not I, sir. Though I must admit that it's kinda cool.

C&R FFL

Found this helpful link regarding obtaining a Curio & Relic Federal Firearms License. The main useful bit:

What is a C&R or Cruffler?
C&R is nothing more than a way to facilitate collecting.
You may have certain firearms shipped to your C&R FFL address, just like a FFL business.
The easy definition is firearms that are 50 years old or more.
-There are also some collectible firearms allowed.
You can write to the ATF asking them to determine a firearm a C&R.
-It looks a little difficult; requiring you to demonstrate why the firearm is collectible.
It is not a business.
-It MAY NOT be a business or it will be taken away fom you.
If you can own a gun you can get a C&R license.
The ATF determines who may have a C&R.
-Cities have little to no say in whether you may get one.
It does require you to keep a logbook.
-You must record EVERY C&R purchase.
You don't have to record non C&R firearms purchases in your C&R bound book.

One of my old roomies got a C&R, way back when, hence my lingering interest.

Also found a couple articles, one mirrored from Shotgun News with more info, another on importing, and then there's C&R Buds that has a bunch of useful C&R info.

"Last Ditch" Arisakas

Info on identification of the Arisaka so-called "last ditch" model.

STEREO Pictures of Earth

My Dad sent me this link to the STEREO website. Actually, he probably sent it a couple weeks ago. Anyway, the site's got some pretty sweet pictures of the sun. In stereo. Bitchin'!

祇園での遊び方

「一元さん」についてもうちょっと知りたかったので、ネット検索したらこの記事が出た。かなり面白い。行った御茶屋は「今後もどうぞ来てください」って言ってくれたっけ？

Lee Iacocca on Chrysler and the Future of Detroit

CNN Money had an interesting interview with Lee Iacocca. A couple interesting blurbs:

AT: Do you blame the Japanese for Detroit's decline over the past couple of decades?

LI: I've taken on the Japanese forever. Toyota's a great competitor. Nissan's coming on strong. Honda's always been great on engineering. They're good companies, but they had advantages. It's unfair competition. Their market is closed to us. They still manipulate currency. When they come to this country they don't have unions, and that's tough to compete against. Sometimes I think their trade practices are predatory.

AT: In the '80s you suggested raising the gas tax.

LI: Yes. I went to see Reagan and said, "Let's put a 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline. That's $50 billion. We can cut the deficit in half." He said, "You've got to be out of your mind. You don't tax gasoline." And he laughed. So we never did it. Our state and federal taxes add up to about 46 cents a gallon, compared with $5 in Europe.

A 50-cent gas tax? Why not? There's nothing that says people have a god-given right to cheap transportation. Of course, our economy depends on it. And in general more taxes are bad. Still, by having artificially low gas prices, we encourage its waste.

OS X Safe Sleep

I've often wondered why OS X doesn't have an analogue to Windows' hibernate mode. Turns out that newer Macs have the feature, called Safe Sleep, and that it can be enabled on some older Macs as well.

• A how to enable Safe Sleep on legacy Macs.
• An Apple help document depicting a Mac coming out of Safe Sleep.
• A description of the feature.

Minute Man Range

Back on 3/31 I ventured over to the Minute Man Range. Mostly because I wanted to shoot and it was raining, and I wasn't aware of any other indoor ranges near town. It took about 30 minutes to get there, driving through some real country. The drive was kind of nice, actually, except that would've been about a gallon and a half one way in my car.

I took one of my guns and rented a Glock G21 from the shop. Previously I was skeptical about Glocks, but the one I'd shot before was a G19, and 9mm I've found is pretty lame for accuracy, at least relative to .45. The G21 was nice. The range was nice, except their ventilation could've been better. That's a perennial problem with indoor ranges, though.

Seattle Mariners

The wife's father wants to go see Ichiro play at the Mariners' home ground. Thus, we're doing some checking into tickets and such. First there's the Mariners' website. A map of the Safeco Field seating helps pick out where to park it. The "Terrace Club" area looks good, if not spendy. Maybe one game in the lower box and another in the Terrace Club would do. There's a Field A-to-Z Guide, a collection of FAQs about the field. Interesting tidbits include the custom jerseys available for purchase, and that if one shows up during batting practice before the game one might be able to get an autograph. Cool!

Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young

I had occasion to look up on Wikipedia Chris Rock's No Sex (In the Champagne Room), for background on all that good advice. (I particularly liked the part about "don't go parties with metal detectors", and the humor of the pierced tongue part.)

What I didn't realize that was it was a parody of the "Wear Sunscreen" song. I'd heard that on the radio before too, but either had forgotten about it or figured the latest trend was to give random advice accompanied by music. The column that song was based on, apparently often the target of Internet hoaxes, is actually quite good. Especially for a column. Thus, I bookmark it here.

Anna Nicole Smith's Autopsy

I'm sure that this is in poor taste, but CNN posted Anna Nicole Smith's autopsy on the web. Out of sheer prurient interest, I checked it out. It's pretty twisted.

Most Digital Content Not Stable

Further rationale for doing analog backups of select material, e.g. photos to negatives or slides. Gotta keep collecting these articles....

File Sharing a Threat to Children and National Security

Actually, yes, it is. Parents these days don't teach their kids right and wrong, and file-sharing is definitely in the gray area. You just know that even 50% of files swapped are legal! Plus, less than bright employees could put such applications on government machines, and misconfigure them such that confidential material gets shared. (Of course top secret machines shouldn't be connected to the Internet, but still.)

I haven't read the paper yet, though. It's rather long.

The No Asshole Rule

Now this looks like an interesting book. There used to be an asshole in my group at work, but fortunately, he's gone now. Now only if my job were better....

Wisdom from Chris Rock

"Those are the choices in life: You can be married and bored or single and lonely," Rock said in his 2004 HBO special "Never Scared." "Ain't no happiness nowhere."

Amen, brother. ;-)

Sarah McLachlan Lyrics

I've been a mini-fan since college, but I only bought a couple of her CDs, notably Mirrorball, which is close to a best compilation, just live. Anyway, some of the lyrics are open to interpretation so it helps to have the lyrics handy. I just found out that on Sarah McLachlan's website, the discography contains links to lyrics pages. That's rather nice of her.

Trust and Attachment

The Four Stages of Trust
Attachment in Adults
Jealousy

Not Quite Mr. Fusion

On /. a few days ago, there was a bit about a mobile biorefinery that takes garbage and produces electricity. Sounds cool, but how's it for pollution?

Censorship Alive and Well at Universities

Apparently it's not acceptable to have a conservative-leaning viewpoint at some schools. City Journal has an article regarding this phenomenon. The piece is long, but worth the read.

Seems like the Right and Left in this country keep getting more and more polarized. We're heading for serious conflict, possibly civil war. This time, it's not going to be about slaves, it's going to be about freedom: whether you can say what you want without censorship, or keep weapons to keep the government in line.