Hypercubed Blog

Hypercubed Blog has Moved!

2005-10-30T20:06:00.000-08:00

I have moved my blog to blog.hypercubed.com. I've copied all old posts and comments to the new system. Not only does this move allow me guaranteed future control of the domain (the hypercubed.com domain is mine) but also allows me more flexibility and control. The new blog uses the awesome (and free) WordPress application. Look forward to a post soon regarding my experiences installing WordPress and my overall opinion (preview: very good!). I hope I don't lose an readers... all two of you are very important to me! Hope to see you there.

How Much Is My Blog Worth?

2005-10-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

My blog is worth $6,209.94. How much is your blog worth?

My blog is worth $6,209.94. How much is your blog worth? Business Opportunities Weblog has a little applet that uses Technorati's API to compute and display your blog's worth using the same link to dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc. deal. This is based on research by by Tristan Louis's research into the value of each link to Weblogs Inc.

Qumana Review

2005-10-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

While consulting my god google for more info on RocketPost (mainly looking for anyone willing to pay $150 for it) I came across several mentions of Qumana. Well since I'm an app junky I thought I'd give it a try. The good news is that I have no complaints about the spell check (unlike BlogJet, W.Bloggar, or RocketPost ). Matter of fact is probably on of the most robust spell checkers I've seen. Even includes customized autocorrection (so I can automatically convert "teh" to "the").

The bad news is that it does not include the ability to view and edit the HTML directly. I'm sure for most people this is sufficient. But for me I like to view the HTML directly and make tweaks here and there. In addition I don't see anyway to edit the post details like publication time or post as a draft.. Such a shame considering how good the spell check looks and the fact that it is completely free.

RocketPost Basic

2005-10-22T16:55:00.000-07:00

I'm trying out RocketPost blogging software. The interface is nice and solid. The editor allows switching between design mode and HTML mode which is a must. RocketPost even has the extremely useful feature of being able to download all posts off blogger. This is very nice for backup purposes and such. The interface allows me to edit the publication time and date; something that I’ve seen missing from other blogging software.

With all this application goodness I was floored at the utterly horrific spell check. One of the main reasons I ever want to use a blogging tool is to provided integrated spell check. I’ve tried BlogJet and W.Bloggar and others not worth mentioning. All of them have problems with their spell check in my opinion. Unfortunately RocketPost is the worst. First of all it breaks the standard convention for spell check. Normally when you run a spell check in most applications you will be presented with a dialog box that allows you to ignore or replace the misspelled words one at a time. Often many of the words are not misspelled but just missing from the dictionary. For these you need to either hit ignore or add to dictionary. Because I am often presented with many of these in a row it is easy to just click-click-click through several at a time. In RocketPost you are not presented with a dialog box but rather a drop down menu that drops form somewhere in the vicinity of the potentially misspelled word. So in order to ignore several words you need to click ignore, move mouse to new drop down, click ignore, move mouse... and so on. It eliminates the ability of motor memory as the buttons are constantly moving. Also, sometimes the word you are checking is covered by the drop-down that fails to repeat the word. You stuck guessing... “What word did I type that looks like gurge?”. Also you need to be aware that if your misspelled word contains any punctuation (for example wo'nt) it is ignored and therefore assumed correct. Why anyone would choose to break the well established paradigm for spell check is beyond me.

In addition there is my pet peeve. I am coastally writing the word “teh” rather then “the”. MS Word is smart enough to automatically make all my “teh”s into “the”s. In BlogJet and W.Bloggar I has to perform a scroll to replace “teh” with “the” during the spell check. Even worse in RocketPost “teh” isn't even one of the options. It also provides not capability for replacing the word with your own word not in it’s dictionary. That means every time the spell check comes across a “teh” I need to stop the spell check, change it manually, and start again. That is very unproductive. In then end I still haven’t found any blog posting software better then good old MS word or bloggers built in WYSIWYG editor.

I have also noticed that there appears to be no feature to publish your blog. In blogger you can post an article but it will not be updated until you publish your blog. This means after you post your article you need to log into blogger and manually publish. Then what is the point of blogging software.

[Edit: Wow! They charge $149 for the full version.]

Einstein has his priorities in order

2005-10-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

hetemeel.com is a very cool web app that allows you to add text to Einstein's chalkboard.

Save Flash from Firefox

2005-10-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

The other day I posted an article on how to place a flash file for display on your desktop. I mention a couple of methods for saving the flash file to your hard drive. Both methods involve examining the source code to get the flash file URL. Turns out there is a much easier way in Firefox. I'll leave the details to the source but basically, you can view a list of all media on the page, including flash files, from the "View Page Info" menu. Once you find the appropriate item in the media list there is a "Save As…" button that allows you to easily store the file to your HD. Very nice stuff.

Weblog Usability or How I Suck as a Blogger

2005-10-18T22:32:00.000-07:00

The king of usability Jakob Nielsen has list the top ten design mistakes for weblogs. So I thought I would check out how Hypercubed blog stack up. 9/10 is not bad right? Well it is if that is the number of usability rules you’ve broken. Let's go over them one-by-one:

1. No Author Biographies
Not having a biography on this blog was a conscience decision. I decided a long time ago that this blog was not going to be about me and I avoid writing about myself. My blog is a place where I can share my technological experiences not my personal ones. I tried at one time to talk about my self and my chronic case of mental randomness but I didn't like it. I prefer to stick to science, technology, and philosophy; although I've been weak on philosophy.

2. No Author Photo
See #1.

3. Nondescript Posting Titles
I rarely use descriptive titles. I usually try for something pithy. I most likely fail at that but at least I’m trying.

4. Links Don't Say Where They Go
This is a basic web no-no. I know I should avoid using links that that don't describe the destination like this or that. However, when writing a semi-informal blog I make some sacrifices to allow the content to flow. It is hard to find the time to write as irregularly as I do. If I worried too much about this type of thing it would inhibit my ability to supply content. It takes me too long to write each post as it is. Hell, it takes me several minutes just to get through the spell check (if you ever IM’d with me you know that is true).

5. Classic Hits are Buried
This is my one out of 10. On the right sidebar I've linked to several notable posts. What defines a notable posts is arbitrary but I try to include posts that I thought were especially interesting or humorous or posts that seamed generated a lot of traffic.

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
Unfortunately a calendar approach is the only navigation of the archive available through blogger. I've been considering several options to add categories including using del.icio.us tags as described here (damn, did it again, see #4). Personally I haven’t liked the results so that will have to wait tell I hack together something of my own (or blogger.com gets on the ball and adds them).

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
I want to say that I publish when I have something to say but the truth is at any given time I have a backlog of topics I want to write about. Usually the problem is finding the time to create a coherent post. There is a certain minimum level of quality (very minimum) that I'd like to achieve and if I don't think I have the time to dedicate to the subject what I think it will take I don't. I'd rather miss a day (or a week) if it is needed. Is this inconsistent with #4?

8. Mixing Topics
Wow, I really screwed up on this one. Can science, technology, and philosophy all be considered one topic? How about stuff I’m not allowed to talk about with my co-worker, wife, and lunch buddies?

9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
I don't write for my future boss but I am conscious of the fact that people that know me or work with me will be reading. That is one of the reasons I don’t talk about myself and try to keep it mostly safe for work.

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
Well, I failed this one too. I’ve considered for sometime moving my blog to my primary website. Matter of fact I have a not so current backup located there. One of the reasons I don’t switch over is that I enjoy hacking up the blogger templates. I can still do that if host the blog myself but I know I’ll have the tendency to start playing with some server side stuff here and there mostly eventually creating my own blog system. That might be fun but who has the time. I consider keeping the blog at blogspot an act of self control. Besides why not use bloggers bandwidth rather then mine.

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth

2005-10-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

I get lots of e-mail spam and I mean a lot. For some reason much of it is in Russian. Maybe because of a post I made about the ease of translating e-mails in outlook. I don’t translate it by the way, in case you Russian spammers are listening. The rest is usually trying to sell pharmaceuticals, penis enlargements, or penny stocks. I blogged about using CloudMark (here and here) but the spam e-mail continues to roll in. I also receive many spam posts on my websites’ forums. Most of those are links in Chinese and get promptly deleted. There ar a few more subtle spam posts by some folks pretending (poorly) to have a conversation regarding certification tests. Those I tolerate because I want to see where they’re going. I’m also starting to have to deal with a new form of spam… blog comment spam. Most of theses I delete unless I can find some why to post a humorous comment back.

So what is the deal? Why all this spam? Well unfortunately the answer is pretty easy. Sending spam (or posting spam) is cheap and it works. That is the thing that annoys me most. Why the hell does it work? Who are the idiots that are buying these “Medhictions” that promise to “IMMEDIATE SIZEGAIN ON UR SMALL SIZE @1%# seize”? Would you ever buy anything from a store that advertised satisfaction guaranteed “or your monneyy back without question ask!”… No! So why in the hell are people buying this crap? The solution is as simple as the cause just don’t by from spammers! But unfortunately some people are just too stupid. Maybe we should require a license to gain internet access?

How about the penny stocks... well you might think that the spammers want you to buy them so they can experience a quick price surge and then sell. You might be tempted to try and ride the wave. The truth is these stocks don’t increase much and the drop pretty rapidly. If you need proof read Spam Stock Tracker. This guy tracked several spammed stocks to determine how much he would lose if he had purchased shares in each. At last check he would have lost 7,550.40 of a 17,405.00 investment. Again the answer is just don’t do it!

Ok, now what about my forum and comment spam. We’ll I’m not going to buy anything from these people. What about you my loyal randomly-acquired-and-most-likely-lost reader? Well, if I do my job well you will never see the comment spam. Hopefully the spammers will get the hint and stop spamming my sites (a man can hope can’t he?). But I’ll take it one step further… I’m going to post the names of the sites that are spamming me and encourage you to NEVER buy from these people. I know some will think that I’m giving them extra advertising. This may be true, but in a way I think it is therapeutic for me. Think of it as my public hate list.

NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM (or even visit) THESE WEBSITES:
http://www.emeraldcityhost.net
http://www.emeraldwebhost.net
http://www.emeraldwebhost.com
http://www.riskfreemoney.biz/
http://hosting.desired-info.com/
http://www.tudormagnetics.com
http://www.enlargementreview.info/
http://kittens.ipoogle.com/
http://www.freedom-online.org/
http://www.prestonswebhosting.com/
http://www.zangocash.tk/
http://x.homebasedbusiness-123.com/?siebooks.free
http://www.save-gas.net/

Monopoly Best Chance Game 3.0

2005-10-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

McDonald’s is once again running their Monopoly Game. For those that don’t know this game is played by collecting game pieces (monopoly properties) through purchasing certain products at McDonalds. This game is very popular among consumers which is surprising considering that the first 6 years or so that they ran the game were a complete fraud. Turned out that the Chief of security at that promotion company that had been responsible for administering the contests had been stealing the winning pieces and distributing them to associates for a share of the profit. In total something like $13 million was embezzled in this manner from 1995 to 2001. In this case they were caught and McDonalds has now setup security measures to make sure it never happens again. Every time I hear about something like this it makes me wonder how many more times it is happening without anybody being caught. It is like speeding on the freeway… every time you see one person getting a ticket you know there are 100 more that didn’t get caught.

In any event the interesting part of the Monopoly game is that in order to win a prize you need to collect all of the properties of one color, all four train depots, or both utilities. Makes it sound easy… you collect two out of three and you think “Wow! I’m 2/3rds of the way there”. Well not really you see two of the three properties are very common while the last piece is rare. That is how they control the number of winners for each prize. I think most people realize this and I’m not revealing any dark secret or anything. What is secret (somewhat) is which properties are the rare ones. I’m always worried that I’m going to get the rare pieces, essentially winning the prize, and not realize it. If I never get the other two, which is very likely, I effectively have forfeited the prize. Well the great google has once again shown me the light. I found a page that lists all the rare pieces for this year’s game. So now I can rest assured that I won nothing other then high cholesterol!

My Periodicals

2005-10-07T21:58:00.000-07:00

I was flipping through the periodicals that I have subscriptions to and I thought "What an interesting collection of magazines." Here are a few... What does this say about me? It sure covers my interests fairly well.

P.S. I'm not really a Paris Hilton fan... she just happened to be on the cover this month.

Five-second rule

2005-10-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

So I recently was caught in a discussion about the five-second rule.  You know that rule that says if you drop a piece of food on the floor it is ok to eat if you pick it up within 5-seconds.  One person said that they thought the rule was disproved.  I disagreed and said that I thought the rule was proven correct by a high school student science experiment.  With such a disagreement there is only one thing to do… consult the all-knowing oracle or wisdom (that would be Google).  So I did the “research” and discovered that the 5-second rule was proven false… but yet true at the same time.

High school student Jillian Clarke studied the five-second rule as part of summer internship in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Her study won an Ig Nobel Prize for Public Health in 2004.  In the most literal sense Clark’s study disproved the five-second rule.  Clark showed that foods dropped on intentionally pre-contaminated tiles (hard surfaces) were contaminated in less than five seconds.  It appears that five seconds has no bearing on the how contaminated the food will get.  If you drop your food on a contaminated floor it should not be eaten.

So this seams pretty straight forward… right?  Snopes marks this one as an urban myth.  But wait a minute!  They are missing a vital part of Ms. Clarks study.  The details above are from Ms. Clarks 2nd experiment where she intentionally pre-contaminating ceramic tiles with E. Coli, dropped various food products for various amounts of time, and then measured the E. Coli count on the food.   However, the first part of her experiment (details here and here) Ms. Clark and her team took swab samples of floors at various locations around her campus.  They showed that the bacteria levels where not high enough to cause significant contamination of your food product.  It is noted that this is more then likely due to the types of surfaces sampled.  They measured dry hard surfaces.  It is likely that soft damp surfaces will have higher bacterial counts.

So the literal sense the 5-second rule as it is stated is correct for some floors.  If food that falls on your kitchen floor sits for less then 5-seconds it is, most likely, ok to eat.  Matter of fact if the food is on the kitchen floor more then 5-miniutes it is probably ok to eat.  But nobody would suggest you apply this “rule” to food dropped on your damp doggy bed.  Besides what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger… right?

Job Burnout

2005-09-28T22:02:00.000-07:00

TheFabricator.com has a three part article on job burnout. It includes help on identifying job burnout and some tips on how to manage it. According to their self-diagnosis test I'm 97 -- "a candidate for job burnout" 4 points shy of "burning out". That is a relief as I thought I was already burnt out! I know shouldn't feel burnt out. I haven't been at this job long enough to feel burnt out. But the feelings of pointlessness and the total disgust for big business attitudes have crept in. How can anyone feel a sense of accomplishment in this big business culture were you are ranked solely on your cost savings for the company rather then the quality of your work. Where every idea for quality improvement needs to be accompanied by a 10 page report on how your proposal saves the company money. I don't think it is my company in particular but big companies in general. One of this articles tips is to get a new job. I really don't think that will make a difference... it will be the same crap with different people.

To me the most reasonable tip for a burnt out employee appears to be detachment... in other words just stop caring. I care about my job because I feel it is a career. If I view it simply as a 9-5 job then I wouldn't care as much and I wouldn't stress as much. You just can't stress out about a job that you don't care about. Is that the best thing for a company? How successful can a company be when all the employees don't care?

Part discusses the need for companies to take greater responsibility for employee job burnout. It mentions that in the current economic environment employee burnout often is considered a relatively insignificant, individual problem that needs to be handled through the employee's assistance programs. And besides there are plenty of employee where he came from. This article calls that type of thinking is

wrong, shortsighted, and ultimately can lead to an organization’s downfall.

I think it is true... as burnt out (or close to) as I think I am I see other employees that are even further down the line. I think asking these already stressed and often overworked employees to take time off to attend a voluntary assistance program and most likely have more work piling up for them when they return is ridiculous. Employee burnout needs to be addressed as a company wide problem and take steps to identify the causes and prevent it in the first place. From the article:

The bottom line is that an organization should care about and take steps to prevent job burnout if it wants a healthy bottom line long-term.

[Via: slashdot.com]

Flash on your desktop

2005-09-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

The other day while visiting the omni’s blog I noticed a really cool flash clock on the right hand side of her website (now removed out of courtesy to our CPU impaired brothers). I thought it would be cool to have that on my desktop. It is actually quite easy to add web pages or parts of web pages to your desktop in win 2000 or XP. All you need to do is create a HTML file and add it to your active desktop (I’ll show how to do that in a minute). So while viewing the omni’s website I selected View -> Page Source and scanned through the extremely tidy HTML (women have to keep everything clean don’t they) until I found the embed tag for the flash file. It would be easy enough to copy this HTML word for word (or should I say tag for tag) and place it on my desktop. However, if you do this the flash file itself will need to be loaded from the original website every time you boot. This can be very annoying if you are behind a firewall that requires authentications and is considered rude to the site hosting the content as you are using their server’s bandwidth. So the best option is to download your own copy. I noticed that the HTML contained the following text:

<!-- Get your own clock/calendar FREE at
 http://ptnuke.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=132 -->

But either my Portuguese is really bad or the files are missing (Actually my Portuguese is non-existent and the files appear to be missing). So the next option is to download the flash file directly from the source. Unfortunately, unlike images, you cannot right click to download flash files directly from a webpage. In general to download flash files you have two options:

In some browsers (not IE) you can copy the file URL into your toolbar, hit enter to load it, and then select File -> Save page as... to save the flash file to your hard drive.
You can also create a simple HTML file that contains a single link to the flash file. Open that page in your browser and right click on the link and select Save Target As...

In this case I have already done all the foot work so you can just download it from here (use right click, Save Target As...). Now that you have the flash file somewhere on your hard drive you need to create a simple HTML file that contains the embed tag to invoke the flash player. This is just a matter of copying and pasting the code from the HTML source file (in this case omni’s code, let’s hope she doesn’t mind) and changing the source URL to be our local copy. Again I can save you some time if you just copy and paste the code I already created:

<html>
<body bgcolor="white">
<!-- Get your own clock/calendar FREE at
 http://ptnuke.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=132 -->
<embed src="clockcalendar.swf" width="210" height="225" quality="high"
 pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
 type="application/x-shockwave-flash" bgcolor="#ffffff"></embed>
</body>
</html>

Save this text to an .html file on your computer in the same directory as the clockcalendar.swf you downloaded earlier. Notice that you can also change the two bgcolor tags to match your background.

Now to get the file onto your desktop will depend on the operating system you are using:

WinXP

Right click on your desktop and select Properties.
In the Display Properties box that appears select the Desktop tab the Customize Desktop...
In the new Desktop Items dialog select the Web tab then new.
Now you can enter the path of the HTML file we created above or use the browse to find the file. You may have the urge to select the clockcalendar.swf file directly but that wont work.
The item will then appear on your background. Click on the items border to move and resize the window however you like.

Win2000
For some reason it is easier to add a desktop item in Win2000. Right click on your desktop and select Active Desktop -> New Desktop Item. You will now be presented with the New Desktop item dialog. Now you can follow steps 4-5 above. If you see anything in addition to the clock that you don't want on your desktop (your home page is displayed by default) just right click on your desktop and select Active Desktop and unselect the items you don't want from the bottom.

NO deaths greatly exaggerated

2005-09-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

Over the last several weeks many websites and the main stream media have been running multiple stories on the Katrina rescues and aftermath. The reports of rape, murder, and piles of bodies at the Superdome and the Convention Center were extremely disturbing. However, now that the horror stories have stoped and recovery has started where is the news? Well, apparently these sites are mute for a reason... because they were all duped. While the conditions in New Orleans were horrible beyond anything I have ever experienced the rumors of deaths and violence have been greatly exaggerated. This article posted at NOLA.com give great details of the reality found in the aftermath. No evidence of murdered babies and not the rumored hundreds of bodies. Will major websites and the main stream media take responsibility and clear up the disinformation? We'll see... we may have to leave it to the bloggers that don't have to save face:

Deaths greatly exaggerated in New Orleans
exaggerated crime in katrina aftermath
Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated: Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated
Exaggerated reporting on the SuperDome in N.O.?

[Edit: I removed a reference to a particular website. This article was not about them in particular but directed at the misinformation sources in general.]

Battlestar Galactica Season Finale

2005-09-24T18:20:00.000-07:00

So last night was the season finale of Battlestar Galactica. What do I think? Actually I’m not quite sure yet. This season finale had to be the most intense (or should I say tense) cliff hanger I’ve ever seen. This episode itself was excellent. That was a good surprise compared to the last two or three that sort of sucked. The whole episode left me in a sort of post-traumatic state. Things got really screwed up, everything we know about the pattern of life on Battlestar has changed, and right when things are coming to a head… To Be Continued. Sure it was successful at what it was intended to do but to leave us (me) hanging when the situation is in such a state is almost torture. Maybe I’m being over dramatic, after all it is just a show, but it is really going to leave me in an uncomfortable state for the next 4 months until next season. In other words the season finale was great but at the same time I fracking hate it!

In other Battlestar news the show has been selected as the #2 best Sci-Fi show of all time by Boston.com.

My blog defiles the pages of the pharyngula and omniverse

2005-09-24T01:04:00.000-07:00

I just noticed (ok... I noticed a few hours ago, stop nit-picking!) that my blog is listed as a "Weblogs of the Week" over at pharyngula.org. In the famous (slightly modified) words of Wayne and Garth....

[I'm] not worthy! [I'm] not worthy! [I'm] not worthy!

I was wondering why my daily visits went from around 5 to over 30 in the last few days. And I thought it was all due to omni's link. Wow, it really looks like this blogging thing is paying off. I'm going to be rich any time now. Watch out Bill Gates I'm coming for you!

All kidding aside thanks to pharyngula and the not-quite-opposite end of the spectrum but kinda-kitty-cornered ominverse.

My first meme (how cute!)

2005-09-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

I saw this meme on pharyngula.org and thought I would participate just for the fun of it. But don't worry teh risk of falling into meme hell is slight.

Meme rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
It happens to be my most popular post: here.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

I could setup the application just fine (see instructions here) but for some reason I could never get the runtime debugging to work.

Interesting. Most popular post and the root of the problem. Creepy!

ING Direct Orange Savings Account

2005-09-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

I recently signed up for an ING Orange Savings Account savings account, made an easy $25, and am now receiving ~~3.30%~~ 3.40% interest on my savings. In case you don’t know about the ING Orange Savings let me explain. ING is a regular FDIC-insured federally chartered savings bank but there are no branches. Your account gets linked to up to your regular checking account(s) allowing you electronically transfer money in and out via online banking just like you would with any other bank account that has online banking. Because ING does not have any branches their interest rate is much higher then traditional banks. The interest rate is currently ~~3.30%~~ 3.40% at ING vs. 0.5% at BofA and CitiBank and 0.25%-1.01% at Wells Fargo. If you want read more opinions you can check out the ING Epinions page.

If you want to sign up for an account you can do it directly through the ING direct website but to earn the free $25 you need to be referred. If you would like a referral from me please contact me your first name, last name, and email address.

[Edit: For the sake of full disclosure I should point out that I will also receive $10 if you sign-up through me. However, that in no way influenced my opinion of ING. It may have encouraged me to post it rather then just spreading the word verbally but my opinion is uninfluenced.]

[Edit #2: The ING Orange Savings Account savings account is now at 3.40% as of 9/22/05]

Arrrrr....

2005-09-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

Avast, me hearties! It be international talk like a pirate day!

What is a pirate’s favorite letter? It be Arrr!

Robertson Blames Hurricane on Choice of Ellen Degeneres to Host Emmys

2005-09-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

In a follow-up to my previous articles on hurricane Katrina and Pat Robertson (here and here) is this article in the prestigious news site Dateline: Hollywood. According to the article Robertson is now blaming Katrina on the choice of Ellen Degeneres to host the Emmy Awards. He has a point this time... he notes that last time Degeneres was chosen to host the Emmys, in 2001, the September 11 terrorism attacks took place shortly before the ceremony. We all know that post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this) is one of the most profound logical arguments known to man.

By the way in case you don't get it Dateline: Hollywood is a satire site. Apparently many people didn't get it. But I really don't blame them with Pat's track record. If you want to read some of his memorable quotes please look here. Some of the best:

Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

Many of those people involved in Adolf Hitler were Satanists, many were homosexuals - the two things seem to go together

I know one man who was impotent who gave AIDS to his wife and the only thing they did was kiss

[Via: BoingBoing]

Tongue-eating bug found in fish

2005-09-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

This is a very bizarre news story about a insect that eats the tongue of a fish down to a stub, then attaches itself to become a replacement. Sounds like Sci-Fi!

[Via: http://www.boingboing.net/]

Don't let context menu get out of control

2005-09-12T22:55:00.000-07:00

In MS Windows when you right click on a file or folder you are presented with what they call a context menu. The menu contains many useful tools that can be evoked on the file you have selected. The “copy to folder” and “send to” are some good uses of the context menu. IN addition many programs you install add new items to the context menu. Some of these are useful but more often then not they are useless additions that don’t seam easily disabled. Pretty soon you can have two dozen useless items on the menu that not only take too much room but also can create a huge delay before windows displays the context menu. Recently my context menu became so cluttered that right clicking on a file made me wait a good 30 seconds. Unacceptable when all you want to do is get the properties of a file. So I figured I’d go through and delete all the unused context menu items for example “escuche in winamp”… don’t need that one.

You can try removing the items from the register manually (see here for instructions). This works but takes time and there is always the prospect of a catastrophic failure they always warn you about before editing the registry. Thanks to Google I found a better solution. I found a simple little application called Context Menu Editor by a freeware developer BaxterSoft, LLC. With this application you can easily remove items form the file context menu (when you right click on a file), the folder context menu (when you r-click on a folder) and from the IE context menu (when you right click on a webpage viewed in IE). You simply select the menu item, view the information to make sure that is the one you want to delete, and hit delete. All done. The program is simple but works well for what it does. However, for some reason the installation program doesn’t add any listing to the start menu so you’ll have to find the executable in file explorer. I wouldn’t mine seeing a new version that has undo feature.

If you need more you can also check out ShellExView. ShellExView is similar to Context Menu Editor but on a much broader level. ShellExView doesn’t just show items in the file, folder, and IF context menus but all shell extensions on your computer. This is nice but it actually becomes more difficult to find the items that you want to remove. ShellExView installs nicely, can restore items disabled, and has a reporting feature. All very nice but not a simple as Context Menu Editor and a bit of overkill for what I needed in my case. I suggest you give Context Menu Editor a try first and go to ShellExView if you need something more powerful.

Pat Robertson blames Katrina on...

2005-09-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I mentioned that Pat Robertson blamed hurricanes in Florida on gays (or more correctly Florida's support of gays). Well, it seams that he is now blaming Katrina on a single person in particular. You'll be surprised who it is.

[Via: www.ridingsun.com]

Katrina was caused by....

2005-09-01T22:23:00.000-07:00

I think it may be a natural response. But like many other natural feelings (like the strong urge to steal children's candy when it looks better then your slim fast) it is one that needs to be avoided. I talking about the strong desire to blame natural disasters on someone (or something). I think we all seek answers after a major event. We want to know why, how can this happen, how can we prevent this next time. Unfortunately sometimes we jump to conclusions that are simply poor and sometimes dangerous.

In the wake of Katrina we are all shocked and horrified. The 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Tsunami's, Columbia, and now this (did I miss any?). The 2000's are turning out to be a tough millennium. But do we really have to blame Katrina on something?

Director of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Endowment's research center appears to be saying that Katrina is punishment for not believing in Islam.

In 1998 Pat Robertson said "hurricanes and other natural disasters would sweep down on Orlando, Fla., because gay men and lesbians were flocking to Disney World on special "gay days." Well, all I can say is that his Operation Blessing charity is not getting my donation. Read about use of operation blessing's resourse to support Pat's diamond mine.

Maybe the closest is RKF Jr. He blames global warming. Although global warming probably played a factor in the hurricanes this season he specifically George Bush, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, and the Republican Party for their failure to support the Kyoto protocol. Which you should know is a farce and that humans are not causing global warming.

The truth is that Katrina is an extremely unfortunate event that is part of a natural waether cycle. Maybe if we spent more time learning from previous events rather then attempting to place blame we could have reduced the impact of this hurricane.

What can I do?
You should first look into donating through your companies if possible. Most major corporations offer matching funds for charitable donations.
Donate to organizations like the RedCross or others.
Click here to offer free housing to those who so desperately need it.

Save streaming media to disk

2005-08-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Have you ever needed to watch a streaming video and been ex-stream-ly (haha) annoyed at the brain numbing pause you get when you skip forward or back? You see the every time you change position in the file your viewing software stops the transmission and begins buffering the section you skipped to. It can be very annoying and potentially damaging to your fist (if you're like me and tend to punch your screen). Well, all this can be avoided if you simply download the video to your hard drive. Unfortunately, downloading streaming media is disallowed. This is usually done to avoid bandwidth issues (keeps the flow rate nice and slow for the server) or so that the content provider can control the content. Often times it seams to be just annoy us. However, there is a solution. You can download SDP Multimedia's SDP downloader. SDP downloader enables saving of streaming media over MMS, MMST, MMSU and HTTP streams. With this software you can simply enter a url of the streaming media and choose a location on your disk to save the media file and let it fly. What this software is actually doing is streaming the media from the website and re-recording it to a video file on your HD for viewing at your leisure. Don't be surprised that it will take 60 mins to download that 60 min video.

I have only two criticisms of the application. I think the GUI needs some work. It is a little difficulty to figure out at first. The more critical draw back I see is with the batch downloading mode. You see in this mode the SDP downloader is supposed to download multiple streams in sequence. Unfortunately to get this to work you need to create a asx play list. This cased me to have to search the web for several minutes to find the asx protocol and the create the play list. Why not make the play list directly in SDP downloader, or better yet simply have a grid where users can enter multiple files. But in the end these minor criticisms don't come close to the pain and suffering this application has saved me. They got my $20.

wiki: SDP Multimedia

Edit: Also a "Shut down Windows when finished" option would be really great.

SecondLife cures blogging

2005-08-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm a bad blogger. It has been 25 days since my last post. It is not that I haven't had much to say (I always have too much to say). One of the main reasons is that I've been screwing around with SecondLife. SecondLife is sort of like a multiplayer online game but the truth is there is not really any game to play. Instead we should call it an online virtual world. It is a immersive 3D environment that gives the players (residents) the ability to create the virtual world they live in. Players can create new objects in the game, program them, and sell them for virtual money. And while in other online games it is against the rules to trade game money for real cash in SL it is encouraged. While most residents are there to socialize or role play there is a large community of content creators the make and sell virtual goods. Matter of fact some people make a living playing/working in this game.

I joined the game and right away started programming new scripts. Some people I've met in the game are very good at making new items... I'm good at programming them. What can I program them to do? Anything really. I can make a ball float around and push people (I have to be careful this can get you banned), I can make objects slide/grow/rotate at the click of a button, I can program a streaming video TV with remote, I even saw a SL implementation of forth. The programming language in SL is simple to learn but surprisingly powerful. Any object in the virtual world can be programmed to do a multitude of tasks. If your into programming and you have some free time (and $10 to spare) I encourage you to check it out. I think it is a programmers fantasy... living in a world where every rock, plant and brick can be manipulated and programmed as you see fit.

Cloudmark, better then I expected

2005-07-31T11:37:00.000-07:00

The other day I posted a (not so) short review of Cloudmark anti-spam software (read Cloudmark marks to much). I've now used Cloadmark for 1 week and I have to admit that it is working better then I expected. When Cloadmark filtered through my inbox it mis-marked a lot of my legitimate e-mail as spam. However, it seams to do a lot better on incoming mail. In one week I'm had only two false hits. I'm sure to some extent Cloudmark has "learned" from all the corrections I made after it went through my inbox but it appears to be handling new types of legitimate mail just fine. I still don't like the fact that I had two false hits. So while the application works better then expected I probably won't be shilling out $39.95 per year for this app. I guess in general I like to try new applications but rarely like to buy them.

Boing Boing: Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" cracked in 24h

2005-07-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

Once again product activation does nothing but annoy the legitimate users.

Firefox? Maybe.

2005-07-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

So if you follow internet related news you know all the buzz these days is Firefox, Firefox, and Firefox. Personally I never really got the point. I had been using Netscape back in the days, then when IE started being included in windows (anti-competitive or good business?) I switched to IE because it was simply easier. Not to long ago I examined the Opera browser and found it so-so. It was a decent alternative to IE but what is the point of switching if they are almost equal? So being neither a MS fanboy nor a MS-hater what is in it for me by switching to Firefox?

So I thought I'd give Firefox it a try. My first impression is that it is a fast browser, has decent rendering on par with IE, and the tabbed system is nice. Then I checked the memory usage. It appeared that Firefox was using more memory then the same page IE. Well I think that is to be expected. With IE some of it's functionality is most likely hidden in other parts of windows, thus "hiding" the memory usage. Look here for a more detailed analysis of Firefox memory usage compared to IE. You will also see that Firefox is a memory hog that refuses to return it. Again I ask what is so good about Firefox?

So I didn't give up right away. I see that there is a book urging users "Don't Click on the Blue E!" that claims that Firefox will allow users to "browse faster, more securely, and more efficiently". Haven't see faster yet and don't know how it could possible be more secure. I see some efficiency improvement thanks to the tabbed browsing but from what I understand IE7 will have tabs. Is Firefox just a good alternative until IE7 arrives?

So why should I switch to Firefox? Well, here is a website that to give me 10 reasons to switch.

Tabbed Browsing: See above.

Popup Blocking: Maybe I missed something but my IE on XP has this same feature.

Find Stuff Easier: Ahhhh.... Yes. The search feature in Firefox is nice. But it is almost exactly the same as I had in IE with A9 Toolbar installed.

Simplified Privacy / Annoyance Eliminator: This is nice you can view cookies and such but did I really need to know that Amazon set a cookie to "KJHDKLQUWBCMNZUI"?

Better Bookmarks and History: The bookmark manager is nice but I had no issues with the IE method of using the favorites folder.

Accessible, Intelligent, Responsive: A bunch of shortcut keys I'll never use.

Customizable and Extendable: This is really cool. Extensibility in Firefox is off the hook. If I just look at the shear number of extensions available on their website I am very impressed.

Modern Download Manager: So far I've considered this a drawback. When you select "save to disk" from the download dialog box the file is saved to a preset folder. It was a while before I realized that all downloads were being sent to my desktop. Sure you can change this but I'm used to being asked each time I want to download something. Maybe I'll get used to this new method.

Built for standards: That's right we all need standards. It is nice that Firefox conforms to all the W3C standards but Microsoft tends to be a standards setter not a follower. I'm sure when IE7 comes out there will be some fancy features that will only be in IE until an equivalent is incorporated into a standard and then into Firefox. Will developers wait that long? I doubt it. This same sort of thing hurt Netscape.

KISS (Keep It Simple and Straight-Forward): Not sure what this means. I thought IE was pretty simple. Plus using the same system for file browsing and internet browsing seemed pretty straight-forward a simple to me.

I haven't given up yet. I t does seam that Firefox is a good application with more pluses on it's side then IE (for now). I really like the extensibility and the DOM Inspector. So I'm going to continue to try Firefox. I'm struggling to give it a fair shake and see if some of the issues are the fact that I need to retrain myself. I'm resisting the urge to "Click on the Blue E!" for now but we'll see what happens when IE7 arrives.

Cloudmark marks to much

2005-07-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

I have several websites, a blog, and several of my e-mail address are on shown many websites across the web. What's more I have never liked the e-mail obfuscation (harshblogger_at_hypercubed_dot_com). Needless to say I get a lot of spam. On a given day I receive approximately 50 e-mails only 4 or 5 of which are legitimate (90% junk). To control the spam situation I use Outlook's junk e-mail filter. I've added a "Add Sender to Blocked Senders List" button to my toolbar so I can quickly go down the list, identify the spam, and add the sender to the blocked list. When I press the "Add Sender.." button the e-mails are automatically sent to the "Junk e-mail folder" and the senders e-mail address is added to a list of junk mail senders. Next time I receive an e-mail from the same sender it is automatically moved to the junk e-mail folder. This catches a few of the e-mails (maybe 50%) but those shady spammers are constantly changing e-mail address and half the time the senders e-mail is spoofed anyway. So with such limited abilities I've decided to try something else.

I downloaded Cloudmark; which, from the website, looked like a good solution. It is a plugin for MS Outlook that does essentially what the Outlook filter does, as I described above, but uses a bigger central database of spammers address. I installed the application on my machine and it ran through my inbox looking for spam. Now remember I had already filtered my message using Outlook filter so my inbox should have been fairly clean less a few stragglers. Well, Cloudmark filtered out 15% of my inbox as junk. Wow, did I miss that many? Well, no.... Looking through the "spam" folder I see that Cloudmark filtered e-mail from my bank, my student loan handler, my car insurance company, many online store e-mails (like legitimate Amazon and Dell mailers), many of my opt-in e-mail newsletters (like MSDN among others) , legitimate e-mails from paypal, and even a few e-mails from my wife (is she on their spammers list?). Actual of all the e-mail that it identified as junk only 30% was actual junk e-mail.

Seems like Cloudmark is a little over zealous. I had to then go into the spam folder and filter back in all the e-mail that I do want. Seems to me that I'm doing the same thing as using the Outlook filter except with Cloudmark I'm filtering in my legitimate e-mail rather then filtering out junk. But here's the thing, I know that when I'm flagging the junk in my inbox I'm going to miss a few. That's ok, maybe I'll catch it next time. But if I have to filter in legitimate e-mails missing even one can have consequences. That's the same reason that I wont use server side filtering. I'll try Cloudmark for a few more days and see how it works on incoming mail but will probably be un-installing it after that.

So what is the solution to spam? I really don't know. I often try to use e-mail address that can be discarded later when the spam gets to much but that doesn't seem to be helping. The only real way to stop spam is to get people to stop buying from the damn spammers. The spammers are not sending this stiff because they want to annoy you. They are sending it because it works. For every million of us that flags, filters, or deletes these spam e-mails there is some dumb ass out there that is buying that product (statistics from here). If you're one of those people I want to say: STOP IT DUMB ASS! Maybe this is evidence that we need minimum intelligent rules for internet access.

Time Cube

2005-07-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm late on this but I just ran across Gene Ray's TimeCube website (wikipedia). I love everything cubic (especially Hypercubic) but this site is so whacked. It is some sort of rambling of a deranged lunatic with a wacky ass theory of everything. His theory is basically that everything is cubic (whatever that means). I mean this guys is so damn off it is insane.... literally.It would be impossible for me to go through all his theories and debunk them. Not because they are true but because they are incoherent (and awfully formatted). Plus we all know the theory of everything is that everything is hypercubic! Just for fun here is my fictitious argument with Gene Ray:

I think Cubic, I am wisest. You think self, you are evil.

Well, I think Hypercubic so I am wiser then you, Mr. Ray. If you are R and I am H then R=X^3 but H=X^4 which means H=R^4/3 so I am you to the 4/3 power.

I will give $1,000.00 to any person who can disprove 4 days in each earth rotation.

How about starting with the definition of a day according toMW: "The period of rotation of a planet (as earth) or a moon on its axis". You can keep the money for your psychology bills.

I am not allowed to lecture at the word animal academic institutions, for they fear my wisdom will expose and indict the pedant hirelings as betrayers of dumb-ass students - the dung heads who allow their freedom of speech to be suppressed without a whimper, unbelieveable. Word animals will feel the wrath of Cubic curse.

Maybe because we word animals know your are dung head schizophrenic lunatic.

My wisdom so antiquates known knowledge, that a psychiatrist examining my behavior, eccentric by his academic single corner knowledge, knows no course other than to judge me schizoprenic. In today's society of greed, men ofword illusionare elected to lead and wise men are condemned. You must establish aChair of Wisdomto empower Wise Men over the stupid intelligentsia, or perish.

Thank you. Proof that you have been diagnosed schizophrenic. Well, I'm Hyperphrenic... beat that!

There is no human entity, just human Cubics - as in 4 different people in a 4 corner stage metamorphic rotation - never more than 1 corner at same time.

Does that mean that you and I are the same person? But I proved above that I am you to the 4/3 power. I think that means we are both 1 (1^4/3 = 1) or is it zero (0^4/3 = 0).

Nature has no choice but to bring forth a hell upon evil cubelessness. Know it to be of your own making.

Again you are simply wrong by a power of 4/3. Cubelessness is evil, Cubeness is evil^3, convert to Hypercubism or you will bring forth hell upon your self. Hell, exists is a place we can't reach, namely a forth direction or dimension. That is where hell resides and will come forth from a forth direction.... you've been forth warned.

A mother and baby are the same age, as a 1 day old baby has a 1 day old mother.

Ok, I have to hand it to you Mr. Ray for this one. I agree entirely.

Honestly the mother quote is pretty good. Think about it. If you want even more fun take a look at the guys HTML. Played havoc in my WYSIWYG editor (outlook) when quoting it.

Norton SystemWorks product activation

2005-07-16T12:52:00.000-07:00

I recently purchased Norton SystemWorks 2005 Premier. I've purchased Norton SystemWorks every year for probably the last 5 years but skipped 2004 and hesitated getting 2005 because of the product activation. I really don't like the idea of purchasing software that needs to be remotely activated on my computer. What happens when I need to reinstall the application on a PC after my wife cancels my broadband? What if my computer goes to crap and I need to reinstall on a new machine. What if I need to use it in a virtual machine without internet connection? What about after the upcoming apocalypse when I need to install NSW on the last available laptop in the world? So I realized that these fears are not very rational (at least the last one) and I had already given in with windows XP so I went out and bought NSW 2005, after all it is practically free. I opened the brand new box, installed the application, and started the product registration. The system then claims that I've used this product key on too many machines. What? It just came out of the box. I then had to call the Symantec tech support, filter through the phone system, give my e-mail, name, and phone number and the product key; SOPD-SBNV… no, no, no… B as in "Boy I hate product activation", N as in "Never again", V as in "Very Pissed"). The person that helped me was very polite and helpful (wish all customer service could be) and simple said: "Try it again it should work now". And it did.

So overall the experience not that painful and it works now but should I really have to make a phone call to use a piece of software that I bought in a store? Did I have to give my name, address, and e-mail? And why did the product registration fail in the first place? I think most likely it was that somebody has used this product key already. So if the Symantec people just reset the product key every time someone calls then what is the use? They had no way to verify who I was or weather or not I actually had purchased the product. What's the point? Doesn't seam like it is going to stop the pirates, is going to cause inconvenience for legitimate customers, and they have to spend money on the support staff to answer the phones. Is it really worth it?

SCIFI.COM | Battlestar Galactica

2005-07-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

I pretty much only watch two things on TV which is hardly worth my cable bill. The rest of my free time I'm either online or with my son. I watch G4's Attack of the Show daily and Battlestar Galactica weekly. Battlestar has been in reruns lately but season two premieres tomorrow today (Friday July 15th). If you haven't been watching Battlestar I really suggest you check it out. I consider it one of the best sci-fi TV series' of all time. If you want to get into it now a good start is to go to SciFi's Battlestar site where you can stream, for free, the season one finale. I have to hand it to Sci-Fi for this. I really think this a great way to get people into this series once they see the quality of the episodes.

[Edit: Great plot summary here]

Optimus keyboard

2005-07-14T13:54:00.000-07:00

The Optimus keyboard is so cool I had to repost it from Slashdot. This keyboard uses color OLEDs to display images on the keys. This the keyboard can change itself depending on the application you're running, user preference, or language. How about changing when shift or alt are pressed? I really hope this makes it to production and eventually a reasonable price. This is the way keyboards should be.

[Via: Slashdot]

Black as a thousand midnights

2005-07-11T22:56:00.000-07:00

As I was riding home from work today I hear the phrase "black as a thousand midnights" on the radio. I found it pretty strange to talk about blackness as something that can be superimposed. Isn't blackness the lack of color? If you look at the amount of light present in one midnight and add up a thousand of them I think you would get a pretty bright night. It got me thinking of what other silly phrases I can think of that have this same logic (or lack of).

As cold as a thousand ice cubes. (each cube is less then 0C (270 K) so 1000 should be about 270,000 C or 45 times as hot as the outer surface of the sun).

As quiet as a thousand mice. (a quiet room is 40 dB or 10^-8 W/m^2. If we take this as the intensity of a mouse then a thousand would be about 10^-5 W/m^2 or 70 dB, almost shouting).

As empty as a thousand vacuums. (can you get less stuff then nothing?).

Slow as a thousand turtles (a thousand turtles traveling at 4 mph all travel at 4 mph but if we add that would be 4,000 mph, about twice the SR-71 speed record).

As fast as a thousand beams of light. (nothing can travel faster then c so it must be c).

As dense as a thousand black holes. (Can you get any denser then a singularity).

As boring as a thousand English classes (ok, I can understand that one).

I show up late at the Skeptic's Circle Saloon (but it's not my fault)

2005-07-06T23:35:00.000-07:00

The twelfth skeptic's circle due out on July 7 at Unscrewing the Inscrutable has shown up early but in the wrong place. I attempted to attend the Skeptic's Circle Saloon but had difficulty finding it because of the confusion in time and location. Originally intended to be held at Unscrewing the Inscrutable the meeting was instead held a day early at the UTI Annex. If you read way down at the bottom you will see that I showed up real late, got a little too drunk, and began whining about the lies my mother told me.

Completely awesome skeptic's circle and yes I was late.

live 8 works (for the wrong people)

2005-07-06T23:04:00.000-07:00

Protestors at the G8 summit made a lot of noise and were promptly ignored by the attendees. Another group of people that were promptly ignored were the organizers of the giant charity concerts live8. While many millions were entertained by the live 8 concert(s) very few took the time to sign the online petition. I say what did they expect? People attend these concerts to hear music not necessarily to support the cause. I don't understand why entertainers feel they can solve all the worlds problems by doing a charity event. Criticisms of faluire aside at least Live Aid raised real money. Live 8 is supposed to do what? Raise awareness and pressure leaders into increasing aid and cutting third world debt. It will most likely be a misguided failure. And according to polls it looks like most people agree. The world leaders, hopefully, are going to do make their decisions based on the advise of their advisors that are paid big bucks to sit down and weigh the facts and make informed decisions. I'm certain that none of them are going to be swayed Bono and company. In general I'm sick of entertainers thinking they can save the world by singing or speaking out against prescription drugs.

So what was the point of Live 8. Well, I suggest that it was to raise money. Unfortunately not to fight poverty but for the entertainers and big businesses. How can you have a "free" charity concert that is distributed "on demand and only on AOL" and on MTV presented by Vonage, via phone by Sun Microsystems and USA Wireless. Live 8 is sponsored by AOL, Nokia, Capital Radio, O2, Sun Microsystems, and USA Wireless. They are getting publicity and so are the entertainers. At least most of these sponsors are being couth about it but I was almost floored this morning when I heard a commercial touting "watch this historic charity event exclusively on AOL." Does anyone else see this as a little less then completely altruistic?

I Used To Believe : the childhood beliefs site

2005-07-01T13:32:00.000-07:00

While looking for evidence to debunk my mothers lies I encountered this website. It is a collections of childhood beliefs posted by adults (who hopefully don't believe them anymore). The funniest ones are in the sex section as I'm sure we all had many misconceptions about sex an where babies come from. Here are a few of my favorite "safe for work" ones:

When I was little my older sister told me if you swallowed chewing gum it would wind itself around your heart and stop it beating.
- Clare

I had a strange fear that if I closed my eyes in the bathtub, William Shakespeare would come up through the drain and kill me. I knew his name, but I had no idea who he was, so I just naturally assumed he was some sort of bathtub vampire.
- Dan

When I was little, my Mum told me that when the Queen went to the toilet, a lttle brush came up and scrubbed her bum when she had finished.
-Kim

when i was little i used to always want to buy ice cream from the ice cream man, and sometimes my mom would give me money. but one time, when i asked for money she got fed up and said, "oh, that's the knife sharpening man! he comes around and sharpens peoples' knives to use to kill little kids who ask him for ice cream! please, whatever you do, DONT ASK HIM FOR ICE CREAM!" from then on, i was horrified at the knife sharpening man, aka the ice cream man. :P
-amanda

10 lies my mother told me

2005-06-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

Don't worry Mom I'm not going to reveal any dark family secrets. Rather I'm looking more for lies that everyone's mother has told them at one point or another. I guess they are not really lies because my mother (and your mother) were told these same incorrect facts by their mothers. I'm talking about old wife's tales. Although I really don't get the phrase. Why old wives? What about young fathers. I'm sure my father told me a tale or two. Anyway, on with the subject at hand.

Mom: Don't go swimming for an hour after you eat or you'll get cramps and die.
There has never been a reported case of death due to cramping while swimming. Muscle cramps in the calves, feet, and hands and oxygen-deprivation stomach cramps while swimming are not uncommon but have never been linked to a death.

http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/hourwait.asp

Mom: Don't cross your eyes. They'll get stuck.
Intentionally crossing the eyes is never a cause of strabismus (crossed eyes); the eyes cannot get "stuck" in a crossed position.

Mom: Don't watch TV with the lights off. It will hurt your eyes.
In general you should limit the amount of TV you watch as it can be harmful to your eyes. However, ophthalmologists generally agree that watching TV in the dark doesn't cause any more harm than watching TV with lots of light.

Mom: You can't have any of my coffee. It will stunt your growth.
There is no compelling evidence that drinking coffee at a young age can stunt growth. Matter of fact a 30 year study of coffee drinkers showed no evidence of repressed growth.

Mom: Don't eat spicy foods. You'll get ulcers.
90% of ulcers are caused by a Helicobacter pylori bacterial infection. Neither stress nor spicy foods cause ulcers. But in some cases they can make ulcers worse.

Mom: Eat your carrots. It will improve your eyesight.
This one is debatable. Carrots are a good supply of Vitamin A which is important for healthy eyesight there is no evidence that eyesight will improve.

Mom: Put on a coat or you'll catch a cold.
Cold air does not cause a cold people do. A cold is a virus contracted through contact with other people. The reason for this myth appears to be that during cold weather people tend to stay indoors more; thereby increasing personal contact with others.

Mom: Don't play with that toad, you'll get warts.
Toads do not have (or give) warts. Warts are caused by human papilloma virus. This is a human virus that is not carried or transported by other animals. The odd bumps on the back of a toad are not warts they are to help camouflage them in their natural habitat.

Mom: Don't swallow your gum it will take 7 years to digest.
Gum, or anything else you swallow, will pass typically in a days time. Swallowing gum is not considered healthy but it definitely won't get stuck.

Mom: Don't crack your knuckles. You'll get arthritis.
Probably not but mother was closes on this one. There doesn't appear to be any conclusive evidence either way regarding arthritis but it appears that there is some weak correlation that knuckle-cracking causes some damage to the hand.

http://elfstrom.com/arthritis/knuckle-cracking.html

There you have it. Thanks to the internet we can finally break this long chain of myths and our children can become the coatless gangs of caffeinated knuckle cracking cross-eyed kids we always wanted to be. Oh, yeah.... and whacking it wont make you blind either.

Testing w.bloggar

2005-06-28T14:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, just for kicks I'm testing w.bloggar. The HTML editor actually appears to be a little better then BlogJet's but without the WYSIWYG editing. But the good syntax highlighting helps tremendously. Probably best of all for most people is that w.bloggar is free. The image capabilities in w.bloggar are not as good as BlogJet requiring you to upload each image to the FTP site individuality before adding to your post where BlogJet uploads all the images at once when posting. Dragging and dropping text appears to be broken. Amazingly spell checker seams to have the same problems as BlogJet.

[Note: edited to show correct name of application w.bloggar not w.blogger.]

w.bloggar spell checker

BlogJet follow-up

2005-06-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

Word travels fast on the internet. I posted my review of BlogJet yesterday and less then 14 hours later someone from BlogJet posted a comment. I hope they take my opinion constructively. Let me clarify my point of view. BlogJet is a decent and solid program. But for me I get the same abilities using outlook and blogger.com with some added inconvenience of copying and pasting. This added inconvenience is offset by the inconvenience in using spell check BlogJet. Let me illustrate. As I wrote this post I typed “the” as “teh” 11 times. When I hit spell check in BlogJet I get the dialog in figure 1 below. Notice where the correct spelling of “the” is? No? That is because it is down the list a couple of lines. To get the correct spelling I have to scroll down and then hit “the”. I would have to do this 11 times using BlogJet (scroll, click, scroll, click, etc). Now look at outlook spell check in figure 2 below. Notice that “the” is the first item on the list and the default selection. Outlook knows that this is a common spelling error and orders the suggestions based on commonality (or so I assume). Furthermore, notice the button on the right “Change All”. When I hit that all “teh”s will turn to “the”s. One click is defiantly better then scroll, click, scroll, click, and so one. In figure 3 is the spell check from iespell “a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage.” It also has “the” as the first suggestion and a “Change All” button.

I know what your saying. Learn to spell jackass. Well, maybe if I tried hard I can fix my “teh” issue but the same goes for other words. The BlogJet spell check is not poorly written it just is not as smart as outlook’s (or iespell's) which I believe is common across all office applications. I hope the BlogJet developer, if he returns, will take this as constructive criticism and take their spell check up a notch.

Figure 1: BlogJet spell checker

Figure 2: Outlook spell checker

Figure 3: ieSpell spell checker

BlogJet, dumb spell check kills it for me

2005-06-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

The other day I mentioned that I'm testing BlogJet. I’ve used BlogJet for every posts after (and including) that one. Well, first for the cons. Using BlogJet provides a convent HTML editor for creating and uploading your posts. The HTML editor is slightly better the the post creator at Blogger.com with the added convenience of a spell checker. It allows you to add graphics and the graphics are uploaded automatically to an FTP server of your choice. This is very convenient as blogger doesn't have the capabilities to add a graphic and when posting to blooger you need to open a support FTP application to upload your graphics to your server then embed the image URL in your post. BlogJet does this automatically. Unfortunately, that is the only feature I liked.

Like I said the HTML editor is only slightly better then bloggers and if you really wanted embedded spell check your could always use ieSpell or similar tool. The spell checking tool in BlogJet is plain dumb. As a habitual keyboard pecker I often type “the” instead of “the” and the BlogJet spell check requires me to scroll to the bottom of the suggested corrections list to hit “the”. Additionally there is no “change all” feature in the spell check. With my spelling abilities I need a good spell checker. Personally I think I prefer spell checking my posts in outlook. I construct my post in outlook as I would an e-mail, spell-check, then copy to blogger editor. The inconvenience here is that the images wont upload (requiring an FTP upload as I sated above) and that I can’t edit the HTML directly inside outlook. So far I’ve been finding myself writing in BlogJet, copying to outlook, spell checking in outlook, copying back to BlogJet for posting. After posting I then usually pop over to my blog to make sure the upload is complete. If I’m opening the blog anyway I might as well post it directly into blogger and skip the middle man.

Well my BlogJet trial version is expiring soon and I don’t think I’ll be renewing it. When someone embeds a blog posted inside outlook then I’ll be all over that.

Coordinate Exchange COCOMO

2005-06-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

So as a follow-up to my last post regarding Coordinate Exchange I did some digging and discovered the COCOMO model for software cost estimations. In it's basic form COCOMO can estimate the total effort of a project from the SLOC (source lines of code). So after a little more searching I found this program by Rod Stephens at vb-helper.com to count the number of lines in Coordinate Exchange. So using Rod's program and the COCOMO model I calculate the following for my Coordinate Exchange project:

***************
*** SUMMARY ***
***************
Forms: 9
Modules: 23
Classes: 18
Total Controls: 230
Total Lines: 9803
Total Subs: 166
Total Functions: 167
Total Properties: 54
Total Comments: 1701

**************************
*** Basic COCOMO model ***
**************************
Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC): 8,102
Development Effort Est., Person-Yrs (Person-Months): 1.80 (21.59)
Schedule Estimate, Years (Months): 0.67 (8.03)
Total Estimated Cost to Develop: $310,882

The development effort seams high. I've been working on CoordEx at most three years now so I don't know how I can spend almost two man-years on it. In any event that is an estimated 300,000 price tag for CoordEx. So based on the amount of money I've received for CoordEx development that is a P/E (price to earnings) ratio of 1800. In other words I've earned less then 0.06% of what CoordEx is worth. Do I believe this is the actual value of CoordEx? Not really... just an interesting evaluation.

Show me your underpants code

2005-06-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

I’ve briefly mentioned my Coordinate Exchange application before. This application started as a simple plug-in for MS MapPoint to enter and extract pushpin data (latitude and longitude data) but quickly grew into something more. While still restricted to working within MapPoint it has many features hat work independently of MapPoint. This application can read and write GPS data to and from several different file formats and communicate directly with some GPS units. While writing it I attempted to make it easy to add new file formats and GPS units as time goes on. Matter of fact every once in a while I receive an e-mail asking if I can support a new file format and it generally takes me less then a hour to add it (as long as it is text based). At the core of CoordEx is a simple macro language that translate the data at ease. It is easy for me to read data in one format and out put in another and even scale the value along the way in case of a needed unit conversion (i.e. meters to feet). This macro language is something that nobody has ever seen. It is embedded inside my code and not available to the users but every time I need to add something to CoordEx I appreciate the work I did early on to make this system flexible.

Well, now to the point of my post. I was recently approached by a small GPS unit manufacture (I wont mention the name as I don’t have their permission). I was asked if I’d be interested in contributing to an application they were developing that can read data form their GPS unit and output several different file formats for use in other mapping applications. At first I was very interested in this. I spent several days discussing the list of required features and how deliverables will be made and so on. As time when on I began to think more about this. What they wanted was that because my CoordEx application was already constructed it would be quick and simple to reuse some of my code for their applications.

Well, as I thought about it more I realized that that portion of my code needed to make their application work was the core of CoordEx and includes the macro-language that I’ve come to love an appreciate so much over the years. How much was that worth to me. Sure there was no requirement that I stop development on CoordEx and the time it would have taken me to embed the CoordEx core inside there application would be minimal but is it worth it? I’d earn a few hundred dollars easily and they would sell there applications and make some more for themselves. They are not going to get rich off my code and it is easily re-creatable. It is not like I’m sitting on the foundations of MS-DOS (QDOS) and they are going to go off and make millions. No, they will probably hire a few freelance programmers to knock out a simple application that fits their needs and someone will make several hundred.

But I guess it is not the money. It is the felling that by handing over the core of this application that I’ve spent so long developing I’m losing something of much more sentimental value then what it is worth in real value. Sure, for a large sum or some type of royalty rights I could be convinced to hand over a copy and reveal my ~~underpants~~ code but I don’t think anyone is willing to pay for the sentimental value of code.

On a side note; now that I have figured out the debugging issue in VS 2003 I’ve been working (although rather slowly) on converting CoordEx to .NET. After the conversion CoordEx will run independently of MapPoint and will be a convenient GPS data conversion tool for a much wide audience.

Spell with flickr

2005-06-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

This is pretty cool. You enter a word and it will retrieve graphics from Flickr to construct a collage that spells your work. Click on the individual letters to change the image of each letter.

[Via: Attack of the Blog!]

FORTRAN.NET?

2005-06-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

I do a lot of programming. I do it both at work and at home as a hobby. I program mainly in Visual Basic.NET and FORTRAN 90. I also do some JavaScript (in HTML), VBScript (via ASP), and VBA. I’ve done some C and Pascal programming. I know all the hardcore programmers out there reading this (are there any) are saying to themselves where is C++ and/or Java. Well, I never program in C++ or Java. I know they both have become the de facto standards in programming these days but I’ve never seen the point in climbing their steep learning curves for what I have to do. The new Visual Basic.NET (which is by the way 10x better then vb 6.0) has all the fancy object based features you could ever want (inheritance, polymorphism, etc.) and FORTRAN has the mathematics ability and speed when needed. At home when I'm programming for fun I want to get right to the part I'm interested in. I don't want to complicate my life by fighting with the GUI or with pointers. I want to focus on the part that interests me and that's it. At work I need a programming language that makes it easy to enter the mathematics I need and will solve the problem fast. I love FORTRAN for the easy vector and array manipulations. Each serves it's purpose and very well I think.

I’d wouldn't mind seeing a Fortran/.NET hybrid. Give me Fortran math abilities with Visual Basic.NETs object oriented system. Hopefully we get some of the OO stuff in the upcoming FORTRAN 2000 (yes, I know they are a little late) but not everything. Allow me access to the system libraries and Common Language Run-time along with the cross-language capabilities of .NET. Give me the option of using FORTRAN fixed format read’s and writes all packaged in Microsoft's Visual Studio and I'd be hooked. I've see some attempts to integrate Visual Studio but they all fall short. Essentially they create a set of function calls within FORTRAN that send information into VB or C and back. Basically I want VB.NET for engineers and scientists.

In memory of Dr. Yian Chang

2005-06-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

In Memory of Dr. Yian Chang
1965 – 2005

A great man, a great physicist, and a great friend. You will be missed by many.

Research services in Outlook 2003

2005-06-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

Ever find a new feature in a tool you've been using for a long time. I do all the time and it's both exciting and annoying. It is exciting to figure out something new but I think back to all the times I could have used that feature and saved myself a boatload of time. Well, that is how I felt this morning when I "discovered" research services in Outlook 2003. The damn menu item has been there all this time but I never thought of clicking Tools -> Research. When you do this Outlook will open a research task pane that allows you to lookup a words in the dictionary or thesaurus, search the Web, or best of all get Translation services without leaving Outlook That's right I can now read all my foreign language ~~spam~~ e-mail.

With the research pane open and the translation service selected all you have to do is highlight the text and the translation shows up on the right. The translation are generally poor but that is typical of machine translations these days (at least until the new Google Translator). So from now on when I get an e-mail in Russian I can translate it right away without cutting and pasting into Babel Fish only to discover that they are selling spam or gym subscriptions in Moscow. Now if I can just recover the 2 hours over the last year that I spent translating these e-mails. Hey, at least I'm not the guy creating tables of content in word by hand (if you are that guy look here).

Testing BlogJet

2005-06-04T00:38:00.000-07:00

I generally write my post in MS Outlook. Outlook allows me to add hyperlinks with ease and includes a spell checking. I then can copy and paste the text into the blogger posting form which will keep all my hyperlinks intact. I’ve decided to test drive some of these blog posting tools. Today I have installed BlogJet. It is a trial version so I figured I’d try it out for a few days and see how it goes. So far it looks nice. It allows me to spell check and add images to my post. I can even edit the underlying HTML. Once I hit “Post and Publish” my text is uploaded to blogger while my images are uploaded to my website. That is pretty cool and saves a lot of time. I don’t know if I like it $39.95 worth but I’ll give it a spin.

Casio Wave Ceptor

2005-06-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

I'm very bad at buying gifts. I never know who I should buy gifts for (do you give b-day gifts to your boss's cousin's administrative assistant?) or what to buy. Even on the rare occasion that I decide what to buy I rarely can find one that is right for that person (does my wife's hairdresser's sister like puke green Daisy Dukes?). My wife on the other had is great at it. She always buys something that is great and typically makes me feel shitty for giving crappy gifts.

Well this year for my birthday my wife gave me a Casio Wave Ceptor watch. First of all it is a pretty nice looking watch but the features are really cool. The front face is a solar cell for charging the batteries so hopefully I can drag myself away from my keyboard long enough to keep a charge. It has all the other nice watch features like 12/24 hr format, duel analog and digital display, alarms, stopwatch, and electro-luminescent backlight, and world time. But the most impressive feature is that every night the watch calibrates itself to the U.S. atomic clock signal transmitted from in Fort Collins, CO. I should never have to set the time again. Sweet! Mine is actually a Japanese version so the day of the week is written in Kanji (so maybe I'll learn something) but there are many different styles available here in the U.S.: search amazon. Hopefully I will get the matching sports car for father's day.

Shields up, block that dangerous Cruise missile

2005-05-31T21:10:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting article. Apparently Tom Cruise is offering unsolicited medical (or should I say anti-medical) advice to recent postpartum sufferer Brook Shields. Cruise feels that post-partum depression should be treated with Vitamins. I do think that some people are being over medicated but who is Tom Cruise to be offering medical advise to others. I applaud Shields for calling him out on it. In her words:

Tom should stick to saving the world from aliens and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression decide what treatment options are best for them.

If you read the article you will realize that Shields' depression was extremely severe and taking anti-depressants could likely have saved her life and the life of her daughter. To the other extreme I think people are often over medicating their children. I hear all the time about young children that are taking drugs to control their hyperactivity. Sometimes it may been needed but it seams to me these people have normal active children and they are too lazy, busy, or tired to keep up with them. Children have a lot of energy and just because you can't keep up doesn't mean that you need to dope the hell out of them to make them as slow as you. Also, maybe you should stop pumping them full caffeinated soda all day and then you wont need to give them downers before bed.

On the subject of Scientology I have to admit most scientologist I meet (or see on TV) are pretty together people. Maybe the proof is in the pudding but I can't understand how can anyone believe that metal illness is the result of alien ghosts infecting the mind. Or believe in any religion whose founder (science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard) is often quoted as saying "The way to make a million dollars is to start a religion" (this is controversial). If you want to know more about the "secrets" of the church of scientology here: http://www.xenu.net/.

[via: Skeptico]

Will Wright discusses "Spore"

2005-05-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

Will Wright, creator of SimCity and The Sims, discussed a new game project called Spore at the 2005 Game Developer's Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. In this game the player will start with a microbial life form and evolve it all the way to the point of interstellar travel. I'm not so much interested in the game as I am in what Will calls "procedural" content development. In Spore Will's game developers are not spending time creating stories and complex animations. Instead the animations and graphics are all dynamic based on a procedural system and the user selected parameters.

What's more, because the whole system is procedurally driven the individual creatures created by the player can be easily compressed into small packets and transferred into other players ecosystems. Within the ecosystems different players species compete for survival (Darwinian like). What fascinates me is that because of this procedural system the creatures are not preprogrammed. Undoubtedly, as the users create new creatures there will be life forms that the game designers never dreamt of. You see I loved the GTA series of games but you are essential playing in a world and along a plot that the game designers planned. With Spore the users are creating their own worlds and their own plots. Even the developers don't know how the plot will unfold in each users ecosystem. I really think this is the future of content.

I've thought about evolution type games (or simulations) for many years. Systems like like Conway's game of life fascinated me. I wanted to see more advanced ecosystems and more diverse phenotypes. I knew that in order to do it right the system must be dynamic enough that new phenotypes could come into play without being preprogrammed or otherwise ore-planned. Everything I've seen so far has fallen short of my vision. I hope that Spore is a step in the right direction; although at this point is all user driven. I'd love to see a evolution simulation system that can evolve based on Darwinian principles and result simulated life forms the system programmers never planned or expedited.

I was fooled

2005-05-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'll admit it I was fooled. I was planning on blogging about this article according to which 42 Cambodian midgets attempted to fight a lion. I was going to suggest that they win the Darwin award and bad mouth their leader and the Cambodian government. Well, luckily I didn't because it appears that the whole article was a hoax, I should have known. Well, you should check out this site where the people that created the fake BBC article explain how they made it, how it spread, and how they are attempting to control the hoax. Interesting read.

Musings on Traffic (the web kind)

2005-05-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

It is the 26th of May and at this point I've been blogging for 2 months now. I thought the two month anniversary is a good moment to stop and reflect on my work here. So far my traffic has been mediocure as to be expect on a new blog without a coherent theme (I've talked about this before). In the last two months (60 days) I've posted 44 entries for an average of 1.4 days between posts. Some of those posts were on the same day. I've posted on 36 days out of 60 missing 24. 14 of the 60 days I was half way around the world but still managed to post 2 entries during that time (what dedication!).

I had two major "hits" when my blog was linked to by some other majors blogs. The chart below shows the jump in traffic during these events. There are some interesting things I notice. For one the "Glass - Solid or Liquid?" post generated more unique visits to my blog whereas the "MapPoint" post generated many more page views. I take this to mean that the viewers of the MapPoint post either returned many times or found the article interesting enough to visit other pages. On the other hand the glass post generated a lot more visits presumably because of the popularity of either the skeptic's circle, the Pharyngula website, or both but the visitors didn't find the post interesting enough to stick around. It is also interesting to note that the Glass post continues to generate many hits a day while the MapPoint post has basically fallen off the map.

So I guess what this tells us is that it is not the quality of the posts that count, as the MapPoint post was apparently better quality, but getting your site linked to by other popular sites, as evident in the glass post. Also, worthy of noticing is that now that my site has shown up on the Pharyngula blogroll my blogs value, according to BlogShares, has gone from B$1,000 to B$14,000 (Yes, I know this is a fictional market, but interesting none the less) [note: apparently because the way Pharyngula does it's random blogroll my value is now back down at B$1,112.89. Buy, buy, buy.. it is bound to come up again].

Even if the above observations are true (probably not) I'm not going to let that change the way I blog. I'm still going to attempt to post about interesting things (at least for me) and am not going to attempt to have my blog name dropped every where. I'm in this for self improvement not popularity.

Goodbye Kevin Rose

2005-05-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

Goodbye ~~England's~~ Kevin Rose. Last night, with all my excitement over MediaMan and CueCat I almost forgot the biggest news of the evening. Kevin Rose of G4's Attack of the Show is leaving the show. I'm sad to see home go. He was the straight man of the group and will defiantly be missed. But the good news is that he is moving on to new (and hopefully better) things. Kevin and others are starting a download only tech show at systm.org. Seams to be a very good quality show that might be able to compete with the broadcast shows. I'm not quite sure how they plan to make money but I hope it works out.

MediaMan

2005-05-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

Last night on G4's Attack of the Show Sarah's Damn Good Download was MediaMan 2.1. It looked good so I downloaded it and took it for a spin. Sarah was excited about the ability to enter data by "scanning" the barcodes using a webcam. Looked nice but I had a better idea.

I searched through the old electronic junk box in the closet (the one my wife always wants to throw away) and pulled out an old CueCat®. Do you remember CueCat? The CueCat was a barcode scanner that was handed out for free (I got mine with my wired subscription) where the idea was that users can scan barcodes into the CueCat software to jump to websites related to that product. It was an obvious cheap ploy to collect marketing data. But anyway, the CueCat actually plugged in-between your keyboard and computer and when a barcode was scanned a garbled string of characters was sent to the computer as keystrokes. Well it wasn't long before people learned how to decrypt the garbled text into a real barcode.

I had a plan. I was going to write a simple VB code that would decrypt the CueCat code into a normal barcode for input into MediaMan. Well to my surprise the brilliant makers of MediaMan have actually included the CueCat decoder into MediaMan. I hooked up the CueCat scanned a book into the barcode entry form and pow. There was the book; title, price, and even an image of the front cover. Within a few miniutes I had scanned an entire book shelf. So sweet! Thank you Sarah... that was the best damn download ever.

Old Games

2005-05-24T21:24:00.000-07:00

I like old games. Especially ones that I really wanted to play when I was younger and couldn't afford it (like I mentioned with Zelda) but are now cheap as hell (try the pre-played section at EBGames). It is even better when the games are free. I like to find and play old abandonware games. One of the best sites for abandonware is Home of the Underdogs. Also try searching on Google as many of these sites tend to venture too far into the not-so-abandonedware and get shut down. Another great site is replacementdocs to download old manuals.

I'm also attempting to setup a MAME machine. I've got the computer running great using AdvanceMAME and AdvanceMENU running under MS-DOS 6.22 and using the DOS version of pcAnywhere to control it. I did a lot of tweaking of pc's setup including a custom compiled version of AdvanceMAME. Hopefully soon I get around to blogging all the sweet hacking of my PC to get MAME just right. In the future I hope to get a cabinet to install everything in and make a standup cab complete with coin slots.

Read it and weep (I did)

2005-05-23T09:23:00.000-07:00

At my work there is a constant (friendly) clash between the physicists and the engineers. Well, this article at NYTimes.com sets everything straight. According to the article the top 10 classiest occupations are:

1. Physicians and Surgeons
2. Lawyers
3. Database Administrators
4. Computer System Administrators
5. Astronomers and Physicists
6. Chemical Engineers
7. Chemists and Materials Scientists
8. Network and Data Communications Analysts
9. Computer Support Specialists
10. Dentists

Only one engineer among the bunch (Chemical Engineers at #6) but still below "Astronomers and Physicists" at #5. It takes some work but you can find the other engineers further down:

12. Aerospace Engineers
20. Engineers, Other
22. Civil Engineers
43. Mechanical Engineers
44. Electrical and Electronic Engineers

How sad for all the Electrical Engineers. They are even below "Engineers, Other" at #20. So I guess even if someone argues that I am not a Physicists because my official title is "Engineer/Scientist" I'd still be at #20 safely above "Electrical Engineers". I'm glad that is finally settled.

All joking aside I find it interesting that I can rank high in all categories (Occupation, Education, and Income) but at the bottom for Wealth. I guess that is the cost (literally) of living in California.

[via: pharyngula]

A Complete Waste Of Time

2005-05-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

This website contains tons (how many websites to a ton anyway?) of online games and gimmicks bound to lead to hours of wasted time. Many of these games (like Kitten Cannon that I've mentioned before) are highly addictive so please heed the warning posted on this website:

WARNING: Do Not Read This If You Have Work To Do!!!!!!!!!

Be sure to check out the ThrowPaper and South Park Create-A-Character. Below is my best guess at what I would look like as a South Park character.

[via: Lockergnome's Windows Fanatics ~ May 20, 2005]

RoboForm Watch

2005-05-21T22:35:00.000-07:00

While doing some ego surfing on Technorati I noticed an entry on a japanese blog translating a post I made regarding RoboForm. I've tried translating the site using babelfish but not getting very good results (did you know Babel Fish is from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?). It appears that the author is some sort of RoboForm fan-boy. It is interesting to see such a minor post on my insignificant little blog can seam important enough to be translated to Japanese. I'll have to get someone that knows Japanese to read it to see it was translated by hand or using the fish.

The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

2005-05-18T22:57:00.000-07:00

The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy movie came out recently and I was only slightly impressed. It was funny, in a British sort of way, but not very funny. I had never read the book(s) and as I was watching I was thinking that this would be much funnier if I were reading it. Soon after that I purchased the book and while I’m not yet finished I can tell that this is going to be a great ride. The humor in the book is many times more then what was in the movie. I don’t regret seeing the movie. As a matter of fact I think seeing the movie first was a benefit. Having watched the movie it gives the book added voice and visuals that might not have been as detailed if I hadn’t seen the movie. I’ll write more when I finish the book (or the trilogy, which for some reason consists of five books) but for now I’ll leave you with a great quote that you will find in the book but not in the movie (it would never work in the movie):

…”you’d better be prepared for the jump to hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”
“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“You ask a glass of water.”
Authur thought about this.

My heroes have always been scientists

2005-05-17T21:49:00.000-07:00

A little poem I wrote (with a little help from Willie Nelson)

I grew up dreaming of being a scientist,
and loving the scientist ways.
Pursuing the works of my well published heroes,
I burned up my childhood days.
I learned the rule of modern-day science,
don't hold on to a paradigm too long.
Just take what you need from the shoulders of giants,
and pen the words of a new science law.

My heroes have always been scientists,
and they still are, it seems.
Always in search of, but one step in back of,
myself and my paradigm-shifting dreams.

Scientists are special with their own brand of misery,
from being alone too long.
You could die from the cold in the arms of a theory,
knowing well that your best days are gone.
Picking up pens instead of a football,
I let the strength of my youth fade away.
Old worn-out pencils, and old worn-out minds,
with no more ideas and no new discoveries today.

My heroes have always been scientists,
and they still are, it seems.
Always in search of, but one step in back of,
myself and my paradigm-shifting dreams.

Always in search of, but one step in back of,
myself and my paradigm-shifting dreams.

20 questions (neural network)

2005-05-16T23:06:00.000-07:00

This is really cool. It has been around for a while so probably many of you have seen it before but I just discovered it. This is a web based version of 20 questions. You think of an object, answer 20 questions, and often the website will correctly guess what you are thinking of. Behind the scenes is a neural network that is constantly learning to distinguish your item from your answers. It actually works pretty well. It is better if you stick to tangible things like pencils and paper rather then the more esoteric like philosophy but will still get some of those.

20Q.net is an experiment in artificial intelligence. The program is very simple but its behavior is complex. Everything that it knows and all questions that it asks were entered by people playing this game. 20Q.net is a learning system; the more it is played, the smarter it gets.

Crappy anti-evolution article: Just an opinion?

2005-05-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

This article at The Social Affairs Unit Weblog titled The Theory of Evolution: Just a Theory? is probably one of the stupidest anti-evolution essays I have ever read (thanks to Pharyngula for leading me to it). I can understand someone being anti-evolution for religious reasons but this guy is a historian that just has no idea what he is talking about and fails to present any form of logic. Be sure to read Pharyngula analysis. I tried to post my own comments to this blog but it appears they have shut-off their commenting system. I guess too many people pointed out the flaws. Anyway, here is the comment that I tried (twice) to post:

I realize that everyone is entitled to their own opinions but your readers need to recognize that this article is in fact not only an opinion but an uninformed one. You may in fact "have as much common sense as the next man" but your knowledge of the theory of evolution is extremely lacking. I am not a biologist and have only one college level anthropology class behind me but it is extremely easy to see the flaws in your arguments. Rather then spending my time pointing out all of them out I'll refer you to one facet of modern evolutionary theory that you have misunderstood: Punctuated Equilibrium.

According to the theory (yes, theory, everything is a theory unless you happen to be God) of Punctuated Equilibrium says "instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill ("equilibrium"), "punctuated" by episodes of very fast development of new forms." Please read this website: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/PUNCTUEQ.html and you may realize some of the flaws in your arguments. Simply put evolution doesn't just happen in one cat giving birth to a raccoon. There are ecological changes that call for the species to adapt or parish. The moths in Lancashire are a great example of this. No, the moths did not become a new species but after many, many years with enough incremental changes the Lancashire moths of the future will be different enough to be categorized as a new species. You even included another example at one point mentioning that "Most species extinctions appear to be the result of unpredictable natural catastrophes, like the meteor which allegedly wiped out thedinosaurs 65 million years ago". You are correct. A natural catastrophe disrupted the natural equilibrium in the ecosystem causing a period of fast development of new forms.

[note: my's comment(s) showed up two days later.]

Embedded Haloscan Trackback

2005-05-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

My last post contained a link to BloggerHacks and Haloscan. I thought I’d now offer my own hack involving the Haloscan trackback system. Typically when Haloscan’s trackback system is added to a blog it is added as a simple link that invokes a pop-up window containing the trackback information from Haloscan (see example). It is actually very easy to embed this page inside your blog using embedded frames. I'm going to provide instructions for adding this to a Blooger.com template but it can easily be adapted to other systems.

First add the Haloscan JavaScript to you page as instructed to do at haloscan. Copy and paste the following code anywhere between your <HEAD> and <HEAD> tags in your page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.haloscan.com/load/[your_halosan_id]"> </script>

Be sure to replace [your_haloscan_id] with your haloscan id or copy the text directly form the haloscan page.

Next you will add the embedded frame. I only want the trackback page to appear on the individual entry pages so I place the following text between the tags below the comments section:

<div id="trackbacks"> <a name="trackbacks"></a> <h4><script type="text/javascript"> postCountTB('<$BlogItemNumber$>'); </script></h4> <IFRAME width="100%" height="250" SRC="http://haloscan.com/tb/[your_haloscan_id]/<$BlogItemNumber$>" TITLE="Trackbacks" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" width="120" height="240" border="2" frameborder="0" style="border:none;" scrolling="yes"></iframe> </div>

Again replace [your_haloscan_id] with your haloscan id. That is mostly it, not much to it. You may notice that I have placed all the trackback code inside a <div> with an id set to trackbacks. This is so you can edit the CSS portion of your template to format the trackback section however you like it. I'm not going to go into the details of this because everyone's template is different but to start you can try coping the #comments and #comments h4 in the CSS section to #trackbacks and #trackbacks h4. Works great for me (see example).

Blogger Tools

2005-05-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

These are exciting times at the Hypercubed blog. My traffic has once again nearly tripled. My dream of worldwide readership is back on schedule although a little delayed. In honor of my new found success I’m posting some links to sites that will help other would-be bloggers.

Haloscan: free, easy to use commenting and trackback system for blogs and websites.
Kalsey’s Simpletracks: Send TrackBack pings even if your blogging tool doesn't do TrackBack.
Gtmc Knight: steal these buttons: Pre-made mini-banners.
Kalsey’s Button Maker: Make your own mini-banners.
Blogger templates: Some really good templates for blogger.
BloggerHacks: Some hacks for Blogger.
Who Links Here

Pharyngula::The Eighth Skeptics' Circle: Must be Malebolge!

2005-05-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

The eighth edition of the skeptics' circle is now posted over at Pharyngula and the Hypercubed blog makes it's first appearance with Glass - Solid or Liquid?. Please hold your applause until all the blogs have ~~performed~~ been read.

Also, in case you don't get it (I needed to Google it) Malebolge is the eighth level of hell. Seams very appropriate.

Many and varied sinners suffer eternally in the multi-leveled Malebolge, an ampitheatre-shapped pit of despair Wholly of stone and of an iron colour: Those guilty of fraudulence and malice; the seducers and pimps, who are whipped by horned demons; the hypocrites, who struggle to walk in lead-lined cloaks; the barraters, who are ducked in boiling pitch by demons known as the Malebranche. The simonists, wedged into stone holes, and whose feet are licked by flames, kick and writhe desperately. The magicians, diviners, fortune tellers, and panderers are all here, as are the thieves. Some wallow in human excrement. Serpents writhe and wrap around men, sometimes fusing into each other. Bodies are torn apart. When you arrive, you will want to put your hands over your ears because of the lamentations of the sinners here, who are afflicted with scabs like leprosy, and lay sick on the ground, furiously scratching their skin off with their nails. Indeed, justice divine doth smite them with its hammer.

Barlowe vs. Anthropomorphism

2005-05-10T07:41:00.000-07:00

I fondly recall reading Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials by Wayne Douglas Barlowe when I was younger. It is a very fascinating guide to extraterrestrials seen in various science fiction literature. It was an inspiring book that encouraged me to create my own aliens. I began carrying a notebook (made of paper in thoese days) where I would record all the "fascinating" creatures that I think up, like the Jackal people, the human/plant hybrid, and the infamous jelly based people. Ok, so I wasn't that creative back then (or now, some might add). Most of my "ideas" were just anthropomorphic versions of earth creatures. Probably the most creative idea I had was a hominid with a unique pattern of male/female sex organs that in order to mate needed to find another with the opposite set of female/male sex organs in the same pattern. May sound dumb now but then again I'm not too sure that I didn't read this somewhere. I was stuck in Star Trek science fiction which, as I mentioned earlier, was pretty poor.

I also remember years later reading Expedition also by Wayne Douglas Barlowe which was entirely different. He didn't just take features of earth creatures and make them more human. Barlowe made these creatures completely alien. Alien senses, aliens mobility, and alien evolutionarily niches to fill. This book didn't just define a couple of alien creatures out of context but described an entire ecosystem. It made me realize that creatures don't exists because they are neat or useful to a story but because they fill some spot in there local environment. All the creatures need to fit together, each with features that match it's roll in the environment while maximizing it's net reproductive success.

Well it looks like others have admired Barlowe's work. This Saturday (5/14/05) Discovery Channel will be airing a program called Alien Planet based on Barlow's book Expedition. In addition to details on the show there is a very well done flash based virtual voyage to Alien Planet on the discovery website.

Talking to myself

2005-05-09T12:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, so now that mention of my MapPoint post has fallen off the list at http://msdn.microsoft.com/mappoint/ my web traffic has returned to normal (10-15 visits per day) and my dreams of worldwide redership have been shattered I can sit back and reflect on the whole blogging experience. Do I mind that my traffic is so low and I am basically writing to myself? No, not really. Sure it would be nice to get a few comments now and then to know if people are interested in what I have to say but it isn't necessary. This blog gives me a way to record the interesting things I find or think about everyday. As my mind wanders so does my blog. From special relitivty to doorknobs, from hypercubes to Zelda. These are just a fraction of the random things that I think about daily.

I think that is just the way I am. My mind picks up on things an kicks it around all day long analyzing the topic from every angle my mind is capable of comprehending (often leading to insomnia). I actually had someone tell me that the stuff I talk about during lunch is too weird for them. If my lunch topics are so strange that some people don't want to eat lunch with me then I must be saying something interesting... right? Ok, maybe not. Either way this blog serves several purposes for me:

it is a great way to record my random thoughts,
it is a terrific forum to post my discoveries, and
it is good writing practice.

Yes, like everyone else and their half-sister-in-law I would like to be a writer. I no longer have fantasies of becoming the next Asimov or Nevin but I sure would like to write one science fiction novel before I go. Tips number one, two, and three for becoming a writer are practice, practice, and practice. Maybe with a little work I can learn to avoid run-on sentences (there are a couple in this post), fix my atrocious grammar, and perhaps through some miracle improve my vocabulary. Is that expecting to much from a blog? Probably, but at least I'm doing something.

So what is in the future for the Hypercubed blog? I'm not sure. I'm defiantly not going to promise a new post everyday. Blogging takes work and while I'm blogging I'm neglecting my other projects. I hope that in the future I can balance my blogging and my programming and, hopefully, you will see me post about some of my programming projects here.

RoboForm is like a doorknob

2005-05-08T03:21:00.000-07:00

When you enter or leave a room do you even notice using the doorknob. Probably not. That's because it becomes a part of your motor memory. The actions required to use a doorknob are simple enough and you do it often enough that you can perform the actions by rote (i.e. routine and automatic, not requiring conscious thought [my definition]).

Every once in a while there is a piece of software that, like the door knob, can become such a part of your motor memory you forget it is even there. That is how it is for me with RoboForm is a plug-in for your browser (IE and others) that remembers your login information after you login to a password protected site. The next time you visit that site you can have the password filled in for you.

I've tried other software that does the same thing (like IE auto-complete and eWallet ) and RoboForm is by far the best. Bagusoft Password Safe 3.0 is a distant second. I'm not going to go into details of all the features (you can read them here) but simply say that if you want a password storage tool that will not interfere with your daily browsing yet lets you quickly login to your password protected sites then this is the one for you. Install it, use it, and you'll almost forget it is there, like a doorknob.

Boing Boing: Place The State game

2005-05-07T00:47:00.000-07:00

I was never very good at geography in school. Matter of fact I wasn't good at anything other then math and science. Anyway, I think I would have defiantly done better if I had this site available to me when I was in school. This website contains several flash based web games geared towards geography education. The Place the State game is actually really fun. Makes me realize how little geography I know even today.

[Via: boingboing]

Buridan's Ass: The Tangled Bank #27

2005-05-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

Here is another round-robin posting "carnival". This time it is The Tangled Bank; a weekly showcase of science and medicine blog entries. This weeks "carnival" is hosted by Buridan's Ass. Be sure to read "Why We Need Science To (Correctly) Understand The World" and "Pardon me while I geek out a little....". There are also many posts discussing the ever present evolution vs.. intelligent design.

Orson Scott Card says what many of us were afraid to say

2005-05-03T19:47:00.000-07:00

The L.A. Times has a c ommentary by Orson Scott Card where he expresses his ambivalence towards the end of the Star Trek franchise. Card argues that the Star Trek franchise was the bottom of the barrel science fiction. While written science fiction has a lot to offer Star Trek was

sci-fi as seen by Hollywood: all spectacle, no substance.

While the original Star Trek was playing on air:

science fiction writing was incredibly fertile... with writers like Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg and Larry Niven, Brian W. Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke creating so many different kinds of excellent science fiction that no one reader could keep track of it all.

I agree with Card. I was a Star Trek fan but all along I knew that it didn't compare to what I was reading. The thing that kept me into it was that I could suck down one episode a night (re-runs) while a novel took much longer to finish and greater concentration. But these days with good sci-fi like Battlestar and Firefly (shame it was canceled) who needs Star Trek. I once expressed a similar feeling to a group of strangers during a lunch gathering. I was later taken aside by a young lady that began to franticly yell at me that, being a Star Trek fan, she was extremely insulted. I had to explain to her that I was also a fan but that doesn't mean I can't call it like it is. I don't think I ever spoke to that girl again. I think many Star Trek fans have earned the full term "Fanatic".

Speaking of Orson Scott Card and good science fiction, I have just finished Card's Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novel "Enders Game". It was an amazingly intense and entertaining book. I felt the end was rather abrupt and I didn't care much for the subplot involving Valentine and Peter but a minor distraction in an otherwise great book. Even though this book was written relatively recently (1994) I think it is already considered a classic in the genre, I highly recommended it.

[via slashdot.com]

Glass - Solid or Liquid?

2005-05-02T22:38:00.000-07:00

I pretty much remember only one thing from my high school physical science class. You know, the class before chemistry and physics where they try to teach you about the scientific method, states of matter, and planets without a single equation. I remember very clearly the day the teacher informed us that glass was not a solid but in fact super-cooled liquid. I was skeptical at first but I was told that there is evidence. You see, I was told, window pains on medieval buildings have become thicker at the bottom then at the top because the glass is actually flowing very slowly. I was shocked and amazed. I thought this would be a great topic to bring up at cocktail parties when I grow up. "Hey there pretty lady, did you know that champagne glass you're holding is actually a super-cooled liquid?" I never had a chance to use that line but I'm sure it would have worked.

The problem: he was wrong. The consensus these days is that glass is not a super-cooled liquid but in fact a amorphous solid. The confusion comes about for two reasons:

Structurally, glasses are similar to liquids. Many solids have a crystalline structure on microscopic scales with molecules arranged in a regular lattice. The molecules in glass have a disordered arrangement, but sufficient cohesion to maintain some rigidity. In this state it is often called an amorphous solid or glass (see reference).
Because of the molecular structure of glass there is no first order phase transition as it cools (in other words it doesn't appear to have a distinct melting point). In a solid there is a sharp distinction between the solid and the liquid state, that is separated by a first order phase transition. Some people claim that glass is actually a super-cooled liquid because there is no first order phase transition as it cools. In fact, there is a second order transition between the super-cooled liquid state and the glass state, so a distinction can still be made (see reference).

As for the window panes. It appears that the glass making techniques of the time were not very good and resulted in noticeable thickness differences across a sheet. When placing the glass in the windows, builders would place the thicker side on the bottom for greater support. "If medieval glass has flowed perceptibly, then ancient Roman and Egyptian objects should have flowed proportionately more—but this is not observed" (see reference). Egyptian glass would now be puddles of glass.

In essence the question of what state of matter glass is in doesn't have an easy answer. The general consensus among those who know is that it is an amorphous solid (see reference). Perhaps glasses should be placed into a new state of matter rather then try to define it based on the "classes" of matter invented by ancient Greek scientists 2500 years ago (see reference).

References:

Web traffic and population growth

2005-05-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my blog saw a 2.3x increase in visitors due mostly to a post on MSDN's MapPoint website ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/mappoint/ ). If my web traffic continues to increase by 2.3x everyday the number of visitors on May 23rd will exceed the current world population. Of course by May 23rd the world population will increase by over 5 million so my dream of world wide readership will be delayed by approximately 1 and a half minutes.

The above conclusion is obviously ridiculous but all the facts are true.. that will happen if my traffic continuous to increase by 2.3x every day; but it won't. But it goes to show you that facts can be manipulated and distorted to provide for false conclusions. Sometimes you need to watch people carefully because we all make faulty assumptions sometimes and sometimes they are not so easy to catch. But the preceding statements brings up one things I'd like to discuss. The worlds population is predicted to increase by 5 million in the next month, nearly 75 million over the next year and by 2 billion by the time I'm 60.

It is obvious that the world cannot sustain this growth. As the population grows will will be running out of supplies needed to maintain our population. Famine, war, and disease are all in our future. The future may also include dramatic climate changes due to population growth. It is estimated that maximum population the earth can support is between 4 billion and 16 billion people (see reference) (we already exceed the lower limit). What can be done?

I wrote an essay in my first year college English class arguing that the solution to population growth was space exploration and eventual colonization of other planets. That by moving out into space we will offload some of the Burdon on earth. In the middle of my research I realized that I was wrong. If we wanted to keep the current population constant we would have to ship out 5 million people a month. I can't image that it will be possible to ship off that many people at that rate unless there are major technological advances. In addition, the resources needed for transportation will most likely make for additional burden on our already limited resource. Until we invent transporters (Star Trek like), cold fusion or other major inovations, space exploration is not the answer.

Population control can come about through restrictive reproduction laws. Laws that restrict who can have children and how, many could work, if enforced, and most likely be a good thing in the long run. However, this type of control over individuals' personal lives goes against my political ideology. Do the ends justify the means? That is never an easy question but I tend to lean towards no in this case. Instead, I think what needs to change is the culture. I feel we need changes in our reproductive health education. Make people aware of the problem and let people choose to have less children... not force them. Educate people on how they can control their reproduction and empower people to make their own choice about if and how many children they want. I really hope that our social changes in the future can come trough education and not through laws.

References

Visual Studio cannot debug [MapPoint] Add-In if .NET 2.0 runtime installed

2005-04-30T00:16:00.000-07:00

I've done a lot of programming in MS Visual Basic using version 6.0 but recently I have been switching over to VB.NET 2003. One application (Coordinate Exchange) that I wrote in 6.0 was an plug-in for MapPoint. This application has been been fairly popular among MapPoint users and for a while now I've wanted to convert it to a more stable VB.net version. I knew converting wouldn't be easy but I couldn't even get past the first gate. For nearly a year now I had been trying to create an add-in for MapPoint using VB.NET and constantly running into a brick wall. I could setup the application just fine (see instructions here) but for some reason I could never get the runtime debugging to work. The application would run fine if installed but always crashed silently when entering debug mode. I had literally been trying to figure this out for the past year (from as early as May 10, 2004)... I searched the web, posted multiple requests for help to forums and news groups, and even sent an e-mail to a MapPoint developer (Chandu Thota) and never got any response. I was really shocked that nobody appeared to be having the same problem. Was it just me? I tried on several of my machines and each had the same problem. I was stuck.

I'm glad to say that I've finally solved it. Or actually somebody else solved it for a similar situation and I finally came across the answer. See the problem was not me or my application but the fact that every machine I owned had Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 installed. When MapPoint would open the addin it would load the version 2.0 by default. Visual Basic.NET 2003 would be attempting to debug assuming version 1.1. The application would then crash without any error message.

The solution is actually very simple. You have to instruct MapPoint to use the NET Framework 1.1. To do this create a file in the MapPoint directory (the one containing MapPoint.exe) named MapPoint.exe.config. The file should contain the following text:

<configuration> <startup> <supportedRuntime version="v1.1.4322"/> </startup> </configuration>

After that all MP plug-ins run using 1.1 runtime and there are no more crashes in debug mode. Now all I have to do is spend the next year or so and convert all my 6.0 code to .NET. Wish me luck.

Evolution vs. intelligent design

2005-04-29T00:35:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of evolution vs. intelligent design (ID) discussion on several blogs recently (here and here) so I thought I'd add my 2¢. I Believe everyone has a right to believe as they wish. If someone wants to believe that evolution is guided by a God (or gods) and that the earth was created 40,000 or 6,000 years ago so be it. More power to you. Matter of fact, in a way, I envy your ability to believe whole heartedly in something that's unprovable. But whatever your beliefs ID is not science and should not be taught in science classes but rather in theology classes. And I believe that theology classes have their place. I think there are inherent problems with theology in grammar school (biased teachers and such) but at the college level I feel if is very beneficial. Even as a non-believer and a skeptic I felt my history of religion class at collage was nearly as valuable as were my biology and anthropology classes.

Also, it is apparent that many IDers have very little knowledge of evolutionary science as it exists today. Pharyngula points out that Geoff Brumfiel in his article refer to evolutionary biologists as Darwinists. Pharyngula equates this to calling physicist Newtonists. As a physicist I would hate to be called a Newtonists. Science is not stagnant. Evolutionary Biology has improved a lot from the Darwin's natural selection. Modern evolutionary theory includes the concepts of punctuated equilibria and evolutionary synthesis which add to the evolutionary driving force. They also don't recognize that evolution is not a forward only process. There is not necessarily a magical driving force leading to the creation human beings in particular. If there was evidence that evolution was driving for the creation of a particular species I too would believe in ID. Rather humans are the result of many billions of failed biological experiments. We evolved the way we did not because of a designer but because we did (This relates to the weak anthropic principle). Evolution is as much working to create new forms of bacteria as it is to create a human. The number of bacterial species is immense and grows everyday. To quote from Stephen Jay Gould's Planet of the Bacteria:

On any possible, reasonable or fair criterion, bacteria are — and always have been —the dominant forms of life on Earth

With all this talk of skeptics and skepticism feel I should explain myself. Yes, I am a skeptic... I don't believe in ghosts, witches, or alien abductions. And no, I don't believe in God. However, I'm not going to criticize anyone for believing in God. You can believe in what you like. If you try to prove to me the existence of God through pseudoscience or logical fallacy I'll argue against you (if I can) but I feel everyone has to right to believe in anything they want. I believe that life exists on other planets without proof. My world view can accept the existence of extraterrestrial species. If your world view can include the existence of God they I'm happy for you. I ask simply that you be consistence with the facts. There is evidence that the world is over 40,000 years old and if you have an explanation for that (i.e. God made it look that way) then I'm satisfied and you will hear no arguments from me.

Skeptics’ Circle #7

2005-04-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

So I'm very new to blogging... both writing a blog and reading them. Most of the blogs I've seen don't have anything of interest to me. However, lately I've enjoyed reading several blogs run by various skeptics around the world. If you want a launching pad to these skeptical posts you're in luck. Saint Nate has organized the The Skeptics' Circle a biweekly round-robin post that summarizes various posts from around the skeptical blogger community.

Skeptics' Circle #7 is hosted by Josh at Thoughts from Kansas. Enjoy!

Skeptico

2005-04-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

When writing my last post on the ionic air purifiers I came across a great blog at skeptico.blogs.com. Honestly, I have very little time to blog myself, much less reading other blogs, but Richard Rockley’s blog is great. To quote from his site:

It sometimes seems like the whole world has gone mad. Everyone I meet seems to believe in some irrational nonsense, no one can ever back up their beliefs with evidence, and yet they view me as the one with the problem. Psychics, psychokinesis, auras, alternative medicine, indigo children, global consciousness, astrology, reincarnation… the list is endless. And just when I think I’ve heard everything, along comes a new piece of drivel I have to listen to. Does anyone ever check anything before repeating it? Doesn’t seem like it.
And if I ask for evidence to back up what is claimed, all I get is, “you don’t understand”, or “what do you mean, ‘test’ it?”, or “I just know it works” or “that sounds closed-minded”, or “science doesn’t know everything”.
It’s all over the news too. Sports people think that God stops whatever he’s doing to help their team (it’s always their team) win a game. Creationist groups want to teach “intelligent design” as though it is science. Does anyone in the media know the difference between science and pseudoscience? Not that you can tell.

This site takes a critical look at many issues, he does his research, and proves his point. Simply a great blog and intelligent blogger. I only hope that someday I can blog as well as he does. Yes, I have a case of blog envy.

Here are some of my favorite posts so far:

Ionic Air Purifiers

2005-04-22T16:44:00.000-07:00

The first time I saw a commercial regarding those ion or ozone air purifiers I knew it was a scam. My theory was that a high efficiency filter doesn't mean anything if the air flow is low. The ORECK XL for example may remove 95% of all particles but if the air exchange rate per hour is very low then most of the air in a room is untouched. Well it turns out that it is even worse then I thought. When the manufactures claim their air purifiers clean 95% of airborne contaminants they provide no particle size range. As a matter of fact these purifiers remove mostly large particles while standard HEPA filters meet a minimum efficiency of 99.97% at 0.3 microns. Turns out the majority of harmful particles are 3 microns or less in size as small particles travel deeper into the lungs, causing more damage while larger particles get trapped in your nose a throat. In addition these ion purifiers can release harmful ozone into your home. Consumer Reports criticizes ionic air purifier. I guess the moral is that scientific claims can be used to mislead... do your research.

References:

Debugging Langton's Ant (way too long)

2005-04-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I mentioned that A. K. Dewdney was a contributing author of many Computer Recreations articles appearing in Scientific American magazine. While in collage I used to rife through back issues of Scientific American magazines to read every Computer Recreations and Mathematical Recreations I could find. One of the most memorable articles was The Ultimate in Anty-Particles by Ian Stewart appearing in the July 1994 issue. In this article Stewart describes a simple cellular automaton invented in the 1980s called Langton's Ant. Langton's Ant is a fascinatingly simple example of cellular automata similar to Conway's Game of Life . With a very simple rule set the ant will create very complex patterns that appear random. However eventually the ant will enter a repeating pattern and you realize that it is not random at all.

A Langton's Ant code was one of the first pieces of software I ever wrote. At the time I owned a cheap Tandy computer that couldn't even run a ASM compiler much less a higher level programming language like C or PASCAL (or at least one I could afford). So what did I write it in? Well believe it or not I wrote my application in MS-DOS debug. That's right in debug. If you know anything about debug you know that that is a real feat. Let me try to explain. Well, the lowest level on computer programming is writing in machine language. That is actually writing in the 1 and 0 that computers understand. Well, I don't believe there is anyone in this world that can program directly in machine code. The next level up is assembly language. At this level you are writing in a type of shorthand code that represents the machine commands that will be sent to the CPU. The language commands consist of moving numbers in and out of memory and hardware (i.e. the screen) locations. As you write your code you need to jump around in memory quite a bit. The good thing about using an assembly language compiler is that you can assign names to various memory locations so that you don't need to know the exact memory address. In addition as you modify the code the memory addresses change.

But I didn't have a assembly language compiler.. instead I had debug. Debug is a MS-DOS tool that was intended to view and modify data in memory. So using debug you can actually view pieces of memory and print out the assembly language commands. So what I actually had to do was write out the entire code on paper before hand, type the code directly into memory using dummy values for the memory locations then go back and change all the memory locations to the actual locations. Run, debug, repeat. It was not easy. Luckily Langton's ant was easy to write. I have never again written anything in assembly language but writing that piece of code taught me a lot about computers that I never would have gotten using Visual Basic or C++. I have long ago lost the code and the executable but several years ago I wrote a version in Visual Basic that I turned into a screen saver. More fancy but defiantly, but not as interesting.

It is also interesting to note that Ian Stewart (the author of the Scientific American article that started in all for me) has also written a couple of books regarding FlatLand by by Edwin A. Abbott one of the inspirations for A. K. Dewdney's The Planiverse .

A. K. Dewdney

2005-04-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

Continuing my theme of slightly interrelated random stuff or as ninad commented "completely interesting but completely pointless stuff" I'd like to talk more about A. K. Dewdney. I mentioned A. K. Dewdney Earlier as the author of The Planiverse . In addition to The Planiverse Dewdney has written another of my favorite books The New Turing Omnibus. The Turing Omnibus is a great computer science book for beginners. It covers, in detail, essential topics in computer science including: finite automata, turning machines, NP-completeness. Each topic is well covered yet it is readable and comprehensible even for the non computer science student. I wouldn't recommend this book for your grandmother (unless she is into that stuff) but if you have an interest in computer science but are not trained in the field this is the book to get.

In addition to these great books (and others he has written) Dewdney was the author of many Computer Recreations articles (later mathematical recreations) in Scientific American from 1984 - 1991 in one article of which he invented Core Wars. Dewdney is currently a Professor Emeritus of the University of Western Ontario.

Boing Boing: Nasa's robotic head plumbs the nadir of the uncanny valley

2005-04-09T23:51:00.000-07:00

This is so creepy I thought it must be a prank but the file is hosted on a NASA/JPL server so it must be real... right?

morons.org - Man Arrested for Using $2 Bills at Best Buy

2005-04-08T21:27:00.000-07:00

We have all had our bad experiences with Best Buy but this poor guy was arrested for using $114 in $2 bills. OK, so he was probably being an ass because the Best Buy employee "misstated" that installation was free but he didn't deserve to be arrested. Next time he should remember Bets Buys policy on customers questions:

When asked a question by a customer to which you don't know the answer simply make up whatever answer you need to close the sale. You can always deny it later.
- Best Buy Employees Manual §254.75

I believe the same policy is in effect at Fry's electronics.

Kitten Cannon - Presented by Flash Player

2005-04-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

Every first year physics student knows that the maximum range of a projectile is achieved at 45 degrees. That is unless your shooting a kitten into a field filled with bombs, trampolines, and Venus fly-traps.

My top score: 1516

The American Physical Society presents "A Century of Physics"

2005-04-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

Interactive history of Physics.

Vending machine dispenses free drinks during disasters

2005-04-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

This would never happen in the US. As a matter of fact I bet if the cola companies and the vendor operators could get away with it the price would increase after a disaster.

Another reason it would never work here (maybe not in Japan either) is that I'm sure the first person to reach the machine would take them all and start reselling at inflated prices.

San Andreas Radio

2005-04-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

With Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Rockstar games has again created an great game. But in addition to being a great game it also has a great in-game soundtrack. If you enjoy the in-game music and want to listen in your real car you can buy the 8 disc official soundtrack. Or if you already own the game you can head over to Eddie Edwards' website and download San Andreas Radio and rip the music right from the game disk. I don't know if this is entirely legal but it sure is grand... thanks Eddie.

Programming Junky

2005-04-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

Set Me.RatherBe = enumActions.Programming

Maybe Black holes do not exist

2005-04-04T00:38:00.000-07:00

"It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist. "
-George Chapline Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

According to this article appearing at nature.com at least one physicist at LLNL believes that what appear to be black holes are in fact dark-energy stars. Dark-energy, as you may know, is the theoretical substance used to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe (although it appears that some Italian and U.S. cosmologists don't believe dark-energy is needed). On the outside dark-energy stars would act exactly the way you would theorize a black hole would act but the inside will be quite different. According to the article, instead of being crushed at the singularity things bounce around inside.

This gets me thinking. How can we ever test what is beyond the event horizon of a black hole/dark-energy star. Once we send a probe in can we ever retrieve the data. If we were to send an observer beyond an event horizon will we never know his observations. According to some physicists (and now Stephen Hawking) information might be retrievable. That brings up my philosophical question of the day "If a scientist made a discovery beyond an event horizon and there was nobody there to review it, did it shift a paradigm?"

The results of my research...

2005-04-03T11:54:00.000-07:00

After decades of research and many late nights solving some of the worlds most difficult partial differential equations using some of the most advanced Hilbert Space Methods known to man I have finally solved one of the most fundamental enigmas facing intellectual men of the world today.

I have discovered that when a woman says "I like nerdy guys" they mean:

This Guy

Not This Guy

Hypercubed, But why?

2005-04-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

Ok, so yesterday I answered the question of what it is to be Hypercubed now. I will answer the question of "why". I guess the answer is that I've been fascinated with the concept of 4-dimensional space for a long time. My fascination began when I read The Planiverse by A. K. Dewdney. This book is a fictional account of contact with a creature living in a 2D world. By understanding the relation between 2D and 3D space we can begin to understand four dimensional space. That is to say the idea of space containing four physical dimensions measured in length. This should not to be confused with the twilight zone type parallel universes (creatures from the 13th dimension, etc) or 4 dimensional space-time. But rather the idea that there could be space that is composed of 4 dimensions of extent. Right now we have up/down, left/right, forward/back... three dimensions each measured using a ruler (not a clock). What if there was a fourth direction that can be measured by length... ana/kata. What would geometric figures with 4 dimensions look like? Because it is impossible for us to imagine 4 dimensional objects (at least I have never met anyone that claims they can) we have to draw on analogies. The only way to begin to understand 4d space is to examine the relationship between 2D and 3D and extend these relationship to 4D. That is why a hypercube is so interesting. We can take two objects we are very familiar with, the square and the cube, and extend it to 4+ dimensions. If you are interested in this type of subject I suggest you read The Planiverse ... it is just plane fascinating (ok that was a bad pun).

Related Lnks:

Flat Land - by Edwin A. Abbott

Hypercubed?

2005-04-01T19:20:00.000-08:00

Some of you (is anyone actually there?) may be wondering what it is to be Hypercubed. Well Hypercubed is the inflected verb meaning to form into a Hypercube. According to Merriam-Webster a Hypercube is "a geometric figure... in Euclidean space of n dimensions that is analogous to a cube in three dimensions" (see reference). Notice it is a geometric figure in space of n dimensions. Therefore Hypercubed means to be formed into a n-dimensional equivalent of a cube. However, when people mention a hypercube they most commonly are referring to the tesseract, the four-dimensional version of a cube. Doesn't Hypercubed sounds better then tesseracted?

What is a hypercube (tesseract) look like? A line is a one (1) dimensional object. Now imagine if you were to make a duplicate of this line and then connect these two lines by more lines of the same length. This would be a two (2) dimensional square. Now take this square and connect it to a duplicate square using more duplicate squares. You now have two squares connected by four squares, six faces in all. This is a three (3) dimensional cube (look here). Now the hard part; imagine two cubes where each face of the first cube is connected to one face of the other cube by a duplicate cube. This is difficult to imagine because we live and think in three dimensions. But mathematically there is no difference between space with three dimensions and space with four dimensions. Well obviously, due to limitations of 3-d space, we cannot see a four dimensional object. However, using the same techniques that one uses when drawing a 3 dimensional cube on a two dimensional piece of paper we can project an image of a four dimensional hypercube (or the wire frame of one) into three dimensions. In 2000 I posted an article on my website explaining how to use POV-RAY to display four dimensional objects here. The image below is a projection of a hypercube made with POV-RAY.

There are other ways to view a hypercube. We all know how to unfold a 3D cube; it is also possible to unfold a hypercube. Check out Salvador Dali's painting "Crucifixion" (aka "Corpus Hypercubus").

Related Links

Hypercube - Visualization
Hypercube's Hompage - What are Hypercubes?
Hypercubed - Wolfram Research
Four-Space Visualization of 4D Objects - Masters Degree Thesis by Steven Richard Hollasch

Slashdot | Fun With Transparent Screen Backgrounds

2005-03-30T20:41:00.000-08:00

This is a few days old but very cool.

Slashdot Fun With Transparent Screen Backgrounds

Memories of Zelda

2005-03-30T19:04:00.000-08:00

Now for a story from my youth. I remember the one kid down the street that could afford a Nintendo system. I used to go to his house and stay for a very long time. No I wasn't playing games.. I was watching them. You see if you didn't own a Nintendo you didn't know how to play and if you didn't know how to play then none of the other kids would want to sit and watch the loser play. So I sat and watched. Every once in a while I would get a few minutes but the other kids would quickly offer to "help me" get past a hard part. I soon learned that "helping me" meant them playing and me watching.

Anyway, the game I was really interested in was The Legend of Zelda. My god that game looked awesome. I really thought you could go anywhere and do anything in that game. So because I have very limited time playing the game and I was a resourceful kid I decided to do the next best thing... make my own. Yes, that's correct... I made my own. I took a new ream of paper and began by drawing one screen on each piece of paper. When I was done the entire map filled my living room. It was cool. Next I divided up each screen/sheet into a 10x10 grid. I then began to fill a notebook (paper notebook not electronic) with the game details. My idea was the when a player entered a certain grid of the map he would look up the coordinates in the notebook, scan across to the column that represents the an action ("drop bomb" for example) and it would list a reference number. You would then look up the reference number in a second book that would tell you the result of your action. Even if you looked at the adjacent paragraphs you would have no clue where or how to case that result. I think it was was a very sweet idea especially coming form a 12-year old. I spent months researching monsters and stories from Greek mythology to add to may game. Needless to say I never finished that project (I still rearly finish projects). It was too much for a 12 year old. But to this day I've never seen anything like it. It was something half way between the choose your own adventure books and a video game. I never did figure out how combat would work.

OK, so why am I bringing this up now. Well I discovered a program called Zelda Classic located here: zeldaclassic.armageddongames.net. This game is an exact replica of the Nintendo version. But not only can I finally play Zelda for more then 15 mins but I can finally bring my Zelda-like game to life. With the Zelda Classic's Quest Creator you can make your own Zelda like adventure in 8-bit color rather then pencil on paper.

I'd still like to make a paper based game like I came up with 20 years ago just to see if it could work. Might be easier now with word processors and Photoshop. It's been on my list of things to for many years now. But until then I'm going to be playing Zelda.

Antimatter, feynman diagrams, and gravity

2005-03-27T01:06:00.000-08:00

If you have studied (or are studying) Feynman diagrams in school you may have heard that particles with a downward trajectory (backward in time) are interpreted as an antiparticle moving forward in time. Well, if you read Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures it is clear that Feynman took this very literally (also look here).

If you are into physics you should contemplate this for a couple of days. It is a fascinating topic. Some great discussion on this topic took place on the sci.physics.research news groups last year... it is a great read.

It is clear that because of simultaneity in Special Relativity (or lack of) observers on different inertial reference frames can see different sequences of events. What Feynman shows is that what appears as a particle to one observer can appear as an anti-particle to another. Think about this... when a particle-antiparticle pair are created in a particle accelerator are they really the same particle viewed going forward and backwards in time . If I happened to be passing by the lab at relativistic speeds could I see the event as a particle scattering?

One word of warning though. Don't fall into the trap that I (and others) did. A particle traveling backwards in time appears to "have opposite electromagnetic, weak, and strong charges, as well as spin" (see reference). But an attractive force, viewed backwards in time, is still an attractive force. Think about it for a while. Think of a small body passing a large body in space and being diverted by gravity. Now run the film backwards... do you see it. Yes, it is still an attractive force. Observers in different reference frames can see different events but you can't have something accelerating towards an object in one reference frame and away in another. Remember the The Barn and the Pole Paradox? Think about a film of a falling object. The object is accelerating towards the ground. If we reverse the film the object starts near the ground with an upward velocity. But notice something.. the object is slowing down. In fact the object is accelerating towards the ground. If it shot up into space at accelerating speeds we would all be surprised.

Now the very keen observer may have notices that I've done a big no-no. I've been invoking arguments based on special relativity to discuses gravity which requires general relativity. But as far as I know the arguments hold true.

I'd love to hear comments on this topic.

Don't fuck with Ovid

2005-03-26T18:02:00.000-08:00

publius_ovidius: Don't fuck with Ovid -- the long version

In case you haven't seen this.... have a read. It is very interesting. Apparently this guy caught some identity thieves red handed. One thing I take out of it is that I really want to get the credit card companies to stop sending those stupid checks. Does anyone use those anyway?

Welcome to the Hypercubed Blog.

2005-03-26T17:37:00.000-08:00

What is Hypercubed Blog... well it is my local corner of the blog world. I am an physicist by training, engineer by trade, programmer by night. I develop websites and program applications in my spare time. My most popular program is Coordinate Exchange a plug-in for MS MapPoint that facilitates the exchange of coordinate information in and out of MapPoint. I run several websites including http://www.hypercubed.com/ and I am a (semi-)active developer of MegaBBS. I was at one time semi-famous for coming up with a method for creating custom tile-sets in NWN. For that I received a cool award from BioWare. But that should be almost it about me. I have tried running a blog before and I realized I don't like talking about myself. So I will be doing very little of that.

So what will I be talking about? Well, I think I'm going to post things that interest me. I am interested in programming, computers, and science. I may occasionally spout off a rant or two about a political issues but I think I really want to focus on creating a online log of what I think is interesting. I spend at least some time almost everyday scouring the web for cool stuff. My favorite sites are Slashdot and Engadget. I will be linking to interesting stuff when I find it and posting any interesting things I do or discover.