Mostly Harmless

Last Friday night the LIRR was talking about if 10 inches of snow fall, then they will shut down the entire train system. That only sounds bad since last time it snowed some poor people were kidnapped and held hostage against their will for many hours on a disabled train. The idea is that it is better to strand people at the train station than abandon them on the train tracks.

The amount of snow this last weekend around where I live? None, not one centimeter.  Now the weather man is predicting a ton of snow for tomorrow. I’m all ready to go and it will be great for the kids if we actually do get snowed in.

My family and I have been living in our house for over 5 years now. During that time, I have cleaned up my junk in the basement a couple of times.  Our kids? Not once. Our basement looked like an organized mess.  All of their toys (mostly broken) were piled up against the wall.

That changed today. This morning Lily and I started small and just kept going. We ended up throwing out eight 45 gallon bags (I could have sworn we bought 55 gallon drum liners but they weren’t). The kids helped too, so no hysterics.

What made me a little depressed was that the 1/144 HG Gundam models that my son made were damaged and had parts missing, so he decided to toss them out. Not all of them, but the four that he tossed were ones that I was proud of him working on.

Here is the models he tossed today.

It’s not really a big deal, and each one was broken. But I was a little sad at them being tossed out so casually.

The deal with my son is that if we clean out the old stuff, I’ll get him a Lionel O gauge set.  Right now he has an HO scale set but with all the space we cleaned out, we can get another folding table and set up a bigger set.

Geez, I really am getting old and sentimental. You are supposed to get attached to people and not things.  That is something I am trying to teach both my children so I can’t really be unhappy about them letting go of things.

The anime Darker than Black Gaiden has started.  The last series was not too bad but this seems to have more action. It’s supposed to take place right after the first season.

I’ll keep an eye on it and see if it’s worth following.

I’m giving Mozilla Weave a try. I’ve been a big fan of the extension formally known as Foxmarks (Xmarks) so when Mozilla released Weave, I was not sure if there was anything for me to look at.

I use a work PC, my HP, and a laptop. Xmarks has been good at keeping my bookmarks and passwords secure and supports a revision history of your changes. Somehow I messed up my bookmarks and this got moved to the Xmarks server. Not a problem, I just rolled back to an earlier revision and got all of my bookmarks back.

It’s like applying SVN onto my browser.  Mozilla Weave is not quite like that. It does do bookmark and password synchronization but it doesn’t provide a means to rollback to an earlier version of your bookmarks (or maybe I just couldn’t find it). What appeals to me is that it also syncs up your browsing history.  I have often been at work trying to remember a web site I had seen the night before at home. I’m hoping that this will sync my browsing history.

Xmarks has been very responsive to their users so I expect this feature to make it into their extension soon.

Stefan had replaced his old Epson Stylus Photo R300 printer a long time ago and dropped it off at my house.  It’s a USB Epson inkjet printer that has been replaced a couple of times over. I don’t even know what the current model is, but this one was free so who cares?

Naturally, I hooked this up to my Linux server in the basement. I could not get CUPS to agree with me so I’m printing via Samba.

I went to Costco and picked up replacement inks and glossy photo paper.  The Epson inks were $60! The paper was the Kirkland knock off so I’m assuming the price was good. I connected my laptop to the print queue and shot off a test page using plain paper.  That came out okay, so I loaded up the glossy paper and printed a couple of photos.

The photos looked like crap. There was banding all over the place and it looked like the ink had not decided to adhere to the glossy surface. If I looked closely, I am sure that the ink was about to slide off the page. So a few more test prints later and I set the default as premium glossy paper, Photos only, and enhanced photo processing.

The next photos looked stunning. The colors jumped right off of the page and the detail in the photos was just plain amazing.  For my color test, I printed this photo of some fish statues. I had forgotten that some of the fish were actually not blue. I’m printing more and I have lots of paper and ink. The only downside is that the printer often has problems grabbing the glossy paper. It requires a lot of “take out the paper, insert the paper the exact same way”. But the output is really good and as I said, I got the printer for free.

What? No, I did not read any of the printer instructions or documentation. Why would you ask?

On Monday I’ll update the photos in my cubicle with these new printouts. I can look at them and admire the photos I took.

I think Charlie Brooker gets it. The news format is perfect.

Now if only someone could get Stone Phillips to do this skit on the Daily Show.

I was catching up with a friend and she asked me if I still used Skype. When she and I worked at the same company, instant messaging and Skype were very popular.

I have not used Skype or IM for many months.  With Skype I was getting weird spammy contact requests so I left it off. For IM I just stopped using it. This morning as a “why not?” I installed Skype on my PC. The interface looks more busy but aside from that it’s still Skype.

I was going to post a picture of the Skype GUI but somehow I don’t think my contacts would really appreciate that.

Facebook and keeping a blog journal have ruined the whole instantly contact your friends experience for me.  I have a working phone and e-mail address; it’s much more personal that way.  Even when someone I know joins Facebook, I’m usually on the phone with them the next day.

Instant anything just does not have much appeal for me anymore. Or maybe I’m getting old. I work with lots of mundane technology for a living, so the gee whiz factor rubbed off me a long time ago.

With some fanfare the iPad was announced today. And if I am reading it right, it’s like an iPhone but big and fat.

I don’t get it.

It’s an iPhone without the phone. It does not multitask.  So while you are using it as a ebook reader, you can’t keep any instant messenger sessions in the background.  You can probably play music, but no streaming music via the wifi.  You can probably still cut and paste, but no switching ssh sessions ’cause that will make the ssh app to exit.

What’s the appeal again? Seriously, who will step up with a really useful little tablet? I’m hoping ASUS or MSI will deliver something that I actually want. I already have an iPhone.

I’m not fully awake but saw this via Reddit.

Very cool and excellent landing.

This past week some interesting events occurred. First, there was a special election in Massachusetts and then there was the SCOTUS ruling that says corporate entities (and unions) can’t be limited in advertising bombing the electorate.

That Scott Brown got elected is really a non-issue. People vote and get elected all the time and I don’t really feel sympathy for a party that has a 19 seat lead in the Senate. It’s the pundits and political hacks that are making hay out of this.

The Democrats lack the stomach to make changes to health care; this is not news. They are the mewling party of the self-inflicted gunshot wound and always have been. Scott Brown and the tea party birther nuts are not the problem for the Dems, they do it to themselves.

The SCOTUS ruling is different. There should be a level playing field for John Q. Public candidate in an election. Many corporate friendly pols are hailing this as an affirmation that rights are protected. But corporations are not people and they don’t have the same rights and privileges as a human being. For a better look at what I mean, check out this analysis on the SCOTUSblog, they pose a fun hypothetical.

Look at the recent New York City mayor election:

Mr. Thompson, who participated in the campaign finance system, was outspent by 14 to 1, and he struggled to attract experienced staff members and raise money.

How can anyone win when one side spends over $100 million and the little guy can only spend $7.2 million? Voters are not dumb and people who make the effort to vote are being good citizens. But anyone is susceptible to a bombardment of advertising.

Put it another way: when George Soros openly spends on candidates who reflect his values, what will these corporate friendly pols say then? When MoveOn.org raises millions and goes after that conservative, woman hating, give to the rich not to the poor, faux christian candidate (you know who you are!), will people complain?

It’s not like candidates will place a Nike or other corporate logo on their hat. They should, if only so people really know who’s paying them to vote on bills. This ruling only illustrates that the Roberts court is openly partisan and will disregard precedent when it fits their world view.