In what may be the start of a trend, I'm posting a link to yet another blog's post. This one shows the original drawings for Pac-Man by Toru Iwatani.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Creationists suffer another legal defeat
This is good news, certainly, but a bit surprising given that it's Texas smacking 'em around.
Some good news from Texas! Yeehaw!
The Institute for Creation Research — one of the biggest nonsense-peddlers in the 6000 year history of the world — was handed a nice defeat this week. That link to the National Center for Science Education (the good guys) has all the info you need, but to summarize: the ICR moved from California to Texas. In the previous state, for reasons beyond understanding, they were able to grant Master’s degrees in their graduate school. But Texas didn’t recognize their accreditation, so they filed to get it approved.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Things I learned from Chuck Jones
I want to draw your attention to a post from the Desonesto Doctrine about things the author learned from Chuck Jones. I share these lessons, particularly #11, 20, 22, and 24, but most of all, lesson #25: “That’s all folks,” is a much nicer way to say “The End.”
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Unhappy Hipsters
I stumbled across Unhappy Hipsters today, a site that combines pictures of ultra-modern houses (some of which look really good and some of which look absolutely sterile) with captions, such as these:
In 90 degree heat the climbing wall quickly turned to flypaper.
Smug doesn't even begin to cover it.
I ended up going through all of these. They're really funny.
Quote du jour
"I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me." --Hunter S. Thompson
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Instructables.com
The Instructables.com website is so cool, I figured I'd try adding a recipe to it and see how it worked. This link is for the Habanero Garlic Pasta recipe that also appears here on this blog. Take a look at both and see which format you like better.
Blog's been updated with labels
I have been working on things in the background to get the blog posts updated with labels. I've worked through all 760-some posts and I've added labels to just about everything. In the course of this, I've been able to:
- correct a few typos and missing words
- re-read about cats that aren't here anymore (sniff!)
- remember any number of things that had happened in the last 6 years (which is why I wrote them down)
- look at maybe a dozen posts that I started and never finished and are still saved as drafts, some of which may get finished
- updated a few posts that had additional information
- changed everything to Verdana for easier reading
- admire my writing again (humility has never been a strength of mine and, damnit, I like what I have to say here)
I have the labels listed on the right side, currently with the "cloud" format, where the number of occurrences for a given label is indicated by the size of the label. The biggest are funny, me, and websites. (Go figure....)
Friday, June 18, 2010
Charlene Strong to meet with the President
I know Charlene Strong from the Washingtonians. She is a wonderful singer and a great person. 3 years ago, her wife Kate (who was also a wonderful singer and a great person) was killed in a tragic accident. Charlene's experiences thereafter underscored why LGBT couples need marriage rights as much as anyone else. I wish her great success meeting with the President next week.
There's an article in the Huffington Post about what she's going to be doing. Please share the video clip with folks, particularly with people who aren't aware of why marriage rights are important for everyone.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
A cherished childhood toy
When I was about 7, Dad gave me a wonderful educational toy called the AstroExplorer. It's a nifty little gadget for seeing constellations.
The AstroExplorer is a small plastic gadget with a flashlight bulb that's almost completely blacked out. You open it up, slip a disk of black paper into the base with a constellation in white on it, then fit the two pieces together again. The light bulb (powered by an AA battery) puts out a very dim light that backlights the paper and shines dimly through the white bits. You hold the AstroExplorer up to one eye and look with the other eye at the sky so that the constellation image overlays the stars in the sky and voila! Thanks to the miracle of binocular vision, you can see the constellation in the sky with some of the star names, the connecting lines, and a drawing of the figure in the constellation. The disks also have arrows pointing to other constellations nearby, the ecliptic, and so on.
I love this toy, both because of how cool it is and because it reminds me of Dad whenever I look at it. (I may take it with us when we go visit him this December.) Although the manufacturer, Tri-G Company in Venice, CA, vanished decades ago, you can still buy these for $10 or so on eBay. They're a wonderful gift for anyone who likes stargazing.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Joke du jour
Rude joke from Candy Hogan.
One car salesmen complained to the other, "Business sucks. If I don't sell more cars this month, I'm going to lose my fucking ass."
Too late he noticed a beautiful woman sitting two stools away. Immediately, he apologized for his bad language.
"That's okay," the woman replied, "If I don't sell more ass this month, I'm going to lose my fucking car."
Quote du jour
From @hollybarakat on Twitter:
If you play a Justin Bieber album backward, you hear messages from Satan. Even worse, if you play it forward, you hear Justin Bieber.
Decommissioned a computer
My former #1 computer, CHLOE, is completely decommissioned. I had tried to get it up and running with a new 2T hard drive, but nope, it was still dying unexpectedly. Examining it Monday afternoon when we were swapping out DVD drives finally showed how the damage from the lightning strikes this past summer had manifested: half a dozen of the small on-board power capacitors were bulging and at least three were leaking electrolyte. I'd had CHLOE as my #1 computer for a number of years, so it's the end of an era.
I could have the board fixed for $60, but you know... I just don't need a second computer at the moment. I may want to get a RAID box at some point, but I don't see any overwhelming need to do that now, so I've just scrapped it. I've got some spare parts from it that I probably won't need, including 3GB of DDR RAM, a CPU chip, and a great big tower case that may be of help.
I've now got more room under the desk as a result, too.
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