PoliticalCartoons.com
Work gets me depressed some days. :(
Elfwood amateur fantasy
and sci-fi art. I like to browse by hitting the random picture link.
In the SCA, I'm squired to Master
Torvald Sigurdsson.
Hmmm, here's a shot of him fighting in
Crown Tourney.
Market Day at Birka
is this weekend. It's a freaking long hike (5 hour drive).
Dunno if I'll go or not. Jenny wants to.
ThinkGeek sent me back my TShirts in the
right size and changed one of them from black to "gold" (yellow). :( grrr. Maybe
I'll send it back again.
In a fit of wierdness, Google updated it's cache of my website today. Now it's most recent
cache is has my 1/4/3 entry. *shrug* Guess I can't complain too much, I've never
tried to index 3 billion seperate documents.
Liquid oxygen can be used to help start your BBQ.
Take a look.
InfranView is a free image viewer with lots of editing capabilities. It won't
let you draw, but it's great for cropping, resizing, or renaming pictures. It
can do most of this in batches too, which just rocks. Grab it from
this
quilting site. :)
Slashdot was reminded of the No Electronic Theft Act
yesterday. They
point to this article
on CNET. In case you don't know, the NET act makes
trading files electronically the same as running a business selling illegal
copies of stuff. Trading song A for song B is now considered financial gain. So
$1000 worth of MP3 can put you in jail for a year as a felon.
There is, of course, no mention of how you value an MP3.
A CDR can hold 600 MB. The average song is 3MB. You can fit 200 songs on
ond CDR that cost $0.10.
In order to get a song, you have to buy the album it's on. For simplicity,
an album costs $20. If you have 50 songs from 50 different albums, that could be
$1000 worth of stuff.
Like Jay walking, this law can be applied to anyone.
Here are some articles on the Wikipedia that I've had a big hand in:
Counter Strike is a Mod of Half Life which involves polive vs terrorists: I did
Tips,
Console Commands,
Equipment descriptions.
At work I use
Programmable Logic Controllers,
happily none of the current ones (for me) use
Ladder Logic.
Middle Earth Role Play
was a lot of fun in it's day.
Capoeira is a really bizarre
martial art. I like
my version
of this article better.
SCA
The
Internet Slang wasn't
much of me, but it might amuse you to read it.
It's just a really wierd feeling to be able to fix tpyo's in someone else's work.
It's also strange to come back to something you wrote and have it be better then
you left it.
Here's a Japanese website that sells airplane kits. It's an interesting
collection of airplane shapes. It's kinda a
airplane identification
page. 2/3 down is the Blohm and Voss BV141B. That's some freakin wierd asymmetry.
We got a couple inches of snow last night to make up for the melt on Saturday. :)
Another game to eat up all your time: Bridge Builder
is also for all ages (by which I mean there is no violence). Each level has a set
number of anchor points and a budget. You have to build a bridge to span the
water. The "test bridge" function is particularly enjoyable.
I moved cubicles yesterday. Wanted a change of pace. No one at work has
commented yet. I'm farther from the squeaking plotter and the Printer of
Infinite Jams. :)
Made up a
links page to collect stuff that doesn't suck.
Compusa wrote me back. In answer to my question about how I can buy something
that is only on their website with a giftcard when it's against their policy, they
say "Sorry, at this time the web site is not capable of accepting gift cards."
There's nothing like the feeling that my email was just answered by a very simple
keyword sensitive script. if "giftcard" & "website" then "sorry, no" Nothing
says "Shop somewhere else" like replies on the same topic as your question. It's
Almost like a person read my mail! That's virtually good! *sigh* Best Buy does
bait and switch, CompUSA doesn't stock what I want. Wonder where I can shop
next.
Couple of culinary joys: Last night, the local dinner served us Chicken Shortcake
instead of chicken and dumplings. strange. Today, I learned exactly how it's
bad to have spicy chinese food in your eye. I'm fine.
No word from Compusa, so I emailed them. Last time I used their web feedback page.
Gridlock is
a puzzle game for all ages. May need a vaguely recent browser to play it. Get the
blue block out the exit. All the blocks can only slide along their long axes.
I went out to a "regional fight practice" yesterday. It drew 30-40 fighters and
we focused largely on unit vs unit engagements. The waits between fights were a
bit long for my tastes. *shrug* Was a great site (hot showers). Today, I feel like I've
been clubbed with several big sticks. And my muscles are sore. It was fun. :)
Just for curiousity sake, Google last looked grabbed my 12/6/2 page. (which could
have happened anywhere between then and 12/27/2, my next entry.)
Saab + Sauna + BBQ or, What do you do with your time?
Compusa seem to be poopheads. I have a gift card/certificate which I can't use
on their website and the KVM switch I want is only available on their website.
We'll see how that works out. (Keyboard/Video/Mouse switches let you connect
multiple computers to one setup of KVM and hit a button to change which computer
you are currently typing on.
Hey family (or other folks with Palm OS handhelds) go to
Palm.com
and download this
Abacus financial calculator.
I think I'll do a little tutorial online for how to make it tell you everything
you want to know about mortgages and loans. Here's the
manual by Dove
Software.
Wood keyboards and mice. Yes really
keyboards made from a single piece of wood.
I got a couple of pics of the snow blower that Albany uses.
Here's a shot of Jenny and our friend Lara.
The supreme court decided that 90 years was an acceptable length of time to keep
something out of the public domain. Well, in 20 years, maybe Congress will extend
this limit again. "Copyright, protecting the intellectual property rights of dead
people forever!" Wonder if they'll back date the limit and take Plato out of
the public domain...
Anyway, here are links:
Salon
has a copy of the Associated Press blurb.
Yahoo
does too.
Slashdot
has links to the majority and dissenting opinions of the judges. As always, slashdot
is not an unbaised source.
Since I pretty routinely search for reviews on stuff before I dish out cash, I
figured I'd throw my opinions of stuff I buy onto the web.
Review: Tachyon: The Fringe. Single player is fun so far. I'm enjoying the voice
actor, forgot who he is now. Multiplayer (Arena) was disappointing. Throttle
seemed to be completely unimportant. You were either stopped, moving(slowly) or
using your afterburner. Combat boiled down to circle straffing which isn't the most
complex thing to do in empty space. Other problems: (1) All the comparison graphs
would animate when you swapped items. This made it more difficult to figure out
what stat had changed between two weapons or ships. (2)The game host must
disconnect everyone, ending play, if he wants to reconfigure his ship.
Review: Sony MDR-G52 headphones hurt when wrapped around my plus size brain
box(head). The
flexible "pain tabs" that go behind your ears pull out, making them slightly better.
I'm happy with the sound.
There's a bunch of SCA events coming up for Jenny and I.
Feb 15 - East
Kingdom University I believe is a collection of classes and a feast. Jenny will
be there and I may make it to the feast.
I picked up Combat from
EBX
recently for $4.41. My review is: I paid a fair price. You could easily entertain
yourself for 2 whole hours with this game. It's not related to the original Combat
in any recognizable way. It reminds me of Tron and what movie makers of the 80's
thought games would look like in the future.
Slashdot pointed me over to the
Electronic Freedom Foundation's recent article
"Unintended Consequences: Four Years under the DMCA" which details pretty
much every stupid way the overly broad Digital Millenium Copyright Act has been
used (and that I've heard about.) It's a long article but it has concise
explanations of specific conflicts.
Winter is here!
Washington Ave, where I live. The snow piles are around 5 feet high.
Here's a pic of my place and the shovel that I've been working out with lately.
Drop me a line if part of my site was useful.
Copyright Tom Cerul 2003-2010
I do not speak for my employer.