An interesting article in Discover Magazine about the work of the Rat Tickler led me to think about emotions and types of emotions. There have been many attempts at categorization; Jesse Prinz says everybody is wrong and every body is right which is a little too glib for me as a catchphrase, and a little too overwrought as a concept.
Category Archives: noise
Sandy has passed.
Everybody’s alright here; this was nothing like Irene. Which is lucky, since the State and County still haven’t bothered to fix the damage from Irene yet,and they easily could have ended up with a broken sewer line dumping directly into Newark’s water supply.
A few trees came down, but we never even lost power.
Oktoberfest!
Delaware’s German-American society, the Saengerbund, is throwing it’s annual Oktoberfest celebration. Beer will flow, home-made potato salad will be piled to the tent roofs, and oom-pah bands will fill the air with music.
If you’re wondering why it’s in September instead of October, well, that’s actually traditional. The original Oktoberfest took place in the Theresienwiese, an open space near the center of the German city of Munich, to celebrate the wedding of Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen and Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1810. Ludwig, as you’ll no doubt remember, was later an admirer of Lola Montez, and the grandfather of Mad King Ludwig.
The 1810 celebration led up to the wedding on the first Sunday in October, and all Oktoberfests up until 1994 have also taken place during the sixteen days up to, and including, the first Sunday in October. In 1994, the schedule was modified in response to German reunification so that if the first Sunday in October falls on the 1st or 2nd, then the festival would go on until October 3 (German Unity Day). Thus, the festival is now 17 days when the first Sunday is October 2 and 18 days when it is October 1. I totally cribbed the last two sentences from Wikipedia, of course.
So Oktoberfest ushers in the month of October, and the name makes perfect sense. Except, of course, that nobody in Munich ever calls the festival Oktoberfest at all… they call it “die Wiesn” after the local nickname for the Theresienwiese. Only foreigners call it Oktoberfest.
I just go for the rollmops. A slab of pickled herring on a slice of rye bread, what’s not to like? This year I’ll probably only get to spend a few hours there, but I enjoy walking home afterwards – it’s almost exactly four miles according to Google, and a good way to burn off a lot of beer calories.
Watermelon starts today
Last weekend I got to see The Polka Dots, along with a lot of other great musicians, at my friend Mike’s 40th birthday bash. I’m still tapping my toes from all the fantastic bluegrass/old-time/Celtic/Appalachian/folk music (with a little Pink Floyd to boot).
Many of the musicians who jammed with Mike are at the Watermelon Park Music Festival today, along with Bruce Molsky and Del McCoury. I, unfortunately, am not, despite several invitations from kind friends, and this annoys me beyond all bearing. Grrr. I really wanted to take the whole family to see the Dots (we’ve seen Bruce and Del before, no disrespect intended, boys).
If you’re in the area be sure to go. Tell ’em young Vincent van Gogh sent you!
Aaaah! I fell down the wikipedia hole again!
I was looking up some details of set theory and ended up at Leibniz Biscuits.
The biggest group of mutual altruists always wins.
This blog post made my day. I like seeing people do serious analysis of social interactions (especially when they confirm my ideas about ethical behavior).
Always be nice to people, until their actions prove they are purposely acting to harm you.
last day of pre-reg for pennsic
As usual, I had to create a new account, having forgotten my many old ones. At least this year I didn’t accidentally hack the site and dump the backend database; that was embarrassing last time around.
facebook monetizes
Well, the shoe dropped. You know how your cool nonprofit organization has 1000 followers on facebook? Turns out your posts aren’t getting propagated to all them… unless you pay the danegeld!
I guess that IPO wasn’t as spectacular as expected. Apparently people want to see a viable income stream or something. Philistines.
gravedigger
I’ve been asked to find and prepare a suitable spot to inter a man’s ashes.
The serviceberries are coming ripe, and I’m competing with robins and catbirds to get some. So far the birds are winning. I’m badly outnumbered.
it’s the practical way to avoid traffic congestion
The Mizar – it’s here, today!
Well, OK, technically it was in Texas, in 1973. Don’t hassle me with details, baby, my lab-coated female assistants and I are flying the Pinto to the golf course.
NoScript users will need to permit flixxy scripts to view the video.
reset Squeezebox Duet receiver to use wired connection
I’m a big fan of the Logitech Squeezebox system, which pairs excellent Logitech hardware with excellent linux-based software. The technology was originally developed by Slim Devices, Inc. and the pre-logitech units still command a good price on eBay. Logitech’s duet is probably the least popular model; it’s a little headless Squeezebox music streamer you connect to your main amp, and a fancy remote control that unfortunately has a very small battery. I’m pretty sure that Logitech has stopped selling them now that the touch is available.
Now, in general, if you can get a wired connection for a streaming network device, you want one. Wireless should be reserved for things that need to move around, like laptops, and not wasted on a box that sits in the same place all the time. Slim Devices recognized this from the start, and provided RJ45 connectors on all their boxes.
But, if you turn on the Squeezebox, and its ethernet wire has been mysteriously removed (not that any of your children would admit to any knowledge of such depredations, of course – it must have been wild animals) it will kick over to wireless connection automagically, and then when your kids start running seven simultaneous sessions of WoW on the wireless your music will start skipping like Dorothy on the road to Oz.
Plug the wired connection back in… and VOILA! Nothing happens! You’re still on wireless and there’s no option on the controller to change it. Here’s how to fix the problem:
1) Push the big button on the front of the Duet receiver and hold it down until it flashes red.
2) Shut off the Duet controller. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.
3) Turn on Duet controller (and select the Duet receiver, if necessary).
4) The controller will now give you the option of ethernet or wireless connectivity. Select ethernet, and wait a minute while the system runs its DHCP queries.
You’re done!
live nude underage kittehs
Delilah is watching kitten cam. It’s like a non-murderous version of kitty-TV.
fix the date format in windows
Windows, like most things made in the USA for mass consumption, likes to use the insanely stupid American date format, for which we are famous the world around.
Of course, the actual American standard for writing dates is ISO 8601 format, as recommended by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (as well as every science and engineering standards body in the world) but American schools still teach the brain-dead m/d/yy format to our children, so understandably the world thinks that’s what we use.
Here’s a link to instructions to fix window’s date representation.
Here’s a link to a possibly useful rant I wrote on this subject
goodbye, Clare.
Clare’s memorial service was yesterday; I took the day off and drove down to Baltimore to attend. She was a wonderful, caring person and will be greatly missed.
slashdot sure has jumped the shark
Near the end of the 20th century, when slashdot was personally run by Rob Malda and a very small crew of friends, I used to spend a tremendous amount of time on the site. You could engage in free-for-all discussions with Daniel Robbins, Alan Cox, Donald Becker, Andrew Tridgell, Dan Bernstein or Keith Packard, and occasionally somebody like Steve Wozniak or John Carmack would just drop in to the middle of your conversation. You could make a comment about some coding decision SUCS had made that compromised the reliability of routing information in the linux network stack, and not only would you get a lively response arguing for and against it, you might find the author himself engaging you – either defending his code, or asking how you thought it should be fixed, or both. There was a strong libertarian vibe, but the conversation was about technology.
Very little of the above applies to slashdot today. In fact the closest thing to what slashdot was may well be Rob’s personal G+ stream (the link probably only works if you’re in the Google thingiverse).
Today, slashdot looks like this or this astonishingly often. It’s like a hypernexus of Ayn Rand worshippers and concern trolls reacted to form a hard nodule of utra-truthiness, where any attempt at technical discussion inevitably warps into a political screed that demonizes one group or another – favorite targets being democrats, “greens”, muslims, and absolutely anything funded by tax dollars.
Hajime, let it begin.
Heather bought me a blog.