Afternoon Musings

On the way back from lunch Dawn and I were talking about Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla (naturally). Dawn asked if I had known that Edison had electrocuted Topsy the Elephant with AC (alternating current). [Edison was a proponent of DC (direct current) and liked to electrocute things with the competing technology that Tesla championed (AC) to prove how dangerous it was.] I had mentioned that I had also read that fun fact.

We started to wonder if either of us would be able to make great enough enemies that they would resort to electrocuting animals to prove us wrong, and if so, can the size of the animal they electrocute be used as a measurement of how great of an enemy you’ve made? I vaguely remember hearing somewhere that one measure of a great person is to see how powerful their enemies are. Surely electrocuting an elephant bodes well for Tesla’s greatness. There aren’t many larger mammals that can be killed to top it (I’m looking at you whales). So what animal would you have electrocuted to prove your worth (I think I would be pleased with Riblet…)

Also I read this comment from a thread on Slashdot today. The comment itself is a non sequitur in the thread. I post it here in its entirety for your Friday afternoon reading enjoyment.

Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.

I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race
cannot survive long in the intense theatre of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.

Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.

When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."

This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.

There can be only one.

In the service of diversion

I really like to try and post a blog entry a day. That’s my goal. I don’t always meet it, but it’s what I shoot for. Now that school and work are in full swing it’s getting to be a bit tougher. It’s not that I don’t have the time. It doesn’t take all that long to write up an entry, plus since it’s something I actually enjoy doing, it’s not hard to make the time. It’s inspiration that gets to be the problem. Sometimes it’s difficult to experience enough interesting stuff in a 24 hour period to write a post.

One basic rule I try and follow is not to post anything that is too work related. That just seems like a good practice. Currently my days consist of go to work, go to class, do homework, and sleep. It’s not that my classes aren’t fun and exciting (actually it kind of is) but they don’t often produce grade-A blog material. And trust me, it’s not that I don’t try and force them to be. This week I scrapped a blog entry I was writing about Entity Relationship diagrams because I couldn’t make it work. I was trying to diagram out the abstract nature of “Your Mother” joke via the ER diagram method. I think it’s a funny concept but the actual implementation left a bit to be desired. I keep thinking I’ll get around to writing a post were I use natural deduction to imply that Ruby has a tail. The proof is logically sound.

The closest thing I came to an interesting observation last night was a passage from my Formal Methods book. The passage in question was an aside explaining where the “=” sign came from. I’ll post it for your perusal:

The ‘=’ symbol is due to Robert Recorde, whose textbook on algebra The Whetstone of Witte, published in 1557, used the symbol for the first time. Recorde argued that a pair of parallel lines of the same length were suitable as the symbol for equality `bicause noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle'.

I thought it was kind of funny that the old English looked a whole lot like LOLCAT speak. Perhaps LOLCAT is actually retro? If we translated Beowulf into modern English then into LOLCAT could a high school student figure out which was original English and which was LOLCAT? The LOLCATerbury Tales? I could go on attempting to mine the rich vein that is LOLCAT humor but I suspect I’ll only find “fool’s humor.”

The weekend is coming up though. I often mentally bankroll the beginning of the week’s blog entries over the weekend. Unfortunately those are normally entries where I complain about things. But perhaps I’ll have some amusing antidotes to share next week…

Evening Conversations

I forget the exact series of events that led up to the following conversation. I suspect that they are immaterial. Sufficient to say this is how many of our late night conversations go.

Dawn: I think Riblet has been using me EEE again.

Bill: Oh really? Has she been trying to hack the internet again?

Dawn: Yes, she’s been trying to order thumbs off the internet. There’s no telling what crimes she could commit if she had a pair of thumbs.

Bill: Let’s hope she doesn’t manage to acquire any then.

Dawn: I don’t think she will. She was doing searches for people selling “TUMS” and kept getting pages full of anti-acid medication.

Bill: She spells like a LOLCAT?

Dawn: Yes, she’s been reading icanhascheezburger lately. Her spelling is horrible.

Bill: I bet she thinks it’s an educational program meant to teach cats how to read and write.

Dawn: Yeah, she thinks she’s taking distance learning classes. She’s been asking a lot about buckets lately.

Bill: Great, just what we need, her demanding one more thing. First thumbs, now buckets.

I'd move in a heart beat.

Everyday Luxist.com has an estate of the day. Everyday I check out what houses that range from 1.5 million dollars (a pittance by Luxist standards) to north of 80 million dollars look like. I fantasize about the amount of non-socializing I could do with an estate that large.

Today’s estate really resonates with me. I like the overall design and styling of this house. At just under 2.5 million it’s practically thrifty too.

Contractor by day, washboard player by night?

So the columns on our house have never really been completed. We had our soffits fixed and our roof and columns replaced all by the same contractor. We were really happy with the crew that came out to replace our roof. They were fast and neat. On the day they finished the job it was impossible to discern that any major work had been done on the house. I have no idea how they managed that keep our yard so clean while at the same time scraping tons of crap off the top of our house.

Unfortunately the guys replacing the columns where not the same guys who replaced our roof. The roof guys were the elite ninjas of housing contractors. I’m pretty sure the guys who did the columns were the country jug band of housing contractors. The roof was done in less than three days. The columns were a two week project…and that was a couple of weeks ago. Dawn and suspect that the column guys think they are finished. I’m not sure why they would think that though.

Things that are wrong with our columns:

1. They left painters tape all over the place. I’m not sure if they expect me to pull out my ladder and climb up to the top and remove it? That’s not the sort of thing I should have to do if I’m paying someone else.


2. We had metal street numbers on our old columns that we asked to have moved onto the new ones. Those numbers are now AWOL. Dawn asked for them to be returned a week or so ago and we were told that “inquiries were being made.” To my mind this implies the job has been turned over to Scotland Yard (my mind is a strange place that does not often mirror reality); however I suspect the British Police are not actually involved in this issue.


3. We were told any imperfections in the new columns such as pits or knots in the boards would be puttied, sanded, and painted over. This is not the case.


4. The paint job on the columns is not all that great (meh… what can you expect from a country jug band?)


5. THE TWO COLUMNS ARE BUILT DIFFERENTLY. I can think of at least three ways to assemble four boards into a box. They have implemented two of them.

Yesterday I sent an email to our contractor along with photo evidence of our claims against the shoddy job. He replied promptly with an apology and had vowed that they job would be corrected by the end of the week. We shall see. If not, perhaps I’ll have to start making inquiries of my own.

War Photojournalism

Wake up people, there is a war going on, right behind my house. Child soldiers armed with brightly colored BB’s and frighteningly realistic BB guns are on maneuvers as long as daylight permits. Where are their parents? Why don’t their parents love them enough to buy them video game systems and violent movies to keep their butts at home? Why are they allowed to destroy the field behind my house? (Also where is the hungry wildlife when you need it?)

I suppose it’s a case of the parents being happy that their kids are not at home destroying their house. They can’t see the field so it’s out of site and out of mind. Not a single parent has come to investigate what their child spends countless hours doing. I doubt a single parent will insist that their child cleans up the impressive amount of junk that is being dragged into the field. I suppose the real looser will be the poor guy who has to brush hog the field in the summer. There are now deep holes and lots of metal junk to help destroy and mangle his machine. I wonder if the parents will pool together to pay for his repairs?

[Clicky for larger]

The child-soldiers’ real piece de resistance is their main battle fort. I’ve taken to calling it the hobo-palace. Unfortunately it’s also the most visible structure from our house. Perhaps I have these young scallywags pegged wrong. Perhaps instead of the unmitigated defacement of public lands what they are really doing is an elaborate historical reenactment. They could be recreating the hobo-wars which took placing in the early twentieth century as described by John Hodgman. Although they are wearing a bit too much camouflage and not enough torn-up pinstriped suits for their outfits to be a period correct. I my head it makes me happy to image that they’ve each adopted a hobo name which they refer to each other by while they shove pointed sticks and metal bits into the mud. However, I suspect that is not truly the case.

[Clicky for Hobo-Palace enhancmenet]

Specs = Awesome?

Here’s an interesting case of marketing verses innovation.

When it comes to digital cameras Fuji has a history of blazing their own trail instead of following the pack. While each successive generation of digital cameras always seem to have very similar characteristics the Fuji ones have always stood out because Fuji likes to do things their own way. The difference is as fundamental as how they capture their images. Virtually every digital camera on the market uses a CCD (charge-couple device) sensor to capture images. Basically CCDs work by light falling on square “pixels” on the CCD and getting converted into color values. Fuji developed their own CCD technology that they called Super CCD in which they used octagons instead of rectangular pixels. The strange shaped pixels necessitate some crazy interpolations that normal CCD don’t have to do. The result is a digital camera that behaves a bit different than the rest of the pack.

How different? Well the FinePix F30 and FinePix F31 have been said to capture some of the best pictures in the compact camera market. Their specialty? The cameras excel at capturing images in low light situations. You know, like pubs or indoors or generally in places that you hang out with your friends without the benefit of studio lighting. Besides their superior low light performance there is something else that set the FinePix cameras apart. When they came out they had fewer megapixels than competing cameras.

It seemed that some joker at Fuji decided to place a higher value on image quality than on the maximum number of megapixels they could fit into a camera. The “megapixel race” is generally what defines newer generations of camera. Sure the features subtly change, but the big difference between successive generations is the image resolutions. Fuji held back on the number of megapixels but instead built a camera that could actually capture a decent image in low light. The critics loved the FinePix cameras. Too bad the public didn’t. I guess when people go to Best Buy to decide what camera to buy they base their decision on what the spec sheets in front of the camera say. Better image quality is a tough thing to sell on a spec sheet… megapixels is a hard number to compare cameras with. The result is Fuji cameras appear to be underpowered or older technology in the store. What’s the point of making a better camera if no one buys it?

In the latest line of FinePix cameras Fuji decided that they needed to have the same number of megapixels as their competitors. The new FinePix F50fd is a 12 megapixel monster that competes favorably on the spec sheets. However the reviews, while positive, can’t help but notice that image quality has suffered for the addition of superfluous resolution. While the Super CCD images are still better than normal CCD images they are just a hair better instead of head and shoulders better. The camera is more marketable but less remarkable.

When I read the reviews about the new camera I thought “this is great.” I’ll be able to go out and buy a superior camera at last generation prices. Because that’s what normally happens when a new line of cameras comes out, the older discontinued line get’s a hefty price cut. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that instead of a discount FinePix F31fd cameras are now going for $400-$500. They were originally only about $250 when they first came out last year. So now I wonder what Fuji will do with their next offering. Will they notice the trend that their older cameras are selling for twice their original price (to admittedly smaller numbers) or will they continue to pump out cutting edge specs with ho-hum images?