Could we puh-leeze stop with the breathless reporting of that latest scourge against humanity, H1N1?

I was listening to XM radio news talk for the last few days;  one channel has AP news, and another an independent news provider.  And in both cases, they had breathless reports about the scary H1N1 that was coming to eat you!

This struck me as interesting, because I thought that the most recent disease poised to kill everyone was Swine Flu, not this H1N1 thingey.  So I got back to work and (instead of actually producing code, naturally) I looked up this new viral threat to humanity.

It’s interesting.  Read it if you want, I’m going to summarize below:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H1N1

H1N1 is the regular flu.  Now, for any of the survivors of the original Spanish Influenza outbreak, perhaps the line (said snarkily) “It’s only the flu” might be a bit insulting, but I promise no insult was [...] Continue Reading…

As you can see to the right, I’ve finally activated my Hacker’s Diet Tracker Widget.  I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, but without access to a decent scale, I didn’t want to put in garbage data.  However, last Friday I purchased a scale at Wal-Mart and got a shock.  I mean, I knew I was morbidly obese, anyone with eyes and ears sensitive enough to detect the creaking of asphalt when I walked across the pavement could tell.

I tell a joke about the first time I went to my college campus and took the elevator up.  A few more people came in, and I turned sideways to make room, and didn’t change in target profile at all.  An aspect ratio of 1:1 sucks.

So, I decided to kick the diet up a notch, and instead of just doing the standard Hacker’s Diet, to instead do Atkins, for [...] Continue Reading…

Found car wash. Pretty ancient. Did a decent job, but had to by full 2 dollar rounds D: #
Weather is beautiful. 70 degrees, overcast, wind out of the north. Feels like a nice late October Texas day #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Found car wash. Pretty ancient. Did a decent job, but had to by full 2 dollar rounds D: #
Weather is beautiful. 70 degrees, overcast, wind out of the north. Feels like a nice late October Texas day #

Powered by Twitter Tools

http://twitpic.com/dnvsi – Theme park in Mall of America. #
http://twitpic.com/dnwtw – Second half of theme park from second level. #
http://twitpic.com/dnx66 – Lego store in Mall of America. #
http://twitpic.com/dnxd6 – Lego model dirt bike rider. Sad; I immediatly thought "Excitebike". #
http://twitpic.com/dnxmu – Lego Jango (sp?) Fett. #
A kilomile and more from home and I still cant escape "Kemp." Not exactly Blue Bell, but tasty nonetheless. #
http://twitpic.com/dnxzd – The picture of Kemps, so the last update makes sense. #
FILLUP REPORT: 2.52 in Rogers, MN #
http://twitpic.com/do64t – Unleaded, Diesel, and MARLBORO?!? #
Avon, Minnesota. Cant decide weither to make a Shakespere or makeup joke. #
Miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep. (Now in Wadena.) #
FILLUP REPORT: 2.59 for both Plus and Regular in Wadena (Why?!?) #
Sebeka! Cept we actually gotta drive through it to get to where were ganna stop. #
Finally! We've [...] Continue Reading…

As I said in my INFRASTRUCTURE! post, I’m fascinated by the way things work.  This continues on to my fascination with email;  such a simple protocol, and so important to our lifestyle!

This post on the InnerLayer was my longest ever (including my short story), where I discuss email and how awesome it is…

“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
— Albert Einstein, explaining radio.

Email, like Telephones, the Internet, Power Lines, Credit Card Terminals, ATMs, etc. have become so much part of our daily lives that we just accept it without really thinking about it. You click “New,” put some data into [...] Continue Reading…

Coffee.  I’ve never been a big fan, but there are those out there who swear by the stuff.  Shortly after joining the company, a holy war of sorts was fought over the coffee to be used in the company pots.  Here was my take: Back in Computer Science 101 I was promoted to Assistant for the Networking Staff at Kemp High School, in the tiny town where I grew up. The networking staff consisted of exactly two people: a brilliant Pascal programmer with a penchant for networks and a veteran of the mainframe days, who would happily lean back and tell old war stories about 130 column chain printers and tape drives. One thing I noticed upon entering their office was the strong smell of coffee in the air. Indeed, they had a large pot of coffee on perpetual brew. And these [...] Continue Reading…

When I was growing up, computers were these wonderful things that sat at the back of the classroom (usually one, or maybe two if the class was lucky). If the school was lucky, there was a “computer lab” where you could have access to the latest and greatest in government approved hardware. My favorite of the time was the Apple IIe. Our school district had so many of them, they handed ‘em out to classrooms (The school district now uses them as very effective door stops). In fact, I got my start with computers by tinkering with a IIe. My first computer experience was hooking up a printer to aIIe, and the wonder of this experience (plug something in, type a command, and print came out!) completely captured me (I was in first grade), and from that moment [...] Continue Reading…

I’ve mentioned before Pokemon Abridged Version, written and performed by HomeStarRunnerTron on Youtube.  It had excellent voice acting (for a parody) and a quick wit, very in line with “Abridged Series.”

The idea of “Abridged Series” is to take a 30 minute cartoon and shorten it to about 10-15 minutes, overlaying new dialog that somewhat matches the original intent of the show whilst changing the exact words to be much funnier.

HSRT’s Pokemon Abridged videos were pulled from YouTube, apparently due to a mix of using Pokemon footage and some clips of some fameous songs.  DCMA takedowns for a parody?  OF COURSE!  Welcome to the new free world.

Various clips I’ve found of the video around are of random quality, don’t stream well, or (shock) are pulled for DCMA violations.  So I’m hosting my own streams on my own server of this excellent PARODY.  Enjoy.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Get [...] Continue Reading…

So you’ve decided to give modding a try.  You’ve also decided to mod Duke Nukem 3D.  Well rock on!  You’re in for some fun. However, in my attempt to make a mod (named Texas Toast), I discovered that there is a lot of information available about Duke Nukem 3D modding… but most of it is in text files on rusting hard drives or locked in the synapse firing patterns of people on the Internet.  I’ve had to ask many questions to figure out what’s going on. What I’ve decided to do is go ahead and blog about the various steps I’ve taken to set up my mod, so that people coming after me can have an easier time modding themselves. Why mod Duke Nukem 3D?  Isn’t that game older than dirt? I’d like to get this question out of the way, first, right off the [...] Continue Reading…