Untitled Document
2003 News Archive
Neal Stephenson's New Book
September 24, 2003
Quicksilver is Neal Stephenson's big new book. Enoch Root is back (wiki)! In 1713 no less... His last book, Cryptonomicon was so darn good. It will be hard to go out and but this new one knowing that a few days will then just evaporate.
Yellowstone Super-Volcano
September 17, 2003
There is increased thermal activity in the Yellowstone Caldera, in particular, being seen at the Norris Geyser Basin (closed to the public in August) and as a possible growing 'inflated bulge' in Yellowstone Lake. An eruption would be...well...not good at all. Is a cataclysmic eruption coming? USGS says no. A rouge geologist says this and this.
Fee Demo Up For Vote
September 9, 2003
The highly controversial and much detested Recreation Fee Demonstration Program, unless killed, is likely to undergo a major overhaul -- one that would greatly expand the program and more directly promote public-private partnerships, privatization and commercialization of our public lands.
Please send a quick e-mail to DC by Tuesday September 23rd, opposing Fee Demo on lands administered by the US Forest Service, the BLM and the US Fish & Wildlife Service.
Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY) is holding a public hearing on 9.9.03 on his bill, S.1107, which will make Fee Demo permanent ONLY for the National Park Service. The public record is open for citizen comments on this bill for two weeks after 9.9.03, until 9.23.03.
Does it look the same to you?
September 9, 2003
Here are some eye popping optical illusions. Does everyone see these the same way. Astounding stuff.
Astronomy Picture of the Day
September 3, 2003
A great time-waster™ is available here. Here's another.
Quote of the Day
September 3, 2003
"All that grief for one two-hour trail ride? Never again! On the other hand, there's one next Sunday, and I think I'll go…" Link.
Lathe Modifications
September 3, 2003
A good metal lathe costs big bucks. Affordable Chinese metal lathes are available for under a grand from Harbor Freight and Grizzly, but stock, are a mess. With some work, these can be made into decent machines, and are even adaptable to Sherline tooling. Why? Turning tapered bores on Uilleann Bagpipes is a tricky thing! CNC?
Craig's Excellent Quotes
August 26 2003
"Simplicity is the most difficult thing to achieve." --Gae Aulenti, architect. "The purpose of diplomacy is to prolong a conflict." --Mr. Spock (Star Trek), "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the decision." --Benjamin Franklin, 1759. Good stuff. Go here and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Lots of metalworking resources too..
Trustee from the Toolroom, by Neville Shute
August 26 2003
A book I'm enjoying a great deal. About positive technical work and growth. Available for $1.95 through Amazon.com.
An Introduction to UKH!
June 04, 2003
Pow! Yarghh!!! Wap! Oooof! !! "It really must be tough being a monster. There aren't any clothes in your size, and people run away screaming, getting superheroes to beat you up." Arrgh! Plus a whole bunch of good comics links.
New Linux Server
June 04, 2003
I've just got to recommend IRides for dedicated server hosting. This site is now on it's own new shiny Redhat 9 server with root access, for a very reasonable monthly price. Thanks Craig for making the move so painless! Co-location choices in New Mexico do not even come close in terms of price or features.
I wish I could say more positive things about Redhat 9. Some important stuff (Apache 2 / PHP4 / MySQL 4) does not play well together. The Redhat problems slowly are being solved. Mandrake 9.1 appears a more complete and stable Linux distro, either as server or desktop. Here's to keeping Mandrake afloat.
"Old Man of the Mountain" Collapses
May 3, 2003
 New Hampshire's "Old Man of the Mountain" is gone (it finally collapsed). Seems it's one thing after another this year. This saddens me, having spent considerable time in and around Franconia Notch as a kid. This old guy had appeal. We can't say we didn't expect this, but only sometime way, way off in the future... Too bad my daugthter won't get to see it. Here's the official scrapbook.
Ghost Rider: Neil Peart's Healing Journey
May 3, 2002
This is a good read about Rush drummers BMW motorcycle odyssey across, and up and down North America, after losing daughter and wife in a single year. Lots of familiar places for me, some familiar thoughts and feelings too. Peart's evolving writing gives insights into great books, drumming, lyrics, travel, nomadic motorcycling as a way of life, solitude, addiction, having money, loss, healing. Owes a lot to Ed Abbey, in a good way.
The Irish Low Whistle
April 17 2002
I took a chance and purchased Joe McKenna's CD, The Irish Low Whistle. Wonderful! Joe plays his Overtons, Copelands, Sindts (how long is the wait for a Sindt 'D' now?). Mary Bergin (whistles), John Doyle (nice guitar playing), and Donnchadh Gough (Bodrán) make for good accompanyment. Did he really invent the low whistle???
Essential Sligo Fiddle
April 17 2002
Got CD's by two essential masters of the Sligo fiddle style, which I'm trying to learn. John Vesey and Kevin Burke (Patrick Street, Bothy Band, etc.). Of the two I think I prefer Vesey. How does he do that? A good summary of the old masters and newer players, and examples of their work is at IrishFiddle.com.
Microsoft: 2003 and Beyond
March 5, 2003
Predictions about the future are hard to get right. This one seems particularly well thought out. It provides a technical roadmap for 2003 and beyond focusing on Microsoft's strategies. This is a long article, but well worth the read. It makes me more eager than ever to find some serious alternatives to Windows and especially the Office products. Some useful alternatives are OpenOffice, Mozilla, Gnome, Abiword, GnuCash, Gimp, FilmGimp, and whichever Linux distribution that you prefer. Still looking for good open source alternatives to Dreamweaver MX. BlueFish seems the best of the lot, but does not even come close. Do you know of any alternatives to Quickbooks?
Piaget had it right
March 5, 2003
Piaget had it right. Nouns come before verbs. We just did a test and my 18 month old daughter has about 85 nouns but only ten verbs. Kid learn at such an amazing rate.
Santa Fe Institute Newsletter
February 19, 2003
Good reading about evolutionary behavior.
Boing Boing .net
February 19, 2003
Looking for a good way to kill some time?
D-Link DWL-900AP+ Wireless Access Point
February 19, 2003
Not bad for $100! This 802.11b wireless access point is relatively easy to set up, and once running seems to provide trouble free wifi access. With the access point set at house center, we get (degraded) coverage even at the far ends of the house, and even through an adobe wall. This device can be used as a repeater with a second device as well, to extend coverage well into the back yard. WEP encryption is only so-so, and a pain to set up. With a good directional antenna, broadcast is claimed up to 4 miles (!). Here's a review.
Microsoft Palladium Summary
February 18, 2003
Here's a good summary article on the next version of Microsoft Windows-- which sounds like an operating system to avoid at all costs. If there ever was a time to move to open source software it's now! If only there were an open source web editor as good as Dreamweaver, that ran on Linux!
TurboTax Writes To Your Boot Sector?
February 18, 2003
My experience uninstalling C_DILLA, Intuit's latest uninvited guest was, let just say, not a whole lot of fun. I was suspecting it had monkeyed with the boot sector. Now that seems to be confirmed. It seems TurboTax uses your boot sector to store licensing information. If you have blissfully installed TurboTax 2002 and discovered C_DILLA, you might be asking "just what do I do now?"
phpBB
Febuary 12, 2003
I've tried quite a few bulletin board servers and never really been happy with any of them. They are either unreliable, hard to maintain, or difficult to restore after failure, etc. phpBB, a freely available open source BBS addresses these concerns nicely. It's easy to install and set up (20 minutes!), stores data in standard MySQL database (easy backup and restore), and uses standard PHP application server technology. From a user perspective, it seems easy to use and allows posting of attachments. Here's a simple board I set up yesterday.
Armchair Caving
January 12, 2003
As an armchair caver, I always enjoyed Red and Patti Watson's book about the connection of Flint Ridge and Mammoth Caves. Now there is a follow up. Beyond Mammoth Cave, by Jim Borden and Roger Brucker portrays the personalities and rivalries that emerge in the connection of other caves with the Mammoth Cave system. And I thought running a software user group was difficult!
And don't forget the Floyd Collin's Story!
More Turbotax 2003 Trojan
January 12, 2003
Ouch. This has got to hurt. Look at the Amazon.com TurboTax customer reviews at the bottom of the page. 1 star out of five is the norm, mostly based on the fun C_DILLA activation scheme.
An Alternative View
January 8, 2003
"They told me downloads were "destroying sales", "ruining the music industry", and "costing you money". Hooray for Janis Ian.
Turbotax 2003 Trojan
January 8, 2003
Remember the X Files bit where they put the nanobot into the vaccine? If you have purchased and installed TurboTax 2003 (PC), then you have installed the C_DILLA trojan. More details are here, here, here, and here. Uninstalling won't get rid of it. As a long-time paying customer, I'm fed up with Intuit, and am looking for alternatives to TurboTax and QuickBooks Pro. Let me know if you have suggestions.
Good Music
January 2, 2003
Got Tusong Sammy's CD today, "Fat at Last". What great original tunes, and played on the English Concertina! I especially like The Lexington Whirl, Junior Junior Skyhook, Hello Goodbye, Bryns Bounce and Jemmas Jam.
Dr. Peter Murphy
December 30, 2002
Peter Murphy, my friend, passed away last month. I have many good memories of working with him at the USGS. He had a sign above his desk: "In your heart of hearts, you know you don't know". That was good advice. He was a real mentor and friend to a lot of people. Information about Peter's wake is posted here.
Making Money the Old Fashioned Way
Posted by Harlow Pinson, December 29, 2002
Entrepreneurial how-to books often seem to gloss over developing a custom product line. Joe Martin, founder of Sherline Products, a line of quality mill and lathe tools, gives some generous and excellent advice on coming up with a product line. I can't recommend this highly enough.
Puerto Peñasco
Posted by Harlow Pinson, December 28, 2002
We just returned from a wonderful trip to Puerto Penasco, on the northwest shore of the vulnerable Sea of Cortez in sunny Mexico. We stayed at the affordable Vina Del Mar Motel (an ocean view), ate a ton of shrimp, and enjoyed drinking some excellent Mezcal. We camped one night in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a place we want to return to and explore.
MIT for Free!
Posted by Harlow Pinson, December 28, 2002
MIT is making available it's courses online! If you have a small telescope, the Astronomy course looks excellent (my dad used to teach this one at MIT). I'm going through the Systems Optimization course now. Always wanted to go to the Sloan School!
Open Source LMS
Posted by Harlow Pinson, December 18, 2002
Commercial Learning Management Systems are so expensive. Fortunately we are starting to see some open source alternatives, and even one based on Zope. Move over Click2Learn Apsen. Way too expensive! I especially like the MIT Open Knowledge Initiative. These are just specs., but see the idea in action at MIT.
Why JSP Sucks So Hard
Posted by Harlow Pinson, December 13, 2002
Under the category of where things are going, is this look at the problems with yet another templating solution. "once again my UI engineers will be taking perfectly good HTML written in Dreamweaver and tearing it apart, throwing out some of it and rewriting other parts of it, just to make it work with the JSP they're writing. Once they're done, the HTML author will have absolutely no clue what the page does any more". Is ZPT any better?
OS/2 End-Of-Days
Posted by Harlow Pinson, December 11, 2002
IBM has announced that the OS/2 operating system will no longer be available, and that support will end in 2004. It was good for me! Thanks IBM. Here's a history of OS/2.
Putting the Role back in Role Playing Games
Posted by Harlow Pinson, December 11, 2002
Here's some good articles on role playing game design, that go beyond mindless slashing and killing. There is A Christmas lesson in CRPG design by Timothy Cain, Thoughts on RPG development by Leon Boyarsky, Hand of Gosh Darn Good Design by Chris Taylor, and Treatise on Combat to Pink Floyd by Gareth Davies.
An Excellent Collection of MySQL Tutorials
Posted by Harlow Pinson, December 2, 2002
Here's an excellent collection of tutorials on MySQL from devshed.com (a Zope powered site!).
Rowing the Atlantic
Posted by Harlow Pinson, December 1, 2002
Holy cow! Ray Jardine and his wife Jenny, author of the best book on backpacking, are rowing across the Atlantic.
Cabezon Volcano
Posted by Harlow Pinson, December 1, 2002
We went to climb Cabezon, a volcanic plug in northern New Mexico, but did not know that it is a class 4 climb. Here and here are information about climbing cabezon.
Apache, PHP, and MySQL Tutorial
Posted by Harlow Pinson, November 29, 2002
A good tutorial on setting up Apache, PHP, and MySQL on a Linux box is available here. It seems like the relevant steps are nicely summarized.
Configuring Zope
Posted by Harlow Pinson, November 29, 2002
This seems the best tutorial yet on setting up Zope on a Linux box. It includes getting Python and Zope, installing it, configuring it to run behind Apache, doing virtual hosting using Apache's rewrite rules, and automating startup. It lacks a few things, like using SiteRoot instead of the better VirtualHostMonster.
DTML Date Formats
Posted by Harlow Pinson, November 29, 2002
I always forget the DTML syntax for dates. Here they are. It would be nice to see this in ZPT format too!
|
