Hat Capitol posted this wonderful image. Go check it out... cool picture, eh? The street signs made me curious, and sure enough... here's the intersection today.
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Showing posts with label geek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geek. Show all posts
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
10 Places for the Temporal Anthropologist to Visit (part 1)
Noted temporal anthropologist Dr. Wendell A. Howe is currently investigating the immigrant experience by traveling from Liverpool to New York on the RMS Umbria. He debarked at Ellis Island with the rest of the steerage passengers, spent a couple of days processing through immigration, and most recently hit the slums of New York with social reformer and muckraker, Jacob Riis. Not a bad trip for your average 27th century time traveler looking to learn about the details of one of the most famous immigration paths in history.
Dr. Howe's travels, along with a recent article on the "Top Ten" destinations for a a time traveler got me to thinking what would be my Top Ten destinations in time. For the purposes of this list we're going to assume the Babel Fish has been invented (and thus that God has been proven not to exist). We'll also assume that my appearance will be suitably altered so that for example when I show up in Japan in 1281 I'm not instantly put to the sword for being an unwelcome foreigner in a closed land.
In no particular order here we go:
Off Trafalgar October 1805:
The greatest battle in the Age of Fighting Sail, Admiral Lord Nelson led 27 British ships of the line against 33 French and Spanish ships of the line under French Admiral Pierre de Villeneuve. Nelson was killed, but his destruction of the combined fleet saved Britain from invasion by Napoleon. Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory, took numerous casualties so I probably don't want to hang out on the Admiral's flagship, but a perusal of the order of Battle of Trafalgar shows HMS Conqueror as having received three dead and nine wounded for a casualty rate of 2% amongst its officers and ratings. I'll take those odds.
Dr. Howe's travels, along with a recent article on the "Top Ten" destinations for a a time traveler got me to thinking what would be my Top Ten destinations in time. For the purposes of this list we're going to assume the Babel Fish has been invented (and thus that God has been proven not to exist). We'll also assume that my appearance will be suitably altered so that for example when I show up in Japan in 1281 I'm not instantly put to the sword for being an unwelcome foreigner in a closed land.
In no particular order here we go:
Off Trafalgar October 1805:
The greatest battle in the Age of Fighting Sail, Admiral Lord Nelson led 27 British ships of the line against 33 French and Spanish ships of the line under French Admiral Pierre de Villeneuve. Nelson was killed, but his destruction of the combined fleet saved Britain from invasion by Napoleon. Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory, took numerous casualties so I probably don't want to hang out on the Admiral's flagship, but a perusal of the order of Battle of Trafalgar shows HMS Conqueror as having received three dead and nine wounded for a casualty rate of 2% amongst its officers and ratings. I'll take those odds.
The British casualties across the fleet were relatively light, but for the Victory and the HMS Royal Sovereign casualties were heavy with 20% of the men in each ship either killed or wounded. Of all British casualties at Trafalgar 80% were from two the first two ships in Nelson's weather line and the first six ships Vice-Admiral Collingwood's lee line. The combined French Spanish fleet suffered indiscriminately with an estimated 5000 dead and another 10,000 wounded or captured sailors and marines.
Alexandria circa 100BC and Baghdad circa 1100AD:
Eventually these two places would see two of the greatest crimes in human history committed. Once you've beaten the other side's army, kill the women and rape the cattle, but DO NOT destroy the largest compendium of human knowledge ever gathered up that point. Just don't do it.
The Library at Alexandria seems to have survived Julius Cesaer's unintentional burning of it, and it's later reduced history is clouded in mystery. The House of Wisdom was sacked after the Siege of Baghdad by the Mongol Hordes in 1258. It is claimed, perhaps apocryphally, that the waters of the Tigris ran black for six months following the the library's destruction from all the books and scrolls the Mongols threw in the river.
Whatever their later histories in 100BC and 1100AD the two libraries were at or near the height of their collections. Some temporal anthropologist could spend a lifetime at either of these two institutions, but as I'm more a temporal tourist I'd just like to spend a year or two at each surreptitiously scanning knowledge that's been forever lost to humanity. Though this list is generally without order, these would be the first two places I would visit.
Jerusalem circa 30-33AD:
We're gonna see what all the fuss is about. Basically this one is pretty simple. Was Western history worth it? It's pretty straightforward really. I'm gonna go back and hang with Jesus. If he is the Son of God, he'll know why I am there. If he looks at me like I just fell off the last donkey in the crazy convoy, well, sorry people, we've been had. Either way, I gotta know.
Come back for Part 2.
Monday, May 10, 2010
I'm not doing this twitter thing right
Ok first off my real account http://twitter.com/mcsey 400 or so hard earned followers over what three years or so that I first started making noises on Twitter. 2400 tweets of varying quality, but for me at least exactly what I was looking for. I can scroll back through my timeline and find what I was thinking about or doing on whenever.
On Friday @ferris_bueller_ @cameron_ and @sloanepetereson_ started recreating "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" via twitter and foursquare. Thinking it would be a funny one off joke I made an @Prin_Rooney account, posted Principal Rooney as my profile pic and tweeted "I'm onto you @ferris_bueller_ I will catch you this time." And then started arriving at places they marked on foursquare just after they got to the next place, and generally tweeting like I was confused about the differences between 1986 Chicago and today (WTF is Willis Tower, and how do I get there?)
In a word... bullshit.
I got a few followers on Friday, and then went home for the weekend. I get in today, and well...
http://twitter.com/Prin_Rooney 510 followers in three days, now how do I leverage that? I should have just used a gimmick account to begin with.
On Friday @ferris_bueller_ @cameron_ and @sloanepetereson_ started recreating "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" via twitter and foursquare. Thinking it would be a funny one off joke I made an @Prin_Rooney account, posted Principal Rooney as my profile pic and tweeted "I'm onto you @ferris_bueller_ I will catch you this time." And then started arriving at places they marked on foursquare just after they got to the next place, and generally tweeting like I was confused about the differences between 1986 Chicago and today (WTF is Willis Tower, and how do I get there?)
In a word... bullshit.
I got a few followers on Friday, and then went home for the weekend. I get in today, and well...
http://twitter.com/Prin_Rooney 510 followers in three days, now how do I leverage that? I should have just used a gimmick account to begin with.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
09:09 09/09/09
Five nines. (First one to mention that my camera's timestamp is set an hour off gets a prize. Unfortunately the prize is scorn.)
Thursday, January 01, 2009
New Year's Resolutions 2009
Personal:
1) Be more patient with my kids. They're great. I need to remember that. They need help and patience -- not harsh criticism and aloofness.
2) Start dressing better. I have a job that lets me wear very casual clothes (carpenter's pants FTW). I can also get away with unkempt hair and an unkempt "beard"
Like this (that's six weeks on the beard BTW):
1) Be more patient with my kids. They're great. I need to remember that. They need help and patience -- not harsh criticism and aloofness.
2) Start dressing better. I have a job that lets me wear very casual clothes (carpenter's pants FTW). I can also get away with unkempt hair and an unkempt "beard"
Like this (that's six weeks on the beard BTW):
Cute eh? Except that I have blue jeans on instead of khaki carpenters, that's pretty much what I'd wear to work and how I'd look. So dress pants/button downs except casual Fridays, a real hair cut, and shave three times a week.
3) Get back to my high school weight. Gain 15 pounds to get back to 165;)
4) Make all my kids' home games.
5) Keep the dishes out of the sink. (Yeah right).
Geek:
1) AT LEAST ONE POST A DAY! That will probably last a week, but I really have no excuse, as I don't mean one quality post a day, just one post. I can post from two different devices I carry on me at pretty much all times (and I always have the craptacular autoupload from the cellie). No excuses.
2) Brush up on CSS with the overall goal of theming my own Drupal installation.
3) Comment on other blogs more. Find more good discussions and ask questions.
4) Continue to grow http://2paws.net/
5) Integrate the soon to come XP Pro machines at work into the current Open Directory infrastructure. (Ick.)
Monday, December 15, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Apture thoughts
Ok so things new things are cropping up on this here little read blog, but I wanted to take a moment to go a bit meta and talk about Apture. All this popping media is embedded via that slick new Websy Deucy app called Apture. According to its developers, "Apture provides the first rich communication platform allowing publishers and bloggers to easily turn flat pages of text into multimedia experiences." And lemme tell you it does exactly that, and it does it pretty darn well.
Pros:
Ohmigosh is linking to just about anything easy. While writing I still insert my main links via copy pasta or manually, but afterward I publish the post, turn on the Apture editing interface, and deep to my heart's content. I've even started just dropping a marker ^before and after^ what I want to link and then using Apture to put straight web links in after composing.
Link controls... don't want PDFs popping inline? Turn it off in the Apture control panel. Same goes for all the different types of media. You control whether they do what they would normally do, or do it the Apture way.
User generated link database... I like this feature though its eventual usefulness will be a function of scale I suppose. If you highlight words that other users have linked you can see what they linked them to. I can see this being useful both for what to link to and what not to link to. If eleventybillion ppl have already linked to that piece of media, why not choose a different one where appropriate?
Neutral but I think will be a pro:
Wiki mode... Wiki mode allows other users to add links to your page. It can be a "protected wiki" of only registered users, or it can be the beauty and terror that a true wiki is. Anyone can link anything on your page to anywhere. As Wikipedia founder The Virgin Jimmy Wales showed us... Wait. Stop. You see what I did there? That joke, if it works at all, only works because of Apture. That has nothing to with Apture Wiki mode, but hey, get your own blog.
Cons:
Auto popping first links... A'ight I'm gonna give everyone a hint. Do not pop anything up inline in my browser unless I click on it. No no no, I didn't say mouseover. Mouseclick. The first link moused over automatically pops the link. This is annoying and painful -- like having Burl Ives strapped to your back. This is also a trivial coding change I would imagine (which most likely means I am wrong). An option to turn this off would be greatly appreciated.
Default interface placement... Again a niggly little complaint, but I use Blogger (Hello Captain Obvious) and the editing interface pops and wants to stick right over my New Post button in the top right hand corner of the browser. Ideally I'd stick in the bottom right corner of the browser window next to my Firefox extension buttons, but that's me. I'm guessing it would be difficult for the browser to "remember" where the edit interface was, so how about a "4-corners" option to make it pop in any of the corners the user chooses.
Some wonkiness (see Update)... Occasionally I've had Apture tell me to close my browser and retry. This needs to get fixed. As I get a better idea of when it does this, I'll expand on this, as this does seem to be a bug rather than a feature I don't like. It deserves a bit of research on my part to make I'm just not doing it right.
Conclusion:
Apture, despite some interface issues, rocks hard tasty ab style, and it might change the way you think about composing posts. I know it has done that for me.
Update -- from the Apture FAQ
That would be my problem.
Pros:
Ohmigosh is linking to just about anything easy. While writing I still insert my main links via copy pasta or manually, but afterward I publish the post, turn on the Apture editing interface, and deep to my heart's content. I've even started just dropping a marker ^before and after^ what I want to link and then using Apture to put straight web links in after composing.
Link controls... don't want PDFs popping inline? Turn it off in the Apture control panel. Same goes for all the different types of media. You control whether they do what they would normally do, or do it the Apture way.
User generated link database... I like this feature though its eventual usefulness will be a function of scale I suppose. If you highlight words that other users have linked you can see what they linked them to. I can see this being useful both for what to link to and what not to link to. If eleventybillion ppl have already linked to that piece of media, why not choose a different one where appropriate?
Neutral but I think will be a pro:
Wiki mode... Wiki mode allows other users to add links to your page. It can be a "protected wiki" of only registered users, or it can be the beauty and terror that a true wiki is. Anyone can link anything on your page to anywhere. As Wikipedia founder The Virgin Jimmy Wales showed us... Wait. Stop. You see what I did there? That joke, if it works at all, only works because of Apture. That has nothing to with Apture Wiki mode, but hey, get your own blog.
Cons:
Auto popping first links... A'ight I'm gonna give everyone a hint. Do not pop anything up inline in my browser unless I click on it. No no no, I didn't say mouseover. Mouseclick. The first link moused over automatically pops the link. This is annoying and painful -- like having Burl Ives strapped to your back. This is also a trivial coding change I would imagine (which most likely means I am wrong). An option to turn this off would be greatly appreciated.
Default interface placement... Again a niggly little complaint, but I use Blogger (Hello Captain Obvious) and the editing interface pops and wants to stick right over my New Post button in the top right hand corner of the browser. Ideally I'd stick in the bottom right corner of the browser window next to my Firefox extension buttons, but that's me. I'm guessing it would be difficult for the browser to "remember" where the edit interface was, so how about a "4-corners" option to make it pop in any of the corners the user chooses.
Some wonkiness (see Update)... Occasionally I've had Apture tell me to close my browser and retry. This needs to get fixed. As I get a better idea of when it does this, I'll expand on this, as this does seem to be a bug rather than a feature I don't like. It deserves a bit of research on my part to make I'm just not doing it right.
Conclusion:
Apture, despite some interface issues, rocks hard tasty ab style, and it might change the way you think about composing posts. I know it has done that for me.
Update -- from the Apture FAQ
Q. I get the error message "Could not load panel. (This might be because you have other browser windows open with Apture. Try closing other browser windows and refreshing the page, or restarting your browser.)"
A. On a Mac, the Operating System in conjunction with Adobe, only allows a limited number of Flash instances. To fix this, close other windows using apture or running Flash.
That would be my problem.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Why Apple Should Buy Dell
Why Apple Should Buy Dell:
After beginning with this non-starter the author, Frank Fox, goes onto suggest several reasons why this would be a good idea and what Apple could possibly do with the Dell brand (the best of which is to make Dell a "Linksys" like low end brand to Apple's high end "Cisco" brand). He does, however, miss the most obvious idea. An idea floated by Michael Dell himself in an inverse way.
Apple should buy Dell and then what?
"Shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
Almost everyone knows that Apple is sitting on a huge pile of cash, around $24.5 billion. That might be enough to fill one of Scrooge McDuck's cash vaults, but there have to be some other interesting things to do with that much money.
While feeling depressed about how low the value of Apple stock has fallen recently (below $90 per share), I checked out some other companies that are falling due to the same economic worries. There I saw the perfect company that is finally cheap enough that Apple can buy the whole thing: Dell.
After beginning with this non-starter the author, Frank Fox, goes onto suggest several reasons why this would be a good idea and what Apple could possibly do with the Dell brand (the best of which is to make Dell a "Linksys" like low end brand to Apple's high end "Cisco" brand). He does, however, miss the most obvious idea. An idea floated by Michael Dell himself in an inverse way.
Apple should buy Dell and then what?
"Shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
Monday, November 10, 2008
Friday, November 07, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
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