I am getting a lot of spam from the free Yahoo email accounts of friends who are Windows users. I think there is some sort of virus/trojan-horse going around on Windows that hijacks Yahoo accounts and sends out unsolicited commercial email, fraudulently masquerading as my friends (which means it gets through spam filters).
If you have Windows and a Yahoo account, check your anti-malware status please, and good luck.
We measured 22″ at 8 am this morning, and 27.5″ at 1 pm.
It took us three straight hours of shoveling and snow-blowing to clear a path to the hot tub, a fire escape path, and enough driveway for one car to get to the road… which was last plowed about 16″ ago… so we are snowbound.
Update: at 4pm the snow stopped falling; ~30″ deep. Our road was plowed and mail delivered.
I am tired of Flash content crashing my web browsers, so I installed ClickToFlash in my Safari (has to be done in each user account) and FlashBlock plugin in my Firefox (has to be done in Firefox for each user account). Now I can play Flash when I want to, not whenever a website decides I should see their flash junk.
When I hit a site with Flash, my browser displays a little “play” button instead of executing the Flash I have no control over. I get a chance to decide if I want to trust the Flash code on the server or not. No more browser crashes.
Here is an article describing how to use the Firefox FlashBlock in Camino: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20041217163514494.
The contract I have been working on is drawing to a close with the successful launch of a new corporate website for the client. So I am looking for work and available in February for a new Linux/UNIX Systems Administrator position or contract.
I normally do not try to see movies in 3D format because they have typically been jarring, annoying, and tacky. Given the opportunity to have the appearance of things jumping out of the screen at you, most directors seem to feel like they have to use that gimmick even when it is not needed.
In recent memory I have seen two films (Coraline and Avatar) which are both fully designed in 3D and computer animated, and I noticed two things. A trend away from the cheap jump out at ya gimmick and slightly less jarring headache after the experience.
So that second thing is interesting.
Aside from the gimmicky tacky tricks, which thankfully seem to be on the decline, trend-wise, 3D films also jar my mind enough to leave me with a mild headache. Why?
The technology keeps getting better.
I am left wondering if the brain can actually detect that the camera lenses are not precisely the same distance apart as my eyes. Since not every one has eyes place exactly the same distance apart, this would make it very difficult to film a movie that ALL people can watch in comfort. Is this an issue?
I completely agree with Sandy Banks when she writes “It’s not Harry Reid who should be apologizing“, it’s Michael Steele.
There is nothing racist in what Harry Reid said. Perhaps it is a bit cynical of the American public, which is dangerous ground for a publicly elected official, but it’s also an accurate and damning representation of the current state of race relations in the United States.
I notice that ABC has gone pretty fully right wing on this one (perhaps because Reid is no friend of big business?) and is digging up turmoil over this non-story as much as they can. When did ABC become Fox?
Along with Michael Steele, two sitting United States Senators need to apologize for overstepping their bounds and interfering with the executive branch setting foreign policy. Senators Lieberman and McCain are backing Netanyahu and undermining not only the sitting president’s foreign policy but that of the first George Bush. We elect our president to do foreign policy, and that is not supposed to be the job of our senators. They should apologize and step down from public office as neither has done much of use for years and years.
Update: “Talking about racism does not make you racist; advocating racism does.”
One of the things I like best about the greater Washington area is how integrated we are… For years I have been comparing our local stomping grounds favorably to places like Chicago (a lovely city) where the blocks are clearly black or white and even those blocks are clearly one ethnic group or another. Perhaps I was wrong:
The river between Milk and Tyler post on the excellent Greater Greater Washington blog alludes to racial divide based on Netflix rental queue data as revealed in the New York Times interactive map.
So I guess we are not as diversified and integrated as I thought, which saddens me a little, at least for those using Netflix to rent movies. Hell, I had not even heard of nearly half the movies on the NY Times article.
Of course, there is the purely amusing question of why the heck is “Yes Man” so popular at Andrews and Ft Meade?
There are other cities on the NY Times interactive site, enjoy.
BoingBoing has a very interesting article: Prescription for consumers challenging academic textbook cartels that begins to address the issues surrounding over-priced college text books that students are being forced to pay for if they adhere to the “required text” portions of their class schedule.
I recall from the mid-1980s that many texts were reasonably priced and useful, but many others were clearly just padding to help line the pockets of certain professors and their friends (back then it was clearly a minority of greedy faculty, and most faculty were very considerate of the costs and needs of students). I have nieces in college now and some of the class requirements for textbooks are extremely suspect. Rather than individual greed, it looks more like a market manipulated by slick corporate handling of the entire business… for profit margins any business manager would be thrilled by.
The comparison with prescription drugs as a racket is interesting. That is another market where the chooser does not bear the brunt of the costs; and it is another market where the costs have spiraled more quickly than other markets and where the profit margins are … well, gross.
I have often thought that electronic book readers could serve the markets for throw away books like magazines, newspapers, and college texts; but the sad truth is there is no incentive for text book publishers to switch to electronic systems nor to reduce costs. We (as purchasing parents and relatives of students) will have to force this issue by organizing and forcing at least more circumspect behavior if not public regulation.
Ataque de Pánico! (Panic Attack!) 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk
Fede Alvarez tells a little about how he made the short film:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=154&t=822329&highlight=big+robots
They look like Mechforce Marauders to me… but perhaps I played a little too much of Ralph Reed’s excellent Amiga game in the early 1990s…
Take a peek at the weather service forecast for your location over the next several days.
If like us, your area is predicted to get daily high temperatures only a few degrees warmer than freezing, you should know that the snow you need to move this morning is going to be sitting wherever you put it until the next warm day or heavy warm rain.
Think about that before you move it, for the easiest time to move heavy snows like this are when the snow is fresh and soft. If you shovel it into a pile, you have compacted it, and the pile will be harder to move if it is not where you want it. If you leave it sit, and it melts a little, then re-freezes, it will become frozen solid and be very difficult to move. We cannot count on the warmth of the sun melting this anytime soon according to the weather services; at least not in our area.
This is something we are not accustomed to in the Washington DC area. So plan ahead and think about where you will pile the pretty white snow. It’s going to be there for several days at least… Think about where it will be safest to locate the mounds of snow which will eventually melt and flood…
Get ALL your exits cleared and a path away from your home cleared so you can evacuate in case of fire.
If you are going to be driving, completely clear off your ENTIRE car, not just the windows. That giant pile of snow on your roof will come off and blind or damage the vehicle behind you; and it if is me, you can be sure I will crash you so I can get the person truly responsible for the accident. Please be responsible and completely clear ALL snow off your whole vehicle, especially if you drive a van or any vehicle with a large roof that collected lots of snow and ice.
Traction in this kind of snow is all about having some tread on your tires. The kind of vehicle does not matter. If you have a huge planet-killer 5000 with four wheel drive, if your tires are approaching bald, you will still have no traction. Don’t risk it, put on snow chains or winter/snow tires, or any tire with plenty of tread.
Snow this deep means that ground clearance is an issue, here trucks and taller vehicles do have an advantage; but please remember, height does NOT improve traction. You must slow down for bridges, exit ramps, and turns… and slow down well before any of those slippery areas.
Be safe out there folks, and plan ahead. I grew up in central New York where any snow we got would likely be with us the entire Winter season. Please treat this like one of those snow falls if you have a forecast of many days where it does not get warm enough to melt off.
Of course, if this all melts suddenly, there will be a whole different set of flooding problems…
