Saturday, September 25, 2010

Speak Easy

In my dim recollection of school, I was one of the people who sat at the back of the class and I only tried to communicate with the person directly in front of me. The one exception was Physics, but that was because Mr. Harp was awesome. He looked precisely like every man in every Herman comic strip and was easily a billion times funnier. I wanted to sit close enough to hear everything he mumbled.

Anyways, there were times that I knew the answer to the question the teacher was asking ("Anyone? Bueller?"), but I almost never spoke up. I never really understood why teachers would ask the students. Weren't we supposed to be learning from them? Surely they knew the answer. And they were getting paid to make sure that knowledge was passed on to us. Waiting for some smarty-pants to blurt something out - right or wrong - was a waste of time. And I don't recall that it achieved any kind of class unity or even competition. Did the less knowledgeable students want to become more like the brown-nosers? I doubt it. And it certainly didn't make the ones with the answers more popular.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

The Tenacity of the Nerd

Years ago, for whatever reason, there was a job position for a resident nerd on ships that traveled around the world. I don't know why it existed - and I don't know if it still does - but I do know that one particular British nerd became famous as a result of it. He was a young man who was aiming to be a doctor until - like me - he discovered there wasn't much good he could do for people while he was puking or passed out on the floor. What to do? Become a clergyman, I suppose... Nah. Jump on a boat and be the resident nerd!

So one day, while strolling on a beach in Chile (the life of a resident nerd is tough), he picked up a rock. Upon nerdy close examination, he found a mysterious creature inside it. It looked a lot like a barnacle, except it was missing the main feature of a barnacle: the barnacle-y shell. Everyone knows barnacles secrete a shell. That's what makes them barnacles! Apparently what everyone knows isn't exactly true. Mr. Resident Nerd had found himself a barnacle that avoids the whole secretion thing and simply burrows into a rock.

Now, I know what you're thinking. If you're not a nerd you're thinking, "I'm surprised I've gotten this far in the story. Where did I see those chairs I really liked...?" If you're a nerd, however, you're wondering if Mr. Resident Nerd is haunted by the discrepancy for 35 years and devotes every waking hour for 8 of those years to nothing but studying every living and fossilized barnacle known to humankind in the hopes of figuring out what really defines a barnacle. Let me help both of you out. Non-nerds, you saw them at INspiration Interiors, but they were kinda pricey. Nerds: yes.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Quote of the Day

From a comment on Anthony Watts' delightful blog, "Watts Up With Dunning-Kruger?" comes this gem from Dr. Dave (I can only assume that's his real, full name):

We have many fine spokesmen on the side of realism; Anthony Watts, Christopher Horner, Patrick Michaels, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Richard Lindzen, Fred Singer, etc. Lord Monckton is unique. He is an eloquent, gifted orator.

Why list all those ineloquent, un-gifted orators? Isn't it enough to simply say that Monckton is unique in that he is eloquent and gifted? Isn't that enough of an insult without having to specifically name all those without talent? And the first one is the host of the blog! Normally, Watts comes down hard on anyone who uses a pseudonym while not kissing his ass...

Anthony Watts

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Verses Versus Choruses

I can still remember that moment when a little bit of my youthful optimism died. It was Hall & Oats who did it. In particular it was their song, Private Eyes.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Seriously, Rosemary?

At the start of 2010, a company that makes music software (Image-Line) announced a new product that they would soon be selling: Drumatrix. It combined a physically modeled drum set and an internal step sequencer. And you could name your own price. And they would donate some of the money to Haiti. How cool is that? Very.




It wasn't long, however, until they were sent notice that "drumatrix" was a term already in use by someone else; somebody named Rosemary Schonfeld, who has written a book on "a different approach to drumming" called Drumatrix. I should point out here that I don't know the exact order of events. It may be that Image-Line started work on their project, noticed the name after doing a search, sent an inquiry and then received a negative reply.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Photoshop Follies - Refusing to Open

Here's an odd one, and I figured I should post it in case it happens to someone else and they want to know how to fix the problem. I know it will happen to others because I've read about it elsewhere. Can't hurt to make sure there's another place with the info, though.

I opened up Photoshop CS3 today and tried to open a file to edit. No go. Not through the browser, not via drag and drop. It also wouldn't create a new file. Not just odd, but annoying; scary if you're on a tight deadline, I'm sure.

The fix is to change your default printer to a local one and/or make sure your printer is attached and on. (A reboot may also be necessary.) You read that right. Doesn't matter if it was never a problem before. Doesn't matter that it makes no sense whatsoever.

Photoshop doesn't open or create files? Blame the printer settings.

Hmm... now I have that file open and I forget what I was going to do with it!

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Touch Ups: Photo Finessing and Mangling

I take a lot of photos. Some might say too many, but digital is cheap and my skills are weak so I feel my best chance is to take too many and then weed out the bad ones. I'd say the ratio of good to bad is about 1:100, so I pretty much have to take a lot of photos.

Weeding is very important, because I process every single photo before I publish it. (Publish? That sounds too official for what I do. I just put 'em on websites for nobody to look at.) That would be a lot of work, if I processed all the bad ones, too. Mostly, I use Photoshop to tighten the photos up; darken the darks and lighten the lights. It can make a pretty profound difference. There is an auto-level correction function in Photoshop, but I rarely use it because it often fixes things that I don't want fixed. For example, it finds orange to be unnatural and will lessen the amount of orange for you no matter how much orange is supposed to be there. So I do the settings manually.

Lately, I have also been doing some extra processing to my photos. These extra steps include exaggerating focus, colour saturation and contrast. With just a few changes, a basic photo can have much more character. I'll show some examples...

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Signed, Onymous


I was meandering my way through the climate science wing of the internet the other day when I came across something that amused me. Besides my longtime, nerdy interest in actual science I also find the psychology of the participants quite fascinating. Not only do you get exposed to such exciting concepts as denialism, authoritarianism, projection, Morton's Demon (aka confirmation bias) and Dunning-Kruger syndrome - you also get to see them in action!

The following excerpt of a comment comes from someone claiming to be Tim Curtin (who?) on a climate science blog called, "My view on climate change". Hmm. What the name lacks in creativity it makes up for in simple honesty, I guess. Anyways, nobody else seems to have noticed this section of comment at all (or didn't feel it worth commenting on) and it's off-topic so I won't clutter that thread up. Also, I find it to be a subject worth a full posting of my own, so I'm writing about it here.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Irony and Comedy Live Together in Mike Behe


In 1996, at the tail end of the 20th century, a biochemist named Michael Behe published a book in which he reveals an idea that he describes (in a fit of uncharacteristic humility) as only being one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the last 100 years (cue triumphant music). It really is an amazing idea; amazing because it points scientists to God. (Disclaimer: does not necessarily point scientists to God. *wink*)

This amazing idea was apparently less amazing when it was first presented to the world eighty years earlier by someone else. Perhaps because that older version was (ironically?) more correct. I'll get to that later.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Google Chrome Rules

I love Google Chrome. There are so many things about it that are just so nice, but I just found a new one and felt like blogging it. This ties in with Vista (64 bit) and Apple annoyances. Ever since I switched to Vista, my experience playing MP3 files through the browser has been awful. For whatever reason, Quicktime is the default player for MP3 files in the browser and for whatever reason it shows up black on black. I have no idea what's going on, I just know I hate it. The controls exist, they just can't be seen. I'll show you what I mean:

Monday, February 1, 2010

Disregard (As Usual)

This is just a test to make sure the new links page provides accurate links!

Friday, January 1, 2010

Cool Game: Machinarium


Random browsing led me to a story about a cool, cheap game that had been pointlessly hacked. What's the point of hacking a $10 game? And when you consider that it was lovingly made by a small company, who thinks they're going to be perceived as anything other than a total dick for doing so?

Anyways, the game is called Machinarium. It's a Flash game. You control a little robot who's been tossed on the trash heap. The first thing you have to do is get his torso over to his head and then find the missing limbs. Control is pretty limited, but it's more of a puzzle game than an action game. With limited actions and limited resources, you have to stumble around in each level until you figure out both what you're supposed to do and how you can do it. It reminds me of Adventureland, but with cool graphics and excellent music. (The music is moody, which suits the game. Don't expect a soundtrack you can groove to just because I said it's good.)