inhumane
adj : lacking and reflecting lack of pity or compassion

One of the sites I’ve been visiting for…woah, about 10 years now is Slashdot. There’s nothing really special about it, it’s “News for Nerds, stuff that matters”. The only reason it managed to get so popular is that they were one of the first sites to fill their nitch. People post a link to a story and a paragraph of introduction, and then everyone gets to post their comments. People’s posts are rated, which helps filter out the worst of the garbage, and what you get is about 95% blabbering, and 5% really interesting, useful posts.

The other day a news item came up about designer mice. Mice who have been genetically altered to the needs of the Scientist. For example, if you’re studying arthritis, you can order mice that are arthritic. Ok, it doesn’t sound like much, but the scientists are ecstatic.

A mouse with arthritis runs close to $200; two pairs of epileptic mice can cost 10 times that. You want three blind mice? That’ll run you about $250. And for your own custom mouse, with the genetic modification of your choosing, expect to pay as much as $100,000.

And what do I see as the first comment on Slashdot?

Does not the deliberate creation of a living creature to have a specific disability of some sort seem in some way cruel or inhumane? Or is it just me?

Well, that set me off. These mice are being used to increase our knowledge of genetics and genetic diseases. I’m a science junkie, but I never read too much into genetic diseases. When you have a flaw in what builds your body, the problems are inevitable. Since it’s in the foundation of what makes you, it’s usually untreatable. At best, they can deal with the symptoms.

It’s just too tragic for me to deal with, so I acknowledge its existence and move on.

There is hope though. We finished mapping the human genome a few years ago. And we’ve also mapped the lab mouse, and a few other organisms that science loves to use. We’ve discovered that mice and men have the same genes. The only difference is where they’re placed in the DNA and when they turn on and off. Using these mice will tell us what these genes do, and give us clues on how they do it.

It would be an understatement to say, “We have a lot of genes to go through”, but for us to fix or modify human DNA, this is what it’s going to take. It’s also going to take a lot of mice.

So, on a lighter note, back to Slashdot. I sat there and tried to come up with a good response to this guy. Humor seemed to be the best way to do it, and I guess I did it pretty well. It was given the highest rating for humor possible.

Inhumane?! Science being cold, calculating and pitiless? Say it isn’t so!

Don’t worry about it, when the tests are done, they cure the arthritic mice, put the anti-seizure chip in the epileptic mice, and tiny little bionic eyes in the blind mice. Then they send them to a local farm and release them in a field. Where it’s nice and sunny and they can run and laugh and frolic all day long.

But usually they last about 15 minutes before an owl comes by and eviscerates it. A lot of owls hang out by that field, we’re not sure why.

Apparently, I’d be a laugh riot at the lab. I should get one of those lapel flowers that shoot water.

If you’re interested in what’s being done today with curing genetic diseases, one of the fields is called “Genetic Therapy”. I wish those scientists who work in genetics the best of luck and success.

Science | 2 Comments »

Recently I helped my Mom choose a nice new LCD monitor. It’s much larger than her old one, so it can also display a higher resolution without forcing the user to squint at the screen.

She’s not into computers like I am, so I thought I’d poke around and try to find something nice for her to look at, and really show off her new monitor. What I found were Electric Sheep.

At first glance, it’s not that impressive. A screensaver that shows funky abstract animated shapes? There are tons of pretty pictures on the Internet, and most screen savers are computer generated shapes, what makes these so interesting?

Because they’re not just generated by your computer. These objects are very complex, and require a lot of CPU power to create. If you wanted your PC to make these, you could be sitting there for a long while, waiting for the first frame of the first animation to finish. So how is it done? Everyone who is running the screen saver creates a small part of it and sends in their result to a central server. When you run the screensaver, your computer becomes part of a team. The technical term is called “Distributed Processing”. It’s far more common than you think. Computer generated movies like “Finding Nemo” are made by having hundreds of ordinary computers, each one generating a small part of the film, then combining all the small parts into a whole film.

From what I can tell, Electric Sheep uses tens of thousands of volunteer computers to generate it’s videos, which they call “Sheep”. This ad hoc network is bigger than any commercial art house that I know of.

What? Still not that cool? Yes, distributed processing has been out for a while now, if you’re into computers, you’ve probably run the “Seti@home” screensaver. This is what introduced the concept to the population in general, and many people downloaded the screensaver to donate their processing time towards the search for extra-terrestrial life. Not that pretty, but it was kind of cool to say you left your computer on so it could search for aliens.

I suppose it would have been cool if we actually found anything, but I digress.

Here’s the second thing that makes Electric Sheep really cool. Applied evolutionary algorithms to art.

Breeding.

They’re breeding art.

Example: You’re watching the pretty shapes and colors and swirling bits, and you see something you really like. You hit the up arrow, and that submits a vote for that that particular sheep. At the end of the day, the sheep with the highest scores live longer. Then all the sheep cross-breed. You end up with some good looking, ok looking, and bad looking sheep. Again, the sheep are sent out, people vote for them. The bad looking sheep don’t get many votes and don’t live to breed. Maybe a few of the ok looking sheep get enough votes to live long enough to breed. The best looking sheep last long enough to have kids once, twice, perhaps many times. Until eventually, they’re considered the ugly sheep compared to their kids. Then they all cross breed again, and the cycle continues. Unattractive shapes and uninteresting movements are bred out, the good looking stuff becomes better looking. They’ve been doing this for six years, and I think the results speak for themselves.

Evolutionary algorithms have always been an interest of mine, but I’ve never seen the results end up looking so beautiful. They post the current most popular sheep on the about page, so I can’t really directly link to any specific picture. But check it out.

Now, the only issue I have with these are that they’re low resolution. Understandable, when you consider they started this project in 1999, computing power has come a long way since then. Fortunately, they’re working on a new project. Creating high resolution sheep, and an appliance to send them directly to your HDTV. They have plenty of sample pictures here.

And that brings us back to the beginning of this post, check out the pictures on that page Mom, they should look really nice on your new monitor.

Computers, Science | 1 Comment »

It had never occured to me to serve jello shots at a wedding.

I love it. In my future wedding everyone should consist of 40% alcohol by the time the vows are exhanged.

Other Blogs | 1 Comment »

One of the sad truths about blogs, is that they eventually die. I suppose nothing is forever, but when you come across a great blog, you don’t ever want that person to stop

Steven Den Beste’s USS Clueless page was one of the great blogs. He put a lot of thought and work into his posts, and it showed. Making him a favorite of all the big names in the blogosphere, and of mine.

Unfortunately, that kind of success attracted a bad crowd, Intellectuals. At one point he put up a forum for his visitors, and some of the conversations seemed interesting; so I joined in. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but something was off. Despite having most of the topics center around his posts, the conversations weren’t enjoyable. I would find myself cringing, or avoiding the forum so I wouldn’t face the reactions to my latest post. It finally came to a head when I had gotten into an argument with someone over sending food to North Korea. Specifically, he wanted to send the US’s surplus milk production. I pointed out that most Asians are lactose intolerant, and out of all the surplus food the US produces, milk is probably the worst choice.

And he simply would not admit that it was a bad idea. That conversation went back and forth several times before I realized that and walked away from the forum. (Surfed away. Whatever.)

The whole thing crystallized when Den Beste stopped writing. He mentioned that he would get a bunch of nit-picky emails. That after his big sweeping post, where he’d worked hard at making and supporting his point he would get a flood of emails pointing out minor flaws that don’t detract from the main point.

Death from a thousand pedants. And by pedant, I like this definition: The triumph of furthering the triumph of accuracy and correctness, over tact.

So he finally quit writing. Well, sort of. He’s an old man, and now spends most of his time relaxing and watching Japanese animation and posting about that.

So, why do I mention him now? It seems that he’s posting again, dipping his toe back into the waters, and all the blogosphere is abuzz with excitement. Well, I’m not.

The big idea. The all-encompassing essay that took several ideas and concepts and bound them together into the main point. That was his greatness.

His new stuff is light. Commentary even.

The pedants broke him, and it’s tragic.

You can find his new stuff here.

General, Other Blogs | 1 Comment »

What I’m going to show you is something new and interesting in photography.

What makes it interesting is how you take the photo. You set the camera for a long exposure, start the picture, then you toss the camera up into the air.

I’m sure that there’s a lot of garbage pictures, and a few dropped cameras.

But there are plenty of shots that end up looking very good. Beautiful even.

General | No Comments »

Well, it looks like The Big Pig will be buying a new TV…

I want HDTV because I watch DVDs. Even if I didn’t, it would be stupid to buy an old-fashioned TV right when HD is starting to come online in a serious way. On the other hand, I don’t want a panel TV because there is no way I’m going to pay more than $600 for a bedroom television I watch mainly during exercise.

If you’re just going to use it for watching DVDs while exercising, you don’t need an HDTV.

Buy a nice, normal 27″ TV and put aside the money you’d save and put it towards a sweet home theater setup. I’ve already bought myself an HDTV projector. Works great. The screen is as big as I want it to be, and I don’t have to go to the movie theater any more. I put up a few pictures in my Gallery area to show off to my friends. That’s with the flash on, and the screen size set to the minimum setting.

I’m going to say it again because I like the sound of it. I don’t have to go to the movie theater any more. Ahhhhhhhh.

Now, building a home theater isn’t for everyone, but I think I’m reading Steve correctly when I say “He’s the type of guy who will build one.”

Tech | No Comments »

Does the sound of the fans in your computer bother you? They bother me, PCs made by the big companies are quieter. They know it’s an issue, so they design the inside of the case with noise reduction in mind. For this reason, the nosiest PCs are home built, like mine. It’s easy to see how things get out of hand, two of the latest video cards, a couple high speed hard drives, get the fastest CPU and overclock it, and your computer will be generating a lot of heat. You don’t need to go this far to have an annoying level of sound.

There’s a few ways of dealing with PC noise. One is to buy a PC that’s pretty quiet to begin with. Apple’s Mini is low powered; one small notebook fan is all it needs. Another is to engineer the case itself. Buy sound reducing foam, quiet power supply, speed adjustable fans, and such.

Then there’s water cooling. Fans work by blowing cool air over hot surfaces, and then pushing the hot air out of the case. With water cooling, you’re using water to draw away the heat instead of air. It seems counter-intuitive at first, but the only drawback I’ve come across is that you have to plan ahead.

Ok, two drawbacks, it costs more. Depending on the quality of the components you get, it can cost a lot more. (German Engineering!) The way it works is simple: You need a tank to hold the water, a water pump to move the water around, special heat sinks that the water goes through, and some silicone tubes to pipe everything together. Oh, and a radiator with a fan. Yes, I know, we’re trying to get away from fans. But it’s not the fan that’s the problem; it’s the size restrictions in the case. When you use a radiator in a water cooling setup, you can make it big enough so that you don’t need much air going across it to cool it. The fans can be made much slower and quieter if you can make them bigger.

My first water cooling kit I had I actually received from a friend for free. It was an incredible pain to setup; the water reservoir was made out of a cheap plastic that soon cracked. I took me weeks to find a plastic part to attach it to my CPU. But when it was done, the amount of noise my PC generated had been greatly reduced.

It was a hack, but I was hooked. Since it was so difficult to install, I never went back into my PC case to try and hook up anything else to the water cooling system. I left well enough alone.

Fast forward about two years. It’s still working fine and an eyesore, but I can live with that. What I couldn’t live with was the fan to my video card. It had started to make noise. A lot of noise. Playing card in the spokes of a bicycle noise. It seemed that it was time to redo my water cooling setup.

I started looking around. I wanted something that I could easily upgrade and work on. Something quiet. Something really cool. Ah, the Zalman Reservator 1 Plus.

Fans are needed to push the air over radiators, unless you make the radiator really big. Most of the pictures you see on the Internet of this device make it difficult to judge it’s size. When the UPS guy showed up, I couldn’t believe the size of the package. Most water cooling systems can fit in a shoebox, This box was 4 feet tall. Unpacked, the tower stands about 6 inches taller than my computer case, and I use a full tower case. When I had finished installing it, I had to go to the store for some distilled water and seriously wondered if I needed one or two gallons of water to fill it. It took a little less than a gallon of water.

Assembly was easy. I spent more time reading the instructions that I did putting it together. Some of the hose clamps were annoying, but they weren’t insanely difficult like my last kit. It comes with a water block (heat sink) for the CPU and the video card. That was important, a single water block made by a reputable company will cost you 40$.

Turning it on was interesting. If I didn’t see the liquid going through the hoses, I wouldn’t have been able to tell it was running. I checked the temperatures and everything seemed to be working. My PC is now cool looking and quiet.

I love it.

Computers, Tech | 2 Comments »

So, a few people have wanted to know why I haven’t been updating my Blog.

When I started it, I figured it would be best not to put stuff about my personal life into it. Stick to the big issues, much like Baldilocks does. That worked for a while, but then I ran out of steam, and just didn’t care about the big issues.

I had a lot going on in my life which I have no problem with blogging about. After all, as an adult, you can do things that are interesting to you. So the new format will be more along the lines of The Big Pig. Well, I’ll try to do it without the misogyny, but that sure does bring him a lot of traffic!

General | No Comments »

One of the reasons I started this blog, was so I could comment on other people’s blog posts. Sure, I can go to their blogs now and post. But the comment will soon be buried, and perhaps lost if the blog disappears. So now I can do stuff like this:

Acidman has a post on Illiteracy. The quote is somewhat interesting, but it’s the topic that grabs me.

I spend a lot of time on the computer. It’s 90% reading. Before the Internet I read many books, my vast paperback collection filled up my entire homemade shelves. So when I hear that an adult can’t read, it stuns me. Every time.

Back in college, I had applied for a telemarketing job. As part of the application they have you read off the introductory spiel. I thought they did they did that to see how well you could communicate. Then I found out later, they were making sure you could read. They’ve had applicants fail the “reading test” previously.

Stunned!

Remember computers before the Internet? You had a set of programs, and you could do stuff on the PC. Maybe play a game. If you were really into computers, you got yourself a modem and dialed into a local BBS and posted a note. Maybe downloaded a file.

Plugging your PC into the modern Internet gives you the ability to do anything that’s possible with a computer, on your computer. It would take me, literally, days to cover all the possibilities for work, fun, and self improvement.

Before the Internet, your PC was an island on it’s own.

Illiteracy, isolates you just as much.

Being able to read allows you to tap into the sum of human knowledge and experience. You don’t have to be a skilled handyman to fix your house, get a book that tells you what you need to do. You don’t have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of plants to learn what the best conditions are to grow your new flowers. You don’t have to depend on your friends to find a good dentist or lawyer or doctor, just get the phone book.

And I haven’t even touched on just reading a good book for pleasure.

Comic books! You mean to tell me, there are people, who were born in the country, that aren’t blind, can’t read a good comic book? How crazy is that?

In general, I don’t care what other people make of their lives. Didn’t go to college? That’s nice. Dropped out of high school? Eh. Can’t hold a job? Big deal.

But not being able to read? That’s a fucking tragedy

General, Other Blogs | No Comments »

Allow me to translate:

Note to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (or whatever you’re calling yourselves these days): I was just re-elected president of The Newspaper Guild-CWA, and I’m not resigning.

No matter how much damage I do to Journalism or the reputation of journalists, you’ll get my resignation when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

In case you missed it, for about a month I have been subjected to what I would characterize as a right-wing screed over some comments I made at the National Media Reform Conference in St. Louis on May 13. The comments (which I won’t repeat here) were about journalists getting killed in Iraq and criticized how the U.S. military has dealt with those deaths.

I blamed the military for targeting journalists about a month ago, and suddenly, all these people who actually support the military were discussing what I said.

(snip)

If I made a mistake, it was in trying to cover the issues surrounding safety for journalists in Iraq in an off-the-cuff way. I regret that my in-artful phraseology, and the storm it incited on the right, may detract from a critically important issue for journalists, especially those who cover war.

Something went wrong somewhere. I’m not sure what. I may be the President of the “Newspaper guild.” but things like using words to communicate concepts to others is just beyond me. And I got a D- in journalism school in “Talking to people to figure out what is going on” class.

So at the risk of repeating what we’ve reported for months in The Guild Reporter and elsewhere, here’s a better way of saying what I was trying to communicate in St. Louis: An unacceptable number of journalists are being killed in Iraq, most of them by insurgents, many of them brutally. Fourteen of those deaths, involving U.S. forces, have been inadequately explained or investigated by the U.S. military. One, the April 8, 2003, bombing of the Al-Jazeera studios in Baghdad, never has been explained at all. As a result, many journalists around the world wonder if the U.S. military is targeting journalists.

So at horrible risk of saying the same thing again, (dramatic sigh and pout): The amount of journalists that have been killed in a war zone is above our acceptable rate. 14 of those deaths that involved the US Military have not been explained to our satisfaction. Those that were killed by anyone else, we’re fine with.

Oh dear god. I’ve repeated myself! When will the horror end?

Since April 2003, the Guild, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Reuters and others repeatedly have called upon the Pentagon to conduct independent investigations of these incidences. So far we have received only redacted, whitewashed explanations which often raise more questions than they answer.

I’m…sorry, I can’t translate this. A committee to protect journalists? What the heck do they do? Threaten to send out nasty letters to dictators if they don’t stop killing reporters?

Spanish journalist Jose Couso was killed when the Palestine Hotel, a known headquarters for many unembedded journalists covering the war prior to the occupation, was shelled by a U.S. tank on April 8, 2003. His family and friends still hold a 24-hour vigil at the U.S. embassy in Madrid on the eighth of every month to protest the lack of accountability by our military for Jose’s death. Meeting Jose’s brother a few weeks before the May 13 conference added to my frustration and anger about the U.S. military’s non-responsiveness on this issue.

Jose Couse was shot by a tank, in a war zone. His family protests against the US military every month. I can not grasp the concept that in a war zone people get killed, and the Pentagon is tired of trying to teach me this.

Nevertheless, the St. Louis conference was about media reform, and the panel I was on focused on concentration of media ownership—and except for those few sentences about journalists dying in Iraq, that’s what I talked about. So you can imagine how surprised I was when Sinclair Broadcasting, one of the largest broadcast owners in the U.S., called to film an interview with me about my comments. (Truthfully, I had to listen to a webcast of my presentation before I actually recalled what I said.)

I said something stupid at the end of a speech, and all you people do is focus on it!

You’ll remember Sinclair Broadcasting—the broadcaster that on the eve of the 2004 election tried to pass off an anti-John Kerry commercial as a “documentary” about his Vietnam War service. You also may recall that Free Press, the group sponsoring the National Media Reform Conference, led the campaign to protest that broadcast. Ultimately, institutional stockholders—principally some large union pension funds— forced Sinclair to modify its plans. I guess the prospect of piling on the president of a union representing journalists speaking out at a media reform conference sponsored by Free Press was just too tempting.

Girlfriend, they’re just jealous! You see, back during the election SB tried to show a commercial, but FP didn’t like it and so she went to her boyfriend who went “Yo, you can’t show that.”, so SB didn’t show it and now SB is getting back at FP by piling on me. Vast right wing conspiracy yo. This is all someone else’s fault, I didn’t do nothin’ wrong.

Sinclair aired its piece without me. I was unavailable. Likewise, I was unavailable to Fox News. (Four different Fox shows called in and/or faxed requests for me to appear.) And to Limbaugh, and several other talk-radio blabbers who peddle hate. And to “Swift Boat Veterans” promoters. And to the Moonies’ Washington Times, and to all those self-righteous bloggers who are so sure they have all the answers.

All these news programs with huge audiences tried to get me to air my side of the story, and I’m all “Hey! I’m saying that the military is targeting and killing journalists. I don’t want to be on your hate-peddling shows. You hate mongers!” And I didn’t try to talk to those self-righteous bloggers. I hate all that self-righteousness. When I was a regular journalist, my motto was “I only interview humble people. Ghandi was pretty much the only person I interviewed. He was cool.”

I gave one interview, to Editor & Publisher, figuring it was a credible publication that reached most Guild members in one way or another. But my cold shoulder didn’t stop the right-wing media machine from blowing its whistle and barreling down the tracks anyway. They had a video webcast clip of my remarks, and they could air them!

I found one media outlet that I could give a puff piece too, yet it wasn’t good enough for you people! And even worse, they could use my own words against me! That’s something that journalists do to other people, not visa versa!

Fox’s Bill O’Reilly interviewed Sinclair hack Mark Hyman, who “broke” the story. (Is this really a story?) O’Reilly announced I was hiding and giving no interviews, then proceeded to interview E&P reporter Joe Strupp, whom he identified as the only reporter to interview me. (I was “hiding” from O’Reilly—all of Fox, actually—but not from E&P.) I heard Rush Limbaugh had called me a “babe.”

As the head of the Newspaper guild, I am unable to figure out what might make a good story. I can’t believe O’Reilly announced that I wasn’t giving any interviews! I gave that one! And that guy got interviewed by them. Rush Limbaugh thinks I’m hot. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

(snip)

It would all be amusing were it not for the vicious, mean-spirited—sometimes pornographic, sometimes threatening—e-mails and phone messages these hate-stokers from Fox & Co. generated. The misogynistic language and name-calling don’t bother me so much, although if some of these e-mails were read on a network program like the David Letterman Show, Brent Bozell (another social commentator who has called for my resignation) undoubtedly would be clamoring to get the entire CBS network thrown off the air for good for violating obscenity standards.

I’d find this all funny, except a lot of people are really upset, and they’re yelling at me! Being yelled at sucks, I feel like I’m having to pay some sort of concequence for my actions. I’m sure if I don’t say anything it will all blow over.

What does bother me about the e-mails is the number of them that prove the point I was trying to make in St. Louis. Many echoed the sentiments of Charles Edwards who said in an e-mail to me, “We should have open season on journalists in Iraq. Traitors.” If the sentiments expressed in these e-mails are any indication, at least some of these loyal “Americans” think journalists should be targeted by the U.S. military.

There’s an angry mob gathering outside my office building. They’re very bad people and I don’t see why they’re angry at me or people who share my profession. I also don’t get why they’re carrying all that rope.

That’s why I hope Americans who actually care about democratic discourse and public debate will support independent, fact-based journalism and professional journalists who strive to practice it. Please refrain from attacking reporters who are trying to get to the truth. Focus instead on re-creating a media climate where a future Woodward & Bernstein can investigate abuse and speak truth to power without fear of government retribution or an orchestrated deluge of hate mail calling for their demise.

I hope that Americans support journalists who don’t just make things up and have the facts to back it up. I don’t have any of those facts, but I’m one of those journalists. Please don’t shoot me or send me nasty emails because your masters have ordered you to do so, you mindless idiots.

What the heck are they going to do with all that rope?

General, Politics, Military | 1 Comment »

Was looking though the local Denver Post today, and an article on charter schools caught my eye.

For those who haven’t been watching, Charter Schools are non-government schools. They receive tax dollars for every student they have, just like a normal Public School. Charter Schools had to win a legal fight to exist, and since then, it seems that they’re doing quite well. In the past year their enrollment in Denver alone has gone up 71% to 6,000 students.

There are several parts of the article that made me smile, but this is my favorite quote

The nearby charter, KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy, has 207 students. The academy promises trips to Utah and New York City if students do well in school.

“We can’t compete with that,” Giron said. “We don’t have the money.”

So, the Charter School receives the exact same amount of money as the public school. Yet the Public School doesn’t have the money. Oops, the school district keeps 5% of the money going to the Charter School for administrative costs. It looks like they receive less.

Some Charter Schools are “For Profit”, which means they get the same money and have enough left over to make a profit.

It’s as if “Public School” has been raised indoors for its entire life, and then is suddenly thrown out into the wild woods of capitalism. Looking about with a dumbfounded look on its face and slowly starving while watching the other beasts thrive and grow.

“We will need to give our principals more training and capacity to handle this. Some of them have never been in the business environment where they have to compete.”

Yeah, I foresee rough times for Fido.

General, Politics | 1 Comment »

Sorry I’ve been away. It seems that once I break my “Try posting at least once a day” rule, I lose my posting momentum.

So what brought it back?

Two traveling penguins from Seaworld in San Diego went through regular airport screening at Denver International Airport recently. Here, Pat and Penny are removed from their carry-on case so they can walk through the metal detector.

They put penguins though the metal detector. If terrorists ever get smart and creative enough to figure out how to stash enough explosives/weapons on a penguin to take out a plane, then it’s time to give up. We’re just doomed.

General | 2 Comments »

I didn’t think there would be any good shots that day, it was overcast and I had to work. On my dinner break, I saw this scene, and thought I’d give it a shot. Next time I’ll try to catch the sun before it sinks behind the mountains so much.

Careful when clicking on the picture, it’s a biggie.

I decided to go with this picture first for two reasons. I love the mountains; it’s why I moved here. I hope to become skilled enough with photography to capture the essence of them. Second: What you’re seeing here is actually three shots combined into one panoramic shot.

The camera came with the software to do this, and after using it I have mixed feelings about it. It was easy to do. Too easy. There are no advanced controls on this software, so all you can do is toss in the pictures and have it spit out the result. Don’t get me wrong, the result looks really good. No signs of stitching or anything. But the software changed the resolution of the final picture.

I bought a 5 megapixel camera. So when I use it to it’s maximum resolution, it’s because I want a 5 megapixel picture. Now, each of the pictures I took was 1920 pixels high. After going though the panoramic software, then end result was 945 pixels high. Somewhere, I lost a lot of data. For online pictures, it’s not that big of a deal. Most people have their resolution set low enough so that they’ll have to scroll. But I want to print these babies. And that means keeping as much data as possible. Ah well, it’s something to look into.

The thing that surprised me most about this picture was Photoshop. I tried a few things with it, auto-color, auto-levels, and auto-contrast. Normally, these adjustments add a lot to making a picture better, but not this time! The FZ-5 is great at reproducing the correct colors. The sky was actually that pink, and the rays from the sun were vivid. Photoshop cleared up the area and removed most of the pink in one try. In another, it made everything far bluer. The water looked very nice, but again, it almost filtered out the focus of the photo. The sunset.

So I’m keeping the whole thing as-is with no color modifications.

Ta da.

Edited to add: Seems that the blog software only shows the full picture. You’ll have to save it locally and open it if you want it to fit on your screen.

General, Tech | 2 Comments »

So, this isn’t what I promised. I do have some nice shots with the new digicam, it’s just that setting up a decent picture for the web takes some thought. And today is “Pay your taxes” day, so I couldn’t dedicate that much time to the task.

Fortunately I came across this picture today. It doesn’t look very pretty, but I found it very interesting. The article on the study isn’t as interesting as the picture, but it does go over the project.

I’m amazed that they found the students that willing to co-operate.

General, Science | 1 Comment »

Sorry for dumping so much political pap on you all, once I get my new digital camera I’ll be putting up some nice pictures and other topics.

I work in front of a TV.

Mostly in front of a computer, but they put a TV up and tune it to CNN. The theory goes, when disaster strikes, we’ll see it on the TV and…do something. I’m pretty sure “Do something” is the official reaction. Let me tell you, it’s been pure hell when Terri Schiavo had her feeding tube pulled. They had her up all night, every night, during the whole two week ordeal.

So tonight I looked up and to my surprise, I saw the most political commercial of my life. We don’t get any sound, so I can only give you the point it was trying to get across. They were asking the viewer to call your Senator and tell them to save the filibuster. The filibuster! The political stall tactic for when you don’t like what’s going on in the Senate. I never thought something I learned in 9th grade history would ever become relevant.

I remarked on this to Heather, a coworker of mine, who actually knew what this was about. Seems that the Republicans are going to do their damnedest to get the 10 judicial nominees that were rejected by the Senate, installed anyway.

So I tried to look up some useful info on what was going on. I was shocked at how little useful info there was out there. I would think there would be a list of the 10 who were rejected, maybe saying where they were to be installed, or on what grounds they were rejected. It could be that I’m not good at finding information on the Internet, but I don’t think that was it.

So, instead of useful current information, I’m going to give you useful historic information. This is the story of how the House got rid of it’s filibuster.

Politics | 1 Comment »

Sorry I haven’t been posting much as of late. I haven’t been reading the blogs like I used to. It seems that I’ve actually gotten around to doing things on my “To-do” list.

Yessir, I’ve been a whirlwind of activity.

Then I came across this today, and I think it’s worthy of mention. It started out as a “Top Ten” list about propaganda, but once the distributed brain of the blogosphere got hold of it, it quickly ballooned up to a top twenty.

Last I heard, the mainstream media (Called MSM in shorthand) has picked up a reputation of being less trustworthy than lawyers. You see the tactics they use over and over again, but seeing them written out like that really clarifies them.

General, Other Blogs, Politics | 2 Comments »

It’s fascinating. Today’s US military prides itself on it’s adaptability to meet any problem that comes up. That’s why it was so interesting to find something that caused them to go schizo: growing a beard.

It seems in middle eastern cultures, having a beard is a big deal. And that our forces clean cut faces brings up cultural issues when trying to deal with the natives. So the command comes down that if you’re out dealing with people, you should grow a beard.

Not coping well.

Military | No Comments »

Today is my Birthday.

I don’t deal with birthdays well, so this is all you’re gettin’ for today.

And yesterday.

Maybe tomorrow.

General | 2 Comments »

Anarchy never seemed like a good idea for me. It reminds me of the guy who realizes he’s losing at checkers, then stands up and flips over the board in anger. Not any good at the game? Insist that all the rules go away.

Picked up from LGF

He sighed: �It�s hard being an anarchist parent,� he said, �because as a parent you have to be the authority figure.�

I wonder how insane his kids are now. “Why did you do what I told you to do?! I’m the authority figure! Don’t do that! Wait, are you fighting me because I told you? What are you doing?!”

I think this webcomic sums up what life under Anarchy would be like.

Politics | No Comments »

I’m Impressed.

Seven military policemen in three Humvees were escorting a truck convoy, and were ambushed by “Insurgents”.

The bad guys:

Surveyed the area and set up the ambush.

Brought machine guns, Grenades, and Rocket launchers.

Were protected by trenches.

Had their getaway ready.

Outnumbered the Marines over 4 to 1 with 31 heavily armed men.

They were crushed…24 killed outright. Three of the seven Marines were wounded, and one looks as if he’ll be permanently disabled.

Another interesting note, two out of the seven Marines were women.

(Edited to add: My mistake, it seems that there were 40-50 bad guys.)

Military | 1 Comment »