Once Again the Guitar Proves Worthy

Just when I think there aren't any more good things you can do with a guitar:

Find more videos like this on w.a.s.t.e. central

I Am In Your Interwebs, Locating your Earthquakes.

Use IP addresses to locate epicenter of earthquakes. Love it.

Mint.com - Money, Not Candy

If anyone hasn't checked out www.mint.com for managing your money, I suggest you do so. When tax time came, I tried Quicken and Microsoft Money each for the second time, and I can't imagine how they made it that far in this world. Not that mint.com is perfect - you can't create your own categories, for example, and I have yet to find a way to have it show me only the transactions where money is going out as opposed to in. Probably some part of their ultimate ploy to make money off of me. For now it *seems* free.

OSX NTFS FTW (NSFW)

I didn't think this was possible. Mac owners, particularly dual-booters, may have run into trouble accessing Windows-formatted external hard drives or partitions. I certainly did. In swept Google out of nowhere with MacFuse, a "mechanism" (their word, no doubt for lack of a better one) which allows people to implement their own file systems for OSX. Naturally. I can envision Andrew writing his own file system, but I suspect the rest of us will want to grab NTFS-3G, which is an implementation of NTFS. (Download is at the bottom of sketchy blog post.) I was skeptical, but it worked great. Install MacFuse, install ntfs-3g, and suddenly OSX can read and write to my Windows partition.

Pre-Fab Political Ads

But they seem so real!

Terrorist Fist Jab

Ah, Fox News. From "fair and balanced" to "fairly balanced" to "let's find new and creative ways to get the words 'terrorist' and 'Obama' in the same soundbite" balanced.

The lead-in: "A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? ... We'll show you some interesting body communication and find out what it really says."

I, for one, can get behind this. It's about time a new sensation swept the nation (while covertly communicating terrorist leanings with others). I hereby petition all responsible readers of YST to strike the terms "dap," "fist bump," and "that thing Tom does" from the lexicon. It's "terrorist fist jab" from here on out.

Baby I Got Your Money...

Even though I only take out cash once a month, I wish Bank of America's ATMs had better UI--like Wells Fargo. At "the next stage" they display a transaction history--like a custom menu that you never have to customize. One click to get my cash, that's what I want. Now, if we could only up the $300 limit and get rid of 20s.

Side note: when I was in Japan, the smallest denomination they give out at ATMs is 10,000 yen notes--$95. Large notes, automatic umbrella shrink-wrappers, and blade hand driers (the fact that they were everywhere makes me think Dyson ripped off the idea)--all our base are indeed belong to Japan.

More spheres

Uh oh, someone mentioned math. The guy who came up with this also happens to have an abiding interest in the problem. He wrote a good summary of the then-current state (2002) of the n-dimensional sphere packing problem (from 2 to 128 dimensions) here. How many integer sequences did you discover today? (for fun, try the web cam...).

Why I will never get an iPhone

Too much information. One problem with "persistent" memory like flash is it's sometimes not obvious whether or not it's really gone away.

Sats

So when you are bored at work, you end up in weird places. (I know, you are nervous about clicking that link.)

I never appreciated the scale difference between low earth orbit satellites and geostationary ones. I noticed that it seems sort of crowded out there. "How many satellites can actually fit in geostationary orbit?" Well, figuring out that problem seemed much more interesting than examining a huge database of misclassified Accounts Payable.

Here's what I came up with from my searching, rough back of the envelope:

geosynch orbit = 35,600 km
earth width = 12,800 km
circum @ orbit = 263,900 km
+- latitude = 10 dg
+- latitude (tan 10 dg) = 7,400 km
+- altitude = 200 km (higher than that is where sats go to die)
+- positioning of sats = 35 km (margin of error)
min distance between sats = 10 km (made that up)
passing lane east = 35,600 + 35 + 10 + 5 = 35,650-35,800 km
passing lane west = 35,600 - 35 - 10 - 5 = 35,400-35,550 km
# of belts of satellites = 2 (also made up)

Total # of satellite slots @ geostationary orbit = (7400*2/45)*(263,900/45)*2 = 3.86MM.

I'm sure there are more limitations--like it is too expensive to keep satellites in a precise orbit, so most wobble in altitude and latitude. Also, if 70% of the earth is water, you have a lot of coverage where you don't need it. The point is, we can fit a lot more.

Shigeru Miyamoto is pretty much where I would like to be, when I'm 55.

Why I cancelled Netflix

Edit: This content is actually from www.hulu.com, go there instead for better selection and total avoidal of Comcast.

Remington Steele? Check. 30 Rock? Check. Airwolf? Check. Arrested Development? Check. I'm violently anti-Comcast, but they've got something good going (good like I pay 0 dollars per month instead of 60 dollars per month): http://www.fancast.com.

Hypnotizingly beautiful Alice in Wonderland techno. Yes hypnotizingly is a word.

Fractal Furniture

Imposture

I knew it.

HD Division

So I made the plunge and bought a the middle of the road Mac Book (first blog post from the new putar).  I am going to install Vista on the drive (am I hearing boos and hisses?) but I am wondering about how much disk space to put on each partition.  It all hinges on a fairly n00b question that I can't find the answer to--I know they use different file systems, but is the data from OS X available for Windows to read?  For example, do I need two copies of my music?  How do you guys have your Macs divided?  Do you even boot it up into OS X ever?  I am considering giving OS X a try, to see if I like it better than windows. (more boos and hisses?)

Also, lol for reading this article at Teh Consumerist.  Sure enough, he pitched all that crap, and I turned down the hard sell.  Then he got crafty.  In the end we worked out a bargain where he sold me Apple Care for $66 off the $250 price ($183) in exchange for him giving me the student discount ($100 off my $1300 laptop).  Then we agreed that I would return the Apple Care for a refund at a different store.  I guess I would drive 20 minutes for $100.  

Music, anyone?

I came across this the other day and just started playing with it now. Record songs from (online) radio and automatically archive them for future listening:

http://www.chilirec.com/

I've been particularly enjoying the ability to find and listen to music that isn't normally accessible to me, such as songs in French and Swedish.

(And no, I was not only attracted to it because it's from Sweden...)

I Really Should Be Working...

...but I came across this piece in Radar magazine that I thought was pretty good. Basically, an adult poses as a kidand writes to famous people.

In the late '90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious 10-year-old named Billy.

Some favs. Nightstalker's response:

Know any Asian girls willing to correspond?

Charles Manson:

JUST to forgit I didn't take your money when I had ALL your credit cards locked up in my dreams—Rife with Con Va Lution due 2 subjewgashen.

Larry Flynt:

Until then [when you are 18 and subscribe to my magazine] you should read the Sears Roebuck catalog.

Clarence Thomas:

I like the Egg McMuffin.

Lol

3G iPhone $199 -- Sold. Maybe

Checking teh tubes this morning, saw this article (Fortune).

AT&T is preparing to subsidize $200 of the cost of a new [3G] iPhone, bringing the price down to $199 for customers who sign two-year contracts, the source says.

That would easily put me over the edge. But then this:

The average iPhone user however, runs up a $100 tab each month due to the higher priced data and calling plan.

$100 would be a deal. With my current Blackberry voice & data plan, I end up paying ~ $150 a month. I suspect with better browsing capability, I would be paying far more.

The real kicker, however, is that I plan to leave my company which currently pays for everything. $1,800 a year to have YouTube, big maps, and voicemail as email is probably not worth it. I will probably kill my data plan, my world roaming plan, my international dial out plan, and my 900 min a month plan. I have 3,000 mins saved up--which could probably last me a year.

How a caterpillar grows and becomes a moth. Nothing technologically fancy about the site, but I couldn't peal my eyes away. A great way for an alonergist to enjoy nature.

Muppets singing Danny Boy. I don't remember where I got this from, could've been one of you. The world still has no Jim Henson replacement.


Ps - also see Beaker singing Yellow by Coldplay, thanks to modern video re-editing technology:

c0/\/\p|_|T4r

I am going to go ahead and convert "You See This?" into my own personal "You Comparison Shop Comput4rs!" I am headed back to grad school in the fall (btw, I visited Stanford's campus last week and loved it, I am headed there unless Columbia MBA accepts me) and need a new computer. Well, I need a new computer system and I am hoping for recommendations from my geek mentors.

I am not convinced that a single all-purpose laptop is the right approach for me anymore. If I get everything I need* (note: need = want) like Bluray DVD / george foreman grill drive, 18 TB RAM, 4 PT HD, 12 USB ports, etc. then the laptop is too big to carry around. If I slim it down to something I would feel comfortable lugging around, then it is a nightmare to work on for a long time.

So I am trolling for ideas on what to do. I am tempted by the following:
- new small portable notebook (thinkpad, apple, dell, hp...)
- new desktop (dell, or the ilk)
- a networked storage solution (hp)

The problem is that is at least $4,000+ worth of stuff.

I assume that you readers are more tech l33t than me--so my question is what do you people do? What sort of solution could I get for $2,000 that would:
- give me a super portable notebook to take to classes
- let me work comfortably on papers as well as watch movies, stream music, etc.
- allow me to trash my 3 or 4 USB backup drives (that never seem to work that well anyway)

I am not set on buying a desktop and a separate storage solution--maybe combine the two? I don't know, just thought I would put this out there. Anyone know of super deals on laptops?

Direct Note Access

When first I read Gizmodo hailing this as the "Photoshop of Music", I was a little skeptical. But after watching the video with the bearded German, Peter Neubäcker, a former guitar maker turned programmer, I'm convinced it will have huge repercussions on the music scene. It basically gives you midi like control over recorded samples. Maybe there are other products that can do this, but this is the first I've been told. Very cool.

Chop Ikea

Chop Chop

What can be better (and more geeky) than a.) getting stuff at Ikea, and b.) transmorgifying it? Like this:



(source: Ikea Hacker post)

One day I'ma build a car that runs off of grass using only Ikea hardware.

IrfanView And So Can You

Okay, Karl. Here is my secret. Its name begins with Irfan, because Irfan made it, and ends with View, because it's an image viewer. But it is also much more than that. In fact, it's one of my favorite pieces of software ever in terms of simplicity, speed, and power. But definitely not in terms of logo design. (Sorry, Irfan, but I'm just not sure if "bright red roadkill burglar cat with a magnifying glass" accurately conveys the coolness of your app. On the other hand, now that I see it written out, it does have a certain je ne sais quois...) Loading instantly and taking no memory is always a good first step.

Some things you usually want to do when browsing and editing a folder of photos:
1. Press Enter to go in and out of showing the photo full screen. Use the + and - keys to zoom in and out when not in full-screen mode.

2. Whenever a photo is open, simply use the scroll wheel or arrow keys to go between photos in the same directory. (These may also pan if the image is larger than the screen, but you can disable that.) There is a slideshow mode to flip through images automagically.

3. To delete the photo from your computer, press Delete. (This is, sadly, pretty revolutionary.)

4. It's not just a viewer. You can adjust contrast, gamma, hue, saturation, etc. in the "Enhance Colors..." dialog. In fact this is where I do most of my photo editing. It also works with Photoshop plugins.

5. You can also Crop (Ctrl Y), add a border (Canvas Size...), Resize/Resample (Resize/Resample (Resize/Resa... oops))), and so forth.

6. Set the jpeg output quality to about 95, and your filesizes will likely be two thirds or less of the camera's original output filesize, with little to no loss in image quality. Which is especially handy when you can...

7. ... batch edit a whole folder of files. Simply resaving with no changes is an excellent method for saving hard disk space, but you can also do all the other things mentioned above, resulting in a whole folder of resized, bordered, sharpened, corrected photos. So there.

8. And more! Lots of settings and customizability, as well as other useful functions such as the robust screen capture abilities used for the above picture, and the ability to display non-images such as pdfs, movies, or flash files, though I usually set it to only show images for the sake of simplicity.

9. Finally, be sure to get the plugins, which are handily all available as a single download. One of them will let you view EXIF data within a JPEG. (Press "i" when viewing an image to open its info, and then "e" to view the EXIF.) This data usually includes camera specifics such as model, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, date/time, and, if the picture is of a person, what that person looked like at the time of the photo. All useful tools for spying on the internets.

Free Wi-Fi Finder

I think just about everyone on here could use this one:

http://www.anchorfree.com/hotspot/finder/

ReaWorks

Sorry, that's a bit clannish to follow some company's style guide for English, but I happen to like the company:

Reaper DAW

Not touted on their homepage is probably the coolest and single best reason to get this ($50 for private, noncommercial use although the demo never times out and is fully-functional). Imagine you have a few bits of old networkable technology lying around (laptops, old desktops, whatev) and you're thinking "hey, wouldn't it be cool if I could use these old machines as plugin hosts so I can spare cpu cycles on my main machine?" Yeah, the dream is over. Reaper lets you load plugins and (after you install Reaper and the plugins on the slave machine) start them up on the remote machine, leaving your main CPU ready for handling whatever you want to throw at it. The best reason IMHO to upgrade to gigabit ethernet. Today I purchased a new switch just for this purpose. If your laptops start disappearing to go live at my house, you'll now know why. 802.11b is too slow btw (I know because I tried). 802.11g may work but I haven't tested it yet.

Canon camera magic?

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Supercharge_Your_Camera_with_Open-Source_CHDK_Firmware

So, I haven't looked into this beyond reading the Lifehacker article and skimming the linked page, but I imagine that there are one or two avid photo takers in this group who might enjoy hacking their cameras... Sorry it's only for the Canon ones. :(

Code Geekery

http://projects.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharp/Default.aspx

A little bird once told me that a certain project was being ported to C#. Wouldn't it be fun if a good portion of it could also be ported to Javascript? This might save me mucho time and sweat and tears (not to mention countless hours googling random Javascript language constructs) on my current project. Web-enabled graphics applications may or may not apply...

Ambition Makes You Look Pretty Ugly

I predict this post will be heaped with scorn—if not outright deleted-- because
a) it’s not nerdy enough
b) Tom surely disapproves of at least 90% of these bands.

However, in my attempt to bring Culture to the masses and stick it to The Man (while using Gratuitous Capital Letters as much as possible) I have to point you to Stereogum. This music website has compiled cover versions of three iconic albums, available to stream from the website or download for free. I like the Radiohead collection the best, but that’s probably because OK Computer is such a classic, well-written album. Some songs are stronger than others, but overall they are fun re-imaginings of some of my favorite songs.

• Drive XV: A Tribute to R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People


• OKX: A Tribute to Radiohead's OK Computer


• Enjoyed: A Tribute to Bjork's Post