Chuggnutt!

Month: August 2006

  • In the air

    I don’t know what it is, exactly, but these last few days really seem like summer is done and autumn is just starting. No, it’s not the colder weather we had today… perhaps it’s like Jennifer’s husband said, about the quality of light changing so that it looks like fall.

    Actually I think that’s a large part of it. The days are shorter and the sun has been shifting southward again, and the light has a fall quality to it. I can smell it in the air, too. Something crisp. It feels like the harvest season, or at least feels like it should be.

    And then school’s starting on Tuesday… both are kids are in this year (first grade and kindergarden). That plays a factor, I’m sure.

    So, even though we officially have nearly another month of summer remaining, it seems to me that it is now (informally) the beginning of autumn.

    Did everyone remember to bring in or cover their plants tonight?

  • Commodore 64 emulator… in Flash

    Okay, geek levels are off the charts on this one: FC64, a Commodore C64 emulator for Flash. And it’s open source. This is just mind boggling…

    …because, among other things, what this means is that I could embed a Commodore 64 emulator, games and all, right here on my blog. Because it’s in Flash. And Flash in installed on nearly every browser these days.

    So not only could you play C-64 games here… if you know BASIC, you could write and run your own programs for it. So then I wonder if those are saveable? I bet that would be easy to hack… Talk about a community project: everybody writing programs for everybody else to run without having to install software or trade files at all. Hmmmmmmmmmm…

  • Much Ado About Pluto

    More geeky space news! This is more mainstream-popular, though, as I’ve seen it popping up everywhere. Pluto is no longer a planet. I’m actually a bit surprised at the uproar this seems to be causing; Slashdot has more on this.

    Me, I guess I’ve always been suspicious of Pluto; I mean, the thing has this wildly weird orbit that goes above the plane of the ecliptic and that swings inside Neptune’s orbit. And, it’s smaller than our own moon. And, its own moon, Charon, doesn’t actually orbit around Pluto; rather, they orbit around each other (with the center of axis somewhere between them rather than at Pluto’s center).

    All decidedly un-planetlike.

    So I think reclassifying it is a good move. It doesn’t make it any less mysterious or interesting. I guess I just don’t see why this is such a big deal; Pluto itself didn’t go anywhere.

    So, my two cents.

    And, getting even geekier (possible?), the Wikipedia article on Pluto mentions it “is the prototype of a yet-to-be-named family of trans-Neptunian objects.” Trans-Neptunian? No no no. It should properly be classified as a Kuiper Belt Object. Right up there with other KBOs like Sedna, Quaoar, and the like. (And the name “plutino” is just stupid.)

  • They don’t make ’em like that anymore

    Okay, I’m a little behind on news, but I thought this story was extremely cool: Voyager 1 passes 100 AU from the sun. I guess this is only of interest to you if you’re a space and astronomy geek.

    (Some quick Wikipedia references: Voyager 1, AU.)

    It’s just amazing to me that a spacecraft built with 1970s technology has been able to go so far and outlast a lot of other junk that’s been introduced to the world since then. It’s currently the most distant man-made object from Earth. Signals from the spacecraft take more that 13 hours to reach us.

    The spacecraft [both Voyagers] are traveling at a distance where the sun is but a bright point of light and solar energy is not an option for electrical power. The Voyagers owe their longevity to their nuclear power sources, called radioisotope thermoelectric generators, provided by the Department of Energy.

    Voyager 1 is now at the outer edge of our solar system, in an area called the heliosheath, the zone where the sun’s influence wanes. This region is the outer layer of the ‘bubble’ surrounding the sun, and no one knows how big this bubble actually is. Voyager 1 is literally venturing into the great unknown and is approaching interstellar space. Traveling at a speed of about one million miles per day, Voyager 1 could cross into interstellar space within the next 10 years.

    Via Slashdot.

  • Well, that’s a sucky way to start the day…

    So on my way to work this morning, I got into a car accident. One of three cars involved! Westbound on Franklin, just past the light on Third, and the first car stopped for the construction they’ve got going on, and the car in front of me rear-ended the first car, stopping up short, and I had to hit my brakes—but still rear-ended the second car. A three car pile-up. Sort of.

    Anyway, I’m fine, no injuries, just smashed up the front of our Honda Odyssey real good (but the engine seems to be fine, so that’s good). The other two drivers are fine, too, so everybody came out of it shaken but unscathed.

    Yep, it all sucks. The car is at the shop now, waiting for a damage estimate, and I’m dealing with insurance and paperwork and all that fun stuff.

    What I find amusing, is everyone’s reaction: first is the natural, “Are you okay?” question; that’s been followed up with, “It wasn’t the new car, was it?”

    (No, it was the older car.)

  • Life is what happens when you’re making other plans

    Yeah, that headline there? Totally saccharine and goofy and pointless. Yes, I know it’s cribbed from John Lennon, so what?

    Anyway.

    The “life that happened” was a sudden and unexpected gall bladder removal for my wife last week. Yeah, I know—Wha?!? She went to the doctor on Wednesday, confirmed that she had gallstones, and they wanted to take the gall bladder out either that night or Thursday. We opted for Thursday, so I spent most of that day at the hospital and the rest of the weekend taking care of, er, everything. So I’ve been busy.

    You know what’s crazy? They treat gall bladder surgery (formally known as cholecystectomy, in this case laparoscopic) as basically outpatient; my wife was able to come home Thursday night.

    Okay, this is even crazier, and creepy (from that Wikipedia article):

    Gallstones are, oddly, a valuable by-product of meat processing, fetching up to $900 US an ounce in their use as a purported aphrodisiac in the herbal medicine of some cultures. The finest gallstones tend to be sourced from old dairy cows. Much as in the manner of diamond mines, slaughterhouses carefully scrutinise offal department workers for gallstone theft.

    Wow. And “ew.”

    On the other hand… no, I won’t even go there.

  • Now this is how you do viral…

    This is absolutely great: Send a free personalized message from Samuel L. Jackson for “Snakes on a Plane.” I swear, the thing is brilliant… the audio editing is really good… and it makes phone calls anywhere for free. Even better? You put in the phone number you want it to appear from… and it uses that number for caller ID.

    As my brother said, you think you’re getting a call from a friend, and Samuel Jackson is commanding you!

    Oh, uh, the movie itself? Well, if it’s successful, it’s because they’ve been taking the viral approach all along…

  • It’s been awhile for Scooby…

    I figured it’s been just long enough for everyone to forget…

    Scooby's at the front door! ticket

  • Post eye surgery

    The eye surgery went very well, our daughter has been recuperating marvelously all weekend (it wasn’t a very eventful weekend because of this), and things are more-or-less back on track.

    Saturday morning we did make a Costco run, largely because I had an eye exam of my own at the optometrist there. It’s been probably 15 years since I last had my eyes checked, and the kids having the surgery—not to mention having had eye floaters for years—put me in mind to getting it done. As it happens, I have nearly perfect vision; I see 20/20 in each eye, and have a very mild astigmatism that may necessitate getting glasses in a few years. The floaters are normal.

    And yeah, go ahead and get the “floater” jokes out of your system; I can hear a bunch of you snickering in the back.

  • In Lake Oswego, eye surgery tomorrow

    Like the trip we had almost two years ago, tonight we’re in the Phoenix Inn hotel in Lake Oswego in preparation for our daughter’s corrective eye surgery tomorrow. Pretty much anything I would say is covered in that previous post; the only details being different really are that my daughter is six and it’s her third (and hopefully last) such surgery. And I’ve taken today, Wednesday and Thursday off from work for it (back on Friday).

    On the positive side, we had a really excellent dinner at Piazza Italia in Portland’s Pearl District; we got to try some cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory at Washington Square; and we’ll be doing a Trader Joe’s run sometime before coming back on Thursday. Anyone need anything from TJs?