Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Author: Jon

  • Diversion

    We got the minivan back from the shop this week, and today I had the distinct pleasure of attending a diversion class for the ticket I had received (you all remember my accident, right?) The diversion class was the kind with the driving simulator—whenever you’re involved in an accident this is the type of class you get. It ran from nine until about three.

    The class by itself was just fine; full of information and videos about traffic safety, etc. Definitely worth it to get the ticket expunged from the record. The simulators, though, they were something else…

    …as in, really old technology. I’m quite sure they were state-of-the-art fifteen years ago, but in this day and age they just seem, well, sad. Seriously, these are circa early- to mid-nineties units; the “simulators” are basically adjustable seats with the simplest possible console you can imagine: steering wheel, ignition, speedometer, and indicator lights for the program. Gas and brake pedals. Gear shift (for an automatic) and emergency brake.

    Everyone sits in these consoles and watches a screen where the “simulation” is projected from—I kid you not—laserdisc. Laserdisc! Aside from thrift stores, I haven’t seen a live laserdisc player since the late 80s. And it’s just a movie, basically, no real interaction—you simply “drive” the console in accordance with what’s on the screen, and the indicator lights flash if there was an error of some sort (too fast or slow, no turn signal, etc.).

    All very basic. Embarrassingly so.

    Modern video game systems are more advanced than this. In fact, with how affordable technology is these days, there’s almost no reason you couldn’t put together a simulator out of a PlayStation or Xbox, cheap LCD monitor, and driving controls (which I’ve seen for racing games), and have the entire system come in for well under $1000.

    Laserdisc! I’m still shaking my head.

  • I’m on a Scooby roll…

    Scooby's at the front door - McDonalds sign

  • Compare and contrast

    Compare and contrast this:

    Global warming over the coming century could mean a return of temperatures last seen in the age of the dinosaur and lead to the extinction of up to half of all species, a scientist said on Thursday.

    With this:

    The earliest civilizations were not a product of favorable conditions but rather a last resort in the face of dramatic shifts in the weather, a climate scientist said on Thursday.

    I’m trying to decide if these are complimentary or contradictory. Or maybe I’m just randomly amused, correlating the climate crisis faced in one article with the results mentioned in another…

    …what we tend to think of today as civilization was an accidental by-product of unplanned adaptation to catastrophic climate change. Civilization was a last resort…

    Interesting stuff.

  • Pets are expensive

    Our Labor Day weekend itself was decent enough overall, but Sunday night we had to take our oldest cat to the emergency pet hospital because he’d been acting weird all day, and by the evening was seemingly in serious pain. Turned out he had stones in his bladder and was all blocked up.

    Since our regular vet wouldn’t be open until Tuesday morning, the cat stayed at the emergency hospital from Sunday night through Tuesday morning (about 36 hours), receiving treatment. Tuesday my wife transferred him to our regular vet, and they performed surgery to remove the stones that day.

    Recovery Tuesday night, and again tonight. Probably home tomorrow. But all this adds up to another hefty bill. Pets are expensive. I’m beginning to wonder if we should have insurance policies taken out on them.

    And before anyone thinks I’m totally cynical, the cat is doing just fine. He’s 13 years old, but remarkably healthy otherwise.

  • Scooby mix tape

    Scooby's at the Front Door - cassette tape

  • 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.)