Writings

I started following Wil Wheaton on twitter a few months ago.  He's a very funny guy, and a great writer, and now showing up in all manner of TV shows as the evil villain.  As a late comer to his minions I didn't immediately realize that his internet catch phrase is "Don't be a dick!".

I think those a pretty good words to live by.

Today (well really yesterday) I learned that I really should have replaced our house iron filter some time ago.  It was on my list of things to do over the last 6 months, and I finally got around to it on Saturday.  It was one of those tasks that I'd never done before, so kept procrastinating on it, even though it only took 15 minutes.  The filter element, the part you replace, looked like a paint roller that was drenched with some of the russet sunset we had used in the kitchen. (sorry no pics, it was disposed of before I could think of it).

As soon as it was replaced we had at least twice the water pressure in the house.  I regenerated our water softener, and now our dishes are getting clean again, the shower up stairs has much more sane water pressure, and the tub faucet no longer has orange water come out of it when you first start it.  Yay for that.

Via reddit.  (click image to enlarge)

These images are always created by taking pictures of our sun then scaling them up and changing the color.  It makes me wonder though: are really big stars are actually round?  there seems to be some evidence that at least Betelgeuse is not.

Glass is not a high-viscosity liquid at room temperature: it is an amorphous solid, although it does have some chemical properties normally associated with liquids. Panes of stained glass windows often have thicker glass at the bottom than at the top, and this has been cited as an example of the slow flow of glass over centuries. However, this unevenness is due to the window manufacturing processes used in earlier eras, which produced glass panes that were unevenly thick at the time of their installation. It is common to find old windows which are thicker at the sides or the top.[114][115]

Wikipedia has a pretty good list of Common Misconceptions, with references explaining why they aren't true, and what the real story is.  Unlearning a wrong fact is one of the hardest things to do as a human being, so do yourself a favor and unlearn something wrong today.

Futurama Cupcakes by Unicorn Magic Baking Co. (photo courtesy of Unicorn Magic Baking Co.)

Want!

Take two of my favorite movies, slam them together, and here's what you get:

Two years ago I got into amateur Astronomy.  I bought an 8" dobsonian telescope (which is the perfect first scope), and joined the local astronomy club.  I've come to realize that my biggest weakness is coming up with appropriate target lists, given location, time, and the equipment I've got.  It turns out there is actually a piece of software specifically written to address that: Sky Tools 3, which is windows only.

More interestingly, it turns out that this is the only piece of software, pay / free, regardless of platform, that does this.  There is nothing else close.  There are plenty of planetarium software, free, open, and pay, on every platform that you can imagine.  That's a crowded space.  But to solve this very specific problem of generating good visual observing lists there exists only one software solution.

It got me thinking.  When we talk about cross platform software, and getting people to consider open source alternatives, people always focus on the crowded center.  Debates over word processors and browsers, email and graphics tools.  These all have pluses and minuses, but in the crowded center there are plenty of options.

Out at the edge of software there aren't options or alternatives.  The market is too small to support more than one, and you are lucky if even one tool exists to do what you like.  These pieces of software are the tent stakes that keep Microsoft as the 90% platform for personal computers.  At least with virtualization it means that I won't have to run windows on real hardware to run Sky Tools, but it does mean that I'm going to be running windows in a VM a lot more often than I was before.

This is just brilliant. Click on it to get the full sized version.  Originally from flickr.

The replacement for the Willis Ave Bridge was floated down the Hudson River yesterday, from it's building facility up north of Catskill NY.  To get something like this down river they had to weld 2 barges together, and use 3 tugs to keep it on track.

The whole event, for the few of us that came out for it, was great.  I ended up chatting and joking with 3 other completely random folks near where the AP had set up their video camera.  It was that perfect sense of community, even though no one knew each other, we were there for a common event.  Even when there were discussions around the walkway, which is our local contentious issue, and it was clear that people had different points of view, it was a level of civil and jovial discourse that just doesn't exist in politics any more.  It was refreshing and wonderful.

A perfect way to end a day in the office.

Via reddit, I came across this truly amazing article in Wired Magazine (from 2008) on the story of trying to save the Cougar Ace.  It's a truly amazing story, something that reads like the best disaster films you've ever seen.  Wired doesn't write long form like this any more, which is a damn shame.