Roomies
Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
Almost cool out
It was almost cool enough today to make me think about switching from shorts to pants. I'm sure I got a few odd looks from all the sweater clad people walking around today.
Had a good day out with the pups today, starting with an hour or so out at the Hampton Park dog run. We were there by ourselves for the first half hour or so, before being joined by a pair of Weimeraners, Gus the Bouvier and a lab/rott mix. Stuck around, let the dogs run around and play some more while people chatted, then we decided to head off to the Farmer's Market and let the dogs check out the sights.
Ran into Vera and hubby Patrick hanging out with the Palmetto Fiber Arts Guild doing the spinning and knitting thing. We didn't have our camera with us, but Patrick did and got a good shot of the dogs and their Hallowe'en bandannas. Patrick gave the wife and I a spinning demonstration and there was a neat demonstration of loom weaving. Interesting looking craft.
The dogs loved the Farmer's Market and got plenty of love and attention from people there (the matching bandannas helped a lot..."Awww, look at the doggies!"). We always get the occasional odd comment from a few people though
- "Are they related?"
- "Are they brother/sister/husband/wife?"
- "Is this the mother?" directed at Nala (we get that a lot).
- "Is that a miniature lab?" directed at Simba. No such thing as a miniature lab. At least it's not breed standard at any rate. We just say "No, he's just a puppy".
- "Are you going to breed them?"
Anyway, after cruising through the Market, we headed down King St to window shop and expose Simba to more things. Quick stop in Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville to check out their collars and leashes and then a walk through Charleston Place where they got more love and attention. The dogs were starting to get pretty tired by now, so we trekked back up King St to the car and headed home.
It was a good day to hang out with the dogs.
Mole crickets
Managed to catch this critter uprooting a trail in our front lawn today. For such a little bug, it created a pretty large trail.
Probably explains all the tunneling and loose dirt we've got in the back yard too. The wife is on a mission to eradicate them now.
So much for Hallowe'en and Thanksgiving
A recent trip to Lowe's and Wal(ly)mart revealed outdoor shops full of Christmas crapstuff already. Did I sleep through Halloween and Thanksgiving or something?
If radio stations start with the Christmas music any earlier this year I may have to blow up my radio.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Got ham on the menu for this year's Thanksgiving. Going to see if I can make it like mom does. This marks the start of my eating season :)
Yummy Ham
This was my Thanksgiving ham from yesterday. Just a very simple preparation with a basic brown sugar/mustard glaze. Amazingly simple. Just grab one of those smoked hams from the meat section in the grocery store, stab it with a thermometer and bake until it reaches about 125°F (52°C). Take it out, slather on the glaze and throw it back in the oven until the thermometer beeps at 145°F (63°C). Remove, let it rest for a few minutes and carve.
Add some smashed potatoes, fresh peas and corn and you have Yummy.
Simba's big dog crate
A little over a year ago we bought Nala her 'big dog crate', the last crate she should need (unless she happens to chew it to bits).
Today Simba got his big dog crate. I think he looks pretty pleased with it.
Where did everything go???!!!
Stupid me. I accidentally dumped my blog directory when I hit the delete button, thinking I only had a file selected when the folder was selected instead. Then I watched helplessly as Windows zipped through and trashed everything. No recovery from the recycle bin either, because it was on a mounted Samba share from the server, and naturally I have no recent backup since the tape drive bought the farm on me.
*sigh*
Fortunately the main part of the blog is recoverable with a simple rebuild. About the only things lost are the images that were part of my blog posts. Considering how many of them there were, I may just bag it and not bother with recovering too many of them.
Trying out a new look
It's the Note Taking theme from The Style Contest. I thought it was kind of neat. Still tweaking it a little bit here and there.
How Many?
| Eugene | Mah |
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| HowManyOfMe.com | ||
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Not sure how accurate their statistics are, but I suppose if someone's looking for me, I wouldn't be hard to find.
Rainbow brain
What Color is Your Brain?
GREEN:
At work or in school: I work best by myself. I like to focus on my ideas until my desire for understanding is satisfied. I am easily bored if the subject holds no interest to me. Sometimes, it is hard for me to set priorities because so many things are of interest.
With friends: I may seem reserved. Although my thoughts and feelings run deep, I am uneasy with frequent displays of emotion. I enjoy people who are interesting and of high integrity.
With family: I am probably seen as a loner because I like a lot of private time to think. Sometimes, I find family activities boring and have difficulty following family rules that don't make sense to me. I show love by spending time with my family and sharing ideas and interests.
Take this quiz!
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Doggie weekend
We're beagle-sitting for a friend of ours this weekend. Finish off the work week with a trip to the dog park, doggie class for Nala tomorrow, Simba needs a bath, both dogs are getting ear treatments (just a mild ear infection) for 'yeastie beasties', which they are none too pleased about and JASPCA's Paws in the Park is happening on Sunday.
It will be interesting to see how 3 dogs and 2 people stuffed into a car get along.
RFID credit cards and (lack of) privacy?
A story over at Slashdot points to an NYT article describing how some researchers cobbled together a device to read those newfangled RFID credit cards. Everything was built using OTS components, and the researchers say an even smaller device could be made. So conceivably, a nefarious bad guy cracker with a modicum of skills could cobble one together, mingle through crowds and lift info off these cards through people's pants and purses.
The finding comes at a time of strong suspicion among privacy advocates and consumer groups about the security of the underlying technology, called radio frequency identification, or RFID. Though the systems are designed to allow a card to be read only in close proximity, researchers have found that they can extend the distance.
The actual distance is still a matter of debate, but the claims range from several inches to many feet. And even the shortest distance could allow a would-be card skimmer to mill about in a crowded place and pull data from the wallets of passersby, or to collect data from envelopes sitting in mailboxes.
Naturally credit card companies and banks say this is a highly impractical attack method given that other methods (i.e. phishing) are so much more effective. Excellent application of security through obscurity. I guess they haven't learned that even if it might be less practical than current methods, it just becomes another item in the bad guys' arsenal.
NYT also provides a link to a paper by the researchers. It's an interesting read with a lot of good info on how the RFID cards work.
Software engineering for scientists
The November/December issue of Computing in Science and Engineering has a great article titled Software Carpentry. It's basically a crash course on software engineering for non-programmer scientist types that need to write programs. All the courseware is online, or if you happen to live near University of Toronto, you can sign up to take the course.
From the website's overview:
Many scientists and engineers spend much of their lives programming, but only a handful have ever been taught how to do this well. As a result, they spend their time wrestling with software, instead of doing research, but have no idea how reliable or efficient their programs are.
This course is an intensive introduction to basic software development practices for scientists and engineers that can reduce the time they spend programming by 20-25%. All of the material is open source: it may be used freely by anyone for educational or commercial purposes, and research groups in academia and industry are actively encouraged to adapt it to their needs.
Sounds just like me. I'm looking forward to going through the course material and learning something useful that I can use to re-work some of my existing programming projects.
Watch out where your dog pees!
Bailey, a Staffordshire bull terrier, went for a wee against a faulty pylon, reports The Sun.
His owner Gary Davies said: "There was an almighty explosion and the whole street lit up. I turned round and the dog was on fire."
The power was off in homes in Middlestone Moor, Co Durham for five hours.
Fortunately, according to the article, Bailey is recovering and recuperating.
Virtual caffeine buzz
Energy Fiend is a website a friend of mine sent me. It's a different kind of blog. First you can find out how much caffeine is in some of your favourite food and drink. Then you can find out how much of your favourite caffeinated drink it would take to kill you. If that's not enough, you can also find out how much of your favourite caffeinated food would put you down.
Naturally you'd be feeling pretty ill way way before you get anywhere near that lethal dose. Kind of fun to see how much it would take though. 291 cans of Sunkist Orange Soda would put me down. Who knew!
Chandra Images of the Year
The votes are in and the best images of the year taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory over the past 7 years are posted. Some of them are pretty spectacular too.
My favourite of the winners is the 2002 image of the Crab Nebula which shows x-ray emissions from the cloud of gas surrounding the pulsar at the nebula's center.
There's another really cool composite image of the Crab Nebula made up of the Chandra image, an optical image from Hubble and an infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Pretty, huh?
Doggie sisters
Half sisters really, I guess. At Paws in the Park, we ran into a couple who owned another black lab that looked like Nala. Turned out both of them had the same sire, Angus, and were both about the same age. Different litter though. Don't they look cute together?
It's Dan's fault
Thanks to Dan for getting me stuck on Google Reader.
Here are some of the tidbits I'm sharing via Google Reader. I even added a new module to the sidebar. I need to find out how to style it so it fits the look of the blog a little better.
Now to figure out why my random image block isn't working anymore...
Doggie graduation
Simba graduated from Companion Dog class today. It was a tough final exam, having to do 1 minute sit and down stays, recalls through lots and lots of distractions, and being forced to leave all kinds of fun toys and tasty treats alone and ignore all the dogs among other tests. Simba made it through though despite crashing into one of the store displays during the recall) and passed with flying colours.
Below are some of his graduating classmates and their owners.
Fall back!
Don't forget to turn the clocks back before you go to bed Saturday night. Next year DST starts and ends 3 weeks earlier. Can't say as I really see the sense in that. Apparently someone convinced a bunch of politicians that it was a good idea though.
Still plenty of storm season
From the 1730 Tropical Weather Outlook:
A WESTWARD-MOVING TROPICAL WAVE...ACCOMPANIED BY A SURFACE LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM...IS LOCATED ABOUT 80 MILES NORTH OF BARBADOS AND ALSO ABOUT 110 MILES EAST OF MARTINIQUE IN THE CENTRAL LESSER ANTILLES. SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS HAVE INCREASED AND BECOME A LITTLE MORE CONCENTRATED NEAR THE CENTER...AND UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE FORECAST TO BECOME SOMEWHAT MORE FAVORABLE FOR SOME ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENT DURING THE NEXT DAY OR SO.
Might have to keep an eye on this one.
CSCLRC Lab Fun Day
Next weekend, Saturday Nov 4 the CSCLRC is hosting their second annual Lab Fun Day. It's being held at the James Island County Park in the dog park area, so even if you don't have a lab you can come. It should be a fun day of retrieving demonstrations, fun and games. Come out with your dog(s) and play!
Pumpkins
There weren't nearly as many pumpkins entered in this year's pumpkin contest (only saw 10 of them by the time I made it to the cafeteria) as there have been in previous years, but there were a couple of good ones.
This one from the Department of Oral Surgery was one of my favourites.
The OT folks took first prize this year with this Coastal Carolina Fair pumpkin
This one from the PT people took third place
Not sure which one was the 2nd place winner. I didn't see a second place trophy beside any of the other pumpkins.
New life for Hubble!
Huzzah!! NASA has given the go-ahead for one final Hubble servicing mission for the spring of 2008.
From the ScienceDaily release:
Shuttle astronauts will make one final house call to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope as part of a mission to extend and improve the observatory's capabilities through 2013.
The flight is tentatively targeted for launch during the spring to fall of 2008. Mission planners are working to determine the best location and vehicle in the manifest to support the needs of Hubble while minimizing impact to International Space Station assembly. The planners are investigating the best way to support a launch on need mission for the Hubble flight. The present option will keep Launch Pad 39-B at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla., available for such a rescue flight should it be necessary.
There will be a lot for the astronauts to do on this servicing mission. Two new cameras are to be installed, gyroscope and battery replacement and an attempt to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph are among many tasks to do.
This last mission should allow Hubble to operate at least until 2013 and fill in the gap until the James Webb telescope goes online.