December blogger meetup
The general concensus seems to be for next weekend without any date preference so I'll pick Saturday Dec 8, say around 6:30?
Leave a comment if you prefer another time.
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.
But it was in 3D!
So. Very. Cool.
The Cole's Notes version of the Reader's Digest edition of Beowulf (aka the movie) that is. Just think of how cool it would have been on IMAX.
Oh, right, the IMAX theater shut down. Damn.
The movie itself is a condensed version of an epic tale, but enough to bump it up on my Things To Read List.
The CG is pretty cool using the same technique used for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Movement is still a little artificial looking, but the detail is very good. Skin is still very hard to make look right in animation.
Grendel was pretty ugly, not entirely what I was expecting though. The dragon was very cool though. And *ouch*, the arm! The things a hero does to live up to his reputation. As to how faithful this movie adaptation is to the original epic, I don't know, but I'll find out soon.
If you're going to see it, make sure to see the 3D version. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Another hurricane season over
The 2007 season officially ended a couple days ago with no signs of any late brewing storms (yet) like in 2005.
The synopsis from NHC:
THE 2007 HURRICANE SEASON PRODUCED FOURTEEN NAMED STORMS...OF WHICH SIX BECAME HURRICANES...WITH TWO OF THE HURRICANES ATTAINING MAJOR HURRICANE (CATEGORY THREE OR HIGHER ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE) STATUS. IN ADDITION...TWO OTHER TROPICAL DEPRESSIONS FORMED DURING THE YEAR. THE NUMBERS OF HURRICANES AND MAJOR HURRICANES WERE NEAR THE LONG-TERM AVERAGES FOR A SEASON BUT THE NUMBER OF NAMED STORMS WAS SLIGHTLY ABOVE AVERAGE. IN TERMS OF THE NOAA ACCUMULATED CYCLONE ENERGY (ACE) INDEX...WHICH MEASURES THE COLLECTIVE STRENGTH AND DURATION OF NAMED STORMS AND HURRICANES... THE SEASON HAD ABOUT 82 PERCENT OF THE 1951-2000 MEDIAN ACTIVITY... THE LOWEST OBSERVED SINCE 2002. DESPITE THE NEAR-AVERAGE OVERALL ACTIVITY...TWO CATEGORY 5 HURRICANES...DEAN AND FELIX...MADE LANDFALL DURING THIS SEASON FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE RECORDS BEGAN IN 1851.
The NOAA summary contains some interesting info too.
It's winter. Get over it.
Seriously, what's with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the TV weather people over snow and how it's all coming down weeks before the official start of winter? This morning I heard 3 separate weather people lament about all those places in the northeast and midwest getting dumped on and how winter doesn't even officially start for another three weeks.
Really now, you're supposed to be weather professionals. Snow is a fact of life in these places. The real story should be why hasn't the snow come earlier like it's supposed to? Is anybody living in a winter city really all that surprised they're getting snow? Most of them are probably more surprised the snow didn't come three weeks ago.
When it 30 cm of snow falls in a place like Charleston, that's a worthy weather story. The snow that's falling in the northeast and midwest? That's just normal.
December meetup: mark your calendars
Don't forget the December meetup at El Bohio (check the map if you need directions) this Saturday, December 8 at 6:30.
I'll be there early to make sure we have a big enough space. From the comments so far it looks like around 8-10 people. If you're planning on coming (or even a maybe) leave a comment.
Mythbusters were here!
And I missed them! Why didn't anybody tell me! They were practically underneath my office in the 'Confederate Steam Gun ' episode that aired last night.
The Mythbusting trio of Grant, Tory and Kari were here checking out the fMRI lie detecting research going on. Not sure when it was filmed, but they were here getting scanned on the 3T magnet to see if they could beat the fMRI lie detector.
Oh, I'm so bummed I missed seeing that go on.
A night in Cuba
Well, almost.
Yesterday's meetup was a little sparsely attended with just Chuck, Vera, Mike and myself, but the four of us had a good time chatting and sharing travel related stories.
Chuck had his camera with him, so we got our server to snap this photo of us and the Cuba poster.
So much for the end of the season
There's a late-comer to the party named Olga which probably won't be sticking around for very long.
OLGA CURRENTLY HAS GOOD OUTFLOW OVER THE NORTHWESTERN SEMICIRCLE...WITH OUTFLOW AND CONVECTION IN THE SOUTHEASTERN SEMICIRCLE SUPPRESSED BY THE UPPER-LEVEL LOW. IN THE SHORT-TERM...THIS PATTERN IS FAVORABLE FOR SOME STRENGTHENING...AND THE INTENSITY FORECAST CALLS FOR MODEST INTENSIFICATION BEFORE THE CENTER REACHES THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC ON TUESDAY. AFTER THAT...THE LARGE-SCALE MODELS FORECAST STRONG WESTERLY VERTICAL WIND SHEAR TO DEVELOP ALONG THE FORECAST TRACK. THAT...COMBINED WITH THE LIKELY DISRUPTION OF THE CIRCULATION BY PASSAGE OVER HISPANIOLA...SHOULD CAUSE WEAKENING.
Computer on life support
My computer at home picked yesterday to decide that the only bootable device it had was the floppy drive. Not sure what's going on, but no amount of cajoling, bribery or tinkering in the BIOS was able to get it to see anything other than the floppy drive as a bootable device. The BIOS is recognizing all the drives, just doesn't let me choose any of them as a boot disk. Darned thing won't even boot off a CD either.
On the plus side, it boots up just fine from floppy.
Time for some intensive troubleshooting. I have a feeling I'll have to accelerate my plans to replace this computer and get a new one much sooner than I planned. I was really enjoying the Powerleaped CPU too. It'll be really disappointing if I can't get the computer up and running again.
Maybe I can just get a new motherboard off EBay.
Update: I was able to boot up another computer using my boot drive, so I think something on the motherboard finally gave out.
My gadgets are dying!
Man, I'm just having no joy with any of my electronic stuff this weekend. Now there's no audio coming out of the DVD player. I was watching Casablanca, turned it off to head out to a Christmas party, and when I start it back up after coming back, no audio!
Argh.
Does it come with a generator?
Over at AnandTech, they take a look at the triple-SLI graphics configuration made possible with nVidia's newest 780i chipset. Three GeForce 8800 cards in one box. That's some serious drool inducing graphics processing power. Minimum power supply specs? A whopping 1.1 kW! That's more than most microwaves ovens in the average kitchen.
According to the power consumption tests they did, the system draws a little over 400 W just idling and over 700 W under load playing Bioshock.
Ok, it's a pretty extreme configuration that probably doesn't appeal to anybody except the most hardcore of gamers (and maybe the number-crunching performance junkies out there). What do normal people need with three GPUs in a system anyway. If you've got one of these, you're not going to be doing anything else with it anyway because there's no room left for any other PCI/PCIe cards.
I bet a fully outfitted system would be pretty cool for doing 3D word (wicked cool gaming too of course), but would probably cost as much as a small car. I think I could have some fun with one. Will 3x SLI catch on? Outside of the small niche market of hardcore gamers and performance junkies I doubt it. With nVidia's CUDA though, it might appeal to number crunchers looking for supercomputer-class processing in a (relatively) cheap desktop solution.
I wonder if a generator will be listed as an option...
Two is enough for now
I really, really need to stop cruising through lab rescue listings before I end up with a third one.
I'm sure the dogs wouldn't mind another addition to the pack. I just need to keep reminding myself that I have my hands more than full with Nala and Simba already.
That doesn't mean you can't give one a good home though.
Dog's Letter to Santa
Dear Santa,
I'm sorry I chased the kitty-cat.
I won't do it again!
I try hard to be a good -- wait, there's a cat crossing th
Stolen from an email I got today
Random thought walking
Random thoughts pop into my head all the time, which usually leads me on a random walk of thoughts.
Walking down the stairs, 'spoon' popped into my head.
I followed that to 'There is no spoon' from The Matrix.
That took me to 'Spoooon!!!!' from The Tick. Tick's battle cry always seems to have a good time running through my head so it stuck around for a while.
Spoooon!!!!
Spooooooooon!!!!!!!!!!
Spooon?
Then when I got back to my desk, I thought it might be interesting to Google 'spoon quotes' and see what came up.
"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon." - EM Forster
"Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed." - Buddha
"One who speaks fair words feeds you with an empty spoon" - Italian proverb
"High School is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just plain useless." - John Mayer
Happy Birthday Nala!
Nala turns 3 today!
Here she is 3 months old.
And here she is yesterday.
She's very focused on the cookie I have in my hand.
New toy
Nala really enjoyed one of the new toys I got for her today. It's supposed to be one of those super tough soft squeaky toys. Knowing Nala, it won't take her long to eviscerate and de-squeak.
Fedora at home?
I've had Fedora on my desktop at work for a few months now, and now I'm thinking about dumping Windows at home too.
Except for a few apps like Quicken, and maybe a few games, I think I should be able to make the switch to Fedora at home pretty seamless. I might be able to get around that by using Wine, or maybe even doing the virtual machine thing. I will probably lose the cool function keys on my new keyboard though, unless I can find a way to make them work in Fedora.
Before I make the switch, I'll need to do some research and see if anybody out there has posted any experience with some of my more commonly used apps under Linux.