Just saw these two articles over at Slashdot.
These kinds of things really bug me. Big corporations and special interest groups abusing the legal system in what amounts to extortion. Buying politicians to get stupid legislation introduced. Makes me want to smack them all upside the head for being idiots.
Ok, show of hands, who really likes driving?
Me, I hate driving. Especially city driving. Well, at the very least, it's not very high on my list of preferred activities.
Why is it that some people turn into ignorant inconsiderate boobs when the seal themselves into their cars/SUVs/trucks?
After driving around here for a while, I've decided that while the roads are decidedly better than they were in Detroit, the drivers are not.
A few things I've observed in my four years of driving around here. Some of these are probably not unique to here, but I've noticed them more than other places.
1. Most people don't use turn signals. Apparently, this area has a large population of people who become telepathic once they get into their cars. So instead of using turn signals, they just transmit their thoughts to other drivers around them. Or else they think everyone else becomes telepathic in their cars, and should be able to read their mind to find out when they're turning.
2. When *you* use your turn signal, the person behind you in the lane you're changing into seems to take it as a personal offense and speeds up so you can't change lanes. They seem to think you're trying to move in on their territory, or that you're trying to get ahead of them in a race.
3. The minimum speed is usually around 5-15 mph over the posted speed limit. A lot of times, this usually ends up in the speeders making it to the red light a couple of seconds before I do. It's not like they're getting to their destination any faster.
4. Tailgaters. Plenty of those around here. Even though I might be cruising down the interstate at 70 (10 mph over the posted limit), it's still not fast enough for a lot of people around here. So they run up behind you and stay there until you have to slow down for the traffic ahead, or move over. Then they zoom ahead at 80, only to have to slow down for the slower traffic ahead. Sometimes I think people around here all think they're NASCAR drivers or something.
5. People around here always seem to be in a rush. Once they get into their car, it's like they *have* to get to their destination yesterday. So they weave in and out of traffic, flip back and forth between lanes so that they're closest to the light.
6. Accidents. Every day, there's always an accident. And usually they happen in the same place or the same area. Pay attention people!
7. The mistaken belief that other drivers are telepathic also leads to the problem that very few people do shoulder checks before changing lanes. More than a few times I've almost been broadsided by someone who didn't bother to check if anyone was beside them before changing lanes. Oh, but I forgot...I'm supposed to be telepathic, so I should have read the other person's mind to know that he was going to change lanes.
8. There are a lot of on and off-ramps on the interstate here where people are merging. People already on the interstate apparently think that those trying to merge on don't deserve to be there, so they don't let anybody merge, forcing prospective highway drivers to slow down or stop and wait for a long enough break to get on. Of course this causes traffic to back up behind the prospective highway driver. The new highway driver, once on the interstate, takes a while to accelerate to highway speeds, so the person barreling down behind him is forced to slow down, causing the rest of highway traffic to slow down.
9. Usually when it rains here, it *really* rains. Sheets of rain. Buckets and buckets. Plenty of roads flood, and there are plenty of areas where water pools pretty deep. I frequently get passed by people going way over the speed limit, while I've slowed down because rain has reduced visibility to less than 2 car lengths. Apparently in the world they live in it's not raining like it is in my world.
Ok, I guess that's enough ranting for now.
Good grief. Spam touting cheap viagra is bad enough in my email. now i'm getting it in my blog. Spammers need to be taken somewhere out back and shot. Many times. With large calibre bullets. Large cannons would be even better.
What is it about people that makes them think they can make others responsible for their own stupidity? More and more now, you read in the news about someone suing some company or another for something stupid that they did. All because they think it's someone else's fault. True Stella Awards has loads of stories like this.
This morning I was reading in the paper about Phillip Morris settling a case for $2M because some woman left a burning cigarette between the front seats of her car resulting in her daughter getting burned by the subsequent fire. A tragic accident yes, but I fail to see how PM would be responsible for her stupidity for leaving a burning cigarette anywhere other than the ashtray of her car.
Now I'm not advocating PM or anything, or any of their products (especiallyl cigarettes). I just think that in this particular case (granted that I know very little of the details), PM shouldn't have settled. Even though there was no explicit acknowledgement of responsibility, settling out of court always seems to imply responsibility.
People need to take responsibility for their actions and choices, and the consequences and results of those actions. Making other people take the blame for your own stupidity sends society into a rapid downward spiral that benefits nobody except lawyers. They get rich taking the lion's share of the settlement money, the people that sued end up looking like idiots even though they win, and everybody else pays higher prices to cover corporate lawsuit losses.
Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid.
Well, I guess I'm not the only one who's getting their blog spammed by spam wankers. It's annoying to find new comments in my blog only to discover it's just spam. I still think they should all be shot with very large cannons.
At least now there might be a possible solution coming soon. Reading & Writing has also done some work tracing one of the more recent blog spammers.
One thing I've always wondered is why people don't use more solar power. Especially in southern and equatorial regions where there's plenty of sunny days. There are week long stretches where there's not a cloud in the sky, and everything outside is baking in the sun. Everytime I look around, I see all this potential energy that could be converted and used. That's probably because I was going to be an astrophysicist before I switched to medical physics, so I know how much energy there is hitting the Earth in the form of sunlight.
Solar cells (also called photovoltaics in the industry) are thin and easily applied. Nowadays, solar cells are more efficient than they were a few years ago. You can put them anywhere. On the roof of your house, the top of your car, on your garage. Anywhere that gets sunlight.
They're brittle you say? Encase them in a clear plastic box. That'll protect them from getting pooped on by birds too.
They don't generate enough power? Who cares. So what if a bank of solar cells can't generate enough power to run your house. All you need is for it to generate power so you don't need to draw as much from the power grid. You still get lower energy costs. And if you can generate enough to run your house, then terrific!
Expensive? Sure, but in the long run, you'll be saving money.
Storage batteries? Only if you're generating more energy than you use. And even if you do, you could probably negotiate with your power utility to funnel the excess back into the grid for a credit on your power bill, lowering your power costs even more.
Solar power can even be used to heat water, giving your hot water heater a break.
The US needs to seriously look at alternative sources of energy, instead of digging for more oil or beating countries into submission to get theirs.. When I was in elementary school back in the 70s, energy conservation was the big message. We were always told to turn the lights off in empty rooms, walk instead of taking your car for short trips. Use public transportation. This was the time of the big oil crisis, OPEC embargoes and all that, although at the time I was too young to know or care about that stuff. The oil crisis is over, oil still remains a finite resouce, but consumption has skyrocketed.
Now, as I go around my daily routine, I see everybody driving big SUVs and trucks that get a few dozen miles per gallon of gas. I walk around downtown during the evening, and there are empty office buildings with all their lights on. People drive their cars down the block to the grocery store. Heck, in my apartment complex, people drive the hundred meters or so it takes to just get to the pool!
Now, I'm certainly not a tree hugging, hemp wearing rabid environmentalist. I don't think everyone should stop driving gas guzzling cars. I do recycle what I can. I drive my car to places where I can't walk to, but I don't carpool (athough I've thought about it). I'm just wishing people would be more responsible and forward thinking about their resource consumption.
I certainly don't think we're headed into a energy crisis. We have energy issues, definitely. Witness what happens every summer when energy usage jumps as people crank up their air conditioners and fans. Nothing emergent or catastrophic yet. It will happen eventually though, and sooner rather than later if nothing is done about it now.
Things to read and consider:
Energy Crisis: Chicken Little Speaks
Is There an Energy Crisis? at ABC News
The Coming Energy Crisis?
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
How to Make a Solar Power Generator for Less Than $300
Solar Energy International
MrSolar.com, a place to buy stuff to 'solarize' your house.
Alternative Renewable Energy at Energy Conservation News and Resources
This comes from an article in the Edmonton section of Canada.com.
an American from San Diego is quoted saying: "What bugs me about Canadians, if I may, is that they wear that damn patch on their bags, the Canadian flag patch. That way, they differentiate themselves from us."
Here's another good one
"Some participants expressed a certain amount of annoyance at what is perceived as a systematic attempt by Canadians to make the statement that they are not Americans by sporting the maple leaf,"
Well, duh, that's because we aren't Americans. We're Canadians. And most of us are damn proud of it too.
It's an article about how Canadians should be more respectful of Americans' feelings when travelling abroad, because of how US foreign policy is making Americans feel isolated and unsupported in the world.
Now, I personally don't have anything against the US (maybe aside from their slightly arrogant outlook on the rest of the world). I work and live there, and I even married one. I just have no desire to become one, or to be labelled as one. I know it bugs many Canadians to no end when people try to lump Canadians and Americans into the same pot, or the endless jokes about Canada being the 52nd state. We put the maple leaf on our luggage so that we can be identified as Canadians.
Canadian, and very proud to be one.
I've seen the USPTO grant some pretty ridiculous patents over the past few years, but I think patent 6,671,714 (story at Slashdot and Geek.com) takes the cake.
From the abstract of the patent:
The present invention comprises a method, apparatus and business system for allowing on-line communications with members of a group of recipients for whom the invention has been implemented. A group may, for example, comprise members of a particular business or profession. For example, a group may consist of doctors admitted to practice medicine in the United States. Individual members of the group may or may not have existing internet presences. The invention allows online users to communicate with each member of a given group regardless of whether or not the member has an existing internet presence. In one or more embodiments, the invention does so by setting up a database of contact information for members of the group, creating an internet presence for each member of such group, creating an on-line user interface allowing a user to access the member's created internet presence, and providing means of communications between the created internet presence and the member recipient.
And furthermore, claim
- A method for assigning URL's and e-mail addresses to members of a group comprising the steps of:
- assigning each member of said group a URL of the form "name.subdomain.domain"; and
- assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form "name@subdomain.domain;"
- wherein the "name" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same and unique for each particular one of said members such that an only difference between said URL and said e-mail address for said member is that in said URL the "@" symbol of the e-mail address is replaced with a "." and wherein said "subdomain" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same for all members of said group.
- The method of claim 1 wherein said members of said group comprise members of a licensed profession.
So essentially what the patent was granted for is a way of assigning domain names, URLs and email addresses like
And as patent owners are prone to do, the patent owner promptly proceeded to file lawsuits against two TLD registration companies for patent infringement, essentially a form of government santioned extortion. A patent that should never have been granted if collective people at the USPTO had a brain among them. A patent for which it should be fairly trivial to find prior art for, considering the patent was only filed in 1999.
Really makes one wonder about the people who work at the USPTO and review applications. How much research gets done researching the validity of a patent? What kind of training and background do these examiners have? Some of patents that have been granted recently really want to make you smack all of them with an idiot stick.
I really hate it when I walk into the men's bathroom and find all (or most) of the urinals filled with yellow water. It's just gross. And sometimes, if it's been a while, you walk into the bathroom and get assaulted by the odour of stale pee left in the urinal. Eewww.
What's even worse is when I'm doing my business, and the other guy finishes his and leaves without so much as a flush or attempted flush. Sometimes he'll give a quick whack to the handle, which is completely ineffective. And it's not like they don't know it didn't flush properly. Urinals make distinctive noises when they're flushed successfully. A quick yank on the handle and a little bit of water dribbling down does not a flush make, and definitely does not make that distinctive sound.
Guys, I mean really, is it that difficult to push the lever or button to flush after you're finished? Let the water flow and run your own waste water away. Leave a nice mostly clean urinal for the next guy. Do you leave your toilet at home unflushed after doing your business? Are you trying to mark your territory and lay claim to the bathroom? Is the next guy supposed to walk in, smell stale pee and think "Oh, this one belongs to someone else...I'd better find another one"?
I mean, I know guys are supposed to be gross and disgusting creatures, but really. Flush, please! It's not that hard!
Hmm, they're back. And all from the same IPs the last few days (213.91.217.14, 213.91.217.15 and 213.240.200.127). Just today I've had to dump 3 comments that made it past the blacklist. It caught 6 of them in the past two days though. Added the domains to the blacklist, so they shouldn't be back. Think I'll have to work on some regexps to broaden the blacklist.
I have to question the intelligence of these guys. You'd think after they were blocked once, they'd get a clue.
Now, where did I put that cannon...
Hey dzwonki|polifoniczne guy, go away. This weblog (or any other weblog for that matter) was not created for you to fill with links to your lame web site. Grab a clue when your post attempts get rejected and realize that your "Cool article" posts aren't welcome.
So that you can bring morning rush hour traffic to a complete standstill for 15 minutes while the drawbridge is raised and lowered so you can get one with your boating day.
So this was my day yesterday after the AAPM Summer School ended.
13:45: Arrived @ airport. Self check-in didn't work. Need to stand in long line.
14:10: Stuck in check-in line from hell. Only 2 ticket counter people. Good rant material for Blog. Waiting 40 min for ticket clerk to help one person.
14:35: Hour later. Finally checked in. Off to gate.
14:52: Flight to Charlotte delayed 1 hr due to weather. Will miss connecting flight to Charleston. Need to find out details on next flight.
15:12: Waiting in another line to see about getting rebooked.
15:26: Flight to Charlotte now scheduled to arrive @ 7PM in Charlotte .
15:42: Charlotte flight scheduled to leave @ 17:30. Later 19:55 flight to Charleston should be doable.
15:52: Should have taken my keyboard out of my bag before checking it.
16:02: Found one of those PalmOne airport stores.
16:19: Found book called How To Be A Canadian. Had to buy it.
17:36: On the plane at last!
19:03: Landed in Charlotte.
19:14: Flight to Charleston delayed too. Argh. C Concourse very moldy smelling. Keep getting busy signals trying to call Y.
20:09: On the plane at last.
20:15: Eek. Lots of babies on this flight. Hope they're all sleepy. With my luck today, they're all awake, cranky and screaming.
20:36: Still on the plane. Still on the ground.
20:40: Still on the plane. In the air now.
21:22: Finished the book. Mildly amusing and easy read.
21:35: Landed in Charleston.
22:30: Just when I thought I was home free. No luggage. Crap.
23:00: Arrive at home finally.
It was supposed to have been a flight that left Pittsburgh at 4PM and got me back to Charleston at 7. That flight out to Pittsburgh was probably a sign of what I could have expected on the way back home.
Anyone who's been to an airport recently will notice that the major airlines have installed those self check-in terminals. The idea is that you swipe your credit card so they know who you are and it spits out your boarding pass. Sometimes it doesn't work, so you have to enter another piece of information, like your ticket number. Sometimes that still doesn't work so you enter some other piece of information like the flight number. And if that doesn't uniquely identify you to the system, you're stuck standing in line waiting for a ticket agent to issue you a boarding pass.
So, airlines, if you're going to do this, you need to make sure it's much more robust and that it works for everyone. There's not much point in implementing the check-in terminals if it's going to result in long lines of hundreds of people who end up having to see the one or two ticket agents you only have on duty because you've reduced staffing (because the check-in terminals are supposed to be "more efficient").
There's a radio station here that's already started up with the Christmas music already. What's up with that? Last year I didn't hear my first Christmas tune until Nov 20th. This year it's barely a week into November and already they're starting up with the Christmas songs. Gaaahh!
Adding to the patent insanity, apparently now programming language operators are fair game for patenting. Seems a patent has been applied for the IsNOt operator in BASIC.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A system, method and computer-readable medium support the use of a single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine if the two variables point to different locations in memory, that is, the reverse of the existing "Is" operator in a BASIC programming language or a derivative of BASIC or BASIC-like programming language. In one embodiment of the invention, the memory locations represent objects. The new operator enables a user to determine if the left operand (e.g., a reference type) "is not" the same instance as the reference type listed as the right operand. The use of a single operand for this concept may increase the readability of the programming language.
I'm starting to think that the cake and cookie decorating industry is just one big scam to get us to buy horribly over-priced products just to make treats look good.
It's the only explanation I can come up with why a 5 kg bag of sugar only costs $3, but a tiny little 63 g bottle of coloured sugar costs almost $2. That's like more than 50x the price of regular sugar! I mean really, how hard can it be to turn plain old sugar red or green? It's a scam, a total scam I tell you!
Hey lady, yakking on your cell phone cruising down the highway is bad enough. Next time you might also want to make sure there isn't anyone next to you when you decide to change lanes.
It's a good thing at least one person was paying attention to what's going on around them.
The parkade I'm assigned to at work has 3 entrances, but only two lanes leading up to them. The left lane goes to the middle entrance, and the right lane goes to the right entrance leaving the left entrance laneless. Invariably at the busy times there are cars lined up in the two lanes in front of two of the entrances, but for some reason nobody ever uses the third entrance to the left. Every now and then someone (like me) will turn off and use it, but for the most part that third entrance goes unused. It's very odd. People here are always in such a rush once they get into their cars, but sit patiently in front of the parkade entrance waiting their turn and ignoring that third entrance.
Now there's a bunch of construction going on for the new hospital next to the parkade, and one of the lanes is blocked off leaving just the lane going to the middle entrance.
Do you know what they do now?
They all line up in front of the middle entrance and leave the two side entrances unused.
I don't know if I should yell or laugh at them for their stupidity.
Man, those comment spammers are relentless. All month I've been logging 404 errors from comment spammers with spammy referrer URLs trying to hit my MT installation. If they were actually hitting the scripts (a few are), I might be really annoyed. But the fact that they're all going to a bad URL and just getting 404 pages only has me mildly annoyed at the moment. What's more puzzling is that none of the spammy referrer URLs are even real. So what are these guys tring to point people to? And if they keep getting 404 errors, why do they keep trying? These guys are either incredibly stupid or their spambots are incredibly stupid. Or more likely both.
It certainly didn't take long for lawyers to jump on Vioxx. Just a couple of days after Merck announced they were pulling it, I saw TV commercials from local legal firms urging people who'd been taking it to contact them. With Vioxx as a warm-up, I'm sure it will take even less time for them to jump on Pfizer and Celebrex.
It kind of strikes me as ironic that just a few years ago there was much hubbub about the FDA's lengthy drug approval process and how it was keeping potentially life-saving/altering drugs out of the hands of people who could benefit from them. These drugs can help peeople. These drugs can save peoples' lives. Why isn't the FDA approving them for clinical use? What's taking them so long? The FDA bureaucracy must be overhauled so that these wonderdrugs can be approved faster. Speed up the process!
So the FDA did streamline their drug approval process so that drugs would be approved for clinical use faster.
Now all the commotion is about how the FDA didn't spend enough time studying the effects of things like the COX-2 inhibitor class drugs. They're releasing drugs too soon. They shouldn't have approved these drugs before knowing the long term effects. Why didn't they study them longer?
Either way, the FDA is stuck between a rock and a hard place and someone at the FDA's CDER gets screwed. Drug companies and potential drug beneficiaries (the patients) clamour for the newest drugs to be released expediently. To do that you shorten the time the drugs are studied and evaluated. That means fewer long-term studies. But then if a long-term adverse effect is discovered, the FDA gets blasted for not studying the drug long enough and rushing drugs to market before knowing the long-term effects.
People seem to forget (or conveniently ignore) the fact that for every drug that does get approved, there are several more that are blocked because adverse effects were found or failed to show as much of an effect as expected.
So how do people want it, over easy or fried hard?
Those pesky pop-under ads are back. After switching to Firefox, it was so nice never having to see pop-up/under ads anymore. But someone's figured out a way around Firefox's pop-up/under ad blocking and now they're polluting my eyeballs again.
Argh.
So far only one website I (used to) visit on a regular basis (which I won't be anymore) has these new pop-up ads. Web advertising has become one of those necessary evils. I can live with ads plastered all over a website (obviously the less obtrusive and annoying, the better), but making ads pop up windows all over my screen like weeds is a guaranteed way of driving my eyeballs away from a site. I'm sure the same goes for many other geeks too.
Pop-up ads...just say no.
Halloween pumpkins are barely in the trash and the endless loop of Christmas songs has started on one of the local radio stations already. Last year it didn't start until the 10th. Seems to have started a full week earlier this year! Already saw a bunch of Christmas stuff on the shelves well before Halloween. If the goal is Christmas saturation/aggravation by Thanksgiving, it looks like stores are well on the way.
Halloween: it's the new Thanksgiving.
I've never been a big fan of McDonald's, both from a food and service stand point, but the wife gets these cravings for McDonald's every now and then, so we end up there on occasion. Yesterday was one of those occasions, and what probably should only have been a few minutes waiting in the drive-thru lane turned into about 30 at the McDonald on the peninsula. This particular McDonald's has always had pretty crappy service to begin with, but we were there and the wife wanted a cheeseburger. I suppose when I restarted the car to move up to the ordering sign, we should have taken that as an indication of things to come.
So there we are, third in line wondering what's taking the person so long to order. Finally he drives off, the lady in front of us starts up the car and drives up to the speaker. After waiting a few more minutes, she gives multiple orders, asking for the price after each one. This takes about 10 minutes.
Finally we make it up to the speaker, and end up waiting for another 5 minutes before a staticy voice says she'll be with us in a minute. 5 more minutes pass by with cars behind us deciding to bail out and leave. We probably should have joined them.
15 minutes *after* we reach the speaker, the staticy voice comes back and asks for our order, which we have to give *twice* because apparently weweretalkingtoofast the first time. S..o....w..e....s..p..o..k..e....s..l..o..w..e..r. Finally, we got our order in. Drive up to the window, pay...and wait some more.
We get the drink we ordered, but then someone says the McNuggets were dropped, and ask us to pull forward to...you guessed it, wait some more. At this point I was about ready to go inside and tell them to forget the order and get a refund. Finally after waiting another 5 minutes, we got our stuff (minus straw, napkins and sauce for the McNuggets) and left.
Needless to say, I think that'll be the last time we go to this particular McD's (or any other one if I had my druthers)
The people responsible for this act should be made to die a slow painful death.
From the MSNBC story:
The Drug Enforcement Administration arrested 22 Colombian nationals for smuggling heroin into the United States via various methods, including surgically implanting the drug into puppies, officials said Wednesday.The Colombian organization brought more than 20 kilograms of heroin into the United States, concealing some of it by slitting open purebred puppies, according to John P. Gilbride, the DEA's New York Field Division special agent-in-charge, in a news release.
At least three puppies died from having liquid heroin packets placed inside them and then being stitched back up, DEA spokesman David Ausiello said.
Just reading about it and seeing some of the pictures makes my stomach turn.
After taking the dogs out to the dog park earlier this morning, we decided to stop off at the Farmer's Market and work on socializing Simba a little more. The dogs are always a little easier to handle when they're just a little bit pooped out after running around the dog park.
This morning was a little on the toasty side and they're also just finished a long game of chase and wrestle, so naturally the dogs were panting pretty hard. To top it off, Simba's not exactly great on the leash and tends to pull a lot (working on it) so it makes him look like he's panting really really hard.
There's a very convenient doggie water fountain in Marion Square, so after camping out there for about 10 minutes letting the dogs drink their fill we headed off to walk around. We didn't get very far before some lady walked up to us and said "Your puppy is way too thirsty so I'm donating this bottle of water to him. It just hurts my heart to see him like that." Just like that and walked away. Tried to tell her that he had just been at the fountain drinking for the past 10 minutes, but she was already walking away by then.
Now I appreciate the concern over the dog and everything, but just the way the woman spoke to us made both the wife and me feel like we were terrible dog owners dragging this poor thirsty puppy around. No questions, no bothering to ask if the dog is all right or anything. A simple "Is your puppy thirsty? Does he need some water?" would have been much nicer. Then I would have been able to explain that he's already had lots to drink at the water fountain and then stopped at the Good Dog Bakery booth a few meters away to top off for good measure. He's just panting because it's hot, not because he's thirsty. Dogs do that. When it's hot, they pant and hang their tongues out. When they're thirsty, they don't pant; they drink water.
Oh, and another thing for parents. If your kid wants to offer someone's dog a treat or some food, tell them ask the owners first. Even though most dogs will eat most everything, some things end up coming right back up a few hours later for the owners to deal with. And some dogs don't always react well to a kid thrusting something into its' face without warning. The wife would like to apologize for startling the poor girl trying to give Nala a bite of her cheese cracker. She really didn't mean to scare anyone. Her loud "No!" was meant for Nala and not at all for the girl.
One thing that drives me batty about submitting manuscripts to journals is that just about every one of them has a slightly different format for how they want things. Everything from margins, fonts and how things are referenced/cited to the title page and file format for the submitted manuscript. Drives me nuts.
AIP has a good system going where you can use LaTeX and the RevTeX macros to create your manuscript. All you do is specify the journal you're submitting to in the \documentclass and it's ready for submission. The journal style file takes care of all the formatting for you. Works for all the AIP journals. It's great. Sadly TeX/LaTex remains obscure enough outside the basic sciences that there aren't any medical related journals that I know of (at least none that I would be submitting manuscripts to anyway) that take TeX/LaTeX files. It's a shame really. The more I do with LaTeX, the more I like it. The output that's generated looks so much nicer than anything Word puts out, and doing equations/figures is dead easy. The learning curve is a little bit steeper, but if you can figure out HTML, basic TeX is well within your grasp. Both are essentially just markup languages so there's really not that much to learn.
Honestly, MS Word sucks for creating manuscripts for publication (IMO). You spend all your time making things look right, and then if you take it to another computer where the default styles/formats might be slightly different, everything looks screwed up. Do you fix it? Leave it alone? Hope it looks ok to the journal editor? Will the reviewers ding you for a crappy looking manuscript because their styles/formats have messed up your manuscript?
My ideal world? Every journal publisher would provide LaTeX style files for their journals and accept LaTeX manuscripts, or at least provide MS Word style libraries and/or templates for their journals (like AIP's Toolkit 2000). I think it would make creating manuscripts so much easier.
Ok, I'm done now (can you tell I've been spending all day trying to cram my manuscript into a Word document?).
Now that I'm starting to do a little more research and submitting things for publications, I'm learning just how utterly useless Microsoft Excel is for graphs that aren't destined for screen or online presentations.
Totally and completely useless.
I'm sure this is nothing new to fellow scientists out there. This of course begs the question: Why can't Excel create publication quality* graphs and charts yet? People have been using Excel to do analysis, number crunching and graphing for years and years now ever since it came out. So why doesn't Excel support exporting graphs as a vector based graphics file like EPS (and not just a bitmap rendered as a bunch of PS commands either).
Excel is still an excellent tool for crunching numbers and doing analysis. Lots of functions, easy to do quick data visualization and other things. The graphs it does make are usually pretty decent looking, but when it comes to creating publication quality graphs, fuggedaboutit.
This leaves me with hunting for (free) alternatives to my graph making like R, Octave or Gnuplot . I'm currently using R and Gnuplot for my current project, although climbing the learning curve for both programs is making the going a little bit slow. They are becoming quite useful though.
*Publication quality generally means 300-600 dpi, 7-10 cm long, black/white or grayscale (colour if you can afford to pay for it) or some kind of vector based graphics format like EPS.
Just got an email saying the itinerary for my reunion trip in September has changed so that on the flight back, I'm supposed to be going from Edmonton to Denver to Washington Dulles and finally to Charleston. It's almost 10 hours of flight time and 13 hours from start to finish (not including the drive to and from airports) and nearly double what it was before. Major suckage. Really, really major suckage.
It's a far cry from the original Edmonton->Chicago->Charleston that I originally booked. I may have to call and see what can be done about switching it back to the way it was, if it's even possible.
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.
I just wanted to offer my thanks to the US government for their immense wisdom in pushing DST back three weeks and making me wake up in the dark again. The extra two weeks of morning darkness I'll be getting is just what I needed.
Thanks again.
One of the reasons I like reading Bad Astronomy Blog is The Bad Astronomer's (aka Phil Plait) penchant for calling out states, school boards, educators and who-not trying to push alternative "scientific" theories into schools (which for the most part are fairly thinly veiled attempts at pushing a creationist teaching agenda). Phil does this really well.
I find it all quite amusing, ironic and sad all at the same time (the politicians and their bills, not Phil).
Consider this. You can hardly go a day without hearing someone bashing or criticizing the state of public education, or reading about the latest study on how kids in the US fare so poorly in compared to other countries. Everybody complains about the sorry state of public education in the US (despite the efforts of all the good teachers out there). Yet just about everywhere you turn, there is some politician out there who insists on dumbing down the curriculum even more. They create bills or rules that supposedly allow educators the 'freedom' to teach 'alternative scientific theories' (we all know what that means) at the expense of the real science.
It's the Doomination of America I tell you. Doom! DOOM!
Think about it. Instead of letting teachers give kids a real education or trying to improve the state of public education in the country, they want to fill the curriculum with crap. I mean really, what are you thinking! The only thing kids are learning these days is how to pass those stupid standardized tests (and most of them aren't even doing that!). You want to replace what little science they're learning with crap and expect more students to pass??!!
Seriously, doesn't that just make you want to go WTF?
WTF! WTF!
Don't even get me started on the endless standardized testing and the idiocy that is "No Child Left Behind" either.
I like The Bad Astronomer. Phil's my hero.
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There's stupidity in the news every day, but I usually don't see it in what little news I read. Yesterday seemed to be a day for me to encounter an unusual amount of it.
Just to show that idiocy in the legal system isn't the sole purview of the US legal system, there's this headline from Quebec: Court quashes dad's grounding of 12-year-old daughter.
A father plans to appeal after a Quebec court ruled that he didn't have the right to punish his 12-year-old daughter by barring her from a school trip.
And if that's not enough, Senators approve anti-spanking bill.
Bill S-209, which needs House approval to be made into law, proposes to eliminate Section 43 of Canada's Criminal Code, which allows parents, teachers and caregivers to use reasonable force to discipline a child and correct their behaviour.
Srsly. W. T. F.
And in my home town of Edmonton, city councillors are, IMO, making some very short sighted decisions about the iconic electric trolley buses that have ferried people through Edmonton's downtown for decades.
After gliding quietly along Edmonton streets for 70 years, the city's fleet of trolley buses will be taken off the road for good, city council has decided.
Why are they going away? Because a bean counter somewhere has projected that over the next 18 years, the fleet of electric buses will cost $100M more to maintain than replacing them with diesel or hybrid buses. That's a little less than $5.6M/year. City Council probably fritters away twice that much on other things. The trolley buses are efficient, quiet and non-polluting (yes, their electricity comes from a fossil-fuel burning power plant, but it's also generating the power that goes to your house at the same time) compared to diesel hybrids which, while producing less emissions than a regular diesel bus are still nonetheless spitting out pollution.
Where do you suppose gas/diesel prices are going in the next 18 years?
Yeah, you there on the Ashley River Bridge.
Here's a smart little tip. Next time you want to cut across three freaking lanes, you might want to make sure the other two aren't occupied before yanking the wheel over, ok?
It's a good thing my highly honed defensive driving skills (drive like everybody else on the road is an idiot) kicked in because otherwise you would have ended up changing lanes into my engine, rather than ending up a foot off my front bumper.
Here's something that crosses my mind every time I drive over a bridge around here.
Is there some kind of law or requirement on the SC books that specifically requires bridges to have sidewalks? There are lots of bridges around here that have sidewalks on them, which is very nice.
The only problem is that for a lot of these sidewalked bridges, there are no sidewalks that lead up to the bridge.
So you can walk the bridges in relative comfort. You just have to rough it or put on your hiking boots to get there though.
What's up with that?
I would be more than happy to take the bus to and from work, but your Route 31 - Folly Road bus only goes past my house once. You can take me home from work, but you can't get me to work unless I want to walk a couple of miles to the nearest bus stop.
Please fix.
kthxbai
I've been using Blockbuster.com for movies for a while now, and until recently have always had pretty decent turnaround times with their TotalAccess plan. With movies going back to Columbia SC, I'd usually get notification that the movie was received the day after dropping it in the mail, and another notification later on that day or the next day that the next movie had been sent. Sometimes that movie would arrive the same day I received the notification, but usually I found it in my mailbox the next day.
The TotalAccess plan includes the option of stopping by a B&M (brick and mortar) Blockbuster to exchange movies there, instead of by mail. Since that was something I never found myself doing, I decided to switch to Blockbuster.com's vanilla Blockbuster by Mail plan instead.
That's when I noticed a drastic change in turn-around times. Now it's maybe 2-3 days before I receive notification that a movie has been received after dropping it in the mail, and another 2-3 days before I receive notification that the next one is on the way. Considering they advertise 1-2 business day delivery, I'm starting to feel I've ended up on the slow end of their service. With DVDs going back to Columbia (and presumably coming from there too), I should definitely be within a 1 day delivery zone. Considering the 1-day turn around time I used to have with the TotalAccess plan, the only reason I can see for the decline in service is the switch to the vanilla Blockbuster by Mail plan.
Is this surprising? Not really I suppose. Since you're paying more with the TotalAccess plans, naturally you expect a higher level of service and convenience (in the form of instant turn around with in-store exchanges along with a few other perks). According to this informal analysis of Netflix performed a few years ago, they also throttle movie rentals to give new subscribers a higher level of service.
Is turn-around time a big deal? While it was nice having a 3-4 day turn around cycle (time between movie return and receipt of a new one), many times that movie would end up sitting on the shelf for a week or two (sometimes more) before I got around to watching it. Sure, there were periods where I'd go into burst mode watching movies (watch them the day they arrived, send them back the next day) so the quick turn around was handy. Most of the time though, it's a few days before I get around to watching the movie. In the grand scheme of things, an extra 2 days on that turn around cycle isn't really a big deal (at least for me anyway). YMMV. If you're a constant burst mode watcher, that quick turn around might be important for you, so stick with the TotalAccess plan. If not, save a few bucks a month and go with the vanilla BbM plan.
Apparently you tried to deliver the stuff I ordered from ThinkGeek Friday, Monday and Tuesday, but I had to contact DHL Customer Service to find out that you even tried to deliver it. When you try to deliver something to me and nobody's home, could you at least leave something that tells me you came by.
kthxbai
I'm really starting to think that United's Charleston-Chicago route only exists on paper and doesn't really fly at all.
Three times I've tried to fly it. Three times, I get to the airport and discover it's been "canceled".
Yesterday capped off a great trip back home to Edmonton with a 19 hour journey getting back to Charleston.
Get up at 4AM MST (6AM EST) and head off to the airport. Get onto my 8AM MST flight to O'Hare and have a nice uneventful flight. I get to Chicago, go check the flight board to see what gate to go to next and see a big red "CANCELED" next to the Charleston flight. Expletives ensue.
Head off in search of a United customer service desk, which I discover now consists of a bank of check-in kiosks. At least they make it reasonably easy to rebook yourself. The first option the system presented me with was an early morning flight out of Chicago through Washington-Dulles the next day. Yeah, don't think so (although if I had done that I could have spent part of the day visiting with a friend in Chicago). Next option was another flight leaving at 6PM (on the same day) again through Washington-Dulles and arriving back in Charleston just before midnight. No sign of the flight direct to Charleston at all. Further utterance of expletives ensues, but I decide to take it.
I end up spending the next 6 hours wandering around O'Hare's C terminal and reading about Monte Carlo simulations, having already finished the other more interesting book I had brought with me. Finally get onto the flight and have an otherwise uneventful and boring trip. Get to Washington-Dulles, check the flight board and find the flight to Charleston has been delayed 30 minutes due to "weather". Expletives. By the time I get to the gate, it becomes a 50 minute delay. More expletives.
Another boring flight that finally lands me in Charleston just after midnight. Go to baggage claim to find my bag, but it never comes out. Expletive expletive. Fortunately I found it stored away in the United baggage office.
My checked bag managed to beat me back to Charleston. WTF.
From all of this, I learn two lessons.
United apparently only pretends to fly between Charleston and Chicago, so don't even bother trying.
If I want to get anywhere fast, I should send myself through checked luggage.
I used to think that some airlines were less painful than others. Now I just hate them all.
This is a post I've been mulling over for several years, and has taken a couple of weeks for me to jot down my ideas on and get to the point where I find it acceptable to publish.
After several recent high profile car-bicycle accidents, there's been a lot of discussion about making Charleston more bicycle-friendly. It's something that has been a long time coming and there is much that Charleston, North Charleston and Mt. Pleasant can do to make the area more convenient to ride around. I'm not entirely sure that it's possible to make the Charleston area completely bike friendly though.
Some background on my bicycling history.
I grew up in Edmonton, with my primary mode of transportation being my bike for the 26 years I lived there (never owned a car). Edmonton is what I would consider a very bicycle friendly city, with its extensive network of bike routes, paths and trails, relatively low speed limits (usually 50-60 km/h) and layout of the roads (possibly excepting the newer neighbourhoods that have popped up since I left). These factors made getting around Edmonton on bike very easy. During my undergrad, I made the 24km round trip between home and school pretty much every day as long as the weather permitted (meaning as long as there wasn't snow on the road). Most of the time I could even beat my friends who drove to school. I knew how to get around the city better on my bike than driving around.
I rode a lot in Edmonton.
Based on this, these are some of my opinions on making the area easier for bicycling.
Geography
Charleston is flat. Really flat. The biggest hill in the area is the Ravenel bridge. That makes riding pretty easy and largely effortless. Unless you're like me and like riding up and down hills, this is a big plus. Charleston has a lot to offer for bike riders.
The down side of this is that there are a number of areas that flood during heavy rain. This makes things a mess for both bikes and cars though. At least a bike won't stall out though.
Bridges and roads
Being a coastal place, there are a lot of rivers and streams. Have a look at most of the bridges in the area. Many of them are built with sidewalks on them. What is noticeably lacking though, are sidewalks leading up to the bridges. What the heck is up with that? The other problem is that most of those bridge sidewalks are pretty narrow, barely wide enough for one person to walk along.
The two major rivers, the Ashley and the Cooper, present pretty significant geographic barriers for moving between West Ashley, the peninsula and Mt. Pleasant. The Ravenel bridge makes crossing the Cooper relatively easy. Crossing the Ashley is an entirely different story. You're either braving highway speed traffic and taking your chances crossing entry/exit ramps on the James Island Connector or trying to ride the skinny sidewalk over one of the two Ashley River bridges, only one of which has sidewalks on both ends off the bridge. A recent proposal to add on a side pedestrian/bike bridge to the existing bridge was deemed impractical due to the added weight. I've also seen proposals that call for converting one of the car lanes to a bike lane which I personally think is not such a good idea. However it would provide a better way across than what's currently available. It's definitely a case of "If you build it, they will come". One only has to look at the bike/pedestrian sidewalk across the Ravenel bridge to see proof of that. A better long term solution would be to build a pedestrian/bike bridge over the Ashley and make it easy to get to.
A bicycle friendly place would have a network of bike routes and paths that let people ride in relative safety. There are a few obstacles to setting up a such a network in Charleston but I think it can be mostly done.
As I see it, there are two major problems with the roads in the Charleston area: the layout of the roads, and the speed of traffic.
If you look at the layout of the roads in Charleston, you find streets in developments and neighbourhoods that all dump traffic onto major arteries. Unfortunately that's the only place most of those neighbourhood streets go. In most developments, particularly newer ones, once you're in there's nowhere else you can go. The lack of connectivity to anywhere means the only way to get from one place to another is along the major arteries where you're riding with traffic that's more often than not moving around 70-80 km/h. Sadly at this point there's probably very little that can be done about the roads without demolishing houses and redoing entire neighbourhoods.
The majority of Charleston area roads are designed for vehicle traffic and nothing else. Roads are usually fairly narrow and without much of a shoulder, if any. If you're riding on the main roads, you're riding in traffic that's usually zipping by going at least 50 km/h faster than you are. For the casual bicyclist, that's pretty intimidating. I've ridden on highways with high speed traffic before, but there's always been a pretty wide shoulder to ride in. On many roads around here, that traffic goes by with not much room to spare and leaving little room for error.
Attitudes
The attitudes of many motorists to bicycles on the road is pretty poor in general. Attitudes ranging from "only cars belong on roads" to "only kids ride bikes, get a car" seem to be pretty common around here. I attribute this to people just not being used to seeing riders on the road, the "have to have a car" mentality that's prevalent here and general ignorance. It's something only time and education will change.
The behaviour of many bicycle riders I've seen riding on the roads is pretty atrocious. Riding against traffic, squeezing past cars at lights, blowing through stop signs and lights and generally breaking every rule of the road there is. Again, something that needs to change with bicycle safety courses, preferably starting at the elementary and jr high/middle school level.
With all this said, bicycling is possible around here if you're willing to brave the hazards. I see lots of people do it. Getting around the peninsula on bike is easier than most places around here. There are several riding groups and on any weekend morning you'll see a bunch of road cyclists riding their usual routes. High heels and two wheels is a blog about a local woman who successfully gave up the car for a bicycle commute.
There's a lot of work going on to make the Charleston area more bicycle friendly, which is good to see. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done, and the hardest of it is going to be changing the attitudes of bicycle riders and car drivers towards each other.
