Today at work I was trying to find a good, high-resolution scan of Isaac Newton's original illustration of his cannon thought experiment from Principia Mathematica. There are a lot of small images, and hardly any big enough for our purposes.
Anyway, on an idle whim I tried just going straight to www.newtonscannon.com only to discover the domain name had not been registered.
Well, I fixed that right away.
No idea what I'm going to do with it yet. Stay tuned.
Hey lookee, an actual post after lo these many months! A few days ago I put together a cool little telescope kit from Japan, given to me by my boss. I've took some pictures while putting it together and have posted them here. It's a surprisingly nice low-power scope, given the tiny little box it came in.
So last Saturday there was a star party at Warner Park to watch the Perseid meteor shower. Unfortunately, the site is a little light polluted these days and the weather was a bit hazy, so not many meteors were seen. Lots of people got looks at Jupiter, and I turned my scope on to Albireo just to have something different for people to look at. About 10:00 the fog started to roll in, and by 11 it was getting really bad. But as some people were walking back down the hill, a car with headlights on drove up - and it looked exactly like a scene out of the X-Files - people silhouetted against a mysterious bright light shining through dense fog. One of the astronomy club members had a cell phone camera on hand. It's tiny, but here it is:
So first thing this morning, my RSS reader picks up an aricle from Boing Boing which leads to here, which leads to here. Might as well skip the first two links, and go to the end, which tells you all about how to turn a $10 security peephole from Home Depot into an inexpensive fisheye lens. Real ones go for hundreds of dollars.
So I just had to go to Home Depot after work and try it out. Best picture I have so far:
No comment is really necessary here, other than that the Danny Elfman music is a nice touch.
This arrived in my inbox a day after another take on Microsoft appeared over at Daring Fireball, in which John Gruber dissects the following inane, meaningless ad copy:
In a people-ready business, people make it happen. People, ready with software. When you give your people tools that connect, inform, and empower them, they’re ready. Ready to collaborate with partners, suppliers, and customers. Ready to streamline the supply chain, beat impossible deadlines, and develop ideas that can sway the course of industry. Ready to build a successful business: a people-ready business. Microsoft. Software for the people-ready business.
As a Mac fan, I might be cheering at the slower-than-molasses development pace of Windows Vista, but the article makes a good point:
Apple exists to challenge Microsoft. Microsoft exists to give Apple something to compete against. It's a battle of innovation vs. marketing and we're slowly winning that battle but if there's no one left to fight then I'd give Apple ten years before it gets as bad as Microsoft is today.
Aaaand the renovation of the web site has begun. For some reason I can't figure out yet, Blogger.com doesn't want to render the side navigation bar right. Something strange is going on, because the style sheet works fine in a flat HTML file. Then again, the Blogger/Google folks don't seem to have left any documentation lying around for doing this, so who knows?
Alas, the coffee has its limits, and I am beyond fixing it further this evening.
I'll have to come back later to offer my review of the final episode of Enterprise, as well a few thoughts I have on the end of the franchise. In the meantime, I'll just note that having Phlox pass out barf bags in the penultimate episode was appropriately prophetic.
It's the second best part of a new major Apple operating system release: the obligatory twenty-odd page John Siracusa delving into OS X over at Ars Technica. To call it a mere "review" is a disservice - this guy goes from interface issues to the very UNIXy core and back again.
I'm on page nine now. This will keep me up late reading.
Regarding "Storm Front," or, Did I Call It, or What? >
Spoilers:
Just saw the second part of Enterprise's fourth-season opener. Although the plot details are mostly different, I'd say there's a striking similarity between this two-parter and the little script I offered up back in June.
Trip points to bullet holes in the shuttlecraft as evidence.
Weird time crap happens.
Daniels says goodbye, forever.
Enterprise ends up in orbit of Earth, ready to do something, anything else.
I mean, am I wrong here? The only thing I didn't call was Silik kicking the bucket.
Manny, no need to send the twenty bucks I asked for. You've done a fine job positioning this series for interesting things to happen. You have a great challenge ahead. Make this good.
Well, I've had a few days to take in the first episode of the Tertiary Phase of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I thought I'd log my first impressions. Consider this a review. I don't know if I'll review other episodes, we'll see. Spoilers, of course, for the episode, as well as one or two from the book series.
I'm relieved that they've kept the style so close to the original two series. I wasn't really expecting a Lucas-esque transformation or anything, but aside from a few details you really wouldn't know so many years had passed since the previous episode.
A few details:
Trillian (Susan Sheridan) sounds a bit older now, and to a lesser extent so does Zaphod (Mark Wing-Davey). Still, they put on great performances. Everyone else might as well have stepped right out of a time machine from 25 years ago.
We have a new voice for The Book - because the original voice, Peter Jones, passed away years ago. His sucessor, William Franklyn, matches Jones' delivery extremely well. The sound of the voice of The Book switching back and forth from Jones to Franklyn as the Guide gets updated was funny, produced skillfully, and served as a fitting tribute to the original voice who gave those shows so much of their character. (I wonder... in the Quintessential Phase - the adaptation of Mostly Harmless, when the Hitchhiker's Guide turns sinister, will our narrator also turn sinister? Hmmmmm....)
This time the music isn't either produced from dinky 80's synths, or pulled off the stock music shelf at the BBC. Although I liked the quirky musical choices from the original series, the music here is good, and isn't too intrusive. One bit that annoyed a little was the descending notes we hear as Ford and Arthur catch the Chesterfield sofa and leave prehistoric Earth. It sounded a little obvious, like Shickele Mix demonstrating musically how Jack and Jill fall down the hill. But I'm picking seriously small nits.
Plotwise, I suppose the topic on everyone's mind is why Ford and Arthur had to esacpe prehistoric Earth again, when they already did it way back in episode 8! (Hey, I'm consulting a script, lay off the fanboy comments!) The explanation given is that Zaphod Beeblebrox has been hallucinating ever since he left the Total Perspective Vortex! But why would he be hallucinating about Arthur and Ford on prehistoric Earth? Something's a little weird here, and maybe I need to examine the scripts carefully to see if I can figure out what's real and what isn't. I can't imagine that they just invalidated most of the second series. Maybe more will be revealed in upcoming episodes.
It does make sense, however, that they had to do something drastic to get the plot back in line with the books. The last episode ended with Ford and Zaphod stranded on an asteroid with the Man in the Shack, and Arthur flying away in the Heart of Gold. No real easy way to get Ford, Arthur and Trillian back together again so they can save the Universe with Slartibartfast. Speaking of Trillian, the hallucination explanation also gets her back in the story - she was absent for the entire second series. Anyway, this is all getting confusing, and it's getting late, so I'll wrap it up here. Good show, and I'll be back for more next week.
Best new line: "Insanity is a gradual process. Don't rush it." - Ford Prefect
An interesting tidbit, courtesy of the hit counter I recently installed: at the moment, this site is the only link to come up on Google when you search for "hitchhikers guide tertiary phase". Assuming, of course, you include the quotation marks. So far, two people have wound up here because of it.
I assume that shortly after I add this post, Google will send back two links.
Take a look at the picture accompanying this article over at CNN. Was it really that hard to find a good picture of a Klingon?
It's just begging for a caption contest. Let's see...
"Gee, Billy, it sure was nice of Commander Tomalak to let us into his private museum!"
"Watch what happens when I put a Tribble in the box!"
"I got as far as the head, and then I decided that building my own robotic Orion slave girl would be a lot more rewarding."
"You know how Klingons rise in rank by assassinating their superior officers? Well, I don't mean to brag, but you're talking to the new captain of the I.K.S. Negh'Var."
Fans of the original series must, must, MUST listen to the preview audio clip. It's got mostly the same actors as the original series 25 years ago. Sadly, Peter Jones, the voice of "The Book," is no longer with us. You can hear their solution to the problem in the clip, and it's brilliant.
Not quite a week late, I finally got to watch the season 3 finale of "Enterprise" tonight. Okay, that was fweakin' weird. The last five minutes of that show certainly left things in a completely unexpected way.
Now there are rumors out there that Brannon Braga, writer of a few great Trek episodes and a boatload of average ones and a rather large handful of crappy ones, may be taking a back seat for season 4. Which suits a lot of the Trek faithful just fine. Taking a more active role will be one Manny Coto, who has penned a good number of quality Enterprise episodes this season, so things may be on the rise.
Still, there's that bizarre season 3 ending, and poor Manny's left holding the bag. Well don't fret Mr. Coto, I've got Season 4, Episode 1, Act 1 all sketched out:
T'Pol: Primitive Earth airplanes? Are you positive?
Trip: Shuttlepod's got the bullet holes to match. What the hell's going on?
T'Pol: Ensign Mayweather, scan for any remaining anomalies, particularly temporal in nature.
Mayweather: I'm detecting one off the starboard bow. But it doesn't look related to the spheres.
T'Pol (looking in her little scanner thingy): It's increasing in size and approaching the ship.
Admiral William T. Riker: SHIELDS UP! RED ALERT!
Trip: Who the hell are you?
Daniels: My apologies. I think I can explain... If you'll just give me a moment.
[Daniels fiddles with the PADD he's holding. Riker disppears, and is replaced by a Gorn.]
Gorn: Arrrrr!
Daniels: No, that's not it either. Hold on.
[The Gorn disappears, and is replaced by Archer, who is wearing a flowery Hawaiian shirt and holding a coconut containing some enjoyable beverage and a little paper umbrella]
Archer: Aw, Daniels, I was just starting to feel relaxed.
Trip: Will someone PLEASE tell me what the hell is going on?
Daniels: My apologies everyone. As soon as the Xindi sphere exploded, I managed to remove Captain Archer from the timeline. I figured he needed a vacation, so I sent him to Tahiti for a week.
Archer: Sort of.
[Daniels stabs at the buttons on his PADD]
Daniels: Unfortunately this THING isn't working very well, and he went on a few... detours. As, I understand, have all of you. Anyway, everything's back to normal now. I think. Well, I must be going. Captain, you probably won't see me again. It's been nice working with you.
T'Pol: What about the "Temporal Cold War?"
Daniels: Oh, that little thing? We fixed that all up last week. I thought I mentioned it.
Archer: No, but I'm glad to hear it. Now if you don't mind, we'd like to go home now.
Daniels: You got it. [Disappears]
Hoshi: We're being hailed by Starfleet!
Archer: On screen.
Admiral Forest: Congratulations to all of you. I have new orders for Enterprise. She is to dock at the shipyards for a complete overhaul while her crew relaxes on Earth.
Trip: About damn time!
Admiral Forest: But don't relax too much. Once the Enterprise is back to 100 percent, we're sending you to the Tellarite homeworld. It seems they're having some difficulty with the Romulans.
Lt. Commander Worf: Romulans. They are without honor!
[commercial break]
Manny, twenty bucks and it's all yours.
[update 10/25/2005: Nearly a year and a half later, and I just came up with the final line to this script. Had to come back and add it in.]
AT&T Wireless has just sent me a brand new cell phone to replace my T68i. How nice of them! Except that unlike my old phone, this one doesn't have Bluetooth, and can't synchronize with iSync. Rather than rant about it myself, I'lllettheselinks do it. Grr.
You know, the web designers of sports.yahoo.com apparently wouldn't know a Mac if you beaned them in the nose with an 17" TiBook. I can't think of any other explanation for them only supporting the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, a browser which hasn't had a major update since it was released in 2001. I'd suspect backroom dealings with Microsoft, but even the Microsofties have abandoned development of the browser, so what would be the point of restricting access to modern browsers like Safari and Mozilla?
In the past year, the only improvement I can find of the audio streaming broadcasts Yahoo provides is that Windows Media Player for Mac is now actually able to open the streaming files, rather than claiming that the "codec is not supported." Granted, being able to open the files is infinitely better than not being able to open them, but now the challenge is to find the magic sequence of links that takes you to the file itself. I find a page with a list of games available to listen to. I click on the audio icon next to "North Carolina vs. Illinois". Do I get to listen? No. I get: "Follow North Carolina all season long!" Advertising their broadcasts. I click on "You are already signed up for College Pack", which is the only available link on the page. I get a page with a list of games available to listen to. Looks familiar. I keep this up for ten minutes or so trying to see if there's a link I've missed somewhere. Eventually I give up.
With about ten minutes left in the game, I go back and try logging out and logging back in again. Bingo. Media window comes up. As usual I have to reload the page twice to get the stream to actually start playing, and there are no player controls anywhere in the window.
I ain't paying $4.95 a month for this crap. [edit 5/31/04: This is, sadly, a complete lie. I eventually caved. But I wasn't happy about it, dammit!]
I wonder if Yahoo has exclusive internet broadcast rights? Seems to me that UNC, which, by the way, pioneered live internet streaming broadcasts, should be able to offer it too. I'd forgive all of UNC's various administrative sins and humbly join the General Alumni Association if they'd make basketball games available free as a benefit. Hear that, GAA? You know my price.
So, Mac geek that I am, I went to the Panther party at the local Mac dealer Friday night to get OS X 10.3. Backed up the whole system and installed it after work on Saturday. So far, I haven't encountered too many bugs, though I did notice the Finder has trouble scrolling horizontally if you've got a QuickTime movie or sound file playing as a preview. Although it's slick and has a lot of nifty new features, sadly I can't think of any compelling reason to recommend we buy it for our computers at work... at least not yet. I'm sure some reason will appear before 10.4 arrives.
So anyway, it means that I've got Panther on my G4. As for my old 6500/250:
