Hmm… What should I do with around a pound of Habanero chilis? I’m thinking I could make a sauce, or I could chop them and pack them with salt in a sealed container for a month or so, then maybe make a sauce from that…
I really think that the image in this post might be a leader connecting with the actual bolt of lightning itself. I’m going to email someone at a university (not sure who) yet to ask.
I checked the other photos taken just after that when I was trying to get the brightness of the sky right (and missing one other strike) and I don’t see anything like water on the lens.
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Lightning on 24-Aug-2007.
1) Photographing lightning by hand is hard.
2) I’m not sure why the lightning has a hole in it. Either I was really lucky and caught something weird, or it’s water or some other object on the lens. I think it’s probably the latter, even though I’d really prefer the former. I also have never seen water distort in a way which would distort that way, I don’t think. Opinions?
Now that the storm has passed and sirens have stopped sounding I can go to Costco and then get some Thai.
Looks like lighttpd ticket #1230 was the reason that Gallery Remote wasn’t working with any of the galleries that I host. Upgrading to lighttpd 1.4.16 (which was done to fix some other security problems as well) has sorted out the problem.
Yay!
Some interesting points regarding consumer goods…
Joy Dish Soap:
For years I had a giant bottle of some Dawn-branded dish detergent. It worked great. Eventually it ran out, so while at the store I bought a bottle of some Lemon-scented Joy. Well, you know that musty / moldy / mildewy smell that dish clothes and sponges get when they are left to sit in a too-moist state for too long?
For some reason since switching to Joy, I’ve had my dishwashing sponge turn rancid once a week. Previously with Dawn I could use the same sponge until the scrubby side had worn flat and it was replaced because of wear, not stink.
Currently, after having been replaced a week ago, the sponge smells so bad that I can’t wash dishes with it, lest the stink permeate my hands for the next 24 hours. (Washing doesn’t get it off.) I guess I’ll be buying some Dawn on the way home and throwing out another perfectly good sponge.
It really is a fun game. It will absolutely, completely piss you off until you understand what is going on, but after that it’s a good bit of fun. Definitely worth the 400 points. It’s one of those games where once you get it you want to keep playing it. Too bad I had to go to bed last night… I wanted to play more this morning, but I was close to running late for work.
Other XBLA Demos I’ve Tried:
· Alien Hominid HD: Like the original, but without the bugs (it’s playable!), better graphics make the cartoony-ness even better, and still absurdly hard.
· Beautiful Katamari: A HD version of Katamari Damacy, which is good. What is bad is that instead of cheesy, poor translations there is intentionally bad English in the dialogs, reminiscent of LOLCATS type crap. Hopefully it doesn’t cost more than $30.
· Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved: Fun, Robotron-like (but not), hard, cheap. I forgot to actually buy the full version last night so I’ll do that tonight.
· Viva Piñata: Cute, just not fun for me. Seems like Danielle would like it. Basically you maintain a garden in order to attract very well rendered piñatas. There may be more, but I only gave the demo about 30 minutes.
Xbox 360 UI:
This is typical Microsoft crap. It is not easy to find where demos vs. downloaded XBLA games vs. whatever else is located. I don’t understand why I shouldn’t be able to be in the downloadable game store, where it says that I have already downloaded the game, and start it from there. Instead you hit a button and it tells you how to launch the game. (Go to this menu, then that, then pick this.) It’s somewhat shiny, but a bit too busy for me. Also, I don’t like the built-in banner ads, even if they are just for other games.
iPod w/ Apple Lossless
Sounds really, really good. The DAC in the iPod is actually pretty nice. However, battery life on an iPod is greatly decreased when using lossless. I think this is because the iPod has (if I remember right) a 32MB buffer which it fills before spinning the disc down. This is plenty big for a couple of lossy tracks to fit in, but not lossless. Therefore the disc has to spin up a lot more. Perhaps this will be changed in future iPods.
To work around this I might make a new iPod cable with built-in charging bits for use on my desk along with the headphone amp.
Since I’m in a posty mood, here’s a photo of the pizza I ate last night. Yes, it has pepperoni on it. I was really in the mood for that, for some reason.
(Then I had a bit too much beer… a 750mL of a Corsendonk, then two 625mL bottles of Lion Lager. Whoops.)
Anyway, I hope it makes you hungry.
Well, it looks like reporting an eBay listing which infringes on one’s copyright is a little more difficult than I thought:
If you have a good faith belief that a listing on eBay infringes your copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights, all you need to do is download our Notice of Claimed Infringement (NOCI) form, fill it out, and fax it to eBay.
From: Reporting Intellectual Property Infringements (VeRO)
I’ve got the form all filled out. I’ll fax it off tomorrow morning if I don’t hear back from the seller.
E 74 on my brand new Xbox 360I just spent about 45 minutes cabling up my brand new Xbox 360. What happens at first power-on? E 74.
I powered it down and then back up and it’s now at the intial setup screens, but still…
Fucking Microsoft.
I’ve never found myself in the position of having to enforce my own IP this way, but I guess that now I do. See, earlier today I came across this post on Matrixsynth about someone selling a SID 6581-based synth on eBay (this auction) . Looking more closely at it, it has one of my MIDIbox SID-NUXX Mainboard PCBs in it.
The licensing for this board is Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5, so it can’t be resold. (This was mostly because I used a non-profit version of some software for it and thusly have a responsibility to ensure that it isn’t used for for-profit work.)
I’ve messaged the seller with this:
Hey there... This is Steve, the guy who designed the MIDIbox SID-NUXX board used in there. I'm not sure if we've talked before about your implementation of the board, but I wanted to tell you that the license of that board specifically forbids commercial sale of the design. This is licensed this way because of the non-profit license used for the software with which I designed the PCB.
I'd like to sort this out without disputing the auction via eBay, so please contact me directly at c0nsumer@nuxx.net. Thank you.
-Steve
I’ve also emailed the person who runs Matrixsynth to see if they know the identity of the seller. I also made this post on the MIDIbox forums.
There are a few people who I sent MIDIbox SID-NUXX PCBs to for free. I’m wondering if this is one of those guys… If so, it’s kinda dickish of him to sell off something he was given. If he is someone who had a run of PCBs made himself, he’s most definitely violating the license under which I released the boards.
(None of this above even touches on the reselling of the software contained on there, which TK, the guy who writes all the MIDIbox stuff, generally forbids.)
Space Giraffe Playing DeviceI gave in.
(After ensuring I still had a network run to that corner of the basement, and that I was purchasing one with the HDMI port and new heatsink design.)