Author: cosmo

08/26/2009

The Cash for Clunkers program is, thankfully, finally over. What a waste of 2.9 billion dollars.

Interesting parting shot: all of the top 10 vehicles traded in were American. And 8 of the top 10 vehicles purchased were foreign.

Top 10 Trade-in Vehicles
1. Ford Explorer (4WD)
2. Ford F150 Pickup (2WD)
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee
4. Ford Explorer (2WD)
5. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan
6. Jeep Cherokee
7. Chevrolet Blazer
8. Chevrolet C1500 Pickup
9. Ford F150 Pickup (4WD)
10. Ford Windstar

Top 10 New Vehicles Purchased
1. Toyota Corolla
2. Honda Civic
3. Toyota Camry
4. Ford Focus
5. Hyundai Elantra
6. Nissan Versa
7. Toyota Prius
8. Honda Accord
9. Honda Fit
10. Ford Escape

How, exactly, did this help the American auto industry?

08/23/2009

I saw an article called “Songs in Code” which uses programming languages to describe famous songs. It’s like the Song Chart Meme on Flickr about a year ago, but much much geekier.

A few that I identified:

if (withU) ‘a’ to ‘z’ else (‘a’ to ‘z’).filter(_ != ‘u’)
“With or Without You” by U2
if ( time < 9 ) { Bed.tumbleOutOf(); Kitchen.stumbleTo(); Ambition.pourMyselfACupOf(); }
“9 to 5” by Dolly Parton
var city = {type:”paradise”, grass:0x00FF00, girls:”pretty”)}; transport(this, city);
“Paradise City” by Guns ‘n Roses
self.is_a?(Walrus) == true
“I Am the Walrus” by John Lennon

Awesome.

08/22/2009

Tara and Derek just stopped in for an overnight visit on their way home from a cross-country trip, and Derek had the most awesome t-shirt I’ve seen in a long time. It was all black, and had a little name tag over the breast:

It looks like a real name sticker, of course, and he says people ask him about it all the time but not many of them really get the joke. And I suppose that’s true: either you get the joke or you don’t, and if you don’t, then a bunch of explaining (“no, there is too much… let me sum up”) isn’t going to make it funny.

Sweet.

08/20/2009

Twenty years ago today, Voyager 2 completed its tour of the solar system with a flyby of Neptune’s moon Triton.

The two Voyager probes were probably one of NASA’s– indeed, mankind’s– greatest scientific triumphs. Truly amazing stuff, not to mention the source of breathtaking photographs of the outer solar system.

08/20/2009

Last week I was kind of bored so I decided to get back into computer gaming. I’m hardly a big-time “gamer” and in fact I probably only get this urge about once every six months. But I figured this might be a good opportunity to involve Alex and perhaps Zack in some fun “guy stuff”.

Age of Empires is really cool, but doesn’t work very well under Linux (and I don’t have any Windows computers). Space Empires IV is a classic but I’ve played it so many times it’s not really even a challenge– and more than likely it would be a little too complicated for the boys. So I poked around for some native Linux games. There are a ton of first-person shooters, but they’re usually pretty violent and we’ve already outlawed Halo in our house because of that.

I discovered Warzone 2100 which is a sweet real-time strategy game. It takes place in the future on a nuclear-ravaged earth, and the objective is to research technologies and build tanks and cyborgs and so forth to take over the world. Everything is done in beautiful 3D, with textures and sweet sound effects and lots of action.

Alex absolutely loves the game, and we’ve played a few missions and skirmishes against the AI. Right now Zack is content to just watch and comment on the battles (“Alex, Dad has ten tanks and he’s blowing up the bad guy base!”). I’m sure he’ll get involved soon, and we’ll have three computers running a networked game.

What a great way to waste some time!

08/19/2009

I’ve got my AmaroK music player on “random tracks from collection” which means it picks anything it wants from my 10,000-song collection. It makes for some interesting transitions in music, to be sure.

Loreena McKennitt just popped up: one of her songs from The Mask and Mirror. AmaroK displays the album cover, related tracks, and other interesting tidbits of information about each track it plays, so I saw the album cover for this one:

Whoa. That is most certainly not a very flattering picture of Loreena. Maybe she’s not the most beautiful singer but wow, you’d think they could have done something more with this.

Don’t get me wrong– I thoroughly enjoy her music. But the packaging could use work.

08/19/2009

Just got back from dirt biking in the mountains with my friend Rich. It took me a little practice to get used to riding a motorcycle (this was a big bike) and making corners and climbing rocky trails, but after a couple of hours I had the “feel” of the bike and the trails. I wasn’t exactly speedy out there– Rich had to wait for me around every turn it seemed– but now that I’ve done it I’m excited to go again. Good times.

08/18/2009

Well, summer vacation is officially over. The kids start school tomorrow. It sure flew past.

On the bright side, it means we’ll have a bit more structure in our days and schedules. On the down side, it means I won’t be able to roll out of bed at 8:00 any more. Got to start setting that darn alarm again.