May 29, 2003
The 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference
This is to funny:
Write better emails. Make more moneys.
Where do I sign up?!?!
Moore's Law Rules... or Depreciation Sucks
I found a magazine from August of 1997. The inside back cover was an advertisement from Micron. Here was the top-of-the-line machine:
- Intel 266MHz Pentium II (features MMX technology)
- 32MB EDO RAM
- 4GB IDE hard drive
- 19" Hitachi SuperScan CM751 (18" display)
- Monster 3D graphics card with 4MB memory
- 3.5" floppy drive
- 100Mb Iomega Zip drive
- DVD-ROM drive
- AWE 64 sound card
- Speakers, MS Sidewinder Pro joystick, Windows 95, Office 97, etc.
Total price: $4,199.
Don't even ask about the notebooks in the ad.
Amazing. 5-6 years later and CPUs are 10 times faster, we're using 8-16 times the RAM, and our disks are 10-80 times larger. Oh, and not only is everything today that much better, it's probably half the price.
May 28, 2003
SCO's SEC Filings Prove Novell's Assertion
This is interesting. According to Bruce Perens, SCO's 10-K filing indicates that Novell is right.
Heh.
I wonder what their next response will be.
Warm
I
just realized that it's getting really warm in the apartment. Guess
what. It's 91 degrees outside according to
the Weather Underground. The cats are all stretched out on the
floor for their 6-hour long afternoon nap. They look pretty warm
too.
Perhaps I haven't selected the optimal time to stay at home and work on the book. There's air conditioning at work that usually works--except for a few days last week.
Let's just hope it cools off before July gets here.
Okay, enough distraction. Back to chapter 2.
Damn the Pollen!
For my first two years living in the Bay Area, I was thrilled to find that my annual fall allergies no longer held me captive for the months of August and September. Back in Ohio, as soon as the local news began to report pollen counts I'd be sneezing my ass off and generally miserable (or medicated) for 6-9 weeks.
It seems that Mother Nature has decided to correct this oversight. Now we have high pollen levels in the Bay Area. And I'm really feeling the effects. I'm back to popping Benadryl every few hours. It's great. Clears me right up. Expect that it also makes me drowsy. So I picked up some Claritin at the store last night. Time will tell if it does the job without knocking me out, 'cause it's really hard to write this way.
May 27, 2003
Beginner's Linux Book Recommendation?
My Dad, a long time DOS and now frustrated Windows user, is looking to experiment with Linux. He'll probably try Knoppix, Mandrake, and maybe Lindows (after version 4.0 is out).
However, he'd also like a good book--one that doesn't assume he's a complete moron but also doesn't assume any knowledge of Unix. He gets directory structures, text vs. binary files, and so on. He's not a programmer. He wants to use e-mail, browse the web, use his printer, scanner, and camera. He'll need to organize pictures and perform other "normal people" tasks. Despite what neighbors and relatives think, he's not a computer expert (anymore).
Since I'm clearly not the target audience for such a book, I'm seeking recommendations. Ideally the book would focus more on concepts and low-level skills rather than being distribution specific. Then again, if the only good books are about a specific distribution (RedHat), we'll have to go with that.
What should I suggest?
Watsonville Air Show Pictures
I spent most of Sunday at the 39th Annual Watsonville Fly-In and Air
Show. I was officially there as a "crew member" for the Hollister Gliding
Club, which was displaying their Duo Discus
glider. Drew Pierce, the club owner, flew a demo flight in the
Duo.
(As a crew member, I got to help launch and retrieve the glider.)
I had a good time at the show. I got to talk to a lot of people about flying gliders, see some great performances, and generally enjoy the day.
I used my brand new Canon PowerShot S400 to take these pictures at the show. I haven't had time to put in captions yet.
I'm definitely going again next year!
Wow, DayPop #2
What a surprising thing to see first thing in the morning!
Apparently it the blog world rewards people who say
ridiculous things. My PageRank is
Dead article is now at #2 on DayPop.
I really hadn't expected this.
Heh. I wonder if I'll hit #1? I bet I could. Come on, help me out! All I need is a link from your blog to my PageRank entry.
Oh, wait. That'd be cheating. Don't link to me. Really. Google might further punish my PageRank.
Ok. Make up your own mind. Yeah, just pretend I never mentioned it. Instead, think about how getting on to DayPop is likely to further propel one up the DayPop list.
Or not.
May 26, 2003
Bayesian Aggregators
Always looking for new ways to spend less time reading blogs, I think that Jim is on to something when he suggests Feedster + Bayesian algorithms to create a new type of aggregator.
Anyone working on this?
Software upgrades suck
I ran an upgrade recently on family.zawodny.com. It was the usual apt-get dist-upgrade to bring things current.
Well, it upgraded a bunch of stuff, including Perl to 5.8.0. That cause MoveableType to die in mysterious ways. So after 2 hours of messing with it, I've migrated my data to MySQL (yes, I was still using Berkely DB, sue me).
If this posts, I guess it's working again.
What a waste of time. As if I didn't already, but now I have a renewed appreciation for why someone might want to use TypePad.
#4 on blogdex and #5 on DayPop
Wow. I just noticed that my PageRank is Dead post made it to #4 on blogdex. There's a first.
More importantly, it has stirred up some interesting discussion on my blog and elsewhere. Check out the comments and TrackBacks.
Update: As Josh points out, I'm #5 on DayPop too. There goes my PageRank for life. How amusing is that?
Sunburn
Let's just say I'm staying inside today.
Later I'll post pictures from yesterday. I had a good time.