Magenn Power

I stumbled upon this company called Magenn Power Inc. today.
They've developed a new type of wind turbine which floats in the sky using helium, and transmits power down a tether to the system. They're releasing the home version of this turbine in 2006 (Aprox. $9,999 USD) for a 4 kW generator. This solves basically every problem I can think of with Wind Power, and they look like they've put a lot of consideration into many problems that hadn't occurred to me (for example, the system is made from radar reflective material).

Let's hope for all our sakes this takes off and we can all reduce our dependance on fossil fuels and nuclear (even though I like nuclear) to a certain degree. When I was in first year, one of the things I had to do was write a big ass report on the current state of the power grid, doing statistical analysis of generation capacity. My findings were essentially that the grid was never designed to be a market system and to handle shunting of power all over the place. I think that it's important as a society to really get on board with technology like this, and providing economic incentive (like turning this into a source of personal profit by selling extra power back to the grid) to consumers is an important part of getting the masses to buy into this type
of thing. I know a lot of people who are dismally worried about the state of the world, but let me tell you, there's a lot you can do if you go out and do something
about it.

I think the world will be a very different place in 10 years.

Dear God

I have a realtime OS course this term, so I thought it would be wise to finally get around to putting linux on my rackmount server.  Now, on going to linux.org to find an appropriate distribution, I am rather afraid.

There are, according to linux.org, 286 distributions which are in English, run on intel processors and are still being maintained.  Narrowing my search to "Mainstream" distributions, I get only 90 results.  Of those 90, I recognize the following:

Debian
Gentoo
Mandriva
Red Hat Enterprise
Slackware
Suse
TurboLinux
Xandros
Knoppix
Linspire
Fedora
Ubuntu


Notably that list contains distributions which are clearly offshoots of those, such as GenThree, and Gnoppix.
Already this makes me groan, as I know that all of these distributions are probably nearly the same thing.  If anyone is listening to me, please, please stop balkanizing your operating system.  If you are wondering why Linux has not taken over the world, let me tell you, this is why, if for nothing else.  Half of these seem to be modified versions of debian.

Not to mention that you also have the choice of three different interfaces (X Windows, Gnome, and KDE) for half of these things.  There is such a thing as being too flexible.

So, I am putting out a request to someone who knows more about this than I do (and that person will probably be Reed), I need to be able to code on this thing, and I also want the following software:

Office Suite - OpenOffice
MSN Client - GAIM
Photo Editor - GIMP
Browser - Firefox
Email - Thunderbird
C/C++ IDE - Eclipse (Grumble Grumble)

Oh, and this is a Pentium 3 machine with a 20 Gig HD, so take it easy on the poor thing.

In closing.  Linux will never take over the world before the GOOG does, so suck it up boys, go play with yourselves in your basements.

Just because Calvin and Hobbes is funny

And I haven't seen anyone post these yet this year.

Attention Kate!

I would once again like to advocate Stumble Upon
for anyone who drinks water and breathes air. Regardless of what your interests are, this thing will find stuff in the massive noise of the internet that you will find interesting.

Has anyone in waterloo been to the Goodlife(tm) there and can advocate that it's just SO good that it's worth paying money for, as opposed to the various ways of free excersise(sp) that i'm entitled to?

Yegads, Christmas is in 5 days. I need to do some shopping.

Someone was talking about "Let's Make a Deal"(tm), the other day, and I realized that I have a better explaination about why it's better to switch than the one I previously provided.

In LMAD, you get to choose one of three doors. One of the doors has a car, or something like that behind it, and the other two have things you don't want, like a goat (And I don't care if you really want a goat, that's not the point). Now, after you pick a door, the host will open one of the other doors to reveal a goat, and you have the opportunity to switch the door you picked to the other, unopened door. The theory is that you should always switch. Here's why:

There are only three scenarios, so we can list them (there are actually six, but I'll assume that you don't care which goat is which). G for goat, C for car.
The Doors can be as follows:

C G G
G C G
G G C

Now, lets say you always pick door 1 first (it doesn't matter which you pick first).
Lets start with the sitch where you don't switch doors. In this case, you will
win the car only in scenario 1, where the car is actually behind door 1. That
means you have a 1/3 chance of winning.

If, on the other hand you always switch, since the host will only open a door containing a goat, the only scenario in which you will NOT win is scenario 1. In scenario 2, host will open door 3, and you switch to door 2, winning. In scenario 3 he'll open door 2, you switch to door 3, and win.

So your odds of winning are actually 2 in 3 if you switch, but only 1 in 3 if you don't (and not 50/50 as previously advertised).

Clearly i'm bored at work.

This is stolen

Attention Baby-Boomers, et al.

Complaining about how things were different in your day, and how hard you had to work to make a dime, etc. is not a valid argument. Here's why.

I gather that things were very hard for you when you were a child, I am not disputing that, however, the people who made it different (enacted laws to prevent massive child labour, safety restrictions, etc.) is...

Bum bum bum..

YOU! Fucker. Your parents didn't wake up and make all the laws different, because that's how they raised you. Your children aren't in power yet, so we didn't change the rules. You guys did when you grew up. The changes you're complaining about were enacted by other members of YOUR generation... so.... shut the fuck up.

I mean, kudos to you guys, people shouldn't have to work 12 hour days tongue-washing tractors, or work in hugely dangerous work environments for no money. This is not a good thing, maybe you were subjected to it, but you guys changed it so we wouldn't be, good for you, and thank you, but stop complaining about how easy you made it for us, since you WERE the ones who made the changes, really, shut the fuck up.

Note: This does not apply to the TRUELY old, who are legitimately complaining about how their children have changed the world. You guys have bodies that barely function any more and have had to put up with life for a long, long time, and nobody wants to listen to you. You are entitled to be embittered about whatever you want.

Grazie

More on this later

Christmas with my dad's side of the family today. Man are they (for the most part) bat shit insane. I am most definately going to deke out of here ASAP under the pretense of having to go to waterloo to study.

Work is winding down, thankfully. Everyone seems to be in hibernation mode and just wants to take off for the holidays (including me). 4 more days this week (taking monday off to smoke an exam), although I hear rumors that friday we tend to get kicked out at noonish and paid through till 6, which is good for me.

I don't stop work until the 30th. Those of you mired in shock need to get the fuck over it. I like money. I like it a lot, and I intend to procure more of it so that I can make it grow a lot when Tim Horton's goes public next term and I own the town.

Further more THIS is hilarious.

Additionally, have you ever walked through a mall and realized that the overwhelming majority of our species bears striking resembelance to members of the genus Fuckuglious Primaticus? Jesus, I don't know how some of these people breath and walk at the same time, spawning must be something they get trained in. Maybe there's clinics somewhere.

Warning: The following text might contain spoilers. If you don't know that Snape kills Dumbledore, Bruce Willis is dead the whole time, Verbal is Kaiser Soze, or that Rosebud is a sled, don't read the following paragraph.


In other news, Narnia is ok, but also not really great. There's a lot of "Yeah, ok, the lion is jesus, I get it, now why don't you stab that bitch in the chest instead of gawking at the lion that you heard was dead. Also, I don't understand why you get knighted because a wolf jumped at you and was dumb enough to impale himself accidentally on your sword. Especially if you're ALREADY THE KING OF NARNIA, you don't need to be a knight, you're the king. If I own a McDonalds, I don't get myself a little nametag that says "Assistant Manager" on it, do I?

Christmas People

Attention all people.  I am doing Christmas shopping on Saturday.  I need to know who is doing the gift thing with me, so that I don't forget anyone.  Thus far, off the top of my head, Jon, Randeep, and Cas, you are on the list.  If anyone else WANTS to be on the list, I need to know that.

In particular:  Singha, Todd, Ruthanne.  I need a yay or nay from you three.

Whitney, you are obviously also on the list (and dealt with. =op)
Also must remember to buy my parents things on Sat.

Things i've found today.

If you're into cognitive science, you might find THISamusing.

Beyond that, I found wired article about the best Firefox extensions that you have to have. If you're a del.icio.us user, newly aquired by yahoo, then this makes it useable (I'm looking at you Jon).

More importantly, StumbleUpon.

This is a little extension that lets you rate and submit interesting sites, but more importantly, lets you hit a little green and white button that takes you to a random site other people who specify your settings found interesting.

You will play with this for hours and never get any work done after you install it, and I recommend that you do so, because far too much work is being done these days.  As the article says, it's basically a software implementation of Attention Deficit Disorder.


Oh, and if you're still using IE... Get off your ass.

Booyah

A couple of years ago Iris' family took me to see the Cirque
        with them when it was showing at Ontario Place.  If you haven't
        been.... Get off your ass.  You're gonna want to go.

        Anyway, the company I presently work for has entered into a
        partnership with Cirque du Soleil, for whatever reason, and
        I was hoping they would offer us cheap tickets to the show.

        Today I got an email stating that we do, in fact get cheap
        tickets.  Yay!
        But only to the showing in Ottawa.... Boo!
        But i'll be in Ottawa when it's playing!  Yay!
        But we only get discounts to the worst seats...Boo!
        And only to the adult pricing....Boo!
        And there's student pricing... which means the savings are
        $4.50 per ticket.  
        
        I guess I could use that $4.50 to buy
        a pair of binoculars so that I could see what the hell is
        going on.  Get your shit together guys.  Oh well, maybe
        there'll be some other offer in the future.

Christmas List

Thanks Eve, I totally forgot about the joy that is Amazon.
So when i'm bored, I will be perpetually adding things to this list of shit I'm interested in having. This is more for my personal amusement than the benefit of anyone who might be reading this. At the moment it's almost entirely video games. =o)

BAM

I need something that hooks into my brain and
just records all the shit that goes on in my head.  I find
that I can spend hours thinking about some concept, but if I
then try to go and put it down in ink (or bits), I get bored
because the ideas i'm writing down are in territory i've already
trampled over mentally.  

I've been toying with the idea of a White Knight virus.  I don't
know if this has ever been done, although I suspect it probably has or if the term has been used before.  What this virus (or worm for that matter) would do is propagate itself through known security breaches, the same way existing worms do.  However, once the system was infected, it would REPAIR the security hole it used to get in, then launch itself at other computers from the infected computer, and then delete itself.

This is probably not legal.

Another idea that's been floating around in my head is to write a spider that spends the day cruising around in the blogosphere, eating RSS feeds and news reports, and at the end of the day creates a report of the biggest things, or most talked about, that have happened that day.

It would be useful to have it somehow generate information about ongoing trends as well. This is non-trivial.  Other people have tried to do things like this, but I am unsatisfied
with the results thusfar.

Unfortunately, time for side projects is scarce lately.  I have finals looming a mere seven days from now.  They've been grumbling in the distance for some time now, and i've been diligently chipping away at the material all term, nevertheless, I don't really feel any more prepared for them
then I did last term.  204 will probably be fine, but 241 has not revealed to me its secrets in any meaningful way.  At any rate, in a week they will be dealt with, and I walk onward into the shadows of winter and next term.  I'm rather convinced that our species was meant to spend a lot more time sleeping in the winter than we do.

Anyway, back to the drudgery.
Level 15, by the way.

I've been at work for 2 hours and 50 minutes.  Please shoot me in the face.

Not Pron

If you like puzzles.... Unconventional Puzzles.


You're gonna want to go here. http://deathball.net/notpron/

I'm currently on level 5.

Postman Pete

Anyone else give people names to their classes?  For example,
my main class in this program inherits from a class called
"Postman".  And I call the references to him Pete.


Pete.PostMessage();

Pete has saved me untold anguish, and he's my new best friend.
...

Ok, clearly I'm not drinking enough.


Shows I need to see:

Aeon Flux (Yes, it will suck, but I want to see it anyway)
Serenity
Blue Man Group
Lord of the Rings (The play, not the movie)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.