Neal Stephenson--Anathem]]> http://www.falseauthority.com/mt-archives/commentary/index.html#000126 http://www.falseauthority.com/mt-archives/commentary/index.html#000126 Commentary Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:02:17 -0700

Today my daughter decided she wanted to run home from the park. I didn't think much of it, seeing how she gets tired walking around the block.

She made it all the way home, stopping only once long enough to drink some water.

It was a mile. She's only 3.

I got a big complement today, though. I was trying to keep pace with a fellow on a very expensive looking road bike. I couldn't quite keep up with him, but I managed to stay in sight of him for about five miles (averaging 19mph) when I finally caught him at an intersection. He said, "Man you are haulin' on that mountain bike."

"I'm tryin'," I replied.

"Well, you are," he said, head nodding.

Then the light turned green and he totally left me in the dust. But I felt good about it anyway.

Not bad I think. The biggest component of the speed is my new tires. I highly recommend them if you spend most of your time cycling on hard surfaces.

-Michael Carr]]> http://www.falseauthority.com/mt-archives/#000123 http://www.falseauthority.com/mt-archives/#000123 Fri, 30 May 2008 23:48:39 -0700 I am illiterate.

I've never been able to read well and even at 30 years old I can still count the number of fiction books I've read (front-to-back) on my fingers and a couple toes. For some reason I've always felt a little sensitive about this, the printed word being the primary medium for all things highbrow. The truth is, though, is that just about every story I've ever absorbed has been via audio book.

In addition to feeling inherently unintelligent for "resorting" to books-on-cd, I've had to live with two major restrictions: first, audio books are expensive 5-10 times as much as paperback and second, publishers only hire actors to do audio books if they know they'll sell. I like John Grisham and the like, but obscure, cool stuff never makes it into sound files. limiting my literary experience.

I was reading a friend's blog today and noticed that she said something about her old friends moving into radio drama as a creative endeavor. I was intrigued.

While I'm much too young to have ever experienced real radio drama, I vividly remember having books with a read-a-long tape as a kid. These were much like radio drama and tended to have multiple voice actors and some primitive background noises. I simply loved these things. Audio books, generally having only one reader and no accompanying sounds are just not the same.

Recently, my mother-in-law discovered one of these read-a-longs (on vinyl, no less) featuring Wonder Woman. My daughter seems to like them too and I've been feeling a bit nostalgic. When Muriel mentioned active development of radio drama, I immediately felt excited and stupid (of course they do radio drama, jackass, it's the iPod age).

I started searching out some audio drama and found a huge amount of content available. Here are some links for some stuff that looks promising. Finally! Obscure pulp stories for those of us who can't read.

Dramapod
Darker Projects
Podiobooks.com

Oh, and you'll know it's time to turn the page when you hear this sound.

awk: program limit exceeded: sprintf buffer size=1020
FILENAME="-" FNR=36 NR=36
Unrecognized option: -root
Could not create the Java virtual machine.

I found a German forum with a solution to this problem. Google translated it as:
For those who have the same problem:
You must install and gawk in the file $ MATLABROOT / bin / awk actiavtion.sh each by replacing gawk.

I'm not sure what that means, but I installed gawk (for some reason it wasn't installed by Ubuntu).

sudo apt-get install gawk

and then it worked. Yeah for German geeks

Excerpt (A catalog entry for the current Trig course):

TRIGONOMETRY. Two weeks of content are stretched to semester length by masturbatory
definitional runarounds. Truly interesting and beautiful phenomena, such as the way the sides of
a triangle depend on its angles, will be given the same emphasis as irrelevant abbreviations and
obsolete notational conventions, in order to prevent students from forming any clear idea as to
what the subject is about. Students will learn such mnemonic devices as “SohCahToa” and “All
Students Take Calculus” in lieu of developing a natural intuitive feeling for orientation and
symmetry. The measurement of triangles will be discussed without mention of the
transcendental nature of the trigonometric functions, or the consequent linguistic and
philosophical problems inherent in making such measurements. Calculator required, so as to
further blur these issues.

www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

Many people know about MIT's Open Courseware (OCW) Project, which is great, but doesn't have that much video.

This site, out of India has many more video lectures.

Gigapixel Resolution.

Way Cool.

www.gigapan.org

Jargon: HPLIP (Hewlett Packard Linux Imaging and Printing)

Searches:

HP 5610 Ubuntu Driver
HP 5610 Ubuntu Gutsy Driver
HP 5610 Ubuntu 7.10 Driver

"There's no one in the world more obnoxious than someone really Holy"

Father Lester Bundy
Professor of Religious Studies
Regis University
An Orthodox Priest teaching Buddhism at a Jesuit College

-James Kennedy, et. al
Swarm Intelligence