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What is Ko’s obsession with cake? How can it be explained? Is there something unsavory in his cake? Did he have a particularly good or bad cake experience that has changed his life? He wrote a sonnet about cake. I wrote a sonnet about Little Debbie brand Snack Cakes when I was in high school, it was published in the school writing publication. If I find it, I’ll post it, and dedicate it to Ko.

Josh made this fabulous statement today. It exposes a humorously grim reality of computer based communication, where we are simultaneously freed by, and mocked by our interface. Colorful bubbles or not, I still like to talk to people, but sometimes it makes an awfully goofy impression. Its like having a clown running around blowing balloon animals and honking an air horn while you are trying to have a serious intellectual debate with someone.

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In a totally unrelated incident, the computer lab computer I’m working on at the moment has a broken ‘forward arrow’ key, and its driving me absolutely batty, time to switch computers.

Order a shit-load of Silly Putty. You can get the shit straight from Dow Chemical, in the big huge blocks that they sell directly to the toy company.

How? Easy.

Unfortunately, the minimum order seems to be 100 pounds, which is about 800$ worth of Silly Putty. I’ve already got my mother in Colorado (who is quite a toy fan herself) to commit to 50$ worth of putty. Will in Broomfield and his buddy Chris have also pledged support. I think I can get Billy in on it, and maybe Josh too.. I’ll have to work on Josh a bit though, I’m not sure if he is a big putty man or not…

Hey STL Bloggers, do you want to get in on a huge putty buy? Think 8$ a pound, and then imagine how COOL it would be to have 10 pounds of that stuff!!! Think about it! And then comment here to pledge your support!

Putty for all!

Hey hey, I’m working on a way to let the STL Bloggers automatically ping the page with updates automatically using Moveable Type. The process is more complex than I originally surmised, so I put my codin’ hat on, and am mucking around for the solution, which I think I’ve found, I just need to iron out. I’ll have instructions and/or a patch up soon, but right now its far to late to be messing around in perl.

Does anyone even use moveable type? Or is everyone on devblog? I’m very happy with Moveable Type, I highly recommend it, but devblog seems to be showing definate signs of coolness. In any event, I want to automatically ping the STL blogger site, and I’m determined to do so. Yeah.

I found out that I’ve had an average of 57 unique visitors per day through September. Wow. Thanks people! Thats not many hits, in the long run, but I was under the impression that just my mother an two or three of my friends checked out the site, but I guess its more. Sweet.

I’m currently recovering from numerous small injuries. Mostly plaguing the right side of my body.

Skydiving a while back, I pulled my shoulder as part of a not-so-ideal deployment. BTW, its a myth that skydiving injuries happen while landing. Landing is the easy part. Its deployment where you really get jerked around. Anyway, it wasn’t really getting better for about a week. Partly because I was still using it pretty heavily at work. I was trying not to favor it, but I ended up using it a lot. But now its finally getting better, and is almost totally fixed.

At Shwagstock, I ran into a fencepost at night, bruising my right calf. I was running along, with my headlight on, but instead of looking where I was going, I was looking over at Billy and Stacy. Then I ran into the post, and landed head over heels. No blood, but I got a wicked bruise. Its getting better now though.

Then, oddly, I got a lot of canker sores in my mouth all at once. Three of them, to be precise. Then, while being very careful while eating not to disturb them, I gave my cheek a vicious biting. Then later, I bit my tounge. That means 5 painful mouth injuries. Finally today eating isn’t painful, which means that the little injuries are healing themselves happily.

So anyway, I’m pretty much better now, but I was a sad state of affairs with all those little minor injuries.
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Also, this post by Josh is hilarious. His writing really lends a new look to everyday activities.

Now in an amazing odd-ness, you can get your body turned into gem quality diamonds! When you die, simply send your body to LifeGem, and have them collect the carbon from your remains, and manufacture real diamonds!

I’m not sure what I think about it yet… Is it sweet? Or weird? Does it spit in the face of Buddhist teachings of impermanence? Or is it a desperate attempt to circumvent impermanence, which is saddly doomed to fail? Is that heroic? Or tragic?

You can also get your pets made into diamonds.

I just came back from a STL (St. Louis) Blogger meeting. Not one from an organized meetup site, but just one posted on STL Bloggers. It was fun and exciting. We met at Culpeppers, which is a nice little pubish thing. They had lots of meat products, which I wasn’t into (being a veggie), but beer is delicious, and I had my fair share of it.

I just got home, still fairly lit (don’t worry, I didn’t drive, I took the shuttle), and decided to make a little postie to commemorate the event, or something.

Cybrpunk already posted about the meetup! Damn him, he beat me to it! Oh well, I stayed pretty late, there were only about 5 of 14 total left at the time I left, that puts me pretty high in the late stayers crowd, but not too high.

Blah blah blah.

Anyway, I’m sorry Josh’s last meetup didn’t have anybody.. If he lived in St. Louis, then he could come to ours! But then again, Oakland is probably a nice place to live, I don’t really wish St. Louis upon him.

Tommorow I’m going to write a small document for the STLBloggers site about how to make Moveable Type automatically ping the site when it updates.

Until then, sleepy time, and more work. Peace.

One question I get asked pretty regularly is, “What is your favorite source of portable light?” Some people think it might be Xenon bulbs, others suspect halogen. However, the answer, is LED lights!

LEDs, or Light Emitting Diodes, are electrical components, ranging from less than a millimeter, to over 10 millimeters in diameter. They, like all diodes, only pass current in one direction, when this happens, the electrons move from one pole of the LED to the other, but they have to move through a barrier made from galium, silicon, and many other chemicals. As it passes through the barrier, it causes electrons in the molecules that make up the barrier to change energy states, and release photons that we see as light. The wavelength, or color, of the LED is determined by the materials that make up this barrier.

We all use LEDs. They make up indicator lights on CD players, microwaves, computers, stereos, automobiles, etc. Their small size and high efficiency makes them perfect for portable electronics, and their long life makes them great for robust applications requiring high durability.

LEDs give off very little excess energy, which is why they are so efficient. When a regular lightbulb is lit, it gives off heat, infrared light, ultraviolet light, and all this other stuff that we don’t need. That is just wasted energy! LED lights don’t give off anything except the specific band of light we need, hence no wasted energy.

LEDs come in every color in the rainbow! In the past, we were limited to red, green, and yellows, but in recent years, my favorite color, blue, was added to the roster! Now there are purples, pinks, oranges, yellows, reds, greens, and many more.

There are even white LEDs, which despite their different light color, are actually blue LEDs in disguise. Within a white LED is a blue LED, covered in a phosphor that glows white when exposed to blue light. White LEDs come in a variety of color temperatures, from blue moonlight-like hues, to warmer daylight sun type hues.

I have had numerous LED based flashlights, and all of them performed wonderfully. LED flashlights are generally very compact, the larger ones being about the size of Mini-Maglights, and going down to barely larger than the tiny hearing aid battery that powers it!

Different colors of LEDs make for different applications when used as a flashlight.

Red light does not harm night vision, and so is great for map reading lights, or for use in a car while someone is driving. Red light also will not expose black and white photo paper, and makes a handy task light in a darkroom.

Green light is seen as very bright by our eyes. A green LED will be seen as much brighter than others around it, even if the energy output is the same.

Blue light highlights contrast in a visual field. Lighter colors appear much lighter, while darker colors fade into the background. Good for situations where you need to resolve small details with a minimum of light.

White light is the most natural in appearance, and is a must where color resolution is needed. Look for an LED with a natural color temperature to get the most accurate color representation.

Infrared and Ultraviolet LED lights are also available for special use. Infrared light is viewable by most night-vision goggles, but is still invisible to the naked eye. These lights are used by hunters, night photographers, the military, and anyone who needs a flashlight that will aid their night vision goggles. UV lights are commonly used to illuminate the security features of money for a quick and portable anti-counterfeit checker. UV LEDs produce no visible light, but UV is damaging to the eyes! If you have a UV LED, don’t let its lack of visible output deceive you, peering directly into it can cause permanent eye damage!

So huzzah for LEDs!

I’m back, I’m safe, and I’m reasonably sanitary.

Schwagstock was great fun, with nice music, good camping, wonderful weather, excellent swimming, entertaining people, and all around goodness.

There were about 4000 people there, arranged in a loosely organized village, with a center commercial area called “Shakedown Street” with all the vendor tents selling hemp clothing, grilled cheese sandwiches, t-shirts, strange artwork, and just about anything else you could want. Around it branched off little impromptu residential streets where people parked their vehicles and set up camps. The main stage was set against one edge of Shakedown St. and the second stage was actually right in the middle of Shakedown St.

Our camp was fairly remote, on a far edge. This was actually nice, because we were in a wide open area with lots of trees (for setting up our hammock) and not too many people. We still had neighbors of course, but our tents weren’t back to back. The other nice thing about our camp is that we were right next to the Meramac River, which happened to be excellent for swimming!

The entire circumference of the camp was over 2 miles, so we were very glad we brought bicycles for transportation. Cars were allowed on the far outer road that circled the camp, but there was no driving allowed inside the actual camp, except to find your camping spot at the beginning, and then again to leave at the end of the weekend. Around the outer loop, our bicycles were still faster than cars, as the road was in poor shape, and people were swarming all over the roads. Around the center roads and Shakedown St., our bicycles were perfect, manuverable enough to get around the tents and avoid sleeping people on the ground, but were fast enough to make the long journey from camp to stage a very quick proposition.

Our meals were mostly cooked on a little backpacking stove, and consisted largely of thai noodles, cous cous, and green tea. We slept in a humungous tent that Billy brought. It had two rooms! We also had a hammock in the shade between two trees, which was perfect for lounging. We chose not to light a fire, but our neighbors had a nice one, and we spent a lot of time with them in the evenings.

The bands played mostly Greatful Dead covers, but they did a very skillful job of it. The main stage had a bonfire nearby, which attracted large numbers of fire dancing revelers, and blanket sitting spectators.

Good times were had by all, and we arrived at home safely on Sunday afteroon, where I promptly took a shower, and slept for 16 hours.

Ok, I’m going to be gone until Sunday! The mac is officially being turned off for the weekend. Wow!

Billy will be here soon, with his friend Stacy, and we will load up, and head for the festival. We will return sometime on Sunday. Adios, amigos.

I have to go to work for one whole hour. Unfortunately, its the hour from 8:00am to 9:00am, meaning that despite the fact that I have most of the day off, I still have to get up at the butt-crack of dawn. Oh well, I’m going campin’ tonight!

In case anyone cares, Billyk.com is down. His server was hacked, and he had 17,000 mail messages backed up in the queue! He tried to clean things out, but everything got totally corrupted, and he had to bring the server down. He’ll be installing Mandrake Linux on it soon (yay, leaving the dark side of IIS servers behind!), and then it will be back up and running.

Until then, just read MY site more often. Muhahaha.

For todays entry, I’m just going to relate a funny story that happened to a friend of mine a while back. Why? Because I’m not very interesting today.
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If any of you were ever young, or have ever enjoyed an off-colour joke now and again, then you are aware of the concept of adding the words “in bed.” to the end of any fortune cookie fortune. The original might say, “You will have a wonderful afternoon with your mother.” Adding, “in bed” to the end automatically makes it hilariously filthy. This works for 99% of all fortune cookies. Some are surreal, but most are just quite saucy.

However, there is one fortune I’ve ever seen for which the “in bed” suffix actually makes perfect sense. The fortune was received by my friend Dennis one day, and read, “You will have a good night’s sleep.” Adding “in bed” just makes sense. A bit of a dissappointment for someone expecting something lurid, but amusing in the sense that it is almost absurd how non-lurid it ends up.

Its also a fortune you’d expect to have come true. At least, you have a reasonable chance of it. Its not as outrageous as “You will earn 1000$ a week for the rest of your life” or anything. Its a very reasonable fortune. So Dennis was confident that his fortune, for once, would come true.

That evening, he came home very late from a hard day at school and work, and came up to his bed, tired, and expecting to make good that night’s sleep in bed. As he undressed, he sat on the bed, and lowered his head to the pillow. Upon which his face came in contact with a slimy, warm, wet mass held loosely in a plastic bag. He was horrified at first, leaping out of bed. Shining light on the situation revealed that two dead crayfish had been placed in a bag, and layed upon his pillow. Disgusted and mortified at being so rudely shocked out of his bed time preperations, he gingerly grabbed the bag, took it to the obvious culprit’s room, and hung it on her doorknob.

The rest of the night was uneventful, but the shock of finding dead shellfish in your bed, combined with a fear of further retribution during the night, totally spoiled that good night sleep that the fortune portended.

Have a good day everyone. (in bed, hee hee hee)

This weekend I shall attend: Schwagstock 16. Schwagstock is a jam band type hippy music festival, which always promises to be a lot of fun. I’m not normally a ‘jam band’ music fan, but that is mostly because I don’t think the style really translates well to a recorded medium. However, its very entertaining when experienced live.

I’ll be going up with Billy in a van. We will toss our bikes into the van, along with a tent, sleeping bags, food, water, and other music festival essentials. The festival starts Friday evening, and goes through Saturday evening. Sunday everyone heads on home.

Schwagstock, like most outdoor music/hippy festivals, is held in a large campground, and everyone sets up their own little camping space. The atmosphere created is always very entertaining, as you end up with a strange little temporary city, complete with its own barter systems, its own topography, and its own local culture. Its this ‘temporary city’ idea that makes Burning Man what it is (though on a fantastically larger scale than music festivals like this).

In these shanty towns, fresh fruit and colorful fabric are valuable commodities, bicycles are the ideal form of transportation, and music is a common language.

If for some reason any of you are in the St. Louis area this weekend and want to go, send me an email.

Not to be a warblogger or anything, but this struck me as an interesting thing just now:

While waiting for class to start, I’m browsing the internet. I hit this news article declaring that Iraq will be letting in the UN inspectors. At about the same time, the guy next to me reads the news. Only he is a lot more happy than me, “I don’t have to go to the desert!!”

He is in the MP reserves, and this news means he probably won’t have to be called out. I’m happy for him.

EDIT: He has a blog too!