Yule Be Rockin'

Hello one and everyone. By way of Christmastime greetings I have composed a simple video for all y'all. I'm probably only going to leave it up for a short while since it adds a fringe to the copyright of the music which accompanies it. It may be found here. I apologize if you read this and do not see your shining smiling face in the video. It was hastily thrown together. Perhaps a lame excuse, but there you have it. May the season find you all happy and without loss of limb or addition of taxes.

an unknowwwn holiday

Well, not a holiday as such.
But I would like to take this opportunity to announce:
4 January is national Trivia and Random Fact day.
Upon discovering this day, obviously designed in my honor, I elected that festivities of some kind should be held that day or evening. If you can come that day I will inform you of details. Either the Wagner festival or much more likely it is time for some people to see Uncorked... hmmm.

You know they say - how it was later said of Scrooge, he kept Christmas all the year... well... I keep random fact day all the year. so there.

Supply and Demand

If all the diamonds stored by major diamond companies were released, a perfect two-carat diamond would be worth about three dollars.

Edward Lear

CHAPTER IX
THE HISTORY OF THE SEVEN YOUNG GUINEA PIGS

The Seven young Guinea Pigs went into a garden full of Gooseberry-bushes and Tiggory-trees, under one of which they fell asleep. When they awoke, they saw a large Lettuce which had grown out of the ground while they had been sleeping, and which had an immense number of green leaves. At which they all exclaimed:

'Lettuce! O Lettuce!
'Let us, O let us,
'O Lettuce leaves,
'O let us leave this tree and eat
'Lettuce, O let us, Lettuce leaves!'

And instantly the Seven young Guinea Pigs rushed with such extreme force against the Lettuce-plant, and hit their heads so vividly against its stalk, that the concussion brought on directly an incipient transitional inflammation of their noses, which grew worse and worse and worse and worse till it incidentally killed them all Seven.

And that was the end of the Seven young Guinea Pigs.

Going like hotcakes

Get yours while they last. Think of it as a gift to your quite distant descendants.

And speaking of changes in the earth, whichever side of the global warming debate you find yourself on, I think we can all agree that scams don't really help anyone. Well, I suppose they help the scammers. My favorite parts of the article and comments: possibly 1/3 of Indian offset projects fail the additionality test, and the Norwegian organization that is flooded with $ from carbon-offset sales and is unable to execute projects that fill the orders. Bottom line for some people is that global warming provides a great business opportunity.

Ben, that is a wonderful piece of music. I had difficulty getting past the first few bars, though. I guess I need to practice more.

Hey, who all would be down for a holidays-time party? Time, place, activities?

I love living here

Early one Sunday morning in 2002, a phone rings in Yu Ling's Beijing duplex. She's cleaning upstairs; her son is asleep, while downstairs, her husband, Wang Xiaoning, is on the computer. Wang writes about politics, anonymously e-mailing his online e-journals to a group of Yahoo users. He's been having problems with his Yahoo service recently. He thinks it's a technical issue. This is the day he learns he's wrong.

Wang picks up the phone: "Yes?"

"Are you home?" asks the unfamiliar voice on the other end.

"Yes."

The line goes dead.

Moments later, government agents swarm through the front door -- 10 of them, some in uniform, some not. They take Wang away. They take his computers and disks. They shove an official notice into Yu's hands, tell her to keep quiet, and leave. This is how it's done in China. This is how the internet police grab you.

*twitch*

The Sixth IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality
Tue, Nov. 13 - Fri, Nov. 16, 2007
Nara-Ken New Public Hall, Nara, Japan


ISMAR 2007 is over with great success!!

The conference general chair Haruo Takemura would like to thank everyone who helped to make the conference the success that it was with 241 participants. In particular, I would like to thank all of the sponsors, chairs and student volunteers for their financial support and dedication to the conference.
ISMAR 2008 will be held in Cambridge, UK, on a week of September 14th, 2008. More details will soon be available.

Riddle me this

A heterological word is one that does not describe itself. So... is 'heterological' a heterological word?


Don't injure yourself trying to figure it out. If you get tired, leave - go get something to eat, maybe take a little nap - and come back to it later. It will still be here.

If you don't like the implications and don't mind a bit of language theory, you can eyeball this article. It essentially points out that "'heterological'" and "heterological" are two different things.

When you have that down, consider the object in this image, which contains 3 copies of the phrase 'mobius strip', having the phrase only actually printed 1.5 times.



And finally, realize that it is possible to visualize more than 3 dimensions. (If you look at the number 4, you'll see that each axis can be seen as being at a 90 degree angle to each of the other three axes, although you can't really get your brain to see all 4 at once. Fun, huh?)

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.
--Igor Stravinsky

Well, can you?

Get geekier, that is.

Talent Show

There are lots of videos out there on the Internet that show talent, but I think this one shines particularly brightly.

Wow.

Ricky that is by far the funniest thing I've seen in quite a while. I'm still trying to figure out how to make a shift. I'm on a laptop where the plus sign key is on the equals sign. I saw the little plus sign icon come up for a second, but can't get it to come back so I can play too.

We should totally make an official Band Geeks trail that leads to shifts on whatever web pages we alter. It could be like a contest. Or something.

Anywho, I just thought I'd mention that that was hilarious.

Update: Ok, I figured it out. I've added a couple to weber.edu

Update again: "A computer search up to 10²⁰ suggests that about 12% of numbers are happy, though no proof is known." - from the Wikipedia article on Happy Numbers

File Recovery

Hey Jon! You had fun recovering deleted files eh? Oh, I know the feeling. "Help me!! I deleted the spreadsheet I've been working on for weeks! Oh, and by the way, I think I deleted it four days ago." Wow! How technology solves our problems, eh. I think it's hilarious. Or, there's that Labor Day weekend I found myself in the office working on upgrading MAS, our accounting software. Oooh, that was fun. Not only were we upgrading the software, we were moving it off our Exchange server onto it's own server. Yeah, that was a riot.

But, there's something strangely enjoyable about IT work. That's why I keep going back day after day. It's always enjoyable to have people tell me that I'm their hero for fixing their seemingly critical problem.

Project for the now: upgrade our current 100Mbit switch to a new 1Gbit switch and install Gbit NICs in all the company computers. Oh, and that has to be done without interrupting anyone. :)

Chao!

Cage fighting

Jon, your triple version of Ross' sounds like Steve Reich or, as I mentioned above, three guitarists Cage fighting.

There is your terrible pun for the day.

I just tried Shift Space and it's AWESOME!!!

So Jon, that Shift Space thing is so much fun!!! I've already left random notes on various pages! And I enjoyed using the SourceShift to take over this blog, mwahaha!!!! You all really need to check it out.

later.

Own your very own Internet (tm)

This is one of the geekier things I've seen in a while. It's similar to an idea I had a while back.

ShiftSpace

And speaking of very own, I offer this useless tidbit. (It's been a while since we've had any of-the's around here.)

factoid of the day: the Band Geeks blog record for most posts in a month is September 2005 with 64 posts. The record for least posts in a month is February 2004 with only 3 posts.

fun of the day: trying to recover deleted files from a Mac in the faculty lab. This is not something I care to ever attempt again.

song of the day: Evacuating London from the Narnia soundtrack

important thing of the Right Now: me going to sleep

Bye all.

This is really cool!

This is a simple thing that can decrease your chances of identity theft, decrease junk mail, and decrease paper waste. By calling 1-888-5-OPTOUT (1-888-567-8688) you can "opt out" of getting credit card applications in the mail! It's great, and it really works. Just thought I'd share.

Hey Hey

Yes, it has been a while. It's good to hear from you, Andrew. There is something somehow fulfilling about getting to work in (or at least close to) your field of study after you graduate. Kind of makes it seem like it was worth the years and dollars you put into school.

Jarrett, thanks for the tickets. I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it, especially since I do like a good Pictures at an Exhibition performance. And although I wasn't there in person for the special-needs group concert, I do remember the Rootism on the the subject.

I love this weather.

Long time, no C...

Quite litterally, since I haven't played my instrument for some years now.

Anyhow, I just wanted to swing by the ol' band hall and say hello to all my old friends. I think about you guys often and remember our fun times fondly. I hope you are all well.

As for me, for those who don't already know, I gradumated back in May from the U with a degree in Film Studies. So, now I am a legitimate adult, even if I may not feel like one. I moved away from life on campus and currently rent an apartment in the Aves with three other guys. To make ends meet, I work at KUTV Channel 2 as a studio technician, but am moving into becoming a master control operator. That's pretty much all I have been up to.

I have been meaning to come up north for a while, and maybe one day I will soon so I can say hello in person.

Cheers!