fake google

check out start.com and see if the simplistic presenation rings strangly familiar.
poor google, having to fight IMPOSTERS.

geo coding

application: church outreach. if you want to mail a postcard invitation to the christmas service to all those around your emediate church (say, within .25 miles) then import the names from your quest cd (haven't done this yet) and map all addresses to a lat and long, choose your box, and run the query.

geocoder.us seems to be fairly accurate when cross referenced with my research for my wedding invitation from a few years ago. maybe part of the tools have already been found!

for our mail certification software we're reviewing; to geocode addresses it costs us 1000$ a year. not too bad considering i saw our church member purchase about 400 addresses around our church for about $400.

VI Editor

i needed to use a text editor in unix today (one of the NMR machines uses a unix interface and i wanted to add a parameter to my print view). so i went looking on the internet for a basic guide on how to use vi. i found this guide over at the university of hawaii and it is great! if you ever need to know some basics on how to navigate in vi read this! i printed out the pdf and took it with me and found it invaluable.

power of 9

I learned a nifty, i mean really NIFTY trick in accounting class last night. ohh.. and by the way, kev, I got new respect for your 'business' degree. this accounting stuff is crazy! I thought senior engineering class was hard, these acocuntants go to EXTREME measures of 1940's style book keeping to keep from using a negative sign. and i'm not just talking aobut using parenthesis to designate negative, i'm talking about these guys hate negative!

ok..... have you guys heard of the divisible by 9 trick? turns out if you are summing two columns and the numbers dont' equal, if the difference is evenly divisble by 9, then you transposed some numbers.

I know you can't officially prove anything by example, but i'll give you an example
123 213
34 34
56 56
77 77
-- --
290 380

dif=90
90/9 = 10

I played around with it a bunch in class and i can't quite figure out why it works. jen, see if you can puts your sets class to work and prove it for us!

--palegreenhorse---
yup topology was useful because it taught me to write better proofs. =) click on the image to see the full proof (a simple one and a generalized on that shows any two numbers switched, they don't have to be adjacent). sorry 'bout the quality... is a really nice pdf, but didn't take the time to convert to a higher quality png or something, just used print screen.

For a quick laugh

Yeah, I'd seen a lot of these but they still made me smile (fair warning: not important, exciting or lifechanging... just a little fun): "Zen For Those Who Take Life Too Seriously"

Google's Expansion intio Books

looks like google is having a bit of trouble over indexing books out of libraries. i am most interested in the statement in the story:

But Mr. Aiken said that offer turned longstanding precedents in copyright law upside down, requiring owners to pre-emptively protect rights rather than requiring a user to gain approval for use of a copyrighted work.

i think people shouldn't be exploited by default, they should be protected by default. the author's have a lot more to loose in many cases than gain in terms of being on google. many non-fiction books used for researched aren't read though; rather quote are selected out and small sections or chapters read. the books are priced the way they are because people don't have them sitting on their shelves and one could argue if parts of the books are distributed free on the internet even less libraries will have them.

Type Faster

apparently those clicks on the keyboard don't all sound the same. a computer program can analyze the sounds of the keyboard typing and get 96% of the characters back... but only if you type at approximately 300 characters or less per minute (as far as i can gather that means 60 words per minute). time to get those typing fingers in better shape =).

pet robot

http://www.audiocubes.com/product/KONDO_KHR-1_Robot_Kit.html
Kondo robot with 17 joints. cute little guy. i was hoping for more, like that one that could react to someone pushing it.

It Electric!

i'm not quite sure if i believe this story about static electricity or not... nerdy opinions?

the weight of the world

I found this article on another blog regarding Hurricane Katrina victims.

Check out these other stories listed as well.

It's appalling how things can be...

Way Cool Printing

i'm probably the only nerd that regularly prints journal articles, but this may be useful for something else too.
using the printer drivers that hp supplies, i can print my own little booklet of the article. instead of printing one sided full page of the article it will print two sided booklet. once at the print pop-up i select properties. then finishing. change to two pages on one paper. two-sided printing (manual in my case) and booklet. instructions come up on how exactly to move the first sheets printed back into the paper tray for the other side to be printed upon. then ta-da. fold your sheets together and it is like a little book. so cool.

diy ups

in reading about diy ups's, i came across http://www.dansdata.com/diyups.htm which included:

"A bench power supply is also a generally useful thing. I use mine all the time when I'm building and testing things, or when I just feel like setting fire to a pencil."

this author has good taste. there's nothing like more tools to start fires. i like it.

baitcar.com

baitcar.com is a fun read.

compfused

http://www.compfused.com/
angela and jerel showed this to alodia and I.

random txt?

need some random txt? this image stolen from blogger seems to always come up with somehting new. hit refresh and see for yourself.

white meat

heard on a radio commercial while on the way to work:

"pharmicists, the other white coat"

thanksgiving approved

I got work off, taking monday, tuesday, and wednesday as vacation. so. that means jen and I will drive or fly up on late fri, sat, or sun, haven't decided yet. whats the work schedule like in spokane?

hubble

brian from work (he's selling magazines today) showed me this webiste
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/
i rather like it. desktop anyone?

Space Available

1 + 1 = 1 terabyte
plenty of room for your cattle to roam with a 3 year warranty.

bulges

Well, as we all grow older, we tend to grow bulges (especially mid 50s ladies I've noticed). Appears Central Oregon is also growing older and developing a bulge.

startreck voyager

check out star trek voyager first assistant director... does any one we know KNOW this person?



ahh. nevermind, acording to this he died. the article goes no to say that the actor that plays tom paris is a director. cool.

/end of star trek update.

Something's not right here

Hey why the long head Kali?

camping?

I have taken the pic out just in case those invovled didn't find it as humerous as I did.

Jen and I are going with our friend mike this weekend to hike the 15-20 mile ridgeline of mt rose. it should be alot of fun, or pain ,we haven't decided which. its a 3 day event. camp 2 nights, backpack the rest. while looking through some pictures, we ran across kevs proposal.