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Progress

The new copier requires three button presses and four steps to make a copy. Start, (scan), finish, start. Yay?

2012 08 21 Brent Rant Comments Off on Progress Permalink

Curry Village will kill you

Something denizens of the Center of the Universe have known for decades.

2012 08 17 Brent Climbing Comments Off on Curry Village will kill you Permalink

Picture of the day, 17 August 2012

2012 08 17 Brent Picture of the day Comments Off on Picture of the day, 17 August 2012 Permalink

Picture of the day, 15 August 2012

2012 08 15 Brent Picture of the day Comments Off on Picture of the day, 15 August 2012 Permalink

The real reason not to vote for Romney

He’s a lousy businessman.

Any investor who listened to Vanguard’s John Bogle would have done about the same during 1984-1998 – just buy the S&P500 index, and hold it, reinvesting the dividends. The net returns would be ~20% per year — without giant fees or excessive risks necessary.

So despite all the middle-class-disrupting, race-to-the-bottom, Swiss-bank-account, pay-no-taxes, outsourcing pain that Bain Capital was responsible for, you’d have been better off just investing in an index fund.

Some businessman.

Unless you’re Mitt Romney. Apparently he made out like a bandit.

h/t BdL

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2012 08 15 Brent Because linking is an intrinsic good
Rights Comments Off on The real reason not to vote for Romney Permalink

Los Angeles doesn’t care

So I don't have to search for this link again. Los Angeles doesn't care:

Every mode of living is appropriate for L.A. You can do what you want. And I don’t just mean that Los Angeles is some friendly bastion of cultural diversity and so we should celebrate it on that level and be done with it; I mean that Los Angeles is the confrontation with the void. It is the void. It’s the confrontation with astronomy through near-constant sunlight and the inhuman radiative cancers that result. It’s the confrontation with geology through plate tectonics and buried oil, methane, gravel, tar, and whatever other weird deposits of unknown ancient remains are sitting around down there in the dry and fractured subsurface. It’s a confrontation with the oceanic; with anonymity; with desert time; with endless parking lots.

2012 08 07 Brent Because linking is an intrinsic good
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Pinball

No one cares if you’re two years late and 2x overbudget if you succeed.

Congratulations, Curiosity team.

Science. It works, bitches!

XKCD science

“The error bars are smaller than the line.”

Two things:

  • Someone was getting text messages during the whole descent, and it must have been someone high up because no one asked them to mute their phone.
  • Bolden and Holdren had to piss all over their territory saying first off, right out of the gate, that this was prep for human landings on Mars.  Why can’t we just do good science without turning it into a manned spaceflight boondoggle?

Also, random internet commenters: It’s California, dudes. Not JSC in Houston. Hairstyles and attitudes. If they weren’t on TV, it would be shorts and flip-flops.

2012 08 05 Brent Comment
Science Comments Off on Pinball Permalink

Blackberries

Nothing like eating sun-warmed blackberries straight off the vine, complete with spiderwebs. Luscious, sweet, so ripe they fall off in your hand. The blackberry stain doesn’t wash off.

No, I’m not saying where.

2012 08 05 Brent Comment Comments Off on Blackberries Permalink

Picture of the day, 3 August 2012

 

2012 08 03 Brent Photography
Picture of the day Comments Off on Picture of the day, 3 August 2012 Permalink

How to rescue deleted photos from a memory card

Photorec. Worked a charm.

Pro-tip: run it twice. I tried it on two different cards, and it didn't work the first time on either, but the second time, it found everything, and I mean everything, even though I'm pretty sure that one of the cards had been formatted in camera.

Bonus – it's free, and terminal based. $ sudo ./photorec

2012 08 03 Brent Photography Comments Off on How to rescue deleted photos from a memory card Permalink

Less than one week

I dropped an application for a new passport in the mail last Thursday, after checking the State Department page for timing, and seeing “3-4 weeks” for expedited processing ($100 more, with overnight shipping both ways), and “6-12 weeks” for vanilla processing. I ponied up for the expedited, on the theory of you-never-know.

The processing center got the application on Monday (so much for $28 overnight shipping USPS), and I had a new passport in my hands the following Thursday. So that means it took them not 3-4 weeks, but more like 24-36 hours.

Extrapolating, I guess I should have saved the $100, and I'd have still gotten the passport in at worst another week. Or maybe linear extrapolation is not the right metric, but still pretty impressive. At least for $100, I got my money's worth.

2012 08 03 Brent Comment Comments Off on Less than one week Permalink

Picture of the day, 1 August 2012

 

2012 08 01 Brent Picture of the day Comments Off on Picture of the day, 1 August 2012 Permalink

Fundamental Physics Prize

There’s a new kid gunning for Nobel in town. Seven of the nine prizes went to string theorists. I kinda thought ST might be a bit in disfavor now that the LHC has pretty much ruled out supersymmetry in any reasonably testable regime. No experimentally verifiable SS means that ST is kinda in there with luminiferous aether and N-rays. Better yet is that either the committee which determines the prizes just gave it to themselves (kind of a Cheney vetting the veep moment), or more likely, the past winners get to select the next winners. Meaning more ST lottery winners.

Of course all smart folks. Just no evidence that ST is the right horse. Or even a horse. Or even equine. Much less in the right race.

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2012 07 31 Brent Science Comments Off on Fundamental Physics Prize Permalink

X of the year 2011, update

In the previous year end summary, I forgot this. And the other Bigfoot memoirs. Laugh out loud funny. Seriously. I sat on the porch and guffawed through the whole thing. Woulda been funny even without the G&Ts.

2012 07 23 Brent Comment
Review Comments Off on X of the year 2011, update Permalink

Food for thought

And not so much for eating. Drought, persistent 15% unemployment, austerity in the air.

Is it me, or does something smell like 1937 around here?

2012 07 22 Brent Because linking is an intrinsic good
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