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Nasty Weather

Posted by Tom on June 9, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized.

We had some very nasty weather last night. Heavy rain, high winds, lots of lightning. Really lots of lightning. Power went out around 6pm and I got the generator out around 7:30. We took some nearby lightning hits. This morning I am assessing the damage:

-My Linux box is dead. With luck it’s just a power supply.
-The computer I use with my ham radio stuff is also dead.
-Jan’s computer boots but can’t connect to the network.
-My computer also will boot but looks as if its Ethernet card is dead.
-The router is fried.
-Our satellite TV box is also dead.
-The phones upstairs and in my office are dead.
-Answering machine is dead.

Lots of electronics still unchecked – could be more damage. Haven’t gone out to my observatory yet to see what happened out there.

At least it is all stuff that can be replaced and I’ve got the laptop to get online. No visible damage to the house and, other than lack of sleep, Jan, I, and Itty are all fine.

Hope this is the end of the T-storms around here!

When I get a chance I’ll post some pictures of the flooding and other damage around here.

Random Quote #3

Posted by Tom on May 28, 2008
Posted in: Random Quotes.

“Most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five million strangers.”

—Jubal Harshaw in “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein

This one is a bit cynical but certainly has a grain of truth in it.

Random Quote #2

Posted by Tom on May 27, 2008
Posted in: Random Quotes.

The standard disclaimer applies: I don’t necessarily agree with all of these quotes, but I find something interesting about them all.

The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts.
– Bertrand Russell

This one is particularly appropriate during the election season(s).

Spring 2008

Posted by Tom on May 26, 2008
Posted in: Around the House.

I’m a little late with this post because I was worried that we would have another snow storm just after I posted it. I still may be overconfident but I’ll take the chance.

We had a very hard Winter this year and Spring was late in getting here. But, as far as I can tell, it made it. Here are a few views of things around the house.

Here are the lilacs blooming along the road in front of us. The fragrance was wonderful and every time we had a south wind you could smell them anywhere around the house.

The front of our house

This is a shot of the front of the house, with all the shrubery starting to brighten up. I don’t know the names of these plants – maybe Jan will post a comment and identify them. Off to the left are more lilacs and to the right is the apple tree in bloom.

The apple blossoms were prolific this year. I hope that translates into a huge crop of apples.

Random Quote #1

Posted by Tom on May 26, 2008
Posted in: Random Quotes.

In an attempt to get a little more content here I’m starting a semi-regular post of interesting, provocative or strange quotations. By way of disclaimer, I don’t necessarily agree with all of these quotes, but I find something interesting about them all. What do you think? So here we go:

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
— Carl Sagan

I find this quote quite useful when dealing with crackpots who feel persecuted.

Blog Update

Posted by Tom on May 6, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized.

I’ve just finished putting my customizations back after upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. I hope I remembered everything. If anyone spots something that doesn’t look right, please leave a comment here.

Problems with Akismet

Posted by Tom on April 16, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized.

Akismet is a very good tool for blocking comment spam on WordPress blogs. It has blocked more than 550 spam comments on my blog alone. Unfortunately it recently decided my URL was a spam site and started blocking my comments on other peoples blogs (notably those of Leo and Alice .) It even blocks my comments here if I include my URL! I’ve tried contacting Akismet and tried marking my comments as “not spam” but so far nothing has helped.

If you have a WordPress blog that I often comment on, please check to see if any of my posts have been blocked by Akismet and mark them “not spam.”

You can do this by going to the WordPress Dashboard (by clicking Site Admin) then under the Spam heading click the link on the number of comments blocked. If any of my comments are trapped, please check Not Span and then click the box that unblocks the checked items. This should, supposedly, train Akismet so that it stops blocking my posts. Posts marked spam are only kept for 15 days so you probably need to do this every couple weeks to make sure there aren’t other false positives.

Thanks in advance.

Match It For Pratchett

Posted by Tom on March 17, 2008
Posted in: Science Fiction.

One of my favorite authors is the UK’s Terry Pratchett, know for his wonderfully odd and entertaining Disk World novels. A short while ago he was diagnosed with at rare form of Alzheimer’s and recently he and his wife have donated £500,000 (~$1,000,000) to support research into the disease. A numbeave now started Match It For Pratchet to raise matching funds from all those who love his work.

As far as I know, contributions are not tax deductible in the US but that really does not matter. You can also buy T-Shirts from Poosk.com and all the profits will go towards the fund. That’s what I will be doing. I hope some or all who visit here will contribute too.

Match It For Pratchett

What Day Is It?

Posted by Tom on March 14, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized.

Pi Day

Yes everyone, it’s 3/14. This is the day when we celebrate everyone’s favorite irrational number. (Yes, I know there are a lot of √2 fans also, but there isn’t any 41st of January!).

Did you all get your Pi Day cards in the mail at 1:59:27 this morning? I have to admit, I missed the deadline. Maybe next year.

Here’s a link where you can learn all about Pi Day.

Fun With Ray Tracing

Posted by Tom on February 14, 2008
Posted in: Around the House, Technology.

A few weeks ago one of the podcasts I subscribe to (FLOSS Weekly) had a episode about a ray tracing program called POV-Ray. The people being interviewed in that podcast were so enthusiastic about their software that I decided to give it a try.

It’s a free, open source product and I found it has good documentation too. Anyway, I’ve been playing with it for a while, mostly going through the tutorial and doing the examples. Finally I decided to try something original and here is the result.

Rocket

This is a very simple image though I hope to embellish it as I learn more about the program and how to use it.

The great thing about POV-Ray (at least to me) is that it is all done with software and written in a “scene description language.” It’s very much like programming in any other language except that the output is rendered into an image. I’ve tried creating images from scratch using Photoshop or other image editors but I never could get the hang of that. With this I can work in a way I am familiar with.

All the images created are 3-dimensional and it’s easy to change the viewpoint and lighting to get the best looking results. Also there are many pre-defined elements such as the background stars and the planet’s sky in my little example.

Anyway, if any of you are interested, you can download the program for most OS’s (Windows, Mac, Linux and others) and just play around with it. It comes with a lot of pre-coded examples that you can have fun with. If you want to listen to the podcast that got me hooked you can download it here. It is an MP3 about 32MB in size.