stargeek
Is that fog or are my eyes just misty?Is that fog or are my eyes just misty?Is that fog or are my eyes just misty? 08/08/2004 08:36 AM A couple of nights the city of Oulu was covered in a foggy blanket. Me and Outi went out with our cameras, and grabbed some pictures; my shots are now available at my gallery. I also wanted to test my new Canon Ixus 500. Expect a sort-of-a-review when I get back home. I know, they are crappy shots (photography is not one of my skills), and normally I wouldn't burden you with them, but I think those pictures tell well my current mood. You see, tonight is the night we have to say goodbye. I'll be off soon to Iceland for two weeks of pony trekking (and with my luck, Helsinki is now bathing in heat, and Reykjavik isn't), and after that I have the busiest week I could imagine at work. And then two weddings might mix our schedule so that we might not be able to see each other for a month. That's nearly the amount of time we've known each other so far - it's an eternity. *deep sigh* This is a GrokNews Entry: (what is grok?)Is that fog or are my eyes just misty?Grok Headline matches for Is that fog or are my eyes just misty?MistyMisty 03/23/2005 08:23 AM Misty Welcome to the mysterious world of MISTY,where the unusual is usual, where the unexpected is expected, where every thrill's a chill. Enjoy your journey through these pages... and the strange lands and people you'll meet. Your friend, Misty misty morningmisty morning 05/23/2004 03:08 PM Anne's goofing off with a couple of her girlfriends who have birthdays this weekend, so I've sort of "taken point" with the kids, and it has been sublime, effortless, joyous . . . I have felt the way I've always hoped to feel with them: like we love and respect each other, and enjoy each other's company. For the last eight years I've done everything humanly possible to help build a loving and supportive relationship with them, while always respecting their emotional limits . . . even when it was incredibly painful to feel like I was more interested in closing the gap than they were. I don't believe that it's my place as their stepfather to try to be their buddy, or force closeness on them if they're not ready for it, or interested in it. It has not always been easy, and sometimes the hardest thing I've experienced as a parent is setting aside what I want, when it conflicts with what the kids need. It's been especially tough when my relationship with them, (and my role in their lives,) has been intentionally and actively undermined, but I've always stayed focused on what's best for them, and it's during times like these, when I see and feel the results of my parenting, that I know I'm doing the right thing. Getting Misty Over Old MachinesGetting Misty Over Old Machines 08/19/2004 03:21 PM You ever get sentimental over an old computer? One that you just can't throw away? Back in 1998, I worked part-time at Best Buy so Annie and I could pay cash for our wedding the next summer. That Christmas season was the year a complete PC system (computer, monitor, printer) broke the $1,000 barrier. I still remember the doors opening on Sunday mornings to a throng people nearly drooling at the prospect of a system for $999. You used to have to hold up the weekly flier, point to a package, and say, "Everyone who wants this, go over there, and, " — pointing at a different one — "everyone who wants this, come over here." It was crazy. Anyway, sometime during that job, someone returned a Compaq Presario 4508 mini-tower, and I persuaded the inventory guy to let me buy it as-is for $200. The box said it was 200 MHz, but BIOS told me 233. It had 24MB of RAM, but only 1MB of video memory, so I dropped $20 on a used 4MB video card, taking up one of the two PCI slots in the process. The hard drive was a monstrous 4.3GB. That computer served me well for almost four years. I managed to cram 48MB of memory in it — the most it would take (the case design was so poor that adding memory was a 30-minute operation). It ran Windows 95 for all those years until I got a new machine (a 1 GHz Athlon, which I still use today) and I put Linux on it briefly. I remember installing Office 2000, then having to uninstall it because it was just too slow. About three years ago, I passed the computer on to my mother-in-law. She's one of those folks who does two things: surfs the Web and sends email. In that capacity, the little machine has worked great, until now. I think it's finally started to die. The hard drive cycles endlessly, and every once in a while it reboots to Safe Mode, a phenomenon I can only attribute to some obscure bit of hardware going to pieces so that it doesn't respond correctly on reboot. I have it running Windows 98 SE, stripped down to virtually nothing. Everything that can be removed has been, but it's still using 10MB more memory than it has immediately after rebooting. I'm going to start looking for another machine for my mother-in-law, but I just can't bear to throw the old Presario away. It's chugged along for seven years now, and enabled the sending and receiving of countless baby pictures. I'm a little sentimental about the old bird, and I think I'll just store it away in the basement for a while in the hopes that my wife never finds it and sells it at a garage sale one day. Click here to comment on this entry eroticBPM - Model Bios - Mona & MistyeroticBPM - Model Bios - Mona & Misty 05/20/2004 10:17 AM Who knew O'Reilly's Programming Perl could be so stimulating? .. eroticBPM - Model Bios - Mona & Misty .. Programmer Porn (NSFW) .. Spanking PERL girls! eroticbpm.com/tour/models/modbios/monamisty.php The eyes have itThe eyes have it 09/01/2004 06:10 AM David Pescovitz: 
On eBay, a box of twenty SFX artificial eyeballs.
"Made of a durable polymure-resin-glass compound these eyes are lifelike. Very high quality. Great to collect, use for props or Halloween coming up soon. Professional. Many colors."Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne!) EU again eyes MSEU again eyes MS 08/27/2004 02:00 PM Usatoday.com - Wed Aug 25, 08:24 pm GMT The Eyes of NyeThe Eyes of Nye 03/25/2005 11:26 PM this time with a new more "adult-oriented" show .. The Eyes of Nye eyesofnye.org For your eyes onlyFor your eyes only 12/13/2003 01:53 PM Toshiba is working on LCD monitors that will let you adjust the viewing angle so that it'll be harder for prying eyes (like your boss)... EyesEyes 07/06/2004 09:41 PM Sheila: The sleepy eyes of Sibiu. What big eyes you have!What big eyes you have! 09/19/2004 09:31 AM Littl e Red Riding Hood's wayward past revealed: "Once upon a time, (the story) was a seduction tale. An engraving accompanying the first published version of the story, in Paris in 1697, shows a girl in her déshabille, lying in bed beneath a wolf. According to the plot, she has just stripped out of her clothes, and a moment later the tale will end with her death in the beast’s jaws — no salvation, no redemption. Any reader of the day would have immediately understood the message: In the French slang, when a girl lost her virginity it was said that 'elle avoit vû le loup' — she’d seen the wolf." Don't tell me because my eyes are on youDon't tell me because my eyes are on you 02/10/2004 02:49 AM Mhmmm...what to say, what to say. Nothing really. Ben is here. That's pretty much it. I have a craving for... Farewell To Eyes Above And BelowFarewell To Eyes Above And Below 08/07/2004 10:42 AM Our Eyes photographyOur Eyes photography 09/24/2004 01:38 AM Our Eyes photography. Interesting photographs submitted from around the world using a left-right scroll layout of 10-15 shots with various themes. The scrolling is an interactive part of the piece. Caution: Your workplace may be dangerous to these artists. Some (SFW) favorites . My Eyes. Your World.My Eyes. Your World. 12/02/2003 01:26 AM Private and Public is an interesting concept for a photgraphy project. One spot, one year and many candid photographs.... Prying eyes everywherePrying eyes everywhere 04/15/2005 12:27 PM USA Today Apr 15 2005 4:49PM GMT Eyes on EisnerEyes on Eisner 09/13/2004 11:13 AM Disney's CEO gets ready to move on. Through eyes long since goneThrough eyes long since gone 05/12/2004 07:06 AM
A photo taken by my paternal grandfather of the fire at the Purina headquarters in February 1962. It was so cold that the water was frozen by the time it hit the building and turned it into an ice palace. I put a few more of them into a small gallery of grandpa's photos. My brother-in-law has started scanning in pictures given to him by my 95 year old grandmother which were taken over the course of my grandfather's life. It's so strange to see these images taken by a man who was always remote and stoic. He was a brilliant mechanical engineer and mathematician who introduced me to cryptography when I was 7 via the cryptoquip in the newspaper. He patiently explained letter frequency and how to make a crib. Every time I pick up a draw-string bag from a store, I think of him since he designed the machine to make them but, being an 'Organization Man' straight out of Whyte's book, he shared none of the profits that the company reaped from his design. Grandpa was also the guy who, on Christmas, would take a pocketknife and slowly, carefully unwrap the paper from each gift and fold it. While I respected his intelligence, I never really liked him very much as he made it impossible to warm up to him. I have an exceedingly vivid memory of him talking to me on my 10th birthday about 'niggers' and my immediate reaction of thinking much less of him for it. My mother always remembers him taking back a box kite he had made for me only to give it to my cousin. I didn't think much of it at the time since Robin was only 1 week younger than me, but he had been born retarded due to a negligent doctor with a pair of foreceps and I thought maybe he needed the kite more than I did in the guileless nive way that children tend to see such things. Later in life I would come to understand that he and my grandmother had a long history of playing favourites - from my father's brother, to my oldest sister, to Robin. I spent several summers over at their house and can't really recall that I learned anything about them as people aside from what was obvious and already known; they loved bridge with friends, he was a type II diabetic and they were active Masons. They used to take me to various Masonic functions and even then I was cynical enough to think of it as a creepy cult-like organisation. They were inscrutable in many ways. It's is particularly odd to see these photographs that he took not only because I didn't know that he liked photography, but that he took more than just the usual family snapshots and appears to have been reasonably good at it. My father bought an Olympus OM-10 at one point and I don't know that he took many photos with it since work was his life. I imagine that had he lived to enjoy some of his retirement that he would have taken a lot more pictures. I started getting interested in photography about 10 or 12 years ago and I wonder now if it might be hereditary. :) George, my grandfather, died from a massive heart attack at the ripe age of 84 while roofing his house, which wasn't a bad way to go all things considered. I cursed him at the time since it was right before my Calculus 2 and Differential Equations exams and he was helping my understanding of them tremendously. Looking at the few pictures my brother-in-law sent to me, it makes me wonder if he might have had some redeeming qualities as a human being that I didn't or couldn't see when I was much younger. Keep Your Eyes on MetroFiKeep Your Eyes on MetroFi 12/29/2003 02:57 PM MetroFi doesn't appear to have officially introduced itself to the world: Its Web site is pretty stripped down and only says that the company plans to build a nationwide residential broadband network using Wi-Fi. Most of its leaders come from Covad, though its CTO was the CTO for Metricom. I'll be interested to see what exactly these guys are planning as it seems that WiMAX might be a better technology for such a network.... Apple in Their EyesApple in Their Eyes 06/22/2005 02:39 AM  Tribal EyesTribal Eyes 05/26/2004 07:55 PM I spent some time this week at a meeting of Sun’s Distinguished Engineers; to become a DE you have to go through a lengthy process including peer review. I’m not a DE, I was there to give a speech on Communication, my first outing on that subject. It’s an impressive group; there were lots of technical conversations (on IPv6, process modeling, mobile objects) where I was struggling to understand the basics let alone the details. Anyhow, I’ve already written here that I think people’s faces reflect the language they speak. Along similar lines, as I looked at all these very senior engineers’ faces, I was struck by a particular look in their eyes. I don’t seem to have a good vocabulary to describe it, but “stillness” and “coolness” come to mind. It wasn’t subtle. They are the eyes, I think, of people who listen intensely. Tired EyesTired Eyes 01/09/2004 09:44 PM I haven't really had a consistent, good sleeping schedule for a year and am in desperate need for some sort of product that will help reduce the bags/dark circles under my eyes -- not cosmetics or coverup but something actually... AOL eyes broadbandAOL eyes broadband 06/01/2004 07:19 AM USA Today Jun 1 2004 11:38AM GMT Through an Iraqi's EyesThrough an Iraqi's Eyes 12/15/2003 08:11 AM At 11:16 AM GMT, my cousin called me and told me Saddam Hussein had been captured. I rushed inside, started up my laptop and checked CNN. While the page was loading I plugged the satellite cable into my USB DVB tuner and started ProgDVB. The all-seeing eyes of Chi-townThe all-seeing eyes of Chi-town 09/21/2004 01:11 PM I saw over at Defensetech.org that Chicago's mayor (Richard Daley) has decided to add 250 surveillance cameras to the city's already extensive network of 2,000 such cameras that monitor high-crime areas in the city. Eyes on FloridaEyes on Florida 09/15/2004 11:55 AM Jeb Bush's state is at the center of the political storm again as election officials battle over putting Nader on the ballot. "People have eyes""People have eyes" 04/23/2004 02:43 AM Another pair of eyesAnother pair of eyes 06/11/2004 01:32 AM Usatoday.com - Thu Jun 10, 08:51 am GMT Pfizer: For Value Eyes OnlyPfizer: For Value Eyes Only 12/28/2004 01:13 PM The company deserves the attention of those looking for a value play. Through eBay eyesThrough eBay eyes 01/01/2005 10:09 PM USA Today Jan 2 2005 2:03AM GMT feed your eyes!feed your eyes! 06/15/2004 12:40 AM netdiver, a new media design portal and digital culture magazine. If you care at all about webdesign, you should see this. (Though I found it through random surfing, it was also an answer to an old question of mine.) OK? -eyes on ball. but, look
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 When I was researching the article One Billion Americans?, I got thinking about the implications of the wildly conservative Census Bureau projections of US population, and the embarrassing drastic upward revisions that have been made to them, for global population projections. What made the US projections so wrong (US population peaking at 295 million was predicted as recently as fifteen years ago) was the compound error of underestimating the extent of immigration and overestimating the rate at which immigrants adjust their family size to the average of their new country, or the global average. It's an understandable error -- there's lots of evidence that population growth rates in the developing world are falling quickly. But that's not because third world countries are evolving to two-child-or-less families as infant mortality drops. Rather, it's because those countries are simply unable to sustain more children, so parents are reluctantly, temporarily reducing family size as a result. Give them the option to emigrate to a developed country, and cultural preference, religious dictates, and improved health care will jump their family size (and life expectancy) back up again. And as inevitable ecological and humanitarian catastrophes arise in the 21st century in dozens of third world countries, compounded by the scourges of new diseases, horrendous shortages of clean water, and desertification and crop flooding due to global warming, the pressure to increase immigration quotas by orders of magnitude will be fierce. Back in 1990 when the pundits were predicting US population would peak at 295 million (it passed that level last year and is now expected to peak at between 550 million and 1.2 billion, if it peaks at all), they were saying global population would peak at around 9-11 billion in 2100. But for that to happen with a US population of, say, 900 million instead of 300 million, would mean average third world family size would be much smaller than average US family size. The UN projections, for example, assume annual average growth rate for Africa, Asia and Latin America of 0.5% in the latter half of this century, compared to a current growth rate in those areas (even including China with its already-low birth rate) of 2.1%, and compared to a current US growth rate of 0.9%, which is trending back up to a projected 1.3% rate for most of the current century, thanks to immigration. So the 9-11 billion global peak population just doesn't add up. While it doesn't make sense to get Malthusian and project population will grow indefinitely at current rates (1.3%, i.e. a doubling every 50 years to 24 billion by 2100), it's equally illogical and irresponsible to suggest that the whole world will start immediately radically reducing its fertility rate to achieve in just two generations the low fertility rate that Europe took one hundred generations to reach. If you assume that the levels of immigration now projected by the US Census Bureau will prevail throughout the developed world, that first- and second-generation citizens of developed countries will continue to have considerably larger-than-replacement level families in their new adopted countries, that the prevailing pro-fertility population dogmas of organized world religions will not suddenly be changed, that population pressure in the third world will be eased somewhat by immigration and that modest drops in family size in those countries will be largely offset by longer life expectancy, as has been observably the case in almost every third world country except China, then instead of the 9-11 billion peak the UN is currently talking about, you end up with population soaring past 14 billion in 2100, with no end in sight (left chart above). The curved red line shows the carrying capacity of Earth, assuming a modest annual increase in productivity from the current 30 billion acres (productive-capacity adjusted), assuming average footprint per capita continues to increase by a modest 1% per year, and assuming no land on the planet is reserved for wilderness or natural space for the rest of Earth's creatures. It shows in 2000 that the world could sustain 5 billion humans at the then-prevailing level of consumption. That's a billion humans less than actually inhabited the planet then, possible only by depriving much of the world of a subsistence level of resources, and by taking more from the Earth (in non-renewable resources) than we replaced, essentially stealing the excess from future generations. At the expected global level of per-capita consumption in 2100 (still well below today's North American consumption levels), carrying capacity drops to 2 billion humans. That number is substantiated by a recent C ornell study that says the choice in 2100 is between 2 billion people living a comfortable but not lavish life (achieved by a drastic population reduction) or 12 billion "struggling in misery". And if you want to allow 50% of the planet's surface for other life forms, you need to achieve double that reduction (green line), to one billion people, the level both Jim Merkel and Bill McKibben think we should strive for. That's only achievable, short of coercion, by an average one child family worldwide for the next century. The right chart shows that the increasing average footprint, driven both by North American excess and the surging resource use of China's billion plus people, will drive the aggregate human footprint up even more sharply than aggregate population, from 37 billion acres today (20% more than Earth's carrying capacity) to 210 billion acres in 2100 (six times Earth's carrying capacity). Now remember, these assumptions are much closer to the wildly optimistic assumptions of population levelling that the UN and other global agencies optimistically hope for, than to the Malthusian no-change projections that would see nearly double these numbers. Nevertheless, train wreck ahead. We simply have no choice. We must immediately and aggressively reduce our family sizes worldwide, and we must immediately and aggressively reduce per-capita resource consumption, waste and footprint. That means we must confront religions that don't actively encourage birth control and small families, and show those religions to be socially irresponsible. That means, too, we need to introduce ecological taxation measures to make excessive resource consumption and waste prohibitively expensive, and reward those who tread lightly on the Earth. |
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Oh my god! I've got a while week off. What on earth am I going to do with myself. I mean I've got lots of forms and bills to sort out, and no clean clothes and a flat like a pig-sty and I actually still have some work hanging over my head which I'm going to try and get done tomorrow morning so I don't have to think about it any more (although I have a sneaking suspicion it'll still be with me at the end of the week). I'm also going to Norfolk for my brother's eighteenth birthday (which is so weird and exciting and strange) and four hours after work has ended, I've already got things tumbling out of my head almost uncontrollably. Two site sketches down on paper, plans for redesigns, bits of jottings taking shape, social software things. And I even have this urge to go out and get drunk and maybe go dancing or something. I never feel like that. I wonder where I can find nice fun people to play with...
One thing that I probably won't have time to do is think around the landmark east project which seems to me should be something that those of us with insane creative web-building urges should be able to contribute to. Maybe something using ubiquitous computing, or feeding in contributions to the public and turning into something physical and manifest automatically. Or maybe some kind of collaborative architecture experience - like that font project that was around a few years back, where individuals came to a page and turned one pixel on or off, trying gradually to assemble some kind of glyph. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could create a structure, a landmark, a monument like that? Chunk by chunk, brick by brick, curve by curve...
Gregory Dicum's book "Window
Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air" sounds like a brilliant
idea:
"Broken down by region, this unusual guide features 70 aerial photographs; a fold-out map of North America showing major flight paths; profiles of each region covering its landforms, waterways, and cities; tips on spotting major sights, such as the Northern Lights, the Grand Canyon, and Disney World; tips on spotting not-so-major sights such as prisons, mines, and Interstates; and straightforward, friendly text on cloud shapes, weather patterns, the continent's history, and more."Did you know that the patterns of the streets in subdivisions lets you know when they were built? Or that the round ponds all over Florida are sinkholes? With Window Seat at your side, you'll learn these things. Keep it to yourself though--the person sitting next to you doesn't want to hear it. Link (Thanks, Eric!)
When Apple thrust Mac OS X upon us, it was quite a change. I remember one colleague remarked that his head was filled with all sorts of Mac OS 9 troubleshooting arcana, nearly all of which would be rendered moot once Mac OS X gained its footing. Some behaviors in the new operating system changed enough that they disrupted the flow of how we'd been using the Mac for years. Subsequently, several utilities appeared to bring back those behaviors (see "Top Mac OS X Utilities: Restoring Mac OS 9 Functionality" in TidBITS-622).
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: zoombrowser camera window already running start aborted
