"lifestream" via M. Bobowski in Google Reader

Shooting Rockets at the Moon

2009-10-09T13:49:36Z

#moon

Kind of awesome. Watching the analysis now.

Also, now we know how to stream NasaTV to the TV via the media server.

wget the .asx from the NasaTV page (in the right-hand sidebar under Other Viewing Options, it's the one labeled "Windows Media (Best for Full Screen)")

open it up and find the Yahoo url; in this case: http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1369080&segment=149773

run mplayer -playlist 'http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1369080&segment=149773'

Tagged: Linux, Note to Self, & Science

Obama wins the Peace Prize?

2009-10-09T12:40:20Z

#obamapeaceprize

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that the U.S. finally has a President that isn't the antithesis of peace. (Archnemesis of peace? The anti-peace?) He's a rock star, and the whole freakin' world heaved a collective sigh of relief when he took office.

But I'm just not sure what Obama has done to merit the honor. Is just not being Bush enough? He's made some inroads, he's got some plans, but when I think of the Nobel Peace Prize, I feel like there should be more actual accomplishment behind it.

On the other hand, I can't entirely disagree with the Nobel Committee. As they said, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." (Emphasis mine.) Hope is important, and so is trying, even if it comes to nothing in the end. Maybe it's optimism on their part, that by supporting the idea, they can help bring it to fruition. But then, that's kind of Obama's thing. Which might be their point.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2009
Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize - NYTimes
Obama wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize - BBC News

Tagged: U.S., Politics (actual)

Free Market Jesus

2009-10-08T17:41:34Z

Because I really really want to be like Mighty God King even though deep down I know I'll never be as funny or awesome. And The Conservative Bible Project can use my free-market loaves and fishes parable for only $400 + royalties.

-----

John 6 "Feeding the Five Thousand" (with apologies to King James)

1 Afterward Jesus crossed Lake Galilee.

2 A bunch of men followed Him because they saw He was running a private medical practice and hoped that He would cure them before they died waiting in line to see a doctor under the Liberal Roman-run Socialist healthcare system.

3 Jesus went up a mountain and sat there with His volunteers.

4 It was Passover, a holiday celebrating the escape of the Jews from the slavery of the Welfare State of Egypt.

5 Jesus saw all the men following Him, and He said to Philip, "What are we going to feed these men?"

6 Jesus really knew, He just said this to test Philip.

7 "Even if we had two hundred dollars worth of bread it wouldn't be enough to make each of them a sandwich, O Jesus," said Philip.

8 One of His volunteers, Simon's brother Andrew, said to Jesus,

9 "There's a boy here with five loaves of bread and two sardines, but that's not enough for all these men."

10 Jesus said, "Tell everybody to sit down." There weren't any chairs on the mountain but there was a lot of grass so all five thousand of the men that had come to Jesus for medicine they wouldn't need if health care was deregulated and subject to the laws of the Free Market sat down.

11 Jesus took the loaves of bread and said Grace over them and then He passed the plate on to His volunteers who took some slices and passed the bread on to the men sitting down; He did the same with the sardines, and everybody had as much as they wanted.

12 After everybody ate, Jesus told His volunteers, "Gather up the leftover bread and miracle sardines and make sure nobody sneaks off with any, for a free and endless supply of nourishing food would undermine the Free Market."

13 The volunteers gathered up every last crumb, and the leftovers filled twelve big baskets.

14 Then the men who saw what Jesus did said, "He is truly the Prophet."

15 And Jesus saw that the men wanted to make him King of the Free World but Jesus believed in We the People Democracy so he left.

Tagged: Neocon Nutjobs, Politainment, Religion, Surreality

Changing a hostname on Ubuntu

2009-03-27T07:27:55Z

To change the host name, launch your favorite text editor like so:

$ sudo gedit

Open /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts and replace instances of the current hostname with the new one. Save the files and restart the computer.

A post in the Ubuntu forums indicated that if you don't change both files from the same instance of sudo that you won't be able to sudo to change the second file. I don't know if that's still a problem, since I launched the editor using sudo and opened both files from within it.

Tagged: Linux, Note to Self, Ubuntu

Nyheter från Umeå: 450 sökander till tre tjänster på Tullverket

2009-03-12T10:57:32Z

Jag har nationellt prov för SFI nästa vecka, så jag studerar mycket just nu. En del av proven har många frågor grundade i rubriker från tidningarna så jag studerar med läsar Vasterbottens folkblad och skriver sammanfattningar av artiklar. (Var snall och skriver en kommentar om ser du en misstag i min svenska; det är mycket hjälpsam för mig.)

450 sökander till tre tjänster på Tullverket

Umeås Tullverket har varit dränka av ansökar för tre nyligen utannonserade platser. Umeås tullinformätor Harry Brorsson anser att färsk och överhängande arbetslöshet är anledningen för antalet av ansökan, med många människor drog till säkerheten av en tjänst med staten.

originaltext

And the same in English:

I have the final exam for SFI next week, so I'm studying a lot right now. One of the sections on the test has many questions based on headlines from newspapers so I'm studying by reading Vasterbottens folkblad (one of our local papers) and writing summaries of the articles. (Please leave a comment if you see a mistake in my Swedish; it's a big help for me.)

450 applicants for three openings at Tullverket

Umeå's Tullverket (customs office) has been flooded with applications for three recently announced openings. Umeå's spokesman for Tullverket Harry Brorsson is of the opinion that recent and impending layoffs are the reason for the number of applicants, with many people drawn to the security of a job with the state.

Tagged: Jag larar mig Svenska, Sweden, Umeå Nyheter

Finch Quick Reference

2009-03-05T08:19:15Z

Esc-a actions menu
F10 window menu
F11 widget context menu

Esc-n next window
Esc-p previous window
Esc-N (1-9) go directly to windows 1-9
Esc-c close a window

Ctrl-C quit Finch

Note: In some installs, it may be the alt, meta, or edit key, instead of escape.

Screen quick reference

2009-02-28T17:12:00Z

Ctrl-a c Create a window
Ctrl-a A Name a window
Ctrl-a :number (0-9) Number a window

Ctrl-a n Next window
Ctrl-a p Previous window
Ctrl-a (0-9) Switch to window by number
Ctrl-a Ctrl-a Toggle between most recent windows

Ctrl-a " Window menu
Ctrl-a w Window list

Ctrl-a [ Copy mode
Ctrl-a ] Paste

Ctrl-a d Detach the screen
$ screen -r Reattach the screen

Tagged: Linux, Note to Self, Ubuntu

HP Laserjet 1018 on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)

2009-02-28T13:43:00Z

From the Ubuntu forums (hopefully I'm smart enough to remember I copied it here, and save myself some googling, if I need to install the printer again):

$ sudo apt-get install remove foo2zjs

(You can skip this if you've previously installed build-essential.)
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

$ wget -O foo2zjs.tar.gz http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/foo2zjs.tar.gz
$ tar zxf foo2zjs.tar.gz
$ cd foo2zjs
$ sudo make uninstall
$ make
$ ./getweb 1018
$ sudo make install install-hotplug cups

At this point, I needed to reboot. You can probably get away with just starting or restarting a service, but I'm not sure what, and it was faster to reboot than figure it out.

$ sudo system-config-printer

Tagged: Linux, Note to Self, Ubuntu

Finishing the setup

2009-02-27T14:14:42Z

I set up my xterm with fonts I can read without a microscope. Now I'm running Alpine and irssi in screen. I've been meaning to do that for a while, with the idea that I could keep them running and just ssh from the laptop when I wanted email or IRC. Probably not as necessary, since whatever replaces the dead laptop should have more than 256 MB RAM.

Added Twitter support to irssi, via Twirssi. It's a little confusing, but I think I've got it beat.

Tagged: Linux, Ubuntu

I am death to electronics.

2009-02-26T20:50:59Z

I woke up this morning and took a shower and made some coffee and fished the Thinkpad out from underneath the bed. It was on, not suspended, because I was lazy about setting up the power management stuff, and at some point during the night, the cord had been pulled out. Probably due to New Cat, but we'll never know for sure. It was off, the battery was completely dead.

I took it out to the kitchen, plugged it in, and powered it up while I got my coffee and fed the cats. When I came back to the table, it had hung loading the Xserver. So I did what all former Windows users do, and power cycled. I always have a ghost of worry power cycling Linux like that. Back when I started out, with Mandrake 8.0, that kind of thing was a last resort and required a good fscking before it would come up again. But it's been years since a machine has complained to me about it, so I've developed wanton power cycling habits.

Coming back up, it didn't make it even as far as attempting to start X. The poor little thing stopped flat with a message about not being able to access /bin/sh. We decided it was the hard drive.

I handled myself with laudatory calm. Especially since I hadn't run my backup script manually in a couple of weeks and the last time I remembered doing anything with it, the cronjob was failing, and I had determined it was a file permission thing and decided to sort it out later, adding an entry to my menu that said BACKUP so I'd remember to do it manually until I got around to it.

As luck would have it, either I'm smarter than I think I am, or the Backup Fairy came a couple days ago, because with the exception of a couple changes I made yesterday and some files that hadn't been added to the script yet, my stuff is all on the server. I love the Backup Fairy.

So now I'm setting up on the desktop (which mostly chugs along as our server, when I haven't just had a laptop fatality). I've discovered that all my saved Kmail settings aren't compatible between the 3.3 version I was running on the 32 bit laptop and the older version from the 64 bit Ubuntu repositories that is on the server, so now I'm in the process of setting up my many and various email accounts in Alpine. (These directions work for Google apps email accounts too.)

I got a sendmail error trying to send with my new roles. I fixed it by editing .pinerc and adding the gmail smtp servers to the list.

smtp-server=smtp.gmail.com/ssl/user=usr1@gmail.com,
smtp.gmail.com/ssl/user=usr2@gmail.com,
.
.
smtp.gmail.com/ssl/user=usrx@gmail.com

After some test sending (sorry everyone who got emails from "Girl"--that was me) I also discovered the need to verify what my From: header is saying. Basic directions here and the whole shebang here.

I also set Alpine up to save my passwords, since entering them every time I restarted got old fast.

I think I'm going to migrate all my messaging into irssi too, since it supports Jabber and Twitter via plugins. (Though I could use Finch, I guess.) I've been meaning to set those things up in screen so I can ssh to them anyway.

It's been a bad week for electronics. My Skype phone quit booting for no apparent reason a couple days ago, but that should still be under warranty since I've had it less than a year.

Tagged: Linux, My Life, Ubuntu

NASA, Immunization, and more

2009-02-21T13:29:05Z

There's a really excellent essay on Why We Immunize on the Making Light blog. Not to cloud the issue, but this is a prime example of why strong science curriculums in schools are so important. Reading some of the links from Jim Macdonald's article, it becomes very apparent that there are a lot of people out there without a basic grasp of biology. I really hope the Mommy Bloggers out there pick up on Macdonald's post and start circulating it. It's important, dammit.

NASA is really running with this internet voting thing . First it was voting for what the Hubble looks at next and now, voting on the name for the newest ISS module. I think Serenity is probably going to win, thanks to Firefly. It also has more in common with Unity and Harmony than Earthrise, Legacy, and Venture . It's way out ahead right now.

And speaking of NASA, now we finally understand about the diapers.

In my recent foray into the bewildering array of physics resources on the net, I came across two excellent blogs: Centauri Dreams and Strange Paths.

From SFGate's Mark Morford, whose cutting observations and sublime wit I am a little bit in love with, comes Geekamania.

Tagged: Things of Interest

#spectrial Pirate Bay Rättegången

2009-02-19T14:31:36Z

Live audio broadcast on SR.se and additional updates in Swedish and English.

Translation of live coverage to English via Twitter: @sofia @matti_kolu

All posts on Twitter tagged #spectrial

Rick Falkvinge of Piratpartiet is blogging a Swedish transcript of the trial. (Or read the Google translation.)

Summaries of the proceedings from DN.se Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5

Piratpartiet LIVE!

Tagged: Sweden

Oh, I'm sorry, were you busy?

2009-02-19T08:57:24Z

Last night, before we went to sleep, we were talking about particle physics and quantum entanglement. I'm not a physicist, nor do I play one on TV. This morning I was drinking my coffee (current favorite: Lofbergs Lila Skånerost) and googling the subject, while Maswan was in the shower.

I was very excited to discover that apparently you can convert photons into plasmons and then back again without destroying the entanglement and went running to the bathroom with the laptop so I could read to him:

"Altewischer and coworkers in Leiden University in the Netherlands showed that entanglement between pairs of photons can survive even when one (or both) of the entangled photons is converted into a surface `plasmon` and then back again into a photon.

"Surface plasmons are oscillating electromagnetic fields strongly localized at the surface of a metal and associated with the collective motion of a large number of electrons. Surface plasmons are formed on metal films perforated by an array of holes smaller than the wavelength of the photons. The plasmon tunnels through the holes to form a similar plasmon on the other side, and eventually reconverts back into a photon."

In other news, unrelated to the precedence that physics takes over bathroom privacy, I've been following the Pirate Bay trial on Twitter via @spectrial, @sofia, @brokep, and @tpb. There's plenty more tagged #spectrial. I'm listening to the live feed from SR, too. I guess my Swedish is getting better, because I can actually understand some of it. (I put on SVT24 to see if there's any coverage, but they're just talking about Saab and Hillary Clinton.)

Tagged: My Life, Things of Interest, & Science

I wish I could bookmark posts.

2009-02-15T19:57:20Z

I just read Diana's post on the goth name generator and it made me wish I could bookmark Bloggis posts so I can find them again. Maybe a link or button down by the timestamp or comment link to "favorite" the post, and the ability to access/edit the list via user profile. (Maybe an option to show favorite posts in the sidebar would be cool, too.)

Yeah, I know, I can just use Delicious or something. But it would be a cool function to have built in.

Anyway...

Cat's goth name is "Slut For Suicide" and her biker name is "Suicide Psycho."

Cray's goth name is "Malicious Intent" and his biker name is "Speed Demon." Both are strangely appropriate. Though right now, "Sleep Demon" would be more apt.

Tagged: Bloggis, Caturday

What I'm Looking at Today

2009-02-14T14:15:12Z

I kind of love Twitter -- like I really needed more ways to waste time on the internet.

The HubbleSite posted by @NASA -- vote for what you think the Hubble Space Telescope should look at next. (It's a seriously difficult choice. There is no "all of the above" answer.)

The 'Discreet Companion' Ladies' Raygun posted by @theskypirate -- I just love the steampunk aesthetic. You can kind of see how it's put together, though it doesn't look like there's an actual trigger mechanism.

Bkkeepr lets you track the books you are reading via Twitter using direct messages.

Twitter Peeves -- Yeah, that machine-gun posting thing really sucks. As does the I-deserve-more-than-140-characters string of posts.

Tagged: Things of Interest

Jag tycker om...

2009-02-13T09:52:07Z

Jag tycker om regnan
när jag är inomhus.
Jag tycker om snön
när den fallar mjuk
och vit
och lägger sig över allting.

Jag tycker om brev
från avlägsna
men breven kommer inte nog ofta.
(Jag skriver dem inte nog ofta, heller.)

Jag tycker om morgonen
när världen är mörk
och alla sover
och det är tyst och stilla
och det tycker jag om.

December 17, 2008; en dikt jag skrev för klassen på temat "jag tycker om"

Translation:

I like the rain
when I am in the house.
I like the snow
when it falls soft
and white
and blankets all things.

I like letters
from far away
but the letters don't come often enough.
(I don't write them often enough either.)

I like the morning
when the world is dark
and everyone is asleep
and it is quiet and still
and that I like.

att tycka to be of the opinion
(verb) tycker, tyckte, tyckt, tyck!

om of, about
(prep.)

att tycka om expression meaning to like, to enjoy
(verb) tycker om, tyckte om, tyckt om, tyck om!

Tagged: Jag larar mig Svenska

See the bears in the bear cave at Lycksele zoo

2009-01-22T22:27:49Z

Klick för streama bilder om björnarna: Följ björnarna i idet på Lycksele djurpark

Texten på engelska:

The female Athena was born January 1st, 1997 at Orsa bear park. She went into hibernation at the end of October. On the 8th of January, she gave birth to her fifth litter of young in the bear cave. Because the animal keepers donät want to disturb the bears in their cave, they won't know how many there are until spring. But they believe that there are at least two young.

The father of the litter is named Gimli and is originally from Finland and is also at the zoo. His mother was run over by a train and he was thus alone when he came from Finland.

djurskötarna animal keepers
kull litter
idet bear cave, bear pit
det rör sig in any case
ursprungligen originally
överkörd run over
således thus
hämtades came

Tagged: Sweden

c-jump ® Ski & Snowboard Race

2009-01-21T17:42:58Z

They say it's "not only about teaching and learning: it's fun and entertainment for the whole family!"

And it's only $24.95 (plus $12.00 shipping, worldwide). I'm sold.

(Link from Telcontar .)

Tagged: LOL, Stuff I Don't Need

Freedom Donuts are Abortion Donuts

2009-01-21T12:40:52Z

In honor of Inauguration Day, Krispy Kreme, donut manufacturer of Democracy, issued a press release saying:

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring America's sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies -- just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet 'free' can be.

This display of crass capitalism (Krispy Kreme donuts, for the uninitiated, are like two hundred calorie puffs of air; nobody eats just one) and corporate opportunism was met by unmitigated scorn from the loonies at the American Life League who immediately issued their own press release condemning Krispy Kreme.

Not for using an important, historical day for America to peddle a waistline-expanding, diabetes-inducing, coronary-clogging product that has a deleterious effect on the health, and ergo life, of Americans. For celebrating "freedom of choice." How much do you want to bet that somewhere in the ALL is a little room full of cross-eyed zealots eagerly awaiting Google alerts on phrases like "freedom of choice" so that they can shoot off rapid-fire press releases condemning corporations in a desperate attempt to garner attention for themselves, whether or not the phrase was used in a way even remotely related to their cause?

Or maybe it really is choice they object to, and not abortion. When I looked up choice in my OED, none of the definitions listed mentioned baby killin'.

Nevertheless, Krispy Kreme promptly did what any company celebrating freedom and democracy and America would do, and rewrote their press release at the whim of a fundamentalist fringe group.

Because they have nothing better to do, the ALL immediately issued another press release celebrating victory because they made a company change the wording of a press release that was totally unrelated to their particular brand of moral outrage anyway. But it's important to let all Right-Thinking Americans know they don't have to forgo their Krispy Kreme after all.

So what have we learned from all this, boys and girls?

That's right. American donut companies are all terrorist-loving baby-killers.

No, wait. That's not it.

American donut companies are too spineless to say "Suck it, you wankers," when the crazy comes calling and demands that they jump through hoops because of trivial phrases or irrelevant fashion accessories.

Yeah, that was it.

P.S. Can someone out there talented with Photoshop please please please make me fetus donut?

(Thanks for the link, Steen.)

Tagged: Neocon Nutjobs, Politainment, Surreality, U.S.

Rejection

2009-01-10T22:41:35Z

She stood while he sat on the steps and cried.

He said: "I'm just not happy."

She said: "Are you breaking up with me?"

He didn't answer.

She waited awhile. When he didn't say anything else, she said, "Okay, now I'm going back in to pretend I'm having a good time." She entered the apartment and left him sitting on the steps with his easy tears and beer.

She smiled, eyes dry, and made her way past the kitchen. She hid in the host's bedroom instead, playing solitaire and waiting for tears that wouldn't come.

Maybe she'd cried them all out on Christmas morning, when she found the letter. It wasn't that he was writing to another woman that hurt the most, or that he was going to break it off. It was that she'd found out from the letter to the other woman.

"When were you planning on telling me?" she said. "Didn't I at least deserve to be the first to know?"

"Well," he said, "I didn't send it. And why were you snooping in my desk?"

"I wasn't snooping. I was looking for the battery charger."

He loaded the car with presents while she washed her face with cold water. They rode in silence, forty-five minutes to his parents' house. She smiled when she got out of the car, hugged his mother and joked with his brother. She said: "I made a cheesecake."

There was a knock on the bedroom door. A concerned friend. "Can I come in? He just told us what happened, that you broke up."

She unlocked the door and let her friend in, and he sat with her on the bed and listened to her talk. Maybe he didn't understand, but he was understanding, and that was enough. They had that kind of friendship.

There was another knock. It was him. "I'm not coming home tonight," he said through the door. "I'm staying at my brother's."

"I think that's a good idea," she said back through the door.

After he left, she said to her friend: "Do you want to go to my house and fuck?"

At five o'clock he was at the door, pounding. She'd turned the deadbolt when she went to bed, even though he'd said he wasn't coming home. Her friend was out of bed, pulling his pants on. Ready to leave through the window.

"Stay," she said. "He's not coming in here."

She picked up a pillow and spare blanket. She opened the front door and thrust them at him.

"You get the couch," she said. "I have company."

If he said anything, she didn't hear it. She went back to the bedroom and closed the door behind her. In the morning, after her friend had left, she said, "I'm moving out at the end of the month. You'd better find a roommate or somewhere else to live."

He didn't believe her. He tried to wheedle his way back into the bedroom where it was warm and comfortable.

"You'd better do something," she told him. "I'm moving out."

She found him a situation; some of her friends needed a roommate and his money was green. She moved out, like she said she would, to another city. She met a boy, and she didn't fall in love, but she had regular sex and a pretty good time.

One night she unlocked the front door and found a package inside. She should have felt violated or disturbed at the intrusion. Whoever had left the package had climbed through the window to put it there.

In the package was an amateurish painting of a rose and a mix-tape and a long love letter begging her to take him back.

She never answered the letter or listened to the tape. She didn't like the painting, but it felt wrong to throw away someone else's painstaking work, though she didn't want it. If he had called, instead of driving three hours to break into her house, she could have told him not to come, that she would be out with someone else.

( This is in response to a Project Mayhem writing prompt -- it's a work in progress. Any suggestions? )

Tagged: Fiction, Work in Progress