Suicide Pact
I found these two birds, four feet apart, just below my office window.
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March 19, 2009Suicide Pact
New Plates
February 8, 2009Earthlink SucksWe've had Earthlink DSL and phone for about two years and everything was fine until the start of December. In the past we had noticed transient drop-outs in our DSL whenever there was a heavy rain but as the dropouts became more persistent we started to call Earthlink Customer Support. Each call could take from 5 to 7 hours. They never had any record of the previous call even though the issue was not resolved. The Customer Support reps could do nothing for you until you had performed all the steps in their script each time. After a month, we were able to persuade them that the phone line was at fault and a technician was sent to confirm this. A follow-up visit from a phone company tech fixed the line, but our problems still persisted. Finally, someone at Earthlink said, "Didn't you check our website? We've had problems with the NIDs in your area for weeks." The best offer we had from them was to give us a credit towards our next month's bill. We won't get that credit because we cancelled our contract last week, switched to Sonic and couldn't be happier. August 8, 2007iPhone AccelerometerAccelerometers have come of age. Not so long ago, they cost the earth (or around $30) and output either a voltage or a duty cycle which tied up an ADC channel or a timer. The LIS302, used in the Apple iPhone, is a much sweeter proposition. It has an SPI/I2C interface allowing you to read off the values directly. There are two configurable interrupt outputs which can be set to alert you when a certain threshold has been reached on the X,Y or Z axes, or when the device was tapped or double-tapped. It's a Wii controller on a chip and only $10 in ones from Digikey. June 18, 2007Essential ReadingSome required reading that you're unlikely to come across in a bookshop. The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity, a compelling explanation of consciousness. Vannevar Bush, As we May Think, astonishing prescience from 1945. There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, Richard Feynman ... which you've read already ... ? June 2, 2007Larry's Yard Sale
June 1, 2007Road Rocket
May 29, 2007California poppy
May 27, 2007Shopping
Fortunately, I passed up they opportunity to drive the car first. The salesman took us for a drive instead. This was a clever move in retrospect. If I'd actually driven the car I wouldn't have bothered to haggle over the price. After dinner, I went for a little rip down the 280 to Colma and bought a cheap laptop. Same color as the car. Happy consumer, I. May 5, 2007Box Shop VisitCalled in at the Box Shop to meet some of the people building OrbSwarm. I found myself volunteering for this because they need help, I know some people involved and it was just too cool. They have an mechanical prototype constructed and running around in order to see where their plans conflict with reality. They definitely know what they're doing, having made the "Serpent Mother" for BurningMan last year. Dozens of stainless-steel conjoined segments of the "Serpent Mother" were glinting in the sun outside. |
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