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A few Gimped photos from last weekend’s Bash on the Farm, a music festival in Iowa, follow. I mentioned the highlights here.
The above band was not an “official” band playing on any of the stages. It seems they had just brought their stuff and set up behind that outhouse-like structure for the heck of it. Go team!
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Continue reading ‘Some pics from Bash on the Farm’
The inventor of Javascript notes that Javascript is not going away, so it ought to evolve.
Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) passes along some SF recommendations.
Scott Hodge points us to this article about Malcolm Gladwell and how he works.
Seth Godin talks about screws and screwdrivers, specifically the Robertson head (square head) sort; rare in the US, standard in Canada. Raises the interesting question; most people who use them think these are better. If they’re better, why not use them everywhere? Short answer: because the current “standard” (usually the Phillips head) is “good enough”.
Have you seen Tom Peters’ TP Wire Service? A cool “headline” blog, concentrating on the typical Tom Peters-type topics: innovation, design, creativity, business, marketing.
The Truth Laid Bear has a new web design. If you’ve never seen the old one, you’ll have nothing to compare it to, but I think it’s an improvement.
That’s all I have time for today. Time to work.
Probably no one has noticed any, because I’ve been deleting it promptly, but I’ve been starting to get comment spam, mostly (entirely) filled with links to online poker web sites.
To try to save myself the annoying task of deleting these, you now have to be a logged in user to comment. A user account on this site is easy to create and takes about two minutes; just long enough to enter a few lines and check your email. Most of the people who comment have already created one, so I hope this won’t be too annoying to anyone else who likes to comment from time to time.
It’s been said many times, and will continue to be, that computers with Linux pre-installed will be one of the turning points of Linux on the Desktop. We all know that most people just want to turn the PC on and use it; they don’t want to install the OS.
For some time you’ve been able to do this, though it still isn’t on the shelf of your local technology vendor (probably). On Gentoo’s site (link) you can by a Pegasos PowerPC workstation with Gentoo pre-installed. It’s only $799 USD, a fairly reasonable price for a PC.
It features:
Not too bad. Also, not in my budget at the moment, but I may consider it at a later date. Chances are, though, that I would lean toward a Mac Mini at only $599 USD, and then just install Linux on it.
I was looking through the Synaptic list of available packages on my laptop, and couldn’t find mplayer. So, I decided to install it from scratch. How hard could it be?
Despite the reputation of Linux as the OS for hardcore geeks, I would say that probably very few people compile applications from scratch, that is to say, from source. I don’t count Gentoo users as doing this, per se, since the build from source is completely automated by python and shell scripts, and the user does not actually need to know anything about the process in order to complete it successfully.
Now, there’s not necessarily anything inherently superior to compiling from source, but for an app like MPlayer, if you can’t find a package, source is the only option. That’s the only form offered for download (correction, they do have an RPM download for systems that use the redhat package manager). In my case, I’m sure I could find out why mplayer is not listed in my package list when I use synaptic or apt-get, but I decided to just try to compile it instead.
As I said before, I went down to Iowa over the weekend to visit some friends and to hang out at the “Bash on the Farm” music festival.
By far, three bands there were the highlights; Apologetix, Children 18:3, and the Roosevelts.
Apologetix was great because they combine my two favorite traits in a band:
Basically, they just take secular songs and put Christian words to them. Cheesy? Oh, absolutely. Also downright hilarious, totally entertaining, and a must-see if they are anywhere near you. Among other songs they did Rush’s Tom Sawyer, Skynyrd’s Free Bird, many, many more, but those are good examples in that they nailed them. Right on; you’d have thought you were listening to some weird incarnation of the original bands.
The Roosevelts were cool; I don’t know what the style is; indie rock, I suppose. The songs were well-written, well-performed, and the between-song chatter was hilarious. I enjoyed the sideways references to Zoolander quite a bit. La Tigre, indeed. They seemed genuinely shocked and pleased to be asked for an encore, and obliged with great style, though a bit of an apology; something along the lines of, “Uh, thanks for asking us to play another song, but the only ones left are the ballads…”
You may have noticed that I left Children 18:3 for the last, here. That’s because they were awesome. If I had seen no other band last weekend, it would have been worth it to see those guys. Basically it was pop punk rock, but a little rough around the edges. That description does them no justice, however; they differentiate themselves from the hundreds of other bands playing this style by being, well, better. I will be going out of my way to see these three whenever they are playing nearby.
I have some pics from this weekend, those should come online soon. And any time now, I will also try to post pics from Amy’s trip to Chile. Sheesh, I stink at putting pictures online.
Microsoft has hired Daniel Robbins. Daniel is the founder of Gentoo Linux, although he no longer develops Gentoo and hasn’t for some time. Certain portions of the Linux community, specifically the Gentoo community, seem to be alarmed about this; although, to their credit, the vast majority don’t seem to care very much.
I think it’s a good move on both Microsoft’s and drobbins’ parts. Microsoft is widely known as a cool place to work, and I expect he’ll do well there. Maybe he can get them using Python… heck, maybe he could get bash into windows. That would be cool.
No, I don’t think Daniel will have that sort of influence (though we could hope). I have several times considered whether or not I would ever send a resume to Redmond after I finish my degree. It’s well known that they have a few people working with Linux there, but I imagine that there are other interesting jobs as well. At the moment, though, if I were done my degree, I think I’d apply at Google before Microsoft. More likely, I’d apply at Medtronic or General Mills, both of whom are based in the Twin Cities, and who consistently make Fortune’s list of “Best Companies in the US to work for”.
Anyways, back to Daniel Robbins and Microsoft; I think it’s interesting. I don’t think Daniel “sold out” or “crossed over”, that’s just plain ignorant. The man is going to get to continue programming and working with open source ideas and projects, and be well-paid to do so. Good for him!
Michelle Malkin is starting a regular feature on “the desecration of precious items that won’t be making the cover of Newsweek and the NY Times.”
I hear someone saying that desecrating the flag is not as big a deal as the Koran. Since I can’t rightly comprehend the frame of mind that would make such an argument, I’ll just have to say that you’re entitled to your opinion.
…Not to mention that Bibles are routinely confiscated and/or shredded when travelers enter Saudi Arabia. That’s not worthy of a report, though. (Link)
Zap2It reported last week that “a team of British scientists led by a neurobiologist/stand-up comic” (that sounds like the premise for a new sit-com) believes they have found a formula for TV comedy magic.
They have done this by analyzing two decades worth of British comedies, apparently comparing the various formulae to the actual comedic value of each show.
“[The] formula that looks like this: [((R x D + V) x F) + S]/A. Pilcher explains to the paper:“Comedic value is determined by multiplying the recognizability of the main character (R) by their delusions of grandeur (D). This is added to the verbal wit of the script (V), and the total is multiplied by the amount someone falls over or suffers a physical injury (F).
“The difference in social status between the highest- and lowest-ranking characters (S) is added, and finally the total is divided by the success of any scheme or stratagem in the show (A). Each term in the formula is assigned a value up to a maximum of 10 to give an overall scientific score.”
The formula helps us determine difficult questions, such as, Is “The Office” funny? (it was). Fawlty Towers and Blackadder also made the top five.
Based on the above formula, I will now be sitting down to write my sit-com pilot. The show will be about Elvis, who is still alive, and believes that he controls the world through his mind. Several times per episode Elvis and his entire entourage will fall down, occasionally off of tall buildings or into traffic. For verbal wit, I will have to stoop to lifting jokes from the internet. Elvis’s entourage will include Donald Trump, and a homeless person, and an Amway distributor. Every show, Elvis will concoct an elaborate scheme to make his comeback and take his rightful place as the ruler of the world, which will fail spectacularly to due the infamous bumbling of Gilligan.
If the formula is right, it could be a big hit.
The answer would be no. Neither are Mike D. (the Beastie Boys) and Dustin Diamond (Screech from “Saved by the Bell”) related, to each other or to Neil.
Not as though anyone cared, but this is an urban legend I’ve heard for years. I know a few people who were convinced that Mike D. was Neil Diamond’s kid.
See here, and here, for the Authoritative Confirmation of the Internet.
