A lot of people criticize Apple for its prices, but I have to say in response that taking the time to polish all the edges and simplify really helps. Consider this: I have had a few Bluetooth mice over the years, from Microsoft, Logitech and Apple. The latest Apple mouse is the only one where today it warned me that the batteries are low:
It’s a little thing, but for once I know to go get batteries, before the mouse just stops working.
It’s a nice mouse even without that feature, but taking a little bit of time to add software and hardware for voltage monitoring, it’s just easier to have and use.
In really high-end watches, the inner bits are polished and finished by hand to astounding degrees, even the parts that will only ever be seen by a watchmaker doing the service. Perfection is it’s own reward sometimes.
One of my all-time favorite CMJ disks was #29. Awesome discography, much better treasure/trash ratio than usual.
Anyway, one of the tracks is ‘Rainfall‘ by a group called Bentley Tock. Every now and then I’d google the name but never found much; tonight I hit the jackpot. According to this blog post:
Bentley Tock played around campus a lot, usually at a place called The Chukker (which sadly closed in 2003) and usually on Thursday nights. There were a lot of super late Thursdays (or early Fridays) when the band played. Me, Angela, Cheryl, Tracy, Billy and whoever else was up for it, would always show up. It didn’t matter to me if there was an exam, or if I had to work… if Bentley Tock was playing, I was there. Somewhere around the time I graduated in ‘91, the band packed up and headed to Austin to make a go of a bigger career. One CD came out, titled Able, but unfortunately not much came of it outside their home turf.
He links to the website of Paco Ahlgren, who turns out to have been the frontman for the group, and better yet has posted all the songs for free!!
So go have a listen and see if you like ‘em too. Can’t beat free, and feel free to comment and denigrate my taste in music.
$23 and a new toy is on the way:
USB footswitch from Brando (click to go to their site).
I’m thinking of binding it to the laser jump in Nexuiz, and maybe setting it up as a boss key at work. 
Just kidding. My monitor is visible from outside my office, so boss keys aren’t useful. I’m quite curious to see if I can add feet to a FPS game and have it work – Mom used to play the pipe organ, and I suspect that adding another limb to the action will increase the immersiveness of the game.
Alexander Stepanov is the main driver behind the OMFG-that’s-amazing Standard Template Library for C++. I rather agree with him on object oriented programming (OOP):
I find OOP technically unsound. It attempts to decompose the world in terms of interfaces that vary on a single type. To deal with the real problems you need multisorted algebras – families of interfaces that span multiple types. I find OOP philosophically unsound. It claims that everything is an object. Even if it is true it is not very interesting – saying that everything is an object is saying nothing at all. I find OOP methodologically wrong. It starts with classes. It is as if mathematicians would start with axioms. You do not start with axioms – you start with proofs. Only when you have found a bunch of related proofs, can you come up with axioms. You end with axioms. The same thing is true in programming: you have to start with interesting algorithms. Only when you understand them well, can you come up with an interface that will let them work.
The rest of the interview is quite good as well.
I woke this morning to a slew (here defined as ‘62′) of ssh dictionary attacks:
There were already 20 or so last night. Looks like a new botnet/attack wave or similar. I’m using DenyHosts and quite frankly, you should be too.
If you’re running Debian, there’s a nice package for it that I use and recommend. I’ve set mine to trigger on 3 attempts, but I’ve few users and most use ssh keys and not keyboard auth.
Might be a good time to run chkrootkit and change some passwords!
It took longer than expected, but my new site is now live and public: WatchOtaku.com
Not much there in the way of reviews yet, spent the time building the site, dictionary and layouts. Whew. Please take a look at the manifesto, poke around a bit and let me know what you think!
Since this took me a while to figure out, I’ll post it here. A few of us have been blowing off steam playing Nexuiz, a free cross-platform first person shooter originally based on one of the Quake engines, called DarkPlaces.
Nexuiz is a lot of fun, doesn’t require a lot of learning, and plays very well over a network. There’s a single download, with binaries for Windows, Linux and OSX. (Both SDL and native versions)
After doing some googling, I figured out how to write a short macro and bind it to a key. This one does a laser-assisted jump while you hold down the q key. It looks down, switches to the laser, fires, and when you release the key it looks back up and switches back to the previous weapon. Cute, eh?
alias +laser_jump "+lookdown; impulse 1; +attack"
alias -laser_jump "-lookdown; -attack; impulse 11"
bind q +laser_jump
Seems to work, though there may be a better way to do this. Note that other weapons like the rocket send you higher in the air; this is just a starting point. Save this to
~/.nexuiz/data/autoexec.cfg
and it’ll persist and be loaded automatically. Enjoy!
Vermont, that is.
Yep, that’s my brother, proudly showing his new smokehouse in semi-rural Vermont. From the look of the wellies, I’d say he’s gone native.
A couple of weeks ago, the car lost its second taillight. Same one, in fact, driver’s side brakelight. This time, after replacing the bulb (standard 12VDC 1157 dual-filament) I did some research into LED replacements. After all, LEDs are longer-lived, can be as bright or brighter, and turn on faster for a teensy bit more reaction time for people behind you.
After a bit of Amazon research, I found the Vision X HIL-1157R:
It’s a drop-in replacement, same shape, should fit most vehicles. However, our car (2005 Allroad) doesn’t like it. Audi, in their finite wisdom, chose to have additional circuitry to check for blown lights, and beeps incessantly if it finds one missing. The LED bulbs don’t satisfy the test circuit, so hellish beeping is the fate of anyone who tries this.
So I’m out $20 and have a spare pair. Email me, I suspect they’d work in cars without the check circuit.
