Archive for April, 2009
What’s your tolerance for near-spam?
Near spam is that stuff you recieve from rewards programs, or business mailings, or other things where you’ve allowed yourself to be placed on a company’s mailing list. Not spam, but not always stuff you are interested in, and it usually arrives a little more often than you’d care to read it.
My tolerance is one to two a week, per source. I have a nasty habit of unsubscribing or filtering emails when, say, Wyndham Rewards decides to bug me twice in two days. Yes, I am annoyed to the point of action when I have to push the ‘delete’ button twice in two days. Look out Pederson. You aren’t the only crotchety old man on the block.
April 30th, 2009
Question:
You are at a party, and you sneeze. An acquaintance of yours produces a bottle of lavender oil, announcing that it is very good at mitigating allergies. She suggests that you rub it underneath your nostrils.
Do you…
- Accept the oil, and do as she suggests?
- Politely decline without explanation?
- Refuse the oil, point out that lavender oil is a powerful sex hormone simulator, mention that topical environmental exposure can cause Gynecomastia (the development of functional breast tissue) in male children, question the need for anyone to touch it since sex hormone mimics are implicated in a wide variety of cancers, and offer to forward the relevant peer reviewed research on which you base your conclusions.
(Hint: #3 might not be the correct answer)
April 23rd, 2009
I found a small piggy bank at the dollar store two weeks ago, and I had some spare chalkboard paint. Also, I had some down time while I was sick with a head cold.
The results:
April 18th, 2009
So, I’m hacking on the armagetron source code to allow for serial port control of the light cycles. (Armagetron is an awesome open source implementation of the light cycle death races from Tron). Don’t worry, I’ll post details about the project when it’s more complete, and source code when it’s code-complete.
One of the criteria of this project is that the serial input govern the speed of an individual player’s cycle. If you’re familiar with armagetron at all, you know that your speed is governed by your cycle’s proximity to the wall, and your cycle’s breaks. There isn’t an accelerate button, or a throttle, or any inbuilt way for the player to control his own speed.
After a three day head cold, and a lot of staring at code, I’m starting to think that the ‘most elegant’ solution to the problem of controlling speed is pulse width modulation of the cycle’s breaks. Which… seems goofy. I’ll go back and do it right later. You know, when I can breathe through my nose.
April 16th, 2009