zen.org Communal Weblog

January 20, 2009

Inauguration Day

Filed under: — sven @ 14:06 GMT

This morning the Scudder Falls Bridge entrance to I95 was just at the speed that made it too annoying to enter, so I drove over to Washington Crossing Bridge. Hunks of ice where flowing down it, not as large as the painting, but not to shabby. I could not help but draw a parallel to the inauguration, it made me a little faklempt about today.

December 9, 2008

Remember To Reset Your Clocks

Filed under: — sven @ 15:21 GMT

At 2008-12-31T18:59:59-0500 (2008-12-31T23:59:59+0000) there is going to be a leap second! Anybody have a good cocktail suggestion to celebrate this? If you are in Japan, perhaps something to stave off the hangover from the previous night’s party.

It’s a good thing my systems use ntp.

December 3, 2008

Mother@#$%ing Brilliant

Filed under: — sven @ 21:50 GMT

November 4, 2008

GOTV

Filed under: — sven @ 15:28 GMT

I was reading that extreme leftist web site, Daily Kos, the other day. I was confused as they kept saying GOTV out of any context. I was thinking that it must be this really cool new television channel I don’t get! Well, while there is a mobile phone content provider called GoTV, it didn’t seem to be worth all the comments. Perhaps I was seeing the fnords!

Alas, no, it means “Get Out The Vote”. Even if you don’t like anybody on the Democratic or Republican ticket, vote Green, or Libertarian, perhaps Nader. Or even (shudder) Constitution Party. Write in Ross Perot!

October 21, 2008

Google News – Most Popular

Filed under: — sven @ 17:52 GMT

What’s up with Google News – Most Popular. The US version is usually filled with drivel. I visit today and I see items on Canadian politics, Somali pirates, and ever have to scroll down to see items about the election! Are Americans reading international news? Has the caducity of gossip finally reached its limit? Did Google Change the algorithm?

September 28, 2008

Debate One: One Lie, Four Repeated Errors

Filed under: — sven @ 01:55 GMT

Well, I didn’t watch much, but I just read what FactCheck.org said about it. According to them, the only outright lie seems to have come from Mr. McCain, McCain was way off the mark when he said that earmarks in federal appropriations bills had tripled in the last five years…In fact, earmarks have actually gone down. I really wanted an outright lie from Mr. Obama too, but there was not any last night.

Then, these bugged me:

…McCain repeated a misleading line we’ve heard before.

Obama was out of date…As we’ve said before…

McCain repeated an exaggerated claim…

McCain repeated the false insinuation…

Each with a link to past articles that that showed the correction. It’s one thing to goof, but to do it again? Ok, perhaps the log is in my eye for there splinter, but I’m a simpleton, they are going to be in the position formally known as the most powerful person in the free world. Mr. McCain forwent correction three times, and Mr. Obama once. So I guess the Dems win this one too. Most of the others corrections, though worthy of FackCheck.org, where trivial.

As I think both Democrats and Republicans politician have been sticking it to fellow Americans for decades, I really wanted the misinformation to be more even.

September 16, 2008

@#$%&* Mighty Mouse

Filed under: — sven @ 13:42 GMT

I got this Apple Mighty Mouse at work. I configured it so when you squeeze it it switches spaces. The only problem is now when I’m at home I squeeze my mouse to switch my KDE desktops, and it doesn’t work. One of these days I’m going to crush the mouse in my hand, and shards of plastic is going to rip into my skin hindering my ability to type for life.

August 18, 2008

Ubuntu at Toyota

Filed under: — sven @ 17:02 GMT

I’m waiting a few hours at the Thompson Toyota, my Prius is getting some minor work done to it to pass state inspection, it still takes a few hours. They have a wireless connection to the Internet, but even though last time I connected without problems this time my PII Debian system was not happy. So I checked out the bank of beat up Gateways with vagabond keyboards in the corner. I wiggle the mouse, and up pops the Ubuntu Heron! Wow! I can tell from the scribbled out tag that these are likely hand me downs from Thompson Lexus, I bet them bastards over there now have Vista. I expect that they just didn’t want to pay for Licenses, but I can do some work!

The neat part is that other people are actually using them. By default there are no icons on the desktop, so some people can’t find Firefox right away, but they find it. The card games seem most popular thought, at least today. I guess Ubuntu really is a user friendly system.

July 14, 2008

Java’s toString() for perl

Filed under: — sven @ 15:11 GMT

I post it here so I can find it again if needed again. Sometimes I just want to see everything that is going on in a perl object. Sort of what Java’s toString() function does when printing out maps or lists. This is what I ended up with. Now it’s public domain!

our $join = ' ';
sub to_string{ # ug, java
    my $s = shift;
    my $out;
    if (ref $s) {
	if ($s =~ m/ARRAY/) {
	    $out .= '[' . join($join, map {
		to_string($_);
	    } @$_) . ']';
	} elsif ($s =~ m/HASH/) {
	    $out .= '{' . join($join, map {
		"$_=" . to_string($s->{$_});
	    } keys(%$s)) . '}';
	} else {
	    $out .= $s;
	    warn "How do i display '$s'?";
	}
    } else {
	$out .= quotemeta($s);
    }
    return $out;
}

June 18, 2008

4½ Weeks

Filed under: — sven @ 21:33 GMT

For the last 4 weeks I’ve been home traumatizing, my now almost 4 month old, Linus. I’ve been singing “Oh no, no, I never go to work” (see Track 10 of of They Might Be Giants’s Here Come the 123s). Next Tuesday it’s back to work for me. What’s happened to me in the past 4 weeks? Linus has gone from a drooling, breast sucking, sleeping no more then two hours at a time baby; to a drooling, bottle sucking, sleeping no more then 4 hour at a time baby. Sweden didn’t make the it to the knockout round of Euro2008. No tree hit my house. Zoë turned 4 (today!). I’ve watched lots of Star Trek on on cbs.com (I’m just starting season two!). My CSA started up (mmmm, fresh peas). By far the worst thing that happened is that my kompisar from NEC, and then Princeton University, died. Now, I get to go back to my own office, I don’t get to share one any more. A lot can happen in a day, let alone 4½ weeks.

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