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Save the date: April 8th, 11am-4pm
Easter, Ostara, and the ancient fertility rite of consuming chocolate, having brunch, Egg-coloring, Scones, Chobunnpegelly, and perhaps Peeps…

We reserve the right to take it to Dolores Park, if the weather cooperates.

More info to follow…..

The Hand of God is returning from Australia on a slow boat. The Lotus Girls have all made it back already. I was all excited to see this image at their last show. Do you see the little bracket under the big flexible pipe? It is sitting pretty much right under the yellow handled ball valve. I made that! (image via)

My sister remembers the 80’s. She’s selling Mr T Chocolate lollipops on Etsy

Useful information if you own an AprilAire 2400 whole house air cleaner:

The OEM filter (model 401) for the AprilAire 2400 is a MERV 8 (via since it mentions “70% of 3 micron particles”)

(more info about MERV ratings) (image via)

You can get filters that catch smaller sizes but they get expensive. For example, the best, a MERV 16 filter costs about $120 instead of the regular $25. Also, I think higher MERV ratings require a more powerful blower (see the image and mention of “Final pressure”) and/or it will wear out your existing blower faster.

Everyone (except Julia) smokes in my parents’ house. They use standard filters and I’ve noticed that all my clothes smell of smoke after I’ve been there for a couple days. I’ll try getting a MERV 11 filter for a while and we’ll see how it goes.

Andre tagged me. So… 5 things about me that most people don’t know….

When I’m having stressful weeks, I sometimes talk in my sleep

I never use nail clippers on my fingers. I bite instead.

I am proud that I can eat an ice cream cone without a single drip

I have a collection of Chief Big Wheels. In high school, one of the kids I sat with, George Karl once tore up the Chief Big Wheel from his package of Big Wheels (cousin to Ding Dongs and Ho Hos). He said something like that he hated them and wanted to destroy them all. In response I (of course) took the Chief Big Wheel from my package and said that I loved them and was starting a collection. Every day, the more he told me how he hated them, the more I’d -need- to collect them. My collection has grown to about 70. That’s about 140 Big Wheel treats! Yum!

I have a secret super-hero identity where I wear the letter “R” on my chest. I’m called Resourceful Man! No, really.

I don’t really feel comfortable tagging others. But if you are reading this and saying to yourself, “Bring it on!” Consider it “brought”!

I’m still working on this a project where I want to find and continue to know the location of 10 robots moving up to 10kph in a field about 100 yards square with 0.2-1.0 meter accuracy. RFID-Radar is -almost- a solution in a box except that it takes many seconds for it to do range-finding.

GPS isn’t accurate enough.

I’m now envisioning 2 sets of antennas using angle of arrival interferometry. I’ve been googling (and the library) my head off and not coming up with too much thus far. Do you know of an interferometry system that might detect 0.1 degree difference or so? I figure that with 2 sets, one on the X plane, one on the Y, we can get an accurate location. I’ll ping the RFID-Radar guy on this but I think he’s focused elsewhere.

There was a guy in an SBA class a couple nights ago that had Tourettes Syndrome. I had seen documentaries about it but never met someone with it. It must be a horrible way to go through life.

He was sitting about 20′ from Charlotte and I. At first, it sounded like he was using a cell phone while in class. He’d say something quietly every couple seconds. I listened closer and could tell that, in general, he was occasionally echoing the words of the speaker.

Whenever he looked around the room, especially if he made eye contact with someone, he’d say something… like the kind of thing you might think for a split second if you were looking around, nervous at a party. Things like, “Don’t look at me!”, “What are you looking at?”, “What’s your problem?”

He’d sometimes feed off his own words and actions. At one point, he made eye contact with Charlotte and started scratching his eye with his middle finger trying to “subtly” give her the finger. The scratch grew into a spasm. The spasm grew into thrusting his finger across his face repeatedly and forcefully such that he was just as likely to hurt himself as insult Charlotte.

He made many people in the classroom very nervous. Several people left. Someone suggested that he was schizophrenic.

I couldn’t imagine how sucky my life would be if I had no choice but to voice every emotional thought I had. There aren’t any very effective treatments for this one in a million disorder.

I got this email just today. You might be interested. It’s a movie casting call in Boston. Warren is a friend of mine. This is his second film. His first was certainly completely odd… think Toxic Avenger. It looks like his second is shooting for oddness as well. Though more polished (maybe). With luck, think Evil Dead….

Straight to DVD feature B horror comedy “Snurg Hunter”, budget $150,000, shooting this summer (July-Sept) 2007 in greater Boston. We have guaranteed distribution via our last feature “Pony Trouble”, and so when finished, “Snurg Hunter” will be in stores nationally and internationally. Hopefully with your name in the credits :)

(more…)

After trying out Snap Previews on TJIC’s site for a while, I find them useful. If you disagree, tell me.

If you dislike it, it can be turned off of all the sites you visit by clicking on “options” when a Snap-thingie pops up. I’m still wondering whether letting Snap look over my users’ shoulders is the right thing to do… hmmm.

I had a little trouble installing it with my theme. My custom theme didn’t initially have the following standard code in the footer template: <?php wp_footer(); ?>

update 6-22-07: I removed it after using it for a while.

• While the popup is coming up, you can’t click on the link; this happened a lot.
• I started seeing some semi-pseudo advertising going on. I forget exactly what. Maybe it was “search for pages like this one” or some such. And there is a Firefox “search plugin” for users… so they’re using the plugin to get data from me.
• Why in the world would I want the Snap popup to have a “search the web” text box? -That- is advertising.
• It was kinda annoying.