The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for 2007
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)
I just finished installing WordPress 2.1. If you notice anything wonky, please tell me.
With the installation of WP 2.1, I was finally able to fix Spam Karma‘s captcha. That should do a good job against the increasing number of almost-false-negative comment spams.
My sister remembers the 80’s. She’s selling Mr T Chocolate lollipops on Etsy
Seen in Newark Airport at Christmas. Joy.
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.
My new hard drive, a Maxtor MaXLine Pro 500, 500GB, 7200 rpm, 16MB, SATA-300 / RoHS / OEM / Hard Drive, model #7H500F0. It’s a midline drive, rated for 1,000,000 hours.
$150 from Tiger Direct.
It makes me giddy. I’m such a nerd.
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”!
The front page of Boston.com as well as the Eagle Tribune report:
Public safety officials are not laughing and a 27-year-old immigrant from Belarus is going to end up in front of a judge for planting illuminated electronic devices throughout the Boston area that brought out bomb squads and raised fears of terrorist attacks.
The first of the devices were found early yesterday afternoon at a subway and bus station underneath Interstate 93, forcing the shutdown of the station and the highway. They turned out to be part of a nationwide publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon by Turner Broadcasting. Most of the devices depict a character giving the finger.
Peter Berdovsky of Arlington was arrested last night on one felony charge of placing a hoax device and one charge of disorderly conduct, state Attorney General Martha Coakley said. He had been hired to place the devices, she said.
Here is how to make the terrorist devices in question
Just to be sure you get it: 2 artists were arrested and given felony charges for putting up blinky-art around Boston. The police thought the (12″ x 12″ x 1″) blinky-art were bombs so they closed down the city. The police even blew up a couple of them just to be sure.
TJIC, add this to your Boys in Blue file.
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.