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PDFCreator lets you create PDFs by simply printing to the “PDFCreator” printer. Lately, PDFCreator has held some optional adware, and just today… well, here is the comment I put on Sourceforge, where PDFCreator is hosted:

PDFCreator should be removed from Sourceforge. Today PDFCreator tried to install adware on my computer several MONTHS after I installed it; when installing, I chose to not receive the adware. This adware includes searchsettings.exe, applicationupdater.exe, and pdfforgetoolbar.exe, among other detrius.

What is a good replacement for PDFCreator for Windows?

My greatest strength and my greatest weakness: I’ll do anything with a friend; I’ll do nothing on my own.

The last space shuttle launched yesterday, July 8th, 2011. I watched the launch on UStream. It’s rather amazing that I watched a live video feed from low earth orbit on my computer.

I had a big Space Shuttle poster over my bed when I was a kid, I saw the Challenger disaster in high school, felt and saw motions moving away from the Shuttle. And experienced the mind boggling Hubble Deep Field and Hubble Ultra Deep Field  which was made possible, in part, by the Space Shuttle. I look forward to continued space discovery by mankind!

Hubble Deep Field

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Everyone knows about the very real dangers to astronauts and satellites that come from the Van Allen Radiation Belt, so I don’t need to talk about that.

While watching the Space Shuttle launch yesterday, and surfing, I came across this  plan to clear the Van Allen Belt of dangerous high energy electrons and protons! “…Preliminary analyses indicate that a HiVOLT System can reduce the MeV particle flux in the inner electron belt to 1% of its natural levels within about two months….”

Talk about terraforming! Right here on Terra!

RIP Van Allen Belt, 3.5 billion BC – 2050AD

This weekend I spent some time studying math with Schuyler. Highlights included

• Spending 20 minutes discussing exactly why negative 2 times negative 2 equals 4.
• finally realizing (I remember getting this wrong in high school and never learning it correctly) this one little tidbit about reducing fractions with fractional exponents. (hint, remember that if you’re using two different constant bases, those are not like terms!)
• spending an hour and a half hacking on one fairly simple problem and then BAM! getting it right and knowing why it was right.
• After 5 hours of sitting in chairs, we were both exhausted.

This Thursday night, world famous Matt will be in Oakland!

Let’s dance!

PLACE: Inside the Gazebo in Lake Merritt Park
DATE: Thursday, July 7th
Time: 7pm

Here’s a Google map of the location:
http://tinyurl.com/6c48yao

Facebook invite:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=184616298258481

The photo at the bottom of this email shows exactly where to meet. You
can also view the image here:
http://tinypic.com/r/2ylvdol/7

more deets:
Continue reading ‘I Know Where The Hell Matt Is!’ »

weeks ago graffiti scumbags tagged our street. Some of it got cleaned up, some not. So I went to the gas station across the street to ask if they could clean up the graffiti urine stains on their property. I spoke with the attendant for a little while, showed him where the new tags were. This is not a new problem. He pointed to the alley behind the station and said how they had just painted over the whole alley, covered in graffiti. I had to say it looked nice.

A lot of the new graffiti was on the backside of this small billboard. We exchanged many pleasantries, “I totally understand that it’s a never ending battle with those jerks…” So yesterday I looked out my window and the billboard was being taken down! The attendant told me, “I talked to the boss. He gets paid to have that billboard up, but he called and had it removed anyway. It’s better for the neighborhood that way.”

+1 for the the 76 Gas Station on the corner of 24th & Valencia (1298 Valencia)

Unsurprisingly, I don’t have any photos of the now removed billboard. Here is a bad artist’s rendering:

And here’s a “before” picture from Google Maps, Thanks Steven

I’m teaching “Real Bread in 10 Minutes” class Saturday at 10am! Come and learn how to make awesome bread at home, the easy way!

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Sign up on Skillshare.com or if you have my phone number, call me to reserve your place!

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Real Bread in 10 Minutes, Saturday June 25th 2011 10am-1pm
Learn how to make fantastic home made bread that is easier, less expensive, faster and better than going to the store!

About the Class
Making bread is easier, faster and more flexible than you thought. You can make fantastic bread every day inexpensively with less than 10 minutes effort, including cleanup! In this class, you’ll learn techniques to minimize the ordinary and maximize the extraordinary parts of making all kinds of bread at home. We’ll talk about things like: instant yeast vs sourdough, refrigerated dough, crust, crumb, shaping, amendments, the chemistry and biology of bread, and the thousands of varieties of this staple food. Once you have the foundations, you’ll see bread recipes as suggestions instead of steps to be followed. The sky is the limit! While our bread bakes, we’ll make our own specialty butter! You will eat and bring home what we make in class.

Every day I get 1 or 2 comment spams written by real people that get past my spam filters. Of late they’ve been coming from the Philippines and Ukraine. Usually they are poor excuses for spams. For example, today I received on Burning Man 2010 Resource Guide — Part 1:

I had never heard of Burning Man resources but now I am a fan. Great work ! www.SomeCrappyProduct.whatever

And on How to Avoid Paypal Fees I got

If that money they used to sent you didn’t claimed it for a couple of days. Do they have allotted days to be count on or expiry of the money? Does the receiver will be fines on it? Thanks!

visit my site
www.SuspiciousSurveySite.stupid

and on 3D Wobble Images I got:

URL HerbalScammer.site
This is amazing! I super love effects like this! :D

All potentially written by humans. My personal guess is that the first two are driven by semantic computers and the last one was written by a human. But whatever, this one I got today was definitely written by a beautiful killer of a human.

First, here is my post: Today’s Quote: Han Solo on religion

“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
– Han Solo, outspoken skeptic of the Force

Here is the beautiful comment:

URL: TreadmillSalesWebsite.feh
Haha, what a goof that han solo. Who knows if he meant all religious beliefs or simply those that were…”hokey”. I wonder what he believed. I mean spirits are obviously real right, I mean Obi wan visited luke right? Someone should have a good talk with Han about stuff like that.

Reminds me of XKCD

How many bytes is 1 kilobyte? It is 1024 or 1000? It’s kind of ambiguous, isn’t it?

Nope, this problem was solved in 1998.
1 kilobyte is 1000 bytes. That’s 10³.
1 kibibyte is 1024 bytes. that’s 2¹⁰.

And how do you abbreviate it?
1 kilobyte = 1 KB
1 kibibyte = 1 KiB

Similarly, we’ve got
megabyte (MB) 10^6 | mebibyte (MiB) 2^20
gigabyte (GB) 10^9 | gibibyte (GiB) 2^30
terabyte (TB) 10^12 | tebibyte (TiB) 2^40
petabyte (PB) 10^15 | pebibyte (PiB) 2^50

This actually makes good sense. I’ll try to use it from now on.

Read more about it on wikipedia and at NIST