Archive for February, 2008

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More Unexplained Velocity Changes in Space Probes

Friday, February 29th, 2008

You may not be aware of this. When we sent out some of our research probes the math/theory did match observation. For some reason these little guys are moving very slightly faster for no apparent reason. This is very funny, because there’s some fundamental action taking place within our own solar system that we can’t account for and yet we still make pronouncements about the speed of light, size/age of the universe, and ether, um I’m mean dark matter.

American Institute of Physics
More Spacecraft Velocity Anomalies
A new look at the trajectories for various spacecraft as they fly past the Earth finds in each case a tiny amount of surplus velocity. For craft that pursue a path mostly symmetrical with respect to the equator, the effect is minimal. For craft that pursue a more unsymmetrical path, the effect is larger. In the case of the NEAR asteroid rendevous craft (), for instance, the velocity anomaly amounts to 13 mm/sec. Although this is only one-millionth of the total velocity, the precision of the velocity measurements, carried out by looking at the Doppler shift in radio waves bounced off the craft, is 0.1 mm/sec, and this suggests that the anomaly represents a real effect, one needing an explanation.

Some ten years ago another anomaly was identified for the Pioneer 10 spacecraft (see http://www.aip.org/pnu/1998/split/pnu391-1.htm) and a certain amount of controversy has clung to the subject since then. One of the researchers on that earlier measurement is part of the new study, conducted by Jet Propulsion Lab scientists. John D. Anderson (jdandy@earthlink.net, 626-449-0102) says that the JPL scientists are now working with German colleagues to search for possible velocity anomalies in the recent flyby of the Rosetta spacecraft. (Anderson et al., Physical Review Letters, upcoming article; designated as an editor’s suggested articlePhysical Review Letters)

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Amarillo Apartment Guide

Friday, February 29th, 2008

A friend was interested in Amarillo apartments, something I find myself unusually familiar with. About 5-6 years ago I really researched this topic and visit close to a dozen of them. Since then about 3 have been added and of course the management has probably changed. I have lived in 5 apt complexes while in Ama and have seen several more. Take things with a grain of salt and check out the links if you’re so interested. Good Luck.

Some general Apt guide links Google and Ask turned up:
http://www.apartmentguide.com/apartments/Texas/Amarillo/
http://amarillo.texas.com/apartments.html
http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/TX-Amarillo.html
http://www.rent.com/rentals/texas/amarillo-and-vicinity/amarillo/results/

Winchester Apt
Same owner as Remington Apt
I lived here for ~2 yr. New, clean, well kept. Sharp manager.
Covered parking, gate access, 1-3 story with vaulted ceilings on the top floor.
Wood balconies for 2-3 floor.
Garages available, probably a long waiting list as these are extremely rare in Amarillo.
Some Apt. over garages
The address is basically 9th and Bell, but the is an overpass that makes the roads curvy. Few traffic problems.
1-3 bed, $725-$1100

Remington Apt
Same owner as Winchester Apt, build 1-2 yr later, probably very similar
Seems 2-3 times bigger than Winchester.
On Soncy between halfway between 34th and 45th on the West side.
Gated

Tiffany Square
Older, was one of my choices 5-6 yr ago, but the property doesn’t seem well maintained since then.
South side of I-40 between Coulter and Bell, Light Yellow and White, can’t miss it.
Huge apt for the price.
Across the street from a large park.
I-40 and traffic noise are literally next door.
No traffic problems.
1-3 bed, 743-1382

Newport
20 yr old, I did not like how it was maintained.
Sister property to Chasewood, eerily similar design
On 45th behind the convenience store.
Bell and 45th is really busy, might be noisy.

Chasewood
Reviews
I lived here 3 yr. The staff was good. Got concerned they were starting to cheap out at when I left.
Design is similar to Newport
Well maintained.
Roughly on 34th and Coulter, though several shops are on the corner. The apartments are behind them.
I had a 2nd story on Coulter, very noise till 9-10.
Was a little pricey, but now they have competition

Renaissance
Reviews
On the road behind the UA Theater (I-40)
Looks nice. Newer, maybe 10 yr old.
Lots of doctors, close to the medical center
I didn’t think it was being maintained well as was living on newness.
Was expensive
Gated

Stonegate
Way, way out on Bell.
New, expensive
Gated

Wellington Manor
I-40 and Georgia. Can’t miss the clock tower
Old, old
Huge, cheap

Amarillo Executive Lodging
This is one of many very small older apts mixed in with residential house that exists between Georgia and Western roughly along 28th (not a big street).
I lived in this area, but not here.
Not next to any highways or streets
Quite
These are small apt for 1-6 month stays of executives.

Huntington Pointe
No. And I can’t remember why.

Quail Creek
Reviews
I never saw it.
Heard good things.

Dove Park
Reviews
I never saw it.
High reviews
On Coulter between 34th and 45th

Colonial Arms
Reviews
On 27th between Western and Georgia
White, clean looking from the outside
Reviews: http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/TX-Amarillo-Colonial-Arms-Apartments.html
Older, cable included I think :)

Paramount Place
I lived here longer than anywhere.
Centrally located on 26th st between Western and Georgia and off the main roads
It was my first apt, clean, cheap no frills, good Apt Manager. Cheap, because she kept costs down and only raised rates on new move-ins. Very easy to stay there 4 years.

There are several apt I have lived in while in Amarillo. In order: Bell Plaza, Covington Pointe, Paramount Place, Chasewood, Winchester.

I had family stay at these apt and they are not worthy. Some of them make my skin crawl.
Bell Plaza
Sierra Pointe
Paramount Terrace
Covington Point
Red Oak Ranch

Posted in Rambling | 1 Comment »

Inc: How Hard Could It Be?: Lessons I Learned in the Army

Friday, February 29th, 2008

A really excellent blog post. I have seen these Executives more often than not.

How Hard Could It Be?: Lessons I Learned in the Army

There’s just no way to adequately cut a piece of that paraphrases the article. It is a single item. Damn, that’s good. He tells a great story. Check it out.

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Earth Sandwich

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

If the Earth Were a Sandwich

On the May 16, 2006 episode, Ze challenged his viewers to create an “Earth Sandwich.” The goal was to place two pieces of bread on the ground at points directly opposite each other on the globe, creating a giant sandwich between the two pieces of bread.[8] The task was completed by teams in Spain and New Zealand.
from Wikipedia

Do you think Earth like being a sandwich?

Posted in Not My Story | No Comments »

YN: Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son’s tooth in his eye

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son’s tooth in his eye

DUBLIN (AFP) – An Irishman blinded by an explosion two years ago has had his sight restored after doctors inserted his son’s tooth in his eye, he said on Wednesday.
…
The technique, pioneered in Italy in the 1960s, involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient’s own tooth and the surrounding bone.

The procedure used on McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part of the jaw.

McNichol’s right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth.
…

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Keyboard Shortcuts

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

A long time ago, before most of you had a computer, there was a war between the keyboard and the mouse. The mouse won, but you occasionally see the losing side working slavishly for the winners.

When computers were green text on black background everything had to go through the keyboard. To do anything you had to memorize the keyboard command. You might be familiar with some of the hold-overs like the copy (ctrl-c)/paste (ctrl-v) commands or undo (ctrl-z). The reasoning was that once you got over the hump of memorizing the commands you were much faster than dragging an arrow around.

Perhaps the last proponents of this belief are the older data entry operators who would rather use a green screen w/o all the fancy scroll bars. Everything is a code and they do nothing all day, but bang away of the keyboard.

The mouse cuts down on the learning curve. Two buttons plus 800 X 600 pixels gives the designer a whole lot more options than 109 keys. The mouse interface is much better looking and easier to use. Taking a hand off the keyboard to move the mouse slows you down.

There is one thing I care about and that is the delay on repeatative tasks. Things like adding a new folder, renaming a file, copy, move, etc. use to be way faster to execute on the command line. Like “ren “, versus “Right Click, Wait, Click Rename, Type and hit Enter.” One of the worst things is adding a new folder, because this was really, really fast; “md “. That right click and waiting is a killer.

So, how can you get around it? Keyboard shortcuts. These respond almost instantly and the mouse isn’t required. Here are some common ones for me as a developer.

Keys Action
Alt+(FWF) New Folder
F5 Refresh
Backspace Back
Ctrl-Z Undo
Ctrl-Y Redo
Ctrl-X Cut
Ctrl-C Copy
Ctrl-V Paste
Ctrl-F Find
F3 Find Next
Alt-Tab Cycle through open windows
Alt-Space Open shortcut menu
Alt-F4 Close window

Posted in Computers | No Comments »

PopSci: Wave Powered Boat to Sail From Hawaii to Japan

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

This month, 69-year-old Japanese sailor Ken-ichi Horie will attempt to captain the world’s most advanced wave-powered boat 4,350 miles from Hawaii to Japan. If all goes as planned, he’ll set the first Guinness world record for the longest distance traveled by a wave-powered boat and, along the way, show off the greenest nautical propulsion system since the sail.

At the heart of the record-setting bid is the Suntory Mermaid II, a three-ton catamaran made of recycled aluminum alloy that turns wave energy into thrust. Two fins mounted side by side beneath the bow move up and down with the incoming waves and generate dolphin-like kicks that propel the boat forward. “Waves are a negative factor for a ship—they slow it down,” says Yutaka Terao, an engineering professor at Tokai University in Japan who designed the boat’s propulsion system. “But the Suntory can transform wave energy into propulsive power regardless of where the wave comes from.”

Horie’s latest adventure builds on a storied career of eco-sailing. In 1993 he pedaled a boat 4,660 miles, from Hawaii to Okinawa, setting a world record for the longest distance traveled by a pedal-powered boat.
…
Wave Runner

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Skullcrusher Mountain

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

Jonathan Coulton songs are hilarious! Check out Skullcrusher Mountain and a YouTube video. For those with slow connections the lyrics are below.

Welcome to my secret lair on Skullcrusher Mountain
I hope that you’ve enjoyed your stay so far
I see you’ve met my assistant Scarface
His appearance is quite disturbing
But I assure you he’s harmless enough
He’s a sweetheart, calls me master
And he has a way of finding pretty things and bringing them to me

I’m so into you
But I’m way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I’m crazy
I’m not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You’d see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn’t kill you yet

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

I’m so into you
But I’m way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I’m crazy
I’m not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You’d see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn’t kill you yet

Picture the two of us alone inside my golden submarine
While up above the waves my doomsday squad ignites the atmosphere
And all the fools who live their foolish lives may find it quite explosive
But it won’t mean half as much to me if I don’t have you here

You know it isn’t easy living here on Skullcrusher Mountain
Maybe you could cut me just a little slack
Would it kill you to be civil?
I’ve been patient, I’ve been gracious
And this mountain is covered with wolves
Hear them howling, my hungry children
Maybe you should stay and have another drink and think about me and you

I’m so into you
But I’m way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I’m crazy
I’m not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You’d see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn’t kill you yet
I shouldn’t kill you yet
I shouldn’t kill you yet

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Meditation Room Update

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

For an environmentally friendly/harvested bamboo flooring 1 company, maybe 2 fit the bill. Unfortunately, none of these seem to have an affiliation with a big chain store. At least it’s on their poorly translated, though beautiful web sites. It seems if you want flooring you have to contact them directly. Not my style.

I was hoping to find a brand that I could then look for somewhere online or in-person, but this seems not to be. So, I’ll take my chances. The website for monitoring deforesting techniques is interesting. Forest Stewardship Council

Some of the suggestions for flooring online where Shaw and Mohawk. The price to beat is $3-$4/sq ft. Shaw wanted $7-$8/sq ft, which would raise the cost of the whole project by 30-40%. No thanks. And Mohawk had a bug on their web page that only affected bamboo flooring. Nice. They seemed to only have one choice for bamboo.

Home Depot was thin on bamboo flooring. There were a few samples, but nothing in stock or on display. They seemed to have a few more sample display racks than Lowe’s, but none of them had bamboo. So, that puts them out.

Three more paint colors from Home Depot yesterday. They have drastically fewer choices than Lowe’s. None of them really seem to be it. HD only offers samples in quarts. So, now I have quite a bit of mostly useless paint. How come I almost always walk away from HD feeling disappointed? Maybe I can use them along with the leftovers from cutting trim and other projects this year to make a set of blocks for Christmas.

This week PBS had a thing on Router tables. They looked really useful. The simple shop on the TV program only had a Table Saw and a Router Table for making everything. I was thinking I could use that to custom fit a windowsill to the windows.

Posted in House, Projects | No Comments »

Meditation Room Update

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

Last night I painted the closets except for the trim and ceiling work that needs to be taped off. Closets are a real moral killer, because the surface area seems so small. It’s like doing half a room. They look fantastically better than before.

I’m still having trouble picking a color. I got three more samples yesterday, darker greens. Somehow they are closer, but not it. I’ll try Home Depot today. Some friends swear by Sherwin Williams. I’m so picky and I can’t decide one one color or three.

Posted in House, Projects | No Comments »

SD: Antidepressants Work No Better Than a Placebo

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

Anti-depressants may not be so effective. This links to the actual scientific paper, not an article about it.

Meta-analyses of antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits over placebo treatment, and when unpublished trial data are included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance.
…
Conclusions

Drug–placebo differences in antidepressant efficacy increase as a function of baseline severity, but are relatively small even for severely depressed patients. The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication.

Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration
Antidepressants Work No Better Than a Placebo

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TR: Clothes That Clean Themselves

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

This is worth reading the whole thing. They describe current techniques for making stain repellent clothing. BTW, titanium dioxide is a white pigment used in a whole lot of things.

Clothes That Clean Themselves

Researchers at Monash University, in Victoria, Australia, have found a way to coat fibers with titanium dioxide nanocrystals, which break down food and dirt in sunlight. The researchers, led by organic chemist and nanomaterials researcher Walid Daoud, have made natural fibers such as wool, silk, and hemp that will automatically remove food, grime, and even red-wine stains when exposed to sunlight.

Daoud and his colleagues coat the fibers with a thin, invisible layer of titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Titanium dioxide, which is used in sunscreens, toothpaste, and paint, is a strong photocatalyst: in the presence of ultraviolet light and water vapor, it forms hydroxyl radicals, which oxidize, or decompose, organic matter. However, says Daoud, “these nanocrystals cannot decompose wool and are harmless to skin.” Moreover, the coating does not change the look and feel of the fabric.

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Plants that Twitter when they need to be watered

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

Plants that Twitter when they need to be watered

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9877823-2.html

…
That’s because the folks at Botanicalls, a group that formed at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program that figured out how to get plants to make phone calls when they need to be watered, have now extended that functionality to Twitter.
…

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Incremental or In-Line Search

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

I recently discovered Incremental Search on VS2005 and it turns out I already knew it. You might too. Delimited or “regular” searching is the Microsoft default. I use it most in Internet Explorer to see if the page contains a secondary search term. It goes like this. Click Edit\Find. Type in a box. Click Find. It does or does not find the term. IE might find part of the term. Notepad is the absolute worst. All of the term matches or none does.

Firefox uses Incremental search. This is how it goes. Click Edit\Find. A bar appears across the bottom. Start typing, the window will jump around as your typing matches various words on the web page. If nothing matches, the background of the text field becomes light red. If more than one thing matches, click Find Next to go to the next one.

When I discovered this feature dissimilarity 4 years ago I freaked. It’s so much better in FF that it was half the reason for leaving IE. At this point it’s probably one third the reason. That’s a lot for one feature. It’s very frustrating to use other programs that don’t have this. I use Notepad++, because Notepad’s Find feature is so worthless. MS doesn’t seem to have updated Notepad in a decade and it was one of my most used programs.

Search: If It Isn’t Incremental, It’s Excremental
Visual Studio 2008 How to: Search a Document Incrementally

Posted in Programming | No Comments »

Zoom

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

I noticed a Mac feature I sorely miss on XP. Recently, I cranked up my resolutions and cranked down the font sizes. You can see more at one shot and most of my stuff is text. Hmm.. do I even read text or do I just look for word and letter patterns. Anyway, It’s pretty good. The icons are smaller and the interface is much cleaner. The one part that sucks is graphics on a web page. These are typically setup for 1024 X 800. They look much smaller. This isn’t a problem on the Mac. I hit a button on the 7 button MS mouse and it zooms up 75%. Click, look, click, back to normal.

You don’t even think about it. It’s how your eyes normally work. You don’t use 5 ft focus on everything. Near and far things would be blurry. Your eye adjusts its lenses and the shape of the eye to bring things into focus no matter what the distance is. Once you also get used to this on the computer, it’s really hard to let it go, because it’s so natural.

BTW, Vista is supposed to have this capability too, but I couldn’t tell you where it is.

Posted in Mac, Technology | No Comments »

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