So you thought you would pinch a few friends who weren’t wearing green today, huh? Just because it’s March 17th you think you have the right to go about reminding people they forgot St. Patrick’s Day? WRONG. You are the one who forgot St. Patrick’s Day!
According to this excerpt from the Telegraph Herald, St. Patty’s was actually on Saturday, March 15th this year. The reason? The Catholic Church traditionally moves the date of this celebration if it ever falls within Holy Week, which has not happened since 1940.
So put away your clovers and hide that green shirt because you are starting to embarrass me! Oh, and if you are worried about missing St. Patty’s again sometime soon, don’t be; we shouldn’t have this problem again until the year 2160.
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Last night and earlier today a couple of tornadoes ripped through downtown Atlanta, bringing with them tons of lightning and hail the size of baseballs. Not being from a weather-disaster prone area, this has had me kind of on edge all day long watching the weather men say things like “I don’t think I’ve ever seen two storms merge together like this ever before, especially around a metropolitan area,” and “This is currently a worst-case scenario.”
The real point of this post is to let everyone know that everything is OK in my neck of the woods. Other than a few branches down and the power going in and out a bit, I didn’t really experience much tornado weather, though there were major tornado touchdowns 10 miles north and 10 miles south of me. Somehow I got lucky and actually had a rather sunny day.
We’ve released our second iteration of Wosaic just in time for the Engineering Open House at the University of Illinois. At the Engineering Open House, we created over 120 mosaics for people, and won 3rd place for the non-technical theme.
This new release represents a major rewrite in the code for the GUI and general control flow. While this won’t be immediately apparent at first glance, this means major efficiency gains and better stability. You can now create multiple mosaics in the same session, and even cancel processing mid-generation. Also, the resolution parameters don’t take effect until saving, which means you can save a Mosaic at a variety of different resolutions.
For more details, check out the Release Notes, which also contains links to other useful wiki pages. Or, head straight for the download page to grab a copy of the latest version. Keep reading below for a walk-through to create your first mosaic.
Continue reading “Wosaic 1.0 beta– Faster, Cleaner Mosaics From Your Own Photos”
1 month ago today automaticable and I (and 3 other Wegner brothers) started an interesting new relationship. When automaticable.com was birthed we had a handful of posts to import from our old Blogger days, but we pretty much started from scratch. So what do we have to show for it? Read on for an overview of our first month.
Continue reading “Happy 1 Month Anniversary!”
I know correlation does not imply causation, but I still want to apply fuzzy logic to this post I found on clusterflock. Excerpt below:
How Some Bloggers Feel About Talking on the Phone
Yglesias: “I couldn’t be more thrilled with the phone’s decline. I used to be painfully shy as a person, and while I’ve largely gotten over that IRL I still find it incredibly stressful to talk to people on the phone.”
Atrios: “I think I enjoyed chatting with girls when I was 13 or so, but since then I’ve pretty much hated the phone.”
Alan Jacobs: “This is a loathing I share, and have for a long time.”
McMegan: “Weird fact: every single (successful) blogger I know hates talking on the phone. I’m gregarious face to face, and I’m an inveterate user of various kinds of textual messaging, but I would rather scrub my floors with a toothbrush than get on the phone.”
The logic I want to apply is this: I am a blogger by definition since you are reading this post. I also very much dislike talking on the phone, but consider myself socially competent both in face to face interactions and through text. These facts combined imply (fuzzy logic incoming) that I am a soon-to-be successful blogger.
I know, I know. This makes no sense. But if successful bloggers hate the phone, and I blog and hate the phone, there is at least potential, right? I wonder what the real reasoning behind the correlation between bloggers and their hatred of the telephone, if there even is one. Anyone want to do an in depth study on this? I’m sure there is a psychology major out there that needs a thesis or term paper topic.
I just upgraded to Ubuntu Hardy Alpha 6 to start testing, and am delighted to try the new Firefox 3 beta. Amongst other changes, I found this peculiar warning message when trying to view about:config. In case you’re not aware, about:config allows you to change some backend settings to your Firefox profile, similar to the Windows registry. When trying to navigate to the page, you get a warning:
This might void your warranty!
Changing the default values of these advanced settings can be harmful to the stability, security, and performance of this application. You should only continue if you are sure of what you are doing.
It’s a useful message, as you can do a lot of damage with about:config. But void my warranty? Since when does Firefox ever come with a warranty? Check out the screenshot for a closer view.
For a long time I have had a strong aversion to sushi, mostly because I do not like the idea of eating raw fish. It’s not the flavor or the uncookedness (new word!) but the texture that gets me. I just can’t get over that feeling of raw sliminess on my tongue and throat…blech. But lately I have been a bit more adventurous and have gone to a number of different sushi restaurants around town. I started with mostly tempura sushi, then moved to non-tempura, but cooked rolls. All was good since this was all stuff I had eaten before, it just wasn’t all rolled up and called sushi. Since then I have actually had a number of real, uncooked sushi rolls, but luckily most of them have had an abundance of rice and very little fish, so the raw texture was not overwhelming. I have even gone as far as trying nigiri, raw fish that just sits on top of rice…that was kind of a mistake. I guess it is good that I tried it once, but I doubt I’ll ever do it again.
Today I ran across a pretty cool homemade sushi blog, Sushiday. I know making sushi at home can get expensive and messy with the product being nowhere near as good as authentic sushi, but this shushi blog makes it look so easy! I just wish they had step-by-step instructions with pictures like my absolute favorite food blog, FXcuisine. One of the great things about making sushi yourself is there will be no surprises. Don’t like raw fish? Cook it yourself. Like things extra spicy? Done! Want to try something sweet or fruity? Let’s experiment! I think one of these days I am going to get a few friends together for a sushi rolling party. We can make a ton of rice and get a bunch of nori (dried seaweed) and just fill them with whatever our hearts desire.
Sound fun? Give me some suggestions for what I should experiment with in the comments. Let’s get creative.
We have all read the news stories: students kicked off of sports teams for incriminating pictures on Facebook or recent graduates not getting jobs because the employer Googled their name and found controversial discussions on message boards. These kinds of stories are generally met with frustration, but are ultimately accepted as OK since it was the individuals decision to incriminate themselves on the internet. But what happens when activities that happen often offline, such as student study groups, start moving online? According to TheStar.com (via Slashdot), Ryerson University believes these actions should end in expulsion.
I’ll give you a quick overview, but for a full understanding of the story check out the link above. One student set up a Facebook group where he and other students would ask questions and provide tips, not solutions, to homework problems. Over 100 students had joined the group and have treated it as a virtual “study group.” They even named the Facebook group the same as the popular group study hall on campus.
Because the actions of the students are nearly identical to how students have been studying in groups for decades, this issue is a slippery slope. What if the students were to bring a tape recorder to their offline study sessions so they could refer back to the conversations? What if copies of this tape were made for all the students that participated in the study group? What if this tape were then shared online for other students wishing to participate in virtual study groups? Where is the line drawn here. Because this started as an offline medium, is it ok? Or do these faculty members think students should only be working independently in the first place? I can’t imagine what college would have been like without guidance from my peers.
What this comes down to, in my mind, is a lack of understanding on the part of the faculty. If precedence is set here, then I don’t know a single student that has not “cheated” his or her way through college. Everyone relies on their peers for help, and any university that tries to quash this is in serious denial.
Sometimes when I come home from work and empty my pockets I find I’ve left one of my work pens (actually, marker…I haven’t used an actual pen or pencil in a long time) in my pocket. The weird thing lately is I’ve only been forgetting to take the green pens out of my pocket, and those are the ones that make it home. I use 3 colors throughout the day (red, blue, green). They all serve the same purpose, so it’s not like I only use the green pen near the end of the day or during a specific job that I might forget it more often. It is simply luck that I keep taking the same color home over and over again.
Or is it? I’m starting to wonder if there is something unconscious going on here. Do I like green pens so much that I secretly want to carry them with me at all time? Or do I simply not care for them as much as my other colors, making sure I always put the red and blue back in my pen holder while I neglect their green brother? This has happened way too many times to be purely coincidence. Something is happening here!
So you thought you would pinch a few friends who weren’t wearing green today, huh? Just because it’s March 17th you think you have the right to go about reminding people they forgot St. Patrick’s Day? WRONG. You are the one who forgot St. Patrick’s Day!
