The financial district after the quake
Just a short post here…
I got an e-mail from my lady with a link to The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco which led me to a fascinating excerpt by Gladys Hansen who is currently the curator of the Museum of the City of San Francisco. The excerpt is a written time line of the events as they happened after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 had occurred. A good read I definitely recommend.
Just a quick post this morning before I head to work. I was reading Google news and clued in on an article pertaining to an update to the Big Bang theory which apparently solidifies said theory by quite a bit. What really caught my eye was the graphical representation of the data received by the WMAP space probe that supposedly found the “first light” exhibited by the infant universe shortly (cosmically speaking that is) after the initial expansion.
I suggest you read the article at NASA at http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm.html first and then hit the link to “The Time line of the Universe” and think about what your seeing. Never mind that we may actually be looking at the graphical representation of the actual beginning of the universe but the first thing that occurred to me was that the image closely resembles a Cathode ray tube that was first designed for prototype television receivers. Not exactly but close enough to make me think about it I mean…
What if it was something like that? What if our universe is just Somebody Else’s experiment in – well who knows? Creation of a tiny universe complete with life, stars, quasars, love, hate and income taxes?
What if that’s all we actually are? An experiment of some type?
And what if they turn off the power?
Have a nice d—
Posted in my old “BackWoods Tech” blog now defunct.
Well… not quite, but almost. Read the quote below from the Mozilla Developer news site:
Due to the number of outstanding blocking bugs targeted at beta 1, and the delay in getting a L10N functional NSIS installer working, the Beta 1 milestone will be slipping a little bit:
- Code Freeze: Wednesday, July 5th, 11:59 PDT
- Beta Ship : Tuesday, July 11th
This slip is necessary for us to release a product that can get wide testing from users in both first and second tier locales. It does, however, put us up against the wall in our overall schedule, so we’ll have to get very cautious in terms of the risk we’re willing to accept on patches, and focus our effort on items that are on the critical path for release.
Please focus your effort on bugs marked as blockers with a target milestone of Firefox2 beta1 or mozilla1.8.1b1, landing on trunk with appropriate reviews and requesting approval1.8.1? after some bake time.
Of course, we recognize that there are holidays between now and July 5th, and aren’t asking you to alter any vacation plans you might have. In fact, the earlier patches get on the trunk and the longer they bake, the better!
Now, if you’re like me and have set up a separate profile using the “firefox.exe -profilemanager” run command (Windows XP in my case) and have set up a separate profile for testing the nightly “Bon Echo” builds of the upcoming Firefox 2 then you most likely already have the Bon Echo Beta 1 tucked nicely away in your rapidly maturing “gonna-be” browser. If your experiences with the Alpha builds of the new Firefox browser has paralleled mine at all (especially with the nightly builds of Alpha 3 and now Beta 1) it’s quite obvious that we have a real nice update coming up.
The only things that worry me now is that only 9 out of my usual 22 extensions (see my previous post) have been compatible so far and July 11th is the official public release date for the “re-branded” (from Bon Echo to Firefox) Firefox 2 beta 1 release and although I can live without most of them my beloved pinch hit blog editor; Performancing aka PFF, is still missing in action. Oh well…The final release is still at least a month or so away so there is still time and I’m probably fretting about it way too early like I usually do.
So far though, even with the Alpha 3 builds, the new version has been extremely robust and stable which is very unusual when a new version of a program is still in the Alpha stages. Improvements in everything from memory handling and launching speed to rendering and functionality, point to a much more polished, streamlined browser than the previous 1.5.0.x versions which is something all current and wannabe Firefox users will definitely appreciate.
Technorati : Bon Echo beta 1, Firefox, Firefox 2 beta 1
Been awhile since the last post but things have been rather busy of late. One thing of interest is that I’ve downloaded and have been using IE 7 Beta 2 Preview for all my “internet needs” and except for a very few websites not rendering quite right it works great. Much better than IE 6 although as MS says, don’t I wouldn’t use it on a mission critical machine. In other words, if you absolutely depend on the browser for internet work, don’t upgrade till the final comes out then…absolutely. Also, if you’re one of those who don’t like MS mucking around with the inside of your system so you don’t do the “Automatic updates” at all then stick with IE 6. IE 7 likes a fully updated system. I have to say though, even the preview version is like night and day compared to IE 6. A definite recommend.
On completely different note, my lady caught our cat “Churchill” on her handmade king quilt that she was taking pictures of and of course he hammed it up real good. Ol’ Church is intelligent enough but a bit of a clown. You’ll notice that he managed to align himself perfectly with the pattern of the quilt:
And no, we didn’t position him that way either. He seems to have this uncanny ability to put himself just in the right (or wrong) position at any given time and he does it on purpose. He is absolutely a most special cat.
OK, time for lunch. I’m weak (cough, cough).
Check this out. Preferred e-mail or pay for the privilege? Okay, so it’s targeted at companies not individual users to cut down on spamming and all the other wonderful things that companies legit or non-legit do for fun but as you read the article through you will see that they state that it also includes individual online customers who wish to verify, check, get a receipt or perhaps receive help from some support department on a item/service purchased from a company. If the company is one of those who chose not to pay the postage, their e-mail doesn’t get “special treatment”. In other words, it goes to the bottom of the pile.
Hmmm, This could actually work but I think it would have to be modified somewhat to eliminate the adverse affects on the individual user however, if it doesn’t, AOL and Yahoo might end up punching holes in their own boats.
So much for “Special Treatment”
The home above is featured in “Bob’s Solar Project” Blog that covers the entire process from installation to final performance. By the way, it’s laid out like a regular blog so you have to read it from the first entry (back of the pack) to the last (top of the page). He puts a disclaimer about this in the header but I just thought I’d warn you ahead of time.
His project was also followed in the online magazine called “Tree Hugger” at this link and the follow up here. Check it out.
Would they look like that?
It doesn’t take living near the Canadian border in the winter (and summer quite often) to realize what a wonderful thing it would be if one wasn’t so depend on outside sources for fuel and power and the like and that includes wood heating since the higher the cost of fuel oil the higher the $$$ per cord of wood. Because of the rather rugged terrain that any Vermont power company or electricity supplier for instance has to deal with around here, Vermont, like other states with a similar type landscape have some of the highest electric rates in the union. Try hunting down the cause of a power outage up in the hills at 3:00 am in a blizzard, freezing rain, high winds, minus 30 below or all of them put together and you might understand why that is but knowing doesn’t stop you from wishing for other means of keeping the electricity flowing and the house warm that doesn’t quite cost so much.
Present solutions include things like solar and wind power which has seen some extensive use in the latter years and plans for more, for providing the electricity part of it and a few Vermonters that own dairy farms have begun heating the old farmhouse by setting up a system which uses the methane produced by a manure pile to fuel a converted furnace. Also, we’re beginning to see the methane produced by landfills being tapped and used to fuel small power stations that are hooked into the local grid which help offsets the total cost of power production. This weekend I’m going to perusing around the internet looking for different types of alternative heating and power sources and I’ll post the more interesting items on the site once I trace them down and get them (and myself) organized.
Till then?Stay warm.
Well, the storm did come through last night but overall it just kinda wimped out. Oh, it sounded like a real blizzard alright what with the wind howling and screaming all night but the amount of white stuff on the ground this morning didn’t live up to all it’s nighttime brag and bluster. I mean only two foot snowdrifts in the drive? C’mon now.
Cold? Now that’s another matter entirely. My lady’s car doors were so frozen solid she had to take the claw side of the hammer to pry them open. Big change from the tropical 30′s and 40′s we’ve been having lately and of course the wind has been screaming down the lake from Canada in good shape to add to the fun. I hear several people who happened to get caught outside too long in the draft (outta-staters most likely) are now frozen hard where they stood and won’t thaw until probably May. The middle of January is a bad time to freeze up on the street in these parts. We take care of ‘em though. We just haul out ‘em out to the ice fishin’ village that crops in the middle of the bay every winter and use ‘em to hang lanterns and bait buckets on until it warms up enough to revive ‘em.
No…I don’t have a picture…we wouldn’t want the relations down-country to get upset about their frozen relatives and all so we ain’t allowed to take ‘em.
Have to go now. I see one of those flatlanders starting to freeze up in front of my house as we speak. Got to go bring ‘em in before they set hard and put ‘em down in the cellar by the furnace with the others.
