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Coping
The economic downturn has been stressful, and different people handle it in different ways. Sunday, I was in Safeway, and this elderly man pushed his cart next to mine and said "May I help you?" I looked at him, puzzled, because he wasn't wearing a Safeway uniform ( Read more... ) -
Attic project
Before putting down plywood in the attic, I wanted to have a convenient source of light up there. Yesterday I installed a light switch to control an outlet, both at the top of the attic stair I finished installing a few weeks ago. For a source of power, I opened up the nearest junction box and tapped in. I tested the result with a hand held drill. ( Read more... ) -
Black LEDs
While visiting San Francisco's 54th Annual Precious Cheese North Beach Festival yesterday, I learned about Chromira printing technology. Chromira digital printers are produced by a Santa Barbara company and have been around for 10 years. They differ from the ink and toner digital printers I'm familiar with in some fundamental ways. In my limited ( Read more... ) -
Automated Build Server
At work we have an automated build server with an attitude. Here's the response I received after submitting a set of version labels on Friday:
Oh nuts! Your build failed. But there's good news, too! No electrons were
harmed in the making of your horrible, useless, messy, dissapointing, total and
blatant failure of a build. Boy, aren't you relieved ( Read more... ) -
Earthquake
Having worked on a seismic upgrade, I've occasionally wondered whether the effort will ever pay off. I don't really want to come home some day to find my neighbors' houses in rubble while ours proudly stands. But still, what a shame to have all that work wasted....
Well, perverse psychology aside, we were reminded this evening that we really do ( Read more... ) -
Video compression
Random tho't while vegging with a cold and looking for a video of the Democratic debates:
Video compression will be more effective in the future when the compressor and expander are smarter about human perception. For videos about people, the faces (and especially eyes) need to be rendered most carefully. The details on the walls (or Obama's tie or ( Read more... )
