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Zzap atque vale
Tonight we have a new microwave oven ( Read more... ) -
In which the penny drops and I realize how fscking stupid I am
I've had this image-processing project on a back burner for about two years, trying to decide whether to try and use one of the publicly-available image-processing libraries or roll my own (very simple, very specialized) recognition algorithms. Some of the libraries out there don't actually do what I want -- they blur, they sharpen, they flood ( Read more... ) -
Appliance love
via firecat
Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don't use, underline the ones you use at least once a month, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of.
I wonder how many pasta machines, breadmakers, juicers, blenders, deep fat fryers, egg boilers, melon ballers, sandwich makers, pastry ( Read more... ) -
Relativity
I feel lately like a conflation of a couple of characters from Vernor Vinge's True Names: the Mailman AI, who was non-realtime and communicated by teletype, and one of the oldtimers who relied on hacks like short-term-memory reload to stay sentient. Probably any parent (or fulltime caregiver) can relate: the number of hours a day spent being called ( Read more... ) -
A note to visiting adults
(more of a vent, but duh)
If you come to stay with us, and do not interact substantially with either of our kids or help with any household stuff, those long heart-to-heart conversations you have with us effectively reduce our free time from 90 minutes a day to zero. So you'd better be pretty damn scintillating.
(Yep, I'm guilty too) -
What I think about while commuting
This is a small town, but it's still not very walkable, especially for preschoolers. So for the past 5+ years I've driven C to daycare, sometimes to school, B to daycare, C to summer daycamps, and so forth ( Read more... ) -
Things I have learned from early 20th-century pulp novels
1) The reason unions were so hated by mine owners in the american west was that they proposed to open boardinghouses that fed mineworkers for less per day than the owners boardinghouses, without the workers taking a pay cut to compensate ( Read more... ) -
Oh, Darn
A weird possessions experience that I wanted to see whether other people would have reacted similarly ( Read more... ) -
Grr
In the parking lot of the local food co-op, as I was going there with B this afternoon, there was a lady handing out anti-vaccination leaflets (under the disigenuous heading of "know your rights"), and of course she approached us. I said no thanks, and that I was absolutely opposed to her position. She asked why, and I told her that when enough ( Read more... ) -
First Light
Today I finally got to the point working on the pocket engraver where I got to light up a laser diode. I very carefully pried it as far out of its various housings as I could, and unsoldered from its circuit boards. And touched some leads from a couple of AAA batteries to pins until I found the combination that made for a nice red glow through the ( Read more... )