Gustav could be a bad one.
Here are some less-obvious sources of weather geek info on the storm:
You can tune into reports direct from unmanned data buoys in the Gulf. In addition to the kind of data you get from a normal weather station, these buoy-based stations also report wave height and period.
This is a mid-Gulf buoy and will show the effects of the hurricane on Sunday:
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=42001
This one is closer to shore and will show heavy action Monday morning:
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=42040
Out in the open water, under a Cat 5 hurricane, it'll be pretty violent. The second buoy (42040) went offline during hurricane Ivan after registering a 62.5 foot (19m) wave.
Here's 4 channels of live simultaneous Gustav info on one web page:
http://www.maroonspoon.com/wx/gustav.html
Nice radar page:
http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at200807_radar.html#a_topad
I hope none of you are in the path of this puppy!
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Web Weirdness
Yesterday, I had a little item called "Browser Wars" set to run. It used this image, from a web site:
I left the credit line intact, as you can see.
But somehow a completely different web site--- not the one in the credit line--- somehow intercepted and redirected the link, claiming bandwidth thievery. I'm not sure how or why: The Blogger software is a black box, run by Google. There's no way to know what, exactly, is going on behind the scenes.
I pulled the item and ran a new one.
So, today I'm trying again, but this time with a locally-stored version of the image and with the originating site's credit line intact. If you see the image above, it worked. If not, there's something fishy going on.
Long way to go for a small joke, eh?
I left the credit line intact, as you can see.
But somehow a completely different web site--- not the one in the credit line--- somehow intercepted and redirected the link, claiming bandwidth thievery. I'm not sure how or why: The Blogger software is a black box, run by Google. There's no way to know what, exactly, is going on behind the scenes.
I pulled the item and ran a new one.
So, today I'm trying again, but this time with a locally-stored version of the image and with the originating site's credit line intact. If you see the image above, it worked. If not, there's something fishy going on.
Long way to go for a small joke, eh?
Friday, August 29, 2008
Photosynth Now OK?
You may have seen the news about "Photosynth" last week; a major new (free!) software tool that can assemble 3d views of something from your 2D photos. I didn't mention it here at the time because the Photosynth site died under the early onslaught of users.
The dust has settled a bit and the site now appears stable. So take a look at one of the more innovative tools to come down the pike in a while: http://livelabs.com/photosynth/
Want more info first?
"Photosynth has been one of Microsoft most creative consumer projects in some time. Developed by the company in collaboration with scientists from the Graphics and Imaging Lab (GRAIL) at the University of Washington, the technology uses a number of pictures to create a sketch of a three-dimensional landscape filled with high-resolution images: Upload your pictures and you could end up with a dramatic 3D world. Conceivably, Photosynth could easily be imagined to be one evolutionary step above Google’s Street View Maps feature." http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38994/140/
Must See! Microsoft's Photosynth Makes Photos a 3D Experience
http://www.pcworld.com/article/150100/must_see_microsofts_photosynth_makes_photos_a_3d_experience.html#
More:
http://tinyurl.com/6xjcds
The dust has settled a bit and the site now appears stable. So take a look at one of the more innovative tools to come down the pike in a while: http://livelabs.com/photosynth/
Want more info first?
"Photosynth has been one of Microsoft most creative consumer projects in some time. Developed by the company in collaboration with scientists from the Graphics and Imaging Lab (GRAIL) at the University of Washington, the technology uses a number of pictures to create a sketch of a three-dimensional landscape filled with high-resolution images: Upload your pictures and you could end up with a dramatic 3D world. Conceivably, Photosynth could easily be imagined to be one evolutionary step above Google’s Street View Maps feature." http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38994/140/
Must See! Microsoft's Photosynth Makes Photos a 3D Experience
http://www.pcworld.com/article/150100/must_see_microsofts_photosynth_makes_photos_a_3d_experience.html#
More:
http://tinyurl.com/6xjcds
Thursday, August 28, 2008
More Fun With Open Source Software
I like the Open Source movement. An outgrowth of the freeware/shareware movement of old (which is still going strong in its own right), the concept is wonderfully appealing: Software written for love not money. Wow!
But you know, humans are humans, whatever their motives, and there's little if any functional difference between someone trying to be the best commercial programmer on their team or someone trying to be the best volunteer programmer on their team. The best programmer on any given software team is probably going to turn out superior code. Good code is good code, regardless.
For that matter, there's not much net result difference between the output of a mediocre wage-slave programmer who's just in it for the personal gain of a paycheck and that of a mediocre volunteer programmer who's in it for the personal gain of a bit of glory. Either way, you're gonna get mediocre code.
You know, I've never met a programmer of any stripe who *wants* to produce buggy code. Everyone always at least *tries* to do well. Some succeed. Others don't. Purity of intent doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality of the final code.
This is not a popular view. Read some message boards, and you see that the common belief is that commercial coders (say, Microsoft software people) are the running-dog capitalist lackeys of the programming community, shoveling poorly-tested code out the door after cutting as many corners as possible.
On the other hand, Open Source coders are the Noble Saints of software who lovingly hand polish each one or zero before gently positioning it in the glorious perfection of the final code.
Find a bug in Microsoft software, and it's "See? Those morons can't code for sh*t; their software sucks. Microsoft can just go screw itself; I'm NOT going use use that built-in error-reporting tool. "
Find a bug in Open Source software and it's "Nice catch! Must have slipped through the testing. File a bug report and if enough people report it, it'll get fixed in the next release!"
Two software bugs, two radically different reactions.
This particular issue has been bugging me since I wasted a day trying to chase down problems with Thunderbird, the Mozilla Open-Source email client. (By the end of the day, I was calling it Blunderbird.) Thanks to several hints from readers here, I was able to roughly define the problem area and devise a crude work-around. Alas, there is no fix: It's just a bug. It's a nasty one that affects a major function of a piece of major Open Source software, but still, it's just a bug, same as you might find in any software from any source.
Ironically, while figuring out a temporary workaround for the bug, I was surfing various support sites using Firefox, the Open Source browser.
I encountered this:
Open Source software is sooooo much higher quality than commercial, right?
Right?
But you know, humans are humans, whatever their motives, and there's little if any functional difference between someone trying to be the best commercial programmer on their team or someone trying to be the best volunteer programmer on their team. The best programmer on any given software team is probably going to turn out superior code. Good code is good code, regardless.
For that matter, there's not much net result difference between the output of a mediocre wage-slave programmer who's just in it for the personal gain of a paycheck and that of a mediocre volunteer programmer who's in it for the personal gain of a bit of glory. Either way, you're gonna get mediocre code.
You know, I've never met a programmer of any stripe who *wants* to produce buggy code. Everyone always at least *tries* to do well. Some succeed. Others don't. Purity of intent doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality of the final code.
This is not a popular view. Read some message boards, and you see that the common belief is that commercial coders (say, Microsoft software people) are the running-dog capitalist lackeys of the programming community, shoveling poorly-tested code out the door after cutting as many corners as possible.
On the other hand, Open Source coders are the Noble Saints of software who lovingly hand polish each one or zero before gently positioning it in the glorious perfection of the final code.
Find a bug in Microsoft software, and it's "See? Those morons can't code for sh*t; their software sucks. Microsoft can just go screw itself; I'm NOT going use use that built-in error-reporting tool. "
Find a bug in Open Source software and it's "Nice catch! Must have slipped through the testing. File a bug report and if enough people report it, it'll get fixed in the next release!"
Two software bugs, two radically different reactions.
This particular issue has been bugging me since I wasted a day trying to chase down problems with Thunderbird, the Mozilla Open-Source email client. (By the end of the day, I was calling it Blunderbird.) Thanks to several hints from readers here, I was able to roughly define the problem area and devise a crude work-around. Alas, there is no fix: It's just a bug. It's a nasty one that affects a major function of a piece of major Open Source software, but still, it's just a bug, same as you might find in any software from any source.
Ironically, while figuring out a temporary workaround for the bug, I was surfing various support sites using Firefox, the Open Source browser.
I encountered this:
Open Source software is sooooo much higher quality than commercial, right?
Right?
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
"Hal, listen to me: Open the pod bay doors!"
Not so far fetched, perhaps:
"NASA Discovers Computer Virus Aboard the International Space Station"
Really!
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/08/nasa_finds_nasty_virus_on_spac.html
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1305
Not very dangerous, but geez! Someone in the astronaut corp needs to be taught basic computer security.
Not so far fetched, perhaps:
"NASA Discovers Computer Virus Aboard the International Space Station"
Really!
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/08/nasa_finds_nasty_virus_on_spac.html
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1305
Not very dangerous, but geez! Someone in the astronaut corp needs to be taught basic computer security.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Enjoying the Scenery
A few days ago, a friend of mine invited me to ride his favorite NH back roads, so we headed out on our motorcycles.
Here's the GPS track of the ride:
For context, most of the above is in the middle of the hilly, wooded area in the center of this map: (click HERE if map below doesn't work)
View Larger Map
I got some nice photos, but more by accident than anything else. I was on my KLR, a much smaller bike than the Goldwing you may already know about. It's a single-cylinder (!) bike, and so has some inherent vibration. Add in more vibration from the knobby dual-purpose tires and from the rougher road surfaces themselves, and you have a non-photography-friendly vehicle. The vibration is a killer.
Sitting still, my camera did fine, as in this shot. (Yes, that's an emu, along with my friend Skip. Skip's the one in the blue suit.)
In motion, some photos weren't blurred beyond utility:
But some were very blurred:
A few seemed to work, despite the blurring. Here are two with a nice sense of motion:
And a couple got oddly blurred enough to look almost deliberately artistic; impressionism:
Anyway, this is a slideshow (below) of some of the ride shows the gorgeous scenery we rode through. The deeper-woods stuff comes at the end:
http://s225.photobucket.com/albums/dd54/flanga_bucket/skip_w_ride_20080817/?action=view¤t=29a8e138.pbw
Still photos:
http://s225.photobucket.com/albums/dd54/flanga_bucket/skip_w_ride_20080817
Garmin-format track file:
http://www.4shared.com/file/59745203/c9542a5c/skip_wareham_tracks.html
Thanks for riding along!
Here's the GPS track of the ride:
For context, most of the above is in the middle of the hilly, wooded area in the center of this map: (click HERE if map below doesn't work)
View Larger Map
I got some nice photos, but more by accident than anything else. I was on my KLR, a much smaller bike than the Goldwing you may already know about. It's a single-cylinder (!) bike, and so has some inherent vibration. Add in more vibration from the knobby dual-purpose tires and from the rougher road surfaces themselves, and you have a non-photography-friendly vehicle. The vibration is a killer.
Sitting still, my camera did fine, as in this shot. (Yes, that's an emu, along with my friend Skip. Skip's the one in the blue suit.)
In motion, some photos weren't blurred beyond utility:
But some were very blurred:
A few seemed to work, despite the blurring. Here are two with a nice sense of motion:
And a couple got oddly blurred enough to look almost deliberately artistic; impressionism:
Anyway, this is a slideshow (below) of some of the ride shows the gorgeous scenery we rode through. The deeper-woods stuff comes at the end:
http://s225.photobucket.com/albums/dd54/flanga_bucket/skip_w_ride_20080817/?action=view¤t=29a8e138.pbw
Still photos:
http://s225.photobucket.com/albums/dd54/flanga_bucket/skip_w_ride_20080817
Garmin-format track file:
http://www.4shared.com/file/59745203/c9542a5c/skip_wareham_tracks.html
Thanks for riding along!
Monday, August 25, 2008
mail client goes insane
I've been using "Thunderbird" (the open-source Mozilla mail client) for a while now, trying to find a worthy successor to the once-great but now languishing and seriously outdated Eudora.
Thunderbird has been acting strangely of late. Now, it lost its ability to attach photos. I have no clue why. There was no update or obvious external change.
It's been working erratically for several days, but now I can't attach files at all. An in-situ reinstall didn't help.
Next: a clean reinstall.
Open Source software is so much better than commercial, right? Almost no bugs, right? Sigh.
I'm off to strip off all traces of Thunderbird and Firefox on three systems here, and try a clean, add-on-free reinstall of both applications to see if I can clear this up.
Six apps off, three system cleaned up, six apps reinstalled and tested...
There goes my Monday. Grrrr.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Fall arrives a bit early
A huge Canadian high pressure system blew through New Hampshire last week. It had been humid and still one overnight, but in the morning the air began to move and the clouds roiled and lowered. It rained cold and hard for a while, then the clouds shredded and blew towards the east and the sun came out. The rest of the day--- and the rest of the week--- had nearly cloudless blue skies and a brisk breeze is blowing from the northwest. The air became wonderfully and refreshingly dry, especially after weeks of humidity and rain. The temperature dropped like a proverbial stone.
By afternoon of the day the front blew through, I'd already closed all the windows and sliders here. It'd been weeks since I buttoned up the house like that. I thought I might actually need the furnace briefly in the morning.
It's a real foretaste of Fall; the first so far this season. The big continental weather patterns are starting to shift. More and more of the leaves here are starting to turn--- it's not just swamp maples now. (Some of those in Northwood Meadows went autumnal as early as Aug 3!) Now, trees along the sides of the road are starting to turn the colors New England autumns are famous for.
It's still summer here, and we'll be warm again. Peak foliage color is still some week away, but does appear to be starting early.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
A robot with a living, biological brain. Really!
Robot Has Biological Brain
Scientists have created a robot controlled by a biological brain made of rat neurons.
More:
http://www.google.com/search?q=gordon+robot+brain
Friday, August 22, 2008
Google offers up writing criticism.
I'm not sure what to make of it, but Google's little ad-bot made a surprising choice the other day.
Supposedly, Google's "AdSense" technology parses the content of a given page and automatically selects ads that fit with that content. Once it's found the most-suitable ads, it sprinkles them around the pages here.
But on Thursday, the ad it selected to run in the top slot on my blog was:
I don't know how to take that.
Hey look! A butterfly!...
Supposedly, Google's "AdSense" technology parses the content of a given page and automatically selects ads that fit with that content. Once it's found the most-suitable ads, it sprinkles them around the pages here.
But on Thursday, the ad it selected to run in the top slot on my blog was:
Do You Have ADHD?
Find out about an ADHD medication for adults.
Get the facts & more.
Find out about an ADHD medication for adults.
Get the facts & more.
I don't know how to take that.
Hey look! A butterfly!...
Thursday, August 21, 2008
"Web of Trust"
Got this in the mail:
=========
Dear Mr. Langa, I wrote to you several weeks ago introducing Web of Trust. We have begun a series of videos depicting what can happen to your computer if you visit a risky website, and I thought you may be interested. ..
Best regards,
Deborah Salmi
Web of Trust
www.mywot.com
[press release follows]
PC Doc Pro Lies! - Video exposes how this software reports fake errors to compel user to buy the product
August 18, 2008
You have probably heard about software tools that offer free scanning of your PC and reports fake errors to make you buy the product. Well, we wanted to actually see if this is the case, and decided to test one of these products, PC Doc Pro. We produced a video that shows you, in practice, what happened: http://www.mywot.com/en/online-threats/fraudulentsite
A clean installation of Windows Vista Ultimate has 572 problems!
We started with a clean install of Windows Vista Ultimate. PC Doc Pro scanned the system and found 572 problems, out of which 31 were severe! On a clean Windows Vista installation! Oh yes! The product fixes 50 problems for free, but to fix the rest, you need to buy a 30-day license that costs $29.95.
This is a good example of software that scares consumers by producing fake or false detection warnings. Misleading unaware computer users into downloading and paying for the "full" version of bogus software seems to be one emerging trend within the rogue software on the Internet.
Traditional security software doesn't provide protection
This type of scam cannot be detected by traditional security software, since the website as such doesn't necessarily spread malware that anti-virus or anti-spyware systems would notice. Preventive protection against fraudulent sites is provided by reputation based systems such as Web of Trust, WOT. WOT provides users a common platform where they can share their experience with websites and companies by rating sites and leaving their comments. This way the word about good and bad customer experiences will spread fast.
WOT, people –driven security tool
WOT is a people-driven security tool that warns Internet users about dangerous and suspicious websites. Site reputation data comes from the user community in combination with trusted sources such as listings of phishing sites.
WOT in brief:
· http://www.mywot.com
· Free add-on for the browser (Internet Explorer and Firefox)
· 900,000 downloads
· Safety ratings on 20 million websites
· Rating information for trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety
· Demo video: http://www.mywot.com/en/demo
· Screen prints, logos and photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mywot/sets
=============
OK, it's Fred here again.
I have mixed feelings about sites and services like these. (Internet Explorer's built-in "Phishing Filter" is another.)
I think they're great for beginners or people who can't or won't be bothered to learn how to safe-surf. You know, the ones who click on spam, send around scams, open attachments from unknown persons, or send on infected attachments to their friends....
But if you don't do those things, and if you use the normal precautions and safety tools (antispyware, antivirus, etc.), I don't think services like these can add much.
Plus, there can be downsides. Anything that sits in your PC watching what sites you go to is a potential risk to your privacy and security. Using these sites and services actually can have the effect of making you LESS safe, rather than more!
And, anything that sits in your PC watching what sites you go to is going to consume some CPU time and some memory. Is the benefit worth this cost?
I also have, um, philosophic issues with some of WOT's fuzzy ratings such as the "trustworthiness" of a site's content. WOT ratings are mostly based on user votes, so there's no real control over what "trustworthy" means. Imagine all the Fox News fans heading over to CNN to vote it UNtrustworthy, or all the MSNBC fans doing the same to Fox. WOT would faithfully tally and display those votes, but what do those votes really mean?
(Answer: Not much.)
For me, these tools serve no purpose, and may actually be a negative. (And that's why I turn off IE's Phishing Filter, too.) I'd rather make up my own mind, thank you.
I'll bet these tools also won't do you much good, if any.
But if you have one of those friends who click and download without a lot of care or caution, maybe they'd find it of benefit.
---Fred
=========
Dear Mr. Langa, I wrote to you several weeks ago introducing Web of Trust. We have begun a series of videos depicting what can happen to your computer if you visit a risky website, and I thought you may be interested. ..
Best regards,
Deborah Salmi
Web of Trust
www.mywot.com
[press release follows]
PC Doc Pro Lies! - Video exposes how this software reports fake errors to compel user to buy the product
August 18, 2008
You have probably heard about software tools that offer free scanning of your PC and reports fake errors to make you buy the product. Well, we wanted to actually see if this is the case, and decided to test one of these products, PC Doc Pro. We produced a video that shows you, in practice, what happened: http://www.mywot.com/en/online-threats/fraudulentsite
A clean installation of Windows Vista Ultimate has 572 problems!
We started with a clean install of Windows Vista Ultimate. PC Doc Pro scanned the system and found 572 problems, out of which 31 were severe! On a clean Windows Vista installation! Oh yes! The product fixes 50 problems for free, but to fix the rest, you need to buy a 30-day license that costs $29.95.
This is a good example of software that scares consumers by producing fake or false detection warnings. Misleading unaware computer users into downloading and paying for the "full" version of bogus software seems to be one emerging trend within the rogue software on the Internet.
Traditional security software doesn't provide protection
This type of scam cannot be detected by traditional security software, since the website as such doesn't necessarily spread malware that anti-virus or anti-spyware systems would notice. Preventive protection against fraudulent sites is provided by reputation based systems such as Web of Trust, WOT. WOT provides users a common platform where they can share their experience with websites and companies by rating sites and leaving their comments. This way the word about good and bad customer experiences will spread fast.
WOT, people –driven security tool
WOT is a people-driven security tool that warns Internet users about dangerous and suspicious websites. Site reputation data comes from the user community in combination with trusted sources such as listings of phishing sites.
WOT in brief:
· http://www.mywot.com
· Free add-on for the browser (Internet Explorer and Firefox)
· 900,000 downloads
· Safety ratings on 20 million websites
· Rating information for trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety
· Demo video: http://www.mywot.com/en/demo
· Screen prints, logos and photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mywot/sets
=============
OK, it's Fred here again.
I have mixed feelings about sites and services like these. (Internet Explorer's built-in "Phishing Filter" is another.)
I think they're great for beginners or people who can't or won't be bothered to learn how to safe-surf. You know, the ones who click on spam, send around scams, open attachments from unknown persons, or send on infected attachments to their friends....
But if you don't do those things, and if you use the normal precautions and safety tools (antispyware, antivirus, etc.), I don't think services like these can add much.
Plus, there can be downsides. Anything that sits in your PC watching what sites you go to is a potential risk to your privacy and security. Using these sites and services actually can have the effect of making you LESS safe, rather than more!
And, anything that sits in your PC watching what sites you go to is going to consume some CPU time and some memory. Is the benefit worth this cost?
I also have, um, philosophic issues with some of WOT's fuzzy ratings such as the "trustworthiness" of a site's content. WOT ratings are mostly based on user votes, so there's no real control over what "trustworthy" means. Imagine all the Fox News fans heading over to CNN to vote it UNtrustworthy, or all the MSNBC fans doing the same to Fox. WOT would faithfully tally and display those votes, but what do those votes really mean?
(Answer: Not much.)
For me, these tools serve no purpose, and may actually be a negative. (And that's why I turn off IE's Phishing Filter, too.) I'd rather make up my own mind, thank you.
I'll bet these tools also won't do you much good, if any.
But if you have one of those friends who click and download without a lot of care or caution
---Fred
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Recovering Lost Digital Pix
Tim read the post about "SD vs xD camera/memory cards" and asked:
Do you have any recommendations for a freeware program to undelete picture files on an SD card? I have an SD card with pictures from my just completed trip to Nicaragua that I would like to recover. I realize there are commercial solutions.---Tim
Actually, almost any undelete tool should work. That's because flash memory uses those ancient DOS formats--- FAT and FAT32--- to structure their files. The FAT file structure is as old as personal computing itself, and so is as well-known as it gets.
Plus, those ancient times were before viruses, spyware, disk encryption, and such. Disk security was a nonissue. Everything about operating systems was about making data on a disk as easy and wide-open as possible to get at.
That's one of the reasons why Flash memory makers chose the ancient FAT and FAT32 formats: They wanted a widely known, simple and extremely transparent technology for storing data. It's as plain-vanilla and unexotic as you can get, and again just about ANY undelete tool should be able to handle it.
Note that some tools make a deal about recovering image files specifically. This is a mild scam: An operating system doesn't know or care whether a group of ones and zeros is a picture, an MP3, a novel, a (gasp!) blog entry, or anything else. At the OS level, they're all just files. There's really no need for specialized "photo recovery" tools.
So, you almost can't go wrong in choosing a file undeleter: Try your favorite download site or search engine and search for FAT UNDELETE UNERASE FILE RECOVER WINDOWS FREEWARE or some such, and try the most-popular or most-recommended freebie. Odds are, it will work just fine.
Here are 26 freeware file-recovery tools (some rated very favorably by users) from downloads.com:
http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0.html?hhTest=1&qt=undelete+file&licenseType=49&tag=dir.li
And a preconfigured Google search for you:
http://tinyurl.com/57hq7o
Good luck!
Do you have any recommendations for a freeware program to undelete picture files on an SD card? I have an SD card with pictures from my just completed trip to Nicaragua that I would like to recover. I realize there are commercial solutions.---Tim
Actually, almost any undelete tool should work. That's because flash memory uses those ancient DOS formats--- FAT and FAT32--- to structure their files. The FAT file structure is as old as personal computing itself, and so is as well-known as it gets.
Plus, those ancient times were before viruses, spyware, disk encryption, and such. Disk security was a nonissue. Everything about operating systems was about making data on a disk as easy and wide-open as possible to get at.
That's one of the reasons why Flash memory makers chose the ancient FAT and FAT32 formats: They wanted a widely known, simple and extremely transparent technology for storing data. It's as plain-vanilla and unexotic as you can get, and again just about ANY undelete tool should be able to handle it.
Note that some tools make a deal about recovering image files specifically. This is a mild scam: An operating system doesn't know or care whether a group of ones and zeros is a picture, an MP3, a novel, a (gasp!) blog entry, or anything else. At the OS level, they're all just files. There's really no need for specialized "photo recovery" tools.
So, you almost can't go wrong in choosing a file undeleter: Try your favorite download site or search engine and search for FAT UNDELETE UNERASE FILE RECOVER WINDOWS FREEWARE or some such, and try the most-popular or most-recommended freebie. Odds are, it will work just fine.
Here are 26 freeware file-recovery tools (some rated very favorably by users) from downloads.com:
http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0.html?hhTest=1&qt=undelete+file&licenseType=49&tag=dir.li
And a preconfigured Google search for you:
http://tinyurl.com/57hq7o
Good luck!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Chip wars get interesting again
Intel's new graphics chip design is called Larrabee. The excellent Ars Technica site took a look and wrote this article:
Larrabee: Intel's biggest leap since the Pentium Pro
Prior to this, Intel has mainly done ho-hum graphics hardware for on-the-motherboard solutions. With Larrabbee, Intel is developing stand-alone high-performance graphics cards like the ones from nVidia and ATI (now owned by AMD).
http://www.google.com/search?q=intel+larrabee
Elsewhere, AMD's acquisition of ATI may finally be paying off:
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9112441
It's a whole new graphics card architecture that has the folks who follow such things pretty excited.
It look as if computer graphics is about to take a giant, competitive leap forward.
Larrabee: Intel's biggest leap since the Pentium Pro
Prior to this, Intel has mainly done ho-hum graphics hardware for on-the-motherboard solutions. With Larrabbee, Intel is developing stand-alone high-performance graphics cards like the ones from nVidia and ATI (now owned by AMD).
http://www.google.com/search?q=intel+larrabee
Elsewhere, AMD's acquisition of ATI may finally be paying off:
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9112441
It's a whole new graphics card architecture that has the folks who follow such things pretty excited.
It look as if computer graphics is about to take a giant, competitive leap forward.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
It's Sunday, so here's a church story
Reuters:
Blow-up church looks to lure beachgoers
The 30-metre (98 ft) long blow-up church -- staffed by priests ready to take confession -- will debut on Saturday on the Adriatic coast in the Molise region, an organizer said... The first attempt to inaugurate the inflatable church last month on the holiday island of Sardinia failed after strong winds forced organizers to relocate, she said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSKUA65803620080806
Blow-up church looks to lure beachgoers
The 30-metre (98 ft) long blow-up church -- staffed by priests ready to take confession -- will debut on Saturday on the Adriatic coast in the Molise region, an organizer said... The first attempt to inaugurate the inflatable church last month on the holiday island of Sardinia failed after strong winds forced organizers to relocate, she said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSKUA65803620080806
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Cat's-eye view of the world
This guy straps a still camera to his cat and lets the critter run free all day.
When the cat returns home, the guy downloads the photos to see what the cat's been up to: a cat's point-of-view video diary.
It's strange, but oddly cool:
http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/pe_catcam1.htm
When the cat returns home, the guy downloads the photos to see what the cat's been up to: a cat's point-of-view video diary.
It's strange, but oddly cool:
http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/pe_catcam1.htm
Friday, August 15, 2008
Pip pip, cheerio, y'all.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN1446925320080814
"LONDON (Reuters) - Council chiefs in Birmingham [UK] were left red-faced when they mistakenly used a picture of their U.S. namesake in Alabama on thousands of official leaflets...."
"LONDON (Reuters) - Council chiefs in Birmingham [UK] were left red-faced when they mistakenly used a picture of their U.S. namesake in Alabama on thousands of official leaflets...."
Thursday, August 14, 2008
SD vs xD camera/memory cards
Hi Fred,I have some camera questions for you.
Based on your outstanding road report from your cross country adventure and the great pictures you shared, I investigated and then purchased a Fuji Finepix S700 camera. (I got a great price for it at Amazon, and all the good reviews there helped me make up my mind.) While I'm waiting for it to be delivered, I was curious if it made a difference which type of memory card I got for this camera. I wasn't able to find any basic information describing the difference between the two type of cards (SD &xD) that the S700 accepts, and the only real difference I've been able to determine is price and a slight difference in capacity. I'd be grateful for any light you can shed on this subject.
You also mentioned that you use the Gimp for post-processing of your pictures. Do you still use the Gimp, and how satisfied are you with it? How steep is the learning curve if I'm coming from another image program (Pain Shop Pro 7)? I ask because now that SP3 is out for XP, I'm preparing to do what I call a Nuke & Pave to give myself a clean system to image now that XP is getting long in the tooth and I'm planning on using as much free and open source software as I can when I reload the system.
Take care,Lonnie
Functionally, the two kinds of cards are all but identical. They're both forms of electrically-rewritable "flash" memory that retains data even when powered off.
SD get its name from "secure digital." It's called "secure" because, unlike the RAM in PCs, the data in an SD card is retained at power-down. This is an obsolete use of the word "secure," so don't be misled: SD cards have no intrinsic encryption other features to make the data safe from snooping. Physically, an SD card contains a memory chip and some controller circuitry.
xD is "eXtreme Digital," another obsolete phrase. It was "extreme" when it first appeared ("look! no film!") but there's nothing extreme about it now. An xD card is basically just a memory chip in compact packaging; the camera (or other device) supplies the controller circuitry.
In short, both cards do the same thing.
xD is a semi-proprietary format (created by Olympus and Fujifilm), with the card's engineering internals shielded by patent laws and other measures. Its big advantage, when it came out, was its very small size--- roughly half that of typical SD card, and much smaller than Sony's "memory sticks" of yore.
It's proprietary, so part of the original marketing plan by Olympus and Fujifilm was to lock consumers into buying brand-specific memory for their cameras. Olympus went a little further and built a special "panorama" mode into some of its cameras, and then wrote code so that that mode is only enabled when an Olympus card is in the slot. There's nothing about the card that's special--- the camera's doing all the panorama work. Olympus just fixed it so the feature is only enabled when their special brand of card is used; a way to get people to buy their cards.
SD isn't proprietary, so there are a million different vendors competing for business. Although SD cards are actually more complicated than xD ones, they're often sold for less due to economies of scale. Bargain-oriented vendors also operate in this space, sometimes selling SD cards at near-giveaway prices.
There are also several variants of SD technology, including half-sized SD cards that are just as small as xD.
Many cameras and other devices actually can accept either type of memory. For example, even though my Fujifilm S700 is from Fujifilm, one of the originators of the xD format, the camera will happily eat either xD or SD cards, no problem. Likewise, my Acer laptop's built-in card reader also accepts both card types, no problem.
Which card to pick? Well, you first have to see if your hardware requires only one type of card. If it does, you're locked into that type. But again, it's becoming rare for this to occur.
Beyond that, speed matters. Faster memory may let your camera cycle faster between shots, and may improve memory-intensive tasks such as continuous shooting or large-format/high-frame-rate movie-making. Generally, faster is better, especially if you plan to keep the card for a long time; future cameras will likely need faster memory than today's. On the other hand, if you sell or pass on your cards with your older cameras, then it makes no sense to pay for memory speed your current camera can't utilize.
Speed specs overlap and vary enormously, but in general, SD can be faster than xD.
If you were designing a space mission or something equally exotic, the small power consumption differences might matter (xD, with less circuitry, is slightly more power-efficient than SD) But these differences are completely invisible in normal use, swamped by much larger variables such as flash/no-flash, camera temperature, etc.
Reliability also matters. The rock-bottom, third-tier and no-name brands are demonstrably less reliable than the bigger names. They only flash card failure I've ever had was in a cheapo SD card I got at an absurdly low price. Turned out it was priced that way for a reason!
Capacity matters. Flash memory normally uses old-style FAT or FAT32 hard-drive addressing (this is one of the reasons a card appears as a "removable drive" in your system). The software in your camera controls this; and thus sets software limits on card/drive capacity. A FAT-based file system limits you to 2GB usable memory because the software literally can't count high enough to access larger address spaces. If your camera uses old-style FAT, it may not even recognize a memory card larger than 2GB.
Newer cameras tend to use FAT32, which effectively removes the 2GB volume limit. It retains another limit, though, in that file sizes must be less than 4GB. This is rarely a practical limitation in normal use. (I've never run into it.)
Generally larger capacity cards are more convenient to use--- less swapping, more continuous shooting. On the other hand, the larger the card, the greater the temptation to let the card fill up without emptying it. With several smaller cards, you lose some convenience, but can help ensure that a single problem--- loss or malfunction of the camera, for example--- won't cause you to lose all your pictures.
I use a mix of cards now. My older, slower and lower-capacity cards get moved down the food chain to less-demanding uses, such as digital picture frames. The newer, faster, high-capacity cards go in my newest, best camera.
I generally keep a 2GB card in the camera at all times, just because it's available. (Why not?) On that month-long road-trip, I carried 3 cameras and a total of 8 GB in memory cards, but that was extreme because it was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and I didn't want to miss shots.
If I had to buy camera memory today, I'd search for cards from the more-recognized brands; filtering for those that are larger (1 or 2 GB); and faster (look for a mention of "hi-speed" or some such in the advertising propaganda). Then I'd buy whatever's cheapest from among those that made the cut.
Simple as that!
Hoped that helped. More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XD-Picture_Card
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table
(This is getting long; I'll answer the GIMP questions in a later post.)
Based on your outstanding road report from your cross country adventure and the great pictures you shared, I investigated and then purchased a Fuji Finepix S700 camera. (I got a great price for it at Amazon, and all the good reviews there helped me make up my mind.) While I'm waiting for it to be delivered, I was curious if it made a difference which type of memory card I got for this camera. I wasn't able to find any basic information describing the difference between the two type of cards (SD &xD) that the S700 accepts, and the only real difference I've been able to determine is price and a slight difference in capacity. I'd be grateful for any light you can shed on this subject.
You also mentioned that you use the Gimp for post-processing of your pictures. Do you still use the Gimp, and how satisfied are you with it? How steep is the learning curve if I'm coming from another image program (Pain Shop Pro 7)? I ask because now that SP3 is out for XP, I'm preparing to do what I call a Nuke & Pave to give myself a clean system to image now that XP is getting long in the tooth and I'm planning on using as much free and open source software as I can when I reload the system.
Take care,Lonnie
Functionally, the two kinds of cards are all but identical. They're both forms of electrically-rewritable "flash" memory that retains data even when powered off.
SD get its name from "secure digital." It's called "secure" because, unlike the RAM in PCs, the data in an SD card is retained at power-down. This is an obsolete use of the word "secure," so don't be misled: SD cards have no intrinsic encryption other features to make the data safe from snooping. Physically, an SD card contains a memory chip and some controller circuitry.
xD is "eXtreme Digital," another obsolete phrase. It was "extreme" when it first appeared ("look! no film!") but there's nothing extreme about it now. An xD card is basically just a memory chip in compact packaging; the camera (or other device) supplies the controller circuitry.
In short, both cards do the same thing.
xD is a semi-proprietary format (created by Olympus and Fujifilm), with the card's engineering internals shielded by patent laws and other measures. Its big advantage, when it came out, was its very small size--- roughly half that of typical SD card, and much smaller than Sony's "memory sticks" of yore.
It's proprietary, so part of the original marketing plan by Olympus and Fujifilm was to lock consumers into buying brand-specific memory for their cameras. Olympus went a little further and built a special "panorama" mode into some of its cameras, and then wrote code so that that mode is only enabled when an Olympus card is in the slot. There's nothing about the card that's special--- the camera's doing all the panorama work. Olympus just fixed it so the feature is only enabled when their special brand of card is used; a way to get people to buy their cards.
SD isn't proprietary, so there are a million different vendors competing for business. Although SD cards are actually more complicated than xD ones, they're often sold for less due to economies of scale. Bargain-oriented vendors also operate in this space, sometimes selling SD cards at near-giveaway prices.
There are also several variants of SD technology, including half-sized SD cards that are just as small as xD.
Many cameras and other devices actually can accept either type of memory. For example, even though my Fujifilm S700 is from Fujifilm, one of the originators of the xD format, the camera will happily eat either xD or SD cards, no problem. Likewise, my Acer laptop's built-in card reader also accepts both card types, no problem.
Which card to pick? Well, you first have to see if your hardware requires only one type of card. If it does, you're locked into that type. But again, it's becoming rare for this to occur.
Beyond that, speed matters. Faster memory may let your camera cycle faster between shots, and may improve memory-intensive tasks such as continuous shooting or large-format/high-frame-rate movie-making. Generally, faster is better, especially if you plan to keep the card for a long time; future cameras will likely need faster memory than today's. On the other hand, if you sell or pass on your cards with your older cameras, then it makes no sense to pay for memory speed your current camera can't utilize.
Speed specs overlap and vary enormously, but in general, SD can be faster than xD.
If you were designing a space mission or something equally exotic, the small power consumption differences might matter (xD, with less circuitry, is slightly more power-efficient than SD) But these differences are completely invisible in normal use, swamped by much larger variables such as flash/no-flash, camera temperature, etc.
Reliability also matters. The rock-bottom, third-tier and no-name brands are demonstrably less reliable than the bigger names. They only flash card failure I've ever had was in a cheapo SD card I got at an absurdly low price. Turned out it was priced that way for a reason!
Capacity matters. Flash memory normally uses old-style FAT or FAT32 hard-drive addressing (this is one of the reasons a card appears as a "removable drive" in your system). The software in your camera controls this; and thus sets software limits on card/drive capacity. A FAT-based file system limits you to 2GB usable memory because the software literally can't count high enough to access larger address spaces. If your camera uses old-style FAT, it may not even recognize a memory card larger than 2GB.
Newer cameras tend to use FAT32, which effectively removes the 2GB volume limit. It retains another limit, though, in that file sizes must be less than 4GB. This is rarely a practical limitation in normal use. (I've never run into it.)
Generally larger capacity cards are more convenient to use--- less swapping, more continuous shooting. On the other hand, the larger the card, the greater the temptation to let the card fill up without emptying it. With several smaller cards, you lose some convenience, but can help ensure that a single problem--- loss or malfunction of the camera, for example--- won't cause you to lose all your pictures.
I use a mix of cards now. My older, slower and lower-capacity cards get moved down the food chain to less-demanding uses, such as digital picture frames. The newer, faster, high-capacity cards go in my newest, best camera.
I generally keep a 2GB card in the camera at all times, just because it's available. (Why not?) On that month-long road-trip, I carried 3 cameras and a total of 8 GB in memory cards, but that was extreme because it was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and I didn't want to miss shots.
If I had to buy camera memory today, I'd search for cards from the more-recognized brands; filtering for those that are larger (1 or 2 GB); and faster (look for a mention of "hi-speed" or some such in the advertising propaganda). Then I'd buy whatever's cheapest from among those that made the cut.
Simple as that!
Hoped that helped. More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XD-Picture_Card
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table
(This is getting long; I'll answer the GIMP questions in a later post.)
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
When good software goes bad
I basically like Google as a company. Yes, they've grown huge, but I think they've learned from Microsoft's mistakes and aren't squashing competitors like bugs or locking in customers with draconian licensing terms. For the most part, Google seems to be more good than bad. Actually, much more.
One of the little free services they offer is a customized news page--- you may have played with it: http://news.google.com/ You can set up a page of results with your specific topics of interest covered. Google uses your search history to tailor the search results towards the kinds of news stories and sites you've previously gone to.
It's updated every few minutes, so the news is very fresh and up-to-date. It's almost like having a headline scan of a good and continually-updated newspaper at your fingertips. (And of course, a click or two brings you out to the actual, full coverage of any given story.)
The Google software that assembles your page even tries to find little illustrations to accompany major stories. The illustrations sometimes are directly from a linked story, but if the story has no such available graphic, Google will find a suitable graphic from among its database of image links.
It usually works quite well. But sometimes, there are unintended consequences:
Yesterday, for example, some medical news revealed that large numbers of younger adult men are getting unnecessary prostate cancer screenings. The Google software looked at the keywords in the news article and then did a search through Google's vast repository of image links, looking for a photo with the same keywords in the same relevance and frequency.
Presto! Image found! News item assembled and published!
(click to enlarge)
OK, maybe the software still needs a little tuning.
One of the little free services they offer is a customized news page--- you may have played with it: http://news.google.com/ You can set up a page of results with your specific topics of interest covered. Google uses your search history to tailor the search results towards the kinds of news stories and sites you've previously gone to.
It's updated every few minutes, so the news is very fresh and up-to-date. It's almost like having a headline scan of a good and continually-updated newspaper at your fingertips. (And of course, a click or two brings you out to the actual, full coverage of any given story.)
The Google software that assembles your page even tries to find little illustrations to accompany major stories. The illustrations sometimes are directly from a linked story, but if the story has no such available graphic, Google will find a suitable graphic from among its database of image links.
It usually works quite well. But sometimes, there are unintended consequences:
Yesterday, for example, some medical news revealed that large numbers of younger adult men are getting unnecessary prostate cancer screenings. The Google software looked at the keywords in the news article and then did a search through Google's vast repository of image links, looking for a photo with the same keywords in the same relevance and frequency.
Presto! Image found! News item assembled and published!
(click to enlarge)
OK, maybe the software still needs a little tuning.
New: 21 million NASA images, online free
A major new archive opens:
http://nasaimages.org/
Some incredible stuff in there; well worth poking around. Happy surfing!
http://nasaimages.org/
Some incredible stuff in there; well worth poking around. Happy surfing!
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
"Dear Fred, my brother bought a Mac...."
My brother screwed up and bought a Mac Mini on eBay. We were playing with it yesterday trying to get it connected to a D-Link DIR-625 Router/WAP. 
I've tried Googling some of this with no luck.... How do you determine if it has a wireless card? We also tried the ethernet connection with no luck. Went through the network wizard or whatever they call it. Any help? please....... Even just a website that describes the process. Most I found were worthless, just stepping through the crap on the Mac with no insight to what's happening....
Oh, dear.
Most Apple products are meant to be black boxes. You don't worry about what's inside, just revel in the insane coolness and total perfection of its whole.
If something's not working, it's that you don't believe strongly enough. Things that look like flaws to you and me are just benefits that are so far ahead of the curve that we simply don't understand them. You're not trying hard enough to see the transcendent nature of Apple products.
In short, you're the problem, PC-boy.
There's a fix: Apple hardware can't change--- Apple totally controls what goes in Apple hardware--- so you have to change. Come on; it's not hard:
That hardware you're complaining about is a piece of greatness. Imagine: Steve Jobs himself approved the design. He may even have handled a prototype. It's almost as if you can touch a piece of Steve himself!
OK, maybe Steve himself wasn't involved, but you can be sure that it was someone very, very close to him.
Think about it: This puts you close to Greatness!
So you see, asking questions, as you do, about fixing broken Apple hardware merely reveals how unworthy you are. You don't "fix" it when Apple hardware "breaks." The very words are meaningless in the Apple universe.
If you cannot deeply sense this simple Truth, then you are not worthy of using one.
You have much to learn about the Apple way, Grasshopper.
Glad to have been of help,
Fred
(PS: I know how you feel.)
I've tried Googling some of this with no luck.... How do you determine if it has a wireless card? We also tried the ethernet connection with no luck. Went through the network wizard or whatever they call it. Any help? please....... Even just a website that describes the process. Most I found were worthless, just stepping through the crap on the Mac with no insight to what's happening....Oh, dear.
Most Apple products are meant to be black boxes. You don't worry about what's inside, just revel in the insane coolness and total perfection of its whole.
If something's not working, it's that you don't believe strongly enough. Things that look like flaws to you and me are just benefits that are so far ahead of the curve that we simply don't understand them. You're not trying hard enough to see the transcendent nature of Apple products.
In short, you're the problem, PC-boy.
There's a fix: Apple hardware can't change--- Apple totally controls what goes in Apple hardware--- so you have to change. Come on; it's not hard:
That hardware you're complaining about is a piece of greatness. Imagine: Steve Jobs himself approved the design. He may even have handled a prototype. It's almost as if you can touch a piece of Steve himself!
OK, maybe Steve himself wasn't involved, but you can be sure that it was someone very, very close to him.
Think about it: This puts you close to Greatness!
So you see, asking questions, as you do, about fixing broken Apple hardware merely reveals how unworthy you are. You don't "fix" it when Apple hardware "breaks." The very words are meaningless in the Apple universe.
If you cannot deeply sense this simple Truth, then you are not worthy of using one.
You have much to learn about the Apple way, Grasshopper.
Glad to have been of help,
Fred
(PS: I know how you feel.)
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
World's Oldest Recorded Joke. Really!
A list of the world's oldest jokes was compiled by the UK's University of Wolverhampton. The oldest joke traced back to 1900 BC Sumeria:
"Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."
OK, maybe it lost something in translation. But you have to admit that it says something about human nature that the oldest bit of written humor is a fart joke.
News story:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL129052420080731
The top ten oldest jokes in recorded history:
http://uktv.co.uk/dave/item/aid/604717
"Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."
OK, maybe it lost something in translation. But you have to admit that it says something about human nature that the oldest bit of written humor is a fart joke.
News story:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL129052420080731
The top ten oldest jokes in recorded history:
http://uktv.co.uk/dave/item/aid/604717
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
mind-bending animation
A physicist visually explains his controversial views on the higher dimensions that we can't directly sense, but that some theories seem to indicate really do exist.
http://www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php
Wonderfully thought-out; wonderfully presented.
http://www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php
Wonderfully thought-out; wonderfully presented.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Got your broadcast converter yet?
I recently realized another drawback to satellite TV: The times you need it most (eg emergency weather situations) are also the times you're most likely to lose signal. That's not good.
Cable TV won't be stopped by plain rain, but anything that takes down the wiring will similarly leave you without access to TV-based information.
So, it's a good idea to have at least one plain-vanilla battery-operated TV and/or radio around; ones that can capture and process broadcast signals without requiring anything external to work.
Small portable TVs, especially non-high-definition B&W units, are ridiculously cheap now, as vendors unload their stocks before next year's switch to all-digital signals here in the US. I've seen little 5" (13cm) units selling online for as little as $10.
All older over-the-airwaves TVs will need digital-to-analog converter box to work after the big digital switchover next year. The Government will send you two $40 rebate cards, free:
https://www.dtv2009.gov/ApplyCoupon.aspx
To prevent fraud, the cards are linked to your household; 2 per; and it's one card per converter box (you can't combine them to make, say, one $80 card). The cards also must be used within 90 days of receipt. You present the card at the time of purchase and get an instant $40 off the price of the converter. The retailer keeps the card; it's a one-use thing.
Converter boxes typically cost $50-60, so your out-of-pocket cost is $10-20 after the instant rebate.
The converters require electricity to operate. If you have a 12v-to-120v battery-powered inverter or a generator as part of your emergency gear (a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy, I have both), you'd then be able to receive on-air TV at a time when you might need it most.
Newer TVs have digital-ready tuners, and won't need the converter box. If your on-air TV is old and failing, it might make sense to simply upgrade to a newer TV (doesn't have to be HD) that will work after the digital switch.
But if you have an older TV that you don't want to needlessly add to a landfill, a converter box with a net cost of $10-20 is a pretty good deal.
Cable TV won't be stopped by plain rain, but anything that takes down the wiring will similarly leave you without access to TV-based information.
So, it's a good idea to have at least one plain-vanilla battery-operated TV and/or radio around; ones that can capture and process broadcast signals without requiring anything external to work.
Small portable TVs, especially non-high-definition B&W units, are ridiculously cheap now, as vendors unload their stocks before next year's switch to all-digital signals here in the US. I've seen little 5" (13cm) units selling online for as little as $10.
All older over-the-airwaves TVs will need digital-to-analog converter box to work after the big digital switchover next year. The Government will send you two $40 rebate cards, free:
https://www.dtv2009.gov/ApplyCoupon.aspx
To prevent fraud, the cards are linked to your household; 2 per; and it's one card per converter box (you can't combine them to make, say, one $80 card). The cards also must be used within 90 days of receipt. You present the card at the time of purchase and get an instant $40 off the price of the converter. The retailer keeps the card; it's a one-use thing.
Converter boxes typically cost $50-60, so your out-of-pocket cost is $10-20 after the instant rebate.
The converters require electricity to operate. If you have a 12v-to-120v battery-powered inverter or a generator as part of your emergency gear (a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy, I have both), you'd then be able to receive on-air TV at a time when you might need it most.
Newer TVs have digital-ready tuners, and won't need the converter box. If your on-air TV is old and failing, it might make sense to simply upgrade to a newer TV (doesn't have to be HD) that will work after the digital switch.
But if you have an older TV that you don't want to needlessly add to a landfill, a converter box with a net cost of $10-20 is a pretty good deal.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Meteor Crater in NH?
Sharp-eyed reader Rogers George was playing with the tornado map I posted, and saw this:
I zoomed out a bit on the map, and I see you have a meteor crater a bit south of there! http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=43.11151,-71.184196&spn=0.138099,0.363922&z=12
That impressive circular structure sure looks like a meteor crater, doesn't it, but it's the Pawtuckaway Ring Dike. First time I saw it, it fooled me too.
But a ring dike is just as cool: In geology, a Dike is a sheet-like intrusion of rock that cuts through another rocky body. Dikes can form when molten rock oozes up through a weak seam in a shallower rock body, widening the seam and filling it with the molten rock from below. When everything cools, the intrusive rock appears as a band or wall (aka "dike") , surrounded by the original rock.
Here's Wikipedia closeup of a small section of a picture-perfect exposed dike in Alaska: The dark rock flowed upward through cracks in the lighter-colored rock:
The cracking and filling happened when these rocks were far underground, perhaps as part of large magmatic earthquakes. The old surface has worn away and the rocks have broken, so we now see the exposed dike.
Ring dikes are formed when a dome of molten magma rises in a slow-motion bubble from deep within the earth (think of a lava lamp). The solid rocks surrounding and above the rising bubble are stretched and broken to make room for the ascending mass. Magma can then flow upward through the cracks that open up. Because the rising magma bubble is roughly circular, the field of dikes surrounding the bubble will also be roughly circular.
Eventually, the magma bubble cools down. Erosion sets in and lowers the surface down to the level of the previously-buried dikes.
Remember that these dikes are intrusions of one kind of rock rising through a different, older rock. Because the rocks are different, the erode at different rates, which eventually creates and exposes the structure that we call a ring dike.
The Pawtuckaway Ring Dike is one of three enormous ring dikes in New Hampshire, including one of the largest and best-known ring dikes in the world: the Ossipee Mountain dike.
When Earth's original supercontinent, Pangaea, split into separate tectonic plates, it created fractures and weaknesses in the rocky foundations of the newly-forming continents.
During the Jurassic age--- the classic "Age of the Dinosaurs" in popular culture--- what's now New Hampshire either slowly drifted over a magmatic "hot spot" (exactly the way Hawaii does today), or "rifting" stretched the crust thin. Either way, magma approached the surface as giant blooms and bubbles, fracturing and diking the rock above. We see the remnants of those magma blooms as today's Ring Dikes.
The area was pretty active, way back when. There were other even larger magma blooms that didn't approached the surface, but slowly cooled in vast underground lakes--- magma seas, really. The molten minerals cooked, congealed and crystallized into grainy rocks--- "grain-ite," or granite. Erosion has now exposed that once-subterranean rock, and New Hampshire is now known as "The Granite State."
Where the magma headed towards the surface, NH grew ring dikes: The modest one at Pawtuckaway, a smaller one at Gunstock, and that truly enormous one in Ossipee; one of the largest and best-known ring dikes in the world. On maps, it looks like a round-based mountain.
Check this out, and toggle between topo and satellite images. the dike structure is huge!
http://tinyurl.com/5zk438
You probably don't normally think "volcanoes" when you hear "New Hampshire." But until a week ago, you probably didn't think "tornadoes" and NH, either. It's quite a place! :-)
http://www.nhgeology.org/default.htm
http://www.dred.state.nh.us/divisions/forestandlands/bureaus/naturalheritage/Pawtuckaway.htm
http://wikimapia.org/85750/
http://www.google.com/search?q=Ossippee+%22Ring+Dike%22
http://www.google.com/search?q=pawtuckaway+"Ring+Dike"
I zoomed out a bit on the map, and I see you have a meteor crater a bit south of there! http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=43.11151,-71.184196&spn=0.138099,0.363922&z=12
That impressive circular structure sure looks like a meteor crater, doesn't it, but it's the Pawtuckaway Ring Dike. First time I saw it, it fooled me too.
But a ring dike is just as cool: In geology, a Dike is a sheet-like intrusion of rock that cuts through another rocky body. Dikes can form when molten rock oozes up through a weak seam in a shallower rock body, widening the seam and filling it with the molten rock from below. When everything cools, the intrusive rock appears as a band or wall (aka "dike") , surrounded by the original rock.
Here's Wikipedia closeup of a small section of a picture-perfect exposed dike in Alaska: The dark rock flowed upward through cracks in the lighter-colored rock:
The cracking and filling happened when these rocks were far underground, perhaps as part of large magmatic earthquakes. The old surface has worn away and the rocks have broken, so we now see the exposed dike.
Ring dikes are formed when a dome of molten magma rises in a slow-motion bubble from deep within the earth (think of a lava lamp). The solid rocks surrounding and above the rising bubble are stretched and broken to make room for the ascending mass. Magma can then flow upward through the cracks that open up. Because the rising magma bubble is roughly circular, the field of dikes surrounding the bubble will also be roughly circular.
Eventually, the magma bubble cools down. Erosion sets in and lowers the surface down to the level of the previously-buried dikes.
Remember that these dikes are intrusions of one kind of rock rising through a different, older rock. Because the rocks are different, the erode at different rates, which eventually creates and exposes the structure that we call a ring dike.
The Pawtuckaway Ring Dike is one of three enormous ring dikes in New Hampshire, including one of the largest and best-known ring dikes in the world: the Ossipee Mountain dike.
When Earth's original supercontinent, Pangaea, split into separate tectonic plates, it created fractures and weaknesses in the rocky foundations of the newly-forming continents.
During the Jurassic age--- the classic "Age of the Dinosaurs" in popular culture--- what's now New Hampshire either slowly drifted over a magmatic "hot spot" (exactly the way Hawaii does today), or "rifting" stretched the crust thin. Either way, magma approached the surface as giant blooms and bubbles, fracturing and diking the rock above. We see the remnants of those magma blooms as today's Ring Dikes.
The area was pretty active, way back when. There were other even larger magma blooms that didn't approached the surface, but slowly cooled in vast underground lakes--- magma seas, really. The molten minerals cooked, congealed and crystallized into grainy rocks--- "grain-ite," or granite. Erosion has now exposed that once-subterranean rock, and New Hampshire is now known as "The Granite State."
Where the magma headed towards the surface, NH grew ring dikes: The modest one at Pawtuckaway, a smaller one at Gunstock, and that truly enormous one in Ossipee; one of the largest and best-known ring dikes in the world. On maps, it looks like a round-based mountain.
Check this out, and toggle between topo and satellite images. the dike structure is huge!
http://tinyurl.com/5zk438
You probably don't normally think "volcanoes" when you hear "New Hampshire." But until a week ago, you probably didn't think "tornadoes" and NH, either. It's quite a place! :-)
http://www.nhgeology.org/default.htm
http://www.dred.state.nh.us/divisions/forestandlands/bureaus/naturalheritage/Pawtuckaway.htm
http://wikimapia.org/85750/
http://www.google.com/search?q=Ossippee+%22Ring+Dike%22
http://www.google.com/search?q=pawtuckaway+"Ring+Dike"
Sunday, August 3, 2008
More proof I am a bad, bad man.
And if you're laughing 40 seconds into this clip, you've got the same problem.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c18_1217189503&p=1
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c18_1217189503&p=1
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Tornado Corridor Impressions (pt3)
OK, let's get back to the motorcycle ride through the tornado's path:
On our motorcycles, we approached the tornado damage corridor on a dirt road. We didn't know exactly where the tornado has crossed the road, but we started seeing more and larger downed tree limbs on the side of the road. Every now and then, we'd see large cylinders of tree-trunk rolled to the side of the road where a tree had fallen across the road and been chainsawed in place to reopen the road quickly.
We passed one resident on the way in to the corridor: an older guy who stopped what he was doing to watch us roll by. He was near the end of his driveway, and we were riding single file on the 1.5 car-width dirt road. His house looked fine; he was outside the actual damage corridor.
I had wondered how the tornado-area residents might feel about us gawking at their misfortune, so I didn't know how this encounter would go. I mean, the guy was *right there.* We could have high-fived him as we slowly went by.
I was last, riding sweep in our small group. Driveway Guy made eye contact with each rider, swiveling his head as each rode past. My turn came. I have him my best "I'm not a crazy biker!" smile and waved to him. He smiled and waved back. OK, he's just curious, not pissed. Good.
A few minutes later, we found where the tornado had actually crossed that road: It was like riding into a clearing in the forest.
Every tree taller than 15' or so (5m) was either snapped in half or uprooted whole. An intense aroma of pine filled the air, the scent of who-knows how many thousands of gallons of fresh pine resin bleeding from the broken forest; a vast area of freshly split wood leaking piney volatiles into the air.
It wasn't unpleasant, but my god, it was intense. It was sharper and lighter than what I normally associate with pine resin. I guess that's because this resin was fresh, unoxidized and full of the lighter, fragile compounds you only get from living wood.
The ground and parts of the road were a solid green, unbroken carpet of matted leaves and needles stripped from the now-bare trees. We passed a home on the right side of the road that had its roof ripped off. The yard was filled with debris, but framing for the new roof was already going up. There was a visual irony: The wood of the new rafters almost the same bright color as the fresh wood exposed everywhere in the smashed trees of the surrounding broken forest.
Inside the tornado damage corridor, we rode down a small hill. A utility truck--- electric company, I think--- was parked at the bottom, the utility worker chatting with a resident. Both were relaxed, leaning on their forearms, obviously comfortably chatting; the posture of people who are OK, but tired.
We rolled by, slowly and quietly, and again gave and got a wave of greeting.
As a damage voyeur, I was very glad there were no hard feeling from the folks affected. I was there from genuine curiosity, not schadenfreude. I was glad to see, both in the paper and from the posture of that utility worker and resident, that the all-out emergency is essentially over. Now comes the much longer recovery phase.
The tornado track had crossed almost perfectly perpendicular to the road we were riding. The transition between the destruction corridor and normal forest was just as abrupt exiting the corridor as it had been riding in: The forest floor became its normal color again, the overwhelming scent of pine faded rapidly to normal background levels, and the trees re-meshed their branches to form a canopy above the road. The next house we passed was unscathed.
It was a ride quite unlike any other I've been on.
And I now can say: I know what it sounds and smells like when a tornado unzips a long stretch of living forest.
Fascinating stuff!
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