Ok, what was the name of that thing?

While it's a crossword, it's more a specific type of crossword, without clues to what the words are except knowing their length.

Consider an NxN square, where no cells are blocked, and every row and column contains a whole word.

There's a specific name for those; they're notable because there are few known solutions for each N. I can't remember the name!

Wait, what?

I'd just received a .hack//SIGN OST 1 audio CD. I love the music, but...



This is a zoomed in view of a particular part of the spectrum, as shown in Audacity. It's a solid, loud 16kHz present through nearly all of the song. At the volume I was listening at, it was painful!

I doubt it's an encoding artifact; The CD was ripped to FLAC. Here, I imported the FLAC into Audacity.

I don't know if the master was like this, or if I wound up buying a counterfeit disc.

Note to self: Check these out later.

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3i.html

http://www.irrationaldesigns.com/TSOD/products.html

http://www.brokenthorn.com/Resources/OSDev7.html

http://www.project-euh.com/word_up/

Colonel Panic!

Most of us who've used Linux for any significant length of time have had a kernel panic. Lately, those events have probably been while in X, making accessing the actual details of the event difficult if you haven't memorized the magic SysRq keys (assuming your kernel was compiled with the relevant support).

A couple workarounds are available to deal with this; You can set up a serial console so that system messages get dumped via good old RS-232 to another machine, or even a console on your parallel port so that the messages get printed.

Don't try that last unless you don't mind going through a ton of paper, and have ways of dealing with the printer noise.

It occurred to me, a few days ago, that x86 systems have a (very) small amount of non-volatile RAM, battery backed by the same battery that keeps your computer from losing time when you power cycle it.

While that amount of memory is very, very small, it may be large enough to hold a Panic message; That'd be a nice place for me to be able to look to investigate why my computer randomly hard-locked one evening while I was away.

Some mnemonics for "ls" parameters

It can be a pain remembering all the different options to "ls", but I've found that most of my needs (outside of simple "ls" or "ls -l") fall into one of these three, easy-to-remember mnemonics:

ls -ltr # Sort by time, reversed, show more details.
ls -Ssh # Show and sort by human-readable size.
ls -Ssl # show and sort by human readable size, but show more details.

Graphic background doubles nicely as a desktop background

This is one of the images I came up with as a component for images on fundraising items. However, I happen to think it makes an awesome background image. It's made for tiling, not stretching. Enjoy.

(Sorry, I'm keeping the 300dpi version for myself...)

Fast track to a massive parallel computer

The vast majority of people who will read this have Adobe Flash installed. (Most will probably have Adblock or Flashblock installed, which has relevance, but not that much)

I've been thinking about parallel computation for for a while, and looking at different ways to do it. The best explicitly-known parallel computation setup out there are the @home projects like SETI@Home and folding@Home. These projects divide their workload into chunks, pass those chunks around, and programs running on volunteers' computers take these chunks, chew on them and pass them back.

A few weeks ago, I had the idea that someone could distribute an @home-style client as a flash applet using the one distribution mechanism many of us already hate--website banner ads. Have a flash applet distributed via advertising networks that:

1. Connects to a central server


2. Grabs a data chunk


3. Chews on it


4. Uploads the results to the central server

Flash already allows applets to pull remote files and perform GET requests. (I don't know about POST, though.) All that remains is grabbing and running the workload, and have a server that can verify that the workload results are uncorrupted. (i.e. not tampered with.)

Yes, this results in spinning an end-user's processors more than they would be otherwise, which may cost them a few more cents per month on their electric bill, or a notable reduction in their laptop's battery life. It would be helpful if Flash had a mechanism to change applet resource consumption based on system power state and/or user preferences. Still, yes, it's coopting a user's computer to do something they didn't explicitly agree to. Someone else can deal with the ethics; I'm just spouting an idea.

Also, yes, a large number of pages are only loaded for a very short period of time; The amount of time required to process a chunk of work may well require more time than the page will be loaded (and, thus, more time than the applet will be running). There's a workaround for that, too. First, Flash allows applets from any given domain to store a configurable amount of non-volatile data on the user's machine; That could be used as a data store for intermediate state. Second, the applet could wait a couple minutes before beginning the number crunch, looking for times when a page is left loaded for an extended duration. (Quite likely on sites like Youtube, Pandora and others with streaming media.)

Turning down Maven

I've gotten a couple invites to Maven. I ignored the first, then replied to the second with this:

I appreciate the offer, but reading through just this email, it strikes me as an Amway equivalent where the product is professional services, not hard goods. Roughly intriguing, as that's something I can do, but I've known a bit too much about such pyramid product-selling systems. Eventually, there's nobody left that the tail-end guy would want to bring into the system, meaning all he gets is selling his own time (minus a cut to the Maven system). With the focus on knowledge-based sales, that pool gets even narrower.

I won't be joining; You don't need to send me any more invitations. Thank you for the offer.

It's all fun and games...

A friend of mine (related to another friend of mine) who has a glass eye has this to say:

"It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye--and then it's hilarious!"

He's nice to have on the gun range, too.

Pics on the wing

No, pics on the wing, not pigs.

Anyway, I took this while flying from ATL to MDW. Came out really neat; I don't know why or how. I like it, though.



Complete set from that flight is here.

Looking for a keyboard/mouse combo device

I'm looking for a decent, wired keyboard/mouse combo device. I'd love one of these, but they're prohibited at the office. (The noise is apparently too distracting.) I have one of these, and I like it, but I don't care to be replacing or charging batteries on a keyboard I'm continually using.

Ideas or recommendations?

I didn't realize how much of a loser I was until Google spelled it out for me.

moar funny pictures

"Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex 2nd Gig" and "Toccata & Fugue in D Minor"

I think one could create an interesting AMV that took GitS:SAC 2nd Gig, the corresponding Tachikomatic Days episodes, and mapped them to Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor.

If I were to do it, I think the way I would map it would be based on how you can see the piece played by an organist:



Parts of the song that had more significant use of the right hand would map more greatly to Section 9, their actions and their influences, parts that had more significant use of the left hand would map more greatly to Hideo Kuze and his actions and influences, while parts that had more significant use of the foot pedals would map more greatly to the actions of Kazunda Gouda and his actions and influences.

There are a couple parts that only have high note components, and those, of course, would need to map to the comic relief of Tachikomatic Days.

New Year's Resolution(s)

Get that check to Woodstock, and in the hands of its intended recipient.

Accomplish at least some of the goals I noted for Rosetta Code for 2010.

Build a NAS box for off-box backups of dodo.

Find my Slayers DVDs.

Get a NexusBot dev team running. Avoid contention over choice of programming language.

Solidify some more of my thoughts and ideas for image and video editing and compositing.

Make an AMV or two.

Give up trying to get JT and RL to come back to coffee. (Dunno what we did to scare them off...)

Get some more anime-tolerant friends to attend the weekly get-togethers.