World of Addiction

I'm back to playing MMORPGs, this time World of Warcraft. I play on the Kilrogg server as a Horde Warlock (forgot the name of my race, actually, but it's undead). WoW is a MUCH better experience than Everquest was. There is a LOT less downtime, quests are much better scripted and connected to the storyline, and rewards, for the most part are adequate for the tasks. It's an easy game, and death's penalty is mild, causing at most 10 minutes of downtime (where you can take care of non-fighting business like merchanting, banking and tradeskilling) when you die somewhere really dangerous. WoW also has some nice PVP setups on the PvE servers, allowing even wimps such as myself to taste the blood of other players when the thirst arises.

As an indicator of how easy it is to play, I'm already level 36 out of 60 and I've been playing for about a month. The content is interesting, and the product is well-polished.

So long, Jeffrey Harrow (?)

For some time, I have held a link to The Harrow Technology Report on my blog. It was one of the newsletters that I swore by, faithfully reading each issue as I received it. It was a wonderful newsletter with tons of insightful pointers to newsworthy application of futuristic technology. Jeff is an insightful man, and had accurate foresight. In 2001, one of his newsletters correctly posited that we would see half-terabyte hard drives in 2006, and indeed we did.

I have been reading The Harrow Report since Jeff Harrow worked at Compaq and it went by a different name, so it was with sadness that I watched over the past year, Jeff had not posted another newsletter. Perhaps he has become busy with other projects, perhaps he has hung up his hat. No matter the cause, it is sad to see him go. He was well thought of on the Internet and even won a web award for his meanderings.

I checked his website yesterday, and his newsletters are sitting there, sorted by title rather than date, and the copyright notice still reads through 2005. A letter from Jeff in August, 2006 mentioned that he wanted to get things up and running again, but it doesn't look like he got back to publishing the report. While I hold out every hope for Jeff, it is time for me to let go. So, here's to Jeff Harrow, Futurist and Pundit.

Welcome to 2007

Happy New Year! Hope that you all had a pleasant New Years Eve... I took the family to First Night Alexandria, a conglomeration of music and performers at various points of interest in Alexandria. The evening culminated at the Masonic Temple with a cappella singers and fireworks. Unfortunately, the drizzle started picking up right near midnight, putting a damper and a fizzle on the fireworks. They set them off anyway, but it wasn't as spectacular as it should have been. We were able to hide under a cameraman's tent that he had set up for his equipment, and lots of folks brought umbrellas. Many others just braved the rain.

The music was good. We saw one group that night, Quintango, that even my 13-year old son enjoyed. And for a 13-year old to say that a tango was interesting, you know they're on to something. They played with gusto and passion, and it really came through in their performance. We also got to see some Zydeco music at the Masonic Temple theater. Two electric guitars, an accordion, a drummer and a stainless steel washboard/shirt made up the band. When they were done, the audience called for an encore, so they performed an extra few minutes.

So, it's back to work today. Resolutions for the year are typical for me: Get organized, and get skinny again. Let's see where they lead. I've gotten a good start with my email box at home, since I've set up the new machine, I'm putting all of my email into rules that automatically sort my incoming mail. I hope to have it all sorted out except the truly unique emails (the REAL communications) so that my Inbox stays empty or nearly so.

One thing I use and swear by is Spam-Bayes, a Bayesian filter for Microsoft Outlook. It filters out a large portion of the SPAM that I receive in my inbox, and is very configurable. I installed it and put in the training messages for it to learn what's junk and what isn't. If you haven't installed a client-side SPAM filter, this one is FREE(!!!) and open-source and very easy to use.

Nail in the coffin for G.W. Bush's approval ratings?

Thanks to Yahoo and the Associated Press for this little winner. It seems that G.W. Bush plans to stay home for Former President Gerald Ford's state funeral. While he intends to make a showing at the viewing, and he intends to say a few words at the church, the sitting President has decided to bow out of the state-sponsored formal funeral proceedings. I guess the question that will remain on everyone's minds will be whether this was a decision of the Bush family or the Ford family. Could this decision be the nail in the coffin that defines G.W. Bush's public approval ratings? And will it move him up the list into the Top 5 Worst Presidents in history, if he wasn't already firmly entrenched in the top 10?

A Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Oh what a Christmas this has been. First off, my wife misses her mother dearly around the holidays, and it's only been about a year since she died. And then, in Iraq, a co-workers son was killed in action (Paul Balint Jr. - who died with honor, serving his country). So, Christmas has been kind of dampened around here.

That hasn't completely stopped me from gadgeting up this Christmas. I bought a Wii back the beginning of the month, as reviews kept pouring in about how much fun it was to play. Not being a hard-core gamer, I elected to try to get the whole family involved by purchasing something we could all play. I fully enjoy the Wii Remote, the Wii Sports titles like Tennis, Bowling and Baseball. I had a few weak geek days where I wanted a PS3, but with the unavailability and the sticker shock, I figured that it isn't for me. I'd love to play with the capabilities of the machine, but honestly know that I don't really have time for it.

After Christmas I took my cash and gift-card laden self down to Best Buy and bought a replacement file/print server (also my email box and it runs a Virtual Machine Linux box for MUD development).
After spending about 10 hours loading and reloading the OS (Windows MCE) and having the machine reboot itself every time I tried to use Virtual PC (2004, 2007 Beta 1 and Virtual Server 2005 R2) on the box, spending 2 hours on the phone with tech support, who put the blame on the software [I've NEVER had a problem with Virtual PC on any other platform], reloading a BRAND-NEW, non OEM Windows XP Pro on it, reloading network drivers from the manufacturer of the NIC, and still having the exact same issue.....[run on sentence, but it gets the point across]
I found the solution...return the Emachine T5212 to Best Buy and replace it with a $30 more expensive Compaq/HP machine (50GB larger [SATA] HD, Pent D 820 vice Pent D 805), and my troubles were over. I spent less than an hour setting up the machine and I think I'm just about done with it..

I thought about whether I wanted to call out that Emachines are bad on my blog, but I figured...a) Noone reads the stupid thing anyway, b)Their 'tech support' decided they didn't want to help me fix the problem because the machine worked with all the software that came with it, compatibility be damned, c) I'm not claiming all of their products are bad, just THAT one (The T5212).

Most likely, the issue is a BIOS compatibility issue. I disabled the onboard NIC and put in the NIC from my old machine that I was using, a Linksys. That move didn't fix the issue...exact same symptoms - rebooted itself while loading Windows. The issue smacked very much of a motherboard/driver issue, but the tech support (who were nice, but certainly not very knowledgeable) told me there was nothing they could do to help me.
Back to Christmas. The tree is down, and we're not planning on spending a lot of money on New Year's Eve - maybe hit up the bowling alley like we did last year...Starting to think of New Year's resolutions, which include losing the 30 pounds I've regained in the past year and a half. Hope you all have had a happier holiday than I...talk to you later.

Busy in All Aspects

Been busy in all aspects of my life, so I haven't posted to the blog in quite a while. While I may try to change that, I STILL haven't decided what I want my blog to be, so it will continue to be Randomblings. It's interesting. Back when I created my blog I searched the 'net with Google to ensure that the word Randomblings wasn't used anywhere else. It wasn't found in any of my searches. However, today I did the same search and I've seen the word crop up in many other blogs and other aspects of the web. I have no allusions that I've coined the word, but just wanted everyone to know that I didn't copy it from someone else...more later..

From the WTF file - Artists make LESS from iTunes

Taken from a Question and Answer post on Weird Al Yankovic's blog/MySpace....

Tim Sloane of Ijamsville, MD asks: Al, which of these purchasing methods should I use in order to make sure the most profit gets to you: Buying one of your albums on CD, or buying one of your albums on iTunes?

I am extremely grateful for your support, no matter which format you choose to legally obtain my music in, so you should do whatever makes the most sense for you personally. But since you ASKED I actually do get significantly more money from CD sales, as opposed to downloads. This is the one thing about my renegotiated record contract that never made much sense to me. It costs the label NOTHING for somebody to download an album (no manufacturing costs, shipping, or really any overhead of any kind) and yet the artist (me) winds up making less from it. Go figure.

What the hell is up with that? Is the RIAA purposefully architecting it so that artists get less money from their digital sales than they do for their physical sales? (conspiracy theory), or is it just taking time for investments in digital sales mediums to catch up with the profit margin on same?

Hopefully, sometime in the NEAR future, this will be reversed, and Weird Al and other digital netizens will be able to use the Internet to make money, not lose it.

Passing Thoughts on High Efficiency Solar Energy Collection

I was doing experiments in the electronics kit today and came to the experiment that demonstrates how a ceramic microphone can be utilized to generate electrical current in a wire by capturing sound. As I was reading the chapter, I went for a walk with my dog.

Idea #1 - I began to think - couldn't this idea be utilized to create quieter motors that are also more energy efficient? By encapsulating a noisy (high friction) motor in a dual-wall casing designed to capture sound waves and generate electricity, you could rectify the output and capture into battery storage. Perhaps even noise reducing walls could be created that do the same thing. The output of the walls or anything that isn't 'enclosing' would probably be pretty minimal because of the radiant nature of sound waves. Actually designing the enclosure for capturing and converting sound is probably quite an engineering chore because of the synchronicity required in the enclosure itself. The whole device would have to expand/contract in unison. This line of thinking led to idea #2

Idea #2 - I began to think about radiant energy capture. Solar energy is a pretty good example of this problem. Solar cells are notoriously inefficient, I think because they are capturing solar energy in one small angular channel. After all, the energy coming from the sun is radiating from a giant source, in multiple directions at once. I started thinking about polarizers and what happens to the light that doesn't pass through the polar filter. If it is reflected, couldn't solar cells be designed with a reflection/capture system that aims the reflected energy to a single focus point for capture/conversion?

That's it - just wanted to write those down before I forgot them.

Electronics Kits are FUN

The things we never had as a child can sometimes be the things we return to when we have enough money to finally enjoy them. As a geek, I've always been 'interested' in electronics, but I've never had the time or the inclination to sit and just 'do' it. This weekend, I happened by a Radio Shack and saw the 'Electronic Snap Kit (Electronics 303) [Radio Shack 28-288]. I noticed that it had a software oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer software included in it. So, I bought it.
My son was with me, and we brought it home, and I started to play with it, building the circuits one at a time, grokking each one in turn. The kit is very simplified, where wires and switches are soldered onto plastic snap pieces that you snap together to create the circuits, and the book doesn't explain the concepts behind the included IC's (such as the music generator). But it was fun nonetheless....and then I realized [or rather, my son did]...I had bought another lab kit a few years ago. My son pointed out to me that I hadn't used it at all yet. Sitting pristinely in its box was the 'Electronics Learning Lab' [Radio Shack 28-280] with 16 ICs, breadboard, LED displays, pots, switches, etc all together in a lab kit. So, I started playing with it, and left my son to work with the snap kit. The Learning Lab didn't include the oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer, but I assume that if I study both kits, I'll learn how to use the software independent of the kit.
In any case, I'm having a great deal of fun with both kits. It's too bad that I overpaid for both of them (having purchased them from Radio Shack), but I'm certain that I bought the Learning Lab on sale [I believe at 50% off].

Sorry - but assholes abound

Sorry, but I've turned on comment moderation on the blog. I don't get a lot of comments (very few actually), but this past week some asshole spammer decided to start leaving their crap links all over my site. It felt like finding rabbit shit in my garden. I've cleaned up the rabbit shit and installed some rabbit fencing. Not enough to keep out the intelligent rabbit, but hopefully enough to keep out the assholes.