Canongate Books, the publishers of Life of Pi, have created a Flash based promotional game/animation for the novel. The 'game' elements of the flash are weak but the animation is cool.

I didn't start out this vacation intending to whittle but I found myself sitting next to the campfire one morning poking the fire with a stick I had selected for just that task the night before. The stick was a little short for duty as a fire poker but I liked the way it felt in my hand so I had used it all the previous night. This morning as I stirred the coals I had the idea to carve a fish into my fire churning stick.

Carving this stick would become my passion for the next few days. I finished the fish after a few hours and decided to try a larger shark following the fish. I did the shark project mostly from memory but thanks to a tasty bottle of Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA I had a fin model to work from.

All the kids became fascinated with the progress of this work. The little store at the camp ground sold out of pocket knives because every little kid in my group wanted to carve like 'Uncle Pete'. Luck was with me, as no stitches were required for any of the enthused new knife wielders.

The environs of all the campfires I attended were soon littered with little wood chips as I feverishly whittled. Both thumbs developed blisters from working the little blade of the cheap little knife I was using. The knife was a little plastic handled, locking blade model that I selected from a bowl of similar knives at the checkout counter of my local Ace hardware store. The little thing cost only three dollars.

Once I finished the shark, I added a small leaping whale to the poker end of the stick, sealing its fate to not be used as a fire churner again. It's a simple carving but I think it's pretty cool. I didn't have time to do detailed fin work or sand the rough spots so it's not really done, but given that vacation is over it's complete as it's ever going to be. If you want to see the carving click this link. The beer bottle in the picture is only for scale, but similar beverages did fuel the effort.

It's an odd feeling not having hair. I now understand why guys who shave or are bald wear hats more frequently. I certainly notice the air conditioning in my office more on the top of my head than I used to. I didn't have a lot of hair before, but I guess enough to make a thermal difference.

Head shaving is pretty popular these days, so it's not surprising that there are products and web sites dedicated to it. My manager Roy, pointed me at this cool doodad called the Head Blade. It's a razor with a special form factor for use on the head. The Head Blade company not only makes razors but they sell funky branded apparel and skin care accessories too.

If you just want general information on head shaving I suggest headshaver.org, they have lots of information on both tools and techniques. I could have used some of this information before I took the initial plunge.

The graphics came out nice and the iron-on image was neatly cropped to within a quarter inch of the design. The image on the back of the shirt was a little smaller than I expected but not too small.

The shirt hit the wash last night but I haven't seen how it survived the experience. I ordered a 2XL and it was plenty big so it could absorb some shrinkage without being ruined. All in all I give the shirt a thumbs up.

If you dismiss poetry as too flowery or self referential I suggest you read this work. Here's a short snippet from the beginning.

 Some people wept, and not for sorrow÷joy

 That the king had armed and upped and sailed for Troy,
 
 But inside me like struck sound in a gong
 
 That killing-fest, the life-warp and world-wrong
 
 It brought to pass, still augured and endured.
 
 I'd dream of blood in bright webs in a ford,
 
 Of bodies raining down like tattered meat
 
 On top of me asleep÷and me the lookout
 
 The queen's command had posted and forgotten,
 
 The blind spot her farsightedness relied on.
 
 And then the ox would lurch against the gong

 And deaden it and I would feel my tongue

 Like the dropped gangplank of a cattle truck,

 Trampled and rattled, running piss and muck,

 All swimmy-trembly as the lick of fire,

 

I've never read Aeschylus's Agamemnon nor do I know much of that period of history, so I can't comment on the historical accuracy of the poem, but Archeology magazine seems to think Heaney's done a good job. I don't think that's important to the enjoyment of the work, but it's interesting none the less.

A stratellite is reminicent of a blimp but has a rigid hull and is designed to operate at 65,000 feet for periods of up to a year. The stratellite maintains station using a combination of GPS and solar powered electric engines. Once a Stratellites finishes its deployment period it can be remote controlled back to the ground for service and electronics upgrades. See the Sanswire Network page for more info.

Even then when computers were less of a commodity than they are now that was a lot of money to spend on two PCs. Today as I was dreaming about getting a faster computer, I decided to look around and see what sort of computer I could get for 10 grand today.

It's wasn't that hard to get up into that price range but in doing so It usually required I purchase a 30" flat panel display along with the machine. I've never seen a monitor that large but I believe I could find a use for all that screen real estate.

If I was in the market for an Apple I could get a very nicely configured dual processor G5 with 4GB of RAM and a 30 inch flat panel display for $9652.00.

 Dual 2.5GHz PowerPC G5
 4GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 4x1GB
 2x250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
 NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL
 Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel)
 AirPort Extreme Card
 Bluetooth Module
 56k V.92 modem
 8x SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
 PCI-X Gigabit Ethernet Card
 Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
 Mac OS X - U.S. English
 

 
Power Supply: 650 Watt Max Power Supply
ALX Heavy Duty Power Cable: Alienware® ALX System Power Cable
Thermal Management System: Alienware® ALX Active Liquid Cooling System
Performance-Enhancement: Alienware® ALX System Performance-Enhancement
Performance-Enhancement: Alienware® ALX Graphics Performance-Enhancement
Motherboard: ASUS® A8V Deluxe - VIA K8T800 Pro Motherboard
Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-53+ Processor with HyperTransport Technology
Memory: 2GB Corsair™ XMS Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at up to 550MHz - 4 x 512MB
Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6800 Ultra 256MB DDR3 w/Digital and S-Video Out
Video Optimizer: AlienAdrenaline: Video Performance Optimizer
Video Cooling: AlienIce™ 2.0 Video Cooling System
System Drive: Extreme Performance - Serial ATA RAID 0 - 148GB (74GB x 2) 
  Western Digital® Raptor™ 10,000 RPM w/16MB Cache
Storage Drive: Extreme Performance - Serial ATA RAID 0 - 500GB (250GB x 2) 
  Western Digital Caviar® SE 7,200 RPM w/16MB Cache
Optical Drive One: Plextor® PlexWriter Premium 52x32x52x CD-RW Drive
Optical Drive Two: Plextor® PX-712A 12x DVD±R/W Drive
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS High Definition 7.1 Surround
Network Connection: High Speed Gigabit Ethernet
ALX High Performance Network Cable: Alienware® ALX Network Cable
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
Display One: NEC 30" LCD 3000 Black
Speakers: Creative GigaWorks™ THX® S750 - 7.1 700-Watt Speakers 

Both machines look great. Unfortunatly, I don't expect IBM will be supplying me with either any time soon.

Very frequently I've never seen or even spoken with the people I work with. Our communications take the form of email or instant messages. For example, over the past couple of months I've been working with an engineer in North Carolina. We trade daily IM messages and emails but I wouldn't know her if she walked into my office.

This sort of distributed workforce seems to work just fine, but it can be kind of weird too. The building I work in is pretty big and houses a few hundred people. The odd thing is I only know a hand full of them. In most cases our work paths never cross. I am much more likely to need to work with someone half way around the world than I am with someone a few offices down the hall.

Ronin Spirit of the Sword - a Samurai adventure game. I haven't made it past the tutorial but it looks cool.

Samurai Warrior - A simple fighting game.

A lot more free games can be found at: http://www.2flashgames.com/ and http://www.freeworldgroup.com/game.html

1. Source/Sort Members: This is an old feature I hadn't found before. It does what it says, it sorts all the attributes and methods of a class or interface. You can choose the basic sort order under Preferences/Appearance/Members Sort Order. New to 3.0 is the ability to order members of the same type by visibilty as well.

2. Source/Generate Delegate Methods: Another old feature. Point at a field in a class and it generates methods that delegate to the fields methods. A great typing saver.

3. Preferences/Java/Editor/Enable advanced highlighting/Method declarations: This is new to 3.0 and it allows you to set a special color and text attributes for just the declaration of a method. I generally don't like to use bold text in code and I always disable the default bolding of keywords, but here's a place I think bolding works well. It turns the method declaration into a subtle header.

    public void begin() {
        _counter = 0;
        registerThread();
        _strategy.begin();
    }

4. Preferences/Java/Type Filters: This option allows you to specify classes or packages you want features like code assist or organize imports to ignore. The one great use I've found for this is to eliminate java.awt.List from the list of possible import options for the type List. I use lists a lot and more than once when performing an 'organize imports' operation I've selected java.awt.List when I wanted java.util.List.

"I wonder why people really acquire demons and resort to bewitching others," Kasaija lamented before she cautioned the public against acquiring demons.

TOMBSTONE, AZ (Rooters) - Residents of the self proclaimed "Town too tough to die", have been reported unusual sightings of a large gray bear wandering the Dragoon mountain area. Some of the people making reports have claimed the bear is 'speaking' as it wanders the scrub covered, rocky hills.

Bill Vicars of the Tombstone saw the bear last Saturday while hiking the Cochise Trail. "I was coming out of this grove of cotton woods when I started to hear this odd gurgling speech. I kept hearing, 'huhugiog haahama daam kaacim odham". Sounded like Indian to me. So I keep walking and there I see this big ugly grey bear standing on its hind quarters and waving it's paws at the sky."

There have been at least 25 reported sightings of the bear according to Tombstone city marshal Rolph Spincer, "I've been in law enforcement for 40 years and I've never seen anything like this." he said.

Hank Roman, Vice Chairman for the Tohono O'Odham Nation, says, "Mother Earth is something very sacred, the first helper Jufum has been sent to cleanse the land."

Other tribal leaders could not be reached for comment.

Brando: You know, I was riding a bicycle? that I made myself? 
and I was with Wally Cox and, God, I miss that good man! 
He had fingers like a sailor. [Marlon bends down and takes off his pants] 
I remember one time in Bangkok... [He now takes off his boxers] 
time buzzer rings. 

The taking off of his pants come from reports of his behavior on the set of The Score. The final "You- you- you're a squawking parrot, you're- you're an ant. " line, I believe was some spur of the moment improvisation Marlin did while shooting a scene in Apocalypse Now. I recall seeing it in one of the documentaries on the film. After he says it, Coppola throws a fit. The implication is they have done a million takes and Marlon just wont stick to the script.

After doing a little more research, the Wally Cox reference concerns an old Hollywood rumor that they had a gay love affair.

I didn't find a definitive answer, but I like the opening Flash sequence's dramatic use of the counterpoint between Siegfried's Death and Funeral march and the text display. I imagine the professor must really love Wagner to go to such lengths to advertise the class. It makes me wish I was a student at University of Texas at Austin.

The first elder god of the Greek pantheon was the Titan Gaea (also spelled Gaia), who is thought to be an incorporation of an early earth-mother myth. The same inclusion strategy can be seen with the other Titans who tend to represent core elements of nature; Uranus, sky; Oceanus, sea; Hyperion, sun. Later, the newer Olympian gods represented more complex ideas like love, beauty and war.

In programming we've moved from foundational deities such as computer to elementals such as memory, processor speed and storage to more modern gods such as design patterns, garbage collection and object oriented design.

In the world of technology we don't dismiss the predecessor's we merely incorporate them into the current mythos. Just as with the Greeks, nothing is lost, only the importance is changed.

Update: Pixeltees seems to have lost my graphics. I ordered a shirt for myself, I hope it doesn't come in all white. It would be funny actually if it came with a unfound image icon.

The shirt graphics are all set now.

I'm glad I went. The show was very entertaining. I'm still not a big EWaF guy but I actually knew many of their songs. Chicago, on the other hand, floored me. They cranked out many of their hit songs with screaming guitars and a blaring horn section. They were much rowdier and rockin' than I expected.

The two bands played together at both the opening and close the show and their combined efforts were fantastic. My wife counted 22 musician on the stage at the end when they teamed up to play one of each of their big hits, Shining Star and 25 or 6 to 4. The EWaF guitarist Vadim Zilberstein really got to crank it up during the 25 or 6 to 4 finale. He was a really great player.

From the review of the Pittsburg show from a few nights earlier, it looks like they do the same exact show every night. The description fits what I saw very closely, right down to the coin flip and the kiss on the forehead. I just don't agree with the reviewer that Chicago's guitarist was too loud.