October 28, 2005

Gay Sulu

It's all over the news: Sulu's gay!  It's nice that he finally came out of the closet --- about 10-15 years too late, but better late than never.  But really!  Who *didn't* know?  It's been the scuttlebutt for most of those 10-15 years...

Posted by abatie at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2005

First Try at Geocaching

Yesterday, in a fit of madness, I stopped in at Sportsman's Warehouse in Salem, just to see what their GPS's were going for.  My Garmen etrex Vista's joystick had broken some months ago, and I've been itching to replace it with a Vista Color, which has a wider, higher resolution screen, and is faster.  They can be had for about $255+shipping online.  Wouldn't you know it, they had them for only $300 (the standard retail price seems to be around $360-370), which after adding in shipping isn't all that much more, maybe 10%.  And I wanted to do some geocaching this weekend.

Yup, I got it.  One thing that amazes me, is that it's the first color LCD screen I've yet seen that is actually *more* visible in direct sunlight.  This is very well done.  I wish the user interface were as good.  They lost the buttons at the top of the screens that help navigate.  Instead, you have to use hard buttons on the case to go back.  I suppose I'll get used to it though, it's not *that* hard.

So, today, I tried my hand at finding the State Quarter Swap geocache.  I turned on WAAS, and the thing seems to be extremely accurate, taking me back to the same clump of three trees repeatedly, but unless it was buried in the brambles, I couldn't find it.  Of course, shorts and blackberries just don't mix, and without gloves either, I wasn't too inclined to root around in them.  And the instructions say you don't have to leave the bridge, but I don't believe it --- a container of quarters left on the bridge, or even under it, would be much too easy to see and would not last long in the open.  Anyway, photos and commentary are here.

Posted by abatie at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2005

Holdem

I went to Basic Rights Oregon's Texas Hold'em fundraiser tonight.  Thought I'd see if watching a couple seasons of Celebrity Poker on Bravo has done anything for me.  It must have done something --- I was one of 6 out of 15 or so that survived to the end, though I was short stack of that lot.  It was fun though, and I hope there are more, though not so expensive to buy into...

Posted by abatie at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

You might think people would learn how to drive...

WOODBURN, Ore. - A multi-vehicle accident on Interstate 5 Friday morning turned rush hour traffic into a mess.

KATU 2 - Portland, Oregon

...though mostly this is testing Flock, a new web browser based on Firefox that has integrated blogging, flickr photo album and rss feed support.  Could be interesting...

Posted by abatie at 02:04 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2005

Time Shards

I just read a little short story by Gregory Benford called "Time Shards". Apparently, the basis for it is real: [Proceedings of the IEEE (1969, pp. 1465-1466)] Take someone doing pottery on a potter's wheel. Apparently, some of the ancient potters used a technique in which a fine wire inscribed a spiral line in the clay. The result? A thousand year old phonograph record. Apparently all they've been able to pick up is background sounds so far, but what an intriguing idea...
Posted by abatie at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)