Category: Toys & Tech

Sunday Backup Organization

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Max and mommy went to his grandparent’s house so daddy took the time to organize five years of DVD (originally all DVD-R but more recently DVD+R for Improved! Error! Correction!; everything important is on genuine “That’s” brand Taiyo Yuden 16x media, everything else is on TDK or SONY 8x or 16x [end historical optical media note]) backups.
I must say, we are in a fairly sucklical state of backup media at this point in history. Optical media like CDs and DVDs (and presumably BluRay Disks as well) apparently degrades in a matter of a few years in extreme cases, and keeping things on a form of media (HDs) that constantly spins at thousands of rpm and can die at any moment can hardly be considered a safe archival system.
WANT INVINCIBLE 100TB NAS TO FALL FROM SKY ONTO MY HOME NETWORK LOLZR!!!

Tuk Tuk USA

From Autoblog Green: Tuk Tuk coming to American roads near you?

“…vehicles are currently undergoing EPA and NHTSA testing for road-use approval, though its line of trikes is reportedly already for sale for off-road use.”

Of course, for the US market they are completely overdoing it; you can even order colors like Cranberry Red and Clematis blue in standard, metallic, or pearl finish. Also, it seems they are making stretch models:
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Real tuktuks don’t have 4 cylinders, yo.
All that’s left to do is some hydraulics work and installing a decent sound system.

New Snakeskin Head Drum

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On the way to my uni’s sports day a couple weeks ago, we stopped off at a famous temple (from the ancient “kao noi ka mae” story) where they sold various trinkets, sticky rice baskets, and musical instruments at a series of stalls on the dusty temple grounds.
After testing out this drum and hearing how nice it sounded, my coworker and I debated about who should buy it. He said he had too many drums already, so I bought it. The man who sold it to me didn’t say who made the drum, who killed the snake, or if it tasted delicious, and I didn’t ask. Just having a drum with a snakeskin head is cool enough. One thing was kinda gross, though. The first day of pounding on it, scales were flying off everywhere. I looked down once to find my forearm covered in snake scales that were sticking to my sweaty skin. It was djembeistic and cathartic as hell.
Basic Specs

  • 100% Natural Boa Constrictor Head, 9″ (~23 cm)
  • Glazed pottery body
  • Expertly tied with 100% natural cotton twine and 100% artificial plastic straps
  • Deep throbbing bass response

I will cry out loud when this thing eventually breaks, it’s way too cool.

Word Macros I Have Loved and Almost Lost

I’ve recently had to convert MS Word files with tons of zenkaku English text in them to all hankaku so I could forward them to people on non-Japanese language-enabled systems. Luckily, I happen to have written a macro during my salaryman days that does just that.
Looking at the code, it seems I could never figure out how to get a few symbols working (such as the “degrees Celsius” symbol), but other than that it works very well.
If you have the need for such a macro, drop me an email.

facebook conundrum

I have a lot of n00b friends on Facebook, and I fully contend that Facebook is for n00bs and sissies. However, if I want to see photos and happenings of said friends, this is apparently the only way.
So.
I guess I’ll join and rejoice in e-props and friending the crap out of virtual pet avatars.
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Why do I hate Facebook, hi-5, and all the other socnets with such a passion? Because of little gems like this:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

– From Facebook’s TOS
So will you friend me already, or what?
UPDATE: OMG! Of all people, my brother was already a member! What a frickin’ n00b!
ANOTHER UPDATE: It appears that the great majority of Facebook users are almost as annoying as Youtube commenters.
kthxbai!!
LAST(??) UPDATE: Oh for fuck’s sake. Lawyers to serve notices on Facebook, Australian court serves documents via Facebook. If a goddamn federal justice system is using it in an official capacity, you know it’s gotta be fucked.

Strange Firefox 3 Error

Version 3.0.3 to be exact.
Error content:

“The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.”

Can anybody using Firefox please see if you get the same error (click here) and post results in the comments?
(Please ignore the content on that blog, I’m revamping it for classroom use)
Other browsers seem to be unaffected. Clearing the cache didn’t help. Resetting Prefs didn’t help. Burning joss sticks and mumbling to the Buddha didn’t help.. And I’m not using a proxy. Hmm…
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Related:
This is very curious: Opening the directory produces the error.
http://cosmicbuddha.com/tempblog/
However, specifying the index file does not.
http://cosmicbuddha.com/tempblog/index.html
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A thread on this error in the Firefox support forum
UPDATE: I just moved over to my laptop; Firefox updated to version 3.0.4 and is having no problems with the link, so… Good. But weird.