You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2010.
If, like me, you can no longer get to wikileaks.org you might be successful if you use the IP address instead. Not sure what the story is, but it seems that the Wikileaks.org DNS entry has been removed. So, the only way for me to get to their site now is to use the actual IP Address.
http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Main_Page
This means that, unlike certain countries, the site isn’t really blocked, it’s more hidden than anything. At least for the DNS servers I have access to. And, yes, it didn’t used to be hidden, I will on occasion peruse articles on their website as they can be fairly interesting.
It’s interesting that I can’t get there after my interest was raised from reading this article.
Pentagon hunts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in bid to gag website
Not sure when the block went in, I haven’t been to the site in a month or so. But, it’s blocked/hidden now.
For those of you who don’t know, wikileaks is probably the premier whistle blower website in the world. Unfortunately it seems that it was given a bunch of classified US documents and now the US governement is out to ensure that none of those documents get leaked. This could get ugly. Hope not, but it might.
Well well. There is now a celebration of geekyness and I didn’t even know until my friend Kate pointed it out.
On May 25th of every year, it is now Geek Pride Day! Woot!
Why the 25th of May? Well, for multiple reasons. A few being.
- The Premier day of the original Star Wars 1977
- Towel day in respect for the death of Douglas Adams. (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) Marking the day 2 weeks after his death.
- The Glorious 25th of May. Terry Pratchet Disc world series.
Now I found out on the 25th of May this year that it was Towel Day. A few coworkers brought towels in and explained, as to a slow child, why they brought towels in to me. (-: (Next year, I’m there with my own towel.)
So, if by some chance, crazy as this might seem, I were to “come out of the closet” as it were, next May 25th might be a good day to show my Geekyness.
Wiki link to Geek Pride Day
Wiki link to Towel Day
Wiki link to Terry Pratchett
But if I were…..
I might take Megan’s Birthday present, a Motorola Droid, which I’ve had for almost a week now, and slightly modified it. (-:
Droid
I can’t just give her a stock cell phone now can I? So, what might I change on a smart phone running Android? Well, first off Verizon locks things down so badly it’s a joke, so the first step was to root the phone and get full control of everything.
Then I downloaded and installed the Android RC 2.2 OS, also called Froyo, which will be released soon. (-: Just not yet.
After changing the CPU speed from 600 mhz to 900 mhz, (it’s possible to crank it up to 1300 mhz, but that would suck the battery down quick) and a few other tweaks I ran Linpack to see how fast it was. Doing the OS update and cpu speed change took the phone from a 2.9 MFLOP mini monster to a 8.525 MFLOP Monster!! That’s 8 Million floating point operations per second, in a cell phone!.Wow! And that’s barely doing anything at all to it.
So, that’s a few of the changes so far. I think I like Android a lot. It’s a geeks OS for sure. Now I might just have to give Meg a gift card to Target or something and keep this. It’s too much fun to give away. (-:
Froyo
Today on the way down to Big Sur we decided to make a quick stop at the Carmel Mission. It’s right off of Hiway 1 and we’ve probably passed it 50 times and never stopped. Well, today we decided to stop.
It’s also called the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. Here’s the wikipedia link. It’s a pretty place. What you can’t see in this picture is all of the swallows nesting in and around the bell tower. They are all over, chirping and flying around.
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| From Monterey Living |
With a wonderful view over Monastery Beach.
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| From Monterey Living |
It’s really very pretty and serene. It’s also an active Monastery with a school and live in Nuns.
One of the things that I found very interesting was the similarities to some of the Scottish Kirks/Churches. Fleur de lis carved on the ceiling, motifs carved in stone on the walls, huge vaulted ceilings held up with massive wooden beams. The whole feel was similar to what you got in Scotland. Only about 1/10 the age. It’s only a hundred odd years old. (It was destroyed and rebuilt in the 1880′s according to wikipedia)
I didn’t take any pictures because there were a few people in the main church and unlike some bumpkins, I won’t disturb others to take a picture. Maybe some time I’ll get back and get a few pics of the stonework. It is facinating.
Over in the side yard you can occassionally get a wiff of something horrific. Well, we finally figured it out. It’s a Voodoo Lily, or stink Lily.
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| From Monterey Living |
We have no idea where this thing came from. We didn’t plant it, and it’s actually growing inside of a different plant. Go figure. Anyhow, it’s also known as the Dracunculus Vulgaris, Voodoo Lily, Stink Lily, Devil’s Tongue, Dragon Lily, and Black Dragon. A lot of different names for a big purple stinky flower.
What’s interesting is that it’s next to a cement walk and on the other side of the walk about 2 1/2 feet away is the seed pod.
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| From Monterey Living |
From what I’ve read it’s part of the same plant. I’ve also read that the stink only lasts a few days. Good thing or this plant would be headed for a quick demise.
We decided to take the girls down to Big Sur so that they could play in the river for a bit, then maybe get some lunch. Well, we made it down there okay, and even stopped at the Carmel Mission on the way, another blog post on that.
We took some sodas, sandwiches, and chips to snack on while at the river. Seems that’ now verboten! The Big Sur River Inn, which owns about the only easy river access in the area has now posted the following signs.
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| From Monterey Living |
They have even gone so far as to have their own private Dick walk around threatening to kick people out if he thinks their food is from “outside” the Big Sur complex of overpriced stores/restaurants.
Needless to say we won’t be back any time soon, if ever. Which sucks because it used to be a great place to spend a nice summer afternoon. Oh well. Times change.
I ran across this and really liked it. Just thought I would share.
From the annals of it looked good on paper.
Roberta and I decided to pick up a couple of tents, sleeping bags, camp stove, etc. We’ve been getting parts and pieces here and there over the last few weeks. Today we went up to Walmart and picked up a couple of inexpensive tents they had on sale with the idea that we would take the kids down to Big Sur in the next couple of weeks and start camping again. It’s been a long time since we’ve done that, and haven’t ever slept in tents with the kids.
Well, it looked good on paper. We forgot we live in California. Every camping site we could find anywhere close to us is booked until, wait for it, the middle of August. At least 2 months. Yosemite, late September. WTF? So much for that idea. We’d have better luck saying screw it and driving back to Montana to go camping.
I keep forgetting we live in the National Republic of California. I am reminded though, when I discover that a local camp site costs $55 a night, and up. For a bloody tent site. Go figure.So much for an inexpensive weekend of fun.
I guess we should have thought this out a bit more before spending any money on this idea. Maybe some day we’ll be back in a place where it’s not so, controlled, issued, taxed and monitored like it is here in California. Only place more bureaucratic than this that I can think of was the UK.
One of my favorite phrases for doing something that seemed like a good idea. At least it “looked good on paper”.
I have an old duo-core intel pc running a fatal1ty nforce motherboard. I decided to turn this system into a hackintosh. Well, I had to disable 1 cpu and pull 1 gig of memory out to get it to work. It would only work with 3 Gig on board. That and some serious tweaking, but I succeeded. It works. I’m running Leopard 10.5.8 on a PC. So far so good.
So, since this is working, but the bloody Dell POS (Piece of SH#@) AIO 924 printer is only supported by windows XP and Not OSX and Not Windows 7 and Not Linux, I decided to download and install VirtualBox from Oracle/Ex Sun and load a full version of XP pro in a virtual machine in OSX running on a hackintosh. Well, it seemed like a good idea on paper.
Did you know you can kernel panic Apple OSX? Well, you can.
So, I think I need to upgrade the hackintosh to a p55 style mother board with at least a quad core i5 or i7 and load OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and try again! Cause, by goodness, It Still looks good on paper!! And I’m gonna make it work! Now, how to convince the wife I need to buy a new motherboard and cpu? hmmmm……
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