3/4ths of this XKCD strip explain exactly how I feel about having kids.

I am just sharing this because it’s about my alma mater, it’s a little funny in a geeky way, and I like Mark’s blog.

Check out this story about CIT and Cornell labs.

For the past week to two weeks I’ve done something I had’t done in years - I switched my default desktop environment in my GDM login screen. I’ve been logging into Xfce instead of my usual Gnome. There are basically three reasons why I’m loving Xfce over Gnome.

First of all, I love the theme. I know it’s just Bluecurve, Redhat’s theme, for the Window manager, but I just love how it looks compared to Gnome. I can’t really explain it, but there’s something about the share of blue they’ve chosen and the way it blends with the White of the letters and min, max, close buttons that’s very, very pleasing to my eye.  It’s definitely one of those subjective things and I’m sure there are others who will disagree with me, but I think it’s beautiful.  There’s something about the shades of blue they use that I just love.  (For the curious, the theme of the desktop environment is Clearlooks, their newest theme, but that’s not available as a theme for the Window Manager)

Back in High School I got The W’s Fourth from the Last album and one of my favorite tracks was titled “Hui”.  I thought that, like some of the other songs on the album, it was just a nonsensical song and that calling the thugs on the beach “The Hui” was just because it sounded really funny.  Well, I finally found out that the song was about a real-life gang of surfers called Da Hui.  They get a brief mention in the Local Surfers section of the Surfing article in Wikipedia.  Interestingly, The Offspring also wrote a song about “da hui”.  Well, I’ll certainly think of that song differently next time I hear it!

The top ten are mostly the same photos they’ve been for a while now, but the bottom ten have changed a bit. It’s very, very intersting (to me, at least) that every digital camera I’ve ever used is represented in the Top 20.

#1

#2

#3

#4

I’m uninstalling BitTorrent 5.0.9 from my Windows computer because every time the computer starts up, if I don’t exit from the program, all of my internet-related programs lose their connections. This is way too misbehaved and I’m sick of it. I’m moving to Transmission or one of the other ones that aren’t crap. I can’t believe the original program has been surpassed.

As I’ve mentioned before, although I think it was on It’s A Binary World 1.0, a Cornell education does something strange to you.  Like seeing vectors when speeding up and slowing down your car.  Or in the way in which you explain why Dan will be escorting two bride’s maids at Phil’s wedding:

?(09:00:29 PM)Danny: and here’s what this one guy had to say about it(09:00:38 PM)Danny: Also, I would like to concur with Dan’s sentiments. Given Dan’s unique relationship status amongst our fraternity of groomsmen, it would be logical and just to assign him the surplus of bridesmaids. However, giving him three would stretch the bounds of the reasonable. It would be awkward and contrived. Naturally, six bridesmaids would be pigeonholed amongst four groomsmen in the currently arranged manner: 2 would have 1 each, 2 would have 2 each. Perhaps Margot would appreciate the subsequent metaphor. Since the current combinatorial arrangement is the natural consequence of an application of the Pigeonhole Principle, we can liken the current circumstance to that of the most stable or lowest-energy state. Although I am sure Mr. Mesa’s propensity for being an attractive nucleus for members of the opposite sex is considerable, keeping three bridesmaids in an orbital around his personage would undoubtedly require a good deal of energy on his behalf. Also, let us consider another physical fact. As Margot has indicated we may likely be in “arm-in-arm” contact with our respective bridesmaids. Based off my prior observation of Mr. Mesa, his anatomy appears nominal in that he possess, as do most members of our species, two arms. A third bridesmaid would have to reside in some outer orbital and would have a greatly increased probability of being snatched by another groomsmen to fill his inner orbital. As such, this arrangement is unstable.

I’ve read time and again that the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (which is actually not a trilogy, but one massive book published in 3 parts) has all kinds of allegorical content and contains a lot of stuff Peter Jackson had to leave out of the movies.  Well, they’re certainly right about Mr Jackson leaving material out of the movie.  I’m on page 160 (reading during my lunch breaks) and I’d have to say that roughly 90% of what I’ve read does not appear in any form in the movie.  I’m about a little less than halfway through the first book (in the size they’ve printed) and the main characters JUST got to The Prancing Pony.  I think this happens in the first 10 or so minutes in the movie.  And what a great idea to cut all that chaff was!

I’m not 100% sure, but I think this is the longest I’ve purposely waited to upgrade to another Fedora release. I’ve been reading the Fedora user and developer mailling lists and what’s I’ve seen there has pretty much convinced me not to upgrade. First of all, there are a lot of answers to people complaining about Fedora 9 being unstable which include variations on “no one told you to stop using Fedora 8.” Some answers put it more politely and some more bluntly. And that’s ok. Just like the people who bought the iPhone last year got their pants pulled down over the price, so do those who upgrade to distros right away pay the price in instability. This happens with all distros from Fedora to Ubuntu. Sure, there’s an alpha testing period and a beta testing period, but not everyone can take part in that. I, for example, use my Fedora computer as my main computer for everything but gaming and photography. I can’t be unable to do my banking or type stuff up or work on my animations just because I’m trying the latest bleeding edge Fedora. And there are others like me, so the distro doesn’t truly get tested until it comes out. This is the argument used by the KDE team with respect to the POS that KDE 4 is, according to others - I haven’t tried it out.

I found this online and I think it’s cute. Scientifically, however, I have a bit of a problem with the ending.