Just before lifting the motherboard out to access the RAM.
Archive for February, 2010
Ben’s Mini 10v at this moment
Sunday, February 21st, 2010Ben’s Mini 10v at the moment
Sunday, February 21st, 2010As I do the tedious RAM upgrade.
Google Voice Message Transcription as Entertainment
Saturday, February 20th, 2010One of Google Voice’s features is the transcription of audio messages into text, which can then be emailed to you. Some people rave about this; I’m just kind of so-so about its usefulness. On the other hand, I love it for jokes and entertainment. Here is a recent message transcription I received, verbatim:
Hello, this is Grandma therapy with the message for anyway. We’re just wondering if you are watching the olympics at all if we’ve been watching women screwing includes you know. Nicole is lot of players and they’re playing today at 5 o’clock and if you are watching looking to stands to get Gary, Deborah would be there and the movie and Richard and Paula and John. You know, the, it’s another cousin and I hope all is daughters. I think maybe. And you know, whatever, so there’ll be some of your company to get you didn’t you. Hope to hear You, yeah You.
Yeah, YOU!
Dilapidation (original)
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
Dilapidation
Saturday, February 20th, 2010Taken with iPhone, processed with Camera Bag app (“silver”)
Sign of the Day
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
The Google Library of My (Dashed) Dreams
Thursday, February 18th, 2010I’ve been actively hoping that the settlement Google reached with the backward-looking and narrow-visioned coalition publishers and authors over the issue of scanning humankind’s books and making them available/for purchase to anyone with a computer would stand the antitrust tests it is being out to at the moment. In fact, I wanted Google to have even more freedom in digitizing everything ever published so that my dream of a searcheable downloadable ubër-mega-hyper-universal library would be one big step closer to reality. Alas, meddling capitalists worried about not getting their cut and/or Google getting too much appear headed to hamstringing Google’s gargantuan task. Wired.com has a pretty clear run-down on the history and current status of the issue in a Q&A form if you want to get up-to-date. I really have a problem with the sacred status copyright has been given. Protection of it is talked about as if it’s the holy of holies, as if it’s a sinful violation to copy something that’s out there in the public (i.e., published). In other words, it’s treated practically as a moral issue when it’s purely economic. Sure, an author (and his/her publisher) is entitled to sell and profit from a work. It’s a piece of work, after all, and it’s hard to produce (he says as he struggles to write two pages a day). But can’t there be some kind of a limit, some point (before the current expiration of copyright) where it’s okay to have parasites use the work for other things while perhaps throwing the author’s way a small percentage of any profits (or nothing if no profits are made)? I think so, but that must make me communist or something, like President Obama. Just think of the overall benefits to scholars, students, society at large. I can imagine fair cost structures where producers could be happy (because of increased volume sales) and consumers could be happy (with their Kindles or iPads or MacHackBooks) getting free or lower cost access to the world’s knowledge and entertainment. If this could happen, I wouldn’t care about a Google monopoly and so-called infringement of copyrights. Bring it on!
Safa over homework
Thursday, February 18th, 2010With my iPhone:
Quote of the Day
Monday, February 15th, 2010It is a dirty, not-so-secret truth that tenure review often involves personalities and politics neatly disguised as dispassionate assessment of scholarship—a process shrouded in secrecy and protected by confidentiality. On occasion, faculty reviewers, whose own tenure may have been awarded decades earlier under standards far less stringent, are positioned to make weighty judgments about colleagues, sometimes with limited appreciation for the potentially devastating ramifications. In the corporate world, by contrast, managers empowered to promote or terminate subordinates must at least put their names and reputations on the line.
In our cloistered academic settings, we tacitly assume that senior faculty members, after having survived the tenure grind, magically come to possess the necessary expertise and talent to carry out this awesome task with humanity and respect, not to mention fairness.
(James Alan Fox, commenting in The Chronicle of Higher Education on the February 12th shootings at UAH)
Follow-up: From a comment posted in reference to Dr. Fox’s article:
I think there is a need for an overhaul in tenure at many schools, and for sure there is a need to clearly define the goals and achievements tenure candidates will be judged. If you are lucky enough to work for a university where fairness and transparency is the rule, then I believe you are very fortunate. I have seen some unbelievably shocking treatment of tenure track professors, and from discussions at international meetings, everyone seems to have a horror story to tell. One of the worst comments I heard from our Dean was, “Why would we want to tell tenure candidates how they would be judged, since if we did this they would all get tenure!” Transparent, indeed… I was fortunate to have read the tea leaves correctly and I had a strong mentor supporting me, but not all are so lucky.
I wonder where Vanderbilt fits in this context….?
Gunkanjima (Battleship Island)
Sunday, February 14th, 2010
Thanks to my feedly feedly and the blogger on kirainet.com, I got diverted from early Sunday morning writing to learn about Hashima aka Gunkanjima (Battleship Island). It’s a very small island in Nagasaki Prefecture that was bought by Mitsubishi in 1890 after coal was discovered underneath it. Workers were brought in and an entire little town flourished there as one of the most densely populated places on earth until the coal was depleted and the town shut down in 1974. Amazing story, and even more amazing photos and video:
I so want go there with cameras in hands. The thought of up to 5000 people being born, living, and dying in this cramped artificial “company island” over the span of 80 years astounding. Apparently, there is limited access to the island now, which is administered by Nagasaki. Historians and journalist can get special permission, so I think I’m going to have to flash my creds and go there as some sort of ruins of memory project.
