Miscellaneous Heathen

PhotoHeathen

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:11:00 -0500

Two new sets:

Enjoy if you like that sort of thing.

Dept. of Excellent Customer Service

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:54:00 -0500

Back when Mrs Heathen and I tied the knot, we had the mandatory Williams-Sonoma registry. We got lots of lovely gifts, and some dupes, so after gift orgy subsided we took our excess bounty to the local shop to reconfigure. After we got everything we definitely wanted, we had some excess, so we did something nobody ever thinks they'll do: we spent a bunch of money on a very attractive stainless-steel garbage can that, even worse, takes proprietary bags.

I don't want to hurt any feelings, but this thing may be our best and most useful wedding gift, and anybody who gave us something from Wm-S can lay claim to a portion of our ongoing thanks. Bachelor that I was, I refused to spend money on something I was only going to put garbage in, so I had a nasty white plastic can from Target. It was white, and seemed to attract stains. The new one made a huge difference in the style of the kitchen, and definitely signaled some grown-up-ness. Plus, its wonderful lid is so adept at sealing in trash odor that it's no longer obvious what we had for dinner. It's amazing, really, and means that you needn't waste bag capacity by immediately emptying the garbage just because you threw away fish heads, for example.

So we like it.

Anyway, it came from Wms-S, but it's made by SimpleHuman. A couple weeks ago, it broke. Not horribly, but enough to be annoying. The lid is a tap-to-spring open kind of affair, and the mechanism to make it spring open stopped working. The seal's still good, but you have to open it manually, which means more gross things tend to end up on the lid. Mrs Heathen called to inquire about repair, and something wonderful happened.

First, she got a real human in about 45 seconds.

Second, the real human interrupted her story to find out our mailing address. "Why?" "So we can send you your new lid." "Don't you need a receipt or store or a credit card number or something?" "Oh, no. You should get your replacement in a couple weeks."

Excellent.

How To Tell If You're An Idiot

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:27:00 -0500

You work for TSA.

Today's geekiest, and snarkiest, post

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:41:00 -0500

Check out this old version of the Wikipedia page comparing file systems. Note: most of you will not get this.

We love this a whole lot

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:38:00 -0500

You'd think that, in a post-Borat world, it would get harder for Sacha Baron Cohen to pull of his stunts, but apparently not, at least in Arkansas:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Crowds in Arkansas came for the lure of cage fighting and $1 beer, but police say what they got instead was men ripping each others' clothes off and kissing ... a stunt suspected of being orchestrated by Sacha Baron Cohen of "Borat" fame.

"We had a contract for cage fighting. We were deceived," said Dwight Duncan, president and CEO of Four States Fair Grounds in Texarkana, where the first of two Arkansas fights raised suspicions last month.

Cell Phone FAIL

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:59:00 -0500

Palm, on the heels of their 4th straight quarter of losses, has decided to challenge the iPhone in a bold new way: they're releasing a new version of their Centro handheld that's a completely new color.

On Friday. The same day as the iPhone 3G launch.

Brilliant move, guys. Really.

(Via Gruber.)

This guy is my new hero

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:41:00 -0500

From the News &Observer:

RALEIGH - L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms.

Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.

When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees hung the flags at half-staff.

Bravo. His email message to co-workers is also worth reading:

"This is in no way a political decision. I simply do not feel it is appropriate to honor a person whose epitaph of government service was to have voted against or blocked every civil rights issue that came before the US Congress. His doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice cost North Carolina and our Nation much that we may never regain."

Excerpts from an e-mail message that Eason sent later that same day to Gov. Mike Easley and state Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler:

"I made a decision to refuse to lower our flags at the NC Standards Laboratory to half mast in honor of Jesse Helms as soon as I heard of his death. I cannot in good conscience honor such a man who fought so hard against Civil and Human Rights throughout his life. Even to his death bed, he refused to apologize for the damage he caused. Now, I stand by this decision. It is a personal decision, but obviously affects my job at the lab. It has been over ruled by Division and Departmental Management and as I look out my window, I'm ashamed to see the flags lowered.

North Carolina and the US cannot escape that, at the end of the day, Jesse Helms stood for evil. It made me angry to see local flags at half mast after his death, Senator or no. I'm glad at least one person was willing to stand up to that madness.

(Hat tip to Rob.)

Spot On

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:25:00 -0500

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: The Abridged Script is friggin' hilarious. Enjoy.

Not a lot to argue with here

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:44:00 -0500

A List Of People Who Should Stop Writing Software. Example:

Printer Manufacturers: A Printer driver is a folder with one “.ini” file, and a couple of “.dll”s and that’s it. It is not a 50 MB download. It is not an IE Toolbar, and Side Pane. It is not half-baked photo software. It is not a splash screen when your computer starts. It is not a tray icon.

As it turns out, shit DOES tend to improve over time

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:26:00 -0500

AT least 'lectronic stuff, anyhow.

Heathen Central's 3rd stereo receiver -- after 1988's entry-level Pioneer (RIP) and 1992's $1,000 Onkyo battleship (still in limited service in Heathen HQ's office) -- has gone the way of all circuits. This is somewhat irritating, since it wasn't cheap and has been in for repairs once already despite its relative youth (b. in late 2000 or early 2001; we forget, but it was soon after our acquisition of the Steel Treehouse Lodge (tm pending)). The 2000-era box -- an Arcam AVR100 -- was nice enough, and did the New Fanciness of both Dolby Digital and DTS, so we were very happy with it. Except for a few things.

Problem the First was that, unlike some of the fancier models of its era, renaming inputs wasn't possible. No receiver anywhere, I'm convinced, actually has the correct equipment plugged into every port, and for lots of good reasons, but having customizable text on the screen means at least some positive feedback is possible for the operator (i.e., when you've got the TV plugged into VCR for input-scarcity reasons, it's nice if the screen says "TV" anyway).
Problem the Second was an unfortunately made bet w/r/t digital audio bus inputs. Back in the day, everything was on a pair of RCA cables, one left channel and one right, but with multichannel came the need for, well, more than that (Dolby Digital has 6 distinct channels). Digital cabling solved the problem, but there were two main contenders for plug type: Coaxial and optical. The Arcam has two coax but only one optical input, but the market has since settled on optical. Oops. Double oops since Heathen HQ has optical inputs coming from the Tivo, the XBox, and the streaming music from the Airport Express (heretofore routed through an outboard D/A; we only did cable swap between the Tivo and XBox).
Problem the Third was video switching, meaning the "stereo" controls both what you hear and what you see on the TV. Receivers as old as the Onkyo would try to do this, but they could only handle composite video -- i.e., single-RCA plug video feeds that, quite frankly, look like ass even with plain-jane cable TV. In a world of 1080i, that's just not enough. Even in 2000, the solution wasn't good enough -- the Aardvark will switch S-Video (good enough for standard-resolution DirecTV), but nothing better, so using the DVD player or the XBox meant switching inputs on both the receiver and the TV, which got direct feeds from the higher-resolution sources.

Combine all three of these issues, and you get a situation wherein I once typed up a three-page guide for a long-term houseguest just so she could watch TV when Mrs. Heathen and I were out.

Well, now that the Arcam's dead, we have a new sheriff in town in a little Yamaha amp, and it gleefully solves all these problems.

First, inputs are re-nameable onscreen, so when you scroll the Input knob, you see a word that means something for the local setup. Even better, the Yamaha line comes with four big round buttons square in the front of the box called "Scenes;" these amount to input-and-surround-setting macros you can configure for easy access. At the Steel Treehouse Lounge, #1 is the new Tivo; #2 is the old Tivo (shut up); #3 is the DVD player on stereo-only with all DSP and processing bypassed; and #4 is for DVD movies; each of these also gets its own, human-created name, so it's clear when you hit one of the buttons what the gig is. No muss, no fuss, and certainly no 3-page instruction manuals for visiting playwrights.
Second, the digital bus problem is solved in spades, again with a bit of a one-two punch. It's got enough of the right plugs for us, which is great, but you can also reassign the higher-resolution plugs on the back (i.e., the inputs for digital audio (coax & optical), HDMI, and component video) to the input slots arbitrarily to better suit your configuration. It's part of the same interface you use for changing input names.
Finally, the video switching problem is dead, dead, dead. Only two remotes live on the coffeetable now: Tivo and receiver. There's no need to switch TV inputs now, since everything goes through the receiver -- and will continue to do so well into the future. (The receiver is actually smarter than the TV now, since the 2001-era TV doesn't know from HDMI.)

As a bonus? The Yamaha had a lower number on its price tag than either the Onkyo or the Arcam, which means it's actually MUCH MUCH cheaper if you adjust for inflation -- about half the price of the Onkyo in 2007 dollars, and 2/3 that of the Arcam.

One less bigot.

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:16:00 -0500

Anti-civil-rights senator Jesse Helms has finally gone to his eternal reward. Good riddance.

Betty Bowers has a fine list of quotes from the late Senator.

Today

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:35:00 -0500

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This isn't just what we believe. It's what is TRUE. People have rights, period. Governments do not grant them; governments are created to secure them.

Somewhere along the way, this administration forgot -- or abandoned -- these ideals.

Two words that should make you very, very happy

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:02:00 -0500

Monkey Bartenders.

Ah, Fox. Don't ever change, okay?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:30:00 -0500

Annoyed at a perceived slight by some NYT reporters, Fox News ran photos of the men that had been edited to make them ugly -- receding hairlines, yellow teeth, exaggerated features, etc. Click the link for Media Matters' coverage, which includes side-by-side comparisons of the original photos and the Fox versions.

Dept. of Shit We Thought We'd Posted

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:47:00 -0500

In the afternoon of deck-clearing, we find this MeFi post which refers to this NYT story about a New York apartment remodeling job that included, unbidden, a sequence of puzzles the owners eventually figured out. There's a slideshow as well. File under "what you can get for $8 million," we reckon, but it's still cool as hell. I mean, hello: secret compartments! Codes! What's not to like?

What happens if you put TV in a blender?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:35:00 -0500

You get TV with no context at all, which must be part of the point of this bit of web goodness. (Via JWZ.)

Pay Attention

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:25:00 -0500

Bruce Schneier explains why killswitches are a bad idea. Basically, it comes down to a question of whether or not items you buy are owned by you, or by others.

People seem to continually forget to ask "what will happen with this new regulation or feature is misused?" when they ask for schemes like this. It's not a question of whether it'll be hacked; it's a question of when.

This is the geekiest thing I'll post all week

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:24:00 -0500

Someone has figured out the rough size, shape, and density of Azeroth, i.e. the world in which World of Warcraft takes place, based on observable in-game experiments.

And, ye, verily, the judical smackdown continues

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:20:00 -0500

From Scalzi:

With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.

The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Dept. of GAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:17:00 -0500

Seen in Los Angeles.

There's some gold in the comments, btw.

Mmmmmm

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:16:00 -0500

Ducks.

(Via MeFi.)

Dept. of Illuminating Graphs

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:36:00 -0500

Check out this post over at the Agitator, especially if you still think of the GOP as the party of fiscal responsibility and limited government.

You may want to check those figures, Howie

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:47:00 -0500

Via John Gruber's Daring Fireball, we find this amusing story, wherein Sony CEO Howard Stringer contrasts Apple and Sony: "Apple is a marvelous company, but it is a boutique. We are a giant conglomerate."

Well, maybe so, but here's Gruber's take:

As for just how giant, Sony’s current market cap is about $44 billion. The boutique’s market cap is about three times larger, at $149 billion. In terms of net income for the most recently reported financial year, Sony’s was $3.7 billion; Apple’s was $3.5 billion.

Heh.

It just goes to show you that few things cannot be improved by Mexican wrestling masks

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:43:00 -0500

Ladies and gentlemen: Los Straitjackets perform My Heart Will Go On:

LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:57:00 -0500

TPM:

The Bush Administration's newest tactic for policymaking is to ignore emails.

The New York Times reports today that White House officials simply refused to open an email from the EPA last year because they knew it contained a policy recommendation they didn't like -- part of the Administration's on-going battle with scientists at the EPA over global warming issues.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.'s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

These clowns can't be out of office soon enough. The damage they've done to our country will take a generation to repair.

WANT.

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:16:00 -0500

Dear Intarwub: Please buy us this sink. kthxbi.

You can't tell me this phrase doesn't make you giggle a little

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:16:00 -0500

"Brothel Bus"

Today's Mistargeted Spam

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:15:00 -0500

From: (forged)
Subject: Get your watch now
Date: June 26, 2008 5:54:24 PM CDT
To: Chief Heathen

Did you watch the last 007 flick, Casino Royale? If you did, you probably noticed that all throughout the movie, James Bond wears an spectacularly beautiful Omega watch... and he even brags about it! How would you like to be wearing that same exact model watch?

What, you mean like this?

You All Just Better Get Used To The Idea

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:29:00 -0500

Vice President Chet? It could happen.

Delightful

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:26:00 -0500

Rightwing fruitcake fundie James Dobson is upset that Obama knows the Bible is a poor choice for a governing document.

In comments aired on his radio show Tuesday, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson criticized the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for comments he made in a June 2006 speech to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal.

In the speech, Obama suggested that it would be impractical to govern based solely on the word of the Bible, noting that some passages suggest slavery is permissible and eating shellfish is disgraceful.

"Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asked in the speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?

"So before we get carried away, let's read our Bible now," Obama said, to cheers. "Folks haven't been reading their Bible."

and

Dobson also takes aim at Obama for suggesting in the speech that those motivated by religion should attempt to appeal to broader segments of the population by not just framing their arguments around religious precepts.

"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values," Obama said. "It requires their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason."

Keep digging, Jimmy. Keep digging.