I spent this afternoon doing something I’ve been meaning to do for years: I updated the Mighty Hallie website. Since its inception in 2002, it has run on a defunct weblog app called bplog. Needless to say, bplog didn’t cut the mustard. That, and Hallie’s brother Travis now gets equal billing.
I was glad I could import it without losing anything. It turns out the database gyrations I had to perform weren’t that difficult, all things considered. It certainly was fun manipulating things using SQL.
A Brigham Young University physics professor has analyzed the mysterious collapse of the World Trade Center buildings and concluded that the most likely explantion is controlled demolition.
In his paper, professor Stephen E. Jones writes:
A New York Times article entitled “Engineers are baffled over the collapse of 7 WTC; Steel members have been partly evaporated,� provides relevant data.
Experts said no building like it [WTC7], a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire. (Glanz, 2001; emphasis added.)
That’s correct – no such steel-beam building had ever before (or since) completely collapsed due to fires! However, such complete, symmetrical collapses have indeed occurred many times before — all of them due to pre-positioned explosives in a procedure called “implosionâ€? or controlled demolition. What a surprise, then, for such an occurrence in downtown Manhattan— three skyscrapers completely collapsed on the same day, September 11, 2001.
Engineers have been trying to figure out exactly what happened and whether they should be worried about other buildings like it around the country… Most of the other buildings in the [area] stood despite suffering damage of all kinds, including fire… ‘Fire and the structural damage …would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated’, Dr. [Jonathan] Barnett said. (Glanz, 2001; emphasis added.)
The observed “partly evaporated� steel members is particularly upsetting to the official theory, since fires involving paper, office materials, even diesel fuel, cannot generate temperatures anywhere near the 5,000+ oF needed to “evaporate� steel. However, thermite, RDX and other commonly-used explosives can readily slice through steel (thus cutting the support columns simultaneously in an explosive demolition) and reach the required temperatures. (It is possible that some other chemical reactions were involved which might proceed at lesser temperatures.) This mystery needs to be explored – but is not mentioned in the “official� 9-11 Commission or NIST reports.
Evaporated steel. Hmm.
Fortunately, the U.S. Government never lies. Now go back to your shopping.
Wouldn’t it be great if your computer had the ability to react to sounds? Sure, speech recognition is out there and it does a decent job. What I’m talking about is teaching a computer to hear.
I’d like my computer to be able to recognize sounds that it hears:a ringing phone, the microwave oven signaling its done cooking, a dog barking, glass breaking, the doorbell ringing. What if my computer could get smart about these things? There are a lot of household tools and appliances which aren’t “smart appliances,” those that share their status electrically. A computer taught to recognize these sounds could log them or even respond to them somehow. Then the everyday beeps of these “disconnected” appliances would be communicating to a computer, allowing for some imaginative possibilties for home automation and the like.
Imagine an iPod-sized box that could be loaded with samples of sounds and spit out a network packet whenever it recognizes one. Does this sound useful to anyone? Any other uses anyone can dream up?
The Hack-A-Day story on bullet trajectories reminded me of this idea. Imagine an iPod-sized box that could be loaded with samples of sounds and spit out a network packet whenever it recognizes one.I don’t know enough about sound processing or I’d start hacking it myself.
I love the band Cake. I made the mistake of visiting their website this week and playing the video of their cover of Bread’s Guitar Man (Flash , QT, and WMV). Like many songs Cake plays, this one has wormed into my head. It’s catchy as hell!
It’s a shame Cake’s record label is so evil or I’d buy it tomorrow. If I can find it used in a local store, I might get it that way.
I heard too late that Cake just played in Raleigh at Glenwood South’s Monster Bash. I’m bummed I missed that show! I saw them play a few years ago at the old Ritz Theater on their Comfort Eagle tour. It was a great show.
Ah, I had a point to all this, but I forgot it. Just remember Cake is cool.
When Kelly and I moved into our home in Garner, we had two immediate brushes with Garner politicos. Our first day, a car pulls up to our house. Inside was mayor Don Rohrbaugh, who lived a few houses down the street. Talk about first impressions! I was impressed with any city where the mayor personally greets you on the day you move in!
The second brush was a bit more cryptic. Kelly wasn’t used to standalone mailboxes, having lived in townhouses or apartments all her life. One day Kelly put mail in the mailbox without raising the flag. This brought a stern message from our mailman, scawled boldly on a piece of paper: “mail will not be delivered without raising the flag!” We chuckled at the serious tone of the note, wondering if we had violated some kind of federal postal service law or something. We sure made sure that flag was up!
Over time, I got to know our mailman and soon discovered he was on the town board. From then on, Ronnie Williams always said hello as he made his rounds. He’d ask about the family when I met him at the mailbox. We would wave as he and his wife went for walks around the neighborhood. He would also say hello to me when I attended the occasional board meeting. I began to realize that Ronnie had a rare opportunity as a politician: few people know their towns the way a mail carrier does. He was on the street every day and knew everyone by name. Mail carriers arguably know their towns better than the cops that patrol them.
It was a cold November day when Ronnie last campaigned for alderman. I stopped into my local polling place and said hello to him as he greeted voters outside. I didn’t like seeing my neighbors working in the cold weather, so I returned later with hand warmers for everyone. Ronnie and the others were very appreciative.
Ronnie’s a good guy. Garner is in good hands with him as mayor. It’s good to see a neighbor do well.
I met a friend for lunch today at NeoMonde off of Hillsborough Street and Method Road. For some reason, probably its proximity to The University, the West Raleigh area has a bad problem with graffiti. As I exited the Beltline, I saw a road sign had been marked by some stupid gang. Stuff like just makes the place look trashy.
Luckily, the City of Raleigh has gotten serious about graffiti, setting up a team to deal with it. By contacting the graffiti team citizens can help clean up their neighborhoods.
I had plugged their number (831-6001) into my cellphone, so I decided to try it out. After one ring, a cheerful voice answered “City of Raleigh graffiti hotline.”
Pretty cool. I then gave her the location of the graffiti and she told me a crew would be sent out.
If more people report the graffiti they find, perhaps the taggers will move on. It certainly isn’t worth painting something if you know that it could be gone a day later. I’m hoping that by cleaning up the city, people can take more pride in where they live.
My search for a hack for the Odessey’s navigation system led me to an amazing site: Hack-A-Day. It’s a site which features imaginative uses for everyday tools – things people have dreamed up. It’s a dream website for geeks like me!
Look at the stories on today’s homepage: calculating bullet speed using Audacity (a sound editor app), a dj record cleaner, a mini camera flash coil launcher, a force-feedback turntable for “scratching” MP3s, and an opentracker aprs transmitter, among others.
I love websites that give me ideas for new products and new technologies. This one’s going on the blogroll this very minute.
Check it out, y’all!
We recently bought a Honda Odessey minivan (more on that in a moment) with a Honda Navigation system installed. I’ve been highly impressed with the system – the user interface, the accuracy, and the speed are all top-notch. While the system is close to perfect, the hacker in me can’t resist wondering what else could be done with it.
I did some searches and sure enough, there are tools out there that can modify the software. Tricks that can be done include putting new “skins” on the display, getting rid of the “nag screen” at startup, and changing the background image to any picture you’d like. Pretty cool in itself, but what if you want more? The system runs Windows CE on a SH-4 processor, just like the Sega Dreamcast. Linux has been ported to the Dreamcast, and I own one of them. Theoretically, I have all the tools I need to port Linux to the navigation system!
Why would I, you ask? Potential uses would be to create a navigation app more tailored to my needs – there are a few good Linux-based map tools out there. I could get a better handle on the data the GPS is sending: more detailed travel statistics than I currently have. Other, more entertaining uses would be to put an MPEG4 or MPEG2 player on the system – allowing you to watch video on the dashboard console. The only limit is the hardware itself – how many ports are available, how much memory is installed, etc. And if I decide to go back to the original software, its easy to reset things back to the default software.
I’m not ready to muck around with our newly-purchased car just yet, but I’m sure having fun thinking about it!
Some people think that the days of pirates are long gone. The truth is that they’re alive and well, armed with the latest modern technology and weapons. There are plenty of rogue states from which they can operate, and plenty of harbors in which to hide. The seas aren’t as tame as one might think.
Just this week, one such attack too place off the coast of Somalia. Pirates in speedboats attacked a Carnival cruise ship 100 miles offshore, firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. After a tense, 90 minute battle, the ship escaped by blasting the pirates with a sonic weapon.
During my Navy days, we transited the Malaccan Strait near Singapore. The Malaccan Strait connects the Pacific ocean to the Indian ocean. It’s one of the busiest waterways on the planet, and chock full of pirates. We were wary of other ships as we transited, though any pirate bold enough to attack a U.S. Navy destroyer deserves what he gets. Vessels without the benefit of 5 inch guns or Harpoon missiles are vulnerable to robbery, kidnapping, or death at the hands of pirates. There aren’t a lot of options when you find yourself between an AK-47 and the ocean.
We didn’t meet any pirates on that cruise, but we did rescue a boatload of Vietnamese refugees who had been attacked by pirates. The 47 men, women, and children were robbed of their food and valuables and the gas lines to their engine were severed. Fortunately for them, they were stranded near busy shipping lanes. It made me think that even in the days of GPS, satellite phones, and radar, no one is safe from pirate attacks.
One day not long ago, a man named Mark Russinovich popped a CD he purchased from Sony Music into his PC. Russinovich isn’t your typical PC user – he arguably knows more about Microsoft Windows than anyone outside of Redmond. Russinovich founded Winternals, a company that makes sophisticated utilities for Windows.
While testing a rootkit detector he was writing, Russinovich was surprised to discover that his Sony CD had secretly installed spyware on his machine, destablizing it and compromising its security. It took Russinovich’s considerable skills to cleanly remove this rootkit. What really infuriated Russinovich was Sony’s refusal to own up to the spyware.
Fortunately, Mark documented the whole procedure on his blog. Word spread around the blogosphere to sites like BoingBoing and Slashdot. Now the mainstream news media like USA Today and the BBC are exposing Sony’s dishonest tactic.
Help spread the word that Sony spies on its customers and takes over their computers. Spend your money on companies that don’t treat their customers like crooks. Until Sony reverses course on this, I won’t be buying any Sony product.
