I recently spoke with Dr. Les Kramer (the lead research scientist at Lockheed Martin in Orlando), and he said that a few years back SkyCraft saved their butts. Apparently they were asked to start producing some sort of missile or rocket part that they hadn't built in years, and they were having trouble locating one of the parts they used. Skycraft not only had the part, they had serial #001 and #002 of the part! They were thrilled to have found them there.
My last visit to Skycraft, I purchased a thin multimeter for keeping on my motorcycle. It's come in handy more than once in the past few months!
If I had to choose one thing I like most about Skycraft, it would be the cheap cables. Whereas most places charge a TON for cables, Skycraft is selling Firewire, S-Video, serial cables and many others for CHEAP! Best Buy and others must have a 1000% markup on their cables...
This is normal behavior for the Powerbook G4 -- don't panic.:^) The main reason why this is done is because of the limited amount of recharges that a lithium ion battery can take. By recharging only when it reaches 95%, the total number of recharges over time is greatly reduced, thereby increasing battery life. I agree that it is confusing at times, but if it provides a longer battery life, I feel that it's worth it.
According to the Apple KB document 10970, lithium ion batteries should be depleted fully before recharged. It also says that fully depleting the battery isn't absolutely necessary, but is recommended.
Other useful Apple KB articles to follow are 18241 and 88104 (PowerBook Power and Battery Frequently Asked Questions, Parts I and II).
Sit back and relax as Windows 98 installs on your computer.
Agh! I saw this just a few days ago when I had to reinstall Windows 98 on my girlfriend's computer. "Windows 98 makes your computer faster, more reliable, and more fun!" So reliable that I'm having to reinstall it due to random crashes and odd application behaviors... Right.:^)
I've tried using Tidy before, and it actually refuses to clean some of these M$HTML files... Apparently if there are enough errors in them (which there are), it refuses to continue.:^( Instead, I'm using some perl scripts that I've developed over time that fix a lot of what comes through.
Another thing that helps is to use demoroniser, a perl script that cleans up M$HTML code a little -- it mostly removes things like "smart" quotes and so on.
Are there any places online that show where gas stations are along that corridor of I-10? I've been contemplating taking the road trip via motorcycle, but it only has a 130 mile range before it needs to be refueled. I will probably need to bring extra gas somehow...
Therefore it might be better to ditch those stats all together, or at least make them less informative...
Yeah, cause that worked to stop all the Karma whoring on slashdot...
Maybe SETI@home could implement the same system as Slashdot -- ditch the numbers and use something like plain-English explanations...
"You have processed 123 work units" would become "You haven't processed many work units (mostly affected by you not running the client)"
"You have processed 123,456,789 work units" would become "You have processed a whole lot of units (mostly affected by you leaving your computer on 24x7 for a long time)"
"You have processed 123,456,789,012 work units" would become "You have processed an Excellent amount of units (mostly affected by you craftily setting up the client in a large computer lab)".:^)
How true... I have to work with M$-HTML code day-in, day-out and it just ain't pretty. One day I encountered some bizarre M$-HTML code for a horizontal rule -- it easily took 10 lines, 80-100 characters per line, when a simple tag would have sufficed. Then there's the countless SPAN statements, the empty statements, blank lines with nothing but a on them etc. etc...
I believe it is accomplished by having an EEPROM cartridge in the NES that is also connected to a PC via a ribbon to the RS232 (parallel) port. With special software I imagine it would be possible to just erase and rewrite the EEPROM to store the latest version of what you want to play or run. I can't seem to find any information on Google for this, though...
Hey, thanks for all the tips! Just out of curiosity, would you want to host a couple of kind souls for the night? I can talk about Linux and OS X all you want (although my girlfriend most likely will not).:^) We would be coming through there about May 10th...
My girlfriend and I are planning a road trip for this May (our planned route is listed below), and I came across some books that you may want to look into. While they don't deal with wireless hotspots or technology in general, they do deal with things that are essential for any cross-country trip: weird stuff and good food.
The first book is called Eccentric America by Jan Friedman... It highlights many interesting, different, and just plain weird places to visit. For example, there's a guy in Washington state who is building and plans to fly a hydrogen peroxide-fueled rocket, not unlike what John Carmack is currently doing. The book is also useful to find out what is weird/eccentric/etc. in your own city or town.
The second book is called Roadfood, by Michael and Jane Stern. It is a compendium of restaurants, ice cream parlors, highway diners and so on across the country. I haven't read in too much detail, but it should come in handy.
For those of you who are interested, my girlfriend and I are planning the following waypoints for our roadtrip: Tallahassee, FL -> New Orleans, LA -> Austin, TX -> Roswell, NM -> Albuquerque, NM -> Grand Canyon -> Las Vegas, NV -> San Francisco, CA -> somewhere near the CA/OR border -> Eugene, OR -> Portland, OR -> elsewhere on the way back home. The trip back will wind through Helena, MT and Denver, CO to visit some relatives, with everywhere else just being nightly waypoints. Am I bringing my laptop? Probably not... Am I bringing a digital camera? You bet!
I bought this one shortly after they switched to the new design... It is much nicer, as the keys are much more durable. The only problem is that countless people have pressed the "LIGHT" button and "Illuminator" pseudo-button and asked, "What does that do?"
About switching batteries, next time buy a CR2032 instead of a CR2016 -- it will last much longer. The battery will fit into the watch case (with a tiny amount of force). According to the specs, the CR2032 has a capacity of 220 mAh, while the CR2016 only has a capacity of 90 mAh. The only physical difference is the height, of which the CR2032 is 3.2 mm vs. 1.6 mm for the CR2016. It will fit though, trust me.:^)
This isn't a technology per se, but it's still something that has exceeded my own expectations. It's my Casio Databank watch. I have had it for eight years now, and it's still happily chugging along (I had one before it as well, but it was submerged about 1m deep in water and didn't last too long after that). The Databank takes CR2032 and CR2016 batteries (the CR2032 lasts much longer in this watch, somewhere around a decade), accepts 21mm metal link watch bands with ease, and is still the only form of "PDA" I will bring with me, ever. If only Casio came out with one that had scientific functions and unit conversions, I would be in heaven.
Undo whatever you just did: command + Z Create a new window or document: command + N Create a new folder (in Finder): command + shift + N Close a window: command + W Hide an application: command + H Cycle through the windows in a program: command + ~ Quit an application: command + Q Cycle through open programs: command + TAB Delete a file (in Finder): command + delete Empty the trash (in Finder): shift + command + delete Logout: shift + command + Q Cut the current selection: command + X Copy the current selection to the clipboard: command + C Paste the current selection to the clipboard: command + P Save the current window as a document: command + S Save the current window under a new document name: shift + command + S
Special Features
Here are some hidden short-cuts that enable you to navigate around your computer and change system settings. Each instructed is listed in italic, followed by an explanation of the feature.
Calling up the folder of a document from the current window: hold down the command key while clicking on the picture of the document that appears at the top of the active window. A menu will pop up, showing the hierarchy of folders in which the current document resides, starting with the folder containing the document at the top of the list, on down to the top most folder. (Actually, your hard drive will be at the top level of this hierarchy, just as it is in Finder.)
Viewing the contents of programs in Finder: Click on the icon of the program while holding down Control. From the menu that pops up, select "Show package contents." The programs that you install on your Mac actually consist of a number of files bundled together. To prevent the Finder from being cluttered with all these files, the system hides the files in a kind of box, called a "package." Without getting into the details, Finder displays only the main application file, and thre rest of the contents of the box are hidden from view.
Navigating to different parts of the Finder using the keyboard: Hold down Command while pressing the "tilda" (~) key. A window will pop up asking you to type the location of the folder you want to call up in "slash" notation. Type in a name, preceeded by the absolute path name, with directories separated by slashes. For example, if you want to go to "Applications," you would type "/Applications" because the Applications directory follows immediately after the root directory of your hard disk, which is represented by the forward slash, "/". (Note: this is the same "Quick Key" that lets you navigate through the different windows in active applications). This is a really important shortcut if you don't want to take your hands off the keyboard to call up a particular location in the Finder.
Removing things from the Menu Bar: While holding down the Command key, click and drag whatever you want off of the Menu Bar. Release the item and it will disappear in a poof of smoke, just like Dock items.
There are many functions in OS X that can be used by setting up shortcuts on the Menu Bar. For example, the sound controls of your Mac can be manipulated via a speaker icon in the Menu Bar; likewise, you can monitor how much battery life you have with a battery icon. All these things are turned on either by choices in the System Preferences control panel, or by dragging things onto the Menu Bar. You may want to remove items from time to time, if you decide you no longer want them cluttering up your Menu Bar. The above shortcut is the simplest way to do this.
I agree with you about the rarity of "lone rangers" in pure math... Even though Andrew Wiles constructed a proof to Fermat's Last Theorem in isolation, he still relied on the previous works of Gerhard Frey, Barry Mazur, Kenneth Ribet, Karl Rubin, Jean-Pierre Serre (this is from the article linked above). Standing on the shoulders of giants, indeed...
Is what is ATi going to after the 9900? Are they going to call the next card the 10000? I don't know of many products that made it up to the 9000 moniker and kept going. I guess they could just go back to letters like AMD and Microsoft...
Slashdot Mirror
I recently spoke with Dr. Les Kramer (the lead research scientist at Lockheed Martin in Orlando), and he said that a few years back SkyCraft saved their butts. Apparently they were asked to start producing some sort of missile or rocket part that they hadn't built in years, and they were having trouble locating one of the parts they used. Skycraft not only had the part, they had serial #001 and #002 of the part! They were thrilled to have found them there.
My last visit to Skycraft, I purchased a thin multimeter for keeping on my motorcycle. It's come in handy more than once in the past few months!
If I had to choose one thing I like most about Skycraft, it would be the cheap cables. Whereas most places charge a TON for cables, Skycraft is selling Firewire, S-Video, serial cables and many others for CHEAP! Best Buy and others must have a 1000% markup on their cables...
This is normal behavior for the Powerbook G4 -- don't panic. :^) The main reason why this is done is because of the limited amount of recharges that a lithium ion battery can take. By recharging only when it reaches 95%, the total number of recharges over time is greatly reduced, thereby increasing battery life. I agree that it is confusing at times, but if it provides a longer battery life, I feel that it's worth it.
According to the Apple KB document 10970, lithium ion batteries should be depleted fully before recharged. It also says that fully depleting the battery isn't absolutely necessary, but is recommended.
Other useful Apple KB articles to follow are 18241 and 88104 (PowerBook Power and Battery Frequently Asked Questions, Parts I and II).
Apple's Knowledge Base can be found here.
Hey, thanks! I'll take a closer look at these places on maps.yahoo.com...
Another thing that helps is to use demoroniser, a perl script that cleans up M$HTML code a little -- it mostly removes things like "smart" quotes and so on.
Are there any places online that show where gas stations are along that corridor of I-10? I've been contemplating taking the road trip via motorcycle, but it only has a 130 mile range before it needs to be refueled. I will probably need to bring extra gas somehow...
"You have processed 123 work units" would become "You haven't processed many work units (mostly affected by you not running the client)"
"You have processed 123,456,789 work units" would become "You have processed a whole lot of units (mostly affected by you leaving your computer on 24x7 for a long time)"
"You have processed 123,456,789,012 work units" would become "You have processed an Excellent amount of units (mostly affected by you craftily setting up the client in a large computer lab)".
How true... I have to work with M$-HTML code day-in, day-out and it just ain't pretty. One day I encountered some bizarre M$-HTML code for a horizontal rule -- it easily took 10 lines, 80-100 characters per line, when a simple tag would have sufficed. Then there's the countless SPAN statements, the empty statements, blank lines with nothing but a on them etc. etc...
You're alive! My long lost roommate from yore. Do you have those tickets for the show on St. Patty's Day?
I believe it is accomplished by having an EEPROM cartridge in the NES that is also connected to a PC via a ribbon to the RS232 (parallel) port. With special software I imagine it would be possible to just erase and rewrite the EEPROM to store the latest version of what you want to play or run. I can't seem to find any information on Google for this, though...
OK... Thanks anyway!
Hey, thanks for all the tips! Just out of curiosity, would you want to host a couple of kind souls for the night? I can talk about Linux and OS X all you want (although my girlfriend most likely will not). :^) We would be coming through there about May 10th...
My girlfriend and I are planning a road trip for this May (our planned route is listed below), and I came across some books that you may want to look into. While they don't deal with wireless hotspots or technology in general, they do deal with things that are essential for any cross-country trip: weird stuff and good food.
The first book is called Eccentric America by Jan Friedman... It highlights many interesting, different, and just plain weird places to visit. For example, there's a guy in Washington state who is building and plans to fly a hydrogen peroxide-fueled rocket, not unlike what John Carmack is currently doing. The book is also useful to find out what is weird/eccentric/etc. in your own city or town.
The second book is called Roadfood , by Michael and Jane Stern. It is a compendium of restaurants, ice cream parlors, highway diners and so on across the country. I haven't read in too much detail, but it should come in handy.
For those of you who are interested, my girlfriend and I are planning the following waypoints for our roadtrip: Tallahassee, FL -> New Orleans, LA -> Austin, TX -> Roswell, NM -> Albuquerque, NM -> Grand Canyon -> Las Vegas, NV -> San Francisco, CA -> somewhere near the CA/OR border -> Eugene, OR -> Portland, OR -> elsewhere on the way back home. The trip back will wind through Helena, MT and Denver, CO to visit some relatives, with everywhere else just being nightly waypoints. Am I bringing my laptop? Probably not... Am I bringing a digital camera? You bet!
Are you still as amazed as I am that Lemonade Stand was written entirely in BASIC? It seemed so much more complex than that back then...
I bought this one shortly after they switched to the new design... It is much nicer, as the keys are much more durable. The only problem is that countless people have pressed the "LIGHT" button and "Illuminator" pseudo-button and asked, "What does that do?"
:^)
About switching batteries, next time buy a CR2032 instead of a CR2016 -- it will last much longer. The battery will fit into the watch case (with a tiny amount of force). According to the specs, the CR2032 has a capacity of 220 mAh, while the CR2016 only has a capacity of 90 mAh. The only physical difference is the height, of which the CR2032 is 3.2 mm vs. 1.6 mm for the CR2016. It will fit though, trust me.
I'm only 23, so eight years is a long time for me. :^)
This isn't a technology per se, but it's still something that has exceeded my own expectations. It's my Casio Databank watch. I have had it for eight years now, and it's still happily chugging along (I had one before it as well, but it was submerged about 1m deep in water and didn't last too long after that). The Databank takes CR2032 and CR2016 batteries (the CR2032 lasts much longer in this watch, somewhere around a decade), accepts 21mm metal link watch bands with ease, and is still the only form of "PDA" I will bring with me, ever. If only Casio came out with one that had scientific functions and unit conversions, I would be in heaven.
I have a functioning Apple //c in my room. Lemonade Stand, here we come! The Atari 2600 is in the living room...
OK, here (source unknown):
Quick keys
Undo whatever you just did: command + Z
Create a new window or document: command + N
Create a new folder (in Finder): command + shift + N
Close a window: command + W
Hide an application: command + H
Cycle through the windows in a program: command + ~
Quit an application: command + Q
Cycle through open programs: command + TAB
Delete a file (in Finder): command + delete
Empty the trash (in Finder): shift + command + delete
Logout: shift + command + Q
Cut the current selection: command + X
Copy the current selection to the clipboard: command + C
Paste the current selection to the clipboard: command + P
Save the current window as a document: command + S
Save the current window under a new document name: shift + command + S
Special Features
Here are some hidden short-cuts that enable you to navigate around your computer and change system settings. Each instructed is listed in italic, followed by an explanation of the feature.
Calling up the folder of a document from the current window: hold down the command key while clicking on the picture of the document that appears at the top of the active window. A menu will pop up, showing the hierarchy of folders in which the current document resides, starting with the folder containing the document at the top of the list, on down to the top most folder. (Actually, your hard drive will be at the top level of this hierarchy, just as it is in Finder.)
Viewing the contents of programs in Finder: Click on the icon of the program while holding down Control. From the menu that pops up, select "Show package contents." The programs that you install on your Mac actually consist of a number of files bundled together. To prevent the Finder from being cluttered with all these files, the system hides the files in a kind of box, called a "package." Without getting into the details, Finder displays only the main application file, and thre rest of the contents of the box are hidden from view.
Navigating to different parts of the Finder using the keyboard: Hold down Command while pressing the "tilda" (~) key. A window will pop up asking you to type the location of the folder you want to call up in "slash" notation. Type in a name, preceeded by the absolute path name, with directories separated by slashes. For example, if you want to go to "Applications," you would type "/Applications" because the Applications directory follows immediately after the root directory of your hard disk, which is represented by the forward slash, "/". (Note: this is the same "Quick Key" that lets you navigate through the different windows in active applications). This is a really important shortcut if you don't want to take your hands off the keyboard to call up a particular location in the Finder.
Removing things from the Menu Bar: While holding down the Command key, click and drag whatever you want off of the Menu Bar. Release the item and it will disappear in a poof of smoke, just like Dock items.
There are many functions in OS X that can be used by setting up shortcuts on the Menu Bar. For example, the sound controls of your Mac can be manipulated via a speaker icon in the Menu Bar; likewise, you can monitor how much battery life you have with a battery icon. All these things are turned on either by choices in the System Preferences control panel, or by dragging things onto the Menu Bar. You may want to remove
items from time to time, if you decide you no longer want them cluttering up your Menu Bar. The above shortcut is the simplest way to do this.
I agree with you about the rarity of "lone rangers" in pure math... Even though Andrew Wiles constructed a proof to Fermat's Last Theorem in isolation, he still relied on the previous works of Gerhard Frey, Barry Mazur, Kenneth Ribet, Karl Rubin, Jean-Pierre Serre (this is from the article linked above). Standing on the shoulders of giants, indeed...
Is what is ATi going to after the 9900? Are they going to call the next card the 10000? I don't know of many products that made it up to the 9000 moniker and kept going. I guess they could just go back to letters like AMD and Microsoft...