Archive for September, 2008
Monday, September 29th, 2008
McDougle Mustangs at UNC Volleyball
Ariel’s volleyball team went to the UNC vs. Boston volleyball match Saturday night where they got a chance to serve for t-shirts and then participate in a clinic with the team (along with a LOT of other girls there for the same chance).
The match went 3-0 as Boston College was completely outclassed by UNC
Here’s Ariel [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Kevin
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
MP3’s from Amazon: Cheaper, Better, Easier
I’ve been a longtime user of iTunes. I love the iTunes Music Store. Great interface. Good prices. So it’s with some reluctance that I realize I have to break it off with Apple.
Sorry, Apple…
Amazon is offering MP3 downloads encoded at high bitrates (i.e.: they sound great), cost (usually) 89 cents each [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Kevin
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
Replace a MacBook Hard Drive
Click of Death
It’s a sound any geek will recognize and one which we all dread: the distinctive click… click… click… of a hard drive that has died. You don’t even need to run any utilities — you already know the drive is shot and that you’re going to be doing surgery. Unfortunately, [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Kevin
Friday, September 19th, 2008
A Picture Worth 1000 Words
Anyone call for a superhero? How about the Atomic Tiki?
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Kevin
Friday, September 19th, 2008
Plastic — Results and Second Run
I’ve now completed two batches of plastic and have learned a bit more. First, there is a LOT of air whipped into styrofoam. I can shape and form my plastic, but I’m having trouble getting all the air out so significant bubbles are forming in the hardened plastic.
Plastic disk from first batch
Plastic disk [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Kevin
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Move Your Linux Home Folder
I ran into a significant problem today at work — my home folder was filling up the root partition on my hard drive. Fortunately, I have a very large partition mounted as /data on the same system that has lots of free space. It turns out that moving your home folder is very [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Kevin
Saturday, September 13th, 2008
Better Living Through Chemicals
Yes, there was a time when a company could use “Better Living Through Chemicals” as their motto (the company was DuPont, by the way). Too bad we, as a society, have developed such a distrust of science and technology that such a motto can no longer work.
Tonight Ari and I decided to make plastic. [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Kevin
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
Atomic Tiki
My daughter walks in the door this afternoon and announces that she needs my help to come up with a superhero name for school tomorrow (it’s a spirit thing for the volleyball team). I decided to whip up an emblem for a tee for her as well (we have some iron-on transfers laying around). [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Kevin
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
Happy End of the World Day!
Hurray! At last! The Large Hadron Collider fires up today for the first time.
xkcd:
Too bad it only studies large hadrons. I hear the small ones are so much more interesting.
On a serious aside: I do still regret that the Superconducting Supercollider was abandoned in Texas as the U.S. began abandoning basic [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Kevin
Sunday, September 7th, 2008
Americans and DIY Skills
Over at Popular Mechanics you can find an article entitled “In Age of High Tech, Are Americans Losing Touch with DIY Skills?” Kudos to Neatorama for finding and bringing it to my attention.
It starts with one of my favorite Heinlein quotes:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher [...]
