Gessel On... » photo

Roses are Blooming

Gessel — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:21:12 +0000

And postie is back-reved to 1.1.5, which worked as expected. The new version doesn’t work as expected. As the old version was doing what I needed, and very nicely, I’ll back rev to it, though I’m a little worried that WordPress 3.0 will break it. Pictures are nicely resized and the framing is what I’d hope. I’ll upgrade everything else and then try postie 1.4.x again.

Rental Cadillac DTS

Gessel — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:07:28 +0000

Wtf? Another Caddy? They drive OK, but what is up with the mid-90s vintage entertainment system? Analog in only? American cars always have really crappy music navigation interfaces, but even low-end cars with the janky microsoft sync interface at least can read off a 2GB FAT USB stick (no larger).

If you’re trying to compete with Mercedes an Infinity, you have to be able to read at least a FAT32 file system if not an ipod and usefully navigate folders and playlists.

Fresh Raspberries

Gessel — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 06:29:32 +0000

The raspberries in the yard are fruiting. A few have turned ripe ahead of the rest, but it looks like it will be a pretty good harvest this season, if we’re home enough to pick them.

Multi-Lingual Graffiti

Gessel — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:12:19 +0000

The “Vulva” theme has faded, this is a thought-provoking replacement.

Wierd widescreen

Gessel — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:28:29 +0000

My UAL flight had 4:3 side screens and a 16:9 center screen. The program material was 4:3 and dynamically distorted to fit the 16:9 screen.

Now I’m used to 16:9 screens showing horribly distorted video in hotel rooms; it seems every hotel has invested in wide screen TVs but, hey, broadcast is 4:3. So they’re fixed at “stretch” and only occasionally do you find a TV that you can reset to pillar box so it doesn’t look horrible. And I thought that was bad.

But this is amazing – the screen has a variable distortion field – stretch is zero in the center, but becomes more pronounced on the edges. That means that the necessary compensation is worse than 2:1 on the outside edges, just horribly distorted, while the center is undistorted. I suppose the theory was an analog of fovial vision… gone awry, but the result is just weird, disturbing when someone walks across the screen and seems to get twice as fat from center to edge. Who thought that was a good idea?

People: do not distort the image. Just because you paid for the pixels does not mean you must use them.

My nuts are cold

Gessel — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:19:35 +0000

UAL Triple 7, three class plane, cross country flight (SFO-IAD): about as far as you can fly CONUS to CONUS, and I can’t get my nuts warmed?

I’d trade the puffy comforter for warm nuts any day.

Office bbq

Gessel — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:08:31 +0000

One could get used to la weather…

EE engineers and mat sci wanted

Gessel — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:39:27 +0000

At halcyon molecular. Nice lab… I mean mansion.

Don’t Clean Eyes With Soap

Gessel — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:18:46 +0000

Ouch ouch. 3 days later and still quite lovely. This is what I get for using earth friendly Dr. Bronner’s soap in an earth friendly refillable soap dispenser, which tends to develop a little plug of soap, and which was ejected directly into my eye. Earth friendly but not eye friendly…

Ceiling Cat Is Watching You

Gessel — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:29:06 +0000

For reasons some people don’t understand, I think ceiling cat is pretty funny. Since my stray cats aren’t very good at behaving I made a paper one using a pattern from tubby paws. Now Ceiling Cat is watching. The best part is I’m the only one who notices.

I think I need to install camera’s in ceiling cat’s eyes… new project.