Odd

On odd things that are just entertaining.

The end of a comic era

Sunday, May 14, 2023 

Tonight I listened to the last episode of NPRs excellent and hilarious Ask Me Another, though originally broadcast on 2021-09-24, it didn’t reach my ears until tonight thanks to the magic of podcasts. It was genuinely hard to hear them sign off for the last time.  I will really miss this show and the warmth and good spirits of Ophira Eisenberg and Jonathan Coulton.

I’ve been listening to this show since it started, back so far as to have been over syndicated FM broadcast on KQED at home and since on various digital media over the years wherever I’ve been, even here in Iraq.  It suffered when Covid hit, the energy and charm didn’t translate well to zoom and without an audience as so many things didn’t and sadly didn’t live to see Covid restrictions lifted.  It would have been fitting if they’d been able to record their last show at The Bell House one more time.  Maybe someday they can have a reunion show.

US Public Radio has been an anchor of good quality programming, from Car Talk, which I still listen to weekly despite the questions being increasingly out of touch (though the cars have long been fairly irrelevant) and Fresh Air and Terry Gross‘ voice, which came from my mother’s kitchen radio every afternoon from WHYY about as far back as I can remember.

Posted at 17:42:12 GMT-0700

Category: EventsFunnyMediaPositiveReviews

Kitty Poop (1995)

Tuesday, June 27, 2017 

Many years ago (21 years, 9 months as of this post), I used some as-of-then only slightly out of date equipment to record a one week time lapse of the cats’ litter box.

I found the video on a CD-ROM (remember those?) and thought I’d see if it was still usable. It wasn’t – Quicktime had abandoned support for most of the 1990’s era codecs, and as it was pre-internet, there just wasn’t any support any more. I had to fire up my old Mac 9500, which booted just fine after years of sitting, even if most of the rubber feet on the peripherals had long since turned to goo. The OS9 version of QT let me resave as uncompressed, which of course was way too big for the massive dual 9GB drives in that machine. Youtube would eat the uncompressed format and this critical archival record is preserved for a little longer.

Time lapse of the litter box. Shot in Sept, 1995 in San Francisco, CA. Captured with a RasterOps ColorBoard 364 Nubus card from a Sony XC-999 on a Mac IIfx.

Posted at 15:16:46 GMT-0700

Category: CatsFilmsFunnyOddSelf-publishingVanity sitesvideo

Tortuga Stalking the Yard

Thursday, July 23, 2015 

Tortuga Profile

Tortuga quarter

Tortuga facing

Posted at 01:24:04 GMT-0700

Category: Catsphoto

Better Cabling May Fix The Internet

Sunday, February 8, 2015 

Do you find that the internet seems harsh? Do you find Facebook unclear and that it lacks dynamic contrast? Is there less detail than there should be? Do you notice a loss of energy from the Internet?

It might all come down to the network cables themselves.

AudioQuest Diamond Ethernet Cable

Well designed cables like these have perfect-surface extreme-purity silver conductors minimizing distortion caused by grain boundaries in inferior OFHC, OCC, or 8N conductors for better clarity and reduced harshness. Explanations and arguments will be both more clearly constructed and less confrontational.

Noise and other distractions are reduced by a 3-layer noise dissipation system, not just shielding your data but preventing modulation of your ground plane by noisy RFI.  Even more problematically for those doing research on the web, the untested orientation of standard network cables results in inferior data quality.

Standard network cables either don’t enforce orientation of the pairs at all (Cat 5e and below) or merely segregate pairs with a flexible spacer (Cat 6 and above). These cables use solid polyethylene insulation to ensure critical geometry is preserved to minimize phase errors. Phase errors can easily result in Doppler shifts manifest in either an unnaturally shrill tone or affected bass (sometimes manifest as “mansplaining”).

Most remarkably, the dielectric bias system puts a 72V bias on the insulation and thus organizes the molecules of the insulation to minimize energy loss which creates a surprisingly black background, more essential than ever in the wake of Ferguson.

Only $10,521 for a 12m cable. Now that the internet has become our primary source of information, understanding, and personal communication this is a tiny price to pay for clear, undistorted data.

Posted at 19:24:18 GMT-0700

Category: OddTechnology

Basra Snow Storm

Sunday, February 8, 2015 

I was feeling a little left out, reading posts by people digging out of snow storms and here I am in Basra where it gets down to 10C at night sometimes and usually hits the mid 20’s during the day.  Rough.  But the weather here came through with our own sort of snow storm.

 

Blizzard Brown-out conditions

Starting to look like a brown-out!

 

 

Snow covered yard furniture!

 

Obligatory shot of the yard furniture getting covered.

 

I've got snow on my head!

 

Kitty’s head is starting to show some accumulation.

 

Can't see more than a few hundred meters with this snow!

 

With all this blowing through you can barely see a few hundred meters!

 

starting to accumulate!

 

It’s really starting to accumulate. Where’s the snow blower?

 

Takes special cleaning to get that snow off.

 

It takes some special cleaning after playing out in it.

Posted at 06:20:38 GMT-0700

Category: CatsphotoPlacesTravelWeather

Cat Watch

Monday, February 2, 2015 

Cat Watch
Cat_Watch
The twins resting after a busy day.

 

The Twins

Posted at 17:48:24 GMT-0700

Category: CatsphotoTravel

Regional Energy Drink

Monday, December 1, 2014 

I’ve run across this energy drink in dramatic packaging.  Energy drinks aren’t really my thing, but I thought I’d try it: slightly orange tasting fizzy water, mildly sweet with that slightly weird energy drink taste.  But the bottle is fun:

Bomba Bottle Image

It is made in Austria and seems to be distributed more to the East than the West, at least as far as my travels have indicated.  I have seen it in a lot of Middle-Eastern markets, but not in many European ones.

The lid release mechanism is kind of thematically clever.

Bomba Pull Top Image

I suspect this would be a particularly problematic beverage to forget in your carry-on luggage.

Posted at 18:29:45 GMT-0700

Category: FunnyNeutralOddphotoReviews

Burnt Outlet

Saturday, March 8, 2014 

Occasionally electrical systems here just catch on fire for no apparent
reason.

burnt_outlet.jpg
Posted at 07:39:27 GMT-0700

Category: OddPlacesTechnology

Cactus Farmer

Wednesday, December 25, 2013 

Just a few years back, when I was in 3rd or 4th Grade, my brother and I went to visit David and Jesse Lenat at their Cactus Farm. While we were exploring the green houses, their dad, Richard, gave my brother and I each a cactus to take home.

Mine lived in a small pot near a window through the rest of grade school and high school and then my mom cared for it through college. It grew into a little cluster of pencil thin, green, spiky pads over the years.

After I graduated, moved to California and got an apartment in SF; I was home for Christmas one year and took one of the pads wrapped in tissue to California. It grew well there and now produces big, bright yellow flowers every year.

This Christmas, I stuffed two tiny buds into glass bottles and brought them to Iraq and planted in the yard with one of the cat’s help (paw in the background).

20131223_122142.jpg
Posted at 03:01:17 GMT-0700

Category: CatsGeopostphotoPlaces

Cat day

Tuesday, October 29, 2013 

Happy cat day.

20131030_085515.jpg
Posted at 23:05:50 GMT-0700

Category: CatsEventsFunny