Bob Congdon

The Quick and the Dead

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:00:00 GMT

I split one of my fingernails this evening. It started to bleed because the crack extended down into the quick. Which made me wonder: why do we say "into the quick"? A quick search turns up that the word originally meant living or alive. So it's the living part of the nail. Makes sense. And the phrase The Quick and the Dead wasn't originally applied to gunslingers. It was meant to refer to the living and the dead.

Sushi Bullies

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:30:00 GMT

Sushi Bullies â�� the Japanese equivalent of the Soup Nazi.

The eyeballing game

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:00:00 GMT

The eyeballing game shows you series of geometries that need to be adjusted a little bit to make them right. I got a couple of them "spot on" but it takes concentration to get below 3.0 as an average score.

Smoking Cat

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:00:00 GMT

Earlier this evening the kids and I were in my office playing a game. We didn't notice when Murka the cat jumped up on the desk. As she weaved between the computers on the desk, she slid under a halogen desk lamp. My son noticed smoke coming from under the lamp. Murka's tail was right up against the bulb getting singed. A second or two more and we might have had feline flambé. She was blithely unaware and seemed to enjoy the sudden attention. It took over an hour to get rid of the acrid smell of burning cat hair. Yuck.

World of Goo

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Remember Tower of Goo from Experimental Gameplay? The same folks have built World of Goo, a full-fledged game. It's currently available for Windows and Wii; eventually for Macintosh and Linux as well. You can download the demo here.

World of Goo is a physics game where you build structures out of balls of goo of varying properties. The goo balls squeak and chatter as they move around. Imagine if Tim Burton and Danny Elfman collaborated on a game. It has that sort of look and sound.

Flickering Lights

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:00:00 GMT

I watched Flickering Lights on DVD last night. It's a Danish film from 2000 about four small-time gangsters from Copenhagen who steal $4 million krones from their gangster boss and try to escape to Barcelona. Along the way they're forced to hide out in the countryside, in an old, wrecked building. If you like Tarantino, Coen Brothers and the like, and don't mind reading subtitles, it's worth checking out. The writing and cast are terrific.

One cast member seemed very familiar (the second from the left on the DVD cover). I couldn't remember where I'd seen him before. It's Mads Mikkelsen who played the evil Le Chiffre in Casino Royale.

I borrowed the DVD from a co-worker (Thanks Henrik!). It's available on Netflix.

My only complaint about the DVD is with some of the translations in the subtitles. It's tricky to translate slang and cultural references but a few of them here took away from the film. For example, in one conversation two characters talk about theme parks and refer to Disneyland and Six Flags complaining that the latter had "too many Canucks". Huh? According to a comment on IMDB, the conversation was about two Danish parks "Tivoli" and "Bakken". And rather than complaining about Canadians (which makes little sense in the film) they were complaining about Swedes.

Doesn't Just Work

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:30:00 GMT

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I bought an Airport Express to wirelessly share a printer. Setup was easy and everything seemed to work smoothly. But my wife started having problems printing. The job would get accepted and get stuck. The Airport Express was dropping off the network. Looking at the device log, it was dropping off and then trying to reconnect every 20 minutes or so. I found Volker's post from 2005 with the same symptoms as well as a fix. Problem solved. Hard to believe that in three years Apple hasn't fixed the issue or at least released a KB article on it.

Pearls Before Swine

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:30:00 GMT

My son enjoys reading Pearls Before Swine. I recently started reading it as well. The strip revolves around a group of generically-named animals (Rat, Pig, Zebra, etc). I especially liked this one:

It's an reference to the classic Krazy Kat comic strip. Works even if you don't get the reference.

Not So Extreme

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT

All the laptops in our household now support 802.11n but our current access point only supports 802.11g. This is plenty fast for Internet access but I wanted to see if I could improve the speed of backups to our NAS. So I bought an Apple AirPort Extreme. (Yes, this is the third Apple product I've mentioned in a row).

The AirPort Extreme supports both 2.4GHz or 5GHz so my plan was to use 802.11n over 5Ghz and plug our existing router into the AirPort and run it at 2.4Ghz to support the other WiFi devices in our house. Setup was quick and easy. When I was in the same room as the AirPort, the signal strength was excellent. But when I moved from room to room, the signal would sometimes drop precipitously. In some rooms it was substantially worse than the 802.11g access point. This wasn't looking too good.

So I tried a different approach. Use 802.11n at 2.4Ghz. Although not as speedy as 5Ghz, it's still a decent speed boost over 802.11g. Initially it seemed better but I got the same signal drop offs in some rooms. And it wasn't consistent. Sometimes it would work fine for a bit and then drop off. I made all of these changes late at night so I don't think it was cordless phone or microwave interference. And our existing 802.11g access point doesn't exhibit this type of behavior.

So back to the Apple Store it went for return. I still like the idea of going 802.11n at 5Ghz but looks like I'll have to try another product.

One less USB cable

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

I have a Canon printer in my office at home. If I need to print something I plug the printer's USB cable into my laptop. But I'm not always in my office. And it's a hassle when we have multiple laptops sharing the same printer. So I bought an Apple AirPort Express.

Setup was easy and printing for both OS X and Windows works fine. The only issue I had which took a few tries to get right was setting up the printer in Windows. You need to install the latest version of Bonjour for Windows and run the Bonjour Printer Wizard. The installer insisted that Bonjour had already been installed but the Printer Wizard wasn't there. I'm not sure if Bonjour had been installed by Boot Camp or iTunes but the fix was to uninstall and then reinstall it.

New Laptop

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:00:00 GMT

My wife's Thinkpad T43 has reached retirement age — we bought it in early 2005. She's run out of disk space for all or her photos and music. I tried to install a larger drive but Lenovo made it nearly impossible to upgrade.

What to buy as a replacement? We've had good luck with Thinkpads so I considered the new Thinkpad T500. It's pricey but a comparably configured Thinkpad T500 is about $200 cheaper than my other option, a MacBook Pro. My wife relies on several Windows-only applications but the MBP is solid running Windows too. And, if you consider the $200 to be the Apple Tax for being allowed to run OS X, it's not so bad.

We ended up going with the MBP. I installed Windows under Boot Camp and then moved all of her data and applications over. She's been using it for about a week and is happy, especially with the speed — and all of that free disk space! Her only major adjustment so far has been the Backspace/Delete key.

Yearbook Yourself

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:00:00 GMT

Yearbook Yourself lets see what you might look like as a teenager through the last few decades. Here's me in 1952:

Swell! (Via kottke.org)

Death Star over San Francisco

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 03:30:00 GMT

It's Imperial Fleet Week in San Francisco.

Watch the whole thing.

Donut Peaches

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:30:00 GMT

We have a membership in Tiny's Organic Farm which gives us a steady supply of locally-grown organic fruits and vegetables each week. This week's bag included a box of Donut Peaches.

Very tasty but the box probably wouldn't fool Homer Simpson.