Archive for the 'Science' Category

I am seeing an increasing number of spammy comments that are obviously written by a semi-intelligent human actually responding to the content of the targeted post, but for which the content is almost completely devoid of useful signal. Almost, but not quite.

So, I have decided I’ll employ a new policy.

I’m going to let such comments stand. Especially when they bend over backwards to complement my work. I like that. I’m shallow that way.

However, if the URL and/or email address associated with the comment is nothing but a marketing splurb, those particular fields will be deleted.

I recently acquired a new pinball machine. Got it in unrestored condition for a decent price; low enough that I could make my money back and then some by parting it out. Don’t want to do that, though, as it is always sad to see something of limited production be destroyed.

Specifically, a Williams PIN-BOT. PIN-BOT was a very popular– 12,001 units made– pinball machine manufactured in 1986.

As always, the Internet Pinball Database has a complete set of information, manuals, ROM images, and pictures of PIN-BOT. Love that site.

Now, this particular PIN-BOT is a rather odd machine, when it comes to unrestored pinball machines.

Notably, the machine is beat to hell. Detailed pictures of exactly what I mean on the click through. It is missing the arch assembly entirely (the purplish plastic thing normally found on top).

The playfield has quite a few bare spots — heavy wear — and it is obvious that mylar was put onto the playfield after a number of spots had already worn through.

However, just about every lamp works. And all of the mechanics work just fine. Sure, it needs a flipper rebuild, but that is too be expected!

Hell, even the plastics are in good shape. The only plastic with damage is the spiral ramp and that was quite competently repaired! I have never seen a PIN-BOT with an intact spiral ramp.

Finally, all of the displays work and the ground-fault noise is present, but minimal. A couple of new capacitors and the audio should be clear as a bell. Beyond that, there are a couple of switches out, but that is it for electrical faults.

Once I replace all rubber rings, do a flipper rebuild, and fix a few switches, there is nothing about this machine that should negatively impact play. And a great machine this is!!

Of course, nothing beyond these photos will happen until post WWDC.

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For mother’s day, one of my wonderful wife’s requests was to have a bit of a Ms. PacMan marathon.

So, out came the ghetto arcade controller and, a bit longer than expected later, a Ms. PacMan marathon she had! (A bit longer because a nasty latency bug has cropped up in MAME OS X somewhere along the way. I found a workaround. But, yuck.)

Now, MAME is full screen and pausing the game just to deal with iTunes shuffle play song selection suckage (since iTunes on the MAME machine sends tunage to the garage workspace) is not considered good gaming etiquette.

Clearly, I need a shell script to control iTunes. Remote Buddy is cool, but it is too slow, requires too much configuration, and, after much use, has proven a bit flaky. A simple, straightforward, shell script is sufficient and, certainly, I cannot have been the first too think of this.

I wasn’t! I found this ancient hint on MacOSXHints.com.

David Schlosnagle — who seems to have disappeared — wrote a very useful little shell script that can play, pause, go to the next track, and set the output volume. The script, as posted, doesn’t quite work all the time due to (I presume) shell changes between 10.0(?) and Leopard.

So, I grabbed a copy of the script, dropped it in my hacques repository, and have updated it for Leopard. I also added the ability to set ratings from the command line (and the status command will show the currently playing track’s rating). Minor changes, really.

The latest version can always be had at http://svn.red-bean.com/bbum/trunk/hacques/itunes.sh.

Thanks to David for doing this in the first place!!

Over the weekend, I received one (1) box of electronic junk. Not just any box of electronic junk (as I have many of those, as it is), but one Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronic Junk.

As per the TGIMBOEJ rules, I took some junk treasures and replaced it with a bunch of my own junk stuff.

And, as per the rules, I took a handful of photos of some of the stuff I pulled out. Not all.

I did not take photos of the stuff I put in. That is for the next person on the list to discover fully. Some vague clues, though: I added some antique semiconductors, some power management related componentry, some completely random small bits of goodness, a working caseless gigabit switch, and a purely mechanical device that is gloriously elegant in its implementation. And some other stuff, too.

More TGIMBOEJ pr0n on the click through….

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Quite a while ago, I wrote about fatblogging and, as of about a year ago, that my attempts to get myself below my then 240+ (247 peak in years past) lbs. Not a healthy weight for a 38 year old, even at a relatively tall 6 foot+ in height.

Well… I did. I dropped below 230 briefly and have since climbed back to 238. Why? Not keeping track of my weight on a daily basis diligently enough, not responding appropriately when my weight was heading in the wrong direction, and not exercising with any consistency.

I had been using Google 15 to track my weight. Neat. Basic. Flash. Yuck.

Now? I’ll be using a Wii Fit to, at the least, track my weight. Not only is it a fun little set of mini games that are focused on various dimensions — strength, flexibility, balance, endurance — of exercise, but it has a great user interface for tracking your weight over time.

But I’ll also be using to track much more than my weight. It actually has an awesome set of random exercises that appear to be really well suited to keeping on top of flexibility, balance, and basic strength training.

Does the Wii Fit replace going to a gym? Hell, no. But I never go to a gym. I hate gyms. And, if statistics are any indication, most of the population hates gyms, too. I’ll hike and bike instead, thanks.

We did find a few bugs in the Wii Fit’s “health quantification” algorithms. The Wii Fit assigns a “Wii Fit age” to each user based on performance, age, and BMI.

The initial set of tests don’t so much capture your initial physical condition as they do your ability to comprehend instructions for a wildly foreign user interface quickly.

My wife (who is nearly the same age as me) ended up with a Wii Fit age of 54 and my 7 year old son, Roger, turned up a 23.

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Hey! Today is 5/19.

Five years ago today, I was sitting in Apple’s employee orientation with a big glass o’ the kool-id in front of me.

Still having fun and making cool stuff.

I have always had a soft spot for cactus. They are really quite remarkable plants, after all.

A plant that has figured out a way to exist in some of the harshest climates on the planet while also producing massive growth.

Even more impressive, cactus often produce just flat out stunning blooms.

I have one barrel cactus that is less than 10 inches in diameter that still produced a bloom that was well over 1 foot tall and a good 4″ in diameter! All from what looked to be some little fuzzy growth nubbins in the spring. Better yet, it looks like this cactus is going to do the same again this year!

Like orchids, Cactus often rely upon non-bee pollinators and, thus, it isn’t altogether surprising that their blooms are not really optimized to making the pollen as accessible as possible.

I found this particular cactus on someone’s yard clippings pile while driving home one day. I stopped and grabbed a big chunk.

I figured that I would throw it in the ground and it would either take root or turn to compost.

Take root it did! Last year it didn’t do much, but it didn’t rot either. Apparently, it was setting down roots.

This year, though, it decided to grow what I thought were a bunch of new leaves.

It turns out that they were, in fact, buds and the cactus was going to flower!

This cactus is some kind of prickly pear (Opuntia) and the flower buds are very likely growing on top of what will turn into fruit. All the better because prickly pear is quite delicious with a unique flavor.

And, if the spine are not obvious enough, prickly pear is often one of the more painful fruits to clean unless you are very very careful.

The blossoms are compact, but just loaded with pollen. I haven’t seen anything visiting them yet, but they may be a flower optimized to some kind of night flying pollinator — typically a moth or bat.

The prickly pear (Opuntia) is one of the few cold tolerant cactus species. They are commonly found throughout the southwest US and Mexico.

Given that they grow very quickly, it is common to see piles of prickly pear cuttings at the side of the road. They sprout easily and, thus, it is trivial to start your own pear garden.

I have another species of prickly pear at the other corner of the house. It looks like it is setting blooms, too, which amazes me given that I just dropped cuttings — found on the side of the road — in the ground last fall!

The two that I have aren’t particularly spiny, but their looks are misleading. The little tufts of what look to be hair on the pads are actually needle sharp, hair thin, spikes that will get into your skin and are quite irritating.

Definitely to be handled with gloves! Or just leave ‘em alone and enjoy the interesting growth and occasional flowers!

Update: Embedded the BoingBoing TV segment on reading AmEx blue cards.

American Express decided to “automatically upgrade” my plebeian green card to an American Express Blue card.

Beyond giving me the “privilege” of paying AmEx a monthly exorbitant interest rate if I don’t pay the full balance, the card has an embedded RFID chip that is used to “wave and pay” at a bunch of locations.

Hell, AmEx is so proud of the RFID feature that the card is transparent such that the chip and antenna are clearly visible.

How incredibly stupid.

Why?

Because this is the exact same chip that can be read and decrypted with about $8 in hardware and a some freely available software.

Without touching the card.

From a distance, even.

Better yet, AmEx embeds a bunch of personal information in the card.

Now I have to call American Express and demand a replacement non-RFID card. Others have done this and been stymied. Or, alternatively, I think I’ll just take a drill to this one and apply some rotational entropy to the RFID chip.

Sadly, I’ll have to renew my passport in the next couple of years and US passports now also embed equally as insecure RFID accessible chunks of personal information.

Full size. Desktop works well.

Maker Faire 2008 Day One is over and done with. The show feels like it is about twice the size of last year. The scale of awesomeness is definitely 2x.

There have been a number of changes beyond the scale.

The various displays/booths have been re-organized and the organization makes sense.

The event took over the back parking lot of the fairgrounds and, as such, there is lots of room for various fire arts, very large statue stuff, and various outdoor events.

Gone are the generic arts-and-crafts vendors from the years before, replaced with various “activist” vendors pushing everything from a vegan lifestyle (been avoiding that booth) to awesome chocolates to composting toilets to amazing beer.

The food is awesome this year. While the various carny style food-vendors-that-you-see-at-every-character-lacking-street-fair are still there, you’ll find awesome little bay area food vendors in between. What really good tacos? No problem; beef, whole roasted pork, or braised lamb cheeks — all delicious. Home made yucatan peninsula style tamales, too. Oh, and fresh grilled organic asparagus with a delicious dressing is just around the corner.

Many vendors — TechShop, O’Reilly, EMSL, etc.. — seem to have made the transition from “hey, look, cool stuff” to “hey, look, cool stuff and here is where you can pay some $$ to participate”. Seriously — the show is starting to take on an air of professional marketeering. Only it is still all good– there are many more opportunities to make cool stuff for free than ever before.

The whole show is about interaction. And interact, you do!

Oddly, there are many more decent pinball players this year than last. I’m looking forward to comparing this years audits with the first year’s.

Of course, there is still the grand assortment of kids being exposed to well maintained pinball machines for the first time. Their first reaction is generally “ooh, what is this?!?!?”. Then it becomes all concentration. And, finally, it is the parents reminding them that there is lots of other cool stuff to see!

Awesome stuff. I took a handful of photos in between chatting with many folks about pinball machine restoration.

I’m utterly beat. Have no words. Here are a couple of more pictures. Off to bed to charge up for tomorrow!

This is a perpetual pinball chaos machine. Balls bounce around and trigger lights depending on which color pop bumper is hit.

This little girl met R2D2 and decided to have a dance.

The creator of the amazing artoo detoo robot — Chris — commented with a link to a video of the same dance event.

Thank you!