My view of the world

US patent number 7,415,666 describes “a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed”. —IBM keyboards, which were the standard for years, had this feature back when I was running an 8088 chip and a full meg of ram was to expensive for mere mortals even if their motherboard would support it.

Because there exists so much previous art their claim to be the inventors won’t stand up in court. But just in case you think this is a waste of time consider their obvious reasoning. With the size of Microsoft’s legal department(s) and their aggressive anti-competitor approach no one but the major competitors have deep enough pockets to stand against them.

M$ has something approaching 10,000 patents most of which are a pathetic as this one. But each of them gives M$ ammunition for a legal attack that can be used to bankrupt a smaller company.
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What? You really believe M$ invented something? —Fool, even their base os was purchased for about $60k. It was QDOS -Quick and Dirty Operating System. They just renamed it DOS and leased it to IBM.

When IBM first approach M$ about an operating system the company said they didn’t do operating systems, only ports of programming languages.

IBM then went to the inventor of CPM who immediately went off to play tennis or some such, leaving his wife to negotiate. She refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement so IBM went back to Dear ole uncle Bill and company, who by then had figured out an angle.

—And that boys and girls is how desktop computing was lost to the Dark Side.

The Mio Knight Rider GPS features the original voice of KITT from the TV show and also has flashing LEDs to simulate the scanner from KITT.

Sounds cool right? Ummm, well maybe kinda cool if you’re a fan of David Hasselhoff, but it’s not as good as it sounds.

If you think this looks like a cool toy, just picture those flashing lights every time you check you GPS. And won’t the cops wonder what you’ve got on your dash when they see those?

Now picture listening to that overly authoritative voice all day every day.

This is a gimmick designed with impulse buyers in mind. It’s also great for those people who have everything. At last there’s something you can get that car nut in your life that they won’t already own.

Other problems are that it slower than glaciers and the text to speech isn’t built in. This needs to be loaded from a cd. Why you ask.. As near as I can determine Mio intends this to be a multinational unit.

They probably have figured out that the novelty will wear off soon and by making the device language and country independent they can delay the time before it becomes “as seen on TV.”

It’s a rare day here in Las Vegas.

Last night we had wind and rain. Today the sky is clear and the mountains look close enough to touch.
The air is still and temperature is in the high sixties. The birds are noisy and flitting from wire to branch and back.

I know it’s beautiful up in the mountains, everything will stand out in sharp detail. The wildlife will be out and active.

If ever there was a day for that one great photograph, it’s today.

And I had to come to work.

I built myself a pinhole lens for my Nikon D70 out of some old stainless shim stock and a body cap.
I used the finest sewing needle I had, set a 1/2 x 1/2 piece of shim stock on a board and tapped the needle through with a small hammer.

This is my best effort so far.

Click on the image for a larger version. (1500×997)
The original size is 3008×2000 and when I pull it up on the monitor it’s so fuzzy it hurts my eyes.
–I processed this shot by using the clone tool in Photoshop remove the worst of the dust from the frame and then ran auto levels to clean up up the colors and contrast.

So far the problems I have run into with a digital pinhole are dust, dust, and more dust. A pinhole lens on a digital camera can find dust in a laboratory clean room. I even glued a uv filter over then cap when I was done and it still sucked in the dust.

Determining the pinhole size and shape is an ongoing experiment. And while I can buy pre-made pinhole caps or a set of 12 pinholes in various sizes, they are all micro-drilled and I’m not certain that will give me the image I want.
(The rule as I understand it is the smaller the hole the sharper the focus. But each hole diameter represents a give distance from lens to film(or ccd) running anywhere from 3.5mm to several inches.)

The Nikon body caps I have seen for sale seem to have a hole diameter of .0102 which should work out to about the same coverage as a 50mm lens on a full frame camera. This means that for a dx camera I should need a hole about .008+/-.
I think I may even buy some pre-drilled pinholes to play with but I intend to continue to experiment with my needle and hammer approach.

My first pinhole camera was an old Quaker Oats box with a home grown film holder for 120 film cut into 4 or 5 inch lengths and it worked well for what it was, but with my nifty neat and wonderful digital pinhole camera I can test my exposure without wasting a lot of film or even needing to know my f/stop.

If you go to Pinhole Resource they have quite a bit of information. They also have cameras, body caps and pinholes for sale.

I finally tracked down the website that originated this creepily weird pinhole camera made from the 150 year old skull of a thirteen year old girl.

It appeared on Wayne Martin Belger’s site Boy of Blue Industries.

For more incredibly strange cameras start with his camera archive.

I doubt that I could afford one even if he was willing to sell. But I want the one called Wood.

The Wood Camera is made from Wood, Aluminum, Copper, Steel, Acrylic, and Insects. Most of the camera parts were found in Death Valley, CA. The camera has an interchangeable front plate used to float objects in front of the pinhole. With pinhole photography the focus is infinite. Objects which are a quarter-inch in front of the pinhole are just as in focus as objects 20 miles away.

The day that the US government announced the Fannie Mae / Freddy Mac take-over the London Stock Exchange went down for over 6 hours.

At first the official line from the LSE was, “We will be investigating this and will do everything we can to make sure this doesn’t reoccur.” Now they say “It was software-related, a coincidence, due to two processes we couldn’t have foreseen,” and not caused by high-volume.

These people handle huge volumes of trade and deal in trillions of dollars. The fate of many a company could hinge on the next failure. Which is why I find the “coincidence” - “couldn’t have foreseen” statement scary.

The problem is simple: Their 100+ servers are running Windows Server 2003 with custom C# and .Net programs connecting to a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 back end.

This is the world’s third largest stock exchange and someone got suckered into running M$ crap. That it ran without crashing for as long as it did is simply amazing.

I just have to wonder what M$ had to pay to get them to use their products or was it some anonymous middle management incompetent who believed the hype and the pretty pictures?

When asked for my opinion about handling large volumes of constantly changing data I automatically suggest Oracle as the primary database. It may be expensive to own and operate, but it’s reliable under load. Put it on high-end Sun or IBM servers with massive raid arrays, institute redundant means of communication and you might not be bulletproof, but you’ll be damn close.

But they’re just dealing with a business that requires nearly instant communication and gambling with the financial lives of a few million individuals so I guess going with the “low bid” vendor is ok.

BTW: The New York Stock Exchange is starting to run Linux on its servers.

–EAT AT OWN RISK– (This should carry a Surgeon General’s warning)
This recipe was printed in Stuff Magazine but I like this presentation found on The Stanger better. For more pictures click on the link.

The recipe from Stuff Magazine:

BACON, CHEESE AND BEER DOG

Ingredients:
1 hot dog
1 slice of thick-cut bacon
1 can of spray cheese
1 can beer (It doesn’t matter what kind, but we recommend something dark. Corona probably isn’t a good idea)
1 cup flour
Oil for frying

Instructions:
This one is a little work-intensive, so be ready to buckle down. First take the center out of the hot dog with an apple corer, if you have access to one. If not, just cut out the middle with a knife. Fill the cavity with the spray cheese and use the hot dog you removed from the middle as a cap to keep the cheese in. Wrap the bacon around the hot dog and deep-fry for two to four minutes or until bacon is cooked. Dab them dry with a paper towel (so the batter will stick). Mix the beer with the flour until it reaches a thick, but lump-free consistency. Dip the dogs in the batter, coating the dog completely, and deep-fry on high heat for two to three minutes or until brown and deadly.
NOTE: Don’t fry them too long or all of the cheese will explode out into the oil. That’s very bad.
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The article also had a link to a Corndog casserole recipe.

Yes I’ve tried both recipes:
The dogs aren’t too bad, but you need a cold beer to wash them down.
The casserole is good enough for me to tweak the recipe a bit and make it again. –More cheese.

No, I’m not skinny. Why do you ask?

We went to the Cannery East and had dinner at Carve. Obviously from the name a person would guess it was a steak house.

On a Wednesday evening around 7:30 there was no problem getting a table without a reservation.

Somebody commented that the restaurant is quiet and doesn’t feel like you were in a casino. It also doesn’t smell like the traditional casino restaurant. No stale smoke and no casino smell.

–Even without the smell of stale smoke all casinos smell alike. I’m not certain why but there is a unique aroma that goes well with the deliberately ugly carpet.–

The Prime Rib is kept in a warming drawer and looked hot and juicy. The chef carved the meat to order and trimmed off anything he didn’t like the looks of. –Unlike many places where they sort of hack off a chunk throw it on a plate and never look back.

We ordered fried calamari as an appetizer and then had Lamb Chops, Oysters Rockefeller and Surf and Turf for our main courses.

Our food arrived hot and was well presented.

The calamari was tender. –Which can be a bit of a trick since if it’s not cooked just right you wind up with something that has the texture of recycled tires.

The lamb Chops and the Oysters Rockefeller were both excellent.

My Surf and Turf came with a Lobster Tail that was actually the size you see in the commercials.

My steak on the other hand was a little tough and looked like the big brother of the NY Strip you get with the $1.99 breakfast specials. –This could have been due to my choice of meat. It seems to me that a Fillet Mignon was one of the options. Next time I’ll pay more attention.

The waiter was very attentive and knew everything on the menu including all the options without having to read over your shoulder to see what you were talking about. The menu also includes a very nice wine list.

Don’t ask me what the prices are because I have long since learned not to look at that part of the menu in any place that has one of those “upscale” names.

On the whole it was a very pleasant experience and I will undoubtedly go back. –Only next time I’m going to skip the appetizer and save room for that big ol’ piece of chocolate cake they had on the desert cart.

Everyone’s looking for miracles.

A friend who also has type 2 diabetes is hyping ALA (Alpha lipoic acid) as a cure for neuropathy.

Peripheral neuropathy is a well know side effect of diabetes. Symptoms can include pain, burning, numbness, tingling, weakness, and itching, especially in the extremities.

Alpha lipoic acid is thought to work as an antioxidant in both water and fatty tissue, enabling it to enter all parts of the nerve cell and protect it from damage.

Preliminary studies suggest that alpha lipoic acid may help.

Side effects of alpha lipoic acid may include headache, tingling or a “pins and needles” sensation, skin rash, or muscle cramps.

Note the use of the words “thought,” “suggest” and “may”

Somebody is always taking something that looks like it might have possibilities and touting it as the be-all end-all. “Guaranteed to cure what ails you.”

Of course there’s no solid evidence that it will work.

For Technical information check the Linus Pauling Institute’s website.

—Having said this I may try it. The known side effects are no worse that the known side effects from too much Ibuprofen or Excedrin. –It would be nice if my feet didn’t burn and tingle.

As I said “everyone’s looking for miracles.”

I was looking at the Sunrise Ranch Bar and Grill website and noticed that they’re working to bring create a larger client base. Being located at the corner of Nellis and Oakey means there are several bars within shouting distance, so these guys are going to have work extra hard to keep their customers happy and rely mostly on word of mouth to bring in new clients.

On their events calendar they have two Karaoke nights, Wednesday is Latin Karaoke and Friday is just Karaoke.

–I don’t know what first prize is for the Wet T-shirt contest but regardless of what it is I’m willing to bet that the winner won’t have to buy her own drinks.

On Ladies Night all ladies get their first drink free with valid ID. —So stop by and be sure to order top shelf.

When I spoke to the new manager he said they should soon be getting food full time. –This would be a major improvement because a lot of people like me get the munchies when they drink and aren’t likely to frequent a joint where they can’t at least get wings.