Lunatic Platitudes

This map was put together by researchers who went over death and weather data from the “1970’s” through 2004. Sorry, but it just doesn’t get any more specific than that. The report I read has a quote in it that says this is a call to action: if you have enough money you can move someplace our decades of data says you are less likely to die in a natural weather event. I hope that dude’s rich ego can avoid getting hit by a bus on the way to wherever it is he’s going. of course, I live in an area that shows up on the good side and despite the headline, it’s in the south.

This is clearly one of those moments where I am certain we’ve made too much of the need for knee pads, helmets and boogy man mentality. We’re teaching our kids to be afraid of almost everything and propagating the concept of a darker reality than is necessary. Sure a level of awareness and safety consciousness is good, but this is ridiculous. That’s my take anyway.

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I have to tell all who may care about a house of carburetor wizards located in Marietta, GA.

Please click that link if you have need of a carburetor or some carburetor like thing. I spoke to someone out there today and they made my truck run like it has never run before (for me). I cannot say whether their prices are the best or not, but the thing I do know is that I got friendly, prompt, PERSONAL service. The guy came out to my truck and spent time looking things up and making sure I got exactly what I needed and wanted. I purchased a brand new Carter carburetor which mounted up perfectly to my D100. It’s exactly what the doctor ordered. Fuel economy is up, performance is up, idle is so smooth I can’t feel it which scares me sometimes and acceleration is crisp and smooth. I feel comfortable giving this number out. it is worth the phone call if you have (especially vintage) fuel system needs.

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Ok you techno nerd demi-deity, take a few milliseconds to three way handshake with one of the load balancers serving up www.amazon.com and pray that NetScaler box doesn’t dig a hole and die before you get the bits transferred sufficiently to treat yourself to the goodness that is DRM free mpeg layer 3 encoded audio files waiting to be transferred to your handheld media player device. Even over a slow link, rest assured you’re being spoon fed the silkiest bytes on the Internet.
My headline is sensational isn’t it? The fact is I am a little excited about the Amazon MP3 store. Download a single MP3 for (at most) .99. Download entire albums for $8-$10. I don’t know what their entire price range is, but who cares. The fact is you download songs freaking fast and can play them with anything. I like Linux better than OS X. I like OS X better than Windows. It’s my preference. I don’t have to answer to anyone for that but me, and I agree with my inner computer user. I have never liked being tied down to Apple for music anymore than I have liked any of the alternatives, such as ripping my Audio CD collection which is illegal according to our idiot industry people. I also dislike the idea of doing something that is illegal which has the potential of keeping me from my son (and wife). So for me the legal route is the only one.

iTunes is nice, but I can only run my account on 5 computers, and if I get lazy I get five different song collections. Trying to keep things synchronized here is difficult at best. Don’t even get me started when I want to listen to music on my Linux machine. It just ain’t gonna happen because I’ll be dipped in pooh and shot for stinking before I burn a CD just to rip it back into my Linux box. So $100’s of dollars cumulative over the last several years and I finally discover the real answer at amazon.com.

I recommend looking at Amazon.com.  The selection is nearly unabridged.  I found the Nothin’ Fancy bluegrass album I was dying for and even picked up that last Nickelback album too.  It’s on my Ubuntu box, playing right now.  Amazon even has their little (not required but cool) download manager for Ubuntu and other Linux variants.  It’s slick how they didn’t leave out my demographic.  I certainly want my wife to use this method instead of her iTunes too.  She’s been using iTunes in a VMWare machine running under her OpenSuSE 10.3 laptop system which is *painful*.

My advice to Apple: drop DRM.  Port iTunes to Linux.  Provide the ability to transfer files to other devices through an MP3 transcoder or something.  The iPod is certainly cool, but it’s expensive and far from the BEST player on the market.  I am through with you (finally).

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We all remember those times as a kid, learning multiplication tables. We had flash cards, reams of paper with tables on them to reference, little plastic boxes with keys that would reveal the answer to 2×8 and 12 x 12.

Well, my wife found this game, available on-line at www.bigbrainz.com, which is pretty cool.

They offer versions for Windows and MAC for download only or which can be delivered via CD-ROM ($5 extra). The download only version is $39 and there is a free version to learn the 2’s all the way to 2×12. I like it. I am not a teacher and am therefore untrained except by my own experiences of being taught. Here are my thoughts:

1) The game starts out with a simple pre-level intended to teach you to navigate your little green alien guy through the maze of multiplication problems. Once you emerge, you begin to encounter doors which require you to solve multiplication problems in order to open.

2) Problems are presented initially on the doors themselves, on one side, the problem is written out. On the other side, you see a representation of what the answer is. Once you approach the door, these representations jump away from the door and turn into snails. So when you run over the snails, which each represent one of the factors in the equation, it counts the total value. If it’s 2 x 4, one snail gives you 4, the next snail adds the second 4 to make 8. It’s kind of neat to me and provides some tangible (virtually) structure to solving the problem. When you are done, you go back to the door and type the answer into the equation. If you get it right, it opens the door… to a mean looking troll.

3) You practice the problem by solving the door, then use what you have learned so far to defeat the troll. The poor guy has multiplication problems light up on his chest and you “hit” him by solving those. Type in an answer, he loses ground. Answer enough correctly, and he goes away, leaving a key for the next door. Get one wrong and he hits you back. It’s actually quite non-violent, and I am probably making it sound as if it’s a bad thing. It’s not.

4) The game play is smooth, the software works great and it’s a steal if you have a child like ours who is more interested in being on a computer than writing on paper.

Oh, and here’s another thing. It seems to work very well under Wine on Linux. The only problem I have is the game doesn’t seem to grab the mouse, which is meant to turn your little guy. You have to use the other keyboard keys instead (Q and E) which work just fine once you get used to it. I tested the free version on Fedora 8, running Wine version 0.9.54. The only thing I will say is it is a modern level 3D game and therefore requires hardware 3d acceleration of at least a little bit of horsepower. It’s not a super heavy weight thing, but it does take some rear end to make it smooth.

I recommend it highly.  How cute is that little green guy?

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