random bits

[cellio]

Exhibit #342 supporting the case that Dani and I are well-matched: tonight's theoretical discussion of the proposition "lights timed for 35 MPH are also timed for 70 MPH". Well, that's pretty clearly false; the interesting discussion was of the reverse. It sure seems like lights timed for 70 MPH ought to also be timed for 35 MPH, but I don't think it's so even if you pile on simplifying assumptions like "green 50% of the time".

Remember when disk space cost a dollar a meg? And later it was a dollar a gig? Dani just bought a 500GB drive for under $100. Um, yeah.

When I bought my current computer (a couple years ago), I was sure that 6 USB ports would be enough for anyone. Yeah, right. Ok, I'll buy a hub. :-) Ok, I don't need all of them all of the time, but it's just easier to leave things like the iPod cable plugged in all the time.

(In a similar vein, I was looking at the mass of plugs in my office -- four-outlet wall socket and 6-outlet UPS, all full. One of the nine plugs (the UPS is plugged into the wall) turned out to be spurious. Eek. (CPU, monitor, printer, scanner, two hard drives, router, lamp. Clearly the lamp's days are numbered.))

Conversation while driving through a construction zone:

"Is this our on-ramp?"
"I think so. At least the signs are facing the right way."
"And no oncoming headlights. Let's go for it."
"Man, if their attitude is 'if you're not from around here why are you on our roads?', they should make it easier to flee."

My father-in-law and his wife were in town Thursday (on their way south for the winter), so dinner with them trumped this week's Hebrew class. They were staying at a hotel along I-79 (Stubenville Pike) and said they wanted to eat at "that Italian restaurant". We don't have much occasion to be on 79 between 279 and 279; can they be more specific? The one where they put the french fries on the sandwiches. Ok, "Primanti's" is an Italian name, I suppose, but I've never thought of it as an Italian restaurant. :-) (Food was ok, smoke was pretty bad, vegetarian options were limited. Next time I push for something different.)

A picture in today's paper made me laugh. It was of two people in a Christmas-tree lot with their dogs. I laughed because I had two conflicting thoughts: we're identifying the tree the dogs like (in that way that only dogs do) and keeping it far far away from the living room, versus we're letting the dogs pick the tree since it's going to be theirs anyway. :-)

This morning's torah reader wanted to give hagbahah (one of the honors) to a woman because we tend to give it to men. This involves lifting the open torah scroll overhead and turning so everyone can see it. The first few people he asked turned him down, so I said I would do it. I commented that early in the year is great for lefties because of where the weight is. Only after I said it did I realize that I'm not actually a lefty; I just feel like one. (Born lefty, raised righty.) Eventually I'm probably going to confuse someone with this. :-)

Browser-tab cleanup time!

What if Gmail had been designed by Microsoft? (source lost, sorry)

The clock at the center of the world, reported by siderea.

ZIP Skinny looks up census data by ZIP code and lets you compare areas side by side.

The care and feeding of volunteers, written in the context of the synagogue but applicable more broadly. There's not a lot here that's new to me, but it's a good starting point when thinking about why people do what they do.

Rohrschach passwords? This is an interesting idea (though not ready for prime time yet) IFF any individual is consistent enough to see the same images in a given inkblot over time. Is that the case? Or might I see a butterfly today and, six months from now, not only be convinced that it's a flower but be unable to remember that I once saw a butterfly?

The secret to raising smart kids (from ralphmelton). I haven't read it all yet, but I don't want to lose it and some of you might be interested too.

Zamzar claims to be able to capture "non-downloadable" content (like YouTube) and convert to various formats. I haven't given it a spin yet. Speaking of tools I haven't tried out yet, Foxit looks to be an alternative to Adobe for reading PDF.

Comments

[mbarr.livejournal.com]

My shul lets women do Hagbah/Gleelah. Only problem is that we couldn't find any women that could actually pick up the torah, as they're pretty heavy. (It's a mostly ortho shul, so this isn't a normal thing...)

I think they've found 1 or 2 women that can, but they aren't real confident in it.. and don't want to drop it


At this point... we just have women do gleelah :)

[cellio]

Our minyan's sefer torah is not that heavy as these things go (I've carried much heavier), but I think a lot of people are afraid of it. It's more about balance than strength, but it can be hard to persuade people of that.

At this point... we just have women do gleelah :)

That's what usually happens to us too. The reader wanted to mix it up a little -- we are egalitarian, after all, but we fall into some gender patterns and maybe we shouldn't. (Another in this category, that is less likely to change because it's not something lay leaders like us can just change: Friday night candle-lighting is always done by a woman and kiddush is always done by a man (unless there's a bat mitzvah). As an adult woman, I have never had the opportunity to chant kiddush for the congregation. That's disappointing.)

[mbarr.livejournal.com]

come to my shul :) we don't light candles in shul, but women will do kiddush normally for dinner-

Just 'cause.

[siderea]

Zweck makes my teeth grind. She's correct about what is bad and incorrect about what is good. Very long story short, you probably shouldn't be saying shit like, "You must have worked very hard", either. Accomplishments are not an occasion for a referrendum on the accomplisher. If you want to raise an artist who can tell the difference between his self and his art, a scientist who can tell the difference between her self and her research, an executive who can tell the difference between his self and his bank account, then don't interpret every accomplishment your child makes as indicating something about the child. Comment on the work, not the kid: "This is great!" "I really like this." "I particularly liked your choice of ---." "I loved it when you ---." "This is an excellent ---." "I'm very impressed by this." "What a beautiful ---!" "This is quite an accomplishment." "Good job." "Well done." "I'm proud of you." "I'm delighted with ---" "I am in awe of ---" "Nifty solution!" "Fabulous!" "Interesting!" "Groovy!" "Shiney!" "It rocked my socks!"

[cellio]

That's a good point. I'm glad that at least she doesn't appear to fall into the trap of praising ineffective effort; that would make my teeth hurt too. (You know the style, I assume -- where the kid does something completely off the mark and the parent or teacher (usually parent) proceeds to compliment him anyway.)

Praising -- and constructively criticizing! -- the work strikes this ameteur (whose only credentials are having been a smart kid) as the right way to go. I would hope that anyone of at least average intelligence can easily make the leap from "he likes what I did" to "I did something well and maybe I should do more of that".

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

>> The secret to raising smart kids

This is interesting -- thanks for posting it. It makes me glad that one of the phrases my son has started saying is "try again".

[cellio]

You should also read the comment above from siderea.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Remember when disk space cost a dollar a meg?

Oh, yeah. I remember playing games that loaded off of cassette tapes. It took just over five minutes to load the 14k chess program.

Speed and space these days are truly incredible. There are Lanman password crackers that work by simply precomputing all possible hashes within a certain set of characters. They take a while to run, and up to about 100G of disk space, but once you have that...

[cellio]

Heh. Yeah, I remember cassette-based software, thought I didn't spend a lot of time using it.

Even knowing Moore's Law, it's still kind of boggling that you're probably carrying, in your pocket, computing power that filled entire rooms within your lifetime...

Where to start?

[byronhaverford.livejournal.com]

>Dani just bought a 500GB drive for under $100.

I'm surprised you didn't go for NAS. My 1T box was about $100, IIRC. I've backed up my entire DVD collection. I figured the kids would stream their videos instead of using the physical DVDs, and thus increase the life of the discs (which is a significant consideration when you have three kids of single-digit ages). They continue to use the DVDs. Sigh.

>Primanti's... vegetarian options were limited

Do you accept fish in that situation?

>hagbahah [is] more about balance than strength

I dunno. I find that task to be challenging, and I do not consider myself to be a physically weak man. I suspect that there is some secret that I have not yet figured out, and I'm trying to brute-force it. I keep worrying that the two halves will drift apart, and I will be responsible for tearing a torah.

Re: Where to start?

[cellio]

I'm surprised you didn't go for NAS.

He got that one for work. I'm not sure what constraints he was operating under. I just bought myself a small (only 250 GB :-) ) external drive for about $60; its job is to simplify off-site backups. Sure, I could have improved $/GB by going bigger, but every time I've paid extra to buy more {disk, CPU, memory}, I've regretted it because the prices fall more quickly than my needs rise. :-)

Do you accept fish in that situation?

Yes [1], and that was pretty much the only thing on the menu I could eat. Primanti's doesn't really do vegetarian. (I think you could get the pasta without the meat sauce if you asked.)

[1] There have been places where the cooking conditions were such that I wouldn't -- shared griddle or deep-frying oil that's also used for meat, including pork, for instance. This didn't appear to be one of those.

I dunno. I find that task to be challenging, and I do not consider myself to be a physically weak man.

Right -- I don't think you need to be strong, and I don't think strength is sufficient (beyond a minimum that varies with the size of the scroll). Two tricks I was taught: (1) open the scroll first; don't try to open it while you're holding it; and (2) move the eitzim toward you, such that the edge of the table is about a quarter to third of the way up, and use the table to help. (It's sort of half pushing off, half dropping the ends you're holding while moving vertical. This is easy to demonstrate but hard to explain, so ask me next time you see me.) If you just lift from the table, you're asking for trouble.

Re: Where to start?

[byronhaverford.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean $/GB, I meant shared storage space for all computers. Very convenient.

I figure if there's one dish on the menu I can eat, that's a victory. (But you're right -- it's not worth going back.)

I get it -- you're levering off the edge of the table, then raising the scrolls once they're vertical (give or take rotational momentum). You've still got to get it from table-height to overhead; that's what trips me up.

Re: Where to start?

[cellio]

I meant shared storage space for all computers. Very convenient.

That sound convenient, yes. (Dani does QA for a company that does disk-encryption software, so they probably had different needs. But for home... yeah, that could be handy. Right now we're using the Pentium (note -- not Pentium #, just Pentium) in the basement as a file server. It's only got about 10G on it, but we use it mainly for moving files between desktop machines, and we're not moving videos and music around much, so that's ok. Mind, I suspect that now that either of us can trivially walk across the hall carrying a USB drive, its days are numbered. :-)

I figure if there's one dish on the menu I can eat, that's a victory.

Yeah, pretty much. It's sad when restaurant discussions include the phrase "yeah, they have a dish I can eat", but it's not unusual. If I didn't eat dairy/fish out, I'd pretty much never be able to go to restaurants with friends.

I get it -- you're levering off the edge of the table, then raising the scrolls once they're vertical (give or take rotational momentum). You've still got to get it from table-height to overhead; that's what trips me up.

Bend your knees as you lever them toward you and then stand up; it's easier to continue the motion of your arms upward than to start it that way. And hold them like swords, not with your wrists straight out.