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Monday, October 19th, 2009
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If you haven't heard of Kiva.org, then let me tell you about it. I just learned of it thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) telophase. Perhaps you've heard of microloans? If not they are basically small loans given in poor countries to small entrepreneurs. They do a lot of good for the local economies and have amazingly high repayment rates (at least when given to women, apparently).
Anyway, Kiva.org allows you as an individual to assist with this. The people you see already have their loans, but of course this means the financial institution can't help someone else with the same money. So, they "sell" their loans to you to get the funds they need to continue their business, and when that person repays their loan you get your part of it back. You can take it back or give it to someone else.
I guess it can be best characterized as sustainable recycled charity.
Anyway, I just invested in four small business, and felt like sharing:
( My four investments... )
THIS is how you do charity in a capitalistic global economy. It's elegantly powerful. I like it!
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Friday, September 18th, 2009
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To help you gear up for this finest of holidays, here's a couple of videos!
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Friday, September 4th, 2009
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Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
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Perhaps I've been watching too much Alton Brown. But when I taste this delicious boudin kolache, I can't help but ponder the collision of culinary heritages this simple pastry calls forth.
On the one hand there's the boudin, a quintessentially Cajun invention. In it's sharp spicy bite you can taste the beleaguered refugees from French Canadia as they find their new home in southern Louisiana and mingle their heritage with their more urban Creole neighbors in New Orleans, who lend a touch of the Mediterranean in the use of crisp aromatic flavor notes.
On the other hand, there's the kolache, a Czechoslovakian device. Brought to Texas in the late 1800s with the waves of Czech settlers, this simple melding of sweet bread with basic flavors is deliciously endemic to many rural communities in this region. It's very much a working-class foodstuff, as it's believed the original invention was designed to be a self-contained meal to be taken to the fields thus removing the necessity of stopping work for lunches.
This is as much of a clash of culinary heritages as Sushi Tacos would be. Yet the cajun fire and czech sweetness combine beautifully. They're as different as Rap and Country, yet like Kid Rock they draw from both backgrounds equally well, melding them in ways both surprising and pleasant.
But I am not a nutritional anthropologist.
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Monday, August 24th, 2009
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I just installed a touch panel on my latptop. It works beautifully! I hate the touchpad so much, and this is enormously better. And installation wasn't 100% trouble-free, but it was still quite easy to do overall; the problems I had were related to my computer instead of this new part.
I think it's going to drop my battery life by about 5%, which is worth the trade-off. And the module that runs it does get a bit warm, so there's a new hotspot in the thing (I tucked it down in the lower-left corner).
Still, I'd recommend considering it for any laptop for which they make one. It's good stuff.
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Monday, August 17th, 2009
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Saturday, August 15th, 2009
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So, I just bought a new car! Well, used, but only barely as it only had 7,123 miles on it.
( More pictures behind the cut... )
I wonder if I should give it a name or something. I've never done that before. But then this is a pretty unique little car.
Now I need to find good bumperstickers for it. How about: "large car = small penis... you do the math."
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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This is not my country:
... "It is ironic that a system that was founded because of the people’s anger toward an oppressive monarchy is now making the very same mistakes made by the Shah of Iran."
"It is a disgrace to see the system that condemned what the shah of Iran did — killing people to silence their voices — is now doing the same." ...
... "The hypocrites, who secretly hijacked the popular revolution of Iran and imposed their will on us, have now dropped all pretense and are openly handing us the ‘royal treatment’ still fresh in the minds of countless Iranians." ...... "This is a war zone. This is not my country." ...
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| Time: | 3:09 pm. |
| Mood: |  hopeful. |
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iran.whyweprotest.net
The events over the last few days in Iran are nothing short of phenomenal. Who would have thought that Iran of all places might be the first society to leverage online communications into revolution? They still have a long way to go, but I think they can do it.
Tonight I will be turning my second computer into an anonymous proxy server locked down to be used specifically by Iranian IPs, and join the growing international proxy farm that's helping them get information in and out and communicate with each other internally despite the tyrannical communication restrictions of their government.
"Where is Neda?"
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Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
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The Good News: Two weeks ago I bought a new ginormous 47" LCD TV. It was awesome.
The Bad News: Today my apartment was robbed. Among many other things, I no longer have a new ginormous 47" LCD TV. They trashed my place and everything is torn up. The only good bit is I still have my computer.
Too depressed to say more, I'm now going to go sulk while I wait for the locksmith to show up. :(
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Comments: Read 19 or Add Your Own.
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In a world where people die by their early 30s and are too busy to do more than struggle to keep themselves and their kids alive, then yes, monogomy is a viable lifestyle for most people, especially when combined with the idea of the extended family.
In a world where people live into their late 70s and we have plentry of free time in our lives, not so much. Oh there are some people for whom monogomy is still the way to go, because they've found someone who fits every need and for whom they do the same. But this is unusual, IMO. Most people would be happier if they were in a polyamouruos relationship of some sort, where their needs are filled by a handful of people they love, and they do the same for them.
Additionally now that the extended family has one out of style it's becoming somewhat necessary. The extended family was a method to provide childcare support and consolidate and maintain assets accross generations. The same goals can also be achieved with extended marriages, and cannot at all with simple monogomy.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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There is no manner in which my opinion diverges from those expressed in this comic:
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
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I like Linux quite a bit, especially the latest Linux Mint system. I'm on the cusp of making it my primary operating system. But I still can't quite yet because of my monitors.
Mainly I'm posting this because when someone recently came over they were surprised by my setup and insisted that it was brilliant and I had to post a picture somewhere for people. Me, I thought it was kind of obvious and figured lots of people did it, but now I'm not so sure.
( Cut for GINORMOUS image file )
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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It sounds like Ian Plimer in his new book Heaven and Earth is saying pretty much exactly what I have for the past couple of years. I look forward to reading it.
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Racing the Beam by Montfort & Bogos
This book is a must-read for any old-school gamer/programmer style geeks interested in console history. It discusses in some detail the hardware design of the Atari 2600 and how that design effected the games developed for it. It addresses the topic in general, how these decisions effected the history of consoles in general, and then goes on to have six chapters devoted to six specific games.
I had no idea just how raw the system was. There's very little intermediary processing going on between the game code and the display on the screen. For all intents and purposes the game code is basically creating each pixel of the screen in time with the TV tube firing off the electron gun. Thus the title of the book, because there are no clock cycles to spare as the code has to keep up with calculating each scan line in time to get it written to the screen.
Plus the early cartridges only had 2k or 4k of code space. That's some efficient coding there to get the game to fit. Some of the tricks they used to get these games to work are quite interesting.
For example, take Yar's Revenge. You know, this game:
The neutral zone in the middle looks like random pixels, but it's not. There wasn't enough space left for good random number generation code, nor enough clock cycles between scan line to generate convincing random bytes. Another option would be to store a block of random bytes on the ROM and just display those, but that too would not fit on the cartridge. Instead, those "random" lines are actually the code of the game itself being called up for display, each address being selected as directed by the cycle counter that's running the game. I think that's brilliant.
I haven't gotten to the Pitfall chapter yet, but it's been mentioned that the layout of the 255 screens that make up the game were stored in just 55 bytes of space. That averages out to just under 1 3/4 bits of information for each screen. I look forward to reading about how that was accomplished.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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angry.
