Category: General

We were at the Chinese market the other day and I ran across this unfortunately named delicacy: “Pasture Cake”

Now, I suppose you can’t expect the Taiwanese to know that a pasture cake is a cow turd, but it’s hard not to associate in my mind.

Then Chu-Wan translated it for me: It’s really “Cow Grass Cake”. How is that better???

Having never heard of this, Chu-Wan asked her father about it this evening. Apparently, Cow Grass is the latest health food craze in Taiwan, second only to pomegranate juice. No, it’s not figurative name, either. It really just is grass that cows eat. Not just any cow-eating grass, either. There are certain types of “famous” cow grass that grows in Taidong, and people make special trips there just to eat it.

Why?

Why is this considered healthful?

Well, just look at a cow. He’s big. He’s strong. All he eats is grass. Apparently in the Taiwanese mind it stands to reason that a person eating cow grass will grow big and strong like a cow. Perhaps it’s true, but I think the phrase “dumb as a cow” has to play in this equation somewhere, too.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Loonies, Psuedo-science, Science, Taiwan

Video chat, that is.

Finally got the chance to try out iChat AVs much touted ability to conduct a three-way video chat. My in-laws recently upgraded their Mac Mini to OSX 10.4 and with my MacBook being the only computer between us power enough to initiate one, we tried it out.

It worked pretty well. There was a little bit more audio lag/feedback than we usually get in the standard chat, but not so bad as to make the conversation difficult.

That leads me into a comment that I got my MacBook back from Applecare (for the second time) yesterday. This time they only replaced the following:
APP-607-0199 ASSY, HEATSINK, M42 (1.0mmConnect

I hope that means this time they know what it takes to fix it. Last time one of the things they replaced was APP-603-8071 ASSY, HEATSINK, M42 – let’s hope this one is more successful.

It still boots up with those nasty color bars once in a while, even though the Genius Bar told me that was fixed with 10.4.7 – he was clearly wrong. Now I’m told it will be fixed with 10.4.8. It doesn’t look like a software problem to me, it happens at what appears to be before the OS load.

While on the subject of changes, a few weeks ago I grabbed a bluetooth keyboard, and today I hooked the MacBook up to an external monitor. Now with two screens it’s almost using my PowerMac G4 – except the MacBook has a lot more power. I just need to find a bluetooth trackball.

Since the new 5.5th Gen iPods came out, the Apple store online has had some great deals on refurbed iPods. I bought Chu-Wan an iPod Nano for under $100 and it’s really just like new, so I decided to break down and buy myself a 30Gb iPod with Video. It should arrive by the end of the week.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Applecare, Blog, Computer, Family, Kids, Mac, MacBook, OSX, Taiwan

Harper’s Magazine => A Place Under the Sun

From letters written to President Bush by residents of the Sauerland region of Germany in response to his January 14, 2004, announcement of United States plans to build a deep-space launch pad on the moon. The letter writers are among more than 1,200 Germans who purchased moon lots from U.S. entrepreneur Dennis Hope, who claims legal ownership of the moon under a loophole in the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty.

Remember when we used to laugh about people buying “swampland in Florida?”

Technorati Tags: Astronomy, Blog, Science

Science Magazine => Classical’s Class and Rap’s Bad Rap

Ever wondered whether the classical music aficionado next door has had a bit more schooling than the guy blasting rap from his car? New research suggests you may be on to something. A lot of the stereotypes concerning musical taste and socioeconomic status appear to be true.

It’s always self-affirming when stereotypes that show oneself in a positive light are published isn’t it?

Still, I’m a bit worried about those opera people and their stinky hair. Luckily, I draw the line at opera.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Science

I gotta say, I’m kind of jazzed today.

I’m under considerable pressure at work right now. We’ve had a long-running and usually troublesome project to implement a new online service. (Really, our first online service.)

For our side of it, I’ve had to work it from nothing, with basically nothing with no actual training. So, from my side I’ve had to teach myself about building and configuring a server to serve web services, learn to generate and deploy them. (With a little detour into re-writing some of the org.apache.axis classes to get them to behave properly.)

It’s only been in the last couple weeks I’ve been able to get to the actual programming in Java. Things are finally beginning to progress and I deployed the second of the five needed services today and it had no logic errors on the first pass!

(OK, that’s not to say I didn’t improperly implement it so I spent 4 hours this morning trying to get it to work, but the logic was solid.)

Yippeee! Who said you can’t teach an old programmer new tricks?

I’m seriously looking forward to our vacation in 3 weeks time to San Diego.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Computer, Technology

BBC News => Cost ‘keeps Doctor Who on earth’

Russell T. Davies had this to say recently,

“People will say, ‘Why doesn’t he visit alien planets more often?’” he said. “But that’s because they are expensive. They’re hugely expensive.”

Davies also told Doctor Who magazine that these episodes gained the lowest viewing figures of the series.

“The programmes that do show alien planets are not prime-time programmes,” he said.

“Star Trek and Stargate are subscription-based programmes for a dedicated audience.”

OK, that’s just nonsense.

OK, the part about it being expensive isn’t. The stuff about alien planets being “not prime-time” is just silly. Just write better alien planet stories.

It’s interesting to note that on the Inferno DVD bonus features there’s a documentary where Terrance Dicks, story editor during that time, talks about the problems with being stuck on Earth. The bottom line is, you only have two plots: Alien invasion and mad scientist. That should play great from Torchwood, though.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Dr Who

BBC => Return of the Master

The first Doctor Who DVD release of 2007 will be the The Return of the Master three-disc boxset.

It will comprise The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis and Castrovalva – adventures that saw both the return of the Doctor’s arch-enemy and the transition from Tom Baker’s Doctor to Peter Davison’s.

Prepare for not one but two new companions, killer statues, the slow destruction of the Universe, cunning disguises, big beards, recursive occlusion and stick-on celery. What a combination!

In one of those amusing coincidences, one of the extras on this box set is:

The Crowded TARDIS (dur. 11′ 25″) – by the end of Tom Baker’s tenure, the TARDIS crew had grown from the usual one companion to three. This featurette examines the reasons behind this change of direction. Featuring actors Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton, director John Black and script editor Christopher H. Bidmead. Narrated by George Williams.

Coincidence because I was just blogging about the fact that poor ol’ Davison got stuck with a TARDIS over-full of companions during his term. It will be interesting to see what they have to say about it.

On a side note, I’m glad to see Logopolis and Castrovalva released together. I’ve always believed they should have released all the regeneration “bookends” at the same time. Sure, the Twin Dilemma stinks, but Caves of Androzani isn’t complete without it.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Dr Who

Long before blogging software existing, people had things called diaries or journals. Back in 1998, I began keeping a journal of my overseas trips.

My my sincere apologies to my regular readers, I am going to be posting those old entries into this blog, appropriately backdated, and with some current annotations. My goal in this is to simply consolidate some of my earlier writing into one place for ease of locating, searching and backups.

I’m not sure exactly what this will do to RSS readers, etc.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Retro

Speaking of Star Trek soundtracks…

While I think all the new Star Trek series failed miserably on their soundtracks (dull, uninteresting and completely understated) the original series soundtrack was really first class.

While looking to see if the re-mastered Trek series soundtracks were available, I discovered that 2 of my favorite CDs are still available through Amazon. (One is actually in stock, the other can be ordered through their associates program.) These were two re-recordings by Fred Steiner and the Royal Philharmonic in 1990 and feature music originally composed for the following episodes:

• V1 – Charlie X
• V1 – The Corbomite Maneuver
• V1 – Mudd’s Women
• V1 – The Doomsday Machine
• V2 – Mirror, Mirror
• V2 – By Any Other Name
• V2 – The Trouble with Tribbles
• V2 – The Empath

Relatively few episodes of Trek had original music, in most cases it was re-used from earlier episodes. Many of the prominent musical themes from the entire series had their origins in these scores.

They’re definitely “old school”, though. No contemporary 60’s music, these are more like scores from pre-60’s movies.

“Star Trek: Newly Recorded Music From Selected Episodes Of The Paramount TV Series (Charlie X, The Carbomite Maneuver, Mudd’s Women, The Doomsday Machine)” (Fred Steiner)

Unfortunately, I cannot put an Amazon link to the second one since they don’t have it in stock, but you can see it online and purchase it though the associate program. The full title is: Star Trek, Volume Two: Newly Recorded Music From Selected Episodes Of The Paramount TV Series (Mirror Mirror, By Any Other Name, The Trouble With Tribbles, The Empath) or search for Fred Steiner.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Star Trek