The Blog of Harald

I was talking on Thursday night about how the Internet is enabling “The Long Tail”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail. Disintermediation is allowing small, specialized producers to deal directly with their far-flung customers.

Today I tripped over a perfect example: Mr. McGroovy’s sells “box rivets”. These are small plastic fasteners designed to hold cardboard together in building projects. You know, fire trucks, castles, submarines, etc. for kids to play in :-).

Now this is a specialty market! But his website doesn’t just have the product; he has free plans, and details on how to easily get large cardboard boxes (and how to load them into your car!). Very well done, and an excellent example.

I know my priorities are messed up.

My biggest nagging worry about global climate change is that Americans are going to flee northwards. Into Canada. Bringing their ideology (and idiocy) with them.

Wouldn’t that keep *you* awake at night?

What a fabulous idea! Works for airplane tickets and passports and similar items, too…

bq. So, you’re going to a ticketed event, like a concert or a ball game. It’s out of town. You’re carpooling with four other people. How do you ensure that everyone in the car has their ticket with them?

bq. The car doesn’t move until each person takes out their ticket and holds it to their forehead.

(quoted from 43 Folders: The Forehead Ticket Trick)

A “mesmerizing animated gif”:http://boardgamegeek.com/bggavatars/avatar_1083617851.jpg for your enjoyment…

(via “defective yeti”:http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/000929.html)

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist waits and expects it to change. The realist adjusts the sails.”

(Seen at adventure journalist : the notebook)

Just in case you ever wanted to know, “The Straight Dope”:http://www.straightdope.com/ brings us:

When the zombies take over, how long till the electricity fails?

bq. How long the power supply would last in the most critical zombie situation depends on two key factors %u2013 first, how long a given power plant can operate without human intervention, and second, how long before enough power plants fail to bring down the entire transmission grid. I’ll ignore the side issues of whether the zombies would want to try to run the power plant themselves, or if they would be a union or non-union shop.

(If you’re lazy, the answer appears to be that:

bq. within 4-6 hours there would be scattered blackouts and brownouts in numerous areas, within 12 hours much of the system would be unstable, and within 24 hours most portions of the United States and Canada, aside from a rare island of service in a rural area near a hydroelectric source, would be without power. Some installations served by wind farms and solar might continue, but they would be very small. By the end of a week, I’d be surprised if more than a few abandoned sites were still supplying power.

My MP3 player on shuffle mode just played “Don McClean – American Pie”:http://www.don-mclean.com/ and “Weird Al Yankovic – The Saga Begins”:http://www.google.com/search?q=weird+al+yankovic+saga+begins back to back…

I’m not entirely sure what to think of this:

* [H]ard|Forum – Matrimony Mod

He built a computer to propose to his girlfriend; the case (and interior!) are decorated in a bridal theme. It’s actually pretty cool as a craft project, but a _computer_? I dunno…

I guess the important part is that she said yes :-)

In a wide ranging discussion about Genesis, M. comes up with:

bq. that doesn’t mean God didn’t _create_ gravity, it just means He didn’t _document_ it!

So the amazon.ca package tracker says I should expect to receive my shipment between the 8th and 14th of January.

It was sitting in my mailbox when I got home today.

I’m off to (finally) watch the Firefly pilot… <grin>

I’m a beer drinker, and I love bocks. So when I received this in an e-mail message, I loved it, and I have to share:

bq. Monks in Germany began brewing bock beers back in the 1500s’. They used the full-bodied libations to fortify themselves while fasting during Lent. But along with calories… bock beers contain a lot of alcohol.

bq. One abbot was concerned that the merriment caused by the potent brew might be sacrilegious, and sent a barrel to Rome, asking for guidance.

bq. The cardinals – wine drinkers all—found the bitter brew unappealing. They not only decided the monks could continue to make their beer… they commended them for being willing to drink such awful stuff as a way to pay for their sins.

(forwards lost to antiquity, sadly).

From ryochiji’s blog:

bq. I accidentally ran over my PowerBook with my dad’s SUV today.

bq. It’s not very often that someone gets to say that. But perhaps what’s even more surprising is the fact that I’m writing this on that very same PowerBook. Hold a 12″ PowerBook G4 and you can just tell it’s sturdy. It’s thin, but not flimsy, and the aircraft-grade aluminum case makes it feel like a lump of metal, rather than a sophisticated high-tech gadget.

If I ran over my Acer, there’d be a pile of pieces on the ground. While the lid is wrapped in metal, the rest of the system is plastic case and layers of circuit board…

Critters’ Journey a Lesson in Currents”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5445-2003Aug30.html

bq. Back in 1992, a violent storm tossed 20 containers of rubber duckies off the back of a cargo ship halfway between China and Seattle, and they were quickly presumed lost at sea. Instead, it appears the castaways embarked on an epic 11-year swim across three oceans and half the globe.

A couple of researchers have taken the opportunity, and are using duck sightings to update their computer models. Cool!

[ Title and link shamelessly swiped from Brian Dickson. ]

The “Zombie Infection Simulation”:http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/ would normally go in the sideblog, but it’s just so cute that I had to put it here instead. Go play with it.

(There’s a version where the humans fight back, which seems just as inevitable but leaves lots of dead bodies lying around :-)

This is a stellar practical joke…

Mark Pilgrim is evil. (or is that E-Ville?)

My eyes hurt.

“The Blog of Jvstin”:http://www.all-roads-lead.net/jvstin/blog/000038.html → “Ones and Zeros”:http://www.whiterose.org/michael/blog/archives/003248.html#003248 → “Nail Tinted Glasses”:http://www.whiterose.org/cluey/archives/003246.html → “Dean’s World”:http://www.deanesmay.com/archives/000013.html

The Monty Hall problem is simple:

bq. You find yourself on a game show called “Let’s Make A Deal.” The game is very simple. There are three doors: door #1, door #2, and door #3. Behind one door is a million dollars. The other two doors contain worthless joke prizes. All you have to do is pick which door you want to open, and you get whatever is behind it. But you only get to open one door. By simple math, then, you obviously have a 1 in 3 chance of picking the correct door and becoming an instant millionaire.

bq. You pick a door. As soon as you tell Monty (the gameshow host) what door you want to open, he stops and says, “Okay, you’ve made your choice. Now, I’m going to do what we always do here on this game. I’m going to open one of the other two doors for you that I know has a booby prize.” And he does so. Then he asks, “Okay, now, would you like to stay with your original guess, or would you like to switch to the other door that’s still closed? You only get one shot, so do you want to stay with your original choice, or switch?”

bq. Here’s the question: is there any compelling reason to switch doors?

The answer is surprising!
(more…)

In “Bits and pieces [dive into mark]”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/03/31/bits_and_pieces.html , Mark writes that he has installed an OpenLDAP server and software to manage his contact lists, “For fun”.

bq. (In 1995, my dog had an e-mail address and a home page; in 2003, she was the first entry in my LDAP directory. This we call progress.)

Sounds exactly like something I would do. persephone.cfrq.net is primarily an excuse for me to play with technology, after all. (In fact, stay tuned; LAMP ganglist software is currently undergoing a security audit on my laptop :-)

It’s snowing. A lot. The roads are treacherous.

Happy April Fool’s Day…

From “Jim O’Halloran’s Weblog”:http://www.jimohalloran.com/archives/000180.html :

bq. In March, 1999, a man living in Kandos (near Mudgee in NSW) received a bill for his as yet unused gas line stating that he owed $0.00. He ignored it and threw it away. In April he received another bill and threw that one away too.

The story has a happy ending, which surprised me until I realised that it occured in Australia. I wonder if the outcome would have been as positive if the situation had occured in the United States or Canada?