When the Sky is Full of 0′s and 1′s
• • • • •

I had a really weird dream the last night we were camping. I actually had it early in the mourning after kirstie and her dad had left to get the car repaired. It was a simpsons episode, and I am not sure who i was in it, from my perspective I think i was homer, and it was all in cartoon form (though regretably i did not look at myself in the mirror to see if I was a cartoon, but everything around me was).

This plot could have been right out of a tree house of horror episode. There were these aliens that made everyone in the town sign something so that they could use the internet (or something fun I am not sure of the specifics now). In typical Simpsons style no one read the contract and lo and behold it was a contract for their souls, and the aliens came back to collect. So now Marge, and Maggie are in a room (i think homer and marges bedroom) knee high in water, praying to a television with the aliens on it. Lisa has this bright idea and conjures from her closet a ghost/spirit version of herself that she has saved for this moment, claiming that it will save Springfield. To control the ghost Lisa must lay-down on a small bed in the closet. This she does and the ghost goes into the water filled room and proclaims “umm, aliens can you please leave” and then falls over. This event now makes it possible for the aliens to get Lisa, leaving only homer (me?) and bart. Bart has a great idea of wearing hats and walking into the room such that the hats are water level. This works and homer (me?) and bart are able to escape through a drain hole or something in the floor. We run to the edge of town where someone (flanders or rev lovejoy) tell us to keep going and find an internet connection in a new town to break the spell.

Then I wake up.

So I was reading this blog post about this article and it appears that the long arm of cut backs and pointless war have come back to hurt america directly. Seems that due to tax cuts and money need for the war in iraq that the levee project in loiusiana (on going since 1995) ran out of funding. Its sad when natrual disater strikes, but its even worse when some (alot possibley) of the damage could have been prevented.

• Flying spaghetti monster home page
  (tags: funny)

The plane left a bit early, the “L” ride was quick, I called in to take an extra day off, and now its tues and we are all back. A short synopsis of the rest of the weekend. Friday was Canada’s Wonderland a day filled with sun, rides and more water then you can shake a stick at. Saturday was The Ex where we saw some excellent ice skaters/acrobatics, a cat show, and tons of food. Sunday was a trip into the city proper where kirstie and I meet up with Thierry who gave us great music recommendations of local toronto music. We hung out there with him for about 2.5 hrs (wow time flies) and then took the TTC back to the world largest book store, met back up with kirsties folks and went off to dinner. Monday was emergency car repair and then camp tear-down, drive over to woodbine for lunch and then downwards and onwards toward buffalo.

6 days that felt like minutes, there is never enough time for everything. Lucky Toronto is not really going anywhere anytime soon.

Just got back from seeing this film. Very good, Jarmush has a great eye for framing shots and leaving things very understated. Murray does a great job, a similar part to “Lost in Translation”. I hope this movie didnt come out to early as to be over looked for the Oscars. Well worth seeing.

From war driving last night to what I guess would be called war walking today, finally hooked up to a network here in the mall in Oshawa . Plan for today, taking it easy and going to see Broken Flowers later on. Below is from yesterday written from the airport.

From the airport
7:54am: yeah we’re here really early, but it better then being late. The ride in on the “L” was snappy. Mostly people going to work, a few with luggage. Spent most the ride looking out the window with Kirstie taking pictures. Guess its crazy to think that there would have been internet at the airport. I am sure there is some pay service around here, but I was hoping for a free connection. No loss. Yesterday kinda sucked, but atleast I don’t have to deal with it until next week. Huge re-org, everybody was switched around. My friend said that it kinda like a Chinese fire drill, run around the out side of the car but in the end it was just the illusion of progress. I no longer work for Mike, which is sad (was going to write kinda, but its not kinda sad…it really is sad). It was a good couple (almost 3) years. The head of the area tried to break the news to all of us with market speak justification. It was all so thin, and nerve racking. Just get it over with, we not listening because we know a big change is coming. Going into it we were expecting some of the things; ending of certain projects and the possible new adventures into others, maybe a new project manager (a position that has been open for almost a year), but not the huge re ordering of who reports to who. Mike, always the optimist, said “the most important thing is that we are all still here and still employed”. I hope to be that well balanced some day.

• News and Information about Hybrid Vehicles
  (tags: fuel_cell_talk)

Wired News: Drier Laundry Through Chemistry
How could I pass this up, being a chemist and all. But you have to love the media’s misuse of terms.

The researchers found they could lower surface tension by mixing common surfactants in a new way — five parts lauryl sulfate to one part dioctyldecyldimethyl ammonium bromide. “We call it dodab,” Carter said. Carter tested the compound using a washing machine in his lab.

OK, well technically this is not a compound but a mixture. What is interesting is that really these to ingredients are fairly common hopefully meaning that getting a product out this wouldn’t be to hard. Although, is there really a need, are there American houses going “our clothes are to wet when they get out of the washer”. They do mention a possible 10% drop in electricity useage which could have a significant impact on overall energry consumption.

• OIL change
  (tags: fuel_cell_talk)
• Controlled consumption
  (tags: fuel_cell_talk)
• Conventional Crude Oil Lifetime: A Simple Estimate
  (tags: fuel_cell_talk)

New Scientist Breaking News – Billboards beam adverts to passing cellphones
Wow, so it looks like those weird ads from “Vanilla Sky”, the ones that talk to passers by, are not far away. I guess this is not surprising that ad agencies would find a use for wireless technology.

Yup, this post is about nothing. Every once in a while its good to do nothing. This weekend was one of those weekends. We had thought about going to see Nora O’Connor and Kelly Hogan at Schubas, in the end decided to stay in. Kirstie made some copies of various live shows of bands like The Kings of Convenience and Jeff Buckley. The Air and Water show was this weekend, so that pretty much excluded doing much bike riding on the lakefront path (way to crowded).

Slowly going through all the recently purchased albums. After having seen them at Intonation Fest I really wanted to hear a Xiu Xiu album and so we picked up “la forét” which is ok, but I think I liked them better live. May just take time to grow on me. From a recommendation of a friend we picked up Devotchka record which is amazing. John at Dr Wax thinks he remembers that they sometimes back up burlesque shows, which is fairly fitting due to the lead singers crooning voice and odd gypsy-like instrumentation. I listened to that Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah record almost constantly last week, along with the new Sufjan Stevens record. We are now 2 discs through the 6-disc box set of the complete fall peel sessions and so far WOW! What an amazing band. Listened to one side of the 6 sided Albert Ayler vinyl release of Holy Ghost. I guess they are going to release the whole 6 (or is it 9) cd set on vinyl in batches. This is my first foray into his stuff and so far I really enjoy it. He has a tone that is very distinct and creative.

Still have a huge stack to go through. I cant believe that summer is almost over. Hopefully I can get a few more months of biking in.

• Daily Kos: State of the Nation
  (tags: blogs)

I was sent this from my mother in law. Its an online art gallery comprised of art either inspired by or directly made from science/math. There are things you would expect like fractals and galaxy’s along with pieces inspired my Joan Miro to depict math equations and Einstein’s head on a woman’s body. Mostly very interesting art, showing scientists are left brained too, dammit.

• r4wb!t5
  (tags: chicago r4wb!t5 digital art music)

So here’s an interesting link about the London 2012 games. From the article:

But the new bill will make it illegal to combine words like “games”, “medals”, “gold”, “2012″, “sponsor” or “summer” in any form of advertising.

This seems kinda ridiculous to me. So unless you are an offical corporate sponsor of the games you can not use those words. Meaning local pubs/buisness and the like have to pretend that the games are not happening or face a huge fine. What a lark.

• Harpers.org
  (tags: news)

Well at noon today our network at work got hit with the zotob worm. What is this you ask? Here’s a Google Search. It managed to take down EVERY computer at work, except the lc/ms machines because they are running NT and 2K. So it didnt stop my whole afternoon but did make things more difficult. Whats crazy is that I overheard so many ppl at work going “darn hacker kids, if i get my hands on them…blah blah blah..” WOW Microsoft has ppl wrapped right around their finger. While its true that no OS is safe, the monopolistic hold that MS has on the desktop (both in OS and productivity products, i.e. IE, Office, Outlook) all of which, along with most other programs written for it, have way to my access to low level processes that can really fsck up a system. This is where angry users should be pointing their collective fingers. Yes there are fewer Mac and Linux installations on the net, making them lower targets, looking at the numbers its appears that quite a bit of web servers run some flavor of apache. Yes you can run apache on MS windows, I would venture to guess that most apache installations are on some flavor of gnu/linux (or BSD even?). So why not attack those, maybe its to difficult do to the strength of the underlying OS? Possibly. So why were all these places affected. Why didnt they patch? Why didnt my workplace patch. Well that is due to the fact that any patch must go through a huge process of being tested and made double sure that no critical apps crash becuase of it. This takes some time. Of course now that it hit they are applying the patch like crazy. Again, we shoudl point at microsoft, a patch should not change a system so much that basic programs stop working correctly. Thanks M$ what a mess.

• bikechicago.info
  (tags: bike chicago info local)
• 75 Minutes
  (tags: mp3 blogs indie aac)

After being in pain for most of friday and saturday I decided to Google heartburn and discovered that the various hits described how I was feeling to a T. Reading up on causes and preventions I noticed not only are spicey foods and coffee a cause but so is eating to fast. So on sunday I made it a point to eat slower and will try to continue that since I know I eat to fast. Its always to hard though becuase food tastes so good. Coming into work today I talked to a co-worker about my weekend and sudden discovery of heartburn and he informed me that strees is also a cause. I was shocked, I really didnt think I was all that stressed out until I look back. Last week was kinda rough, both work and non-work wise. He concured that “duh” I was stressed, I guess things here have been bothering me more then I thought. Guess I should read this page.

Oh yeah, what you have all been waiting for. Here are some pictures Kirstie took of me yesterday at the park. We rode down to see our friend michelle play with a few other musicians (another fiddle/guitarist, mandolin, and banjo). It was a nice afternoon and we sat on the grass in the garden and had a small lunch.