crazyskillsbloginitiative

Hanging in there.  It’s amazing how used to something you can get.  I keep thinking - ‘Ooh I know!  I’ll have a cigarette…’  or ‘Oh yeah - that’s what I’m forgetting to do!’  Ahhhhh… It’s not easy, but I’ll get through.  The chest pain has been getting a little better every day, though I am still coughing like mad when I first wake up.  Hopefully that will go away over time.

Microsoft released RC1 today to TechNet and MSDN and will release it to the rest of the world on May 5.  Here’s the best part - the RC release doesn’t expire until June 1, 2010, so that means over a year of free Windows 7 for anyone interested.

Me?  I’m not that interested.  I’m sure there will be a reason to switch sometime, but for right now, 7 just looks like a stripped-down Vista.  And while I have more than enough machine to handle Vista, I don’t see shelling out another $500 as a logical move at this point.  Though “free” does have somewhat of an allure to it.

For an amazing price of $99 / mo.

Too bad it isn’t available (yet) in Cincinnati.

100Mb down / 15Mb up would sure be nice!  We’ll keep an eye on this and keep you informed!

www.dslreports.com/shownews/cablevision-101mbps-for-9995-102133 [dslreports.com]

IBM to send supercomputer to compete on Jeopardy.

“On Monday, the tech giant plans to announce that it’ll be moving one of its Blue Gene machines to Los Angeles to appear on the popular game show, according to a report by the New York Times.”

www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518110,00.html [foxnews.com]

Things appear to be holding together pretty well, considering what the patient is going through.

The patient has been complaining of severe chest pains for a couple days now.  Hopefully they will subside.  All in due time, I suppose.  I believe my job is to be supportive and to provide what I can to keep him as comfortable as possible during the inevitable withdrawal.  He appears to understand this will not be a simple task, but I believe he is going to make a full recovery.

We are trying patches for now, and will progress to Welbutrin if necessary.

He understands it isn’t going to truly get difficult for a few days yet, but after that point it should be  a little easier every day.

As usual, I will keep you updated as to the patient’s progress through this difficult time.

GNU/Linux, Ubuntu flavor, Black Cat style - just keeps getting better!  Major improvements in this release in terms of speed, from booting to firing up apps, to browsing the filesystem, internet.  Very highly recommended.  And props to the Ubuntu deveoper community of the world!

Did I mention fast?

1440 / 360 = 4.

1440 minutes in a day

360° in a circle or around a sphere (globe)

4 6-hour segments in a day (or 2 12s)

or 1° of rotation every 4 minutes.

60 / 4 = 15.

15 / 4 = 3.75

In a full circle there are 360 degrees. Each degree is split up into 60 parts, each part being 1/60 of a degree. These parts are called minutes. Each minute is split up into 60 parts, each part being 1/60 of a minute. These parts are called seconds. Trigonometry [id.mind.net]

Minutes, and seconds, in time, in degrees, and in latitude / longitude.  The Earth is divided equally into 360 degrees of longitude subdivided into minutes and seconds: there are 60 minutes (’) per degree, and 60 seconds (”) per minute.  A degree of latitude is approximately 69 miles, and a minute of latitude is approximately 1.15 miles. A second of latitude is approximately 0.02 miles, or just over 100 feet.  Geography [nationalatlas.gov]

Yes, there is a point to all of this.

The circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles (40,075.16 kilometers). Geography [about.com]

This means 69.170972 miles per degree, broken into 60 minutes broken into 60 seconds.

The numbers aren’t perfect but we are seeing roughly 24,901 miles around the earth, which spins 360° every 24 hours, or roughly 1000 miles per hour at 15° every hour. 60 / 15 = 4. so 4° every 15 minutes. 15 * 24 = 360. 15 / 4 = 3.75 so 3.75° every 4 minutes or 0.9375° per minute.

15 * 24 = 360   A second of latitude is about 100 feet

so a degree of latitude is 360,000 feet; a minute, 6,000; a second, 100ft.

QED

$89 for the four-day event, and in beautiful Las vegas!  Should be a great time for those who go…  I have always wanted to attend something like this - someday.

Motion and Time equals Energy, and you can’t have Energy without Motion and Time, and you can’t have Time without Motion and Energy, and you can’t have Motion without Energy and Time.

Yesterday, the crazyskills department of hosting technologies put up a Left4Dead server, the first to be put up post-update (as claimed by users of the server.) It is quite busy, but get in if you can. Here’s the info:

IP: 74.219.244.14
PORT: 27015 (default)
NAME: :: Generic l4d ::
LOC: Eastern US

Enjoy!

The BBC is reporting that the United Nations’ World Digital Library [wdl.org] has gone online with an initial offering of 1,200 ancient manuscripts, parchments and documents [bbc.co.uk].

Pretty cool stuff!  They are claiming that some of these works are “over 8,000 years old!”

Previously, the oldest stuff the crazyskills archive department was able to find weighed in at 5,000 years.

They do bring up a good point though; they are claiming copyright [wdl.org] on some of these works: “Astonishingly, the collection is covered by numerous copyright laws, according to the legal page,” … copyright where the author, publisher, even country of origin have been gone for thousands of years.

That’s right!  The follow-up to the immensely popular (and unbelievable game) Fallout 3 is scheduled to be released sometime in 2010 [1up.com].  According to Pete Hines, the vice president of Bethesda Softworks [wikipedia.org], the game is “not a sequel to Fallout 3 [wikipedia.org], it’s just another game in the universe.”  Exciting!