My crap trig mnemonics

I liked to remember my trig for programming like this:

"shiny cossacks"

x goes with cosine "cos x" -> "cossacks"

y goes with sin "sin y" -> "shiny"


and that made it easy to go to:

x = cos theta

y = sin theta

The Day After Tomorrow

Somehow I missed "The Day After Tommorow" movie when it came out and just watched it now.


I think my head is going to explode from all of this cognitive dissonance. Global warming causes a global ice age... oh my goodness.

I would be embarrassed to have my name listed in the credits as the "Scientific Consultant" when the movie ignores basic physics and logic. I'd call it the "unscientific" consultant.

Sharknado could use an "unscientific" consultant.

It makes for good spectacle, but it doesn't make any sense. Kinda like a lot that's going on in the world today.

Batman's Big Trak

I never knew that Batman had a big trak...(sorry that's Bat Machine)

http://www.toynerd.com/index.php/2010/06/14/how-to-control-the-dark-knight/

Power went out the other day

A couple of days ago the power went out for about 8 hours. It really makes you think about how much we rely on electricity for everything modern.

That really stops you dead in your tracks, sitting in a dark house. Good thing I had some flashlights handy.


I used to have UPS uninterruptible power supplies, but the batteries kept dying after a year or two so I got annoyed and didn't replace them. My desktops didn't make it through the outage, but my laptop (with its own battery) survived unscathed.

First world problems...

Danmere Backer - videotape backup

Years ago, I had a Danmere Backer that was sold by H45 technology. It was a device that attached to the parallel port (there was an ISA card version) and allowed you to save data to videotape by generating NTSC or PAL signals. A good idea in theory, but it had all of the problems that the old audio cassette tape had. For example, with cassette tape, random access to specific files was difficult.

The particular unit I had wouldn't generate "clean" NTSC video and would vertically roll the TV.

I think I only used it once. Recordable CD technology was faster, more easily verifiable, random access and less hassle. Especially when cds jumped from recording at 2x to 48x.


Still, it was a clever idea. It reminds me of Atari 2600 video, with all of the blocky scanlines.

There's an interesting webpage about linux drivers for the backer with screenshots.

http://linbacker.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html


I wonder if it would be possible to generate video signals from an old Amiga 500 that would allow data transfer with a backer.

Theoretically a 320x200 black and white screen could transfer 8k of data per video frame * 60fps = 480KB/sec.


This reminds me of the cauzin softstrip technology with data transfer over paper.


http://cauzin.com/

Or even data transfer over audio like Sofcast. There's an interesting article from PC Mag May 28, 1985.

https://www.google.com/search?q=software+takes+to+the+air+sofcast

Interesting ideas that never caught on.

Vizio M320SL

I got a TV the other day, a Vizio M320SL. It's not bad. I was trying to see how it works as a monitor and it works pretty well, except that it has that property where the brightness varies by the viewer's angle. So if you sit right in the very middle about arm's length, the brightness will vary and the edges of the monitor will look dark. It's kind of a weird effect.

Also it won't come out of standby. I figured out that if I turn the TV on, wait until it'll display "HDMI" on the on screen display, then move my mouse to wake up my ubuntu system out of standby, the computer will recognize that the monitor's there. Otherwise, I have to bring up the display settings to "reenable" the monitor.

Interestingly, the monitor has an owner's manual built-in. That's pretty cool.


I wanted to test it and found these neat online tools to calibrate your monitor.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-online-tools-calibrate-monitor/

My particular favorite of the group is http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

This would have been so great back in the day

The Vampire 2 is so cool. 226 times an amiga 600.

http://www.kipper2k.com/video/x16.jpg


http://www.kipper2k.com/