Square root.

Posted on May 29, 2004 by Arthur

A couple of weeks agosm_pythagoras.jpg a colleague asked me if I was good in math and showed me his problem: he (basically) needed to know the length of a hypotenuse of a triangle (both sides are known) and he forgot how to do it. These kind of questions are the easiest ones, and I remember drumming up the solution, that is including the proof. After all, if I remember correctly, this was taught to us when we were age 12.

Scary. Why is that? After say 20plus years, the brain just rolled out the Pythagoras Theorem. It didn’t matter, if I was speaking in half Dutch, half English: the drawing plus the formula where right there. Instantly.

There is some magic in math and algebra. It doesn’t matter if you’ll ever use it. But if you use it, after so many years, even the simpliest question with the one solution makes me want to hug a math teacher. You kids better start paying attention.

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Is it already over yet?

Posted on May 29, 2004 by Arthur

I‘m sitting here behind my computer and wondered, ‘What happened to the Tim Hortons Roll Up The Rim contest’?

Or should I ask ‘Who won?’. Raise your hands if you won more than 2 donuts.

But seriously, I expected more coverage over at the Hortons website (English | French | Dutch). It’s good to know that they managed to win a bid on a restaurant chain in New England, but I’d rather see happy faces of winning cup winners.

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Tiny footprint mode

Posted on May 28, 2004 by Arthur

Windows Taskbar screwed? No tabs? Menus gone?

Maybe your Taskmanager is running in Tiny Footprint Mode?

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Peanuts

Posted on May 27, 2004 by Arthur

I was reading about Bush’s latest healthcare initiative (no, it’s nothing about faith-based initiatives this time). Basically he wants to create a ‘mid-level’ Health Care IT advisor. Or something to that order. Why? Here’s what he says:

   Docs are still spending a lot of time writing things on paper. And sometimes it’s difficult to read their handwriting.
Sometimes information gets lost. Sometimes people inadvertently prescribe the wrong drug.
So the fundamental question is: how do we use technology, how do we modernize health care? That’s what we’re talking about.

100 Million dollars for a project to help the sick and weary to get the right prescription. That would help a lot: not so long ago the administration planned to spend 1.5 billion dollars on ‘promoting marriage’?

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Swan, swan, hummingbird

Posted on May 26, 2004 by Arthur

I saw a hummingbird. For Canadians (Atlantic Canadians only, I wonder?) that’s not a big deal. As a European, I’ve never seen one in my life. Not even the last years, while living here: I was either skeptic or plain unlucky. Skeptic, because I truly think that those animals shouldn’t be around these areas. I mean, it can be rather mean weather over here.

And yes, they hover. Or actually, they zoom, zigzag, rollover and smile at you. You heard that right. They smile because apparently they like what’s inside the hummingbird feeder. And they eat it a lot. Which reminded me a bit of Alan’s entry today about ‘fastfeed’: it wouldn’t surprise me if we end up with obese hummingbirds this year. Smile!

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Jiggle-do-jigdo

Posted on May 25, 2004 by Arthur

The sm_jigdo.jpgLinux server (‘Elsie’) needs to be upgraded. After hours looking for a replacement of the Fedora Core 1 kernel I’m back at Debian.

A couple of years ago, Alfons sent up a couple of Debian disks, which I planned to use on an older computer for server purposes only. The installation got stuck: and apparently it was a known bug in the installer (if I remember correctly it had to do with PPPOE (PPP over ethernet). Everything was literally ready to go. The disappointment. I fell back to Plan B: a spare copy of (yessir) Caldera OpenLinux, which I had bought around Fall of 2000. Those were the days. Don’t mention it.

Anyhows: I’m rather impressed with the installer and naturally, jigdo. I only wish there were real servers-only Linux distributions that fit on only one CD. Preferably less.

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DVD-Arthur

Posted on May 23, 2004 by Arthur

For this long weekend my wife and I decided to check out Blockbusters for DVDs. We ended up with 4: Kill Bill vol. 1, Gothika, A Bridge Too Far and one DVD with a couple of Charles Bronson movies. My wife likes Charles Bronson. I don’t mind him: I think his movies are great if you want to kick some butt but have no time to actually kick some butt.

Kill Bill was hilarious: everytime someone lost a limb I kept thinking of firehoses gone loose. I’ll note down a couple of words for the movies section. Gothika was like that: it reminded me of The Ring. I think Halle Berry should keep her long haircut. It’s better that way.

As for the other movies: there is only one reason for buying ‘A bridge too far’. It was filmed in the city I used to live in. More on that later.

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The Planet Of Channel 9

Posted on May 21, 2004 by Arthur

Just this morning I tried to go through the videos, shot over at MSDN’s ‘Channel 9’. After cancelling a hundred of dialogs displaying security certificates (!!!), I managed to get through some of the videos (note, they’re all WMVs). For some kind of reason, the ‘happy we’re here!’ videos made me laugh, hysterically, that is.

The movies raise the impression that there are no deadlines at BigCos. No wonder that everybody wants to work at Microsoft (!!!).

Then there is this ‘yet to be released Tablet PC’ demo by employee Susan. SuperseKreT (!!!) but apparently poor Susan is left-handed: apparently the software isn’t really made for left-handed people. Think about it. Which brings me to the following idea: Windows for Left Handed People’. I mean ‘why should the OK Button always be on the right side?’. You can quote me on that. Now if you don’t mind, I’m off to the Patent Office.

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Search and You Won’t Find

Posted on May 19, 2004 by Arthur

Over at the NYT, an article discussing Google’s new ‘local PC search’ tool. It will be interesting to see how this ‘integrates’ with the browser, and how they plan to be ahead of Microsoft’s search local-engine-plus-DB-to-Web-integration plan. Interesting times ahead, for sure (backlink)

Related: Google’s secret local search tool-project is called ‘Puffin’ (according to the article above). I have no clue why the Google programmers are so obsessed with the word Puffin.

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Fortunate?

Posted on May 18, 2004 by Arthur

Typical shallow thinking where Instapundit calss it fortunate when learning that the train explosion accident in North Korea also killed a dozen Syrian technicians.

Let’s hope for more lucky explosions where these two countries are concerned.

Over 154 people were killed. Over 1300 people were injured. That’s what official North Korean sources say. The Red Cross thinks the explosion killed a lot more.

Fortunate, he says. Think about it.

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The Phone, The Phone

Posted on May 16, 2004 by Arthur

The phone rang this morning (names not withheld, naturally, for more drama):

Me: Hello!?
Other Side: Hi, what are you guys up to nowadays
Me: Nothing really, thank you very much. Who’s calling?
Other Side: This is Mike, is Adrian there?
Me: I think you have the wrong number.
Other Side: Oh sorry, what number is this then?
Me: Beats me, you dialed it, not me.

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Eurovision 2004

Posted on May 15, 2004 by Arthur

In a couple of hours (I think) the yearly Eurovision Song Festival will kick off, which brought me to the BBC’s Eurovision pages.

I noticed something silly when going over the contestants list, singers and songtitles: Most titles are in English, meaning, sung in English. Which is weird, and clearly shows that the contestants aim for international recognition (I mean, they want to be a popstar). Right away, I can tell you that I do not like the song (and singers) the Dutch came up with. A shame.

7:15PM It ended up being the Eurovision Dance Contest (says Terry Wogan): Ukraine won.

6:53PM Live feed over at the BBC is jolly fun.

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Groups-Beta

Posted on May 14, 2004 by Arthur

Via Mernit’s (and everywhere around), I noticed that Google seems to be adding improvements to their Usenet interface Groups.

No rocket-science here or the killer-app, but actually Google’s next step to battle Microsoft. Microsoft has been eyeing UseNet for a while. UseNet has also always been a proven community builder, way before there were ‘blogs’. Developers hung out, asked and answered questions. Groupies too. In my younger days, I even hung out with a band of other funny people.

Killer-App? UseNet has always been around. Thanks to this guy.

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