Little help please? I'm not sure how to use this product.

Labels: advertising

Doesn't it seem like an archetypal dream to imagine that the greatest discovery ever would be made accidentally by a couple of Irish blokes? I'm not sure which is more interesting, their alleged findings, or the hate mail they receive.

Labels: neat-o, ponderage

File under Cool: There's this thing on Long Island they call The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. It's part of Brookhaven National Laboratory, where a lotta brilliant people mingle. It's been around for several years now—maybe you've heard about it. This thing is visible from space, and while it has provided some arcane data that less than 1% of the population can comprehend, it's most widely known for its debated potential to create a world-ending black hole.

By slamming gold ions into each other at the speed of light, they generate thermal bursts a million times hotter than the sun. Apparently doing so can teach us about the state of the universe shortly after the Big Bang, and about matter itself. Neato.

But back before they turned the thing on for the first time, scientists tried to assure a doubting public that the risk of the collider producing a black hole capable of instantly swallowing the Earth, which apparently is mathematically plausible, is "not likely". I remember reading those words and thinking, "oh shit. Those sound like fated words." But then I thought, fate requires a presence. It requires an audience. If RHIC created a black hole that turned the lights off on Everything, those words would be fated words indeed, but they'd be nothing at the same time. Not that such goofy semantics matter...I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, I was recently reminded about the RHIC collider so I checked out their Website and was happy to learn that they stopped being wishy-washy about The Big Oops!, putting such fears to rest aggressively. File under whew?

Labels: neat-o, ponderage

Just had a friend point me in the direction of a new band he thought I'd like. He was right. Not only are the songs of Ok Go really good in a poppy rock urban-suburban paisley artpunk sort of way, but their video for "Here It Goes Again" is a rare piece of originality and cleverness amidst a heap of cookie cutter bullshit and acts that take themselves far too seriously to be interesting. But I wouldn't really know, because that very heap is why I don't watch any music videos anymore. But hey.

Labels: neat-o, tunes

What I'm about to say will doubtlessly fire a few people up. It might not be popular, but I believe it to be true. And I believe it must be said.

Peanut butter has no business being in ice cream.

Labels: at home, eats

If you watch much CNBC, then you're familiar with BP's ads. You see them every time they cut to commercial. They repeat about 5 or 6 ads, and they all pander to the growing crowd concerned about a lack of real progress toward economically viable energy alternatives. Even BP's jingle sounds clean and green. Their color scheme is light and citrusy. Nothing wrong with that, if they are trying as hard as they say, but it certainly doesn't appear that they're investing their unprecedented profits in the proper places. What a disaster...could there be a worse time for Prudhoe Bay pipleline problems?

I just heard the chairman of BP proudly and confidently state that they've invested $200 million to sustain the pipeline. They made 7.3 billion bucks last quarter alone. I think they deserve the outrage they're getting in their ears lately. And I notice they haven't been running those ads recently. Likely for the same reason that every airline pulls their advertising for a few days whenever there's a plane crash of any significance. They don't want their brand associated with the issue, even indirectly. So, I guess BP is offline in two ways.

I've made my two cents pretty clear—oil companies have every right to every dime they've made in this global situation of high demand and limited supply, without having to face arbitrary penalties. But with that unprecedented windfall should come an unprecedented level of maintenance and re-investment in the infrastructure they're responsible for, given the shaky state of affairs we're in, economically and politically, with respect to oil. It should also lead to an unprecedented level of research and development into alternative fuels. We probably shouldn't let ourselves be too satisfied with the internal combustion engine deep into the 21st century. In what other category of life and science do we accept so little progress? Weapons change. Drugs change. Surgery changes. Computing changes. Garden fertilizers, zit creams, artificial limbs, and televisions are all much better than they were thirty years ago. Twenty years ago. Ten years go. But our engines are essentially the same.

Meanwhile, a guy in his garage is able to do this with water:

Labels: advertising, ponderage

So I woke up Thursday morning, saw the news about the foiled terrorist plot out of the UK, made some coffee, and quickly put up a quick post here to purge my head of the frustration I felt upon being reminded that the world is full of lunatics bent on bringing down the global economy. So I uploaded the post, took a sip o' coffee, and noticed that Windows had quietly performed an update and it wanted me to restart. Eh, so I'll let it reboot while I get a refill. {stretch, yawn}

When I came back, my computer was still winding down, which was strange enough. A minute later, it finally shut down and the restart began. But actually it didn't. Instead, my computer decided that it had had enough of working for the man. "Nah," it said. "I think I'll retire now." My registry was completely blown away. It didn't even get to the initial Windows XP screen. Just a curious DOS message about how something extremely important was missing. I've seen my share of blue screens and cryptic messages, but I knew immediately that this problem was over my head. I'd have better luck building a suspension bridge than fixing system-level registry problems. It's just not my thing. I'm not sure what is my thing, but I know it's not that.

So, computer: hosed.

And then a sinking feeling. I hadn't performed any kind of backup in over 6 months. It just so happens that Tess is 6 months old. Hundreds of our baby pictures and videos: gone? Nik had recently reminded me back them up to a DVD. "Yep" I said. "Yep". See, this sort of thing wouldn't happen to me, because it had never happened before, and well, that must mean I've been doing something right, right?

"Nope".

I felt sick. How could I tell Nik that I lost all those dear pic n' vids because I never backed 'em up? How could I have not backed up my own writings, work files, and miscellany? I had taken it for granted far too long, and I can't remember when I'd felt so low. My head spent a good amount of time in my hands last Thursday.

Me: hosed. Humbled.

Whatever happened, happened. I called a couple übergeek friends. Recommendation: don't waste my time trying to repair the registry. Take it somewhere. If they didn't have full-time jobs themselves, they'd do it for me. Estimated fix time: 3 to 6 hours—for somebody who has done it before. For someone who hasn't, it could be measured in geologic time. So I took it to an IT guy who works with Nik. He has a bunch of pro recovery tools and by Friday he was able to tell us that the data was okay. The relief we felt was...it was...you know. Relieving. But he wasn't able to fix the OS and get me back on board. He believed that "errors on the drive" put it in a permanent state of Toast.

Fine, then. At least I didn't lose anything. I can get a new computer, which I needed anyway, and start over again. Tedious, annoying, expensive, and time consuming, but I deserved all of that and more.

Still, I decided to call my friend Stan "The Man" Merrill, übergeek to the gods. He popped over, happy as a clam in sand, turned it on, popped in a magic disc, booted up some intimidating program that looked like RegEdit on steroids, fiddled with the registry for about 40 minutes, and Yahtzee, my computer was fine. Like nothing had happened. Un-retired. Untoasted.

Now I have two computers. I think I'll keep 'em both. But one thing is for sure: I won't ever take this stuff for granted again. I'm backing up all our baby stuff to DVD as we create them, and I'll do the same with all my important stuff. And I'm finally the owner of a serious UPS, which I should have been using for years. 'Specially with all the weather-related brown outs we've been having. Lessons learned, late. But better late than never.

Labels: at home

I've been using Pandora for a year now, and it didn't occur to me until just now to share my faves. I'll only post songs from people/bands that I've never heard of. Figure that's in keeping with the spirit of the site. Check 'em out. I can't promise you'll like these songs, but I can promise that they're good, or very good, or better still. This is a suck-free zone, baby. Oh, you betcha.

• "Alpha", by The Monolith
• "Your Skull is Red", by Team Sleep
• "Pool Song", by Longwave
• "Somewhere Down the River", by Elf Power
• "April & May", by David Fridlund

Labels: tunes