Archive for November, 2008

Segway

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16 years
by in geeky stuff on 2008-11-29

I finally got a chance to ride a Segway.

We spent most of Saturday at the SciWorks museum in Winston-Salem. It’s a pretty cool museum, complete with a planetarium, animal exhibits, and lots of hands-on science exhibits.

While we were milling around, I ran into a guy who looked a little familiar… it was Carl Weston, who used to live down the street from me when I was a kid. He was working at SciWorks, and he was showing people how to ride the Segway. It was a little awkward and slow to get started, but not too hard. I even convinced Foong to take a spin.

By the way, I remember visiting this place about 30 years ago, back when it was called the “Nature Science Center”. Some of the original exhibits are still there, including the Foucault pendulum.

A culture of deception

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16 years
by in madness on 2008-11-25

This morning, I got some yogurt from the cafeteria at work. All of the containers were in an ice bucket, so all I could see were the top foil wrappers. Clearly, all of them were strawberry flavor.

Dannon Yogurt - Top

However, after opening the container, I was surprised to find that it was, in fact, blueberry flavor!

Dannon Yogurt - Front

I’m sure some accountant at the Dannon factory suggested that they save a penny by using the same lid for all flavors.

I’m a CSS n00b

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16 years
by in web on 2008-11-20

I’ve had a web page for over a decade, starting with a single static HTML page, and growing into a fairly feature-rich CGI script written in Perl. But CSS is a new beast for me. So this blog is currently a chameleon, changing skins as I learn what makes it tick.

Space shuttle fly-by

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16 years
by in family, geeky stuff on 2008-11-20

Tonight, we were treated to a visible pass of Space Shuttle Endeavour while it was docked to the International Space Station. On Friday, the girls and I watched the shuttle launch on NASA TV (via internet). So it was pretty cool to see it again, this time live, and in orbit.

So proud of her…

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16 years
by in family on 2008-11-15

This week, I have been slowly exposing Audrey (age 7) to computer programming. This morning, I showed her a short shell script that blinks the LED’s on our router.

while true ; do
   led white on
   sleep 2
   led white off
   sleep 1
done

I explained to her how the loop works: LED on, sleep, LED off, sleep, repeat forever. Then I pointed out that I had started it blinking last night, but that it was not blinking this morning.

She told me “you might have a bug”.

I am so proud of her.

Trying out WordPress

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16 years
by in web on 2008-11-15

As part of my on-going job of maintaining the web page for the Triangle Amateur Robotics Club, I am playing with WordPress. Right now, I am not sure whether I am going to try to maintain a personal blog or not. But I think the club definitely needs one.

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