I don’t think of myself as photogenic
This is the least worst photo of me take recently. A free sample: Mikal at SciFoo
The unabomber
On my random surfing kick the Wikipedia page on the Unabomber is interesting too.
Starfish Prime
As for Starfish Prime, because there is almost no air at an altitude of 400 kilometres, no fireball formation occurred, although manifold other notable effects did occur. About 1500 kilometres (930 statute miles) away in Hawaii, the Electromagnetic pulse created by the explosion was felt as three hundred street lights failed, television sets and radios malfunctioned, burglar alarms went off and power lines fused. On Kauai, EMP shut down telephone calls to the other islands by burning out the equipment used in a microwave link. Also, the sky in the Pacific region was illuminated by an artificial aurora for more than seven minutes. In part, these effects were predicted by Nicholas Christofilos, a scientist who had earlier worked on the Operation Argus high-altitude nuclear shots. High altitude nuclear testing leads to interesting EMP effects, which is something I have known about for a while. There is good coverage of Starfish Prime at Wikipedia and some US government hearings on the issue are interesting too. Wow. Did they really break a bunch of satellites? While some of the energetic beta particles had followed of the earth's magnetic field and illuminated the sky, other high-energy electrons became trapped in man-made radiation belts…
Nature’s write up of SciFoo day one
By the time I got to the SciFoo venue at the Googleplex yesterday evening, it was already swarming with other great people, most of whom I knew only by name and reputation. After some food, beer and chat in the evening sun, the event proper kicked off with a brief introduction by Tim O'Reilly and me, some very brief (3 words each) self-introductions from the other 200-or-so attendees. Then one of the most fun parts of any Foo Camp: writing the agenda. Three huge bright white boards were soon littered with pen marks describing proposed sessions. http://blogs.nature.com/wp/nascent/2006/08/scifoo_friday.html
SciFoo 2006
The first Science Foo camp is being hosted by O'Reilly, Nature Magazine, and Google. I'm going and I am excited like other people.
The wreck of the dominator
Another old thing to visit when next I happen to be somewhere: the the wreck of the Dominator in LA. Via SJH who found it on Metafilter. Oh, and the the guide to forgotten LA places is cool too (via Dan Goods).
This is why I went to MythTV
TiVo implements punishment mode for buying their product. Nice.
Updated nuvexport patch
To get nuvexport working with MythTV User Jobs as a transcoder, I needed to further modify my nuvexport patch to handle the fact that there is no controlling terminal for user jobs. Here is the new patch: Index: export/ffmpeg.pm =================================================================== --- export/ffmpeg.pm (revision 242) +++ export/ffmpeg.pm (working copy) @@ -70,11 +70,11 @@ # Audio only? $self->{'audioonly'} = $audioonly; # Gather the supported codecs - my $data = `$ffmpeg -formats 2>/dev/null`; + my $data = `$ffmpeg -formats 2>&1`; my ($formats) = $data =~ /(?:^|\n\s*)File\sformats:\s*\n(.+?\n)\s*\n/s; my ($codecs) = $data =~ /(?:^|\n\s*)Codecs:\s*\n(.+?\n)\s*\n/s; if ($formats) { - while ($formats =~ /^\s(..)\s(\S+)\s*$/mg) { + while ($formats =~ /^\s(.{2})\s(\S+).*$/mg) { $self->formats'}{$2} = $1; } } @@ -286,7 +286,7 @@ push @tmpfiles, "/tmp/fifodir_$$", "/tmp/fifodir_$$/audout", "/tmp/fifodir_$$/vidout"; # Execute ffmpeg - print "Starting ffmpeg.\n" unless ($DEBUG); + print "Starting ffmpeg: $ffmpeg\n" unless ($DEBUG); ($ffmpeg_pid, $ffmpeg_h) = fork_command("$ffmpeg 2>&1"); $children{$ffmpeg_pid} = 'ffmpeg' if ($ffmpeg_pid); Index: export/ffmpeg/PSP.pm =================================================================== --- export/ffmpeg/PSP.pm (revision 242) +++ export/ffmpeg/PSP.pm (working copy) @@ -170,7 +170,8 @@ $self->{'ffmpeg_xtra'} = ' -b ' . $self->{'v_bitrate'} .' -bufsize 65535' .' -ab 32 -acodec aac' - ." -f psp -title $safe_title"; + ." -f psp -title $safe_title" + .' -ar 24000'; # Execute the parent method $self->SUPER::export($episode, '.MP4'); Index: nuv_export/shared_utils.pm ===================================================================…
On a bunker kick
Now that I am back on my bunker kick dad points out that there was a bunker in Canberra (my home town) as well. Some references I can see online make it public now, including this heritage list. I'm wondering if it's the same as the Bunker Theatre in the same building now. That would be cool...
Back in Phoenix
I'm on another work trip to Phoenix, although the office is really in Tempe. There's not a lot of difference really, given that a lot of American cities seem to be much like suburbs of large conurbations. Not much to say, apart from that the hotel is nice and has a water slide, in fact a water park. More to report later.