base0.net

If there is one thing that has caused quite the stir, it’s the announcement of the iPad last Wednesday. Everyone seems to have an opinion, and of course I have mine as well.  Apple fans are saying that it will change the paradigm of computing, including splitting people into two worlds.  There are of course a lot of grey areas here.  People are tying major issues to the lack of flash, which isn’t really a big deal if you ask me.  Eventually Flash was bound to fall, because it’s a closed system at it’s core.  You can make some Flash things without Adobe, but they can always change the game on you.  Of course, the Apple App store is just as closed as Flash.  You can’t put anything on the iPad without the magic bits from Apple saying that it’s kosher.  There are already a bunch of invalid reasons that they have for rejecting apps, including the very anti-competitive practices of rejecting anything which will be competing against their own apps.  Will they reject word processors for the iPad which compete with iWork?  How close does something need to be in order to be rejected – will OmniGraffle’s outline making tools be too close?

Because I love the iPad, it’s such a great piece of tech.   I can even buy into the “new world” of non-multitasking (noone really multitasks anyway) and non-filesystem world.  I can see building apps for it, but I don’t want to work in the closed system which is the Apple universe, where everything is gatekeepered by a process which has been opaque at best.  It’s all of the arguments against the iPhone’s development model, except on a larger scale.  There were companies who wanted to develop software for the iPhone that were niche apps – things like warehouse inventory systems.  The iPad is larger, it’s about the perfect size to walk around with and read stuff off of.  10 hours of battery life means it lasts through the whole workday.

Of course, there is a back door into most of the new apps – the web browser.  The best part of this may be that you can use it perfectly as a portal to a web app that can build you anything you need. Apple may be getting what they wanted at the start for the iPhone with the iPad.  We all remember the few months before there was an SDK when the party line was that you could do everything with web apps?  It’s much more likely with a nine inch screen and a blazing fast browsing experience.  Web apps are also the end-around of all the restrictions that Apple places on their “approved” apps.  You want a picture of an iPhone in there?  It’s just a GIF.  Want to put some “adult” content in?  HTML5 video to the rescue!  The only thing you can’t do is background processing, but you can’t even do that with real apps.  There’s no API bugs to work around.  It’s not exactly the same as a real app for low-latency things like gaming.

At any rate, I’m still going to develop web apps, and I think that the iPad will be the kick in the pants that the industry needs to make a decent tablet.  Android phones are getting better, and accelerating, in large part because the iPhone changed the smartphone ecology forever.  If the iPad does the same to the tablet market, it will be a very exciting future.

Well, we have finally tied the knot, and now we are on our honeymoon. It feels great to be here at all. The first day was of course mostly taken up by flying from place to place, on our way here, and then taking the hour long drive to the condo. I’m going to call that Day 0 because it doesn’t really involve anything other than travelling. We checked out the internet (cable modem, not bad) and went to sleep after finding some groceries which were quite expensive. After a pleasant sleep in the condo, we were happy to wake up to a beautiful view:

The ocean extended out into the horizon, and we sat on the patio (lanai) to eat breakfast which today was cereal with milk. It is quite relaxing and especially knowing that I didn’t have anything really planned for the day. We decided to make this a little excursion day, finding the nearest large-ish town and looking around. We drove down to Hanalei which is the nearest town of any size. The road down is pretty steep and includes a one-lane bridge, saying something about how many people are around here often. It is obviously one of the less-populated islands. Hanalei itself is a fairly small town which borders a very large beach. I would estimate that it is about the same size as Pella, Iowa.. maybe a little larger. It’s hard to gauge because it is very spread out along the beach. We stopped for some lunch and looked around the shops for a while. Then I bought some sunglasses because I lose every pair that I own after a max of a week.

Afterwards we decided to explore the small condo complex that we are staying in. The pool was found, and is open from 7am-7pm. The hours are a little strange, but it is not lighted, so I guess it is better for the night to be swim-less and also accident-less. I had heard about Sealodge Beach that is near the complex, accessible by trail and wanted to go down there. The trail was marked with a sign saying that it was steep, slippery, and dangerous. Thinking it was only to ward off liability, we started down the trail, which was immediately quite steep. There was then a little creek and then a steep hill that we went both up and down the other side. It was really like hiking through the jungle. The path was quite beaten though so it was well-travelled at least. After the hill we came to the ocean, where the coast is covered with huge porous lava rocks. At this point we either took the wrong way, or the trail got a lot more treacherous. It was very narrow and right along the dropoff which was rocky. People with little hiking skill shouldn’t really take the course. I didn’t realize until later how scary it was for Diana, and now I wish we hadn’t gone farther than the first view of the ocean which was spectacular and much less scary. When we finally could see the beach, we found our way to the end of the trail which was a quite large drop (>4 feet) before the beach was accessible. I think we either didn’t see the right path, or we were supposed to take some other way down the rocks. In any case, we didn’t have the right footwear for this hike – we were both wearing our sandals at the time. I think that Di got some good pictures of the hike before it got to the scary part. We went back to the scenic look of the ocean and relaxed a while, and then again back to the condo from there with some rests. We warned a couple off the trail who was also wearing sandals on the way down, and told another of how it got much harder down the way. I also lost my newly-purchased sunglasses somewhere on the way back up, setting a new record of about 2 hours from buy to lose. I’ll need to buy another pair. I’m still thinking of trying to make it there again. Knowing the way makes it a bit less scary, because you know that you can get there. I don’t think I can convince Diana to let me head down there though, she was very scared for our safety near the rocks.

After the hike to the beach, we relaxed for a little while and then decided to head for some dinner. We drove again to Hanalei and spotted a pizza place called Tiki Man Pizza. The wait was a bit long, there were apparently some large orders (the man mentioned something like 8 pizzas for one group) but it was worth it. We had a pork pizza with pineapple and extra cheese. It was some of the best pizza I’ve had in a long time. The sauce had just a little sweet barbeque in it, which gave it a nice taste. There was music at the bar next door as well, but it took a turn for the “frat boy” as Di put it, so we decided to go to another place for dessert and drinks. We ended up heading to Bar Acuda which had an interesting atmosphere which seemed a bit more high-class. We had some cocktails and wine and a nice dessert chocolate ice cream.

It being about 2am our time at this point, we headed back to the condo. It started to sprinkle a little bit and we walked out on the lawn to see the Kilauea Lighthouse flashing it’s warning to boats (although we have seen exactly zero boats in the water off the coast so far). The rain didn’t come in the condo so we just left the windows open even though it could get a bit cold at night as we found out our first night. Anyway that was Day 1. We’re headed to the lighthouse again today I think, and maybe to the beach to try some snorkeling and swimming, and relaxing.

Check out Diana’s Post for Day 1

Today we come upon our first picture in the montage which doesn’t have a lifeform in it. It’s lava! Dynamic! BOOM! Eruption!

This particular image is kindof hard to make out in the black and white which it was modified into to make it look old. The original is a little easier to see the actual lava which is flowing from an eruption happening in the center to another pool of lava rock.

There are four different types of lava, which are based on the chemical composition of the lava itself, but that correlates with the temperature. It is of course, extremely hot, with the coolest form of lava being at least 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. A lot of the lava which is in the US is in Hawaii – it would be nifty to see some of it, but hopefully not the quick flowing kind. We’re heading there on our honeymoon later this year, so it’s a possibility. One of the things that has always fascinated me is Pillow lava, which is when lava is extruded under water and instantly cools and solidifies partially. It also looks really cool. I found out that it is also used as a way-up criterion because of the way it is formed with the ridges normally on the top.

Travelling through time in the Big Bang Theory opening barrage of pictures, we are only on the third of the total 110 pictures in the visual collage. It’s going to get a little more interesting after this, but this one seems more interesting than the last two. Feast your eyes:

This is a microscopic picture of Radiolaria. Again the image comes from Jupiter Images. They represent a species which has been around for a very long time, since the Cambrian period, so basically 500 MILLION years ago. Because they have been around for so long, but not forever, finding fossils of the Radiolaria are important for dating things.

Radiolaria were popular with amateur scientists in the victorian era thanks to some elaborate drawings that are now part of wikimedia commons. Some of these cellular organisms can become very complex and beautiful. They are still inspiring artists today, as seen on the art page at Radiolaria.org.

Wonderful.

We continue our jaunt through the microscopic world from Onions to some higher lifeforms. This time we are still seeing mitosis:

The image in question comes from Jupiter Images stock photography, and is labelled as “Ascaris bivalent mitosis magnified 200x”. Ascaris is a roundworm, which can infect pigs or humans. It lives in the small intestines and produces lots of eggs. This reminds me of an episode of the Soup where they had some stupid reality show doctor clip about getting tapeworms because of bad sanitation, which is where you would get these. Ascaris lumbricoides is the most common worm infection, affecting more than a billion people.

Just one more reason for me to wash my hands.

The first picture in the Big Bang Theory Opening after the initial 3D universe expanding is very recognizable by lots of people, even though they might not know what it actually is:

This is an image of mitosis – specifically, the Anaphase of mitosis. You can see what I am pretty sure is the original stock image here – the one on screen is monochromed and rotated. Mitosis is what makes life possible – without cells splitting to create new cells, we would not have any life at all. In single cell organisms, it is the entire reproductive process. In this way, I think it’s a pretty good image to start it all out with. This specific image is probably of onion tip mitosis, which produces cells which look pretty much exactly like this. You can tell it’s a plant because there are some really nicely defined cell walls there.

This is the first in a (hopefully) long series of posts in which I am attempting to identify all of the pictures in the opening credits of The Big Bang Theory. I’ve done some minor searching on the web for something of this nature but haven’t found anything, and I’m always wondering what the heck all of those pictures flying by in the second half of the intro are actually. I’ve decided to start at the beginning, mostly because the pictures will be easier to identify.

• Thought I was getting on a train. Was out of service instead. 20 minute late. Fuck! http://tinyurl.com/6o7g5c #
• 2nd out of service double train going north since I got here. Annoying! #
• Finally a train that is taking people somewhere. #
• Off the train. Waiting for the cup now, shouldn’t be long. #
• Finally made it home. Hooray for public transportation! #
• I’m awake. Building a simple tool to help me out with the stuff that I do daily now, maybe it will make things less frustrating. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• @cullect seems to be having issues again #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• @cullect seems to be having issues again #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• finished writing my weekly MTGO metagame article. going to play a game or two before I have to sleep. #
• made it to work later than I wanted today for the short day. unfortunately I’m sleepy as hell. time to acquire caffeine. #
• @mjkeliher one thing that I have done before – make sure that the file ends on an empty line, not at the end of one of your rewrite rules. #
• seriously considering reinstalling my windows partition and all my stuff this weekend. There’s lots to do before that though. Vista or no? #
• grr. Hating threading libraries. Intel TBB looks great for highly-parallel, but is crap for “normal” threading it seems. #
• @mjkeliher yay! Dunkin’ Donuts are yummy. This will be bad for my diet. #
• Partying like it’s 1995 – reading up on how to work with COM. Any good tutorial pointers would be appreciated. #
• using one of @wrox press old books for reference. #
• headed to home, a bit later than I expected but still with plenty of time. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.