DOMAIN CHANGE GOES IN EFFECT

From now on, my blog will be posted at codyg1985.com.

This will be left open for reference, but please update your bookmarks to reflect the change.

Toilet paper dispute between roommates ends in murder

What do you do if you run out of toilet paper? This guy beat his roommate to death with a hammer.

The roommates were fighting, and one pulled out a shotgun. The other roommate then pulled out a sledge hammer and beat the other roommate to death.

Open source internet TV platform

For those of you with the internet connections to handle it, these folks have developed a media player that aggregates streaming video into one source:

Download and watch all the best internet TV shows and videos in one powerful application. New channels arrive daily in the built-in Channel Guide.

Stop squinting at tedious web videos-- sit back and watch big, high resolution videos one after another. It's so easy to use that you'll be watching interesting videos in moments.

Features: subscribe to video RSS feeds (including podcasts, video blogs, and BitTorrent feeds), watch fullscreen, share with friends.

New York state implements tax to extort money from tourists on an annual basis

New York state will tax out-of-state drivers that get ticketed in the state. The tax charges cited motorists $100 per year after the ticket has been issued and paid.

Michigan, New Jersey, and Texas also dock drivers with this tax, and Virginia will soon follow suit.

Computer error stops Times Square electronic billboard in its tracks

It's another branding from Microsoft. A billboard in Times Square had a application crash message on it...the very dialogue box that torments users on a day-to-day basis.

Cheney's got a gun

It has been so easy to make fun of the Dick Cheney hunting accident. Here's a flash video that parodies both Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun" with Dick Cheney.

[blog] Domain change

With the recent problems that have occured with Blogger lately, I have decided to purchase hosting for my blog and personal items. In a few days, I will post the link to the new blog on here, and at that time all posting on this blog will cease.

I will try and import all of my posts on here onto the new blog for crossreferencing.

[personal] I hate having diabetes

I am so sick of having diabetes. It is rare that my body feels good and I feel good. Most of the time I feel tense and ill as a hornet. That's the way I feel right now. The slightest thing pisses me off, and it takes a lot for me to feel better. Nobody can realize how bad I feel somedays, and I can't put it in words beacuse half the time I can't put anything in words when I feel that bad. Maybe I should make an attempt to eat better, but if I try that I will be as miserable trying to count carbs and make healthier choices.

Oh well, here comes another week of rain, classes, and inferior-quality cafeteria food.

Mozilla programmer responds to Firefox memory leaks

Ben Goodger, a lead engineer for the Mozilla Firefox web browser, acknowledged the memory issues that hasve plagued the browser, but also said that the memory leak is the consequence of a caching feature that stores previously-viewed pages in memory. From Goodger's blog:

To improve performance when navigating (studies show that 39% of all page navigations are renavigations to pages visited < 10 pages ago, usually using the back button), Firefox 1.5 implements a Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last few session history entries. This can be a lot of data. It's a trade-off. What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web.

Users can change this feature, as noted in the article:

1. Type about:config in the browser address bar.


2. Scroll down and find the browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers entry


3. Double-click on that line, and change the value as follows:
   
   
   
   • -1 (default entry based on memory on system)
   
   
   • 0 (no caching)
   
   
   • 1-8 (number of pages to cache)
   
   
   
   

[blog] Firefox and Blogger don't agree with each other

For some strange reason, when I tried to publish one of my blog entries this morning in Firefox, I got an error which said permission was denied to one of the archive files. I found that odd, but then I took at look at the Blogger help group and noticed a a post that mentioned problems publishing with Firefox.

So, I fired up Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, and the blog post published without a hitch. Same went for another story I posted that I tried posting in Firefox before it froze up on a PDF file. These may be two reasons for me to switch back to IE, but I am not going to make up my mind yet.

Antigravity propulsion system proposed at space conference

A proposal to achieve near-luminal propulsion speeds was unveiled by Dr. Franklin Felber at Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque, NM. The system works by propelling a secondary spacecraft to a little more than half the speed of light. Felber's paper argues that in front of this secondary spacecraft a narrow "antigravity beam" would form that would repel anything in front of the spacecraft away from it. A primary spacecraft would be placed in front of the secondary vessel, and according to the paper the primary spacecraft would move at near light speeds, assuming its initial speed was the same as the secondary spacecraft.

The paper also argues that this method of propulsion would not involve strong tidal forces which would rip the spacecraft to shreds.

[personal] Light at the end of the tunnel

Today is the day where all of my work is either due, or it has already been due at some earlier time. As I sit here eating away at my candy I recieved for Valentine's Day, I realize that this is really the first day this week I can sort of relax; that is after my Engineering Economy class. Assignments due in every class, I have not had as much free time this week as usual, but the assignments do keep me busy, and I have finished them. What a week this has been!

There may be icing problems here in Huntsville over the weekend; the entire state will have rain throughout the weekend (tired of rain during the weekend), but up here it may be cold enough for ice to form on bridges, overpasses, and power lines. If the power goes out, World of Warcraft will be a bit out of reach for my roommate, and Call of Duty will be out of reach for my other roommate. It will be interesting to see how everyone acts if the power is out for a prolonged duration.

Valentine heart inspired by woman's bum?

That heart on that box of candy that you got for Valentine's Day could have been inspired long ago by the shape of a woman's butt, according to a professor of psychology:

Galdino Pranzarone of Roanoke College in Salem, Va., told Discovery News that he analyzed "essential literary and speculative evidence from mythology and secondary sources," which led to his theory. He believes one rather obvious bit of evidence is that the heart symbol does not directly duplicate the heart human organ.

"The twin lobes of the stylized version correspond roughly to the paired auricles and ventricles (chambers) of the anatomical heart," Pranzarone said, but added that the organ "is never bright red in color" and its "shape does not have the invagination at the top nor the sharp point at the base."

[personal] Tuesday's life by the numbers

Here is a little list that was inspired by these blog posts:

• 2 is how many hours it took to finish an Excel spreadsheet detaling a payment plan for a class project


• 10 is how many minutes it took for my hands to almost turn numb this morning defrosting the car for class


• 3 is how many Valentine's Day candy packages I received


• 1 out of the 3 was from my mother given to me last Sunday


• 9.768 is the acceleration due to gravity in Huntsville, AL (in meters per second)


• 28 is the number of friends I have online on Trillian


• 14 out of those 28 are away and/or idle


• 14 is the amount of homework problems assigned during today's Calculus lecture


• 1108526400 is the Unix time when my Chapter 6 Physics homework is due

[personal] Busy week ahead...

Whew, this week is shaping up to be a busy one. A lot of assignments are due within the generous space of a few days. This includes two Physics lab reports, the Chapter 6 Physics homework assignment, and a case study for Engineering Economy. There is also Calculus C homework that I need to do to get practice with partial derivatives, although that homework is optional.

Thursday will be a load off of my shoulders because after Thursday most of the work will have been due.

I also need to begin work on the second NL History article, for those of you interested in my first article.