Notes from James

Extreme Rollerblading / Something

Not exactly sure what this guy is doing, but he's passing motorcycles at high speed!

Eros and Anteros

For anyone wondering what the statue the couple on page 106 of the July/August 2007 issue of Budget Travel ("Surprise Engagement") were looking at, it's the statue of Eros and Anteros by Alessandro Algardi.

Jack Adalist

Years ago, I worked with a fellow named Jack Adalist. In our conversations, he mentioned that he had a bit role in a movie called Liquid Sky. After doing a search on the web, looks like he has been doing more than ever. Guess it's never too late to quit your job and start over again. Best of luck Jack, wherever you are (Israel?).

Nuts in the Forest

A friend of mine, Tom Jennings, ran 100 miles in the Mohican 100. He did it in 28 hours and 38 minutes. Makes my 12 mile bike to work look pretty silly. Course, it only takes me an hour or so, and I'm not exhausted.

No Jury Duty

I was selected for jury duty, but, unfortunately, it was cancelled. Too bad, as I was interested in seeing how the whole justice system works, and seeing if I would be convicting/freeing people from the wheels of justice. Oh well...better luck next time.

Nothing Better to Do?

If you have nothing better to do, you watch a guy with even less better to do than you. He's counting to a million.

Looking for Something Creepy?

Start here.

Lots of pre-20th century engravings and drawings. Pretty cool, and pretty creepy, even in this day and age.

Pay Your Bills

Don't forget to pay your bills. Somehow I did, for this website, and lost quite a bit of it. Plus, at the same time, they were in the process of migrating to a new set of servers. Hopefully, I'll get it back sometime soon. At the very worst, all the comments were lost. :-( Anyway, at least I got my e-mail address back again so I can receive huge amounts of spam like I did previously.

Wegmans Plastic Bags

I sent an e-mail to Wegmans (the local supermarket chain) recommending that they charge 5 cents for plastic bags, as Safeway in California recently did. This not only saves them money, but the environment as well. I did get an answer:

Hi James!

Thank you for your recent email to Wegmans regarding your suggestion for the reusable shopping bags.

I have shared your suggestion with the appropriate individuals.

We appreciate that you took the time to contact us and hope we can be of service to you in the future.

Not terribly helpful, but another pro-environment voice. I wouldn't consider myself "green", but I'm trying to change. Need to think about my kids and their world. Note to non US readers: bags (both paper and plastic) in the US are generally free.

Click here to send your comment to them.

Update: Looks like they've started doing something. Evidentally not in my area, though.

American Money Under a Black Light

While screwing around at my dad's house, we shone a black light (ultraviolet light) on some US money. Not sure why we decided to do this, but we found an interesting result: the strip of plastic that is in currency glows different colors depending on the value. The pictures here really don't do the glowing justice. Next time you're out clubbing, take out some money and see for yourself...the strips really glow in a brilliant set of colors.

Ten American dollars has a red glow to it.

Twenty is green. 

 

Five is blue.

 

Michigan Alligator

According to my aunt, a Michigan Alligator is a retreaded tire that you can find after it falls apart off of a tractor trailer rig and lies on the shoulder of the expressway. I have never heard of this myself, but I am putting this up here to see if anyone else has ever even heard of such a thing.

Strange Lincoln-Kennedy Penny

A while back, I found a strange penny with a face that someone stamped on it and some sort of glue material on the 'tails' side of the coin. After a bit of internet searching, I found some references to a penny that was stamped with John F. Kennedy's face on it (facing Lincoln's). After guessing that it could possibly be Kennedy, I found some information about it. Unfortunately, the coin itself is rather worthless, but kind of an interesting anectdote to history, anyway. Personally, I was hoping for some sort of weird conspiracy. Ah well.

Here is the best information that I found about this coin.

Relative Sizes

If you think the Earth is big, and the Sun is big, check out this video.

Doctor Who Review

Well, I just got through watching the first episode of the new Doctor Who (well, the 2005 series) and it rocked! I liked the Tom Baker series of Doctor Who, but I always thought that was a bit campy and silly. The special effects made this one a lot more fun, and just the being filmed outside and on location made it a lot more believable and watchable. I loved it...it is my new favorite TV show, so now I'm going to have to get the whole series on Netflix.

I was a bit nervous after seeing Sneakatron's comment, but hopefully this one will stick around in my 'favorites' for a while. Definitely my favorite TV show. Can't really say what other TV shows I watch, though.

Waves Photographed in a Wine Glass

Ok, the wine glass made music, and this is sort of a science experiment. I filled up a wine glass full of water and ran my finger around it to make a musical tone. I then used my camera to take a picture of the waves. The thought was that I could determine the tone that was being played by counting the waves and doing some math with respect to the circumference. Well, I didn't do any of the math, but got a cool picture of the waves around the outside of the glass.

 

Doctor Who on WQLN

According to the WQLN website, Doctor Who will show up on Friday, March 23rd, at 10:00 pm!

Millcreek Township Task Shift (Act 1)

Here is a link to the presentation given on the proposal to shift the taxes. From the presentation:

Winners

• Elderly homeowners with no EIT or PIT
• Lower income homeowners
• Farmers - probably
• Philadelphia workers

Losers

• Elderly with significant PIT
• Renters
• Homeowners who do not file application
• Higher income homeowners (includes many 2 wage earner families)
• Students? [sic]
• Gamblers! [sic]

Neutral

• Elderly renters
• Middle income homeowners
• Commercial

Per this pdf, the recommended question is "Do you favor imposing an additional .52% earned income tax? The revenue generated from the increased tax rate will be used to reduce taxes on qualified residential properties by $375.51. The current earned income tax rate is .50%."

Never Forget

 

Unsticking stuck pixels

Found a site with a Java application to attempt to unstick stuck pixels. Most sites that I have found try to solve this with a DVD or video that cycles pixels, but this one seemed to work correctly full screen right away. Hopefully it will work on my stuck pixel!

Happy New Year 2007

Hi! And welcome to 2007! Just a quick note to ping the blog and keep things alive. Nothing interesting projectwise to report at this juncture, just keeping things alive.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

 

Ghosting

"Ghosting" is the latest trend in Halloween fun. Here's how to start the new ghosting activity in your neighborhood:

• Take two pieces of paper, and draw ghosts on them. Write "You've been ghosted!" on them as well.
• Prepare two bags with candy for the intended victims.
• Go to two houses, tape the ghost paper to the front door, leave the candy on the porch, and ring the doorbell.
• Run!

When the victims open the door, they will get the ghost picture plus the candy. A nice treat, rather than a mean treat! The neighbors can then spread two more ghosts to two other families. Before you know it, the ghosts will have spread throughout the neighborhood.

Happy Halloween!

A Good Reason to Become a Pirate

Reading National Geographic, I ran across the story of the pirate Stede Bonnet, known as the "Pirate Gentleman", who allegedly became a pirate due to his nagging wife, Mary Allamby. Supposedly, after a particular nasty argument, he left and followed his dream of becoming a pirate.

Rather than steal a ship as any respectable pirate would, he bought a ship, renamed it "The Revenge", and hired 70 crewmen (well, folk from local taverns) to become pirates with him. He captured a few ships, but shortly met up with Blackbeard, who took him prisoner. After a few months, Blackbeard abandoned Bonnet again, and he was once again a pirate. Soon after that, he was captured, tried, and hung in Charleston, South Carolina. All in all, he was active from 1717-1718. His reign of terror had ended.

Follow your dreams.

Image Tooltips in Firefox

I wanted to add "Tooltips" to the commenting functions below, as well as the permalink. This way, when you hover the mouse over the button, you know what it will do. Firefox expects the "title" tag to be used in the img statement, where as Internet Explorer pops them up with the "alt" tag. According to various sites, the "title" method is the way to do it. I just did it both ways, and it seems to work ok.

Configuring Apache2 for Password Protection

I found lots of sites that have information talking about setting AllowOverride AuthConfig. However, my Apache2 on Ubuntu was not doing any password protecting for me. I figured out that the problem was that I needed to edit the /etc/apache2/sites-enables/000-default file to change this setting. After I changed this file, it all started working for me. Not sure why I needed to change this file in addition to the apache2.conf file, but it solved my problem. Hopefully it will solve yours.

Erie County Pennsylvania Voting Results

I finally found the place where you can get the results for the November 2006 election for Pennsylvania: Here. Here is a PDF with the results for Erie County. I'm going to have to check out the website again next year to see if the ballots will be presented here as well.

Thunderbird - Reject Mail from Unknown People

If you use Thunderbird, here's an easy way to reject e-mails from people you don't know by setting up a filter:

Tools->Message Filters->New->(((Sender),(isn't in my address book),(Personal Address Book)),(Delete the message))

You can tweak it to reject people that you don't know, haven't spoken with, or automatically label the messages as spam.

Calling the World For Free

Ok, I don't understand how anybody is making money again. However, here's how you can call the world for free:

1. Get Skype
   
2. Call Futurephone at +17128588883
3. Press 1 for English
4. Enter the number you want: 011 + Country Code + Local Number

Like I said, I don't know how anybody is making money again, but it's sure fun! Looks like the internet bubble all over again.

Mythbusters

We went to see the Mythbusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, at Penn State Behrend, just east of Erie. Here's a shot I took of them. A bit blurry, due to the low light inside.

Celebrate Erie Fireworks

Here's a nice picture that I took of the CelebrateErie fireworks show (cropped down a bit from the original).

Fixing the Blog...Again

I just realized that I didn't have the HaloScan comments enabled. I don't get too many comments on here, but at least I'd like that they would be available to view on here. Ah well...

Hopefully they'll show up in the archives now.

Fredrick's 70th Birthday

Here are pictures from Fredrick Ghofulpo's 70th birthday party. His main squeeze, Virginia, put everything together. Excellent job!

Note if you don't have the password and want to check out any of the pictures, please e-mail me -- you can do this via the main page. I'll be glad to give it to you!