I got this message in an email today:
Somehow in one of the recent re-builds I’ve lostmy copyof “Graphic Converter”. Can anyone remind mehow to get another copy for my Mac? Thanks, XXX
I’m having a really hard time not sending an email back saying “try googling GraphicCoverter”.
Sadly though, the answer (which I knew instantly) is www.lemkesoft.com
Nowhere else will you hear a DJ say something like “we’ve heard too much from Sweden today, so here’s Mews, the most famous prog-rock band from Denmark”.
And not only do you get to hear comments like that, they’re said in a very carefully enunciated voice that sounds like he’s being very very careful to keep the levels at exactly the right spot.
Good times.
Bet none of you knew that I used to be a DJ.
So, my father-in-law is now on Twitter. That’s really the start of a million cheap jokes, but in this case it’s actually rather appropriate. Twitter is all about expressing opinions without having the space to fully articulate them, and as such you have the freedom to fire off little nuggets and not feel compelled to turn it into a full-length post/email/etc. For all that half the world makes fun of Twitter, you have to admire how well it’s done. That said, I really don’t understand a lot of twitter-culture.
P.S. I am certain that you could get a Sociology/something doctorate simply by monitoring and cleverly analyzing Twitter’s trending topics. Maybe bin them by genre/category, probable age group/demographic, etc then look at growth/decline rates, etc. I know that papers have been written using topics to model desease/contagion, but if you can figure out how to monetize the trends then you could retire at 30 35 40.
#mafiawars
#NIN
Vampire Diaries
Facebook Lite
Joe Wilson
Goodnight
Jay-Z
Steelers
Nfl
Glee
An imbalanced gender ratio is not a surprise to any physics conference veteran, and I’d imagine that the female-depletion phenomenon is common across the non-biology sciences. Or maybe that’s generalizing too much?
Anyway, at this week’s conference I was really surprised by the demographics; I’d guess not more than 15-20% female, and 50+% were 50+ years old… which meant that between session breaks the lines stretched out the restroom door.
Perhaps unrelatedly, I’m wondering if the inter-session snacks were sponsored by Medicare, since I’ve never seen a more calorie- and saturated fat-intensive collection of cookies, brownies, ice cream bars, cheesecake, etc at any conference. Meanwhile, the CS conference in the other side of the complex got to have fresh fruit and muffins: maybe not an upgrade in the eyes of some, but some variety would be nice. I almost ate something that had 87% of the daily saturated fat requirement, yikes.
Finally, I really wish my phone had a better camera, since I’ve seen some truly spectacular fashion mistakes this week. Many of the usual three-inches-too-short khakis with white socks and black sneakers, but also some impressive attempts at hair, including a rather quality mullet on an otherwise normally-attired attendee. But I really wanted to get a shot of George McFly’s twin brother and his slicked-down, icky-feeling-inducing bangs.
So, it looks as though my current work computer has bitten the proverbial dust. I was having overheating problems all last week, and even before then the fans would spin up excessively – and this is a G5 tower, mind you, so 5 cooling fans at 3000 rpm made my office sound like an aircraft hangar.
So now the question comes to the replacement machine. Assuming I can get the “corp” to pay for it, what features are necessary and what can I do without? I’m tempted go for a bare-bones 8-core tower and then add RAM and hard drives separately, especially since being able to run calculations on 7 processors in parallel would be only/almost half as efficient as running on some of the “slow” 16-processors-per-node NAVO machines. Anyway, here’s hoping, and I welcome any insight/suggestions.
So, another item that was stuck in draft purgatory for a month or so before I was able to actually post it…. a circle of iPhones that are both listening to and playing a very abstract kind of “music.” Each one picks up ambient sounds, runs that through a series of software filters to make it sound more musical, and finally plays the result back (with rhythm).
As each iPhone is picking up the tune from the other iPhones it’s playing it back through the same filters, and so on and so forth. All while the software is “judging” each “cell” of sound, to see if it’s interesting or loud enough or so forth, and cells will live or die based on that criteria — in essence, a musical organism.
a warning: it’s not exactly friendly to the ears, especially the first one – don’t use headphones.
The old MacBook/new MacBook Pro 13″ seems like an amazingly sweet little computer. I liked it before it gained the “Pro” name, but a 7 hour battery makes it the perfect little portable machine.
My views on the 15″ have changed a little though. I mean, longer lasting batteries are great, but why did they get rid of the ExpressCard slot? (Well, I know the answer, it’s probably something to do with the fact that 2% of owners actually use the slot.) Replacing it with a SD card reader doesn’t help me though. (It does help the 90% of people who have digital cameras with SD cards though.) The end result though is that if you want to do anything with fast data throughput like eSATA, you have to spring for the 17″ now.
I might spring for an iPhone 3S. My current phone is two years old now so I can get a cheap upgrade. On the other hand, the only real benefit that I see to the way I do things is the fact that the new phones have a real gps in them. The improved camera, video, etc doesn’t do much since I already have much better tools to do all that.
