Quiet day at Lhomont

I am a bit under the weather today, so we’ve taken the opportunity to enjoy our rented house and the countryside. Linda finished up some work she brought along, and I’ve been reading and took a short walk.
Wired Magazine has an article about Piotr Wozniak, creator of the program Super Memo which exploits a ‘forgetting […]

Off to France

We’ve been a bit busier - and less attentive to the blog - than usual, owing to the upcoming trip. We’re off to Montpont-en-Bresse, a small village in southern Burgundy, where Linda’s rented a nicely restored water mill house. The object of the trip is to spend 10 days mostly living French country village life […]

Hold the home nukes: a Mac dual G5 will do just fine

The cell phone call went something like this: “Sorry to bother you dear, but the big Mac’s screen just went dark, and now smoke is coming out of it. What should I do?” My advice (”unplug it”) may have saved more unfortunate damage to the computer, if not the household.
When I returned, the house was […]

The home nuclear reactor

Toshiba has announced its Micro Nuclear reactor designed for small, remote communities, apartment buildings and small businesses. the 20 by 6-foot device produces 200 kwh and is completely automatic. Designed to run unattended for up to 40 years, the reactor produces electrity for 5 cents a kwh, about half the current grid price. Do we […]

A virtual high tech yard sale

We have a bunch of slightly dated software and (rather more dated) hardware we’d like to move on down the user chain. Stay tuned for the list…
VMware Fusion 1.1.2 has shipped, according to VMware’s Peter Kazanjy. We’re currently running Windows XP on Fusion.

A really big Ice Cube

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory consists of a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice some 2,500 meters below the surface. The ice, said to be about 60,000 years old, will eventually hold 80 boreholes (made by pumping hot water at high pressure), each holding a 2.5 kilometer string of optical detectors. IceCube, though only partially complete, is […]

Working on our look and feel

So, as you may be seeing, we’re working on the theme for our WordPress blog. WordPress makes it very easy to change themes, but I haven’t found a way to park the new theme on another URL while I twiddle with it.
Just made our first (successful) fix to this, the Modernpaper Theme. Coming up (we […]

Conflicted about the Pope, circumnavigating MP, a Linux mini-laptop

The Pope has expressed some admirable sentiments since arriving in the U.S., but there’s one phrase I have a problem with. Commenting on faith in a secular democracy, he said ‘faith is not a private matter,’ suggesting, I am guessing, it should be enforced, presumably by the Church. Judging by some of his previous comments, […]

Tuesday musings

Mike Spillane’s passing leaves me very sad, but to be true to his spirit, life, and the blog, must go on. Thusly:
The Pope is visiting the U.S. this week, and I am very interested in learning more about this man and his ideas. I have been a little leery of Benedict, given some of […]

Another drive goes down

We finally had to shut down the 500 GB LaCie HD hooked up to our Intel Mac Mini. The drive is performing fine, but the machine’s fan is making such a loud and annoying noise that it was no longer good company in our family room. Its control circuitry would appear to be in a […]

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