"Aut viam inveniam aut faciam" - I will find a way or I will make one.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Bunnyhop vs Jet Hop or J-Hop
I thought I would eliminate a little confusion over some of the terms that are floating around with regard to the infamous bunnyhop.
A bunnyhop is executed by pulling your front tire up first.
A j-hop is not a new trick, it is simply what people started calling a bunnyhop when people started incorrectly calling it a bunnyhop when someone clipped into a mountain bike would lift the whole bike straight up at once.
Technically speaking, since it is not a new trick and simply a renamed existing trick, there really is no such thing as a j-hop.
When this photograph was first published in Africa Geographic, BBC Wildlife and later in Paris Match and the Daily Mail (London) it resulted in a flurry of e-mails, phone calls and letters from around the world asking if the image was a fake. Following publication no less than 50 websites were hosting colorful discussions about the authenticity of this photograph. The image became probably the most talked about of shark photograph ever and has become my undisputed best seller.
The photograph is real, no photoshop, no digital manipulation, no nothing, in fact it was shot on slide film Fuji Provia 100 using a Nikon F5 Camera and 17-35 mm lens. For those conspiracy fans who still doubt its authenticity please read how I took the photograph.
To capture this image I tied myself to the tower of the research boat Lamnidae and leaned into the void, precariously hanging over the ocean while waiting patiently for a white shark to come along. I wanted to shot a photograph that would tell the story of our research efforts to track white sharks using kayaks. When the first shark of the day came across our sea kayak it dove to the seabed and inspected it from below. I quickly trained my camera on the dark shadow which slowly transformed from diffuse shape into the sleek outline of a large great white. When the shark’s dorsal fin broke the surface I thought I had the shot, but hesitated a fraction of a second and was rewarded with marine biologist Trey Snow in the kayak turning around to look behind him. I pressed the shutter and the rest was history. Throughout the day I shot many more images, most showing the kayak following the shark, but all lacked the power of that first image of the great white tracking the kayak.
Well I've been using my Etymotic Research ER6i Isolator In-Ear Earphones for a few weeks now and I can report back with some longer term opinions. First off, as far as sound suppression goes, they work just as well as earplugs at keeping the wind and road noise out and as long as you don't have the music cranked, you'll hear what's going on around you just fine.
Now with regard to sound quality, it is absolutely top notch. Because outside sounds are essentially eliminated, you get clean, clear audio with crisp highs and nice deep lows. The earphones themselves fit comfortably into the ear canal and the rubber baffle piece slips off with ease for cleaning under warm water. And while inserting them into the ear is as easy and straightforward as inserting earplugs, a fairly obvious design flaw however, is that no provision is made for getting them back out, with specific warning to not remove them by pulling on the cord. Once inserted into the ear, they go in deep enough that you cannot realistically grab the body of the headphones to pull them out. I have discovered a little trick however, by using the end of my fingernail I grab the edge of the rubber plug and I'm able to extract the headphone with some downward motion. I did however read one user's solution, which was to make a loop from some fishing line to hook over the body of the plug, so they can be removed by simply pulling on the line, something which I will employ soon.
Otherwise they are relatively comfortable as long as they are not inadvertently inserted too deeply and they provide excellent sound. While somewhat expensive for headphones at $75, they prove their worth on the first ride.
Get the awesome new album "The Slip" for free here. Hard hitting tunes as well as some of the softer overtones from Ghosts, this album blends it all together offering some of the two styles but clearly mixed in a way that everything is connected from start to finish.
You've got to love a guy like Trent Reznor, who said on his website: "Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one’s on me." That is just damn cool.
When I saw NIN at the Oakland Arena on the With Teeth tour they put on one hell of a show, now that the US tour dates are up, I can't wait to go back.
You've probably heard his poem First They Came...in original or modified form at some point or another. I had seen a version of it in reverse order of losing our Bill of Rights, something along the lines of:
When they took the 4th Amendment, I was silent because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was silent because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was silent because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment and I can say nothing about it.
While the original obviously has much more impact both in verse and when you take into account the history of the author and reason he wrote it, the amendments version does illustrate a good point.
As we slowly lose our rights (just Google American loss of liberty or anything like that and you'll find plenty of shocking results aside from warrantless wiretaps and opening of postal mail as well watch lists among many other things), this poem reminds us that the loss of liberty does not come overnight, it is a slow but steady process until one day it is too late. Hopefully the Supreme Court will start the ball rolling in the right direction with their pending decision on the 2nd Amendment.
People often forget, that while the 1st Amendment is at the very core of America, so is the 2nd and without it, the 1st is worthless.
And people also sometimes forget that the Bill of Rights is about individual rights. Don't take my word for it, Thomas Jefferson wrote it himself "A bill of rights, is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."
We did not guess at the purpose of the British 1689 Declaration of Rights; we located the Journals of the House of Commons and private notes of the Declaration's sponsors, now dead for two centuries. We did not make suppositions as to colonial interpretations of that Declaration's right to keep arms; we examined colonial newspapers which discussed it. We did not speculate as to the intent of the framers of the second amendment; we examined James Madison's drafts for it, his handwritten outlines of speeches upon the Bill of Rights, and discussions of the second amendment by early scholars who were personal friends of Madison, Jefferson, and Washington while these still lived. What the Subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear — and long lost — proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms. The summary of our research and findings form the first portion of this report.
...
Both as an American citizen and as a United States Senator I repudiate this view. I likewise repudiate the approach of those who believe to solve American problems you simply become something other than American. To my mind, the uniqueness of our free institutions, the fact that an American citizen can boast freedoms unknown in any other land, is all the more reason to resist any erosion of our individual rights. When our ancestors forged a land "conceived in liberty", they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against governmental interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men.
Orrin G. Hatch, Chairman Subcommittee on the Constitution January 20, 1982
While riding the XT, I'm relegated to a rather mediocre speed of 55-60mph as I crawl along the freeway, though I do have the occasional burst into the 65-75mph range when congested traffic dictates. I can live with the slower speed, although not every day, so I do occasionally throw the old FZR into the mix for some more spirited jaunts down the superslab. Anyway, on yesterday's commute it seemed like I went for ages and never hit my reserve and in fact didn't, until this morning at the 163 mile mark. Why that is significant is that when I topped her off today, I only put in 1.7 gallons.
Some quick math will tell you that at 1.7 gallons and 163 traveled miles I got 95.88mpg or 96-freakin-miles-per-gallon! So while generally Americans laugh at less fortunate countries where it is the norm to see most people riding mopeds and scooters at 90+mpg, here we're content to bitch about paying $4 for a gallon gas, while sucking down 8 miles per gallon as we bomb down our freeways at 80mph so that we can spend an extra 15 minutes laying in bed before work.
So to you Mrs. Yukon driving lady that was yapping on the phone and tailgating me before tearing off down the freeway at a likely 10mpg on your solitary commute to work in a vehicle designed to carry 8, I say I will have the last laugh... when I see you at the pump. ;)
You know it seems like it was yesterday, but really this took place about ten years ago. I was working for Clorox at the time and was fairly heavy into "tech" stuff. I got a call from a friend who asked me for my US mail address, to which I was dumbfounded. I sort of paused and started running through my head US address... US address... WTF is that? Could she mean IMAP, POP? She wanted to send me something so it couldn't be SMTP, what was she talking about. As I asked what the hell a US mail address was it hit me. What a dork. lol
Like the MTV ad I mentioned previously illustrates, we're living in dark times. I could honestly care less what the governor does with his personal time and personal bank account, if he's not abusing tax dollars for his entertainment, then that is his business. It is the simple fact that the government is spying on us and keeping tabs on our spending habits that scares me.
When Congress passed the Patriot Act in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, law-enforcement agencies hailed it as a powerful tool to help track down the confederates of Osama bin Laden. No one expected it would end up helping to snag the likes of Eliot Spitzer. The odd connection between the antiterror law and Spitzer's trysts with call girls illustrates how laws enacted for one purpose often end up being used very differently once they're on the books.
The Patriot Act gave the FBI new powers to snoop on suspected terrorists. In the fine print were provisions that gave the Treasury Department authority to demand more information from banks about their customers' financial transactions. Congress wanted to help the Feds identify terrorist money launderers. But Treasury went further. It issued stringent new regulations that required banks themselves to look for unusual transactions (such as odd patterns of cash withdrawals or wire transfers) and submit SARs—Suspicious Activity Reports—to the government. Facing potentially stiff penalties if they didn't comply, banks and other financial institutions installed sophisticated software to detect anomalies among millions of daily transactions. They began ranking the risk levels of their customers—on a scale of zero to 100—based on complex formulas that included the credit rating, assets and profession of the account holder.
Another element of the formulas: whether an account holder was a "politically exposed person." At first focused on potentially crooked foreign officials, the PEP lists expanded to include many U.S. politicians and public officials who were conceivably vulnerable to corruption.
The new scrutiny resulted in an explosion of SARs, from 204,915 in 2001 to 1.23 million last year. The data, stored in an IRS computer in Detroit, are accessible by law-enforcement agencies nationwide. "Terrorism has virtually nothing to do with it," says Peter Djinis, a former top Treasury lawyer. "The vast majority of SARs filed today involve garden-variety forms of white-collar crime." Federal prosecutors around the country routinely scour the SARs for potential leads.
One of those leads led to Spitzer. Last summer New York's North Fork Bank, where Spitzer had an account, filed a SAR about unusual money transfers he had made, say law-enforcement and industry sources who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the probe. One of the sources tells NEWSWEEK that Spitzer wasn't flagged because of his public position. Instead, the governor called attention to himself by asking the bank to transfer money in someone else's name. (A North Fork spokesperson says the bank does not discuss its customers.) The SAR was not itself evidence that Spitzer had committed a crime. But it made the Feds curious enough to follow the money.
Kite-Assisted Cargo Ship Successfully Completes Maiden Voyage
Back in December, we told you of a new company called Skysails that was reintroducing the concept of harnessing the wind on the open seas to save fuel for cargo ships. For its maiden voyage, it would travel from Germany to Venezuela, the United States and Norway under the assistance of a $725,000 computer-controlled kite. Now, after two months, the trip has been achieved — and according to all those involved, a complete success. From the article,
“With that [trip] we impressively validated the original expectations we had for the system“, was how SkySails managing director Stephan Wrage assessed the first practical trials aboard the Beluga ship. “In the future, depending on the route and weather conditions, we’ll be able to post fuel savings of between 10% and 35% using wind power.”
During its time at sea, the kite-assisted ship traveled a total of 11,952 nautical miles. During the time that the kite was deployed — which lasted anywhere from a few minutes to up to 8 hours — it pulled the ship with up to 5 tons of power at force 5 winds — a relief of more than 20% on the ship’s engines. Projected onto an entire day, this performance by the “Beluga SkySails” represents savings of about 2.5 tons of fuel and more than $1,000 a day.
As this is just the initial stage of a pilot program expected to last 12 months, company officials are gearing up for more ambitious testing in future trips. A kite that is twice the size of the original will soon be deployed for double the energy productions and cost savings. The Beluga shipping company is even considering passing on these savings to the crew as an incentive. Nice!
For more on this successful voyage — the future plans for kite-assisted ships, jump here.
Instead of reaching for a phone, she should have been reaching for a shotgun
I don't know about you, but 1) I've called 911 and gotten a busy signal and 2) even if you got someone, you think it might take more than 1 minute for help to arrive?
Why is it people feel that their personal safety and well being should be someone else's responsibility? Without a doubt it is a horrible thing that happened here, something that could have been prevented if she had a firearm and knew how to use it; and at the very least she could have fought back.
A woman made a 911 call from her suburban mansion to report an attempted break-in, but her pleas were interrupted by gunshots, then silence: She had been shot to death.
The woman told the dispatcher late Wednesday morning that someone was trying to break into her home in upscale West Covina, Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Dan Rosenberg said.
"Deputies heard gunshots followed by silence and an open phone line," he said.
Investigators combed the neighborhood Thursday outside the three-story house with a tennis court, pool and four-car garage. Investigators examined the opening mechanism of the driveway's black iron gates, and later a repairman worked on the gates.
The victim was identified as Hsiao Hsu, 45, said Sheriff's Department spokesman Ed Hernandez.
Sheriff's deputies responding to the call entered the home and found the victim. She was pronounced dead at the scene. One or more males were reported seen running away from the house, the Sheriff's Department said.
The San Gabriel Valley Tribune carried a report describing a man who came to the scene about an hour after the shooting and asked deputies, "Is my wife OK? Did you find the guy?"
The man collapsed and cried out, "No! No! No! She just called me, you lie," the newspaper said. A patrol car drove the man away.
A KABC-TV report showed an investigator in the neighborhood examining what appeared to be a handgun under a shrub.
The house is east of Los Angeles in an unincorporated area where many homes stand well back from roads, with tall hedges and gates. Horses stood quietly in a corral at one neighborhood home Thursday.
A neighbor said a couple recently occupied the home, described on real estate Web sites as being nearly 6,000 square feet and having recently sold for more than $2 million.
"They moved in only about six months ago. I've only seen them drive in and out," said Ronald Wheeler, 57, who lives across the street.
Irene and Jesus Marquez, who live nearby, said the family has two children.
"They were really nice, good people," said Irene Marquez.
Funny, some might see it is a realistic depiction of a possible future, while it is in fact the present state of affairs. Warrantless wiretaps, reading of our postal mail, filtering email, no knock raids based on pretty much any sort of tip from just about anyone. I mean, coffee shops have been given instructions to report people based on what they are reading! So some $7 an hour high schooler sees me reading "Mohammed: The Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion" and only notices the main title "Mohammed" and next thing I know the FBI is calling me. Dark days indeed.
I acquired this paper last night at a charity auction and while it has little actual value, it is absolutely fascinating to read and see pictures from not only the obvious story, but just about every article in there. It's pretty amazing how in 40 years that while we're practically from another world, some things are still the same.
Here's a really short research paper I had to write for an English argument class a few years ago. Unfortunately it was very difficult to keep it at 2000 words or less, in fact, I hit 2000 words exactly. I more or less pose and discuss a question about the biotechnological enhancement of mankind and how far is too far? I know... a bit of a large topic to jam into a super short paper, but I wanted to write about something interesting.
Anyway, I do have to rush things a bit midway through, and I've really got to cut things short in the end due to time and space constraints, but I think it is still a reasonable argument considering what I had to work with. :)
Though I have little faith in our system and the politicians and corporations that run it, I went out last night to my polling station and did my part just the same. The Republican party is setting itself up for a loss, though we all support our troops 100%, 70% of us don't want to continue this war we shouldn't be fighting; yet the top two Republican candidates are running on a war ticket with McCain saying stuff like it'd be fine to be there for 100 years.
In the end, other than one man, Ron Paul, all of the candidates offer the same one party platform and what we are left with is the mere illusion of choice.
I've always thought that gaming was something that enhanced my ability to ride DH faster, being able to spot and run cleaner faster lines. Of course, I couldn't really prove that, I just suspected that gaming was something that helped develop a certain skill-set when it came to quick line detection from an otherwise random array of rocks. Turns out I was right, as recent research has shown gamers can consistently outperform non-gamers with regard to several areas of cognitive processes.
So... I'm not wasting my time, I'm exercising my gray matter. ;)
Researchers at the University of Rochester in New York have been looking at exactly how continued videogame-use influences our visual processing. The Rochester researchers intended to see whether habitual game-playing improved the visual skills of gamers, and they came up with a number of tests to measure this against nongamers. They reported that “videogame players were found to outperform non-videogame players on the localisation of an eccentric target among distractors, on the number of visual items they could apprehend at once, and on the fast temporal processing of visual information.” Or, in common-speak: gamers are better at using their eyes, and better at understanding what they see and doing something about it, than non-gamers.
This photo was just hosted on imageshack so I don't know who actually took it or I would give credit, but it appears to have been taken by a police officer. This picture is both unbelievably sad as well as revealing to those who do not understand the loyalty of a dog for his master. Not to get into a debate on cats vs. dogs, but you'd be hard pressed to find a deceased owner with a sad cat nearby.
A cat will run away at the first sign of danger, a dog will give his life to defend yours.
As dog owners we can only attempt to be worthy of such devotion.
Jesus... I don't know how I missed this in the news from earlier this year but wow, both insanely awesome and unbelievably creepy at the same time. Evolution witnessed in real-time.
Now what would have been creepier is if they came after the observing scientists with the spears! lol
Two anthropologists watched in mixed amazement and horror as several female chimpanzees crafted spears and used them to somewhat brutally hunt smaller mammals. Following a troop of the primates in a Senegalese savanna, Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University and Paco Bertolani of Cambridge observed them breaking the branches off of trees, picking leaves from the sides, and sharpening the tips to deadly points. In the March edition of Current Biology, the scientists explained that such sophisticated animal behavior could reveal a great deal about how early humans used primitive tools.
Although tool use is known to occur in species ranging from naked mole rats [1] to owls [2], chimpanzees are the most accomplished tool users [3, 4, 5]. The modification and use of tools during hunting, however, is still considered to be a uniquely human trait among primates. Here, we report the first account of habitual tool use during vertebrate hunting by nonhumans. At the Fongoli site in Senegal, we observed ten different chimpanzees use tools to hunt prosimian prey in 22 bouts. This includes immature chimpanzees and females, members of age-sex classes not normally characterized by extensive hunting behavior. Chimpanzees made 26 different tools, and we were able to recover and analyze 12 of these. Tool construction entailed up to five steps, including trimming the tool tip to a point. Tools were used in the manner of a spear, rather than a probe or rousing tool. This new information on chimpanzee tool use has important implications for the evolution of tool use and construction for hunting in the earliest hominids, especially given our observations that females and immature chimpanzees exhibited this behavior more frequently than adult males.
At work people were talking about Gore and when I saw my mom yesterday she wouldn't stop warning me about West Nile virus. Kinda funny when you think about how and what order we sensationalize things.
And what's the latest craze? We've had everything from killer bees to bird flu, what could be next in our state of fear? Killer brain eating amoebas. Sounds like a bad movie.
So we're being told to avoid water now? How many affected? Oh yeah, 23 nationally over 10 years. I think you're more likely to accidentally drown in your coffee cup or slip in the shower and break your neck.
