Magnets Are Still Amazing

Posted on by Jordan

We take a break from news about moving into the condo to present this public service announcement:

Magnets are really cool!

After having seen the video above, some friends and I started talking about buying supplies to try this ourselves… and found out that there are people selling kits, and that they are kind of pricy: Teacher Source

It’s amazing enough I am still tempted. It may be that I would eventually tire of watching the magnet try and hover, but there is really only one way to find out. 🙂

-Jordan

An Old Knot, Revisited

Posted on by Jordan

It turns out I tie my shoes wrong.

You would think that somebody who, was an Eagle Scout, and is currently working with Scouts would know the basic knots. That’s what I thought anyway.

Then I saw this

The first thing that hit me was “Hey, I have a pair of running shoes with round nylon laces that will not stay tied!” So, I tried the ‘proper’ way to tie the knot for the past two weeks. I can tell you the strong form of the basic shoelace knot is MUCH better than the one I was using before.

I had read about, and sometimes used a technique where you tie the double-knot inverted. That works really well, probably better than the inverted basic bow demonstrated in the video. The downside to that is that the second knot works against the first to tighten each other and the end result can be very hard to untie. For that reason I almost never use the inverted double knot, and now… I don’t have any reason to!

Even after a week I have to stop and think about it every time I tie my shoes, but it is starting to come naturally, so maybe in a few weeks I won’t even know I am doing it!

-Jordan

Programmable Thermostats

Posted on by Jordan

Ok, this isn’t really about our lives, but it happens to be a subject I am kind of interested in.

The article: Do Programmable Thermostats Really Save Money?

I don’t have much to add to this article, other than to say I was really interested to see some of the numbers actually worked out.

From my personal experience, the key to saving money on utility costs is to move into a place with minimal exposure to external walls, but I don’t suppose that will be an option forever.

-Jordan

Tragic

Posted on by Jordan

So, I know there are 1000 other sources you can, and probably are looking at for information about Japan.

All the same, these pictures, and their presentation are… awe inspiring.

New York Times — Japan Before And After Pictures

Awe and terror I suppose… the scale of the destruction all but prevents me from looking at it like a real event instead of something in a movie. I mean, Tokyo is doing rolling-blackouts to ration power! That can’t actually happen.

We will resume our regularly scheduled trip-debrief posting again shortly.

-Jordan

A Little Fact Checking

Posted on by Jordan

A few days ago I received an e-mail with the subject:

” WHAT PILOTS SEE WHEN LANDING AT OFFIT AIRFORCE BASE SAC”


The e-mail had the following images attached:

I am very skeptical of anything I get in an e-mail forward. Skeptical to the point that I assume it is 100% faked unless I can go find a few independent sources to verify whatever the forward is telling me. The fact that they misspelled “Offutt” didn’t lend any credibility to the e-mail.

So… I looked around. The hard part about this e-mail is that there wasn’t much text to work with. Typically you can just plug the first sentence of the e-mail into a Google search and get a lot of information about the origins of the urban legend. (I am skeptical for a reason… maybe 1 in the last 100 forwards turned out to be true)

After not finding anything that looked particularly reputable, I realized: “Hey, I know where Offutt AFB is, and I know a great source for aerial photography!”

Google Maps

I checked a few other sources and the field appears to be blank, and as you can see from the Google image, the message isn’t the same, but I think we at least see that it is apparently true that somebody carves some really neat messages into the fall stubble at the end of the runway.

-Jordan

My Brain Is Full!

Posted on by Jordan

Well, maybe backlogged is a better word.

And actually, I feel like I am starting to catch back up now, but I felt pretty overloaded earlier this week… Might have had something to do with my taking so long to get this post up.

I spent the past weekend at the “No Fluff Just Stuff” conference. It was really good, but doing ten 90 minute sessions in a weekend left me feeling a little numb. The sessions were without a doubt non-fluffy. I learned a lot, but it was probably more than I could really absorb.

The last session I went to “Hacking your brain for fun and profit” while non-technical has been the easiest to start using. It covered ways to make yourself smarter/more productive. First up: getting more sleep. I don’t know if I can keep it up, but I really felt like I should try harder to stay on top of that one. The next point I tried to apply was avoiding distractions at work. I now have all my “new e-mail” sounds turned off, instant messenger can’t make noise ether, and my toolbar is set to auto hide. After nearly a week of that, I think I can tell that it is easier to focus on a task.

As sort of a byproduct of that, I found that Eclipse seems to prevent the taskbar from popping back up like it should sometimes, leading me to look into ways to improve task-switching. I hear there have been some great improvements in operating systems over the past… eight years or so, but my place of employ is still using XP so most of the cool things I initially found weren’t going to work.

Eventually I found out Microsoft labs had a product “Alt-Tab Replacement” in their Power Toys for Windows XP collection. It isn’t perfect, but it improved my situation fairly drastically.

And, that little tip is probably only useful to me… but hey the subscription was cheap right? 🙂

A (nearly) free weekend coming up, can’t wait to see what Heather and I end up filling it with!

-Jordan

Deep Thoughts… Or Something

Posted on by Jordan

Over the weekend, Heather and I drove out to western Nebraska for a wedding.

But before that, let me setup my frame of mind…

First I saw this video:

And then, the Internet being what it is, the remix video:

So, back to my drive out west. The song was kind of stuck in my head, and at the same time I was driving into an awe inspiring lightning show. I mean a really incredible storm! Clearly I all to easily forget how intense a storm can be.  I was really enjoying the lightning show, and started thinking about the guy in the video.

Now, I am afraid he may have been under the effects of some mind-altering chemicals at the time of that filming, but I don’t think that means he was wrong really. Rainbows, storms, all the other things you see outside… they are so amazing and I kind of take them for granted too often.

I actually have started investigating some ways to force myself to get outside, and outside of city limits, but I won’t post any details until I actually get something going. For now lets just leave it at enjoying the amazing show weather patterns in the Midwest can produce, and in awe of the splendor God has built around us.

-Jordan