Those of you who are interested have probably already seen these, but just in case... Recently KMSP's replaced their primary antenna on their Shoreview tower (the taller single tower, not the twin Telefarm towers). They switched from circular to horizontal polarization. Between that and the reduced strength required for DTV (plus not running two signals after the switch), they're going to save a ton of power (88% less on the main amps, probably 90% less than the transition power). I have some other info, but I'm not sure if it should be posted on the web, so I'm not doing that for now. In any case, of course local techs/hams took a bunch of pictures of the process, and those are posted online.
Two changes, that only coincidentally happened at the same time.
First change is I added stickiness to the name and URL fields for comments. Those who use their own computers and don't obsessively clear cookies generally won't have to retype them. There's also a preference related to ads available if they show up, but they don't for recent posts anyways...
Second is I removed the xbl check for comment submission. It has blocked several thousand junk comments over the past few months, but about a third of the junk gets past it anyways. The next check isn't really any more resource intensive, and it will probably catch them too. Because it's probably not needed, and it hit a false positive today (unless people are putting odd names, the first in almost 8 months since I started logging failures). It was a nice check to have since it's hard to avoid (a smarter script won't help), but hopefully not necessary. If I see spam, I may put it back temporarily and devise another workaround.
On an unrelated note, sorry for the lack of posts lately. I've been busy with other things, and trying to keep my sanity by eliminating extra things. Hope things are going well for everyone.
Last week I talked with a guy for a couple minutes about his upcoming documentary The Road to Falluja. He was interviewing people regarding reactions to the bridge and how the tragedy was effecting them. I also found a bit more about why he's making the documentary. The article on the documentary has as much info as I know about it, but it does sound like it'll be something worth seeing. This is somewhat a reminder to myself, but I'm guessing some people who read this may be interested as well. It should be out a bit before Christmas.
After spending some time taking photos around the bridge, I started looking into it some more. MnDOT has some rather interesting information on the bridge available on their web site. In addition to a video clip from shortly after the collapse (from the traffic cameras), there are drawings and reports and information about the rebuilding project. You can also see general bridge facts, which includes timings of when they had reports and action taken.
These are the new lighting in my downstairs/theater area. I'm quite happy with the resulting color. The bulb colors combine quite well for the desired effect. Things do cast some interesting shadows though.
Apparently they tried a few bigger runs this weekend. At least the BLs stopped them quickly.
I've changed the way photos are integrated a bit, and in doing so also made some modifications to the feeds. Rather than posting when a new gallery is added, there's a template in feeds. There are two options for seeing this. To integrate it into the same feed, add ?photos=true to the feed URL. This is also noted in the header of my site if you use a new enough browser. There is also a separate photos feed.
And the big migration to Exchange starts. Of course pretty graphs are required in the analysis of how fast boxes migrate to estimate the load. What better way to do so than to send a Mathematica notebook to the migration team? Perhaps one which pulls data live from the server so they can get the stats themselves whenever desired (and rotate the graph too). Unfortunately I doubt many of you have Mma 6 (needed for transparency), and I'm not going to release the raw stats data either, so a picture will have to do.
The cyan plot is a quadratic fit, the red plot is a mesh of actual data points.
In the interest of liquidating toys I don't use to fund the purchase of new toys, I'm selling my Apple TV. There's nothing wrong with it; it's just not for me. I bought it intending to hack it and do something pvr related, but didn't get much beyond getting in and looking before getting a good price on a S3 TiVo. Yes it's hacked, but done only in software so the case was never opened, and so still has 9 months of warranty. Even has the registration card...
Anyways, I've been meaning to put it on eBay for a couple months now. To save me the trouble and fees, if anyone I know (or foaf/similar trust chain) is interested, best offer over $200 (or close if I'm feeling lazy) by Friday afternoon has it. I'm flexible on the actual sale time if necessary, just if I haven't heard by then, I plan to list it. If you want to make an offer, please email rather than comment.
I've been lending through Prosper for a little while now and making decent returns (a bit over 16%, no defaults yet). For those who haven't heard of it, they effectively coordinate person-to-person unsecured loans with many lenders each taking a piece to manage the risk, and them just taking a point off the top for managing it (they do all credit checks, managing electronic payments, handle the legal issues, and even send to collections if necessary). As for this post, they have a promo going on through the end of August where if you join on a referral you get a decent bonus after the first loan on which you bid is disbursed (the person who referred you gets a bonus too). If any of you are interested in trying it out, you can do so here.
Copyright ©2000-2008 Jeremy Mooney (jeremy-at-qux-dot-net)
