We've moved

I moved a while ago, but forgot to update my blog here. Sorry about that.

New site: www.mckeeth.org

(Redirecting)

500kV Switch

This is a cool little video clip showing the power of electricity:

It is a 500kV Switch Opening in the nevada desert.

Subject tags: [Video] [Electricity]

Copy & Paste Comic

I write a lot of code as a software developer. It is very common practice to copy code and paste it somewhere else for reuse. The preferred method is to put it in a common method or library that both places reference, but that doesn't always work.

I have been curious if comic artists ever did the same thing. I was reading one of my favorite comic's PvP today and noticed that it appeared he copy and pasted one of the characters between two different day's.

The the drawing for Jade in 3rd cell of the comic for yesterday, February 9th, and her appearance in the 1st cell for today, February 10th looked the same to me. I flipped back and forward a couple times and they seemed like a match to me.

Luckily I have Beyond Compare from Scooter Software, one of my "can't live without" utilities. It has a really cool image comparison plug-in. I put the two comics in to see how they matched up.

The first thing I noticed was the one from the 9th was 5 pixels bigger. I always assumed the comics were always the same size from day to day, with occasional exceptions for special format comics. I then slid the two pictures in the different cells so they lined up, and sure enough they were a match. There is some slight variations, which could be artifacts form resizing both of them down from larger originals, or scanning them in from paper copy. I don't recall if Scott Kurtz creates his comics on paper first or not. It is within the realm of possibility that he drew both by hand and is just that good at recreating the same drawing from years of practice everyday.

I used Debugmode's Wink do a screen capture of the comparison process. Take a look.

Subject tags: [Code] [Comic] [Artist] [Blooper] [PvP]

Firefly Season 2

If you haven't seen Serenity or Firefly (or even if you have seen them, and don't own them yet) yet then go buy the DVDs. After you watch them then complete the Firefly Season 2 survey.

Personally I have no problem paying to watch each episode of Firefly, but the amount of money I will pay is dependent on the freedom I get with the episode. If it is locked up with DRM so I can only watch it once (or in a certain time frame) from my computer, then I won't spend much. But if I can burn it to a DVD to watch from my TV then I am more interested.

Subject tags: [Serenity] [Firefly] [SciFi] [Wheaton] [TV] [Movie]

Back to WinAmp

As you most likely know, all the original developers from NullSoft that worked on WinAmp prior to the AOL assimilation left the company a while back. Combine that with the anoyingly slow "modern" skin and a few other anoying features and I finally decided I needed to move on to a different audio player.

Well, I made the rounds, and short of writing my own player I think I am going to stick with WinAmp for now. Sure, it still has some warts, but for overall usibility for playing audio it is the best, and it is well supported. The fact it also does video playback is good too.

I'll stick with the free version for now. My audio ripping needs are satisfied by AudioGrabber (via LAME), Monkey Audio and FLAC.

Subject tags: [Music] [Audio] [WinAmp] [Ripping] [MP3]

Happy Birthday Mozart

Break out the powdered wigs and put on your classical music. Today is Mozart's 250th birthday. How are you celebrating?

Subject tags: [Mozart] [Classics] [Birthday] [Music]

The Future of Serenity

Despite very good reviews, and staying well within budget, Serenity didn't do so hot in the box office it turns out. All is not lost. Amazon still ranks Serenity as #3 in DVD sales, with Firefly close behind in #5.

As Joss put it:

DVD sales should, however, put Serenity back in the black and when the bucks start rolling in we can only hope that one of the suits at Universal looks at the numbers, adds the success of the Firefly DVD box set and greenlights a return for Captain Reynolds and his crew.

Subject tags: [Serenity] [Firefly] [Movie] [TV] [Sequal] [DVD] [Whedon] [Joss]

Google Maps Package Mapper

Honestly I think it would be a good idea for Google to provide this as part of their services. Until they do, we can use PackageMapper.com from Oliver Steele. Just enter your tracking number, and it uses SimpleTracking.com's RSS feed for that tracking number to get the history of where the package has been. Then he uses the Google Maps API to display it all on a Google Map.

Subject tags: [Google] [Tracking] [RSS] [Map]

Moving to WordPress 2.0

I really like WordPress, and the new 2.0 release is sweet. I've been slowly moving some of my smaller blogs over to Wordpress 1.5, and I just this week upgraded one of them to Wordpress 2.0. The installs are always so easy (provided the host doesn't get goofy on me), it is well documented, well supported, and it is such a nicer interface then Blogger offers. I am planning to upgrade this blog soon too. So if you notice some changes or if you cannot access the blog that is why.

If you want to use WordPress, and don't want to mess with installing it on your server then check out www.WordPress.com.

Subject tags: [WordPress] [Blogger] [Blog] [Upgrade]

Self referential

This is a word that describes itself:

sesquipedalian: (of words) long; having many syllables.

Unlike abreviated.

Subject tags: [Words] [Dictionary] [Word] [Language]