Monthly Archives: January 2011

Elongated Sundog and Contrail

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Kelson

Elongated Sundog and Contrail

I got off the freeway to catch the train out to the office last Tuesday morning, and saw this incredibly bright sundog off to the east. I couldn’t get a parking space, so I had to drive the rest of the way, but I did get a couple of photos.

The sun is off-frame to the right.

I’m not sure why the bright patch was so elongated and well-defined. My guess is that a smaller cloud in the foreground happened to be in exactly the right spot to reflect the sunlight.

I had to shorten the exposure in order to actually get some detail on here, like the bit of color spectrum in the middle.

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Gmail On Notice(s)

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Kelson

Google has just launched desktop notifications for Gmail using HTML5 technology. Of course, they’ve had a separate pop-up notifier for quite a while now. How does this one compare?

Improvements:

  • Will run on any operating system.
  • Doesn’t need to be installed on your computer.
  • Doesn’t require a registry hack now that GMail requires SSL on everything.
  • Doesn’t require you to enter your login & password in a separate app.
  • Lets you choose between only chat notifications, only email notifications, or both.
  • If you use Priority Inbox, lets you choose between all new messages or only those PI has marked as Important.

Downside:

  • Needs Gmail to be open. No biggie, as this is true of pop-up notifications for Outlook, Thunderbird, etc. But since the old notifier was a separate app, it could run on its own.
  • Only works with Chrome so far.

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Consarn it, tomorrow’s Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day, and I’m plumb unprepared!

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Kelson | 1 Comment

Recent Links: 2012, Citation Needed, App Store, etc.

Posted on January 22, 2011 by Kelson

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You Know You Need Coffee When… (Volume 2)

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Kelson

Continued from volume one…

  • You put a filter in the coffee maker, then go back to get…a filter for the coffee maker. And then put the bag of coffee back in the fridge…where you’ve never kept coffee. Ever. (Yeah, I was batting 1,000 that day.)
  • You get halfway up the stairs before realizing you left your travel mug in the car. (I’ve done this several times.)
  • You get impatient with the pour rate while filling your mug.
  • You pour cereal into your coffee mug instead of a bowl. (Well, almost.)
  • You come up with a great item to add to your “You know you need coffee when…” list and can’t remember what it was.

Posted in Food, Humor | Tagged | 1 Comment

The Office Barista: Simple Drinks For Your Coffee Break

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Kelson

Don’t have time to go to Starbucks, but want something more than plain coffee? Here are some simple drinks you can make with ingredients that might be in your lunch room, or that you can easily keep at your desk.

Coffee + hot chocolate mix = mocha

Coffee + hot chocolate mix + cinnamon

Hot chocolate mix + mint-flavored black tea

Hot chocolate mix + cinnamon-flavored black tea

Hot chocolate mix + masala chai tea

Since I realized that this was more of a list of what you can do with hot chocolate mix, I’ve been meaning to fill in more detail for…well, months now. Apparently today is National Coffee Break Day, so I figured rather than letting it sit in the drafts folder forever, I’d post what I had in observance!

Posted in Food | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Starbucks’ new Trenta Coffee: Big Deal

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Kelson

I can’t get worked up about Starbucks’ new super-size for iced drinks, the 31-ounce Trenta. Here’s why:

  • It’s only on iced drinks. Iced tea, lemonade, iced lattes, etc. Unless you’re getting plain iced coffee, you’re not getting 31 ounces of fully-caffeinated coffee.
  • Even then, there’s ice taking up a lot of that space. So you’re still not getting 31 ounces of coffee.
  • You can get a 32-ounce drink in any fast food place in America. Sometimes it’s called a large. Sometimes it’s called a medium.

A 31-ounce Frappucino might be a bit much…but how much do you typically get in a milkshake at a restaurant that specializes in them? I’m going to guess it’s 12-16 ounces in the glass, plus about the same in the metal mixing cup that they usually deliver to your table at places like Ruby’s or Johnny Rockets. That brings it to 24-32 ounces — in other words, about the same.

So, a little perspective. Is the Trenta bigger than any other Starbucks drink size? Sure. But compared to a Big Gulp? No one would think twice if you picked up a 32-ounce iced tea or lemonade at McDonald’s (except to ask why you weren’t getting a soda), or refilled your 12-ounce glass twice at a sit-down restaurant.

Posted in Food | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Internet needs a new rule: Do not comment on an article about a controversial topic until you’ve actually read and understood the post to which you’re responding.

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Kelson | Leave a comment

(Mad) Scientific Fact: The Girl Genius Novel is Out!

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Kelson

For the past decade, Phil & Kaja Foglio have been spinning the mad science/gaslamp fantasy adventures of Agatha Heterodyne in the award-winning comic book-turned-webcomic Girl Genius. Now they’ve stepped into a new medium, adapting the first story into a prose novel: Agatha H. and the Airship City.

The Industrial Revolution has escalated into all-out warfare. It has been sixteen years since the Heterodyne Boys, benevolent adventurers and inventors, disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Today, Europe is ruled by the Sparks, dynasties of mad scientists ruling over – and terrorizing – the hapless population with their bizarre inventions and unchecked power, while the downtrodden dream of the Hetrodynes’ return. At Transylvania Polygnostic University, a pretty, young student named Agatha Clay seems to have nothing but bad luck. Incapable of building anything that actually works, but dedicated to her studies, Agatha seems destined for a lackluster career as a minor lab assistant. But when the University is overthrown by the ruthless tyrant Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, Agatha finds herself a prisoner aboard his massive airship Castle Wulfenbach – and it begins to look like she might carry a spark of Mad Science after all.

The comics are great fun, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how they’ve filled in the details in the novel version!

Posted in Comics, Sci-Fi/Fantasy | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

I just watched TRON: Legacy. All the talk of free software, free systems, etc. made me realize: the plot of the original (1982) movie can be summarized as “Information wants to be free.”

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Kelson | 2 Comments