Dave's Blog

OOPS!  Guess I got fooled!  This was apparently an old April Fool’s joke.. Odd that its still on a BBC website as an authentic news story….

DrWho recovered from deep space

It seems scientists at Aricebo, the giant radiotelescope observatory in Puerto Rico stumbled upon signals in the 41-68 Mhz region, which happens to correspond to our terrestrial TV channels.  A little digital processing and voila! Instant ReRuns from 50 years ago!

Imagine what this makes possible!  All the shows that went out “live” on the air before there were even ways to record them can now be recovered!

Got a big antenna?

Read more at: http://www.rimmell.com/bbc/news.htm

We’re allowing “flash trading” to sap our economy, we’re even subsidizing it. We should stop it. Its un-American.

We don’t realize what a major milestone we just collectively witnessed.  This picture may help bring it home.  My friend Bill Caruthers sent me this photo taken from an F-15E Strike Eagle at 26 thousand feet over the east coast.  (The protective combat air patrol for the launch.)

A business associate recently shared with me some shocking information about surge protectors.  If you are like me, you probably have your computer and monitor plugged into an outlet strip that has a surge protector, right?  They’re supposed to protect  your computer in case there’s a lightning strike or a power surge, right?  Well, maybe.
It [...]

There has to be a better name for our obsession for watching the parade of anatomically correct forensic “entertainment” on our big-screen HDTV’s!

You were just a tiny little furball when you joined me on my journey.
You insisted on sitting atop my chest and purring when I first lay down to go to sleep every night.
And if I tried to sleep in too late you made it clear that was unacceptable by batting things I cared about off [...]

I’ve always been fairly paranoid about my data storage,  so I don’t know why I felt so inclined to trust Maxtor’s Central Axis Data Server with all my files.   Maybe it was because I was impressed with the notion that that tiny cute little box held a Terabyte of storage and a Linux server, [...]

Laundry is not my favorite passtime by any means, but trying to match pairs of Tblack mens’ socks makes me suspect there is some sort of conspiracy afoot!

“Gives us the nice bright colors,  Gives us the greens of summers, Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day.” -Paul Simon from the song Kodachrome
Unfortunately, when I started scanning my Dad’s Kodachrome slides from our trip to California in 1967,  I discovered Kodachrome’s dirty little secret.  At first I thought the slides had [...]

Recently while catching up on the MoonViews LOIRP (mentioned previously here I noticed that project head Dennis Wingo had given a presentation to the Mountain View Hacker Dojo.
If you’ve not heard of a Dojo before, it is a Japanese word meaning literally “Place of the Way”.  The term is usually associated with places where young people [...]

I’ve always thought the term Rock Opera described two things that belonged together only in the most twisted of contexts.  Add to that a narcissistic “hero” called White Gold and place him in a whitewashed world called Milquarious,  and apparently you’ve got something the California Milk Producers Board can get behind to propel the “Got [...]

NASA held a press conference today,  on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
They took great pains to explain exactly how the video from the moon was converted and relayed around the world. And they attempted to explain how the original data tapes of the slowscan data had been lost, and probably erased. [...]

My first exposure to videotape was in 1967 while attending Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport, Tennessee.   The city had just completed a new state-of-the-art building with pie-shaped classrooms, ramps instead of stairwells, and closed-circuit TV monitors in every room. Finding my way through the usual hallway shuffle between classes I happened past a half-open doorway [...]

I’m sure many of my FaceBook friends think I’m being curmudgeonly (if there IS such a word!) but despite the temptation to be cute, I always reject invitations to get added to birthday calendars, accept hugs, or find out what color crayon I am. Here’s why:
I will admit that I found enough value in [...]

I like to follow Seth Godin’s wisdom pertaining to Internet marketing. Over the years, he has always been on top of the trends and shown the way for those of us who are trying to keep on top of the Internet’s ocean of ideas. His latest book, Tribes, talks about the way today’s [...]

The battlefront in the war over copyright and remix rights - a trailer for Brett Gaylor’s film rip! A Remix Manifesto.

Here’s a sobering look at how two Domino’s employees making a prank video that went viral caused tremendous damage to the brand.     Talk about a public relations digital disaster!

POV!

This is about right, don’t you think?

January 31st, 2009
I’ve always been fascinated by timelapse photography. The world changes dramatically when our sense of time shifts. Here are some of my favorite time-twisting videos, followed by some of my own:
Fedex Scatter/Gather:
  
4 Hours of Play in 2 Minutes:
   

My brother Alan, who works at and follows all things NASA sent me this link which I found particularly of interest since I once owned two Ampex FR-600 data recorders that came from NASA in Huntsville. Having resurrected an ancient (by technology standards) Scanimate analog animation computer I have experienced first-hand the joys of reviving old technology, finding players for [...]

 
Yes its true that you can receive pristeen digital  High Definition video off the air for free….  or not!
HDTV has been around for years, but its only been since the digital video compression alogrithms got better that the FCC finally mandated that the transition will take place next February 17.
The good news is that if [...]

 
After  months of tracking and mixing and listening, 
Kevin O’Donnell, Alan Gamble and I have finally released the CD we’ve been working on called Leaf Litter in Sunshine. Kevin wrote all the songs, Alan played drums, I played bass and we collaborated with some of the region’s most talented musicians.  Lacking a name, we call ourselves [...]

 
 
I recently came across an old reel-to-reel recording of the band Shadrack, made back in 1973 or so. My friend Jim Shields invited me to tag along and watch as the band did their recording in Atlanta. I re-mastered the songs as mp3 files, and remembered I had some slides I had shot down there [...]

As near as I can tell, my cat’s life is about as ideal as anyone could ever want.  His priorities would seem to be: (1) Eat. (2) If inside, go outside and try to kill something or procreate or defacate. If outside, go inside and eat. (3) Sleep.  Thats pretty much it.
While at times I think I would [...]

I recently discovered some fascinating research into what I can only describe as anomalies in randomness. Before you decide I’ve gone off the deep end, hear me out. Quantum physicists have found that the deeper they dig into the behavior of elemental particles, the more chance comes into play. Einstein was said to be so [...]

I have to confess I was a little worried there for a while. As an operator of a mail server for my web clients, spam is a huge concern. One of the best ways to combat it is to subscribe to the non-profit Spamhaus database of offenders. Based in the U.K, Spamhaus takes pains to [...]

 
Seems like everything is a war these days.  War on Terrorism, war on poverty, war on drugs… So I hate to add to the list of wars, but I can’t help thinking there is one looming - over Internet bandwidth.  Just when we thought we were starting to have enoughalong comes Net Neutrality which is basically a [...]

Been having Internet troubles lately? You’re not alone! A bunch of my clients, friends, and I have been seeing all sorts of “issues” with Embarq’s attempts to cut the cord between themselves and Mama Sprint. The DSL light stays on but there ain’t nobody home. When google’s skimpy start page takes 8 minutes to load, [...]

Well, SIGGRAPH, the big computer-graphics convention in Boston has announced there will be a special showing of “The Dream Machine”, the documentary I produced about the Scanimates!  Here’s the press release:
Its impossible to watch television without our senses being nearly overwhelmed by computer-generated motion graphics. Products and brand logos tumble and flash and grab our [...]

Well I’ve been waiting for this to happen for years, and now its here.  Its always been a no-brainer that Microsoft could easily have your computer phone home to see if your software is legitimate.  So many people now have computers that stay on, and stay connected to the Internet, and Microsoft has us all [...]

I frequently find myself trying to secure a good domain name for my clients.  Ever notice how all the good ones are taken?  Ever notice that if you try to access them you get what seems like a search engine page with a bunch of links?  Whatever you do, don’t click on any of them!  [...]

The news today that Google had refused to hand over millions of records of search terms subpoenaed by the U.S. Government took me by surprise.  First, let me applaud Google for not giving in to the request, as apparently MSN and Yahoo did!  The government apparently wants to analyze a weeks worth of searches to see how many pornographic sites 90 million people [...]

When the word etiquette got contracted with Net to form Netiquette, it was to fulfill the need for some basic rules of the Information Highway.  Back in the ’80’s before anyone even heard of the Internet, I worked for a pioneering software company that had corporate email and offices spread across the country.  I remember trying to explain [...]