ProteinSpill.com

Spam and Content problems

My experiment to permit anyone to post comments without registering is over. I am requiring registered users again now because it’s annoying to have to go in and delete all the comment spam.

Also, if anyone has a problem with the topics I write about here why not send me an email first? Would be a lot simpler than making a big official production out of it to try and scare me. It wouldn’t hurt if you didn’t give me so much material either.

If you like to look at pictures…

Tracy and I recently took a quick three-night cruise aboard the Disney Wonder to Nassau and Castaway Cay. On Disney’s private island, we were treated to a close look at The Flying Dutchman from the Pirates of the Caribbean. We had a great time, but the three-night cruises are really too short.

Lightning Safety

Dead cows lined up along a metallic fence. Lightning struck the fence, and the current traveled along the fence killing the cows

Next time you’re on the monorail platform during a thunderstorm, next to the metal gates, think about this photo. Scary, huh? From the NOAA Lightning Safety site:

If lightning is in the immediate area, and there is no safe location nearby, stay at least 10 feet apart from other members of your group so the lightning won’t travel between you if hit. Keep your feet together and sit on the ground out in the open. If you can possibly run to a vehicle or building, DO so. Sitting or crouching on the ground is not safe and should be a last resort if a enclosed building or vehicle is not available.

I’m sure the lightning protection on top of the station would prevent this from happening. We’ve had some pretty close strikes while I was working. Still kind of a scary thought though.

It’s not my fault, it’s a disorder!

I was so angry when I saw this I couldn’t even finish reading the article.

Intermittent Explosive Disorder.

Absolutely ridiculous! I think they fail to see the real reason for road rage “disorder.” How about the fucknut who insists on doing 60 in a 65-zone in the left lane? The disorder is that maybe the guy behind you would like to get to work on-time. Here’s a tip, if you have a line of cars behind you and you’re not in the right lane MOVE OVER. Slower Traffic Keep Right.

People also need to learn how to merge. How about instead of riding the cars bumper in front of you, you give some space to the merging traffic. If your new travel friends have room to join you, then the traffic comes together like a zipper and everybody gets to their destination faster. You tap the brakes, and the effects are felt for hours.

Then again maybe I just need to visit my doctor and be medicated.

Sun Fire T2000 goin’ back to cali

I boxed up the T2000 and dropped it off at my convenient 24-hour Fedex Kinko’s last night. It’s a shame it had to go back just as I was getting time to play with it. Maybe I’ll test something else soon.. perhaps something more appropriate, like a x4100.

In the meantime, I’m going to try to learn more about Solaris. One of the problems I had with testing this machine properly was that my (gobs of) Linux experience really didn’t apply directly like I hoped. The last time I really played with Solaris was back in the 2.x days c.1996. Things have changed quite a bit.

In the last week I had the Sun Fire, I did get to try installing Gentoo Linux on it. OH MY. Thanks go to David S. Miller for his work on the kernel and Gustavo for the Gentoo LiveCD. I built a vanilla 2.6.17 kernel and modules in about 4 minutes. The rest of the stage 3 install went on in just a couple of hours. Most of the delay was my relatively slow 768K DSL connection, pulling down source. The T2000 with a cross-compiler would’ve made a REALLY sweet distcc host!

Pretty, but it’s whats inside that counts.

Whenever you can type “make -j17″ without distcc, it’s a beautiful thing. If I had more time with the box I would’ve done more measuring around this.

Eclipse on Mac OS X (Intel)

What a pain this was. For those of you who don’t know, Eclipse is an integrated development environment written in Java. Java is supposed to be “write once, run anywhere.” Not exactly the case here, and not clear if you try to download it for your shiny new Intel Macintosh.

I downloaded the latest stable release, 3.12 and installed it on my MacBook. When I went to run it, it throws up the splash screen and looks like it’s going to run and then a simple messagebox with a message to look in ~/Documents/workspace/.metalog/.log for details.

java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError:
/Applications/eclipse/configuration/org.eclipse.osgi/
bundles/63/1/.cp/libswt-pi-carbon-3139.jnilib:
at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1586)

There’s actually a lot more to it than that, but that’s all the details I had to go on. I’m not exactly familiar with Java so I don’t know how to decipher this. I decided to try jEdit instead. Nice editor, but I’m using Eclipse at work.

I searched Google for days using keywords like “eclipse mac” or “eclipse error jini” or “eclipse error install” which didn’t turn up anything useful. It was beginning to look like I was the only one to get this error. Today I searched for “eclipse unsatisfiedlinkerror” duh! I got a link to Steph’s blog which pointed out another stupid assumption. I’m not going to take the entire blame here though—remember, Java isn’t supposed to be platform-specific.

It turns out that there is a newer (unstable?) release of Eclipse that supports the Intel Macs. I’m in the process of downloading it now.

It works!

Puppy-mover Monorail

Very important work is being done for puppy mobility. Thanks to emily for bringing this to our attention.

Accidental Haiku

I love haiku. Especially when I write it by accident. I was chatting with emily recently about a recent visit to Independent Bar in Orlando (much better experience than Tabu, btw, but still smoky. I’m spoiled by PI in that respect). We were talking about a trio of girls who were wearing boots and vaguely 80’s outfits dancing together. [edited somewhat]


me: Yes. I was watching them closely. Especially the one with the brown dress.
em: ha
em: i dont remember the colors of their dresses so i have no idea which was which
me: One blonde two brunettes
em: im sure it was one of the brunettes
me: yes
me: she stole our candle while you all were dancing
em: sounds like a line from a song
em: or a poem
em: so emo
em: you should write it
me: "Then she stole my heart" LOL
em: "fuck you for not dancing with me!" could be the chorus
me: whoa it's already haiku!


she stole our candle
while you were out dancing
then she stole my heart

Anyway, it was fun. I’d go to I-Bar again.

$100 Computers!

Property Control has some old PCs available for sale pretty cheap. If all you need is something to knock around online and such, I will pick one up, install an operating system (your choice, Linux or Windows 2000) and package it with a 15″, 17″ or 20″ monitor (whatever they happen to have at the time ), keyboard and mouse for $100. The specs are 733MHz Pentium III, 128MB RAM, 10GB disk—or better. E-mail me for more info.

Pixie Dust

Every time I don’t get a professional job at Disney I console myself with the same thought: if I take a salaried job then I can’t work in the park. At least having a bill-paying job outside Disney allows me to do what I like on the weekends. If only I didn’t have to drive to Tampa for it.