Category Archives: Misc

Misc

A Few Deep Thoughts on Vocabulary

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Sacred and ruthless. Image generated with Gemini.

Sometimes, my brain wanders a bit far afield…

Did you ever notice that sacred seems to be the past tense of some other word? It is. It’s the past tense of sacre, a now obsolete word that meant, at one time or another, to consecrate as king or bishop; to make holy or sanctify; or dedicate.

And what about ruthless? Being ruthless means to have no pity, to be cruel or merciless. But, if you can be less of ruth, then can you be full of ruth? Yes, yes you can. Ruthful means being full of sorrow or woeful; causing sorrow; or tender, full of ruth. Full of ruth? What is ruth? Ruth means having compassion for another’s misery, or sorrow for your own faults (remorse).

Misc

Ladybug Marker Holder

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I finally busted out some of the tools I’ve been collecting with the hopes of doing some woodworking.  I’m working on a toy tree house for my daughter, something that goes with the doll house she got from her grandma, and when it’s done, I’ll post some photos on here.  I had an extra half-sphere and, inspired by a groundhog I’d seen on another blog, created this.  Nothing too fancy, but starting with half a sphere, drilling some holes, adding a few dowels and small wooden balls, then dremeling some detail, a ladybug emerged.  Lisa then painted it, bringing it to life and giving it character.

I think it turned out great and I’m planning on making some more, though just not ladybugs.  I was thinking a porcupine or a dinosaur might look good.

Misc

Blu-ray blues

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We recently got rid of our cable TV (keeping the internet of course) and wanted to get a set up where we could stream Netflix and other video sources directly to the TV.  Of the various options, it seemed that a blu-ray with built in WiFi would be best, and we started with the Samsung BD-C6500.  This claimed to be able to connect wirelessly, stream Netflix and Hulu Plus, and had a bunch of other internet-ready content via apps.

Most of this is true.  We were able to hook it up no problem, got it connected to our wireless network and streaming Netflix, and were able to browse other internet content such as YouTube.  However, one major glitch:  the blu-ray player lost the network settings each time we powered it off.  We’d have to re-scan and enter the password for our network each time.  This makes using it almost unbearable.  Further, Samsung customer support was not very helpful, suggesting a few things that made no difference.  Finally, the apps available were meager at best, with no Hulu Plus or ESPN apps, and the few apps that weren’t there by default were not very interesting.

Contrast this with the Sony BDP-S570, which at Best Buy cost the same.  This blu-ray player set up as easily as the Samsung.  However, it kept the network settings no problem.  No re-entering the network password.  And the number of apps that come installed with it is much greater than the Samsung, with maybe 5 times as many.  I haven’t found yet if it is possible to install new ones, though I assume there must be some way.  Hulu Plus is not available on the Sony, but in contrast to the Samsung, it seems that there is a plan to get it soon.  This one is even 3D-ready (it isn’t 3D capable yet, but with a firmware upgrade expected to be available soon, it will be).  This isn’t something I care much about, but it just points to the overall better product this player is for the same price as the Samsung.

I’m not sure how much of the issues with the Samsung are specific to our setup.  Our router is an Apple Time Capsule, and I saw online others with that setup having the same problem.  It is just odd that this day and age this kind of thing doesn’t work better.  And that Samsung didn’t have a better response suggests they are ignoring the problem.

I’m very happy with the Sony.  And if anyone else runs into these network issues with the Samsung, I would highly recommend taking it back and getting the Sony instead.

Misc

More tops

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100103_7882TopsOver Christmas break, Lisa’s dad let me use his lathe again, and I made a few more tops.  I made 4 in all, but two of them we gave to friends before we snapped a picture.  In any case, here are two of the new ones with the old ones.  One of them, the one on the right in the first picture,100103_7887Tops I also gave to a friend, Bob.

The handles aren’t quite as polished as I would like and the tips that they spin on aren’t as smooth as I would like to give the whole top a nice smooth look, but overall they turned out alright and do a decent enough job of spinning.  I was maybe a little aggressive trying to by fancy by carving out towards the inside of the volume, which made it a bit difficult to sand them properly, so that is why in the second photo the third top has a bit of a rough edge.  I started to lose a little patience with the sanding.  But, still, they look good, were relatively easy to make, and were fun to make too.

Misc, Science

Analyzing the Election

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Here are some different ways of looking at the US Presidential election:

Correlating the election results with the lighting of the night sky.

Drawing the US by scaling the size of each county not by its land-mass but by its population.

Another population analysis where the brightness of each county is determined by population.

Correlating the election results in the South with cotton output in 1860.

A map showing shifts in voting behavior, places that were more Democratic or Republican than last time.

More later as I find them.