Rubink's Blog

A New Weblog

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 16:40:11 GMT

I'm going to start focusing my efforts on a blog that seems to meet my needs a little better, so I am inviting everyone to bookmark my new location for my daily ramblings on "the internets.". Don't worry, I will be visiting Y!360 sites still so you will hear from me!

HERE IS MY NEW BLOG:

Either go to hypermean.com and click on blog or go straight to it with this link:

http://www.hypermean.com/blog/

Thanks and I'll see ya there....

Development Project - a Dashboard Widget!

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 06:55:32 GMT

Apple released a beta development tool free called Dashcode, specifically for creating Dashboard Widgets. Cool. So I downloaded it a couple of days ago and before you know it I was working on creating a widget. A slight knowlege of Javascript and other development doesn't hurt to know but overall its incredibly easy to generate widgets.

I created and just submitted to Apple my first one. It's a simple widget that takes the RSS feed from the New Mexican and throws it in a widget. And it works!

Click here to go to download page

Above is a screenshot (with the story of Gov. Richardson planning on announcing his first steps to run for president on Tuesday) and here is my page where you can download it. Maybe I'll find time soon to clean it up or create another widget. It's kinda fun.

Friday and we have snow...

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 15:45:37 GMT

...coming in yet again. If there was a word to describe 2007 so far I would say it's "SNOW". Strange. "Global weather chaos" is what scientists have mentioned "global warming" should be called.

Us getting 3 feet of snow is anything but normal. How about ice storms in Houston? Snow in Malibu? Warm northeast winter? Green December in Minnesota? Ski lifts closed in Europe due to lack of the white stuff? New Islands in Greenland due to melt?

I can go on. I have a friend in Kenya who says they have had record floods.

Anyhow, we do need the moisture in NM so I won't complain anymore today.

Photo: A Kenyan flood from a couple of years ago. The ones this year may be worse

Wikipedia making computers "smarter"?

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 05:22:24 GMT

I'm not sure how well this will work, but the theory is interesting. Wish there was a link to their research so I can see more of what it's all about...

Using Wikipedia, Technion researchers have developed a way to give computers knowledge of the world to help them “think smarter,” making common sense and broad-based connections between topics just as the human mind does. The new method will help computers filter e-mail spam, perform Web searches and even conduct intelligence gathering at more sophisticated levels than current programs.

Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have found a way to give computers encyclopedic knowledge of the world to help them “think smarter,” making common sense and broad-based connections between topics just as the human mind does.

Sundance 2007

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 04:33:48 GMT

I know little about what's happening there this year. If anyone has a connection to the scoop, pray tell and post!

Sundance's genius founder Robert Redford came into my work not too long ago. What a great guy. He was not only nice but real.

Sundance News

Fest Opens With Anti-War Sentiment

The Sundance Film Festival opened Thursday night with an innovative movie harkening back to Vietnam anti-war protests and a call by actor/activist Robert Redford for an apology by U.S. leaders. Read more

Turning 'Six Degrees' Into Charity

Kevin Bacon will be at Sundance to launch SixDegrees.org, an online charitable-giving site that is inspired by his namesake game and driven by today's obsession with celebrities. Read more

Never Eat....

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:48:41 GMT

...at a Mexican Place that named themselves "Taco John".

I never heard of them until they ended up getting people sick this past week. Taco Bell can survive E. coli but I'm not sure about a Mexico chain that has so little presence in Western and Southwestern states. That alone should give you a hint about the quality of the Mexican food.

The Taco John's outbreak occurred at roughly the same time as a separate and more widely publicized outbreak of food poisoning that sickened 70 patrons of Taco Bell restaurants in the Northeast. Though E. coli-contaminated iceberg lettuce was the likely culprit behind both outbreaks, the two are not thought to be linked.

And speaking of fast food and diarrhea, I heard a kid in a McDonald's commercial may have been spotted wearing a GG Allin t-shirt! If you don't know who GG Allin is, you should. He ended up dying before his promised suicide on stage, so that was a big let-down. But his performances were famous (or infamous) for nihilistic songs and covering himself in his own feces (and much worse!). Never had the pleasure to see him and I'm very thankful for that.

He is best remembered for his notorious live performances that typically featured wildly transgressive acts such as Allin defecating onstage, committing self harm, performing naked, taunting people to perform fellatio on him, and violent actions towards the audience. Although more notorious for his stage antics than for his wide body of music, he recorded prolifically, not only in the punk rock genre, but also in spoken word, country and western and Rolling Stones-influenced rock.

GG looking sharp and on-game

If the the king of fast food's corporate offices is using GG in any way, they may want to consider reviewing their marketing group very carefully.

Photo: A Taco Johns that looks suspiciously like a Wendy's

Jean Arnold & Donald Trump

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 02:50:48 GMT

One of the more popular artists we have in the gallery is Salt Lake City, Utah's own Jean Arnold. Here is a little about her in her own words:

Raised in the American West, I am obsessed with the land that surrounds me and the environmental concerns tied up in the land. While the founding mythology of the American West is that of endless space, we now find that "remote" is within our reach, traffic and/or jetliners are always within earshot, and empty is filling up rapidly.

She wrote me this morning and had this to say:

"...I ended up placing three pieces of my artwork on the new series The Apprentice), in the Mansion in LA, for the noteriety...You can just take my word for it. (Although I probably will watch a few episodes just to see). On the website, they do have views of the mansion. One of my pieces (a drawing) is seen prominently in this view:

You can see just a glimpse of a smaller painting of mine in the background of this shot. I did watch the first episode, and caught a glimpse of the third piece, a painting...(so I know it also got placed - they just don't have views of every angle in the mansion, on the website)."

I don't watch NBC's the Apprentice (or much else actually), but I find Donald Trump to be an overly materielistic blowhard. Good at marketing himslef to stay in the spotlight but bad with the hairstyle. Oh, and a couple of years ago when he said that he would date his daughter ...if she wasn't his daughter...well, that just creeped me out. And this whole spat with Rosie O'Donnell just has to stop. It's irritating. I really don't care for either, so I won't take sides.

Photo: Farewell by Jean Arnold, as featured in the Donald Trump show

California deserts and cold don't mix

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 18:12:43 GMT

Just had an IM from my good friend Miked (he worked on the Mar's lander...I have brought him up before in posts). He has a place in California out in the high desert (not far from Mohave I think...haven't been there yet), and he comes home to find half his roof caved in, thanks to freezing pipes.

Here is his blog entry about it.

Wish him the best of luck. He is dealing with insurance now.

Roblat & Los Alamos

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 16:19:07 GMT

“We have been trying for 40 years to save the world, sometimes against the world's wishes” - Joseph Rotblat

Cloudcliff Bakery

Being at the Cloudcliff Bakery for a while Saturday afternoon working on the website I noticed that they had a big sign on the front of the cafe honoring Joseph Roblat, the LANL physicist. I have heard the name but knew nothing of him. So I did some research.

Sir Joseph Rotblat (4 November 1908 – 31 August 2005) was a Polish-born British-naturalised physicist. His work on nuclear fall-out was a major contribution to the agreement of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. In conjunction with the Pugwash Conferences, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 for their efforts towards nuclear disarmament.

Early in 1944 Rotblat went to work on the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs. The usual condition for people to work on the Manhattan Project was that they had to become U.S. citizens or British subjects. Rotblat declined and the condition was waived. He always had strong reservations about the use of science to develop such a devastating weapon. He was shocked in March 1944, at a private dinner with Leslie Groves during which it was made clear that the atomic bomb was no longer being developed to deter Nazi Germany, but to subdue the Soviet Union.

Before leaving Los Alamos he was accused of being a Soviet spy and he was barred from the United States for several years afterwards.Rotblat believed that scientists should always be concerned with the ethical consequences of their work. He became one of the most prominent critics of the nuclear arms race, was the youngest signatory of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955, and chaired the press conference that launched it. After the positive coverage of the manifesto, Cyrus Eaton offered to fund the influential Pugwash Conferences. With Bertrand Russell and others he organized the first one of these in 1957 and continued to work within their framework until his death. Despite the Iron Curtain and the Cold War, he advocated establishing links between scientists from the West and East.

That being the case, I wonder if Joseph ever went over to the Cloudcliff Bakery for a cup o' joe and some tasty baking? I think it would be an honor to sit in this Nobel winner's chair...

New Web Site

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 01:56:00 GMT

I redesigned my hypermean web site because:

It was cheesy
It's good practice
I need to work on my css
I wanted to add a bunch of stuff

It still needs a lot of work but I wanted to share the changes with the world. Please check it out:

http://www.hypermean.com

And if you have any suggestions please let me know. All comments welcome.

It's stall a static site and I want to still work on:

More PHP stuff
More css stuff
More javascript stuff
Maybe another blog?
More media
Etc etc etc