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The Instagram Metadata Massacre

Instagram Fingers I've been playing around with the iPhone app Instagram.  I decided to give this freebie a try after a gaggle of soulless self promoting Apple marketing zombies declared it "imaging app of the year."  Instagram, like Hipstamatic,  (which incidentally stopped working after the last update), crops iPhone images to squares, applies hokey filters and then offers … Continue reading The Instagram Metadata Massacre →

Revenge of the PhD Camera

Hipstamatic water meter Cameras come in two flavors. There are expensive serious cameras used by serious photographers to take serious photographs and then there are PhD, (Push here Dummy), cameras. Serious cameras meet the highest technical standards, lenses are diffraction limited, chromatic aberration approaches zero, pixel counts match Nyquist limits, ISO's exceed retinal sensitivity, auto-focus is instantaneous, color spaces … Continue reading Revenge of the PhD Camera →

Old white guys look at the sky!

Last Friday I joined the Saint Louis Astronomical Society (SLAS). In the last twenty years I have been a member of two chapters of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Kingston and Ottawa, the Forth Worth Astronomical Society in Texas, the Minnesota Astronomical Society in Saint Paul and the Orange County Astronomers in southern California. No matter … Continue reading Old white guys look at the sky! →

Iranian Regime Justice is pathetic Sharia Savagery.

Yousef Nadarkhani I rarely comment on the "news" but the planned execution of Yousef Nadarkhani for the make-believe crime of Islamic apostasy has really pissed me off. Once again the Iranian branch of the "religion of peace" shows its primitive, ass-backwards, subhuman side to a stunned world that finds it hard to believe that changing your mind about fictitious religious nonsense is … Continue reading Iranian Regime Justice is pathetic Sharia Savagery. →

New Conan not as Philosophical as Old Conan

Bad news philosophers, our preeminent social critic, our font of wisdom, our modern Socrates has succumbed to the malignant Hollywood poisons of reality TV, celebrity whoring, financial ennui and hopeless incompetent governance. Given the forces arrayed against our philosopher king only Vegas bookies on crack would favor his chances. I knew all this when I sat down to view … Continue reading New Conan not as Philosophical as Old Conan →

Typesetting UTF8 APL code with the LaTeX lstlisting package

Click here for a PDF version of this post. UTF8 APL characters within a LaTeX lstlisting environment. Click for *.tex source code Typesetting APL source code has always been a pain in the ass! In the dark ages, (the 1970's), you had to fiddle with APL type-balls and live without luxuries like lower case letters. With the … Continue reading Typesetting UTF8 APL code with the LaTeX lstlisting package →

Common Table Expression (CTE) SQLServer Queries with J

I've been blogging long enough to observe that your awesome posts are often ignored while your little "one-offs" sometimes strike hit gold. This is particularly true for "code example" posts. When I'm trolling for code --- the geek equivalent of trolling for babes --- I don't want to read about the author's programming philosophy or what the hell … Continue reading Common Table Expression (CTE) SQLServer Queries with J →

1421: The Crank History of Gavin Menzies

Click here for a PDF version of this post. Crank history is big business and it's getting bigger. For reasons that infuriate skeptics there is a never-ending parade of pseudo-historians spouting rubbish that is eagerly devoured by a credulous pig ignorant public. Gavin Menzies' ludicrous tome, 1421: The Year China Discovered America, (also titled 1421: … Continue reading 1421: The Crank History of Gavin Menzies →