Chasing Mavericks (2012)
The YouTube player can not be loaded with disabled JavaScript. The following video is embedded here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jh09vEGNrXc Everybody had been telling me I should watch Chasing Mavericks, but I somehow didn’t feel inclined. Surf movies – and movies about surfing, which is not the same thing – tend to be depressingly fictionalized. They portray the world as a surfer would love it to be, and not as it is. The waves are always perfect, the bros are always on a spiritual quest of communion with the ocean, and somehow there are always more ladies in the water than anyone has witnessed in a lifetime. Continue readingSparkFun Arduino Pro Micro and Linux
Lately, I’ve been working with Arduinos. If you don’t know what that is, it’s essentially a way for anyone to build their own intelligent hardware. There is a microcontroller (essentially, a really small and underpowered CPU), infrastructure to support programming it, and a series of ports that can be connected to sensors, motors, and the like. The Arduino has two major advantages that catapulted it into consciousness: it is open source, which makes it really easy to debug and extend; and it is exceedingly well-documented and reliable. Continue readingSkyfall (2012)
Wait! I already watched this movie! It was the distant year 1982. The first movie of a successful franchise had been very disappointing. The producers could smell the money, but knew there was nothing to be won by continuing on the trodden path. So, the very keen decision: kill one of the main characters, add an amazing and disposable super-villain, and allow for a reboot with fresh blood. The movie in 1982 was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Continue reading
Causality: My Cats Know About It
When trying to pinpoint the root accomplishment of human intelligence, we are frequently tempted to use our inquisitive nature as an explanation. The relentless “why?” of a five-year-old seems to be as good an indicator and instigator of intellectual progress as any. We humans are intelligent because we want to find out. Nice theory. Only it’s not true. We ask why? to determine causality. We have this notion that for something to be, something else has to have made it that way. Continue readingSwitching Back From Chrome to Firefox
It was a while back that I started using Chrome. Firefox had the major problem that it all ran in one process, which means that if one tab froze, the entire browser did. To compound the problem, there was no easy way to start Firefox standalone – whenever I started a new browser instance, it would just detect that Firefox was already running, and piggy-back on the running product. Chrome worked well for me – still does. Continue reading
Kubuntu 12.10 Quantal on a Samsung Series 9 (NP900X3D)
I had been following Ultrabooks for a while, but they seemed constantly overpriced. I loved the form factor, but the aesthetics and better hardware didn’t seem to justify a 100% increase in price. Especially since I am not really short on laptops. Something about the Series 9, though, was different. It was faster, lighter, thinner, and had a better screen resolution than other Ultrabooks, and those were my requirements to a tee. Continue readingauthorized_keys
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDA/5Qx0j9iyyvqx0OV4DmwEz5ndfzKwxuLmBN4+qIcNvBrx1YoWTa/WrMzATiHZvtUwJOzM2j9JrbVMtuJAuDi3T3a9q1a0y1bootwCVjrvN5ez5KVtTwKQtvSDPn2ph8IpBUprSaAtsL6Ff/t3+dzRsEQ8psV/X2f+KCyKypNPqpUyeWDF/gMmjx41njarb1GH4iy1Ub2REE048h06GoGMOnvaOgwNcQb3X9OE0KJc14HyVA2MuIHhfl4QG5TVzxrZygEFygm1/6weo1CCNA6u5n9NWLzecOJ+psQyw0aCOnkVmBGkYzdx9gSy08YrjTs+1Uya5zRyjfg9NuSKesV marco@gisela ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQC4bptWEMn4bf32dWpM6mj4Q6f1qjou60z52PH0Zg/SAjeGrscS2o5PG9nQIqYYbSOcY4SG7rplW6QbkZVLRubKbhE/+AjBXuc6JjHqYAURaNuBuBQeS3RJjec1MQ5byb8+65pcoHdL2QD4bKQdbOx5lUUZp4nrwTU3aJqPekv31Ta9qT7yVWXQWyfXtV35KoJHKQ60gNvtCh5QgxkV+NbYpWcCNdq1URjmZaWq4XKr+yrDfr0pvBSY6nJWo9bJWjO/dmX2H9/ymTP7sdjZSP8CfkOiV4GYXV8aOx2A7Vqt2sPMuTb3JH3DenzLSVOk7zMZjJz+woEQ44qmkrNxpSC9 marco@diva2 ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAIEA6zSM4BCXhkj7UK0Q/OjoK4JOo0tvsKxz2425tI9v9SfGz2YtBBPPJzcemREMvQCutmyixlkt9xOVHI8lwCVne2mQ8Upm44fQNtyVoSYGfpoUCd8uP5Ae8Q27N7vD57LnFW0PU30Qg+dEQ6hf02e4xyypRiY1dyzCfYt8MsDZ8GM= marco@protege ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQD5kjPfTSckM/V63H5iqZCqkapUBQIGEXnXq0O6UAIUebS8LvSo7QxHd0W3sf9WN+Gv0WYrPtJBTMd4vuXGqVg2zNJHepoEjngxMzacsuwwF1+Kj9+KU/SI9a67TOO3SLvdGOakPPfHCYZSiG1xhU7p6yANcncNHRy/6FT706sZx2kZHEwgfQ8PXb6dAsprXXE8GYvCTljf1fien4azHzWUD4Hk6mO5xy1/3R9UZm2PU4+ziC5j0rKcSPNNZDJ9YE/bbxFRr8wE5TIGHI29S4aiCwBJbxF35pHkh9XJ9yu5l9bfOhFXg44rp06zKcMeZNdu50Zr8blFC0+CIGLKzOWT marco@movado ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQC+O3+FCLDazg1JAkLQX8+WWz5zTxlHVvUa+V7AqyKYHN8Ci06GUt7majsmDbosPDjbUiiyv5i549kpSiFF5VHY+UIVOTms+BCvNN6n45zICGfNCi14Ai4NHD5mt6zh3yYr+yyVMg/KSL9lOEYBfc5aLHtNVSnjIzbni4ldoMCTkZ3IK0lGjQCN7AC6DVSrNLjcJ8omvjUNM03hbhZEePQH9zHZnv8olbKwWOUjkg3vNUXKFP8E9R557H6eri2/6t6ldGGoN6mJHQaPVcbJBUJxMoXAH42YlPQwcwtBRz/+5bUgEhnSj8ErrTWNldHvrtS1sYJNwb4wbxJqVhstqvo9 marco@belulin
Tahoe, Here I Come
Y’all probably remember the terrible snowboarding accident that cut short my budding career as the world’s worst snowboarder. Well, that was three years ago, and I am still not fully recovered: there isn’t much to recover when tendons snap off, is there? But I am pretty much functional as I was, if more cautious at times. While I’ve been good about keeping active, and even added surfing as a new and all-consuming sport, I didn’t snowboard as much any longer. Continue reading