This Old Blog

I have created a new Wordpress-powered blog called arcanesciencelab . That's where I will be publishing all my words of wisdom in the future. If all goes according to plan, this will be the last post on this blog. Note that all commenting has been turned off and all comments have been hidden. You spammers finally won. As did Google's lack of caring for Blogger.

The Colonel dressed as Santa I don't know why but Chitose near where I'm staying has Christmas fever. There's Christmas decorations everywhere, and Christmas music (carols and other seasonal American songs) are playing in the background. This Colonel, at a Japanese KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken to all you old timers) was dressed out in a Santa suit right near one of the entrances into the store. I would have eaten there except they were cash (Yen) only and wouldn't take plastic. I've since fixed the yen problem, finding out that the hotel will exchange dollars for yen at the rate of 97 yen to the dollar. Tomorrow I'm going to have my Japanese KFC meal. Looking down from the ninth floor I walked around the hotel a bit, exploring the nearer blocks, keeping the hotel in view to avoid getting lost. So far I'm remembering landmarks, so that I can begin to walk farther and farther on my explorations. This view from the ninth floor gives you an idea of the ...

So here I am in Chitose, Japan. This is the first time in my life I've ever traveled this far, although I've certainly had my fair share of air travel within CONUS. Even my few trips across the border to Canada and south into Mexico (back when Mexico wasn't nearly as dangerous as it is today, and well before 9/11) don't count. Oddly enough this is the first time I've used my passport, the second update to a passport I originally obtained back in the mid-1990s for travel to Japan. I worked for Mitsubishi Wireless up in Lake Mary, Florida, and I was meant to travel to Japan on a business trip. But the trip never came about, and I left the company. Now, almost 20 years later, I'm using the passport for (almost) its intended reason, but for a far different company and set of circumstances. Waiting in Houston to board a flight to Tokyo My trip from Orlando to Chitose started around 6:30am Thursday morning, and didn't end until 10pm Friday Chitose time...

two seniors say hello It's Thanksgiving week. I'm taking a few days of personal time before Thanksgiving Day because I'll be flying on business to Japan on Thursday. My wife and I are running around trying to get as much done as possible before I leave her alone with the two Labs and the three cats. She'll have our two daughters to come and visit as well as all her friends and our neighbors, but still, I worry. And because I worry I plan accordingly. One trip was to our vet with Max and Lucy. Max needed his ears checked, and Lucy needed to have a minor operation checked to see if she was healing well. Both little guys came away with flying colors. Max in particular is happy because his ears are in great shape. Max is a Lab, and Labs are Hounds, and a Hound's ears are very important to them. you don't smell like a puppy... While we were in the waiting room for out turn with the vet, many little characters, large and small, came over to pay their res...

E-PL3, Lumix 14mm, and FL-FM1 Some men pass the time by chasing women. I did that and wound up married, and we all know how expensive that gets, especially when you add in some children. Some men pass the time with hobbies like fishing or golf, and wind up spending considerable sums on expensive boats, expensive fishing gear, or expensive golf equipment (some very expensive). Some men even have photography as a hobby, and we all know how expensive that can get. I, on the other hand, with my limited budget, have a hobby collecting and using older cameras that have passed their prime (no pun intended). So I wait, usually several years, until all those former new hotness cameras become old and busted in the eyes of the market and they go on considerable markdown. The Olympus E-PL3 is one of those cameras. Introduced the latter half of 2011, it was the last of the 12MP µ4:3rds cameras (the other two being the E-P3 and E-PM1). The next cameras to come out of the Olympus camera chute...

You're looking at the cover of a short story written by Cory Doctorow in 2007. That's a good six years ago. Note the title of the story. I've known about "Scroogled" since 2009 when I first stumbled across it. So it's not like Microsoft or anyone associated with them came up with the term. Lately, Microsoft has been selling merchandise , titled appropriately enough, Scroogled. You can get tees and ball caps and coffee mugs and other paraphernalia with Scroogled emblazoned across each item in the Google logo colors. And everybody has been making fun of the Microsoft efforts, including, interestingly enough, Cory Doctorow via BoingBoing . But as Cory writes in his latest article on the subject: It's a clever parody and Microsoft's point is actually a good one, but Microsoft doesn't have much moral high-ground here. The company's long history of dirty tricks against free and open source software, its role in patent trolling, and its eager ...

My 2012 Nexus 7, which is barely a year old, updated over-the-air to Android 4.4 yesterday. This occurred after a long home commute across Orlando through some fairly heavy (and welcome) rain. When I finally plopped down in my La-Z-Boy and reached for my tablet, I was greeted with a notification that the full upgrade had downloaded to the tablet and the tablet was ready to reboot and install Android 4.4. It took around 30 minutes for the installation to finish, but when it was done the Nexus 7 actually looked a bit better and was better behaved than it had been when I first bought it back in October of last year. My tablet, which has been discontinued and replaced by the 2013 version of the Nexus 7, has been faithfully upgraded by Google over the past year. The 2012 Nexus 7 first shipped with Jelly Bean, Android 4.1. Since that time my Nexus 7 has been upgraded with every successive release of Jelly Bean. Over the year I've owned it my 7 has been the best value for a tablet I...