brett's logjam

So, I’ve got this love/hate thing with Powerpoint, you know? You might even call it a hate/love/hate thing. Or a HATE/like/HAAAAAATE/love thing.

Well, whatever it is, I was tickled to read this post on slideuments:

Slides are slides. Documents are documents. They aren’t the same thing. Attempts to merge them result in what I call the “slideument” (slide + document = slideument). Much death-by-Powerpoint suffering could be eliminated if presenters clearly separated the two in their own minds before they even started planning their talks.

(Yes, I read weblogs entirely devoted to Powerpoint. I told you it was a love/hate/love/hate thing.)

You know what today needs?

That’s right. Poems about spelling!

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

iPod Playlist: 2006-04-07 Shuffle

Taking inventory of past obsessions can be a real pain in the keester. Now that it’s done, though, I can finally get around to selling the damn things.

(also in xls format, of course. did you have any doubt?)

Jim Henley has a posse.

iPod Playlist: 2006-04-14 Shuffle

Ever notice how this website never lets you go to http://www.brettpeters.org? You always end up at http://brettpeters.org?

Yeah. I’m sneaky like that. Add the following (with appropriate substitutions) to your .htaccess file:

# kill the www prefix:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} "^www"
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://example.com/$1 [R=301]


The history of the DeCSS Haiku:

I wrote the poem known as the “DeCSS Haiku” three years ago, in 2001. (The poem’s full title is “How to decrypt a / DVD, in haiku form / Thanks, Prof. D. S. T.”) The 456-stanza work, sometimes described as an “epic”, was an anonymous contribution to Prof. David S. Touretzky’s “Gallery of CSS Descramblers”, which collects a variety of ways of expressing technical information about the decryption of DVDs. My poem has now become a part of the folklore of the Internet.

The poem includes a traditional opening invocation to the Muse:

Now help me, Muse, for I wish to tell a piece of controversial math.

It proceeds to describe, using only haiku-like verses with lines of five, seven, and five syllables, all the mathematical steps required to convert an encrypted DVD into a usable form.

Why the hell didn’t anyone tell me that a fortnight was not 10 days, like I’ve mistakenly believed for years?

I mean, where the hell did I get the crazy idea that something that comes from f?owert?ene niht (old english, literally “fourteen nights”) was ten days?

At least I didn’t do this in public.

You mean, the internet is public?

And people can read what I write here on the internet?

Oh, crap.

Spam from brettpeters.org?

From OmniNerd — Beating Traffic:

Whether or not the local school district was in session proved to be the greatest measured variable in explaining the morning commute time variation (y1 vs. x6).

…

While the day of the week proved to have a significant impact on the morning commute, the evening commute showed no such relationship (y2 vs. x1).

…

Another change from the morning results, the month of the year proved to have a significant effect, with February, April and November showing the longest evening commute times (y2 vs. x3).

…

Given the above data and analysis, what can be done to improve my commute times? Changing my morning or evening departure time looks promising. The best bet appears to be moving my schedule out a half-hour to 8:30AM and 6:00PM, bringing significant savings (about 7.5 minutes of commute time per day) without getting too far from normal business hours. Spread out over 50 work weeks, that results in a total savings of over 30 hours a year - the equivalent of about a 38% boost to my existing 80 hours of vacation.

Departure time isn’t the say-all, however, and making this shift won’t always result in a smooth and fast commute. The day of the week in the morning and the month of the year in the evening both have significant impacts, and whether or not school is in session affects both. I could possibly squeeze out a few more minutes of savings by scheduling my vacation days to align with the potentially longest commutes (e.g., non-Friday school days in the months of November, February and April), but the data shows significant variation up and above that described by the measured variables - much likely due to factors outside of the control of the commuter (e.g., weather, wrecks, breakdowns, response to traffic predictions, etc.).

It’s Earth Day today, and the consumer electronics industry isn’t above a little shameless self-promotion to show off their green cred. And, we have to admit, recycling your old gear is a lot better than just tossing it into the basement — or worse, a landfill. So follow the examples of these companies, and make your gear green!

• Apple Computer will pay for shipping and environmentally friendly disposal of any old computer with the purchase of a new Mac from the company’s retail or online stores. So, if you’re a switcher, you can now let Apple deal with getting rid of that old Windows box, and if you’re upgrading, Apple will give that old Quadra a proper send-off.
• Sprint Nextel will spring for shipping and recycling or disposal of any brand of cellphone — and you don’t even need to buy anything. Just grab a prepaid mailing label from Sprint’s web site, stuff your phone in an envelope and send it off. So forget about the sentimental value already and send off that MicroTAC.
  
• Verizon Wireless will also accept any old cellphone for recycling — but you have to bring it into one of their stores. But, hey, at least they’re trying.
• CTIA has more info about cellphone recycling programs nationwide.
• Dell offers something called the Asset Recovery Program. It’s similar to Apple’s plan, but it’s only good for corporate customers. So, if you’re an IT manager and you’re about to upgrade, get Dell to clear out your old stuff, dude.
• Staples will give you $30 worth of coupons if you drop off an old computer for recycling — at least at certain Chicago-area stores. We hope the coupons are good on items like recycled printer paper, so you can double your greenie points.
• 100 Percent Day is a project sponsored by Microsoft, Intel, the US Chamber of Commerce and others with the goal of collecting 100,000 computers for recycling — today. The project’s web site has a list of dropoff locations where you can bring your gear.
• For more ideas, visit the official Earth Day web site.

Worst in history?

iPod Playlist: 2006-04-26 Shuffle