Woodpress

My friend Thom told me today that he read an article in which Richard Dawkins pointed out that dodos aren’t extinct because they were good eating (they were supposedly not at all tasty), but because it was just so darn much fun to bash their heads in.

I find it disturbing that only about a century ago people were so cruel that they deprived future generations of that joy.

Fortunately, we have progressed as a society. If the dodo were alive today, people would farm them.

I recently took this picture on the commute home from work. I’m using it as my desktop wallpaper at the moment.

My seven year old son folded this hat recently, then I drew Snoopy on it for him:

After drawing Snoopy, I realized there was an opportunity for more, so I unfolded it:

My favorite part was making Snoopy say “Dude.”

This post probably doesn’t interest many people, because it’s about a new toy I ordered, and is mostly devoid of actual information. There will probably be a similar (but more informative) post after the camera arrives.

I’ve had my current pocket digital camera (a Sony DSC-T1) for several years. It’s not a high-end camera, but it’s an excellent set of features packed into something I can always have with me, which means that I take a lot of pictures with it. My DSC-T1 has served me well. I’ve had a difficult time finding a non-Sony replacement (since Sony’s DRM rootkit fiasco, I’ve stopped buying Sony products) that matched or beat the DSC-T1 for my purposes (basically, a durable pocket-sized camera with super-close macro capability).

A while ago my DSC-T1 began allowing dust into the optics. It’s difficult to clean out, but quick to accumulate (since I keep the camera in my pocket), so I’ve been looking for a replacement.

A week or so ago, I identified what looks like an excellent replacement, with the main feature I’ve always wished I had in my DSC-T1: it’s waterproof and dust-proof! Today I pre-ordered my Pentax Optio W30 and an 8 Gig SDHC card.

The one major down-side is that it uses QuickTime Motion JPEG for video. I hope that doesn’t turn out to be too much of an inconvenience.

My friend Brian Jarvis usually introduces himself as “Walrus” — it’s a wonderful nickname. Among his many interests, he’s a cub scout leader. For Christmas, I commissioned another friend, Darrin Perry, to draw this for Brian:

A friend of mine, Thom Boyer, recently told me (and a few other people) about platonic solids — three dimensional shapes whose vertices all have the same number of adjacent faces. Plato theorized that these were the building blocks of the universe.

Thom went to a game store and bought a pound of dice (I had no idea they sold them by the pound). He brought them to lunch and shared. I found many dice I really liked. There were only enough for one complete set of platonic solids for each of us, though. This is the set I chose:

I find it interesting that with the pieces in ascending order (by number of adjacent faces) with ascending numbers on top oriented so they can be read right-side-up from the front, the numbers in front are in descending order, ending on the right with a vertex representing zero. I suspect that’s more than coincidence.

… interesting choice of font.

Windows Vista is underwhelming to me. The two improvements that matter most to me are support for remote desktop at resolutions greater than 1600×1200 (Microsoft removed an arbitrary limit), and the ability to use Fast User Switching on systems managed with Active Directory (another seemingly arbitrary limitation removed).

Switching to Vista would require that I buy new hardware (for several computers), and the operating system itself is pretty pricey. The cost of moving to Vista far outweighs the benefit for me.

For a new computer, I could switch to Vista, but I can also buy a Mac. With a Mac I expect a better user experience, and the fact that MacOS X is Unix underneath appeals to me on a geeky level.

For my existing computers, I can continue running Windows XP for now, but I need to plan on Microsoft discontinuing support for XP at some point.

I’m reconsidering Linux as a primary desktop operating system.

Since I tend to read words on my computers, I care about how clear they are. I recently compared Windows ClearType font rendering with subpixel anti-aliasing on Linux. Below is an image with the two side-by-side (Windows on the left, Linux on the right) — click it to see what I had to say about it.

(Note that ClearType and subpixel font rendering may actually look worse than traditional anti-aliasing on a CRT monitor. They’re intended primarily for LCDs.)