A sunflower that was growing in my backyard.
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Finland – Denmark 5-1!
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Absolute Truth
Is there such a thing as absolute truth? I think there is. Some people say it is found with science, but I think that reasoning is flawed. The source of absolute truth is only found outside of our realm, with God. Science is not the Answer to Everything Just because the scientific method is a good way to learn about our physical world, it does not mean that it can discover the absolute truth. Our observations are always limited to our imperfect senses. Our reasoning is biased by our backgrounds. How often has science declared something as a fact only to be laughed at 100 years later? Our Opinions are…
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My Yearly Post About Time
A couple years ago I wrote about different calendar and time systems. Interestingly, I have had my wristwatch in UTC since I wrote that post. Changing to use UTC was not as hard as I imagined. I still use it. Last week I heard about another interesting time concept, the 10,000 year clock. Their implementation is a bit crazy and useless, I thought, but the bigger thought behind it is actually interesting. 10,000-Year Clock I listened to a report on NPR about a guy (Danny Hillis) who is building a huge clock that is designed to run for 10,000 years. The whole story got crazier (not in a good sense)…
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Watching Live Internet Video on Linux With mplayer
I think mplayer is amazing. With rtmpdump and mplayer you can watch internet streaming video. This great post shows the command for several sources like CSPAN, BBC, etc. I would add my own recipe to listen to live NPR: First create a playlist file (nprlive24.pls) with the following content: NumberOfEntries=1 File1=http://npr.ic.llnwd.net/stream/npr_live24 Title1=NPR 24 Hour Program Stream Then just run mplayer: mplayer -capture -quiet -nocache -prefer-ipv4 -playlist nprlive24.pls Don’t you love mplayer?
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My New Year’s Resolution (Give us our Eleven Days!!)
The tradition is to make resolutions as we transition from one year to another. This year I have been thinking really hard what resolution I would make. Anything conventional (lose weight, sleep more, read more, speak only Spanish at home, blog every day, etc.) seem so vanilla, boring, and not at all a challenge. I finally found something interesting, though. My resolution is to abandon the Gregorian calendar and adopt a better one. I would completely love a decimal calendar but it is messy. Who could handle 10-day weeks? Also, the sidereal year (365.256363 days) is not really divisible by 10. Mayan Doomsday In these times, some people might feel…
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Trans-Siberian Orchestra Concert!!!!!!
Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s (TSO) show in Salt Lake City yesterday was not a disappointment. Lasers, lights, fire, smoke, and of course the music kept us well entertained. The show was a narration of a story with a Christmas theme. Well worth the price of the tickets. It is rocking classical and Christmas music and definitely gets you going. Christmas for me has a deep meaning of Christ’s birth, and to get into the real Christmas spirit I listen to more traditional music. However, I like TSO’s style of music during the season for entertainment. They do have a good message of helping each other, sharing, understanding, and being good people. Here…
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Dead Drops
Original Dead Drops Spies used dead drops to interchange information. Maybe they still do. The idea is that you agree on a location of the mailbox and pass information. One of the benefits of a dead drop is that the two people in the information chain will never be in contact with each other, so you can maintain full anonymity (except if you spy on the location and see who is coming to pick up the stuff you left.) Modern Dead Drops What would 21st century dead drop look like? Well Aram Bartholl started a “an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space” which he calls dead drops (see http://deaddrops.com/).…
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Getting Night Crawlers With Visa Concierge Service
I have a Visa Signature Card and I have always wondered what the concierge service is all about. So, today I decided to try it. I didn’t want to do anything significant, in case things didn’t go well. I didn’t even know if it costs me money. So, I decided to start small. I called the number in the back of the card 1-800-953-7392. I thought that I could ask a person first how much the service costs. I was on hold for about 14 minutes when I hung up. That was disappointing. I never got to talk with a real person. While I was on hold, the recording message…
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What a storm
Last night there was a huge storm in Lehi. After putting the ducks in their house, the wind started to pick up. So, Alejandro and I took all the garden chair pillows inside, and I remembered that the gate was open. So I went to lock it, and as I came back, I saw the garden furniture in the air. The garden table was coming my way. I didn’t have time to run, so I just turned my back to the table and embraced myself for the worst. Luckily the table hit me with the flat side, not the legs. Our garden table is (was) of metal, with a mosaic…
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