Stuff and Nonsense

ShortFormBlog: Thoughts on Tumblr and Yahoo (in rebloggable form, upon reader request)

Sun, 19 May 2013 07:37:17 -0500

ShortFormBlog: Thoughts on Tumblr and Yahoo (in rebloggable form, upon reader request):

shortformblog:

obitoftheday asks: What do you think happens if Yahoo buys Tumblr? And why do we all agree that it seems like a bad idea?

» SFB says: I think Tumblr starts monetizing itself more effectively. For years they’ve tried to do everything but the obvious, but the problem is, they’ve turned down…

So we are all going to just pretend to ignore the fact that turning Tumblr into a money-making proposition will, without any doubt whatsoever, chase away the very things make it special in the first place?

Corporate profit and wonderfulness are mortal enemies. Money and goodness can’t exist in the same room. And if the platform did somehow turn a profit, the only correct thing to do would be to share the profit evenly among the people who actually created it - the community.

Yahoo? YAHOO?? YAHOO????? Oh lord, now we’re in for it. Like Yahoo has a good track record turning a company around. (Wish there was a sarcastic font to better indicate my opinion of that!) Yahoo has pretty much destroyed ever company it ever absorbed.

But that being said, Tumblr has to make money somehow. Someone has to pay the electric bills, the cost of the servers, the data connections, the staff that keeps it all running… It’s a question of how annoying and unethical it becomes for the users and readers. That’s what drove me out of Facebook. In it’s never ending quest to make as much money as possible no matter how badly they annoy users, no matter how unethically and intrusively they do it, they turned it from a useful, fun social tool into a scam to make as much money as possible off it’s users.

If Yahoo does take over Tumblr… I shudder to think of what could happen.

Krippner gets a new ride. Yeah, I’m gonna be busy for a...

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:20:01 -0500

Krippner gets a new ride.

Yeah, I’m gonna be busy for a while.

See ya later…

I won’t go into all the details, but the graphic above is...

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:18:41 -0500

I won’t go into all the details, but the graphic above is pretty much true. The “farm bill’ is mostly about food assistance and what basically amounts to corporate welfare that subsidizes industrial agriculture in one way or another (did you know your taxes pay for almost half of the cost of crop insurance?). Most of USDA’s budget has nothing to do with farming, except indirectly, with most of the funds going to food assistance programs, price supports to artificially prop up commodities prices, etc.

All of this started out with good intentions and were included in USDA and the ag budget for good reasons, and I’m not dissing the programs themselves. Many of the programs USDA supports are essential to support school food programs, food programs to help the poor, etc. and I’m all for those. But things have changed and some of the things buried in this bill amounts to little more than corporate welfare for the big multinationals.

Just because everyone needs slide grease sometimes…

Sat, 18 May 2013 07:07:57 -0500

Just because everyone needs slide grease sometimes…

islandboy1977: Taken in San Fransisco Okay, I had to reblog...

Sat, 18 May 2013 07:05:24 -0500

islandboy1977:

Taken in San Fransisco

Okay, I had to reblog this one…

What the hell are you doing...

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:59:52 -0500

Phy Ed teacher at school where I work: Krippner, what the hell are you doing?

Me: Who, me? Uh, nothing…

Phy Ed: You’re twenty feet up the climbing wall, damn it.

Me: Uh, yeah, so? I’m — I’m doing a safety check. That’s it!

Phy Ed: <muttering under her breath as she walks away shaking her head> God, some people never grow up….

I certainly hope not.

Agrimoney.com | Record US farmland growth continues

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:16:54 -0500

Agrimoney.com | Record US farmland growth continues:

Average farmland prices went up nearly 20% in the first quarter of this year. I really don’t understand how prices can keep climbing like this, especially with commodity prices the way they are right now.

When they did the appraisal of the farm for the estate, they estimated it at a price of around $6,000/acre, and I’m kind of wondering where they got that number from. The last farmland sale I heard of in the county where the farm is located was $7,500/acre late last year, and I know of four farms in neighboring counties which went for $8,800 - $10,000 per acre, and land rentals are topping $300/acre around here.

I wonder how long the market can sustain prices like this, though.

Saws Cut Off 4,000 Fingers A Year. This Gadget Could Fix That. | Mother Jones

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:07:55 -0500

Saws Cut Off 4,000 Fingers A Year. This Gadget Could Fix That. | Mother Jones:

Those of you who have been following this blog for a while know that, among other things, I’m a carpenter. I build furniture of various sorts in my spare time. Saws are exceptionally dangerous things.There is, of course, the danger of a razor sharp blade spinning at hundreds of RPM just fractions of an inch from your fingers, but I think the danger of kickbacks are just as serious. Wood gets bound up against the blade and gets spit back at the person operating the saw, resulting in serious injury and even death from head trauma and internal injuries.

Table saws sold in the U.S. don’t even meet minimum safety standards in the UK or EU. With the exception of the SawStop equipment, they lack all but the most rudimentary safety devices, and in some cases you have to remove even those basic devices in order to use the thing because of the way they are designed. If I want to make a very narrow cut, I have to remove the anti-kickback pawls because they won’t let me get the fence close enough to the blade to make the cut. If I want to cut something more than 1 1/2 inch thick, I have to remove the blade guard because it won’t lift up that high. That kind of thing is inexcusable.

I’ve heard all of the arguments against the SawStop equipment. Yes, they’re expensive. A SawStop saw is probably going to cost you $500+ over the cost of a regular saw. Yes, they will occasionally experience a false trigger, resulting in the replacement of your saw blade and the cartridge that clamps the blade. And yes, the blade and cartridge are expensive.

But how much are your fingers worth?

Kosher salt: Don’t stress about sodium intake (unless you’re an average American) | Grist

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:44:37 -0500

Kosher salt: Don’t stress about sodium intake (unless you’re an average American) | Grist:

This isn’t really anything new. This information has been floating around out there for some time. My doctor’s been telling me that salt intake isn’t all that important for years. For the average person, salt intake isn’t that important. If you have high blood pressure, a low salt diet might (emphasis on the word might) help to lower your BP a few points. But for the average person, it doesn’t seem to do much, either good or bad. My doctor’s been telling me that since I’ve known him, and I’ve found that out myself from my own research.

But that being said, there is an enormous problem with manufacturers adding salt to their products. Food processors have made almost no attempt at all to reduce salt in the processed foods except for a few token ‘low sodium’ specialty products.

Why? Because loading their food up with salt hides the fact that it tastes bloody horrible, that’s why. If they didn’t load it down with salt, no one would eat the stuff.

The best thing you can do is follow the advice of your doctor, and ignore the health scares you see on television on a daily basis.

Better yet, turn the TV off completely, convert your satellite dish into a bird-bath, and go outside and start growing your own food.

And mow lawns...

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:07:41 -0500

The grass here is going crazy and I suspect the farm is even worse. Haven’t even gotten the lawnmower out over there yet. Well, we changed oil and did all the maintenance last fall before we put it away so all we should need to do is put the battery in it and go. (he said keeping his fingers crossed.)

I sometimes forget I have two houses and two yards to take care of.

Going trailer shopping tomorrow. Need something big enough so I can haul the tractor and zero turn mower around. Want to get the tractor over here to the house in town because we want to dig out a bunch of old bushes. While I got it over here I want to rip up some of the lawn that’s going bad with the big rotary tiller and either re-seed or put in flower beds or something.

The pear tree in the backyard is in full bloom! That tree is...

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:02:35 -0500

The pear tree in the backyard is in full bloom! That tree is absolutely amazing. It should have been dead a half dozen times in the last few years, but not only does it hang in there it’s thriving.

It’s amazing how fast things are coming into bloom now that the weather has gotten a bit warmer. We have flowers popping up all over the place, the chives are coming into blossom already, the strawberries I put in last year are looking very good indeed.

Hopefully the good weather will continue through the weekend. We really need to get out to the farm and get some stuff planted!

Coal plants could be linked to thousands of North Carolina suicides | Grist

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:03:43 -0500

Coal plants could be linked to thousands of North Carolina suicides | Grist:

Grr…. Studies like this drive me crazy, and news stories about these studies are even worse. This is a prime example of why you need to be very, very careful as you read some of these news items because quite often you’ll find that it isn’t really news at all but some kind of opinion piece or editorial commentary that uses a legitimate piece of information to push the publication’s agenda.

I was a bit curious about the whole nature of this piece so I did what most people don’t do any more, and went to the source, the Journal of Mood Disorders and looked at the original study.

I won’t go into all of the details, but frankly, if I were the editor of the journal and someone came to me with this thing, it would never have been published because it seems pretty much worthless by the author’s own admission. Basically what the author did was look at counties in North Carolina, looked at whether or not there was a coal plant nearby, and looked at the suicide rate. And that’s all.

Let me quote from the original study: “This study is subject to a number of limitations. first, this study looked only at county level characteristics, and not those of individuals. In addition, there are multiple factors which contribute to suicide. This study could not control for these factors in individual residents and did not have all possible socioeconomic data for each county.”

In other words, the only thing this study looked at was the suicide rate compared with the proximity of a coal power plant, and nothing else. It did not look at poverty, it did not look at overall health, it did not look at stress, it did not… Well you get the idea. The study totally ignored every factor that is known to contribute to suicide and only looked for the presence of a power plant.

I can just as easily say that my heart issues are caused by the Canadian Pacific Railroad. How? Well, there are three people on my block, including me, who have heart issues. We all live two blocks away from the CPR line. This is higher than the national average, therefore heart problems are related to living near a CPR line.

It sounds logical, but it’s also absolutely, totally, 100% wrong. All three of us have heart issues related to genetic abnormalities that have absolutely nothing to do with environmental factors.

Mysterious Poop Foam Causes Explosions on Hog Farms | Mother Jones

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:10:38 -0500

Mysterious Poop Foam Causes Explosions on Hog Farms | Mother Jones:

There’s enough of the 12 year old in me to be fascinated when I run across stories about exploding poop.

Now I’m used to dealing with the various dangers on a farm: machinery that’s just waiting to tear off bits of your person, dust that can cause a variety of lung diseases, that pet cow that goes berserk for some reason and chases you up into the feed wagon, and deadly gasses.

The foam is indeed relatively new, as far as I can tell. Manure storage tanks and pits have always been a safety problem because the bacteria that live in that soup produce methane, carbon dioxide, etc. What’s different about this is that foam, which is trapping the gasses and allowing it to build up to explosive proportions.

I suspect it’s some kind of change in the bacteria mix caused by the pigs’ diet as the author suggests. Distillers grain, the mash left over after the production of ethanol, is actually a pretty good feed, but only in moderation.

People who aren’t directly involved in farming often don’t know how dangerous it is. Non-farmers get this idealistic image of rolling meadows, amber grain fields, contented cows grazing, and don’t see the dangerous side of things. When I was growing up, hearing about the death or serious injury of farmers in the area was far too common

USDA Sticks It to Monsanto and Dow—at Least Temporarily | Mother Jones

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:45:46 -0500

USDA Sticks It to Monsanto and Dow—at Least Temporarily | Mother Jones:

I have to admit I was surprised by this. I expected USDA to simply rubber-stamp the whole thing as they’ve done so often before. Maybe there’s still some independence left in the old agency? Maybe someone is still on the staff who actually looks out for the welfare of the general public?

Nah… It’ll go through. Monsanto will write a few checks, their pre-owned Congress-creatures will huff and puff and put on the pressure and it’ll go through eventually.

Yeah, I’m a cynical old bastard.

The Farm

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:35:19 -0500

Here’s an update for those of you who are interested in what’s going on with the farm.

All the appraisals and inventories are finally done, the waiting period for people to make claims against the estate is finally over, and the whole thing can now go to the probate people. Once that’s approved, the property transfer will take place and my sister and I will own the thing.

The question now is what to do with it.

Now that the shock, grief and emotional difficulties we all go through upon the death of a loved one have passed, we’re looking at the situation more logically, and we’re questioning everything, trying to plan, trying to decide what to do. We’re looking at a couple of different paths, one of which is selling.

Sell the family farm? How could we even think of such a thing?

A couple of months ago it was a no-brainer. We were going to keep it. We grew up on that farm, we spent large parts of our lives on that place. Mom and Dad lived there almost their entire lives. How could we even dream of selling it?

Now, though, now that the grief, the emotion has dwindled and we’re thinking more, well, more rationally, we’re wondering why we want to keep it. My sister lives more than 100 miles away, she’s lucky if she can find the time to get down here once a month. Going out there is a 40 mile round trip for me. If I go out there 6 days a week, well, that adds up pretty damn fast.

To make a long story short, we’re seriously considering selling the place. I’d take the money and buy something closer to where I actually live. I don’t need 140 acres for what I want to do. A 10 - 15 acre parcel would work quite well, thank you very much. I don’t need a house, aging barns and all that, just a dozen acres, a shed and a well, as long as it’s reasonably close to my house.

Well, we’ll see. We need to sit down and look at the pros and cons and see what we come up with.

It's white out there this morning, folks... Catching up...

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:08:57 -0500

Brrr…. Pretty much the entire northern third or more of the state got nailed by frost last night, with temperatures down around 29. Fortunately we don’t have any plants in the ground yet, either here or out at the farm, but I wonder how this is going to effect the poor fruit trees. They’re coming into flower. Not much we can do about it. Feel sorry for the cherry growers if they got hit. Just a couple of years ago they lost their entire crop because of the weather.

Should have been out at the farm over the weekend but just had no time at all. I figure by the time I get out there the lawn will be long enough that I’ll have to bale it, not mow it.

This week in May is always hectic for us. It’s Mother’s Day, our wedding anniversary and our eldest son’s birthday all at the same time, so our schedule was pretty full. And, as usual, it was a rainy, drizzling kind of weekend so we couldn’t do much outside.

I spent pretty much all Friday morning at the lawyer’s dealing with the estate. That, thankfully, is almost wrapped up. We’re hoping that everything will be settled, approved, and the property transferred by mid-summer.

Saturday we went to the symphony, which was a fun experience. I enjoy classical music. Well, some of it. My tastes run more towards big, booming pieces by Wagner and Beethoven and Bach’s baroque, and they were doing Schumann whom I’m not all that fond of. But the featured soloist was a nationally known pianist. Then three days before the performance the poor woman fell down a flight of stairs. Wasn’t seriously hurt but she couldn’t play so they had to try to find a replacement for her, and trying to find a pianist who can just walk in and play a concerto which is notorious for being difficult isn’t easy. I know how hard it is. I played bits and pieces of that concerto back in the day and it demands skills that I could only dream of.

The young woman they found was absolutely brilliant! Oh, there were stumbles and mis-cues, but considering she only had two days to prepare, she was amazing.

Rest of the performance was a Schumann symphony and prelude from Wagner. Like I said, I don’t care for Schumann much, but they did a beautiful job with it. A lot of Schumann’s stuff is technically difficult, especially the violin parts. (Look him up on Wikipedia sometime. He was seriously mentally ill for a large part of his life, hearing voices, seeing visions, going through depression)

Sunday Donna and I went car shopping. Her RT is pushing 200,000 miles and it’s time to start looking at a replacement. She loves the Dodge RT (actually a Mitsubishi Eclipse re-branded by Dodge) but is looking to go in the other direction with an OFC (Old Fart Car). She can pick whatever she wants, of course. She’s the one who has to drive it, but our sons and I know she isn’t going to really like any of the cars we were looking at. (We suspect she’s a frustrated rally car driver at heart).

Well, I’ve bored you long enough. Time for oatmeal (ick)

Wrigley: Maybe We Won't Sell Caffeinated Gum After All : The Salt : NPR

Sat, 11 May 2013 09:11:17 -0500

Wrigley: Maybe We Won't Sell Caffeinated Gum After All : The Salt : NPR:

I am certainly not one of those people who think coffee, tea, and other caffeinated products are the spawn of Satan and destroying civilization as we know it. Despite decades of research, scientists have yet to find any real, wide spread, detrimental effects caused by moderate consumption of coffee and tea. Quite the contrary, in fact, with studies in the last few years turning up some surprising health benefits, including lowering the risk for some kinds of cancers, improved mental function, etc.

There are some issues with caffeinated beverages/foods, of course. In higher doses it can cause heart rhythm problems, increase blood pressure, sleep issues, etc. Some people are more sensitive than others and should avoid it entirely. But for the general population, moderate consumption is just fine and can be benificial.

On the other hand, manufacturers are shoving caffeine into damn near everything these days, and even worse, these products are being targeted at teenagers and even children, despite manufacturers claims to the contrary.

Public and FDA pressure has forced Wrigley’s to at least temporarily halt sales of it’s caffeinated gum, despite it’s claims it does not market to kids and restricts sales to people over the age of 25 (?? Really? Just how do they do that? Retailers are really going to demand ID from anyone buying gum? Yeah, sure they are…)

The problem is that while caffeine is generally considered safe, there are problems with it. In high doses it can kill. And since so many products are laced with the stuff these days, how, for example, does a 14 year old know how much caffeine he/she is actually taking in? Soda is laced with the stuff. Energy drinks, which an increasingly large number of kids seem addicted to, have large amounts of it. Flavored coffee based beverages are becoming increasingly popular with young people. It’s entirely too easy for someone to become overdosed on the stuff.

What irritates me is that the manufacturers know this isn’t right. They know what the health risks are. But they don’t care. They don’t care about you, about me, about anyone. All they care about is making a profit, even if it’s at the expense of the people they sell their product to.

OMG OMG OMG OMG…. I think I just wet myself… Also, I...

Sat, 11 May 2013 09:02:23 -0500

OMG OMG OMG OMG…. I think I just wet myself…

Also, I can’t believe I just did 4 OMGs in a row…

But really. Dear sweet lord just look at that tool box…

Kenwood TS-990S update (more amateur radio stuff)

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:10:55 -0500

I finally had the opportunity to put in a couple of hours with the new Kenwood TS-990S transceiver I got Tuesday, and it’s been an absolute blast.

Like all of the high-end Kenwood equipment I’ve used, the quality of this thing is impeccable. it’s just, well, just solid. Down at the AES show a few weeks ago I had a chance to play with some of the high-end Yaesu and ICOM equipment, and frankly they feel like toys compared to the Kenwood. The buttons were sloppy, there was play on the knobs, movement of controls felt toy-like. Not here. Everything on this transceiver is rock solid. The knobs on even the $5,000+ Yaesu and ICOM rigs were sloppy, lots of side to side play, and generally felt like I was fiddling with mass produced toys. Not with the 990. The buttons are solid, with excellent tactile feedback. No side to side play on any of the knobs. Turning is precise with just enough resistance.

It has enough connection options to keep just about anyone happy. Four antenna connectors, RS-232, USB ports (Two on the front for a keyboard and flash drive), speaker outputs, headphone jack, plug ins for CW keyers, video output for an external HD computer type display… I won’t go into all of the details of that.

I still haven’t even begun to brush the surface of all of it’s capabilities. It has built in voice recorders/players, an astonishing range of filters, DSP capabilities, voice processors and I don’t know what all else yet.

It has built-in PSK31/63 and RTTY capabilities. Just hit a button, plug in any USB computer keyboard, and you’re ready to go. Made a couple of PSK31 contacts using only the 990S built in capabilities and it worked flawlessly. But that being said, I probably won’t do that very often because I quickly began to miss the macros, automatic logging and reporting functions of Fldigi. (Works beautifully with Fldigi and the Rigblaster interface, BTW) Anyway, here’s a picture of it in the PSK31 mode.

On the right is the waterfall display showing the signals it was monitoring. The center signal was being decoded, a CQ call from AE5BR. Just below the decoding area is the text input area where text you type appears. Transmit on/off is just a matter of pressing the F12 function key on the keyboard. It can automatically record the text of a conversation (saving it to an external flash drive). There are various memory functions that can be pre-programmed to store frequently used text, like a CQ call.

That screen, by the way, is absolutely beautiful. Bright, crisp and clear. It’s also a touch screen.

The receiver is an absolute gem. My TS-2000 does a pretty good job on the receiver end of things, but the 990 blows it away. Amazingly sensitive. Signals the 2000 could just barely detect and marginal at best come in crystal clear on the 990 (that’s using the same antenna, BTW, a Comet multi-band vertical). Hook this thing up to a really good antenna and it would be simply amazing.

On the output side, the reports I got from the few contacts I made were excellent. Haven’t tried it on SSB yet but perhaps I’ll have time to try that this weekend.

First Look at the Kenwood TS-900S

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:25:35 -0500

If you’re an amateur radio operator, you probably recognize this beast, this is the Kenwood TS-990S transceiver. It’s adorned full page ads in in pretty much every communications magazine since January. The 990 is Kenwood’s “flagship” transceiver, and just went on sale back in March. It just arrived Tuesday, but I didn’t have a chance to even unpack it until yesterday afternoon and because of other commitments haven’t been able to play with it very long.

(Aside: I don’t know how they manage to do it, but UPS has this thing where, when I order something I don’t really care all that much about or is very cheap, it arrives at 9 AM. But if it’s something that’s really, really expensive, or that I want/need really, really badly, they have the driver sit in the parking lot down the street and wait until 5 minutes after I should leave for work before delivering it.)

So I finally got it unpacked yesterday afternoon, and after standing there for a while thinking ‘OMG this thing is freaking enormous” and having to put a different desk in the office because it is so big, I had a chance to play with it for a few minutes.

If you’re an amateur radio operator, you’ve probably seen the reviews and articles about the 990, so I won’t go into all of the specifications and that stuff, I just want to describe my first impressions of the thing.

It is, first of all, freaking huge. Or did I mention that already? Shipping weight is listed as 67 pounds. It’s hard to get an idea of just how big it is from the photos. Size-wise, it’s hard to find something to compare it to. Imagine the case of a big old tower-style computer, something like a server, laid down on it’s side, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the physical size of the thing. Once you get this thing up on a desk or table, you aren’t going to want to move it very often. Just the manual for this beast is bigger than my local phone book. It has to be that big because this isn’t exactly a ‘plug-and-play’ radio. (Helpful hint: If you buy one of these, keep the manual handy. You need it.)

Depending on your point of view, it’s either a very intimidating piece of equipment, or the most tempting, delicious, breathtakingly beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. I heard someone describe the 990S as “an orgasm with an antenna”. (Note: there are some bad reviews of the 990 out on the Internet, but after about 10 minutes with this radio, it was obvious that the people who wrote the bad reviews a) didn’t know how to operate the radio, b) hadn’t bothered to open the manual to find out how it worked, and c) in at least two cases didn’t even own the radio but were basing their opinions on models they saw at shows.)

Anyway, when I finally get an opportunity to work with the radio I’ll talk more about it. No, I won’t bore you poor people with all of this because I know you aren’t following this blog to read about this kind of thing. I’ll put longer entries about it over on grouchyfarmer.com.