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On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice. Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials. We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait! As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work. | | |
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I've been thinking of making an experiment for this question: Do different types of music affect the growth of plants? However, since there are many factors that can affect the growth of plants (for instance, temperature, humidity, the sunlight's angles, and the seed itself...), it's fairly hard to make sure that it's the music that really affects the plants and not anything else. Thus, it is a rather delicate experiment.
I've searched on google for this subject. A lot of people seem to neglect these factors, or at least, they don't mention at all if they interfere with the project or not.
Do you have any suggestions in how to control these factors the most accurately possible? (of course, I can see the limit to how accurate we can be...I only have a small laboratory anyways.)
Should we have more than 1 control group?
Should we keep all the plants in the same room, so we could be more certain about the temperature and humidity?
In addition, not only do I want to find the answer to whether music affect plants or not (which google answers as yes), I would also like to find what really affect plants.
Any hypothesis is greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance! | | |
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Excerpt by Slavoj Zizek in the New York Times: Where does this resurrection of anti-Communism draw its strength from? Why were the old ghosts resuscitated in nations where many young people don’t even remember the Communist times? The new anti-Communism provides a simple answer to the question: “If capitalism is really so much better than Socialism, why are our lives still miserable?”
It is because, many believe, we are not really in capitalism: we do not yet have true democracy but only its deceiving mask, the same dark forces still pull the threads of power, a narrow sect of former Communists disguised as new owners and managers — nothing’s really changed, so we need another purge, the revolution has to be repeated ...
What these belated anti-Communists fail to realize is that the image they provide of their society comes uncannily close to the most abused traditional leftist image of capitalism: a society in which formal democracy merely conceals the reign of a wealthy minority. In other words, the newly born anti-Communists don’t get that what they are denouncing as perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism.
One can also argue that, when the Communist regimes collapsed, the disillusioned former Communists were effectively better suited to run the new capitalist economy than the populist dissidents. While the heroes of the anti-Communist protests continued to dwell in their dreams of a new society of justice, honesty and solidarity, the former Communists were able to ruthlessly accommodate themselves to the new capitalist rules and the new cruel world of market efficiency, inclusive of all the new and old dirty tricks and corruption. source | | |
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I was walking by someone's desk at work and this cartoon was hung up:  I hate to say it but no matter how many times I see that it WILL make me laugh! There's absolutely nothing wrong with that joke, it's perfect. It will always be funny. It will never get old. Which brings me on to other perfect jokes... my man claims that the best joke in the world is this one, which I told him, after I heard it from my uncle Jim: Q: Why does a flamingo stand on one leg?
A: Because if he lifts it up he'd fall down And my sister once told me this one, which we never get tired of retelling: Q: What do gay horses eat?
A: Haaaay! And finally there's my favorite 2009 joke: Q: What did the earth say after the earthquake?
A: Sorry, my fault And my favorite aviation joke! Airspeed, altitude, or brains: you need at least two. But NONE are as important and wonderful as the cartoon that says "find X" with the line saying "here it is". I just want everyone to know that. | | |
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We bought a new house in April and have been working since then to get it finished. I keep saying I'll do one big post when it's done, but instead it seems I'm going room-by-room. I posted my son's room and our patio in recent months. I'm hoping soon to post our living room/hallway, kitchen/dining room and bathroom. But for now, here's our bedroom that we just finished yesterday (save one or two finishing touches). As always, you can click on a photo to see a bigger version on Flickr.  ( Welcome to our sanctuary... )- Tags:
art, bedding, bedroom, color themes: orange, color themes: pink, diy, fabric, featured_room, furniture, inspirational, lighting, paint: red/orange/yellow, styles:indian, wall_decals
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This weekend has been quite the awesome weekend. 3ric brought a high speed camera (7000 frames per second at full resolution) and we made a few videos together. I've uploaded a couple of videos. Here's a high speed video of me using mentholated eye drops. And here's what happens when Eric, 3ric, Kelly and I get soy milk, a belt and a high speed camera. Go Vegan. Or something. For the high speed video of soy milk on youtube: | | |
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My computer's been on the blink for a while, so I've been using Sarah;s, which has led to a pile of post-it notes and scribbled-on scraps of paper gathering on my desk. A lot of these were reminders to post this or that on the blog, which, I obviously didn't do. Sarah spent many hours yesterday trying to revive my ailing machine, which is more or less now acting responsibly. We'll see how long that lasts. In the meantime, I'm gonna play catch-up with a few random mentions of this, that and the other: - The House of Fun Art For Sale list was updated after we got home from the Baltimore Convention, I just never told anybody because I'm such a savvy business person. We got hit with some unforeseen expenses (inc. a hefty car repair bill, ouch) so I'm offering up some new pieces, a few of them relatively big ticket items, a few of them relatively affordable -- pages from Milk and Cheese pages, Bizarro Comics/Bizarro World, Hellboy: Weird Tales, as well as a few pin-ups, odds and ends and the cover to Dork #6, which was The Eltingville Club issue (a note to the reader/customer who purchased the back cover to #6 and the Eltingville t-shirt some months back - I have lost your contact info, which is why I did not write you about the front cover. If you're reading this, please get in touch with me, because I feel badly that I screwed that up. My apologies!). Also, we've lowered the prices on a number of older pieces on the list. Several pages have already sold since we added the new artwork, as a few regular customers contacted us, but the list has been updated to reflect those purchases. If time allows we'll be adding more stuff before the holidays and we'll likely put some more layouts and small pieces up on e-Bay as well. - I am going to be appearing weekly on the SLG Radio show every Thursday, or at least every Thursday SLG head honcho Dan Vado puts a show together. My segment will be taking place in the last fifteen or twenty minutes of the show. We'll talk about comics, I guess. We'll see. So far I've mostly yammered about nothing in particular while Dan tries to get a word in edgewise. It's a live call-in show, so folks can participate if they want. Previous broadcasts are archived on the blog radio site and upcoming guests are announced on the page as well, so check it out. - Speaking of radio, I don't remember if I posted about Jill Thompson and I having been guests on Robin McConnell's I nkstuds radio program recently. You can listen to the episode here. Inkstuds is a great comic book resource, Robin's interviewed a terrific array cartoonists over the course of its 4-yr run (Happy Anniversary, btw). - Speaking of interviews, here's one Jill and I did with Crimespree Magazine regarding Beasts of Burden. - Speaking of Beasts of Burden, here's a preview of the first three pages of the upcoming third issue, which is an Orphan solo adventure. While the orders for the series have been less than stellar, the response has been extremely gratifying, and it doesn't look like retailers are getting stuck with too many copies dying on their racks. We've also received some very nice comments about the series from creators like Neil Gaiman, Dave Gibbons, Len Wein, James Robinson and Eric Powell (all on Twitter), which has been cool as all hell to see, I must admit. #3 ships on the 25th, and hopefully will be a fun sort of palate cleanser after the downbeat second issue. At least that was the plan. - Geek Alert: Universal Monster movie fans take note - I accidentally stumbled across a reference to The Universal Cult Horror Collection, a set of five lesser-known weirdies including Murders In The Zoo, The Mad Ghoul and Rondo Hatton as The Creeper in House of Horrors. The set is only being sold through TCM.com (and one other online source, but the price is the same, iirc), it's part of a deal TCM made with Universal to release some films on demand, and hopes are high that perhaps this could lead to getting Island of Lost Souls out on DVD. The films can be bought separately, as well. I haven't seen any of these, I'm sure they're nutty jerk-fests, but I love this stuff. Now, if I could only afford them... -I've got something like seven new Fun Strips done or almost done. I've gridded up a batch of strips and pages to work on whenever the ink's drying on another job, so who knows, I may have some Dork-type comics to show you folks sooner or later. Still trying to get more done on that Milk and Cheese strip I started and posted a bit from a little while back, but it's slow going. - I'm also working on a pin-up for a charity auction that has been fun, little cartoony versions of as many old Marvel Comics villains as I can remember the details for. It's a small piece but I'm trying to get as many figures in as possible, I think I have thirty or so right now. I'm trying to see how many characters I can draw more or less by memory, and then I'll get the reference out and see what I screwed up, and complete the details on the characters I don't know well. Some characters I can't even lay a single line down for, so they'll need reference. In my head I can see The Mandarin and Klaw, but on paper...nada (besides the sonic weapon -- weird!). But it looks like 80% of these bums are still floating around in my memory banks while I forget my social security number and my own phone numbers. Maybe I'll scan it as it stands and post an in-progress image. Or maybe not. - If the November issue of Nickelodeon was the swan song for the magazine, I'm depressed. If December turns out to be the final issue, still depressed. We had a gag panel in the November Nick...what a bummer to see it end. And just when Emily started reading it, of course. - I've been reading a lot of Spider pulps, my first Avenger pulp, old horror short story collections, some Fritz Leiber SF short stories, some Robert Bloch, some recent young adult fantasy series (The Magic Thief and The Last Apprentice), some David Goodis crime novels, some lesser-known (to me, at least) Black Lizard crime reprints (The Vengeance Man, You Play the Red and the Black Comes Up), some Jim Thompson, and some Blackjack manga. Nothing heavy, nothing too depressing. The Lawgiver is planning a house move, and is culling his library, so I've been hauling bags of old paperbacks over here to digest and then donate. I'm keeping the Spider paperbacks, though. It's been a lot of fun, and a lot of it is research for projects, so it's sort of work, as well. Some days I just want to stay in bed and read until I fall back asleep, like when I was a kid on a rainy day. - I'm doing a lot of stuff for Bongo right now, and for the foreseeable future --, and it's time I got back to that. Latersville, all. | | |
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