This guy is really serious about his dice
This is oddly entrancing to watch, at least for me. This guy explains dice manufacture and how it creates flows that impact randomness and why you should buy his dice.
(via Gnome Stew.)
There's a second part, click the video itself to go to the YouTube page if you want even more.
This is oddly entrancing to watch, at least for me. This guy explains dice manufacture and how it creates flows that impact randomness and why you should buy his dice.
(via Gnome Stew.)
There's a second part, click the video itself to go to the YouTube page if you want even more.
(via Gnome Stew.)
There's a second part, click the video itself to go to the YouTube page if you want even more.
Muir Woods by Moonlight
Enough cat diabetes blogging! I've been doing other stuff this summer, for reals. In fact, I've got a real embarrassment of unprocessed pictures stacked up to deal with. I finally sat down and knocked out the pictures I took on the Muir Woods by Moonlight walk back in July. I've lived in San Jose for 11 years now and I had no idea until this summer that there was this freaking huge park on the other side of the bay. And they have these free walks on the full moons during the summer! We went on this one in July and then a couple of weeks ago we did the Sunset walk to the Point Bonita lighthouse - there will be more on that later as I grind through my photo backlog.
Anyway, the pictures are in the sidebar of course, but I uploaded a set to Flickr. It was a little tricky to take photos once it got dark so I only got a few good ones, plus some of the bay from Sausalito. (We had dinner at Scouma's there on the water, then went to Muir Woods.) I didn't have my tripod so it was difficult to take pictures of the moon, although I gave it a whirl. I think there are some much better photos from the Point Bonita walk, where I did lug a tripod around. This if my favorite shot from the set, even if it isn't that redwood-y:
In geeky notes, I'll point out that all of these photos are geotagged. A while back I bought a GPS logger that I can hang on my camera strap and generate a track file. And I finally found a reasonable workflow for incorporating that information into my photos. There's a plug for Aperture called "Maperture Pro" that will just suck the log file in, compare the timestamps against the camera timestamp and put lat/long in the EXIF information. If you really want to stalk me, you can also download a Google Earth version of the trackfile and see where we walked.
Enough cat diabetes blogging! I've been doing other stuff this summer, for reals. In fact, I've got a real embarrassment of unprocessed pictures stacked up to deal with. I finally sat down and knocked out the pictures I took on the Muir Woods by Moonlight walk back in July. I've lived in San Jose for 11 years now and I had no idea until this summer that there was this freaking huge park on the other side of the bay. And they have these free walks on the full moons during the summer! We went on this one in July and then a couple of weeks ago we did the Sunset walk to the Point Bonita lighthouse - there will be more on that later as I grind through my photo backlog.
Anyway, the pictures are in the sidebar of course, but I uploaded a set to Flickr. It was a little tricky to take photos once it got dark so I only got a few good ones, plus some of the bay from Sausalito. (We had dinner at Scouma's there on the water, then went to Muir Woods.) I didn't have my tripod so it was difficult to take pictures of the moon, although I gave it a whirl. I think there are some much better photos from the Point Bonita walk, where I did lug a tripod around. This if my favorite shot from the set, even if it isn't that redwood-y:
In geeky notes, I'll point out that all of these photos are geotagged. A while back I bought a GPS logger that I can hang on my camera strap and generate a track file. And I finally found a reasonable workflow for incorporating that information into my photos. There's a plug for Aperture called "Maperture Pro" that will just suck the log file in, compare the timestamps against the camera timestamp and put lat/long in the EXIF information. If you really want to stalk me, you can also download a Google Earth version of the trackfile and see where we walked.
Anyway, the pictures are in the sidebar of course, but I uploaded a set to Flickr. It was a little tricky to take photos once it got dark so I only got a few good ones, plus some of the bay from Sausalito. (We had dinner at Scouma's there on the water, then went to Muir Woods.) I didn't have my tripod so it was difficult to take pictures of the moon, although I gave it a whirl. I think there are some much better photos from the Point Bonita walk, where I did lug a tripod around. This if my favorite shot from the set, even if it isn't that redwood-y:
In geeky notes, I'll point out that all of these photos are geotagged. A while back I bought a GPS logger that I can hang on my camera strap and generate a track file. And I finally found a reasonable workflow for incorporating that information into my photos. There's a plug for Aperture called "Maperture Pro" that will just suck the log file in, compare the timestamps against the camera timestamp and put lat/long in the EXIF information. If you really want to stalk me, you can also download a Google Earth version of the trackfile and see where we walked.
Followup on His Royal Highness
I should follow up on my first post about Heisenberg. And I should post more than once a month, but that's a different topic.
The good news is the little bugger is doing fine. The glipizide has made his condition "managed", which is excellent news. Depending on what source you use you hear that "normal" cat glucose levels range from 80 - 170 mg/dL. Our veterinarian told us we wanted to see numbers between 100 - 300 mg/dL for Heisenberg. When he was in for his checkup back in June he had a reading of 411. Now, that may not be accurate because he gets really riled up about going to the vet (they have to sedate him because he gets all hissy and bitey) and stress can elevate the glucose levels but it's obviously above normal. After a few weeks on the glipizide I started taking readings and I haven't seen anything above 267 and he's pretty much dialed in around 250 as an average. He's stopped drinking quarts of water and he's pretty much stopped peeing everywhere (there's an occasional backslide, but it's less than once a week now as opposed to five-six times a DAY this spring), and he seems more alert.
The bad news is that he's also developed a symptom known as neuropathy where he has weakness in his back legs and has some trouble walking. It is possible this will heal over time now that we have the diabetes controlled so we're just waiting to see. While we were diagnosing that we established that he also has a couple of discs in his vertebrae that are starting to fuse together - which would cause much the same problems as neuropathy and the normal treatment is steroid and those would conflict with the glipizide. (sigh) So the upshot of all that is that he's probably never really going to walk (or jump) as well as he did as a li'l guy. But still, it doesn't really seem to bother him and we're assured that he's not in any pain because of it so we just keep on trucking. We got a ramp for the laundry room step so he no longer has to jump up and through the cat door. (It needed to be a sturdy ramp because Karin and I use that door all the time, so we got a wheelchair ramp.) I still need to build him a ramp to his cat tray but he can still jump up on a bed from the floor, so for right now he can make it into the tray easily. He needed the ramp for the cat door because of the combination of jumping up the step and through the cat door is a little tricky.
I've always assumed we'd need a ramp there eventually for Schrödinger, so it wasn't that big of a deal to put one there and for now he seems OK with all of the other steps and jumps he has to do. So once I get this other ramp built we'll just step back and see how he does.
I should follow up on my first post about Heisenberg. And I should post more than once a month, but that's a different topic.
The good news is the little bugger is doing fine. The glipizide has made his condition "managed", which is excellent news. Depending on what source you use you hear that "normal" cat glucose levels range from 80 - 170 mg/dL. Our veterinarian told us we wanted to see numbers between 100 - 300 mg/dL for Heisenberg. When he was in for his checkup back in June he had a reading of 411. Now, that may not be accurate because he gets really riled up about going to the vet (they have to sedate him because he gets all hissy and bitey) and stress can elevate the glucose levels but it's obviously above normal. After a few weeks on the glipizide I started taking readings and I haven't seen anything above 267 and he's pretty much dialed in around 250 as an average. He's stopped drinking quarts of water and he's pretty much stopped peeing everywhere (there's an occasional backslide, but it's less than once a week now as opposed to five-six times a DAY this spring), and he seems more alert.
The bad news is that he's also developed a symptom known as neuropathy where he has weakness in his back legs and has some trouble walking. It is possible this will heal over time now that we have the diabetes controlled so we're just waiting to see. While we were diagnosing that we established that he also has a couple of discs in his vertebrae that are starting to fuse together - which would cause much the same problems as neuropathy and the normal treatment is steroid and those would conflict with the glipizide. (sigh) So the upshot of all that is that he's probably never really going to walk (or jump) as well as he did as a li'l guy. But still, it doesn't really seem to bother him and we're assured that he's not in any pain because of it so we just keep on trucking. We got a ramp for the laundry room step so he no longer has to jump up and through the cat door. (It needed to be a sturdy ramp because Karin and I use that door all the time, so we got a wheelchair ramp.) I still need to build him a ramp to his cat tray but he can still jump up on a bed from the floor, so for right now he can make it into the tray easily. He needed the ramp for the cat door because of the combination of jumping up the step and through the cat door is a little tricky.
I've always assumed we'd need a ramp there eventually for Schrödinger, so it wasn't that big of a deal to put one there and for now he seems OK with all of the other steps and jumps he has to do. So once I get this other ramp built we'll just step back and see how he does.
The good news is the little bugger is doing fine. The glipizide has made his condition "managed", which is excellent news. Depending on what source you use you hear that "normal" cat glucose levels range from 80 - 170 mg/dL. Our veterinarian told us we wanted to see numbers between 100 - 300 mg/dL for Heisenberg. When he was in for his checkup back in June he had a reading of 411. Now, that may not be accurate because he gets really riled up about going to the vet (they have to sedate him because he gets all hissy and bitey) and stress can elevate the glucose levels but it's obviously above normal. After a few weeks on the glipizide I started taking readings and I haven't seen anything above 267 and he's pretty much dialed in around 250 as an average. He's stopped drinking quarts of water and he's pretty much stopped peeing everywhere (there's an occasional backslide, but it's less than once a week now as opposed to five-six times a DAY this spring), and he seems more alert.
The bad news is that he's also developed a symptom known as neuropathy where he has weakness in his back legs and has some trouble walking. It is possible this will heal over time now that we have the diabetes controlled so we're just waiting to see. While we were diagnosing that we established that he also has a couple of discs in his vertebrae that are starting to fuse together - which would cause much the same problems as neuropathy and the normal treatment is steroid and those would conflict with the glipizide. (sigh) So the upshot of all that is that he's probably never really going to walk (or jump) as well as he did as a li'l guy. But still, it doesn't really seem to bother him and we're assured that he's not in any pain because of it so we just keep on trucking. We got a ramp for the laundry room step so he no longer has to jump up and through the cat door. (It needed to be a sturdy ramp because Karin and I use that door all the time, so we got a wheelchair ramp.) I still need to build him a ramp to his cat tray but he can still jump up on a bed from the floor, so for right now he can make it into the tray easily. He needed the ramp for the cat door because of the combination of jumping up the step and through the cat door is a little tricky.
I've always assumed we'd need a ramp there eventually for Schrödinger, so it wasn't that big of a deal to put one there and for now he seems OK with all of the other steps and jumps he has to do. So once I get this other ramp built we'll just step back and see how he does.
No More Glazed Tuna Treats I Guess
(Note: The "glazed tuna treats" in the title is a joke. No such treats ever existed.)
Well. It's been a hell of a week here. The big news this week should have been going on the "Muir Woods by Moonlight" hike (which was fantastic - I need to process some photos) but unfortunately that has been trumped by the fact that Heisenberg has diabetes.
I should hasten to say that … well I can't say it's not a big deal because it is a big deal. But it's a manageable, chronic condition and one that won't really affect his quality of life. Actually to a degree he may come out ahead since he gets to switch to wet food instead of dry and he gets fed more often. But the main point is knowing about it means we can manage it.
It was still a hell of a shock though and lead to quite a bit of running about, multiple trips to the vet, new food, new pills, and so forth. We're not injecting him with insulin yet, we may have to in the future. Right now we're starting by giving him glipizide which stimulates insulin production. That's just a pill so it's a bit easier to administer and since it doesn't produce insulin directly it's not quite as risky to his blood chemistry. If he doesn't respond (or respond enough) to the glipizide then we'll have to start in with insulin.
And we do need to get a glucometer to measure his blood sugar, although we don't have to do that for a couple of weeks. If he stays on the glipizide then we'd only have to check his sugars occasionally. If he goes to insulin then we'd need to do daily monitoring. According to the internet both the insulin poking and the glucometer sample poking are things the cat doesn't even notice really - we'll see about that I suppose.
This also goes a long way to explain why he's been peeing EVERYWHERE and also why the pee is sometimes sticky - he's dumping glucose out that way so he drinks a ton. Hopefully getting the sugar levels under control will mean he stops drinking so damn much and maybe even he'll start peeing in a tray again. (sigh)
All in all, not good news, but at least in some ways the other shoe has dropped and we know why he's been acting weird. And in terms of bad health news this isn't too bad. It's a hassle but it's not a threat. Especially since I work at home I can do things like feed him four times a day.
(Note: The "glazed tuna treats" in the title is a joke. No such treats ever existed.)
Well. It's been a hell of a week here. The big news this week should have been going on the "Muir Woods by Moonlight" hike (which was fantastic - I need to process some photos) but unfortunately that has been trumped by the fact that Heisenberg has diabetes.
I should hasten to say that … well I can't say it's not a big deal because it is a big deal. But it's a manageable, chronic condition and one that won't really affect his quality of life. Actually to a degree he may come out ahead since he gets to switch to wet food instead of dry and he gets fed more often. But the main point is knowing about it means we can manage it.
It was still a hell of a shock though and lead to quite a bit of running about, multiple trips to the vet, new food, new pills, and so forth. We're not injecting him with insulin yet, we may have to in the future. Right now we're starting by giving him glipizide which stimulates insulin production. That's just a pill so it's a bit easier to administer and since it doesn't produce insulin directly it's not quite as risky to his blood chemistry. If he doesn't respond (or respond enough) to the glipizide then we'll have to start in with insulin.
And we do need to get a glucometer to measure his blood sugar, although we don't have to do that for a couple of weeks. If he stays on the glipizide then we'd only have to check his sugars occasionally. If he goes to insulin then we'd need to do daily monitoring. According to the internet both the insulin poking and the glucometer sample poking are things the cat doesn't even notice really - we'll see about that I suppose.
This also goes a long way to explain why he's been peeing EVERYWHERE and also why the pee is sometimes sticky - he's dumping glucose out that way so he drinks a ton. Hopefully getting the sugar levels under control will mean he stops drinking so damn much and maybe even he'll start peeing in a tray again. (sigh)
All in all, not good news, but at least in some ways the other shoe has dropped and we know why he's been acting weird. And in terms of bad health news this isn't too bad. It's a hassle but it's not a threat. Especially since I work at home I can do things like feed him four times a day.
Well. It's been a hell of a week here. The big news this week should have been going on the "Muir Woods by Moonlight" hike (which was fantastic - I need to process some photos) but unfortunately that has been trumped by the fact that Heisenberg has diabetes.
I should hasten to say that … well I can't say it's not a big deal because it is a big deal. But it's a manageable, chronic condition and one that won't really affect his quality of life. Actually to a degree he may come out ahead since he gets to switch to wet food instead of dry and he gets fed more often. But the main point is knowing about it means we can manage it.
It was still a hell of a shock though and lead to quite a bit of running about, multiple trips to the vet, new food, new pills, and so forth. We're not injecting him with insulin yet, we may have to in the future. Right now we're starting by giving him glipizide which stimulates insulin production. That's just a pill so it's a bit easier to administer and since it doesn't produce insulin directly it's not quite as risky to his blood chemistry. If he doesn't respond (or respond enough) to the glipizide then we'll have to start in with insulin.
And we do need to get a glucometer to measure his blood sugar, although we don't have to do that for a couple of weeks. If he stays on the glipizide then we'd only have to check his sugars occasionally. If he goes to insulin then we'd need to do daily monitoring. According to the internet both the insulin poking and the glucometer sample poking are things the cat doesn't even notice really - we'll see about that I suppose.
This also goes a long way to explain why he's been peeing EVERYWHERE and also why the pee is sometimes sticky - he's dumping glucose out that way so he drinks a ton. Hopefully getting the sugar levels under control will mean he stops drinking so damn much and maybe even he'll start peeing in a tray again. (sigh)
All in all, not good news, but at least in some ways the other shoe has dropped and we know why he's been acting weird. And in terms of bad health news this isn't too bad. It's a hassle but it's not a threat. Especially since I work at home I can do things like feed him four times a day.
Logitech Closes The Harmony/PS3 Loop
Long time readers will know that I am an avid proponent of getting a good universal remote to control your home theater setup. It's a lot better than a basketful of remotes and it's very likely to make a complex setup usable for somebody other than the person who did all the wiring and can say things like "I don't see the confusion. Look, the PS3 is on Component 2 on the video switcher and the audio comes in on the receiver under 'DBS 2'. What's the problem?" and then you get this Penny Arcade cartoon. So anyway, we've had a series of universal remotes for a bajillion years - I wrote a post back in January 2007 when I got my Logitech Harmony 880 remote and it still stands.
There's one fly in the ointment. Sony made the ... let's call it "awesome" decision that the PS3 would use Bluetooth for remote controls. Meaning the only remote you could get was Sony and it wouldn't control anything else. Yay. Back last February I discovered that Nyko sold an infrared remote that had a little USB dongle to plug into the PS3. Read more about that here, but the short form is that it was better than nothing but still a flawed operation.
As I understand the issue Sony was being buttheaded about licensing any component to use the Bluetooth protocols (at least that is what Logitech said. Sony being arrogant and proprietary? That's unpossible!)
Anyway, somebody finally quit playing chicken and Logitech now sells a little gizmo that is an IR receiver and a Bluetooth transmitter. You plug it into the wall, do some simple Bluetooth pairing with the PS3 and hey presto! The Harmony remote can talk to the gizmo (via IR) and the gizmo talks to the PS3 (via Bluetooth). The remote can even turn the PS3 on and off just like a real component.
I bought one and it works as advertised. It's a little pricy I suppose, but as things have developed the PS3 has become our primary DVD player as well as Blu-Ray so it is useful to make it work just like everything else. Now the only thing that won't play nice with the Harmony remote is the Wii and nobody cares about that because the Wii has no reasonable video playback use. One drawback to this solution is that gizmo will only work with a Harmony remote (it doesn't come with any remote at all and the Harmony remote gets the codes from the internet software you use to program Harmony gear) so if you wanted to use a Pronto or a Crestron automated system or whatever you'd be out in the cold. In theory if you got ahold of a Harmony remote for a few hours you could teach the commands to any learning IR remote. In my case I have a Harmony already so this works great. I don't foresee wanting something other than Harmony during the PS3 lifecycle and if something odd happens I can always use the "old" Harmony to teach the new hotness what to do.
Long time readers will know that I am an avid proponent of getting a good universal remote to control your home theater setup. It's a lot better than a basketful of remotes and it's very likely to make a complex setup usable for somebody other than the person who did all the wiring and can say things like "I don't see the confusion. Look, the PS3 is on Component 2 on the video switcher and the audio comes in on the receiver under 'DBS 2'. What's the problem?" and then you get this Penny Arcade cartoon. So anyway, we've had a series of universal remotes for a bajillion years - I wrote a post back in January 2007 when I got my Logitech Harmony 880 remote and it still stands.
There's one fly in the ointment. Sony made the ... let's call it "awesome" decision that the PS3 would use Bluetooth for remote controls. Meaning the only remote you could get was Sony and it wouldn't control anything else. Yay. Back last February I discovered that Nyko sold an infrared remote that had a little USB dongle to plug into the PS3. Read more about that here, but the short form is that it was better than nothing but still a flawed operation.
As I understand the issue Sony was being buttheaded about licensing any component to use the Bluetooth protocols (at least that is what Logitech said. Sony being arrogant and proprietary? That's unpossible!)
Anyway, somebody finally quit playing chicken and Logitech now sells a little gizmo that is an IR receiver and a Bluetooth transmitter. You plug it into the wall, do some simple Bluetooth pairing with the PS3 and hey presto! The Harmony remote can talk to the gizmo (via IR) and the gizmo talks to the PS3 (via Bluetooth). The remote can even turn the PS3 on and off just like a real component.
I bought one and it works as advertised. It's a little pricy I suppose, but as things have developed the PS3 has become our primary DVD player as well as Blu-Ray so it is useful to make it work just like everything else. Now the only thing that won't play nice with the Harmony remote is the Wii and nobody cares about that because the Wii has no reasonable video playback use. One drawback to this solution is that gizmo will only work with a Harmony remote (it doesn't come with any remote at all and the Harmony remote gets the codes from the internet software you use to program Harmony gear) so if you wanted to use a Pronto or a Crestron automated system or whatever you'd be out in the cold. In theory if you got ahold of a Harmony remote for a few hours you could teach the commands to any learning IR remote. In my case I have a Harmony already so this works great. I don't foresee wanting something other than Harmony during the PS3 lifecycle and if something odd happens I can always use the "old" Harmony to teach the new hotness what to do.
There's one fly in the ointment. Sony made the ... let's call it "awesome" decision that the PS3 would use Bluetooth for remote controls. Meaning the only remote you could get was Sony and it wouldn't control anything else. Yay. Back last February I discovered that Nyko sold an infrared remote that had a little USB dongle to plug into the PS3. Read more about that here, but the short form is that it was better than nothing but still a flawed operation.
As I understand the issue Sony was being buttheaded about licensing any component to use the Bluetooth protocols (at least that is what Logitech said. Sony being arrogant and proprietary? That's unpossible!)
Anyway, somebody finally quit playing chicken and Logitech now sells a little gizmo that is an IR receiver and a Bluetooth transmitter. You plug it into the wall, do some simple Bluetooth pairing with the PS3 and hey presto! The Harmony remote can talk to the gizmo (via IR) and the gizmo talks to the PS3 (via Bluetooth). The remote can even turn the PS3 on and off just like a real component.
I bought one and it works as advertised. It's a little pricy I suppose, but as things have developed the PS3 has become our primary DVD player as well as Blu-Ray so it is useful to make it work just like everything else. Now the only thing that won't play nice with the Harmony remote is the Wii and nobody cares about that because the Wii has no reasonable video playback use. One drawback to this solution is that gizmo will only work with a Harmony remote (it doesn't come with any remote at all and the Harmony remote gets the codes from the internet software you use to program Harmony gear) so if you wanted to use a Pronto or a Crestron automated system or whatever you'd be out in the cold. In theory if you got ahold of a Harmony remote for a few hours you could teach the commands to any learning IR remote. In my case I have a Harmony already so this works great. I don't foresee wanting something other than Harmony during the PS3 lifecycle and if something odd happens I can always use the "old" Harmony to teach the new hotness what to do.