Comment Re:Finding the crowd (Score 1) 19
Oh and hey - that picture was taken BEFORE I turned ugly!
Comment Re:Finding the crowd (Score 1) 19
Never said I was coming, sorry if I misled anyone... it's too long of a drive for me now that I no longer live in the city, and too much time taken away from the family now that I have one.
I do know what it's like to be the only one showing up at a gathering, though - usually it's me!
Comment Re:Finding the crowd (Score 1) 19
If you're the first to arrive, set your phone's SSID to something relevant and let people triangulate on it.
Comment Puzzles (Score 1) 338
I have a 6-yr-old and a 3-yr-old. So far the smaller one is happy enough with a few kid-friendly games on mom's iPhone (very sparingly, a few times a week at most) but I'm finding the 6-yr-old very engaged with online casual puzzle games. He's not quite ready for escape-the-room-type stuff, but there are quite a few kid-friendly puzzlers out there - check JayIsGames.com, you can search by tags and I use "kidfriendly" and "puzzle" (and "flash" because I'm not downloading anything, even if I did have Windows around)
While others may disagree, I'm happy to let the local schools teach the basic 3 R's; later on I'll supplement the history and geography and science. Right now I'm more interested in making sure he has analytical skills, including skeptical thinking and inductive reasoning. He's not the math/science geek I was at his age. So I'm trying to make sure he learns as much as possible about puzzles and different ways of solving them. "Rubble Trouble" is a current favorite, but that's only after we've gone through most of the Bonte stable (especially "Factory Balls"! he solved virtually all of them, not bad for (at the time) a 5-year-old)
As for the 3-yr-old, he loves Angry Birds first and foremost, but is just as happy tossing the birds to the left as to the right. He's developing differently and takes things at his own speed, so we're kind of feeling our way forward. (by contrast with the older boy, who's basically a carbon copy of my wife's personality) If he ends up more like me there'll be no keeping him away from the more analytical, strategy-type games - violence-based or otherwise - and he'll be wanting to modify the games as soon as he's finished with 'em... I'll certainly be showing him puzzles of every shape and size until we find a genre he likes.
Kids can only be steered so far. But there's enough out there that you can find something that you and the child can agree on for almost any combination of "you" and "the child"!
Comment Re:Tentative (Score 1) 19
I was at the 10-yr event too. But back then I had a lot fewer calls on my time - now there's 2 small kids and a fulltime work AND school schedule to contend with. So I'm afraid I'll only be there in spirit...
Comment Re:answer. (Score 1) 422
Just when I think I live in a remote corner of the world, something like this shows up - this guy came within a few hundred meters of picking up my SSID...
And it's just about exactly one year after the "Craig from Windsor" notes began showing up all around where I work, and went viral online.
Wonder what'll happen next March?
Comment Shelf life? (Score 1) 603
I never see this mentioned, but I wonder, what's the shelf life of the charge on these things? Once topped off, how long can you leave it until it drains itself? It can't be indefinite, from my memory of physics.
I know NiMH cells drain fairly fast (compared to non-reusable batts) - I think the half life is in the range of a few months. If ultracaps are comparable, that's probably good enough, but if it's hours or days, there may be some adjustment issues...
Comment Think small (Score 1) 1123
The people who've said networking is the way to go are, of course, right. All my best jobs have come that way; what few I've gotten from the classifieds (online or otherwise) have been crummy.
But either way, I've learned that it's best to try for jobs with smaller companies. Anyplace big enough to have an HR department will, often as not, screen out your resume if it lacks some credential they specify (college degree at a minimum, usually), whereas a smaller outfit will have a human reading them and might actually give your application enough attention to see that you have something to offer.
Once you get an interview, your degree or lack thereof no longer is important. Just like it won't matter if you actually get the job. What the degree does for you is keep your resume from being tossed out the door during the first round of culling.
Netgear Introduces Linux-Based NAS Devices 128
drewmoney writes "A LinuxDevices.com article introduces several of Netgear's Linux-based NAS devices, technology they acquired with the purchase of Infrant earlier this year. (Here is Netgear's product page.) There are models from 1.5 TB, at about $1,100, to 4 TB, topped by a 4-TB rack-mount version. They are geared towards the professional home user and small and medium businesses. The NAS devices come complete with the usual RAID features, file-system access, and a built in USB print server. All are controlled through a Web GUI and some even offer SSH access."
"Spooky" Science Points Towards Quantum Computing 294
Stony Stevenson writes to tell us that University of Michigan physicists have been able to establish an "entanglement" between two atoms trapped more than a meter apart in different enclosures using light. This shows how two different atoms can have a sort of communication, something Einstein referred to as 'spooky action-at-a-distance'. "By manipulating the photons emitted from each of the two atoms and guiding them to interact along a fibre-optic thread, the researchers were able to detect the resulting photon clicks and entangle the atoms. Professor Monroe explained that the fibre-optic thread was necessary to establish entanglement of the atoms. But the fibre could be severed and the two atoms would remain entangled, even if one were 'carefully taken to Jupiter'."
Leonard Nimoy to Play Spock in Next Star Trek Movie 289
mcgrew writes "The AP is reporting that Leonard Nimoy will 'don his famous pointy ears again' in the next Star Trek movie, due out Christmas of next year. From the article: 'He greeted the crowd with a Vulcan salute. Nimoy was joined by the newly named young Spock, "Heroes" star Zachary Quinto [Sylar], who bears an uncanny resemblance to Nimoy. Both Spocks were introduced by the film's director and co-producer, J.J. Abrams.'"
The Computer Virus Turns 25 in July 194
bl8n8r writes "In July of 1982, an infected Apple II propogated the first computer virus onto a 5-1/4" floppy. The virus, which did little more than annoy the user, Elk Cloner, was authored in Pittsburgh by a 15-year-old high school student, Rich Skrenta. The virus replicated by monitoring floppy disk activity and writing itself to the floppy when it was accessed. Skrenta describes the virus as "It was a practical joke combined with a hack. A wonderful hack." Remember, he was a 9th grader when he did this."
Marketing Yourself as an IT Jack-of-All-Trades? 169
ultimatemonty asks: "As an IT professional looking for a new job, I'm trying to figure out how to market myself as a 'jack-of-all-trades' IT worker. I'm currently employed at a medium sized university as a video conferencing specialist. I'm good (competent) at many IT related tasks (Linux server management, programming, Windows/Linux desktop support, video conferencing support, etc...), but specialize or excel in none of them, sort of like the lone IT manager in a small shop. What kinds of jobs would the you look for with this kind of work experience, and how would you market yourself (design your resume, cover letter, and so forth) to prospective employers so they get the full-breadth of your capabilities, without over-stating your abilities?"
Climate Monitoring Station Proposed on the Moon 106
CryogenicKeen writes with the news that a University of Michigan study indicates the perfect place to monitor Earth's climate system would be the surface of the moon. The side facing us is a perfect location to monitor temperatures and weather patterns here on our planet, and a UM paper proposes an international effort to deploy monitoring stations on Earth's natural satellite. "On the near side of the airless moon, where Apollo 15 landed, surface temperature is controlled by solar radiation during daytime and energy radiated from Earth at night. Huang showed that due to an amplifying effect, even weak radiation from Earth produces measurable temperature changes in the regolith. Further, his revisit of the data revealed distinctly different characteristics in daytime and nighttime lunar surface temperature variations. This allowed him to uncover a lunar night-time warming trend from mid-1972 to late 1975, which was consistent with a global dimming of Earth that occurred over the same period and was due to a general decrease of sunlight over land surfaces."
Halliburton Moving HQ To Dubai 555
theodp writes "Much-maligned defense contractor Halliburton is moving its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Dubai's friendly tax laws will add to Halliburton's bottom line. Last year the company earned $2.3B in profits. Sen. Patrick Leahy called the company's move 'corporate greed at its worst.' Halliburton, once headed by VP Dick Cheney, has been awarded contracts valued at an estimated $25.7B for its work in Iraq."
