where does it go?

Posted on by lhl

Just when I think I’ve plumbed the depths of my time wasting, I discover that Marvel happens to have all the Ultimate Spider-Man issues online on their dotComics site. Sure there are annoying interstitials, but it’s free… Of course, if they started opening up their full library and forgot the cheezy flash (just let me pan and zoom the whole page thank you very much), I would gladly pay a subscription for this…

Posted on by lhl

I’ve been pretty busy recently between work and offline stuff. In an attempt to try to reorganize my time, the blog will probably be suffering a bit.

Recently, I’ve been looking at some photo-related stuff. That D60 sure is tempting…

Posted on by lhl

Of the 19 theaters which will be showing Attack of the Clones with digital projection equipment, four are conveniently located in Southern California:

  • AMC Media Center 6 Burbank, California
  • Edwards Irvine Spectrum 21 Megaplex Irvine, California
  • El Capitan Theatre Los Angeles, California
  • Loews Century Plaza Los Angeles, California
Posted on by lhl

The Mozilla mail process should be separate from the browser, it’s so annoying when a lockup or crash in one brings down the other.

Things I learned recently:

  • Recall is useless w/ tabbed browsing
  • You do not want your socket to dry out after your wisdom teeth get pulled. It is very very painful. Did I mention it was painful?
  • A mediciny tasting mouth is better than a pus tasting one.
Posted on by lhl

Power Steer – an article about the beef industry in the US is one of the most fascinating articles that I’ve read recently. The article covers the inter-relationships of the environmental and biological consequences tied to the economic realities of the industry (and market demand). Some especially interesting tidbits: Hormones pellets are implanted which cost about $1.50, but add 40-50lbs to a steer at slaughter for a return of at least $25. While there are human health implications, because margins are so low, no one can afford to pass on this while the competition does it. Because of the use of corn as cheap feed, which uses petroleum based fertilizers, a 1,250lb steer will have consumed almost 300 gallons of oil in his lifetime. This same corn wreaks havoc on the bovine digestive and immune systems, forcing the constant use of large amounts of antibiotics (yay superbugs). To make things worse, the feed diet raises the normally neutral pH in the bovine stomachs, which has led to development of strains of E Coli, like E Coli 0157 which can survive our stomach acids. While it has been discovered that switching a cow’s diet from corn to hay in the days before slaughter can reduce the population of E Coli 0157 in its manure by as much as 70%, it’s considered economically infeasible by the cattle industry. To neutralize the feedlot manure, rather than making “impractical” changes such as altering the diet, or keeping the cows from living in their feces or slowing down the line-speeds at modern-day meatpacking plants (390 heads/hr), the carcasses are “cold paseurized” – that is, irradiated, steamed and sprayed with antimicrobial solution. At the end of the day, over the past 20 years, the return on each feedlot cow averages $3/head.

The whole situation is deeply disturbing, even for a person who doesn’t have objections to the actual killing and eating of the animal (like me). One has got to wonder, though if the time has passed that any amount of journalism or coverage can raise enough awareness in the public to (see: The Jungle). Really, while economics is cited as the major factor in all these decisions being made, this line of development simply isn’t sustainable and makes absolutely no sense once the full costs (long-term environmental and health expenses issues, oil dependence and related infrastructure, etc.) are figured in. Why aren’t these “hidden costs” accounted for? Something is fundamentally broken with such a short-sighted economic model.

Posted on by lhl

I’ve been pretty busy recently and haven’t much been keeping up with what’s been going on with mozblogger, but it looks like Mike‘s been doing a lot of work. There’s now a second pane and a clipboard and some still-beta dragging stuff. I think there are some interface issues because there are some things I just can’t figure out (like textarea wrapping?).

Doing some skimming/catchup recently. Some interesting stuff:

Posted on by lhl

Two lessons learned from a pit-stop at the McDonald’s on the road home. 1) While chocolate dipped ice cream cones sound good in theory, in practice, the warm chocolate will cause your soft-serve to start melting and leaking almost immediately. 2) While it may be possible to delude oneself into believing that french fries are a “soft” food that doesn’t require chewing, this is not the case. Chewing is bad, chewing means pain.