Thane Plambeck

Pumpkin carvings

I stole the smiley face concept from my fellow Team Purpler Jan, who did a better job carving the right parenthesis in his version. Cole suggested that the colon should have been a semicolon—he was right—but I had already put away the carving knife.

Putting the snarling cat behind a lit pumpkin always startles a few people:

Tube Nightmare

Stay out of the Underground!

Either be your own hypervisor or have one chosen for you

From an ACM bulletin summary "Anti-virus software is ineffective":
* * *
Hardware virtualization, in [Joanna Rutkowska's] opinion, "has been introduced a little bit too early; before the major operating system venders were able to redesign their systems so that they could make a conscious use of this technology, hopefully preventing its abuse." Blue Pill operates by creating a hardware virtual machine and moves the native operating system to this virtual machine, becoming a "hypervisor" itself. The native system doesn't even realize it's been moved to a virtual machine. Rutkowska explains that operating systems need to be aware of such virtualization and have their own hypervisor.

[eWeek article]

diavolo, prisons

I went to see the Diavolo Dance Company at Stanford, racing from a 1pm showing of the documentary America's Brutal Prisons at Cubberley, nearby. Cole met his friend Varun there, and after the performance Varun asked the artistic director Jacques Heim a question I'd thought of myself—how do the dancers avoid getting crushed by that big rolling thing? "There's a lot of communication," one dancer answered, not entirely satisfying me or Varun, I think. They also complimented Varun on his excellent pronunciation of Trajectoire, but the boy speaks French, after all.

In attending these events, I missed Owen's baseball and soccer game. They won one, and lost one. Gloria and he both told me that he had a nice hit up the middle, but the shortstop was out of position near second base, fielded it, and threw him out.

Guess Your Hands

From the 23 Oct 2006 New Yorker (pg 44), "Thieves are Everywhere," by Jason Roeder:

* * *

This holiday season, millions of Americans will go on vacation, a gamble that plays right into the twitchy hands of the pickpocket and double-jointed brain of the con artist. [...] Keep in mind what the criminals have in store for you:

[...]

GUESS YOUR HANDS: You give a buck to the operator of the Guess Your Hands booth, and he says, "O.K., go ahead." Then you say, "Me? I thought you were going to guess my hands." Then he says, "Nope. The sign reads 'Guess Your Hands.'" Then you say, "But why did I just pay you? And what does it mean to guess someone's hands, anyway?" Then he says, "I figured you knew." Then you say, "Well, I don't want to guess your hands." Then he says, "You sure came to the wrong place, pal. Read the sign." At some point during this exchange, the booth operator's sidekick sneaks up and steals your wallet.

Rat Rampant

Laughing Vine

That last animated fractal? Well, it kind of sucked. This one is better, I think.

Here's a static image (and its CDFG code).

Context free movie making

Animation of a context free fractal drawing

Need to think of a title for this one.

six-schizoid

binomial myopia

inflationary hypothesis

inflationary hypothesis
Originally uploaded by thane.

I've been playing with context free, a fractal drawing system—I guess that's what it is—and giving the resulting images the most pretentious names I can think of.

Early results of Google AdSense experiment

One week ago, I inserted Google advertisements at the bottom of my company name generator page.

The bottom line—I've earned roughly $1/day on average, and $7.76 total, so far.

Google won't send me a check until the total reaches $100, though.

Date	Page impressions	Clicks	Page CTR	Page eCPM	Earnings
10/20/2006	115	0	0.00%	0	0
10/21/2006	422	15	3.55%	8.85	3.73
10/22/2006	361	9	2.49%	2.84	1.02
10/23/2006	559	15	2.68%	1.67	0.93
10/24/2006	723	12	1.66%	1.46	1.05
10/25/2006	473	3	0.63%	0.6	0.29
10/26/2006	333	10	3.00%	2.18	0.73
Totals	2986	64	2.14%	2.6	$7.76

From a newspaper article I never finished reading

Once some popchick in a slutty outfit, Madonna yesterday emerged as one of the most potent critics of the hegemony of the industrial-media complex.

The retrial of Roy Garcia

I went down to San Jose this morning to witness the closing arguments in the first-degree murder retrial of Roy Garcia. He's accused (and previously convicted, in 2000) of murdering Deborah A. Gregg following a property-line dispute. It happened on rural property, just inside the southern border of Santa Clara county, where I live. I was a juror in the first trial.

[previously blogged, "it's a long story" links].

I was interested to meet the victim's mother, who travelled from Connecticut to see this retrial. We had a nice conversation this morning in the courthouse for a few minutes after the closing arguments.

Thanks to Pamela Jones for suggesting this meeting!

Termite termination

So there are lots of ways to kill a drywood termite. Our neighbor told us they've used the microwave method. We're probably going to tent the entire house, but only because that's what was recommended.

The chemical used in fumigation is called Vikane. It's a colorless, odorless, highly toxic neurotoxin. They mix it in with teargas so that anyone who gets close to it knows they've got a problem. The tenting will keep us out of the house for three days.

On the bright side, I had a clean bill of health at the dentist: "Your orthodontist did an excellent job," she said.

There are zero people named Thane Plambeck in the USA

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Good to know for future reference.

The Drywood Termite Zone

Drywood-Termite-Zone-Map
Originally uploaded by thane.

Sounds a little like an amusement park ride.

Ick.

termite-guy

termite-guy
Originally uploaded by thane.

We've got drywood termites.

Police on Stanford campus

Photoshopping at random, I took a previously blogged photo of Santa Clara county police in the service of the Great Leader on the Stanford campus, flipped it to B/W and raised the contrast.

It captures the spirit of the event pretty well, I think.

Contractors buried in our neighbor's front yard

Their project was taking too long, and something had to be done.

It makes a nice Halloween decoration.