Silicon Valley Redneck

Product idea!

Totally not what I'm supposed to be doing, mind you, but these things just kinda pop into my head.

What the world needs now, for the WuFlu Zombie Apocalypse?  We've seen those non-contact fever thermometers in use, right?

Well... how about a version that mounts on a Picatinny rail?

A footnote to recent work-related posts

The term "Cortex M4" does not refer to a smart carbine.

See also: Mars Attacks brain gun.

...Oh, and now I have a vision of an Art Project.

Afterthought: If it has something like a Sig Brace, that makes it an arm Cortex M4, dunnit?

Starting point should probably be airsoft, just to avoid trouble.

Freedom of association...

... is not the same thing as free association, though both are generally considered to be protected by the First Amendment.

I did a bit of idle free-associating after finding myself behind a car bearing two window stickers featuring the logo of what turns out to be a supplier of skateboard underpinnings.

The word that springs to mind is "cruciform".  Cruciform, cruciferous, luciferin, luciferase.  Hm.

Wonder what would happen if you threw a bucket of luciferase at the Devil?

I need funding for a project to send bottles of synthetic firefly enzyme into the afterlife!  Maybe as burial goods for dead evil people.

Yeah, my brain is functioning erratically this week.  I did manage to maintain focus for a few hours today, and get some real work done.

If only to prove she's not a terrorist

Southmoon just ate some bacon.

Just so she doesn't start eating lasagna.  Real cats don't eat lasagna.

Rumor of the day

Isn't it strange how Berkeley Breathed and Bill Watterson have never been photographed together?

A poem for the season

The Bison

By Hilaire Belloc

The Bison is vain, and (I write it with pain)

   The Door-mat you see on his head

Is not, as some learned professors maintain,   

The opulent growth of a genius’ brain;

   But is sewn on with needle and thread.

 

"Flee powder"

When the cats see the flea-powder can, they run away.  If I try to sneak up on them with a handful of the stuff, they run away as soon as they figure out what's going on.

Seems they don't like the smell.  I can't smell it. Must be one of those very high-pitched smells, beyond the human olfactory spectrum.

Fried brains yield strange ideas

This here is my second day of bashing my head against a Heisenbug whereby a program happily writes 18 pages to a serial EEPROM, but on the 19th page it gets drunk and takes the rest of the day off.  It's definitely a Heisenbug, because connecting a protocol analyzer (but not an oscilloscope) makes everything work as it should.

This leads me to ponder alternative career options.  Here's one:

New e-commerce concept: make sacrifices on line!  Choose a meat from the Temple's approved list, and pay for it by any convenient means, plus a small monetary donation to the Temple.  The High Priest then nips down to the butcher shop, buys the meat, takes it back to the Temple, sets it on the ceremonial hibachi to send its essence up to Offler on your behalf, then disposes of the worldly remnant in the approved manner.

...If someone sacrificed a whole pig, we might need a lot of priests, acolytes, and neighbors to aid with disposal of the remnant....

And you just know some wag will want to sacrifice a zeeba to Offler, so it's best to have access to a specialty butcher.

Another entertainment-couple breakup

Seems Kermit and Piggy are parting ways.

Shows how well I keep up on celebrity gossip; I never realized they were officially a couple to begin with.

And the story says nothing of their offspring.  How will the young halfbreed turn out?

A Reflection on Fumbling Around in the Early Morning Darkness

Where are my pajamas?
Is that my pajamas?
It goes mrrrrrrp?
It is a cat!
No, that's not my pajamas!

Disturbing company names...

In the news lately: "Tsinghua".

Apparently trying to acquire one of our chip companies.  Or maybe a potato chip company.  Or devour a tech company like a potato chip?  I can never keep track of this stuff.

Anyway, isn't T'singhua something out of H. P. Lovecraft?  Pronounced with about three and a half syllables?  Headquarters somewhere on the Plateau of Leng?

Autocondimentor

Though not in the classic Terry Pratchett sense:

Rather than adding salt and pepper to her food before tasting it, this lamb is stuffing herself with mint.  Yum!

Incidentally, the lamb in question is named Mint.  The slightly older one lurking in the barn is Pepper.

Also, it may appear that the lamb's head doesn't quite fit through the gap in the fence.  This was in fact the case, and intervention was required.  Second time in as many days, apparently.

Update: Closer to home, how's squirrel with tomato?

Update 2, a week later: This morning, shortly before the farm opened to the public, the lambs were out of their pen.  Pepper was munching on capsicum plants.

Garden grammar

My shopping list at the hardware store yesterday:

• One hoe.
• Two hoses.

I have the feeling there's something missing in between.

Cautionary tale

Spotted here:

The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full.

This, kids, is why we don't use flammable Moon wax.

Spam subject line of the day

"Make Twenty Disappear"

I didn't bother reading the contents.  I assume they want me to send $20 for more information.

Kind of like the Dispos-A-Dime machine, scaled up 200 times!

I can't find anything on-line about the Dispos-A-Dime.  'Twas in a daily-paper comic strip, many years past.  Frank & Ernest, maybe?  The thing looked like a vending machine, and had a coin slot and a sign:
        Dispos-A-Dime
        Deposit 10¢

Too lazy to Google this right now

In the modern era of smartphones with voice commands....

Suddenly an old-style phone with no dial looks plausible again, no?

My Dear Aunt Sally

Happy Precedence Day!

When critters attack!

Out walkies this morning, I incautiously went too near the farm fence (the farm being closed to the public on Mondays, and the two-legged staff being prone to late arrival, especially on drizzlesome mornings such as this).

The Dread Guardian of the Farm pounced!  From her lurking spot on the fence onto the back of my neck!

 

Oops, that came out a bit blurry, as action shots will.  Let's try again.

 

Yeah, that captures the moment a bit better.

Darn critter kept trying to rub my head off.  I eventually managed to dislodge her, back onto the cold, damp fence.

A bit later, someone came along and opened the office and presumably let her in and fed her.

Cat on the Bridgeport, shoo-fly-shoo

Mind wandering

Ramblings recalled from this morning's walkies:

Consider a skunk with little horns.  Mephitistopheles?

Did Pepé Le Pew ever meet Ma'am'selle Hepzibah?

Would a big tribble, the color of Admiral Kirk's hairpiece and equipped with ear-warming flaps, be an Ushatner?  (And if it leaked a controlled amount of heat from head to ambient via a thermoelectric module, it could squirrel away energy to be emitted as a "coo" whenever enough was stored!  Or... hm.  External thermoelectric module with one side exposed and the other insulated.  Cools down outdoors, then generates coo-power as it warms up indoors!)

Two other random-but-somewhat-serious ideas showed up this morning; one relates to a currently-dormant project for a client and appears to be not immediately useful (but worth filing away), and the other is utterly pointless but might become a product anyway, because fun-fun-silly-willy, and anyway it's sometimes worth putting a few days and a hundred bucks or so into R&D just to see if something will sell.