Mike's Place

Again, a long period without an update. Seems normal.

I just published my running results for the past several years. I started in 1997, training for the Honolulu Marathon, and ran a number of events through mid-2000. Then I stopped. And did nothing. Well, nothing official. Nothing timed. I've continued to run recreationally.

July 2009, I jumped back into the timed events with the San Francisco Marathon. In October 2009, the Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon. And I already have two more marathons planned before the end of the year.

No more of this lazy crap. :)

Labels: Marathon, Running

David Pogue recently published a book based on Twitter responses to a number of questions he'd post each day. Those whose responses were selected for inclusion in the book received an autographed copy of the book.

Mine arrived today.

I'm quoted on pages 67, 181, 214, and 269...

Page 67
Question: What's the weirdest job you've ever had?
My Response: Balling machine operator, during high school. I ran the machines that attach ball ends to Ernie Ball guitar strings.

Page 181
Question: Rewrite a famous quotation in the style of the half-wits who leave comments on YouTube.
My Response: dewd like askin 4 stuff from ur country is like so ghey u shud be doin stuff 4 ur country

David liked that one, and sent me a response:

That is the best one EVER...

Though he should have spelled it EVAR. :)

Page 214
Question: What's the cutest thing you've ever heard a kid say?
My Response: My mom to my 6-year-old nephew: "Once, when I was your age..." My nephew's response: "Well, once when I was YOUR age..."

Page 269
Question: What should your vanity license plate be?
My Response: BACK OFF

I responded to more than these four, but only these were selected for inclusion in the book. One contributor appears to have over a hundred responses in the book!

Thanks, David! This was a fun collaboration.

Labels: Books, Twitter

The bizarre keyboard processing, described below, can be seen fairly easily in Notepad or TextEdit. Hold down the A and S keys, and press any other key in Columns 1 or 2. You won't see the newly pressed key appear in the editor, though you will see the repeating key stop.

Now try holding down the A and W keys. 1 and 2 and Z and X will appear when pressed, but Q and S won't.

Why?

Imagine you're navigating a game by keyboard -- specifically with the WASD keys, a common combination for movement.

You're holding down two keys in the same row -- say, A and S (A moves west, S moves south, so A-S would move diagonally to the southwest). You then press 2 with the other hand, to activate some ability on your toolbar.

And nothing happens.

I was testing this with Spy++ on Windows, and found something bizarre.

In general, if you're holding down two keys in the same row, certain other keys aren't sent to the application.

Let's refer to each column of keys as the number on top of that column (so Column 1 is 1QAZ, Column 2 is 2WSX, etc.).

Now let's say you're holding down the A and S keys. In Spy++, you can see you've pressed A, you've pressed S, and S is repeating (as the second key pressed). Any other key you press in Columns 1 or 2 will not be processed.

Similarly, if you hold down Z and C, no other keys in Columns 1 or 3 will be processed.

But then it gets even more bizarre. Let's say you're holding down B and N. According to Spy++, no key in Columns 3, 4 or 5 will be processed. In Column 6, the 6 and H keys will be recognized, while the Y key is ignored.

The only thing I can think of is keyboard wiring.

Anyone have any thoughts as to why this is happening?

Yes, it worked! I was able to recover the document, and have ported it into Word. I still have quite a bit of work to do, proof-reading and converting it into a web document. And figure out a good way to display the family trees.

Labels: Geneology

I've dived back into the geneological pool, having created a Facebook group for Maughmers online, and having started friending the assorted Maughmers on Facebook.

I've already gotten a couple questions, including a request for a copy of the original Maughmer book. Unfortunately there isn't any such thing any more, though several years ago I transcribed the text for potential use later (i.e. now).

Unfortunately, the transcription was done with an ancient, ancient program called WordPerfect, which I no longer have. I just downloaded a trial copy for Windows, in hopes it can read the old document, which I can then (hopefully) copy into Word.

Hopefully this'll work. I'd hate to have to transcribe this entire book again.

Labels: Geneology

I'm still working on a better design, than one of the generic templates from Blogger. I'm doing the work locally, so I don't need to keep publishing changes. Eventually, I might even get it done. :) I found a showcase of really nice blog designs, from which I'm hoping to pull an idea or two. I wish I had the artistic talent of some of these people.

---

For some time now, I've been toying with morphing this into a general-use Maughmer site for the descendants of Jacob Maughmer. In 1976, my great-grandfather published a family history. Unfortunately there are holes, including just about any useful information about our legendary progenitor, the children born since 1976, and an entire branch of Maughmers in Chillicothe, OH.

As I own the domain (and have for 15 years), I've also been toying with setting up maughmer.com addresses for Maughmers around the country. I need to switch ISPs though, before proceeding with that plan, as I'm not impressed with the company who bought my existing ISP. I'm now looking at Speakeasy.

I did set up a Facebook group for Jacob's descendants, and plan on inviting the assorted Maughmers on that site. We'll see how it goes. I'm not sure how many will react to getting group invites from some random Maughmer they've never heard of. :) In reviewing the list, I did speak with a few of them twelve years ago, when I was doing some geneological research. Unfortunately my job and marathon training kept me very busy at the time, so I shelved the project. My aunt, however, has been busy continuing her grandfather's research over the intervening twelve years.

Toby's pestering me for a walk, so I'll continue this later. :)

Labels: Facebook, Geneology, Toby

Heard on Countdown this evening...

Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) apparently finds it "interesting" that the last time the United States experienced a swine flu epidemic was in 1976, under the leadership of another Democratic president -- Jimmy Carter. Who, by the way, didn't take office until January 20th, 1977.

Ms. Bachman has apparently also been appointed to some Republican committee on energy. Regarding carbon dioxide, she had this to say...

"...there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas. There isn't one such study because carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural. It is not harmful."

My suggestion to Ms. Bachmann: Read more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Toxicity

In general, I love the suggestion that if it's natural, it's harmless. Like funnel web spiders. And botulinum. And Elizabeth Bathory.

Labels: Politics

Some formatting done, more remains. Unfortunately, none of my archives are currently available. Some new company took over my old web hosting company, and rearranged their directory structure. So, Blogger is no longer writing my files to the correct location when I make an update. Looks like I may need to handle it manually (sigh).