Reading Rainbow got cancelled!

Reading Rainbow comes to the end of its 26-year run on Friday; it has won more than two-dozen Emmys, and is the third longest-running children's show in PBS history — outlasted only by Sesame Street and Mister Rogers.
via npr.org

Apparently, they're cancelling Reading Rainbow. That was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid. There is an online petition, but it looks like I'm too late to sign it. (Yes, I know that the efficacy of online petitions is questionable, but still...)

I think this means that I need to find Reading Rainbow DVDs and acquire them so that Emma and Amir can watch them when they're older. (And they can look at me like I'm crazy for suggesting it. ;-)

Thanks to Garry for the tip.

HP 8530w impressions, and some nVidia X server musings

My work issued HP 8510w recently had the type of hardware failure that
causes random complete lockups. No, it wasn't related to the memory, I
tested that. Much to my surprise, all it took to get it replaced was to
contact IT and tell them that it even had hung before even getting into
the BIOS. Even more surprising to me, they replaced it with a newer
model: I now have an 8530w.

 Given that I've posted before about how bored and disappointed I've been
with HP laptops, I figured I should post to say how nice the 8530w is
turning out to be so far. For starters, it is thinner and feels lighter
(but it's still 6lbs) and more solid than the 8510w. The screen is much
nicer, but since the 8510w had a 1920x1200 resolution, and this 8530w
has a 1680x1050 resolution, it's not quire apples to apples. I do also
prefer the keyboard, and they've added a keyboard light, which while not
as slick as Apple's backlit keyboards, gets the job done. (And takes me
back like 8 years to the IBM X21 I had... ;-) While the 8510w was fast,
the 8530w is even faster, and amazingly enough, seems to run cooler and
quieter.

 While they do seem to have fixed most of my gripes with the 8510w, it
does seem like no one but Apple understands that people with laptops
carry their power supplies around with them. How hard is it to
incorporate an easy way to wrap up the cord into the design for the
power brick? Oh, and for some entirely inconceivable reason, the power
brick for the 8530w is bigger than that for the 8510w. Yes, you read
that right: they made the brick bigger. I just don't get that part.

 Oh, and Ubuntu (well, Linux in general) rocks: I got new hardware,
simply moved my hard drive to the new machine and booted up, and
everything works. It does help that they both have nVidia graphics, etc,
 but still, that part was awesome. Oh, and for anyone that happens to
have a laptop with a new nVidia chipset and doesn't have working
brightness controls, the newest version of the nVidia drivers fixes this
problem! For users of Jaunty, I uploaded the Karmic packages to my PPA, compiled
for Jaunty. (I can't seem to figure out how to make it so that it would
also compile the same sources for Hardy, but maybe I just haven't spent
enough time looking at it or did the proper RTFMing)

I survived the Bear Creek Trail Half Marathon, despite the sun's best efforts

It was a hard and HOT run. 13.2 miles with an average temperature in the high 80s, a couple large hills, and only occasional shade was... painful. It's the first run where I actually got to many points where I couldn't run and had to walk. What amazes me is that even with that, I managed to come in 21st out of the 81 half marathon runners.

 There was one spot in the middle, after the first two large hills where we ran across an open field, no shade, nothing. I could only think of the desert levels in Super Mario Brothers: the ones with the evil sun that tries to kill you.

 So yeah, I survived, and amazingly enough everyone that started the run finished it. Yesterday, I wasn't sure if I was going to do their third run in the series, but now I'm tempted to do so. It should be cooler, and obviously I must like pain. ;-)

Apple Answers the FCC’s Questions on the iPhone and the App Store

We are pleased to respond to the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau’s inquiry dated July 31, 2009, requesting information regarding Apple’s App Store and its application approval process. In order to give the Bureau some context for our responses, we begin with some background information about the iPhone and the App Store.
via apple.com

Apple has posted a rather interesting and enlightening response to the FCC's questions. It would be nice if it didn't take the FCC for them to actually communicate better about why applications are being rejected, because when they actually do give an explanation, it sounds pretty reasonable.

Tail Call Optimization Decorator in Python

This function decorates a function with tail call optimization. It does this by throwing an exception if it is it's own grandparent, and catching such exceptions to fake the tail call optimization.
via code.activestate.com

Sometimes I wonder why a whole bunch of Scheme loving folks use Python. Then, I see rather clever things like this, and it starts to make more sense. I do wonder how much of a performance penalty something like this incurs, though.

Samsung Tablet PC == Great old school RPG device

Ever since I discovered a widescreen mod that lets me play classic computer role-playing games at modern screen resolutions, I've been on a mission to find the perfect portable platform on which to replay the great isometric RPGs of yore. I have found that platform, and it is +10 awesome.
via arstechnica.com

Now I wish I had $1300, because after that article, I want one of those Samsung UMPCs more than anything else. I would so love to play all the way through games like Fallout I&II and Planescape: Torment, and even the Baldur's Gate games, since I never managed to do so back in the day. And this seems like the absolutely perfect control scheme.

Finally, an easy way to upload pictures from iPhoto to Snapfish

via snapfish.com

For those of you that use Macs and do use Snapfish, you may have been frustrated by how annoying it is to have to first export your pictures before you can upload them, or to navigate iPhoto's labyrinthine directory structure to find your pictures. Well, we've finally released an iPhoto export plugin to actually make it easy. I haven't tried it yet, since I don't have my Mac at work, but given that the really early alpha version I had access to like a year ago worked fine, I can only imagine that this is better.

Petition to stop BART's really silly Oakland Airport Connector

We the undersigned oppose spending half a billion dollars on the current Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) project at a cost of $ 500-700 per new rider. We urge BART, the Oakland City Council and the region's transportation funding agencies to review the significant changes that have occurred in this project immediately and to halt movement forward until alternatives are studied.
via oaklandairportconnector.com

I don't even get what's wrong with the AirBART bus... I've taken it many times, and it's conveinent, easy and cheap. Anyways, if you agree with me that the new Oakland Airport connector is one of the worst ideas you have ever heard, sign the petition.