Category Archives: the mindlab

The Gateway 2150 (De)repair Saga – Part I

the mindlab

I tried posting this inquiry on some message board specifically intended for dealing with Gateway laptops. But it’s not the most active board out there. And after about a week of not getting any help I thought:

“Protozoic has always given me plenty of love. Maybe they’d have some insight into this whole issue.”

So here’s the project at hand:

We have this old Gateway 2150 laptop that we never used for about 5 years due to the fact that it ran really slowly compared to our newer computers, and had a tendency to crash even when operating standard Windows 98 applications.

Also the battery doesn’t seem to recharge.

And also the fan didn’t seem to come on ever.

But this year I decided I’d try resuscitating the thing. I only plan to use it for word-processing, a little e-mail checking on occasion, possibly to learn linux.

Continue reading The Gateway 2150 (De)repair Saga – Part I →

Nebraska

the mindlab

I picked up a copy of Tom Morello’s new project, The Nightwatchman – One Man Revolution. For those who don’t know, Tom Morello is/was the guitarist in Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave. Anyway, the album is basically just Tom on acoustic guitar singing activist-type songs. It’s ok; it has its moments. The album has gotten a lot of comparisons to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album, which is really the point of this post.

While always one of my favorite Bruce albums, I decided to listen to it a couple of times recently, spurred on by the Morello album. And I’ve got to say, I think everyone should own a copy of Nebraska. One of the best albums of all time. We’re coming up on its 25th anniversary in September, so pick up a copy at Amazon for $11 or snag a copy at a used record store.

Hot Air Balloons in Atlantis

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The following passage comes from Shirley Andrews’s Atlantis: Insights from a Lost Civilization.

In 52,000 B.C., as dangerous beasts made daily life miserable in Atlantis, it became important to consult with others, often in distant places, who were similarly threatened. Since those they wished to confer with did not have adequate means of transportation to their country, the innovative Atlanteans devised a method of conveying them. Stitching the skins of large animals together to form balloons, they created unique vehicles for transportation in the air, similar to zeppelins. The shape of the craft was determined by the proportions of the animal from whose skin it was made; therefore, some dirigibles resembled elephants or mastodons, and others looked like giant bears. Edgar Cayce carefully describes the techniques Atlanteans utilized to temper metals to make strong lights braces for these unusual crafts. He says they filled the shells of these immense, strange balloons with a gas that lifted them just enough to move in the air close to the ground while carrying several passengers. He also mentions Atlantean planes, which were capable of traveling underwater and were useful for transporting destructive weapons for fighting the threatening beasts.

Atlantis: Insights of a Lost Civilization, by Shirley Andrews, Llewellyn Publications: St. Paul, Minnesota, 2001, pages 150-151.

I can’t really imagine what the large beasts looked like, but I tried anyway in the picture below. The beasts must have been ferocious.

I should note that the nuclear armament I drew dangling from the hot air balloon might be inaccurate. According to Andrews Atlanteans did have nuclear power which “proved valuable for destroying large animals” (163). Atlanteans dropping nukes from hot air balloons is purely my speculation, but it does seem probable.

Click the picture for a larger version.

Hot Air Balloons of Atlantis

Proposed workspace expansion

the mindlab

Here at the Broad there seems to be a constant re-construction of the work-space going on. In fact since I started here I’m not sure if there’s ever been a time when some part of the building wasn’t being torn apart and reorganized. My collegue Abderrahim and I have been displaced twice already due to this construciton and apparently in an upcoming phase of the process we will be displaced yet again, although in theory we’ll eventually end up back in our current space after the work is done.

In preparation for our potential move we were actually asked if there was anything necessary to make our temporary accomodations more suitable to the work we undertake. Since the proposed new space (a decontaminated, decomissioned BL 2 lab) is situated next to another area (the weighing room) owned by our team, we thought possibly we might be able to combine the two spaces in some way, potentially by expanding through the separating drywall.

Not knowing how far the facilities folks would be willing to go in reorganizing the space I drew up several proposals of how the space might be arranged to our advantage, a few of which are detailed below:

Reconfiguration Proposals

Drawings are to scale except for wall thickness which I found difficult to estimate accurately.

After reviewing these proposals the facilities folks informed us that Proposal 1 was out. Breaking through the drywall would not be feasable since that wall contained a significant amount of plumbing and electrical conduit.

Sadly, though I had a warm place in my heart for it, Proposal 3 was rejected as well. No reason was given for the rejection, though I suppose the high pricetag on research grade ethanol stock solutions might have something to do with it.

Ultimately it looks like they’ll be implementing Proposal 2, most likely due to it’s simplicity.

Phallus Phish

the mindlab

There’s a little fishing store you can see from Route 50 on your way west, right before Kent Island. I’ve been meaning to take a picture of it for years now, but Buff got it while on her way back from a job interview. What were the designers thinking?

phallus phish

On Teaching

the mindlab

This will be my rant on my particular experience with teaching in China. It had to happen eventually and I guess that I should be glad that there’s no chance my employer will read this blog, as some employees have faced problems for saying less than I’m about to say.

There’s a problem with the way English is usually taught in China. It is taught via book learning. This fundamentally wrong because a language, by definition, is spoken. The effect is a couple generations of Chinese who can read pretty well and who often have a surprisingly broad vocabulary, but who simply cannot speak English. If you can’t speak a language (hint: “lang” latin derived for “tongue”), then you really can’t do much with it, can you?

My company’s mission is to teach oral English to young Chinese students, to get them actually speaking the language, not just learn about the language as if it was a dead one. Seeing as I’ve learned Chinese the Chinese way (mostly reading and writing, very little speaking) and didn’t appreciate it much, and based on the linguistic theory that I’ve studied concerning language acquisition, I fully believe in my company’s mission. Unfortunately, the company itself doesn’t.

Continue reading On Teaching →

Gets Paid

the mindlab

It is a bloggy thing to do… but I am going out of my TREE.

So here goes:

1) You know it is over when you let your guitarist sing and people are sticking feet in his face.* I can’t stop laughing about this.

2) You know you’ve hit an all new level of genius when you can release a song about writing tunes on the bowl, have them make a music video out of it and get paid.

3) And this has hands down got to be the absolute lamest-half-hearted-I-have-no-idea-what-to-shoot-for-the-video I’ve ever scene. I can only imagine the conversation leading up to it. “Hey guys, we’ve just written a really great song, but let’s not even try on the video. Let’s just shoot a home movie of us making a fried breakfast.”

They should have let Edge stick his feet in the eggs.

If anyone has got some other ones – hit me up in the comment section. Cause I’m here till 5 so I gets paaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiddddd like Biz Markie.

  • Observation #1 is courtesey of Tim.