I've got an original MacBook [2GHz Core Duo, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD (20GB free)]. If I upgrade the RAM to 2GB and the drive to 120GB, would that be sufficient to run Fusion + Vista?

Also, Latvian music is crap [see below].

- Z

Every once in a while some weird fucker will ask me about Latvian culture. And I sort of look at my shoes and mumble something about vodka because the truth is so much more depressing

- Z

The graduated butter dish. Think about it:

You go to make yourself some toast in the morning, but the butter dish is empty. You take a stick of butter out of the box. Perhaps you notice the clever lines on the wrapper that tell you how much stick is in a tablespoon before you take it off and throw it away.

Lunchtime rolls around and you're making mac & cheese. You look at the box: '2 tablespoons butter.' You look at the full stick of butter in the dish, and think back to the wrapper which is now in the garbage and covered with coffee grounds. You dismiss thoughts of using a tablespoon measure. You're about to wing it until you start thinking about it Too Much: would that be cube-shaped or slightly smaller? You have another wrapped stick of butter, but you know if you cut it open it'll taste like fridge before you use it again.

The Zobarware Graduated Butter Dish: It has lines on it.

- Z

I've written off the possibility of doing anything useful this afternoon. I've been 100% on this one project that was due Thursday and so, since everyone was strictly ordered to get out my grille this week, I have no other work lined up. The server was down all Wednesday, so the sysadmin moved the site over to another host, which in turn went down all Thursday morning. This is the project which had to be done using a PHP/Linux solution rather than the standard homebrew .net thing they usually use, due to the specifications of the client's sysadmin. They chose Drupal, which strikes terror into the hearts of men much braver than I, and the whole project turned into six weeks of trying to get it to not suck so hard. This is the same sysadmin who, at 3pm today, told us he was quitting effective next Friday.

When the going gets tough, the tough get naked. But since I'm a digital person I'll just link you to this video of the Austrian rugby team instead. They had much larger problems than I, having just found themselves on the spiky end of a 48-point shutout by Lithuania. So here they are in Vilnius city center:

[flv]0508/AustrianRugby0516.flv[/flv]

(e:chico,44363) contends that the TiTS lineup sucks this year, so I guess I won't feel bad about not wanting to stuff myself into Lafayette Sq with a hojillion other people. Indigenous, the opener on 4 Sept, is an exceptional blues band, so give them a listen [46.9MB, AAC]. We once roadtripped to Erie PA to see them play at some crappy dive bar, and it was well worth the drive.

Here's another math design I did a little while ago in Photoshop, just a real classy muted houndstooth. It blew my mind when I discovered that houndstooth wasn't a doodle, but rather a plaid made up of diagonal stripes that coincidentally made a doodle at the intersections [which is also why it's slightly asymmetric]. Stare into the plaid...



This is my current desktop pattern. Not because I especially like the pattern, but because I hate desktop patterns and this one's easier to ignore than it is to pay attention to. I first tried the traditional black & white houndstooth for about four seconds before my eyeballs popped out of my head.

- Z

My job is programming. My hobby is also programming. This means that my hobby really isn't much of an escape. I also enjoy creating art, but my capabilities at illustration are uniquely terrible. [When trying to explain a ratchet-type jar opener of my mother's I ended up with a drawing of mating brontosaurs.] So lately I've been unwinding by creating [bad] mathematical illustrations in Illustrator. Usually I'll spend a couple hours working on an illustration and, when I see how it's going to turn out, not-save the file, because who cares? But my latest invention deserves more. It deserves to be on the Internet.

I decided to use my powers for evil this time. I have scientifically produced the ugliest web page backgrounds possible. And then I created an animated one, which is just totally unnecessary. Now that I've done it, I think the only place it would belong is MySpace.



CSS:
background: #00f url('f00.png') repeat-x;

Math:
Each image is a gradient from one fully-saturated 'web-safe' color to another fully-saturated 'web-safe' color, 120 degrees clockwise around the color wheel [ie, rotate the RGB hex digits to the left]. It is represented with a 0.72lpi halftone screen [ie, each dot area is 100px across]. For each image, there is also a third complimentary color 120 degrees counterclockwise from the primary color [ie, rotate the RGB hex digits to the right], which can be used in the foreground design. The animated version starts at red/blue and proceeds counterclockwise around the color wheel. They are intended to be tiled horizontally, and take up 600px of vertical space.

- Z