Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Does My Brain Look Fat?



In this strange article they are trying to get at the size limit for human brains, assuming brains were cooled like computer chips. Human brains are about 1.5 kg while the study points out that the thermal limits for mammalian brains (cooled like computer chips) are about 5 kg. They then point out that sperm whales have brains in the 9 kg range. Great, another thing to envy about sperm whales.

I guess the real take away is that mammalian brains are not cooled like computer chips. That explains the lack of ungainly heat sinks sticking out of our skulls. Probably a good thing, although it could make for a more interesting hat industry.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

1 Rule for Weight Loss


I just saw this annoying advertisement. I don't know what they're selling, but here's the rule that really works: eat less and exercise.

The trick is getting yourself to follow that rule. In a previous blog post I shared what works for me. Skip the colon flush and just find a way to keep your intake less than the number of calories that you burn and you'll loose weight.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Transfer Big Files



My brother the playwright is working on some new songs and wanted to send them to me. (Such a nice guy!) Of course they were too big to send in email. I found a site called Transfer Big Files and it worked like a charm. No registration required. No weird software to download. Just fill in a form with an email address and upload your files. They make money from advertisements.

Sweet and simple.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Rattle Snake Again


We saw this rattle snake today while mountain biking. This is the second time Tony and I have seen rattle snakes at Waterdog. At least we didn't run over it.

Click the image above for the full size version.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Twitter Circa 1935



Just thought this was funny.

Friday, May 8, 2009

locate and updatedb on CentOS

If you have a CentOS 5.x box and locate doesn't work. Try this:

sudo yum install mlocate
sudo /etc/cron.daily/mlocate.cron

The first line will install the locate and updatedb commands. It will also setup a cron job to re-index your disk once a day. The second line runs that cron job immediately, so you can start using the locate command right away.

Now you can easily find files on your system. Just use the locate command.

$ locate mlocate.cron
/etc/cron.daily/mlocate.cron
$ locate updatedb
/etc/updatedb.conf
/usr/bin/updatedb
/usr/share/man/man5/updatedb.conf.5.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/updatedb.8.gz


Thanks to my friend Peter Stephan for educating me on the locate command. I don't know how I got along without it.

Enjoy!