Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in RavenBlack's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Sunday, September 20th, 2009
9:26 am	Apparently I didn't blog this last time I found it, I bookmarked it and then my computer had its meltdown, link lost. Google is always extremely unhelpful in my attempts to find real licorice (or liquorice) extract, and the only site I've found that sells it is this one. I'm now going to say some words so that next time I'm looking for it maybe my own blog will come up and have the link; real authentic 100% black licorice extract sticks with no sugar, herbal remedy, and, er, I think that's everything I tried to no avail. (The eventual search that found me the link was a physical "maybe the URL is written on the bag that still has some licorice in it from last time I bought it" search. When will Google be indexing items in my house?) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 18th, 2009
9:13 pm	I am annoyed by would-be skeptics and rationalists constantly drawing too many conclusions from very simple data, and then treating anyone who points out that the other conclusions are not valid as if that person disagrees with the one actual valid conclusion. For example, take this study which legitimately does show that acupuncture is no more effective than fake-acupuncture. The linked writer's commentary is mostly fair enough, but they keep blurring out around the word 'placebo'. This is a really common thing amongst would-be rationalists. That writer is actually better than most, because they acknowledge in the first paragraph "an elaborate placebo whose effects, such as they are, derive from nonspecifice mechanisms having nothing to do with meridians, qi, or..." The big problem is, that's not what the word placebo means. Placebo means something which does not have a physiological effect, not something whose physiological mechanism differs from that which has been proposed. And though the writer, in the first paragraph, specifically acknowledged that they were talking about a placebo which may have effects, as the article goes on they forget that because of using the slippery word placebo, especially when they slide on to describing it as "the placebo effect". In the end, the writer, and many commenters, appear to have jumped from what the study actually shows - that acupuncture's results are identical to the results of very similar treatment that is not acupuncture but still involves lying down for half an hour having someone pay attention to you and touch you - to the conclusions absolutely not shown by this comparison, that "acupuncture does not work" and "it's all in the recipient's head". If the study compared against an actual placebo that would be a valid conclusion, but until it's shown that relaxing for half an hour has no physiological effects at all (not likely!) the study doesn't conclusively show "the placebo effect" at all. For that matter, it doesn't even show "acupuncture is no better than fake acupuncture", it shows only "acupuncture is equivalent to fake acupuncture as a treatment for chronic back pain". Somehow, when I point this out, people think I'm arguing "acupuncture is scientifically valid," or "the study doesn't say acupuncture is not scientifically valid." I am saying neither of those things, what I am saying is that the study doesn't show "acupuncture is worthless", it only shows "fake acupuncture is just as valuable as acupuncture". For the study to show that it's "the placebo effect" as people keep insisting, rather than "nonspecific other mechanisms that might apply to the treatment" it would require a study which tells some of the subjects that they're only going to be having fake acupuncture. You can't actually test acupuncture against a placebo because we can't magically skip someone forward half an hour in time and write "you just had acupuncture" in their brain, which would be the only true placebo for this purpose. The phrase "no more effective than placebo" conjures the idea of sugar pills, which would be a totally different comparison. On that note, I like this analogy; comparing acupuncture to fake acupuncture and saying it's no more effective than placebo is akin to comparing bread pills against sugar pills in a starvation-prevention study, and concluding that bread is no more effective than placebo. My favourite thing that came up on a forum where I was arguing this point, was someone who simultaneously pointed to two studies, one which showed "some placebos are more effective than others" and the other showed "placebos are no better than no treatment". So, A>B, A=C, B=C. Sound logic! (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
6:36 pm	The new Best Buy ads are appalling if you know anything about anything they talk about, but probably effective since the target audience is people who don't know anything about anything. "I'm looking for a new TV with good picture quality." "Then you should check out our new LED sets with bla bla bla." "But I don't want to spend too much money." "No problem! We'll price-match!" Yeah, you'll price-match other shops' $1500 LED sets that aren't really that much better than the $500 equivalent LCD set. How about, instead of price-matching on a product he doesn't want, recommending what the guy actually asked for? And the other ad goes something like: "I want a computer for my daughter for college." "Get one of these laptops here!" "But I don't really know what she needs." "Doesn't matter, this laptop's good for everything!" Except, y'know, it'd suck for 3D art if that's what she's doing, and it's overpriced for web-browsing if that's all she's doing. How about recommending an appropriate item rather than just hearing "computer" and saying "this one!" I guess it's pretty good truth in advertising, but "we hire a bunch of dickheads who, when you ask for advice, will just foist something random on you that we want to sell" doesn't really seem like good advertising copy. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 28th, 2009
12:59 pm	If I had a vehicle, I would want bumper stickers such as these. I AM INDIFFERENT TO SOMETHING RHUBARB RHUBARB RHUBARB RHUBARB YOU ARE READING THIS BUMPER STICKER (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
3:41 pm	Click for full image I have a new favourite pet wildlife insect at our house, this is Bert the dragonfly. Bert follows us around, probably because mosquitos follow us around and Bert likes to eat mosquitos. I have never seen an insect look so gleeful as Bert holding a mosquito with his front legs and biting it to pieces. (not in this picture, though maybe that is a mosquito wing in his mouth?) Also he is great because his face looks like a cartoon! Other recent creatures include a red dragonfly and a black dragonfly, who are less friendly or cool than Bert, lots of little leaping lizards, some sort of creature which we can't find but at night it says "uh-oh" a lot so it's named Spaghettio, a horse escaped from the neighbours garden, tiny tiny grasshoppers about a millimeter long, stripey caterpillars, a great big fat spider of some sort that lives in a hole in the sand, and a swarm of fire ants that dug their network of tunnels assuming our fence panel was a hard bit of ground for their ceiling, only to be flummoxed when it was lifted and they had to hurriedly redig the whole colony. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 10th, 2009
8:12 pm	I've just 'finished' making a Facebook application, but it needs a small critical mass of players for the game to really make sense. If you have a Facebook account, play Pick A Winner! It's similar to "Family Feud" or "Family Fortunes" depending where you live, only instead of a survey being done in advance, there is one question per day, and you score points at the end of the day based on how many people shared your answer (and how many didn't). (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 9th, 2009
7:03 am	I took pictures of one of our new friends at the house of doom. HERE ARE PICTURES. Click for big versions, or, in the case of the best picture, a super big version. The face of Horace, our second-favourite grasshopper after Boris. Boris only has one rear leg, he wasn't around while I was taking pictures. Horace by my finger, so you can see how big he is. About the size of my finger! The best picture of Horace. Also it is very high-resolution if you click it. I like to think it was Horace that decided to ride around on my foot for several minutes when we were inspecting the well-paraphernalia. Jessica's picture of a butterfly that was trapped in the meshy bit of our house. Not shown: the fact that the butterfly is about five times as big as any you'd see in England. Also not shown: 20 bajillion mosquitoes. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 18th, 2009
7:23 pm	Boiling up a single roobois teabag in a lot of water, for the making of iced tea, it strikes me that I'm using quite a lot of stovetop heat inside an air-conditioned house. There's a lot of waste heat, and then a lot more power wastage to get that waste heat out of the house. Another observation from today, the seat in the car is bloody hot. Combined observations that give me an idea; I want a pot with a black cast iron exterior and stainless steel interior, and a glass shell that goes over it, which would be good for making anything that requires a medium heat for a long time, like casseroles or vats of iced tea, just by leaving them outside in the climate of Florida. (Or, in the future, the climate of a tropical island.) There are already solar cooker plans, but those all involve reflectors that would make it more awkward to use. Also, a glass shell over the top and perhaps a rubber ring that it rests on would keep ants and mosquitos from getting at the container (though I suppose boiling temperature and a lid would keep them off pretty well too). (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 12th, 2009
7:06 pm	It is annoying when you have a good idea for an invention that you actually want to use and have the capability to construct with some effort, and someone has already patented it but they don't make them so you can't buy one, but it's also not worth inventing it properly yourself because some bastard already made a vague patent about it. Patent Law: acting precisely contrary to its intended purpose since (----?) (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
6:17 pm	A couple of days ago we discovered an exciting new crazy food section in the oriental grocery shop, containing such items as veggie mouth breeder fish, veggie grilled eel, veggie mutton, veggie spare ribs, and veggie shrimp (on the list but not actually on the shelf). Most of these were, it turns out, products of a company called Su Wei Siang, whose website tells me there are even crazier vegetarian delicacies such as pulled pork, emu meat, emu fillet and emu paste. All of them seem to be vegan, even. So, we bought several items including the fish, and when we got home I was looking forward to trying the fake fish, but then we discovered there were no cooking directions on the package, and I have no idea how to cook a real fish let alone a fake one. So I asked the internet, which had only three mentions of the product at all, and no instructions there either. So I emailed the company, which replied commendably politely and swiftly; I will quote it here so that anyone else in the same position can learn to cook their fish from Google without bothering the nice foodnical support people. Dear Raven, Thank you for your continued interest in SWS Vegetarian Products. Depending on your available cooking supplies and taste preference there are many delicious ways to prepare the veggie fish. For example: If you prefer an all natural flavor, use a boiling pot Use running water to quickly rinse the outside packaging Since the packaging is specially designed to be steamed or boiled directly without removing the content, simply place the entire package into a pot of boiling water Cook for approximately 5 minutes Carefully remove the item from the pot Use a kitchen knife or kitchen scissors to open the packaging Remove the veggie fish and place on cutting board Cut to desired proportions If you prefer a stronger flavor, use a frying pan Allow at least two hours (or more) for product to fully defrost Use a kitchen knife or kitchen scissors to open the packaging Remove the veggie fish and place on cutting board Cut to desired proportions Add cooking oil (your preference of oil) to hot frying pan Cook one side until lightly brown (approximately 2 minutes) and flip to other side You may choose to eat the veggie fish by itself to enjoy its natural flavor or add seasoning/sauces and other mix vegetables to enhance the overall dish. Please also refer to our website for some sample recipes (in Chinese only; English versions will be available soon) for your consideration. Again, thank you for your purchase and we look forward to hearing from yousoon! Thank you for your interest in SWS. Sincerely, SWS Customer Service Team (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
12:59 pm	I just accidentally discovered a feature in Windows Vista. If you run an administrator command prompt (right-clicking the command-prompt thing and select run as administrator and click OK on the permission request), then kill explorer with task manager, then re-run explorer from that administrative command prompt, you get special administrative explorer in which everything you do has administrator privileges. I noticed this when selecting 'run' to type 'cmd' as I usually do, it gave me a command prompt marked administrator, as it usually doesn't. Then I noticed that the 'run' dialog box says "this task will be created with administrative privileges", which it also usually doesn't. So if you're someone who is annoyed by all those security confirmation dialogs (or if you're reinstalling everything on your computer so you're going to be getting one every 3 seconds), this is a way to get around them. Nothing asks for confirmation in this state. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
11:20 am	Last night I got 100 identical Rolex spams that should obviously have been caught by my spam filter. Some investigation revealed that SpamAssassin running in daemon mode simply ignores any message bigger than 50K. More and more spam is having giant image attachments, which puts them over that boundary, which SpamAssassin has been blindly delivering. Large messages being delivered regardless of their spammity is obviously not appropriate behaviour. I asked the internet about it, to no avail. The script 'ifspamh' that links qmail and spamc is partly responsible for the behaviour, so I modified it - I didn't want my spam folder filling up with a million giant files either, so I rewrote the script to just silently drop large messages identified (by their first 50 lines) as spam. A small risk - I've not ever missed a message I was expecting, so the spam filter seems pretty safe. I rarely even look at contents of the spam folder, I just empty it. Mostly I'm just blogging this so that if someone else has the same annoyance, they can use my ifspamh to fix it. I think I've used all the words I was googling for, so anyone with the same issue should find this. I also recommend spamdyke if your server, like mine, is trying to receive a spam every 2 to 5 seconds. Spamdyke drops about 95% of my spam before the server even finishes receiving it, which reduces the load on resource-hungry SpamAssassin. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
2:48 pm	Recently I have been snorkelling, waterskiing, travelling 45mph on an inflated tube-thing, driving a monstery truck, and adventurously changing the adventurously exploded tyre on said monstery truck (Jessica was driving when it exploded so I didn't get a driving trial-by-fire.) Changing the tyre involved purchasing a jack, finding that jack couldn't possibly lift the truck enough, researching a lot, and finding a tractor jack that does the job wonderfully and is what I expect a jack to be instead of being a stupid hydraulic bottle thing which wouldn't fit under a short car and can't lift high enough for a truck with monstery wheels. Also hitting a cross-shaped lug-wrench repeatedly with a brick. In other news, comically unpleasant spam: Subject: Energy to tear her ham wallet For carnal victories! (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
8:22 am	For the first time ever, I have had to reinstall an operating system in order to get a machine to work. How did this come about? Windows update being awful where .NET is involved. (Failing after 10 minutes 'installing', with "an unknown error occurred".) After internet-based solutions failed, foolishly asking MS tech support. At the direction of tech support person, running the recommended 'cleanup' program which promptly made all my programming environment unusable (as in "wouldn't start up") and also didn't fix the problem. Running another Microsoft fix tool, which put the machine into an infinite loop of rebooting before letting me do anything. Trying to use a system restore point, to no avail, "there are no system restore points" (then what were you doing every time you told me you were creating a system restore point?) Using a system recovery thing "automatically make a back up of your data and restore the operating system to factory defaults". Discover that "make a back up of your data" means "make a back up of your user directories that you have never used for anything, and totally wipe all your actual data without warning". Also the system still doesn't work anyway. Go with "format and reinstall to factory defaults" since it already destroyed all my data anyway. PROBLEM SOLVED! Be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, because all my preferred email clients and things that I've been transferring from machine to machine since about 1996 or so no longer exist, new Trillian sucks, configuring older compilers to work with new DirectX was a nightmare anyway, etc. Hate it, because all the newer stuff is a bag of shit with a horrible user interface that eg. lets spam emails do HTML formatting and has a stupid preview window and asks me to confirm every time I delete an email even though it's only going to move it to a deleted folder so it's not like I couldn't undo it if I made a mistake. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO AN EASILY UNDONE ACTION? ARE YOU SURE YOU WANTED TO CLICK YES? REALLY? GRAGHAGHRGHH. Also I lost recent bits and pieces of my programming that weren't added to the backup storage, and all my graphical stuff, and all my music. Thanks tech support. I didn't even want the .NET update, I just wanted it to stop bothering me.</ul> (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 27th, 2009
5:47 pm	If you have a laptop computer, and it tends to get leg-burningly hot or keeps your hands so warm the tops of the keys start to melt, I recommend vacuuming the air inlets, which are probably on the base of the machine, while the machine is switched off. I knew this laptop didn't get as hot as it was getting recently, when I first got it. It had reached the point where the fans were constantly on full and it was still getting hot while idle and in a well ventilated location on a smooth surface (so the air inlets weren't covered). Vacuuming it has returned it to its original fan-sometimes-switches-off and no-more-than-warm-to-the-touch state. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
5:14 pm	The series of unfortunate events didn't continue on the day of car-collection - I managed to drive out of Miami (which involved driving in Miami - I was glad of automatic gears for what is apparently stressful driving at the best of times) and for a couple of hours afterwards with no major incidents. We also went snorkelling since we were there again anyway, which was fairly nice despite the currents being a bit much (high tide on a choppy day). I was quickly reminded why you don't breathe all the way out while snorkelling (if water comes in at the wrong moment you can't blow it out), but apart from that it was all good. The driving probably doesn't sound like a big deal at all to Americans, nor much to most people, but there are several reasons it was fairly major - ie. I'd previously driven for a grand total of about 3 minutes since my driving test, and none of my driving lessons covered driving on the wrong side of the road or any of the weird American driving rules. British drivers would, I suspect, all be horrified by four-way stop signs, crossroads at which people take it in turns to go based on who got there first. It just looks like a disaster waiting to happen. Also the traffic lights rules (which aren't even consistent between states) - a green light when you're turning left doesn't mean go here, it means "check for people coming from your right, then go if there aren't any". A red light when you're turning right also means go if there's nobody coming. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 17th, 2009
9:29 pm	Best day ever, or A Series of Unfortunate Events. Jessica and I woke up early to go snorkeling off the Florida Keys. After an hour or so of driving, (1) the gear lever started refusing to go into random gears. No third gear for you! No third or fifth! Now you can have third and fifth but no second! Nor fourth! Hope you like having no first gear when you try to start again! This had happened before, and eventually resolved itself just from being left alone, so we stopped for a while at the side of the road, then set off again, but it was no better. Then (2) the gear lever jammed in third and wouldn't come out at all. We coasted into the entrance of a gas station with some lucky timing of passing through a red light only for a right turn, which was I think a legal manouver at that particular junction. After calling a towing company several times ((3) they went to the wrong place first, even given an exact address), a towtruck eventually arrived about two hours later. Snorkeling was thus cancelled. We were towed to a car dealership that deals in the appropriate type of car, where there were a short series of fortunate events! The problem was 'just' a snapped cable and a worn cable, not a melted transmission, so it would cost 'only' $800 to repair. But wait, fortunate event 2, there is a sale on labour at the moment! So it is 'only' $85 an hour, making it $530 or so to repair. But back to unfortunate events, (4) they don't have the parts so can't do it 'til the next day. We were intending to visit Jessica's niece in hospital nearby, and the dealership people said "oh, we'll have our driver take you." After about half an hour of trying to find the person who'd okayed that, it turned out that (5) the driver was out carting someone else around and after that would be having a lunch break. So Jessica called family who would be at the hospital to see if someone could pick us up. (While we waited we had a delightful car-dealership-courtyard-picnic.) Someone could indeed pick us up, but! He didn't realise I was there too. Jessica got into the car, he didn't notice me despite us both having come from right in front of the vehicle, so he promptly (6) ran over my foot with the rear tyre of the SUV as I was about to get in. Completing the series, (7) Jessica was unable to get anyone to cover for her at work, so a car was borrowed to return home, and another two hour drive each way must now be had to collect her car (and I'll have to drive one of the two cars back, which carries a not insignificant risk of added events what with having driven a grand total of about 3 minutes in the US and already screwing up the whole "driving on the wrong side" thing once. Though I believe it's obligatory to do that once, so at least I got it out of the way while I had a copilot.) My foot's okay, thanks for asking. Barely even bruised. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
5:56 am	I went into my bank (Barclays) the other day, to ask about making an international wire transfer while I'm in the other country. Can't do it, they say, have to fill in a form in the branch to make wire transfers, unless you have a premier account then your manager can do it for you. Okay, I said, then I shall see about having a premier account. So they rambled at me about what benefits a premier account provides, how you can phone them up at any hour of the night and they'll, eg. buy your mother flowers for you, or find you a deal on a flight when you can't be bothered, and get you preferential treatment at airports. Then they went to ask one of the premier managers about the specific thing I wanted, the ability to do wire transfers while away, and it turns out they can't actually do that any more. Just to reiterate: Bank. Will blow your nose for you. Will not facilitate the transfer of your money. The nose-blowing features did sound quite nice, but not £25 a month of nice when they're still not even letting me have access to my money. So now I'm looking at HSBC, who tell me that with them I can do a wire transfer using internet banking. That is all I need from a bank. Sure, I would like them to deal with the snake-charmer agencies for my snake-charming parties on my behalf, but I'd rather they do their job. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 2nd, 2009
7:58 am	Games! If you have fond memories of Elite, play it again only not quite as good, with Oolite. And then you'll remember how tedious Elite often was. Or play Elite crossed with Asteroids and Nethack that is much better, with Transcendence. Or play one even Nethackier, with ascii graphics and Nethack-like ground battles but real-time ascii space battles, with Privateer: Ascii Sector. A curious thing, that games such as these and Spelunky and Nethack, and most roguelikes for that matter, whose play-lifespan is indefinitely long, tend to be free, while games which entertain you for about 12 hours and then are finished tend to cost 40+ currency units. Perhaps there is a division by zero error in figuring out the pricetag of an indefinite-length game. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 15th, 2009
3:13 pm	I managed to find old-school cheap single-bladed razors the other day, and was delighted. I just shaved with one, and I was right to be delighted, it is much better than shaving with the wobbly-headed double-bladed razors that are all I've been able to find for a while. Does anyone actually prefer the crazy polybladed wire-guarded ultrarazors? I find that with multiblades they just get hair caught in them on the first stroke and are annoying thereafter, and the wobbly head means the razor deliberately avoids shaving me closely. The control and easy-clean-ness of a single blade are much better. But one day I should go back to shaving with a straight razor. (5 Comments |Comment on this)