Wordout

Solid enough to stand on.
Light enough to take with you.

350 Is The Upper Limit
"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted... CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Jim Hansen, NASA

Print This Post Print This Post

Errant Data

A Dataflow Diagram of backup and recovery procedures.Image via Wikipedia

Wordout has lost some data. Posts from the entire year of 2008 were lost today. Then I found out that my last backup (June 1st) was corrupted. All the posts from May and June are still missing. I’ve been able to recover much of it, using a hit-or-miss technique in Google caches, but that will require reformatting before I can republish.

Believe me, this hurts me more than it hurts you.

I am Jon, and I think it’s time to move to a DAILY backup.

EDIT: Just remembered that I have Wordout sent to my email every day, so I will be able to recover everything using those copies. May take a few days, but at least I can recover…
EDIT2: But that means the comments are lost. Crap!

Zemanta Pixie

2

 Get The Free RSS Feed! *OR* Get Wordout sent to your EMAIL! **AND** Add to Technorati Favorites

June 6th, 2008 Posted by Jon | FAQ, Uncategorized | 3 comments

Print This Post Print This Post

Keeping Time

Happy Easter

Here’s a topic that’s bothered many people for over a thousand years. Why does Easter move around so much? And why do Orthodox Christians celebrate it at a different time from those in the West? For the answer we have to start looking about 2000 years ago.

Easter celebrates the rising from the grave of Jesus of Nazareth. If we zoom in a bit on that event, we see that it occurred around the celebration of the Jewish Passover. So it follows that the date we celebrate Easter is tied to the date of the Passover. And since Jewish holidays are not determined by the Gregorian calendar, but by the Hebrew calendar, the dates for Easter each year seem to vary.

There is some historical contention concerning the actual date Easter should be celebrated each year. Generally speaking, two schools of thought have evolved over the past two centuries. Although there are several distinct areas where they disagree, they can be distinguished most easily by one major difference. The Eastern thought still ties the Easter celebration to the Passover, explicitly stating that Easter cannot occur before the observance of Passover. Western faiths do not include this limitation.

In 2008 the differences in the way the dates are figured means that over a month will pass between the Western and Easter celebrations. In 1997, The World Council of Churches proposed a reform in the way the date is calculated, based exclusively on astronomical observations. This would have removed the disparity in the dates used by the Western and Orthodox faiths, but in the end, none of the member churches adopted the reform.

So where did Peter Cottontail, the Easter bunny come from? I have no idea. Same with Easter Eggs. Nevertheless, here’s a little bunny puzzle for your Easter enjoyment.



Happy Easter Folks

.

This year, those of us in the West will celebrate Easter March 23rd. Eastern Christians will celebrate Easter on April 27th. For those who are interested, my son and I will be joining my family at my mom’s house. She’s planning to serve lamb as a traditional entre, and I think she’s planning a ham as well. I’m pretty sure there will be some deviled eggs, potato salad, and an asparagus casserole you’d spend your last dime on just to taste. Cake and pie for desserts and really great coffee, as long as we keep my niece, Stesha away from it…. she really likes some strong coffee.(I love you Stesha!)

So, enjoy the puzzle, check out the links, learn about Easter and astound your friends with Easter trivia! As for me,

I am Jon, and I’ll be here all weekend.

.
.
(edit: I noticed that most of those SnapShots display the same text. The links go to different locations on a huge Wiki page. Even though the SnapShots are identical, the links are different. Thanks. Jon

 Get The Free RSS Feed! *OR* Get Wordout sent to your EMAIL! **AND** Add to Technorati Favorites

March 21st, 2008 Posted by Jon | FAQ, Fun Stuff | Leave a Comment

Print This Post Print This Post

Homemade Telescope for About 5 Bucks

The View From The Cheap Seats

So there you are, at the game beach parking lot of a super secret facility just out enjoying the night sky doing absolutely nothing wrong and you think to yourself, Wouldn’t it be great to have a telescope right now! I can remember when I was young, my brothers and I would make “play telescopes” out of toilet paper cardboard… remember that? I don’t remember them working very well, though. Real telescopes were just a fancy fancy.

Thanks to the folks over at Metacafe for pointing us to the following video. All you need to make the telescope are 2 empty 2-liter bottles, two easily found magnifying glasses and some tape. For tools you’ll need some scissors and a screwdriver. I suppose in a pinch a single knife would do the job of both.

The video is 90 seconds. Enjoy!


Make A Telescope In 90 Seconds


Home Made TelescopeThe funniest bloopers are right here

.

.

I am Jon, but I remember feeling like Galileo.

 Get The Free RSS Feed! *OR* Get Wordout sent to your EMAIL! **AND** Add to Technorati Favorites

March 12th, 2008 Posted by Jon | FAQ, Fun Stuff | Leave a Comment

ss_blog_claim=b99478ef357cf283b8f9c0bdec76d812