Oh mighty blogospheric brain, if anyone in my readership is connected with the show Big Bang Theory or with Warner Brothers television studios, please contact me privately. I’m trying to help out some dear friends with something.
Posted: 6:19 am Fri January 06 2012 | Comments(0) |
Another appeal to the mighty blogospheric brain, to see if anyone can shed some light on 19th century German naming conventions among sibling groups. This one from my Dad, who avidly pursues genealogy.
German naming system 19th Century
One ancestor and three of his brothers all immigrated to the US. They have all been identified in German baptismal records for the early 19th century. However, a fifth brother, of whom we have never heard, also turned up.
Even stranger, the ancestor’s given name was Georg Lorenz. However, his baptismal record says his name is Lorenz. The fifth brother was born and baptized after Lorenz and given the name Georg Michael. Is there any logical explanation for the older brother to have taken his younger brother’s first name?
Posted: 2:23 pm Sat September 03 2011 | Comments(3) |
This is signal boost for a friend, who will pick up feedback here in comments.
Amongst the manifold experiences of my trusty readers, can you all recommend a list of which college English departments are SFF friendly? A student who is applying for college wants to be a creative writing and/or English major, and is also a budding fantasy novelist — and definitely wants to be writing genre fantasy, not “literary” fantasy. While my friend is aware of some of the few graduate programs that are genre-friendly, can the mighty blogospheric brain offer some comments on undergraduate programs?
Many thanks.
Posted: 5:05 am Wed August 17 2011 | Comments(6) |
Anyone reading this in PDX planning to drive to the Locus Awards next weekend? What with my chemo schedule slip and all, I can probably make it.
I have a tentative ride up Friday afternoon, but no ride back on Sunday. If possible, I’d rather ride up first thing Saturday morning, and I need to come back Sunday morning/midday.
If you’re coming or going with an extra seat in the car, please let me know.
Posted: 4:49 am Sat June 18 2011 | Comments(2) |
ETA: A working 802.11g bridge has been made available. This post is now academic, and is being left live for the networking prØn value. Thank you.
I had two knowledgable and generous friends over yesterday helping me reconfigure my network to upgraded bandwidth from Comcast and an upgraded Cisco E4200 router to support the higher speeds.
We got into the issue of reconfiguring the old Linksys 802.11g router (WRT54-G) to be a bridge with the E4200 in order to support some printers that lack their own wireless cards and cannot be connected to the E4200 via wired Ethernet. (All of this has to do with the physical layout of my house and the location of two of the three printers here.) This was previously supported by a bridge between a very old Linksys B-Bridge (WET11) and the WRT54-G. Much consulting of Web sites and fooling around with the admin interface. Bad success ensued.
Failing that, we tried to bridge said very old WET11 directly with the E4200. Among other things, the WET11 admin interface appears to be in a fragile state, and we simply could not make that happen. Further bad success ensued.
We eventually arrived at a somewhat inexplicable yet working kludge of resetting both of the old pieces of equipment to factory defaults, whereupon we could bridge the WET11 to the WRT54-G without actually doing anything to the admin interface of the WET11. We then connected the WRT54-G to the E4200 via Ethernet.
This is not a crisis, but the current network kludge is a clumsy, failure-prone and insecure networking arrangement. For about $60 I can buy a new WET610N, the current 802.11n functional equivalent to my seriously ancient WET11, but if possible I’d really prefer to use the otherwise perfectly functional WRT54-G as a bridge rather than spend even more money.
I would be very grateful to anybody in PDX who is a router-whisperer and understands Linksys/Cisco configurations well enough to untangle this problem for me. (Or on the other hand can confirm that what I’m trying to do cannot be done and I should just pony up the damned $60 and be done with it.) Advice is also helpful, as my knowledgable and generous friends can play hands to good directions if available. A site visit would be far more helpful given my chemobrain and their schedule. Happy to pop for beer and pizza, or gift a few books in return, if so.
Please advise.
Posted: 5:37 am Mon June 13 2011 | Comments(0) |
In which my Dad asks for a little help with some American social history: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
Engineering the end: How planning for loss helped a family through it — Ah, cancer.
DIY Bacon Roses — Just because. (Via Miki.)
French school lunches — An amazing snippet of video… (Via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1){kind=small}
willyumtx.)
Name of the Year — Heh.
A Gay Former N.B.A. Player Responds to Kobe Bryant — Yeah. I know. Me mentioning sports. But this is a gender (and to some degree, race) issue. Both of which I do care about.
The New Cold War — There has long been bad blood between Iran and Saudi Arabia, but popular protests across the Middle East now threaten to turn the rivalry into a tense and dangerous regional divide.
Neediest and sickest would pay the price under GOP budget plan — Mmm, compassionate conservatism on the march. You guys sure know how to make America proud.
?otD: Bacon or pancetta?
Posted: 5:01 am Mon April 18 2011 | Comments(0) |
My dad is doing some historical/genealogical research on our family, and is stumped by an item from the 1910 U.S. Census. He’s hoping someone out here in the blogosphere can shed some light. So far his Google fu has been inadequate.
Dad says:
Two men in their 40’s living together at time of 1910 census in New York. Both employed as silk finishers in a silk mill.
One is listed as head of household and single. He apparently remained single for his whole life.
The other is listed as “partner” and married – having been married 20 years.
Anyone understand the use of the term partner in the 1910 census?
Thanks!
Posted: 7:18 pm Sun April 17 2011 | Comments(3) |
Apropos of this morning’s zen photo, I’ve been meaning to ask this for a while. I think I know the answer, but suspect my intuition is out of place.
What’s the copyright status of a photograph taken by someone else using my camera?
Example A:
I gave the camera to the_child and she took it on a field trip. Those are her photos, unambiguously. If I am going to reproduce them, I seek her permission.
Example B:
I am out with friends. I gave the camera to kenscholes to take a picture of me and bravado111 on my behalf. Generally I know who took the picture, and can secure a permission if needed. Say, because I have placed the photo in Locus or something.
Example C:
I am out with friends. I gave the camera to a waitperson to take a picture of the group of us on my behalf. I never get the photographer’s name or contact info. Do I have any right to reproduce that photo under copyright law? It can’t be work for hire, because I didn’t pay them for the photo. The implicit ownership of the photo is clear: it’s my equipment and the photo was taken at my request. But the copyright status is unclear to me.
Thoughts? Experiences?
Posted: 7:24 am Sat January 08 2011 | Comments(14) |
I have a short fiction manuscript with section headers in my terrible dog Latin. Anyone here with enough real Latin willing to have a look and correct my manglings?
I’d be much obliged.
Help has arrived. Thank you!
Posted: 6:41 pm Tue December 21 2010 | Comments(2) |
I swear this went through Link Salad in the last year or two, but I cannot run it down.
Is there a stable configuration for extremely long-term orbits (millennia or more) for artificial satellites? I recall reading that at least one satellite has been placed in such an orbit. I’m trying to sort out if that’s true, and if so, is there a name for such an orbit?
Why, yes, this is rocket science.
Posted: 5:33 pm Sat December 11 2010 | Comments(9) |