Archive for the 'General' Category

Obama hate-mail has been scouring the internet for years. People frequently resend emails that they simply don’t understand. My dad sent me one with the title “After two years of Obama—here’s your change!!!”. Here’s an image of it below:

The first and easiest thing to fact check is to see if this person can do math. The answer is no. Why? Well, look at the last line: If you are driving in the right lane doing 65MPH and a car goes past you at 27 times faster, then how fast is it going? The claim is 7,555 MPH. Man that is fast! But hold on, let’s make sure they are doing their math right. 65 MPH * 27 = 1755 MPH. People with common mathematical sense will quickly spot that claim as being *way* off, and it sure was! If they can’t multiply 27*65, then what the heck makes me want to believe any of the other numbers they gave?

Now, this chart is praying on people who are ignorant and easily forget things. Let’s see, when was the first time crude oil was over $100/gallon? And gas prices fluctuate heavily. If I was to generate a chart like the above, I would want to scam people into believing things are worse than they were before by taking the absolute maximum and minimum values. Let’s consider the first item, gas at $1.83 a gallon. Let’s fact check that. I visit: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_home_page.html and see the chart below:

Yup, it was about $1.83/gallon in January 2009, but they conveniently picked the lowest part in the graph. Heck, 4 months prior it was > $3.70/gallon! Wait a minute, that means it is currently 19% lower than it was before!

Please don’t blindly believe anything circulating on the internet.

I’ve had a few questions on where I got my zip line stuff.

Here’s what I got:

1. Petzl Tandem Speed Pulley 30113 – $ 79.95 from http://karstsports.com/, free shipping.

2. From ZipLineSupplies.com I ordered the following. Note that they appear to be a front for “Fehr” - http://www.fehr.com, and you could probably order directly from them too.

So, $245 for a lot of fun. The “speed” version of the pulley probably wasn’t necessary, as the thing goes damn fast.

A good resource for setting up zip lines is available at: http://www.outdoorfunstore.com/zipline.asp — they also sell zip line kits, but are rather expensive.

Please help!

My cat Piper is missing. She is a siamese, with white snowshoe paws. She is a polydactyl (extra toes) and is fixed. She comes to the name Piper (when she feels like it).

She was last seen the morning of Saturday, August 28th at our house in the Santa Cruz mountains off of Hutchinson Rd. Louise let her out for the day and she never came home. She may have gotten taken by someone, or may have wondered too far from home and gotten lost. There is also the possibility that she was injured by another animal, or car.

If you see her, or have seen her, please call or email me! corbin at corbin’s treehouse <dot> com. I miss my cat dearly.

It’s always geeky and interesting to see web stats for a site. Mine gets ~80 to ~100 visits on a normal day. The asylum.com article spiked that up to 30,000 visits in one day.

From analytics.google.com for my domain:

Blue Tree Software, my shareware “company” that I have had for many many years is now closed. If you visited http://www.bluetreesoft.com you will be redirected to corbinstreehouse.com.

I plan on releasing my flagship product, WallChanger, as open source. The applications all run on Windows, and I only use MacOS, so it might take a while for me to post the source somewhere and rebuild a “freeware” version. If someone wants to build it for me and remove the reg code stuff, let me know…I’ll send it to you.

Screen shots of my old website in QuickLook (boy, I designed that a *long* time ago):

Before “Blue Tree Software” I called “Blue Software” (even older! Cool main font):

Playing around with designs:

And while I’m at it, old screenshots of corbinstreehouse.com, designed when I was in high school back in 1995/1996:

The fruity rainbow design when I was learning Adobe Illustrator and playing with dynamic javascript stuff. Back in 1997/1998ish (and around for quite a few years):

“Imaginary Internet Websites” when I made web pages for people in college:

I recently moved my blog and website from one server to another (hopefully better, where I have less downtime, and no data loss!). My Pictures gallery is down, but let me know of anything that doesn’t work (comments work again!)

corbin

Comments are currently broken. I need to fix them. I know about the problem..I just have to figure it out. Sorry, and thanks!

I want to cut down on the environmental impact for our wedding. So, I ordered biodegradable plates, cups and silverware from http://letsgogreen.biz/- I’ll find out how long they really take to biodegrade as I plan on composting them myself.

[EDIT: spelling of greening actually has a r in it]

Louise, modeling some cloths she got from my dad, and a sock monkey monster from my sister.

I don’t like the idea of killing a tree every year just so we can stick it in our house and put presents under it, so I convinced louise to let us get a live tree. So, instead of removing a tree from our ecosystem, we will be planting one back into it. Imagine how many trees we could plant if everyone started doing this. If you live in a city, you can still take your tree to a nearby park or forest and set it free after the holidays.