Tomato is a small, lean and simple replacement firmware for the Linksys WRT54G.
The Tomato Router Firmware works beautifully. With the TCP Vegas and QoS settings, I can have several users on my network including torrents and web surfers and still have the best Skype call quality I’ve ever had, all with the same DSL connection I’ve had for years. The interface is fabulously clean and functional. I can see who is on the network and get a good feel for what is happening at a glance. I’ve been running the software for almost a year now and, plain and simple, it works great.
I just donated $20 to the project.
I am currently running Tomato version 1.25 on a Linksys / Cisco WRT54GL. (yes, v 1.27 is currently available)
My friend Barry now has a weekly radio program on KSRO radio. The station is based in Sonoma County. It’s called “The Clean Energy Show with Barry Cogbill” :-) He talks about solar power, energy efficiency, green jobs and other stuff each week!
The show airs Wednesdays from 12:30pm to 1pm on AM 1350, KSRO
My little corner of the internet gets a surprising amount of look-sees.
The blog gets about 800 hits a day according to WordPress Stats
Lee.org got about 4.7 million page views in 2009 and 15 million file requests.
Last week Lee.org got about 100,000 page requests!
Take a glance at some stats from Analog:
Analyzed requests from Tue, Apr 25 2006 at 12:03 AM to Sun, Mar 07 2010 at 12:57 AM (1412.04 days)
Figures in parentheses refer to the 7-day period ending Mar 07 2010 at 3:53 AM.
Successful requests: 65,999,273 (414,283)
Average successful requests per day: 46,740 (59,183)
Successful requests for pages: 13,864,666 (123,701)
Average successful requests for pages per day: 9,818 (17,671)
Failed requests: 768,050 (182)
Redirected requests: 608,002 (734)
Data transferred: 2.38 terabytes (11.64 gigabytes)
Average data transferred per day: 1.73 gigabytes (1.66 gigabytes)
Steve Nelson just forwarded along this awesome OK Go music video.
I’ve been teaching Introduction to Mechanical Sculpture and Electromechanics for Everything at the Crucible. So I sent this to my students as encouragement:
Here is a review my friend Marcus wrote of his experience seeing the metal band Anvil in concert in San Francisco. I found it greatly uplifting!
Lance wrote:
> how was it?
>
I had a lot of fun. Another one down in my quest for unique experiences. :-)
The audience at the Fillmore was really mixed, ranging in age from 13 to 70. Some were young (some parents brought kids), some older (standard SF fare) and some people looked like they could have been to concerts when Anvil started out. (The band has been around for 33 years…)
It definitely was very loud, but I expected that and it was fine with ear plugs. The opening band was Attitude Adjustment, which is pretty much hardcore thrash metal with yelled lyrics, which is not my preferred musical choice for most listening occasions. But, also interesting because it was a new experience for me to see live.
Anvil played music that was good solid 80s heavy metal, some a bit towards speed metal. Overall not bad at all, although a bit hard to hear with the volume. The song titles could all have been taken directly from Spinal Tap: Metal to Metal, Forged in Fire, Thumb Hang, Jackhammer, Mad Dog, Mothra (!) etc. Very entertaining, I loved it. I don’t think they were really #1 hit contenders, although in the 80s everything would have been possible The guitar and drums playing was quite good. But the show made it. The guys just looked like they had a blast, running around, rocking out, and just having fun. At one point the guy actually took out this shiny gold dildo and played guitar with it. Hilarious.
Varying the vibration speed to change the sound on the pickups, which actually worked, and much better than I expected. (Lips, the front guy, later after the show kind of conceded that Spinal Tap is the fake Anvil…)
The guys were great. They gave an energetic show, and had all this fun and optimism. Totally like previous underdogs who valued their newfound movie-driven popularity, tremendously appreciated the audience, and enjoyed every minute of performing. And Lips said “This is what I love doing. You’re giving my the time of my life. I appreciate you guys so much, that after the show, I’m coming out there, and won’t leave until I’ve met each and every one of you.” And he did. Took over an hour to see the over hundred people who stuck around, he signed everything, and he hung around and actually really talked to people for a bit – he’s pretty funny – and he grinned for every single picture they took. (I neglected to take my camera – bummer). Great guy.
I definitely want to see the Anvil movie now. Let me know when it arrives in your queue.
I had a recent conversation with a friend about polyphasic sleep. Here’s my followup email to him about this
——————
…It was my impression that you believed polyphasic sleeping couldn’t be done because people just aren’t capable of doing it for more than a short period of time (IE like the breatharian argument – no one is a breatharian for more than a few weeks because they die).
Morgan Engel presented at the September 2009 5 Minutes of Fame “A Primer on Polyphasic Sleeping”. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2180170 25 minutes into the video. At 29:00 he says (paraphrased ) “I did it for 6 months and it was great. I taught myself many things with the extra time. I had to stop because my girlfriend thought it was weird”. But also … “it’s really hard to do because to have to live a regimented lifestyle.” That is a popular refrain I’ve seen from others.
If this page (http://trypolyphasic.com/map) is any indication, there are maybe 100-1000 people in the world who say they have successfully done polyphasic sleep.
That said, I think a good simple summary would be:
Polyphasic sleep is certainly possible. However, it takes at least as much personal effort as going to a gym regularly. The awkward social aspects add to the difficulty.
Since I’ve never been able to make it to a gym on a regular basis despite trying and knowing that there are many personal benefits (having more energy, improved physical strength, needing less sleep), and I don’t feel a serious desire to attempt this, I’m not going to. At least not right now… ;-)
The International Space Station (ISS) will be passing over San Francisco Thursday night!
Look up in the southwestern sky at exactly 6:57pm on Thursday night and you’ll see the International Space Station appear and fly all the way to the northeastern horizon. It should take about 4 minutes to go from horizon to horizon. It looks a bit like a jet flying at very high altitude, only it’s way too bright, it will likely be the brightest thing in the sky besides the moon, brighter than venus, brighter than watching the planes coming into SFO on Bernal Hill! When I first saw it on Bernal Hill last year, it took my breath away. It’s this tiny tin can moving at 20,000 miles an hour with 5 astronauts bobbing around inside, an artificial satelight that was put there by all these countries cooperating with one another.
