Zaphod's Deepest Thoughts

2012, Doomsayers, The End of Time, and Cataclysm.

Okay, I am going to make my 2012 predictions now, and go on record with them.

IN 2012 NOTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY THAT COULD BE CALLED A CATACLYSM WILL HAPPEN.

There. I said it. The Mayan calendar will reset, and life will go on. But I also predict, that in 2012, the sensationalist fear-mongers will say they got it wrong, and the actual end of the Mayan calendar is in 2013, or 2014, or 2015, or or or, I believe some will even go as far as saying 2112! To these people, this voice from the then past says... SHUT THE HELL UP! You may not keep the sheeple amongst us living in a constant state of fear. Panicked worrywarts give me a sour stomach from empathy. You may play until the end of 2012, but after that...

GET A JOB, YOU WERE WRONG, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE WRONG, LEAVE HUMANITY ALONE YOU UNBELIEVABLE IDIOTS.

YOU ARE NOT A PROPHET. YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. YOU HAVE NO POSITION OF AUTHORITY. YOU HAVE DESTROYED LIVES.

And to those of you who were misled by these idiots, I have nothing but pity, understanding, and sympathy for you. Humans in general have always been into sensationalism, it is no fault of your own that you listened to these self proclaimed authorities. This might sound hypocritical, but put your faith in the Lord, for at least with that group, no one knows the hour of his return. They believe you should live your life in peace and just keep yourself an outstanding individual to be safe. Sounds good to me. Well, if ya gotta invest your time believing in something intangible, why not?

For those of you who call bull on this, good, you can't be fooled into wasting your life in fear of the end.

Oh, btw, the world will end, NO ONE KNOWS WHEN. But I guarantee, someday, we will be smacked by a big rock, maybe even a planet, chunk of stellar core, or the ultimate insult to all we've done and created, sucked into a black hole. Yes, it will end, but to waste your time worrying about it, sure wastes the precious moments of your life. Just think if all that time you spent worrying about you, and your lot in life, you spent worrying about the animals at your local shelter, the old and feeble, the starving amongst us.

What I think the main distillation of all this is...

Doomsayers are psychic vampires. Are you food?

Zap :)

Radio Contests Can Lead to Personal Information Disclosure.

There is this local radio station I enjoy very much, KTWO AM . I use them for my daily dose of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, plus Coast to Coast AM. Lately, they have been running a "Listener Fan Club" type contest thing, where if you enter certain words e-mailed to you, and said on the air, into their website, you can redeem these for prizes. Great, so I played the game for awhile, earned some points, and went to redeem them for a compact fluorescent light bulb.

SURPRISE! To claim it you had to fill out a IRS form W9, and give it to them.

Never before in the past had I need to fill out a W9 for promotional materials,

Now, as far as I knew, non-monetary prizes were not considered income unless the amount was extreme. But still, the thought of turning over my social security number to a radio station I am not employed by, just to claim a less than $1.00 (before store mark-up) compact fluorescent light bulb, sets off alarm bells. In this age of information theft, I am suspect of anyone reaching for my SSN without need.

I probably wouldn't mind as much if I had to send the W9 into the IRS myself, but leaving my SSN in the files of a non-related entity bothers me. As it stands now, I am not going to claim my prize due to this, and further, I am going to drop out of their "fan club" and send all further contacts to the trash in my e-mail. Sadly since there is no way to un-join the fan-club on the website, I will probably have to flag it as spam.

Now, before you freak out, I hold the Talent, DJs, newscasters, and even the station's GM, faultless. I do however suspect something fishy in the bean-counting department, or the middle/upper management. Your social security number just shouldn't be given out like this, nor should it be used for identification. Any business I can think of, would normally just write off such a small amount as the cost of doing business. I even have doubt the DJs know about this W9 silliness.

Even stranger, I am still going to listen to this station, because I like the people running it, and the content. However, in my opinion, they really need to be bought be a local benefactor, and given more control over their destiny... I do not believe the corporation holding title to KTWO has the best interests of the people of Wyoming at heart.

This article and content of this site in whole, is opinion covered under the 1st Amendment, and is not to be taken as an endorsement, nor detractment of any product or service.

Catch a Stratovolcano on Doppler Radar, The 3rd Mount Redoubt Explosion.

Well, as soon as I heard Redoubt exploded on the radio, I headed over to NWS Anchorage to see what I could see from their WSR-88D!

I was well rewarded!

That's it, just west of the word Kenai, way too cold for a thunderstorm, just right for a boom. Hope someone caught it earlier than this. You can see the new plume, and the old one streaming off to the NNE. The explosion, is of course, stationary. Enjoy!

Question answered about the Sylvania SMPK2242, and more!

Yet more adventures with my SMPK2242!

J. H. Wrote in to ask me some questions and after answering them, he thought I should post it in the blog, so here goes.

***BEGIN Q/A***

Q: "Do you know of a firmware update that will allow you to play unlicensed mp3's on the player? I have 5 mp3 players in the house with everyone using different applications to transfer the music (songbird being the newest addition) and this is the only device that isn't working properly."

A:Simple, just connect it so it comes up as a USB hard drive, and put all your MP3s in /MUSIC.

Just as the videos go in /VIDEO.

Honestly, I never installed the bit that lets it work with Windows Media Player, as it would probably try to lock up the device as DRM only (Why? So [Company-X] could make you rent things you already own!).

I Just save things to it, as if it were a normal USB drive (Using windows explorer under Start/Programs/Accessories , it appears as Removable Disk Drive G: on my system. Yours may vary.) So next time you connect it to your PC, don't select MTP device, select USB drive. No special conversion is needed for non DRM mp3s, just copy them to the right directory on the device.

As far as I can tell, the SMPK2242 is one of the most OPEN players out there.

Zaphod

P.S. I repeat, no special programs are needed for the SMPK2242! Get back to me if you need more help.

***END Q/A***

I also added later, that the SMPK2242 can also play .ogg without modification, and that one can put in subdirectories like "/MUSIC/Heavy Metal/AC-DC" or "/VIDEO/Music Videos/New Age/Enya/" to keep things organized.

Of course, I can't leave well enough alone, so I did research on the Curtis International website, about what other Personal Medial Players they have that use the same codecs and media type, found out that the data on the TRANSCODING HELP PAGE should also work with these models:

SYLVANIA SMPK1072
SYLVANIA SMPK2072
SYLVANIA SMPK2242 (My model the page was made for!)
SYLVANIA SMPK8854
SYLVANIA SMPK8854B
SYLVANIA SMPK8858

CURTIS MPK7836
CURTIS MPK7836UK
CURTIS MPK8854

And I would assume, many other off brand players that use the AVI container, and the XviD codec may benefit too. Be mindful to match your player's screen resolution with that in the encoder.

If you have any more questions, get back to me at my CONTACT page!

Zap!

Sylvania SMPK2242 Personal Media Player page added.

For Christmas a friend of mine bought me a Sylvania 2 GB personal media player. It's truely a wonderful gift, and plays all sorts of non proprietary material, so long as you have the right conversion program(s).

Well, after seeing everybody on the web was frustrated by the lack of support for the video conversion utility that came with the player, and it's limited scope, I decided to make a page about how to use Media Coder instead, with much better results.

You can find the page HERE !

Sure hope it helps.

Zap! :)

Gloom and doom for the USA?

I don't think so, but this Russian does.

Personally, I think he's full of it, especially in the way the country is supposed to split up.

If I had to look at this as being an issue, turmoil in North America, and how it would divide up, here is my map of it.

Okay, that seems rather simplistic, till you consider my sources of input on the subject, which are the 2008 election maps (displayed further down), and a knowledge of certain things.

1. Where population centers are, and what influence they would have on soldiers able to be provided to the front.

2. General survivability of people in a breakdown of society, based upon the level of societal support they currently enjoy, and current lifestyle choices (Ever go hunting? Ever go fishing? Ever go camping? Ever go backpacking? These people who do can survive with allot less support than people who live in cities.).

3. Where most of the military hardware of the countries is stored, and where most of the soldiers serving in said military come from (loyalty).

4. Pincer movements between any two areas of stronger influence crushing a weaker area in between.

5. Ability to receive material support from foreign allies (ports).

6. The constant threat of Tijuana and their drug cartels being neutralized by absorption.

7. Disgruntlement of people being ruled by far off regions.

8. Historical division of areas of production vs. areas of transshipping and middlemen/management.

And finally...

9. The most recent (2008) elections, which areas supported which idealism. Here are the maps of those...

Source: US Elections Board.
Red=Right Wing/Conservative.
Blue=Left Wing/Liberal.
Note: Alaska went conservative also. (Sarah Palin, Conservative V.P. Candidate was governor of Alaska)

Source: Wikimedia Foundation.

Looks pretty clear and clean cut to me. So, lets hope, for the sake of silly pie in the sky leftists, and general ethics, that we don't decay into civil war. But if we do, I do believe my side of things will come out on top. Good will always triumph over evil. And you need to ask yourself, what IS good, and do your intentions lie in line with the classic definition of good.

If you can't tell intuitively what good is, then I bet you are in one of those areas not marked as being the new United States.

Zap!

Why Detroit (and soon the rest of the auto industry) Is In the Crapper.

I'll be as short (Yeah, right, sureeee, I'm angry!) as I can about this. They say that Detroit has run out of ideas... baloney.

Detroit has plenty of ideas, and they have rejected all of them! Why you ask?

COWARDICE!
(and of course, the pointy haired boss)
(with apologies to the great S. Adams)

For years and years, the best and brightest minds in Detroit, the engineers and designers, have been dreaming up the most fantastic, yet attainable cars. They were capitalizing on Americas greatest power, our power to invent!

But then, as usual, some pointy haired boss who couldn't grasp the new car, or even the concept of the new car any further than the fact there was a "concept" in there somewhere...

Slapped the label "concept" on it, showed it to his friends, and relegated it to the dumpster.

Cars that could break 200 miles an hour and hold it for as long as you like.

One seater commuter cars that had room for you, your briefcase, and the ability to go 300 miles on a 3 gallon tank.

Cars that would parallel park themselves at a push of a button.

Electric cars that could run 40 miles on a charge. (For getting back and forth from work, that's all most people need)

Cars that would last for 1,000,000 miles. (Semi tractors do it all the time)

I could rabbit on and on, but the truth of the matter is, since the higher ups in the companies couldn't appreciate how much the public would want one of these vehicles, since they were afraid of the risk in them, they never allowed any of them to reach production. No, they would say something like "Let's take last years model, and raise the trunk, and make it boxier... and we'll call it the Capri EX, as in s.E.X., and that will make people want it!" Then, because people buy it, for they have no other choice that stands apart from the rest of the cookie cutter cars, they think that it was wanted. WRONG!

Now, allot of you may be saying "Man, he's got it all wrong." Oh, have I? Why not talk to the American powerhouse in Milwaukee? Yes, none other than Harley-Davidson. Take a look at the V-Rod if you like, it's a living, breathing concept motorcycle in production. Sleek, fast, good looking, better handling, safe, everything a motorcycle should be! And it sold like mad! Now, Harley-Davidson pwns the world motorcycle market, and all it took was one truly original bike to bring them to light, and then innovative upgrades and redesigns on their big twins to keep them there.

Detroit, you've been a bunch of haughty fools following Japan, and doing nothing original. As a matter of fact, Japan never really goes outside the box either, they just slowly improve on what we've done. You even took the mighty HMMWV stripped it down to a Tahoe with a boxy body (HII) and then castrated it back to an early 80s S-10 Blazer with a less rounded shape (HIII). You have no idea the value of testosterone. I see more women driving HIIs and HIIIs than men. and Even our pickup trucks, once mighty and rugged symbols of manhood, the pickup truck, has become more smooth, soft, bubbly, and slick... just like a minivan! You even tried to marry the two in Excursions and Expeditions!

Enough of this for now, but you will be paying the price and living on the street soon, unless you streamline the path between concept and production post haste. Oh, and try asking the people what they want too.

Zap.

Added Digg, let's see how it does.

Well, I've drank the Ghoul-Aid and added Digg to my blog. Let's see how it does.

If you remember a story, one that you liked from time past, please search it up, and if you can find it again, nail it with a digg please. I am sure others will agree with you.

Why am I so late into the digg game? Well, it used to be that stories on digg would get digged way up by botnets. Now, they've taken steps to clean things up. I don't think any of my goofiness will ever see the front page of digg, but, maybe someone will dig a little deeper.

(I am almost certian my server would bomb with a front page digg anyway!)

New Filetopia 4 name and logo leaked!

Wow, I never thought I would see anything new out of them, but here it is...

Amazing isn't it?

Actually, it's not, it's a bad, somewhat inside joke based on this software in development forever. Sure hope it doesn't make for too much bad karma. But on a REAL NOTE...

BeTaGuRu has released a bugfix patch for Filetopia being run under Windows Vista, you can get it HERE.

It matters! ( Well, at least to the universe it does. )

Yet another article plumbing the depths of time for finding out a universal truth was seen by me today...

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/10/underground-lab.html

Yet for all the hubbub, it seems to me another group of college kids have just found a way to milk the people for more grant money. ( Ever hear about the frenchies who had a particle detector requiring thousands of gallons of cognac? My LANL friend and me agree it would have been much more worthwhile if they used single malt scotch! )

Here's my 3 simple ideas on why matter won out, and none of them are really testable, but they make allot of sense.

1. God. Yes, it's a cop-out, but if you cant accept anyone's theory, it's what you are stuck with. Lump it. I am most comfortable with this one as it makes the universe allot safer than I think it is. Comfort does not equal satisfaction though.

2. Matter didn't win. There was an "un-eveness" to the matter and antimatter cloud in the expanding universe, and clusters of galaxies we see today, are actually made of antimatter. Some people say the difference could be detected, but I have yet to see honestly HOW. This is the most uncomfortable theory, as in E.T. Could vanish in a multimegaton blast should his ship try to land here. ( Tunguska anybody? ). Conversely, it could make space travel for us slightly buggery, if we should develop intergalactic drive.

3. Matter and Antimatter are known to annihilate and make 2 energetic gammas. Energy can be converted to mass (matter mass mind you, not anti-matter). So quite possibly M + aM = 2y = 2M (Translated... Matter + Antimatter became 2 Gammas, which were then converted back into 2 units of matter.) I find this both comfortable, and satisfactory, as the early universe was so hot that much energy had to become matter, or everything would have just boiled away as photons (Gammas are photons too). Also it follows known conventions of E=mc^2... nowhere in that equation does it allow for antimatter, does it? But allot of E was made by the annihilations in the early universe. Seems like a one-way trip to matter to me.

What's your thoughts? Please comment below.