No relation to Villa Montalvo

I started a new job today at a startup more secretive than Transmeta was when I started there. Basically the whole point of this post is that you shouldn't use my Orion Multisystems email address anymore.

Illegal Aliens

I put the coordinates of Area 51 into Google Maps for "Groom Lake Base, Bldg 170" I found the July 2003 space imaging overview and detail images of Area 51 and created an overview and detail overlay for Keyhole 2. I'm also noticing that maps.google.com has certain areas intentionally pixelated or colored over (like the roof of the white house or the capitol building).

Moog Voyage

Saw Bob Moog at robotspeak.com in San Francisco today. He demonstrated the Minimoog Voyager Anniversary Edition. I purchased the one he demonstrated on, and Bob was nice enough to sign it. I also got an Etherwave Pro Theremin the same day which Bob also signed for me. Bob told all sorts of stories of the history of electronic music. I put an mp3 of the event and a review of the Etherwave Pro on my website.

Cold Fusion

Purchased the cold heat soldering tool from Fry's and used it to add a FM transmitter to the pitch preview of my theremin. It's not very easy to solder with since you need to complete a circuit at the tip with the solder, but it did live up to its promise of not burning a hole in my carpet. I put photos of the operation on my website.

Solder without burning holes in the carpet?

I just saw this Cold Heat Soldering Tool on tv while watching the secret life of machines, and it reminded me of how I used to burn holes in carpet (on accident) in my younger years. I'm so glad I work somewhere with professional soldering setups.

Kernel.org got faster...

I finally finished updating everything on The Linux Kernel Archives so that it now uses vsftpd instead of proftpd, a 2.6 linux kernel, a more modern distribution than Red Hat 7.2 and I fixed up various graphics on the web pages to be more "modern" versions. We went from serving 150mbps at a load average of 200 to well over 300mbps with a load average of about 20. *whew* glad that's done.

Can you take a bad photo at Yosemite?

Well my trip to Yosemite National Park is coming up Wednesday and I'm just noticing that today's weather forcast shows a 40% chance of snow Friday and Saturday, and the park service says that the recent warm weather has caused a lot of snow to melt and make nice waterfalls earlier this year, so I'm looking forward to my first trip there. I'll be taking all my camera equipment, so with any luck my photo page will be bursting with new images of everything I see. I plan to take 2.5GB of compact flash with me.