Jason Francis: The Daily Life

I'm an IT geek at heart. I'd like to invite you to experience my random Thoughts, Interests, and Me. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-28065630-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

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Free Ancestry.com 1930 Census Database Search - Click Here Only Thru Feb 16th-20th.

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R.I.P. Whitney Houston.

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Marketing.

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New Samsung TV. No-Remote. Voice & Motion Controlled. Face Recognition.

[mindingparadise]

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work doodles....

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This site lists drug side effects reported to the FDA by everyday people.

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Nerds in the 1930s at a science conference, they remind me of 1970/80s gangster flicks. But, one thing is for sure, this suit, tie and trench is mostly lost amongst my people of nerds and geeks. This is more of a corporate-ivory league-law school look now. Today, a graphic tee, jeans and some decent shoes will do the job.

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Two Nights of Dreams Interpreted

For the past two nights I seem to be having these short vivid dreams. So I decided to write down my dreams and interpret its main keywords from each dream that had great emphasis. Let’s see what’s going on in my head.

Dream 1 Tonight I dreamt that me and one of the shift leads at my job, we were building some type of high-tech storage compartment or dog house from pre-cut wood that he was adding on to his yard. On one piece of wood there was this gigantic ant that by far I’ve ever seen, it has to be about 3’’ in length. As we pick up the piece I grabbed it, detached the head and watched the blood pour out. The SL (site lead) said to me “o yea, he’ll bite you, then you’ll get welts and then worms will come out.” Shortly after I seen welts on my right forearm which then turned into earthworms coming out floating there like grass eels in the bottom of the ocean, my arm felt painful and somewhat hot. Immediately I woke up.

Keywords: Gigantic Ant, Welts, Earthworms or Worms, Wood

Dream 2 So last night the 26th of January, I was in I believe Columbus Ohio, me and an unknown person was sitting in the car (for some reason whiplash is standing out at this point, so Ill use it as a keyword). We seen an elderly women coming out of here apartment and about 8-12 gang members ran up and surrounded her, its looks like they snatched up purse, then approach me, as if they were trying to intimidate me, but nothing happened. They just stood their looking. And I woke up.

Keywords: Whiplash, Gang, Elderly women (maybe this keyword, the first keyword had a really strong emphasis)

Keyword Meanings:

Ants To see ants in your dream signify your general dissatisfaction in your daily life. You are feeling neglected and insignificant. Or petty things will annoy you throughout the following day. The dream may also be a metaphor on feeling antsy or restless. It may also be a pun on your "aunt".

Ants also symbolize hard work, diligence, cooperation and industry. Increase business activities are expected. On a less positive note, ants symbolize social conformity and mass action. In this regard, you may feel that your life is too structured and orderly. According to the biblical interpretations, ants symbolize diligence concerning the things of God. Despite its small size, the ant lays up substance during times of plenty. (Prov 30:25)

Earthworm To see an earthworm in your dream indicates that you need to go deep into your unconscious in order to unearth your hidden feelings and desires. Alternatively, earthworms symbolize little things that can be beneficial for your growth and well-being. It also represents renewal. Perhaps you need to restore some aspect of yourself. 

Whiplash To dream that you have whiplash indicates that you are butting heads with someone in your waking life. You are experiencing a conflict at school, work, family, or personal relationship. It may also be a pun on "a pain in the neck". Perhaps you or someone is being a pain.

Wood To dream of wood suggests that you are feeling dead and emotionless inside. Your behavior is too automated. You are not fully thinking things through. Alternatively, the dream may be a pun on "getting wood" or sexual arousal. To dream that you are carving or shaping a piece of wood indicates a power-giving act or creative gesture. You are molding or shaping the course of your own life. Alternatively, the carved wood symbolizes spirituality and vital energy.

Gang   To dream that you are a gang member signifies your need to achieve and accomplish things through force and intimidation. The dream draws attention to the primitive, unruly aspect of yourself.  To dream that you are confronted or threatened by a gang signifies circumstances or situations in your waking life that are becoming overwhelming. You feel that you are being "ganged" up on.

Elderly To see an elderly person in your dream represents wisdom or spiritual power. Pay attention to the message or advice that the elderly person is conveying to you. He or she can help provide life answers and solutions to your problems and try to guide you toward the right direction.  

Welts No Entry.

Dream Interpretation

According to the Dream Dictionary, it would appear that someone right now in my work, personal or business life have an unresolved conflict that needs to be addressed carefully. I feel overwhelmed as if I’m doing too much work and whoever isn’t doing enough which is in turn draining energy making me feel as if I’m conforming to a structured life that. And by addressing my issues, desires and conflicts this will give me self-growth, a renewal of spirituality and energy and restoring some aspect of my life to shape and mold my own course in life.

How I feel

I feel that it’s fair to say the majority of this is actually true. That is all I have to say about that.

[jayfran-blog]

The next Xbox console pictured above is slated for a fall 2013 release. Its rumored to be six times more powerful than the Xbox360 and will be using the AMD 6000 series chip architecture that will out perform Nintendo's Wii U by an impressive 20%. Not too shabby Microsoft. We all know this new Xbox talk is hearsay for now, but an official spec document should be released in the late summer. Gamers get ready. Image credit: Joseph Dumary

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Meet the Aerodyne, a computer designed with some Mojo

By Jason Francis

Jeffrey Stephenson a computer designer and innovator, developed a new machine dubbed the Aerodyne, its out-cased with a gorgeous mahogany wood and aluminum to highlight its elegant design. This build has a vintage and modern quality about it that I find to be impressively satisfying.

However, I feel it will make a decent novelty item for light-weight tasks in the long run such as a media server or someones home security system ran by 20MP weather-proof webcams strategically placed around the house. Without a fan limits its potential for real work to be done, but the RAM and SSD might give it the right amount of Mojo to pull off an upset... We'll just have to wait until an official release.

Specs:

Mini-ITX

8GB DDR3

256GB SSD

Intel Core I3

Microsoft Windows 8

Pictures from Jeffrey Stephenson Site

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Action Figure: Steve Jobs, click on Steve for more images.

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Action Figure: Steve Jobs, Deatailed to the T, to be released

This action figure is slated for a February release at $100 a pop.

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Glowing Scorpion Exoskeletons May Be Giant Eyes

Scorpion bodies are studded with eyes, sometimes as many as twelve — and scientists may have found one more.

A scorpion’s entire exoskeleton may act as one giant light receptor, a full-body proto-eye that detects shadows cast by moonlight and starlight.

That’s still just a hypothesis, but it would help explain why they glow so brilliantly under ultraviolet light.

“It might be a sort of alarm that’s always going off until the scorpion finds shelter,” said biologist Douglas Gaffin of the University of Oklahoma. “Shade might turn down the alarm on that part of their body, so they preferentially move in that direction.”

  No matter their color in daylight, be it jet-black or translucent, ultraviolet light makes pigments embedded in their exoskeletons emit photons.

A scorpion finds shelter under a blade of grass. (Douglas Gaffin/University of Oklahoma)

That property is called fluorescence, and nobody knows quite why scorpions possess it. Suggested explanations include mating signals or evolutionary leftovers of natural sunscreen needed before they became nocturnal. Whatever the case, 430 million-year-old fossils of scorpion relatives called eurypterids suggest their fluorescence has been around for a very long time.

Gaffin, leader of a study published Dec. 19 in Animal Behavior, noticed during scorpion collection expeditions that one desert grassland species, called Paruroctonus utahensis, always seemed to scurry under something, even in total darkness.

“You eventually wonder, “how do they find that one blade of grass and stay under it?” he said.

Gaffin wasn’t the first to wonder if fluorescence played a part, perhaps by converting ultraviolet sunlight and moonlight into a color visible to scorpion eyes, which are attuned to greenish wavelengths.

One researcher bleached fluorescent pigments from scorpions, covered their eyes and showed they could no longer discern shelter from open space. Another study showed nerves in their tails fired when green light (the same color of fluorescence) was shined on the body part.

Taking the research a step further, Gaffin and his colleagues recorded the behavior of more than 100 scorpions under UV, green light and longer wavelengths their eyes couldn’t see. The researchers completely blocked some scorpions’ eyes with foil to determine whether exoskeletons alone could “see” anything.

They found that eyes-blocked scorpions moved just as erratically under UV light as their unblinkered brethren.

“Maybe they’re collecting stray UV light, maybe starlight, and pigments turn it to green, and that’s what their nervous system is picking up on,” Gaffin said. “How do they do this? I don’t know.”

Starlight is far dimmer than moonlight, barely enough to make scorpion pigments fluoresce. But Gaffin said the vast quantity of pigments may add up in sensitivity to something comparable to an eye.

To probe the idea further, Gaffin plans to coat scorpions with UV-blocking sunscreen. There’s just one problem: It kills them in a couple of days.

“I might cover them in scotch tape, then put the sunscreen on that,” Gaffin said. “I’ll find something that works.”

A desert grassland scorpion eats a cricket. UV light (top) shows the blue-green fluorescence of the animal's exoskeleton. In normal light (bottom), the scorpion appears translucent. (Douglas Gaffin/University of Oklahoma)

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Scientists scan damaged audio mediums, creates playable emulations of vinyl

Keep hope alive for those old 12'' and 10'' vinyls that no longer play on the record player and are housed in the downstairs basement in a milk crate.

Digitizing your analog archives? Vinyl to CD / MP3 / iPod turntables might do well enough for your old 45s, but the folks at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory prefer to listen to their old beats by taking pictures of them. More specifically, restoration specialists are using a system called IRENE/3D to snap high resolution images of damaged media. The cracked discs -- often made of wax on brass or composition board -- are then repaired digitally, letting researchers play the digitized discs with an emulated stylus. So far, the team has recovered a handful of 125 year old recordings from a team in Alexander Graham Bell's Volta laboratory. The all digital system gives researchers a hands-off way to recover audio from relic recordings without running the risk of damaging them in the process -- and no, they probably won't let you use it to listen to that beat up copy of the White Album you've had in your closet since eighth grade. Hit the source link to hear what they've recovered.

My thoughts:

There might be a huge market for this, especially among the baby boomer generation. This is not my work, but its still a very cool idea that's happening. Read below.

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A Network Engineer nightmare.