The Sake Adventure, Part 1

By Jim, on July 30th, 2007%

Sake, as you probably know, is commonly referred to as “Japanese rice wine.” The term wine here is a misnomer, as wine is made from fermented fruit, and rice is a grain. The common term for a drink made from fermented grain is beer. Nomenclature aside, I’ve long enjoyed this particular beverage.

Shortly after I . . . → Read More: The Sake Adventure, Part 1

2 comments - (Comments are closed)   Homebrew

Web Search Ramblings

By Jim, on July 27th, 2007%

Most people reading this blog understand conceptually how Google and other search engines work. In brief, they have a program called a Web crawler that goes from one Web site to the next, downloading and storing pages, and extracting links to other pages. A separate process reads the stored documents and creates an inverted index . . . → Read More: Web Search Ramblings

Comments are closed   Computers, Web Crawling

Hypocrisy? In Congress?

By Jim, on July 25th, 2007%

Am I the only one who recognizes the hypocrisy in these “withdraw the troops” bills that continue to be introduced in Congress? I’ll grant that our involvement in Iraq has become an untenable situation, but anybody with brains (and, as much as I distrust our Congresscritters, I don’t for a minute think they’re stupid) knows . . . → Read More: Hypocrisy? In Congress?

One comment - (Comments are closed)   Idiocy

Magnetic Conditioning of your Wine

By Jim, on July 23rd, 2007%

Over the weekend I visited a place called Water 2 Wine, where you can make your own wine. They help you make your wine, handle the fermentation for you, and even assist in designing custom labels. It’s cheaper than buying the wine in a liquor store, but much more expensive than making it yourself in . . . → Read More: Magnetic Conditioning of your Wine

One comment - (Comments are closed)   Idiocy

Too Much Memory

By Jim, on July 10th, 2007%

More memory is a good thing, right? Not necessarily. I upgraded my machine last week from four gigabytes of RAM to six (I’m waiting for the replacement two gigabytes to make it eight). Now TextPad won’t load a one-gigabyte file. It used to, back when I only had four gigs of memory. But not now. . . . → Read More: Too Much Memory

One comment - (Comments are closed)   Computers, Idiocy, Programming

Memory Test

By Jim, on July 3rd, 2007%

Memory prices are really coming down. Three months ago we paid about $80 per gigabyte for the one-gigabyte sticks. The two-gig sticks were more than double that–$175 or so. Last week we ordered some two-gig sticks to upgrade a couple of machines. We paid about $80 each, with shipping. One-gigabyte memory sticks are now available . . . → Read More: Memory Test

One comment - (Comments are closed)   Computers