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via Acts of kindness rarely make the news.

Tax Day Repurposed To "Illuminate" Corporate Tax Evaders

via Tax Day Repurposed To "Illuminate" Corporate Tax Evaders

Bingham Landslide

[Image: Photo by Ravell Call, Deseret News, courtesy of KSL].



Utah's Bingham Canyon Mine, one of the largest active copper mines in the world, had a massive landslide last night, which makes for quite an extraordinary coppery blur against the orderly terraced geometry of the hole itself.



[Images: Photos by Ravell Call, Deseret News, courtesy of KSL].



"The copper-mining company [Kennecott] was aware of the impending slide ," local news station KSL reports, "and had warned residents near the mine Wednesday that a slide was possible any day."

Kennecott engineers had been detecting ground movement as far back as February. At the time, the movement amounted to just fractions of an inch, but it was enough for the company to close and relocate the mine's visitors center. "This is something that we had anticipated," [a company spokesperson] said of the slide. "We knew the slide was imminent. We had relocated machinery, we had rerouted roads, we had rerouted utilities, we had rerouted buildings."

But the ground had faster plans, and it rerouted the roads itself.



[Image: Photo by Ravell Call, Deseret News, courtesy of KSL].



Oddly enough, the Bingham Pit, as it's colloquially known, was the subject of one of the earliest posts on BLDGBLOG, as well as a recurring site of visual investigation in the work of photographer David Maisel. "These sites are the contemplative gardens of our time," Maisel writes, "places that offer the opportunity to reflect on who and what we are collectively, as a society."



It is an absolutely amazing landform perhaps made all the more otherworldly by the Herculean levels of terrestrial obliteration its creation required: planetary resurfacing performed on a jaw-dropping scale.



[Image: An aerial photo of the Bingham Canyon Mine, Utah, by David Maisel].



Last night's landslide only adds to its terrestrial interest, giving us hints of what fate might ultimately befall all the many mines, flattened mountains, hydroelectric dams, and other gigantic acts of human industry—open wounds, lasting far longer than cities—that currently surround us.



[Image: Photo by Ravell Call, Deseret News, courtesy of KSL].



After all, even our deepest mines will erase themselves, buried in flash floods of rock, carrying nearby architecture, roads, and all memories of themselves along with them.



(Bingham landslide photos originally spotted via Chris Rowan).



via Bingham Landslide

JPEGS: J Hooks with Handy Pegs

Leave it to Thabto to come up with a quirky name like Jpegs for these J-hooks.

Inspired by the classic wooden clothes peg, these hooks can manage just about anything from your keys to coats and bags and also wrangle your mail at the same time. Or, stick a love note in the clothes pin. Or lunch money!

Pop a photo of the hook’s owner to help keep your family’s things organized and separated.

Each Jpeg also come with powerful magnets so you can put them on your fridge to use for kids’ drawings or notes, and also hang a potholder or apron. There are tons of uses for these!

via JPEGS: J Hooks with Handy Pegs

All Adobe Updates

via fever.lobath.com’s Saved Items http://xkcd.com/1197/

Snowy Street

Snowy Street
Originally uploaded by durgis

First post with my new D3100!

Google Reader Pentadactyl Passkeys

To pass useful keyboard shortcuts to Google Reader through Pentadactyl.

The first command sets the passkeys property and takes a url, and list of keys.
The second command stores the options to your rc file, overwriting if necessary.

:set passkeys+='https://www\.google\.com/reader':nplmsSt
:mkp!

Properly Removing HTC News and Stocks

This article explains how to properly remove the HTC News and Stocks item from a HTC Desire without causing the Sync Accounts to be messed up. This is a fairly advanced topic, and should not be done without reading this entire article. No warranty of any kind is provided with these instructions, any consequences of you following these directions are yours to bear.

You will need the following tools:

1. A rooted HTC Desire, or maybe another HTC android device.
2. ADB, and some knowledge of a linux shell.
3. SQLite3, and some knowledge of SQL.
4. Text editor (vim, etc)

Shut down the phone and reboot into recovery mode.

Open a shell, and use ADB to pull the following files.

/data/system/accounts.db

/data/system/sync/accounts.xml

Open accounts.xml in a text editor and remove the News and Stocks entries.

...

Save the file and exit.

Open the sqlite database accounts.db and remove the News and Stocks entries from the accounts table.

sqlite> select * from accounts;
1|News|com.htc.newsreader|
2|Weather|com.htc.sync.provider.weather|
3|Stocks|com.htc.android.Stock|
sqlite> delete from accounts where _id = 1;
sqlite> delete from accounts where _id = 3;

You can also clear the authtokens, grants, and extras tables of related entries. The following is an example of clearing the authtokens table with the accounts_ids from above.

sqlite> delete from authtokens where accounts_id in (1,3);

Exit from SQLite.

Remove the following files from the /system/app directory.
Note: this list also includes the Footprints application.

DCSStock.apk
DCSStock.odex
Stock.apk
Stock.odex
com.htc.StockWidget.apk
com.htc.StockWidget.odex

NewsReader.apk
NewsReader.odex
com.htc.NewsReaderWidget.apk

com.htc.NewsReaderWidget.odex

HtcFootprints.apk
HtcFootprints.odex
HtcFootprintsWidget.apk
HtcFootprintsWidget.odex

Exit the ADB shell and click "reboot" on the phone.

DD

DD
Originally uploaded by durgis

Fishing Dart Weekend

Fishing Dart Weekend
Originally uploaded by durgis

Finally got the pictures from the fishing trip we went on during the extended weekend in the 'North Woods'.

Windows XP IIS SMTP Relay Setup

Install IIS from Windows component installer

Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services

(local computer) -> Default SMTP Virtual Server -> Domains

Right Click on Domains -> New -> Domain...

Select Remote, Next

Enter domain name (eg, google.com), Next

Right click on new domain name -> Properties

Check 'Allow incoming mail to be relayed to this domain'

Route Domain: Select 'Use DNS to route to this domain'

DD

DD
Originally uploaded by durgis

hbloader

I got the following error while attempting to compile hbloader (a boot loader for the mc68hc11 Handy Board)

~/Desktop/hbloader-1.23 $ make m6811-elf-as -o hbtalker.elf hbtalker.s make: m6811-elf-as: Command not found make: *** [hbtalker.s19] Error 127

I am on Ubuntu 8.10, and have installed the m68hc11 gcc compiler packages available in the Universe repository; which was done using the following command.

sudo aptitude install gcc-m68hc1x gdb-m68hc1x newlib-m68hc1x

I noticed that the Ubuntu packages had slightly different names for the compiler. m68hc11-as versus m6811-elf-as which was used in the Makefile. New makefile is as follows.

all: SRecord.o S19Parser.o hbloader hbtalker.s19

SRecord.o: SRecord.hpp SRecord.cpp
g++ -c SRecord.cpp

S19Parser.o: S19Parser.hpp S19Parser.cpp
g++ -c S19Parser.cpp

hbloader: hbloader.cpp S19Parser.o SRecord.o
g++ -o hbloader hbloader.cpp S19Parser.o SRecord.o \
&& echo "Succesful build."


hbtalker.s19: hbtalker.s
m68hc11-as -o hbtalker.elf hbtalker.s
m68hc11-objcopy --only-section=.text --only-section=.rodata \
--only-section=.vectors --only-section=.data \
--output-target=srec hbtalker.elf hbtalker.s19 \

m68hc11-objcopy --only-section=.text --only-section=.rodata \
--only-section=.vectors --only-section=.data \
--output-target=binary hbtalker.elf hbtalker.b


clean:
rm -f *.o a.out *.core *.s19 *.elf *.o *.b *.rel *.lst hbloader

Man I haven't played with my 68HC11 Handy Board in so long; never did I try it on Linux before.

First Bloom

First Bloom
Originally uploaded by durgis

Message:
The first fuchsia blossom of the year. I cleaned up the back yard today, just couldn't stay inside. Planted the lilies of the valley my mom dug up for me last fall.

Skype

Just got Skype working with pulse audio on my desktop in Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10. Installed the medibuntu package, and had to restart before the sounds would work properly.

Sound Preferences:
Sound Capture: HDA ATI SB ALC885 Analog (Alsa)

Audio Controls:
Playback:
Front Mic: 80% Volume
Front Mic Boost: 80% Volume

Recording:
Capture: Unmuted 1/3 volume

Switches:
Headphone checked
IEC958 Default PCM checked

Options:
Channel Mode: 6ch
Input Source (x3): Front Mic

Skype Audio Options:
All Pulse
Allow Skype to automatically adjust my mixer levels unchecked.

D D

D D
Originally uploaded by durgis

Front and back

Front and back
Originally uploaded by durgis

Message:
Shows the front and back boards. Right and left respectively. I should post a diagram later.

Side view of the joined boards

New Multimedia Message
Originally uploaded by durgis

Overview two boards clamped together.

New Multimedia Message
Originally uploaded by durgis

My first time using a router.

New Multimedia Message
Originally uploaded by durgis