The Future of BadgerNet
I had the opportunity to sit in on a
WADEN meeting on the future of the
BadgerNet system.
It sounds like the
State of Wisconsin DOA has decided on using
H.264 for the next iteration of the BadgerNet system.
Many of the meeting participants were not in favor of H.264 or the manner in which it was chosen. The video quality is lower and audio lag time is greater with H.264 than with the current compression technology.
CUW is using H.264 over the Internet with acceptable quality. Indeed, the quality is higher that what we were getting with three channel-bonded ISDN lines. I think that the quality will be good enough.
Misc. Morning
I've been cleaning my room. Sorting cables took nearly two hours. All my unused cables are now neatly sorted into a box that now weighs 27.6 lbs. Someone please remind me why I have 19 ethernet cables ranging in length from 250 to 3 feet.
My bookshelf finely decided to bite the dust. Mom warned me not to get a cheap pressed sawdust bookshelf. Did I listen? No. Now I have to find a place for all those books. This has prompted more rearranging. The box of cables does not need to be in the cupboard, so it goes under the bed. This creates room in the cupboard for books. Problem Solved.
Later today I'll finish putting everything away and start cleaning the food tools & sink. I'll go back to getting
Faraway ready to be the new server for the
Auer Family web
Watch the local progressives
I enjoy reading many things published be the so called "progressives" even though I often find them to actually be regressing. The
Milwaukee IMC is one interesting place, so is
Vital Source.
My excuse for reading them is know thine enemy and such. Still, treat your opponents like they are your friends. No need to get rude like the
Ozaukee county Democrats who have
compared school to the KKK. Yep, that's why the minority student group (MSG) has the best room of any student group.
Anyway, back to the Milwaukee IMC. I don't see any vitriolic hate towards conservatives on their front page, that is a plus. In fact, the top story right now is complaining about some policies of John Edwards campaign. They actually seem to be equal opportunity idealists. How refreshing.
A day in the life
I pulled more wires today. Most of the wires are
CAT6 for
structured cabling in the
CUW library.
We have pulled nearly four miles of cable. I think that we are running 1.5 miles each day on average.
The person across the hall is making too much noise. I have to be at work at 8. Noisy telly. Noisy stereo. I'll be glad when they go back to their normal dorms when school starts.
Blog engine tweaks
I've been working on the back end for my weblog.
First, I moved from Movable Type to Blogger. Then I made a Blogger template which integrates well with the rest of my site.
Some little tweaks are still in order to get XHTML1 strict compliance. There are a few annoyances with look and feel. The top image is
still off by a few ems.
I'm not looking forward to hand-importing all my older posts from Movable Type. Blogger needs batch import support. I suppose I could write a program to get posts from MT and post them to Blogger using their respective APIs, but that is too much work for now. I may change my mind once I start to move posts over.
There was a great deal of hype in the 1950s over the nuclear discoveries of the 40s and 50s. Many great inventions came out of the nuclear era. Many more miracles were claimed to be possible but never materialized. I think that this is happening again with stem cell research.
Many miracles are claimed. Many have been proven true. Many more are probably fantasy. This is especially true with the embryonic vs. adult stem cells.
I just watched at senate hearing on C-SPAN. Many successes with adult stem cell research were presented. Not fanciful statements, but proof in the form of patient improvement.
Senator Wyden, D-Oregon, attempted to discredit the physical results of some scientists' research by digging into their personal beliefs. I got the impression that he believes, as an article of faith, that only embryonic stem cells are capable of helping people. He attempted to discredit the testimony of two of the presenters by dragging in their irrelevant personal beliefs. Those beliefs were obviously contrary to his own. He referenced NIH web pages that made statements contrary to those of the scientists. As if patient improvement is subject to the winds of politics.
Adult stem cells can heal patients. Embryonic stem cells can cause tumors. It is clear which approach is better for now.
Adult stem cell research is showing promising results. I'm concerned that it will be suppressed by those in favor of embryonic stem cell harvesting because it proves that you don't need to kill children to create miracles.