Personal website for Eric Farman http://www.ef280z.com/ All original content created and owned by Eric Farman, between 1999 until the present day. All trademarks are owned by their respective companies. Well, with roughly half a dozen posts this year, one can imagine that much has been done other than writing nonsensical dribble here on my site. And you'd be right. I maintain that a "year in review" is of no use to anyone, myself included, so I'm not going to perform any such task here. But, as today was quite miserable outside, I opted to spend a bit of time catching up on photographs, in between loads of laundry. The photographs page is now populated with pictures up through the end of last year, which includes the trip I took with Chuck to the Grand Canyon. Whether I continue to add 2009 pictures this evening remains to be seen. One thing I would like to do, however, is update the Visual Lightbox engine to pick up some of the new features added in the seven or eight months since I first completed that page to my liking. If I could clean up the UI at the same time would be just gravy. http://www.ef280z.com/index.php?start=555 http://www.ef280z.com/index.php?start=555 Sat, 26 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST So, off and on, I've been messing around with the pictures page for this incarnation of the site, trying to find an engine and layout that I'm happy with. A few weeks ago, I think I finally found one in the Visual Lightbox tool. I've made some modifications to it to make it fit more nicely in the layout I have, and was pleased enough that I started working on the backlog of photographs. The last incarnation of this site didn't have any pictures newer than Summer 2007 included. It was never a big deal, since I barely wrote anything then anyway, but it was annoying. So, in the last few weeks, I've gone through the pictures since then, up to and including my trip to Chicago this past summer, and uploaded them to the site. Most importantly, I enabled the web page that will display them for whoever still reads this. If/when the weather turns to crap, I'll keep working my way up through the last ten months of photos. But I'm tired, and need to move onto something else tonight. One last thing... Author Emeritus Steve Shoe has a pair of blogs of his own, which I've added to the links section on the right. I suggest taking a peek at them, and seeing what he's up to in his professional life. http://www.ef280z.com/index.php?start=554 http://www.ef280z.com/index.php?start=554 Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT Found this in an old text file on my PC...The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C the temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas. Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have, then, that Heaven at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C. http://www.ef280z.com/index.php?start=553 http://www.ef280z.com/index.php?start=553 Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT I enjoy reading, that shouldn't be a surprise to those who know me. Earlier this week, I just completed Walter Isaacson's book Einstein: His Life and Universe. The book that I read prior to this one was David McCullough's John Adams, with the disclaimer that I didn't realize that it was a miniseries on HBO until about three minutes ago. Both books are comparable in length, and are written by well-known authors that have a degree of "popularity" to them. But that's about where the similarities end. The book on Adams was a tough read for me, largely because I like to understand everything that is going on in a book, but also because I'm trying to remember what I read the last time I picked up the book four days prior. But with that self-induced problem notwithstanding, it was well written and immensely informative. Adams is certainly a character from the Revolutionary Era that deserves more credit than he is ever given. His infamous temper notwithstanding, he was selfless in his work for the infant nation, and far more prudent (frugal?) in life than Jefferson. Always interesting to see the accusations of being a Tory directed at Adams, when Jefferson is far more dependent on the "luxuries" afforded to royalty. This book provides a very clear sense of the world at that point in time, especially the difficulties of travel for even the simplest (by today's standards) of journeys. Also interesting to find that some of the same divides in policy that started germinating around his time in office are the same ones wrestled with today. The Einstein book, however, I was disappointed in. I was also disappointed (again) in the NYTimes Bestseller list, which this book spent time as the #1 entry. It was an easier read, but largely because it seemed to repeat itself so often. So much time was spent stating (and re-stating) the obvious, and so little time given to the other characters that make appearances in his book, that one can't get a sense for the EVENTS transpiring around his life. Niels Bohr shows up several times in the book, but the long-running debates between Bohr and Einstein were discussed almost as an afterthought, and with little interest. Perhaps it is the result of Einstein's legacy in our popular American psyche that I was as let down as I was, but I don't think so. While I haven't read many other contemporary biographies (Theodore Roosevelt being the closest), other "larger than life" figures are often painted more fully and completely than this re-hashed pile of garbage. The one solitary nugget in this biography that I did find interesting was an unfinished letter Einstein wrote to his son, Hans Albert, on December 28, 1954:God's own country becomes stranger and stranger, but somehow they [Americans] manage to return to normality. Everything -- even lunacy -- is mass produced here. But everything goes out of fashion very quickly. http://www.ef280z.com/index.php?start=552 http://www.ef280z.com/index.php?start=552 Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT I don't have a full "blog" to write here. But I have lots of little things rolling in my head. And I'm going to dump these marbles out here, so that I have more room for useless crap in my brain. I noticed that I have a thing of Motorcraft automotive touch-up paint on the shelf with the deodorant, cologne, shaving stuff, travel-sized soap and shampoo, and bug spray. At a quick glance, it could be mistaken for a thing of nail polish. Obviously that's not something I would have for myself, but it does have a nice deep red color. That could give someone the wrong idea. I should move that. As soon as it stays above freezing for more than two days in a row, I have a laundry list of things I need to do. And it's driving me mad that I can't do them now. Why does a hotel near downtown Rochester cost 90 dollars, but a hotel in the same chain 15 miles away outside of town cost 120? Especially since both are off Interstate-level highways, so they're not exactly in the middle of nowhere. The new Lamb of God record is EVIL, but OH SO GOOD. It has been a long week at work, but you know what? I feel REALLY good about how it's gone. This year's gonna be interesting, and with luck, quite a bit of fun. A weekend or two ago, I started the picture page for this iteration of the site. It actually works, but I can't get the layout to work such that I'm truly happy with the results. Hindsight being what it is, I should never have put the menu on the right side of this page. My Sirius satellite radio is on the fritz. I don't think it's keeping a charge when in the car dock, but charges fine at home. This will be about the 40345th thing that is bothering me about their hardware. Believe me, I think satellite radio is the greatest thing ever, especially for long trips, but this hardware is a piece of crap, and sours me to the idea of buying another receiver. If I move that paint, I will NEVER find it again. http://www.ef280z.com/index.php?start=551 http://www.ef280z.com/index.php?start=551 Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EST