Blog

The Fighter/Attack series is one most people are familiar with, and probably the most well-known set of aircraft the United States Navy and Air Force produce. Unfortunately, the understood distinctions between each aircraft are not that well known. Most commonly, all fighter aircraft are referred to as an F-16. If you don’t believe me, just look up a few YouTube videos; you’ll be able to see variances in the details of the aircraft, but most of the videos will call the aircraft an F-16 … it’s sad, really. ...

Has there ever been a moment in your life in which you’ve seen something and your thought has been, “This is it … I’m about to die.” Perhaps you’ve been out hiking and you’ve seen some form of wildlife. Maybe it’s been when you stood on the edge of a massive cliff (I felt this way when I went to the Grand Canyon). If you’re like Jess, it’s probably been when you’ve seen a spider. ...

My brother and I have always had an obsession with airplanes, spacecraft, and NASA that borders on the unhealthy. Our obsessive endeavors have taken us annually to the Quad City Air Show, where we have drooled at our magnificent dreams hovering just before our eyes. This year’s edition of the Quad City Air Show is just around the corner—June 18-19. And as a tribute to those momentous dates, I have decided to release a special on each of the aircraft that will (cross your fingers) be present or performing at the Quad City Air Show this year. Today’s installment is the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, an enormous transport aircraft built for the United States Air Force during the Korean War. ...

Music, as defined by Webster, is “the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.” This has come to be the generally accepted definition of music. However, Webster also defines music as, “An agreeable sound.” Sound, by its second definition, is “the sensation perceived by the sense of hearing.” To hear is to “Perceive or apprehend by ear,” or to “Gain knowledge by hearing.” Hearing is defined as, “The process, function, or power of perceiving sound.” The definition seems a bit circular when you look at it, but essentially music is what your ear perceives as a pleasant sound. ...

For as long as I’ve been developing in Java, its lack of native support for OS X has always bothered me. This is more than likely an issue with Apple’s proprietary interface rather than Java, but, for the sake of being loyal to my Master, we’ll pretend the fault is on Java. I don’t want the default Java icon–I want my application’s icon to appear in the dock! And why does setTitle not actually change the name of my program in the menu bar? It still remains the name of the Java package that the main () method is contained within. I don’t want people to know the package layout of my software. ...

After hours of frustration and failure, I finally set up a USB bootable Linux distribution that worked on both a BIOS-based PC or EFI-based Apple system. Ten minutes later, I repeated the process with a second distribution. I’ve been perusing this fine internet of hours all day, reviewing and attempting to complete step-by-step tutorials that were supposed to allow me to do this. Unfortunately, none of them would actually work on my MacBook Pro, as they promised they would. After finally acquiring a resolution, I decided to post my own step-by-step set of instructions that also claimed to work for a BIOS system or an EFI system. Hopefully it actually works for you as it did for me :). ...

Joe Kmetz and I were on our way to Krista’s house over Turkey Break and I had designated Joe as the DJ for the trip. At some point during the drive we ended up listening to “Hotel California,” probably the best song the Eagles ever wrote and performed. This spawned a discussion as to the meaning of the song. Unfortunately, neither of us knew for sure, but I promised Joe I would investigate the song as soon as I had time. ...

After viewing a few John Cage videos on YouTube (like this one, this one, and possibly this one), I thought to myself, “What the heck … I could write this crap.” And so, using his song 4’33” as my deepest inspiration, I proceeded to do just that. In fact, I made an entire album, with philosophical song explanations and artwork to go along with it. ...

I was never really good at Chemistry. Better at it than at Biology, but still not exceptional. Granted, I earned an A when I took Chemistry in college, but this was from Kirkwood, which doesn’t have the highest academic prestige, so the A was easily achieved without completely understanding the material. The same goes for Biology. That being said, I may not have the fullest understanding of acids and bases and things breaking down. (In fact, if the previous sentence really makes no sense, that’s probably why. I was just trying to throw the words out to sound intelligent.) ...

After Al Gore invented the internet for us, we realized we needed a way to walk around the thousands upon thousands (and now billions upon billions) of sites that were out there. Meet the browser. To the best of my knowledge, Al Gore has never claimed part in inventing the browser, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Just for fun, and before we start to really rip apart the benchmarks of Google Chrome, let’s look at some old, failed browsers so we can scoff at them (by order of appearance). ...