Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway

Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway with Artist Ray Troll and paleontologist Kirk Johnson is a small exhibit on at the Burke Museum (University of Washington) from December 19, 2009 to May 31, 2010. Ray Troll is an artist whose distinctive work you may have seen before. In this exhibit Troll teams up with paleontologist Johnson for a whimsical yet serious look at evolution, extinction, and life on earth. Fossils are displayed side by side with Troll's original artwork depicting the animals represented by the fossils - often in funny situations. The concept of extinction is presented as a natural part of the cycle of life. In fact, over 97% of species that ever lived are now extinct. The average mammalian species lifespan (from origination to extinction) is about 1 million years. Paleontologists estimate that humans have been on the earth for about 200,000 years. Will we beat the average?

Windows 7 GodMode: Not Your Ordinary Control Panel

Heard of the Windows 7 ‘GodMode’? The name is a bit much, because, if I truly had God-like powers over my Windows 7 machine it wouldn’t crash unexpectedly or freeze. Maybe they should have called it something like ‘ConvenientAccessModeForControlPanelsCheatsheet’ but then again maybe not. Anyways, ‘GodMode’ goes like this: you create a folder (anywhere) and you give it the specific name XXXXX.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} where XXXXX could be ‘GodMode’ or ‘Gaia’ or ‘AgnosticPowerUser’. The folder icon changes to an administrative control-like icon and you have access to lots (all?) control panel settings. Given that Start Menu in Windows 7 has gotten much better with finding phrases (e.g. try “power plan”) the GodMode may not be so relevant?

GodMode seems to devolve (nice pun, huh?) to be just a general trick where if you know the GUID to a particular control panel then you can use it in the same way. For example from my 32 bit Windows 7 machine these will work:

Network Connections.{7007ACC7-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E}
Wireless Networks.{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87}
Power Options.{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}

To find the GUID to use, search your registry for the phrase “.ControlPanel” and you’ll find references to control panels and you can find out the appropriate GUID. This is left as an exercise to the reader. Note that fooling around in the registry can have unwanted consequences so be careful and read up on good practices for working in the registry. Here's what the full GodMode panel looks like:


Update: 2017-02-21. This still appears to work in Windows 10.

Update: 2023-08-10. This still appears to work in Windows 11 Pro.

Sonos – Je Te Veux

We just installed Sonos and in a word it’s fantastic! What’s Sonos? Sonos is music at your fingertips, any room of the house. The real magic (besides the wireless technology) is the touch-sensitive Sonos Controller. From the intuitively designed controller interface you can quickly access your music archives or Pandora or Rhapsody to name a few of the possible services or just plain old radio. The controller goes where you go around the house. Stop, start, change music, adjust volumes, and mute with a few taps of the finger. Each zone (or room) of the house if you like can be playing something different.

Within a matter of a few seconds I set up a Philip Glass Radio on Pandora and was loving it. As I write this, I’m listening to El Chicano (a little Tell Her She’s Lovely doesn’t hurt does it?) via Rhapsody. Last night I was enthralled with Camille’s latest relase Music Hole (very interesting, Money Note). The real deal cincher was when I looked for the obscure-ish Erik Satie song Je Te Veux (here’s a video performance of the song) and discovered an album of Satie work that I’m not sure I would have found otherwise, Sport & Vergnügen.

Sonos brings the fun of music discovery back. It makes music immediate and very accessible with very little friction. That said, you still have to do a little work to let Sonos see the music you own. We use an HP MediaSmart server to host our media files. And, there is a gotcha with WAV file formats in that Sonos doesn’t preserve album order. The solution is to use FLAC format.

Knock, Knock, Who’s There? Edward Jones.

The other day the doorbell rang and we thought oh it’s one of those darn door-to-door religious nuts, but we answered it anyways. Well, well, it wasn’t someone warning us about the end of the earth, but rather advertising financial advising services. Whoa. We don’t live in that upscale of a neighborhood. After a little research it seems it is common with Edward Jones. Still a bit weird for my taste. The knocker even followed up with a Christmas card.

The 2010 Lunchbox

The phrase we’d like to kick off 2010 with is this: don’t poop in someone’s lunchbox. This was a phrase that came up over and over New Year’s Eve night with some friends as we joked around. The next day we kept saying it and realized that it is a pretty good guiding principle. If you are about to dump on someone’s ideas, manner of being, or general happiness, think twice before you do it. Please, don’t poop in another’s lunchbox.

Goodbye Peppermint Stick

I suppose we should be saying goodbye to 2009 and the decade, but we have nothing interesting at this time to say about that. However, we will take this opportunity to mention a subject near and dear to us: chocolate. By far, the best chocolate we’ve had this holiday season has been the Theo Chocolate Peppermint Stick 70% chocolate bar. Who could resist them? A perfect blend of dark chocolate and peppermint, not cloying or overpowering as sometimes peppermint-infused chocolate can be. From what I understand, this chocolate bar was made for Bartell Drug. We could rely on getting them at Theo’s showroom in November and most of December but when they ran out just before Christmas, frantic calls to Bartell began. We were able to secure a small stash to last us for a few weeks. When the last of our peppermint stick bars run out, it’s back to the Jane Goodall 70% bar, which is fantastic anyways – so that’s not so bad.