Entries from May 2004 ↓

In addition to fuel saving costs and lower emissions there is another benefit to switching to a hybrid vehicle. If you buy one this year you can claim a $1,500 deduction on your 2004 tax return, down from $2,000 for hybrids purchased in 2003. Next year, the deduction will drop to $1,000, and it’s scheduled to fall to $500 in 2006. It’s also important to note that because it’s a deduction the actual value varies, if you’re in the 33% tax bracket, a $1,500 deduction will reduce your tax bill by $495. If you’re in the 15% tax bracket, it’s worth $225.

Beyond the federal tax deduction many states also offer tax breaks. Colorado, for example, offers tax credits of about $3,000 on some models of hybrid cars. If you live in New York State you are eligeable to recieve a state income tax credit of $2,000, plus a partial refund of your sales tax.

It is important to note, that this is a tax credit, which is more valuable than a deduction because it provides a dollar-for-dollar reduction in your tax bill. So depending on where you live, after a year you could stand to cancel out the premium cost of a hybrid vehical thanks to fuel savings and tax reprieve. After that you can start saving money on fuel costs. Don’t forget your numbers assume that gas prices don’t rise anymore.

Ok, so my mouse at work bites and I decided to pick a new one up. I got the Logitech MX700 (the same as steve) it is a wireless optical mouse with a charging station which is nice. Ok, so to set it up in linux:

1. compile imwheel and install
2. add the following lines to the top of your ~/.xinitrc:
/usr/X11R6/bin/xmodmap -e “pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5″
imwheel -k -p -b “67″ -f &
3. Edit your /etc/X11/XF86Config file. Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Mouse0″
Driver “mouse”
Option “Protocol” “ExplorerPS/2″
Option “Device” “/dev/mouse”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “6 7″
Option “Buttons” “7″
EndSection
4. Lastly, you need to modify your ~/.imwheelrc file to your liking.

This is my imwheelrc file. That gives me working pgup and pgdown buttons on my mouse and scrolling. Still can’t use the applications or back/forward buttons. If someone figures that out let me know.

In other news I posted a bunch of old zn photos to my gallery.
http://unsure.org/albums/thezetanus

So, buzzco and I joined the gym on weds, today will be my second visit. Should be cool. Along with a general get less fat endevor I am also trying to get out in poughkeepsie more. Yesterday I went with the IBM Hiking Crew to Black Rock Forest down in Newburg/Beacon. It kicked my ass but was a pretty cool time. And the view rocked. You can find my photos here

Also bisti sent me a link the other day to a pretty cool site. http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/ I have no way to explain it except it’s damn cool and here is a sample result.

Ok, so here is the picture:

I have a 19″ LG Flat Panel, 15″ Viewsonic Flat Panel hooked up to a wee box. That machine is a p4 2.4ghz with a gig of ram, 250 gb SATA drive, dvd/cd-burner, with a geForce 5500 fx to push both displays. My iBook is off to the side. I also have a tvtuner hooked to the 15″ lcd, just in case. Also there is a little Sony BoomBox, it has a 5 disc changer, and takes audio in from my 40gb iPod.

So I got back last night from visiting good ‘ole potsdam. Hung out with ZN folk thursday, went out on the bar crawl with a little pregame thursday night with COSI and others. Friday was intersting too, spent the day with ZN guys, had a huge dinner and proceeded to pass out for the night. Missed both 40 hands and tristram. :/ Now I’m home and cleaning and thesising. And playing with simon, he’s a little crazy. We’re getting einstien for a few weeks, so he’ll have another cat to chill with. Also I put a bunch of photo’s online from the weekend.

ZN:
Hanging out: http://unsure.org/gallery/album03
Poor Dave: http://unsure.org/gallery/album04

COSI:
Just a handfull of photos: http://unsure.org/gallery/cosi

Road Trip:
I took a huge road trip a few years ago so i figured it was time to put these online: http://unsure.org/gallery/roadTrip

.
^ see that?
That is a concentrated ball of rage.

[Preface]: I wrote this last week when I was supposed to be doing other stuff. It’s a little odd but I need content.
So I haven’t really used OS/2 except when it is running on an HMC on a z/series which is not a good example of a working OS/2 environment. One of the things I’ve heard about it that was fantastic was graphical pipes. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I’ve been trying to imagine how that could work and be really useful. This is how I’m visualizing it.
When you are working or scripting in a normal unix environment you have access to lots of small useful programs that you can chain together to create tasks, cat, less, awk, etc. It would be nice to have precreated visual representations of these tools as widgets that you could visually chain together.
This kind of tool could be employed in two ways, one as visual scripting allowing an administrator (or a home user) to prototype scripts that they would like or need. You can imagine writing a pretty simple log parser quickly just dragging together and wiring up a visual cat to a visual sed object.
Perhaps this idea is more useful for actual application development. The tasks these little unix utilities handle for you are very useful in a CLI form but in many cases there is no equivalent widget for the same function. If you think about it scroll bars are similar to less, a text canvas is similar to cat, and a file selector embodies ls and cd. Where is the equivalent widget for sed and awk for example?
In either case this reminds me very much of javabeans (not enterprise javabeans). They allow you to visually create reusable interfaces yadda yadda. I think the missing piece of this is tying those reusable interfaces to unix tools that users are used to.
So there.