Ross Burtonhttp://www.burtonini.com/blogA potted account of Ross' lifeen60Ross BurtonGod's Secret Formulalife/gods-secret-formula-20030916http://www.burtonini.com/blog/life/gods-secret-formula-20030916So I've borrowed this book called God's Secret Formula by Dr. Peter Plichta. It claims to be an amazing piece ... So I've borrowed this book called God's Secret Formula by Dr. Peter Plichta. It claims to be an amazing piece of work proving that prime numbers are the fundamental basis of the universe, that the number 19 links everything, etc etc. Most amusing.

I'd probably be less skeptical about the book if I hadn't been noticing serious errors in the book all day. He is claiming that without the moon there would be no tides (the sun effects the tides too); that the number of days in an average pregnancy and the difference between 0° Celsius and absolute zero are the same, 273 (Celsius is an arbitrary scale); and that 361 is "nearly" 360. The man is a nutcase.

Sadly Googling for his name produces hundred of fanboy sites, but no critical analysis of his work. Anyone know of any links? I'd like to see how many more incorrect statements he has claimed as "truth".

]]>/life2003-09-16T20:53:58ZA Common Bugcomputers/sound-juicer/id3tag-20030916http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/sound-juicer/id3tag-20030916Will everyone who is about to file a bug with Sound Juicer about how it crashes when its has extracted ... Will everyone who is about to file a bug with Sound Juicer about how it crashes when its has extracted a song please compare their bug report with this one. If its the same bug, please don't file it again. Bastien has been very good with marking these bugs as duplicates, and I'm sure he is getting bored now.

Everytime you file a duplicate bug, God kills a kitten.

Please, think of the kittens.

]]>/computers/sound-juicer2003-09-16T20:10:37ZSound Juicer 0.5.3computers/sound-juicer/sj-0.5.3http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/sound-juicer/sj-0.5.3Sound Juicer "Mr. Nitpicky? Mr. Patch Machine more like" 0.5.3 is out -- download the tarball here . Debian packages ... Sound Juicer "Mr. Nitpicky? Mr. Patch Machine more like" 0.5.3 is out -- download the tarball here. Debian packages ready now, before the Mandrake ones for once!

What's New:

  • Encode the total number of tracks on the album in the metadata (Bastien Nocera)
  • Rewrite MusicBrainz lookup so that metadata is returned in a signal.
  • Actually set the device to use when extracting (BN, but I don't think he knew it)
  • Don't warn when there is no CD in the drive on startup (BN)
  • Poll for a CD, instead of relying on the Reread button (BN)
  • Exit when no CD drives are detected
  • Don't crash when editing track names when lookup failed (Mike Hearn)
  • Add filename tags for lowercased forms of the title/artist/etc. (BN)
  • Warn when GStreamer plugins are not available (BN)
  • Never use mpegaudio plugin, as it is MPEG2 and sucks (BN)
  • Only display track listing for a audio CD (BN)
  • .desktop file specified Bugzilla information
  • Eject works on FreeBSD
]]>/computers/sound-juicer2003-09-16T15:46:00Z