Feb 17 2012

What do you call a family in the animal kingdom

There was a discussion at work the other day about what you call the group of eggs / babies from a particular bird.  None of us could remember the specific term for that species, though we were sure that it was specific and not just a generic “chick” term.  One of the group did some research and came up with a huge list of various animals and what you call their offspring or a group of them.

So for your enjoyment:

aardvark: aarmory
albatross: rookery
alligator: congregation
alpaca: flock, herd
ant: colony, nest, army, swarm, bike
antelope: herd, cluster
ape: shrewdness, troop
***: pace, drove, herd, coffle
auk: colony, flock, raft
baboon: troop, flange, congress, tribe
badger: cete, colony, set, company
barracuda: battery
bass: shoal, fleet
bat: colony, cloud
bear: sleuth, sloth, slought, maul
beaver: family, lodge, colony
bee: colony, grist, hum, swarm, hive, cluster
beetle: swarm
bird (general): fleet, parcel, dissimulation, flight, volery, cast, flock, aviary
bison: herd, troop, gang, thunder
bittern: sedge, flock, siege
bloodhound: sute
boar: singular, sounder, herd
bovine: herd
buffalo: gang, troop, herd, obstinacy
bullfinch: bellowing
bullock: drove
butterfly: rabble, flight, swarm
buzzard: wake, flock
camel: flock, train, caravan, herd
caribou: herd
cat: clowder, clutter, pounce, cluster, colony, glorying, destruction (wild cats)
caterpillar: army, nest
cattle: drove, herd, bow, bunch, draft, drift, mob
cheetah: coalition
chicken: brood, clutch, flock, peep, hatching, battery
chimpanzee: cartload
chinchilla: colony
clam: bed, flaccidity
cockroach: intrusion, swarm
cod: lap, school
colt: rake, rage
coot: cover
cow: herd, drove, pack, team
coyote: pack, rout
crab: cast
crane: sedge, siege, flock, herd
cricket: orchestra
crocodile: bask, nest, congregation, float
crow: murder, horde, parcel, hover, muster
deer: herd, leash, bevy, game, quarry, bunch, mob, parcel
dog: gang, legion, kennel, pack (wild), litter (young)
dolphin: team, school, pod, herd
donkey: drove, herd, pace
dove: dule, duet, flight, troop
duck: brace, flock, gaggle, paddling, team, raft, badling, bunch, waddling
eagle: convocation, brood, aerie
eel: swarm, bed. draft, wisp, knot
elephant: herd, host, flock, parade, memory
elk: gang, herd
falcon: passager, cast
ferret: business, cast
finch: charm, chirm, trembling, trimming
fish (general): school, shoal, draft, nest, cast, draught, run, catch, drift, haul
flamingo: stand, flamboyance
fly: business, hatch, swarm, community, cloud, grist
flying fish: glide
fowl: plump
fox: leash, skulk, earth, troop
frog: army, colony, froggery, knot
gerbil: horde
giraffe: tower, troop, corps, herd, group, stretch
gnat: cloud, horde, swarm, plague
gnu: herd
goat: tribe, trip, flock, herd
goldfinch: charm, chattering, drum, troubling, vein
goldfish: troubling
goose: flock, gaggle, skein, line, wedge, nide
gorilla: band
grasshopper: cloud, cluster
greyhound: gallop, leash
grouse: covey, pack, brace, drumming
guinea pig: group
gull: colony, pack
hamster: horde
hare: down, husk, leap, , leash, flick, kindle, drove, warren
hawk: cast, kettle, boil, leash, mews, aerie
hedgehog: nest, array, prickle
hen: brood, battery, parcel, roost, mews
heron: siege, sedge
herring: army, glean, shoal
hippopotamuses: bloat, pod, herd, huddle
hog: drift, drove, herd
hornet: nest, bike, swarm
horse: harras, herd, pair, team, stud, field, mob, troop
hound: cry, mute, pack, kennel
hummingbird: charm, chattering, drum, hover, troubling
hyena: cackle, clan
impala: herd
jackrabbit: husk
jellyfish: smack, brood, smuth, smuck, fluther
kangaroo: mob, troop, herd
kitten: kindle, kendle, litter, intrigue
lark: ascension, exaltation, bevy, flight
lemur: group
leopard: leap, prowl
lice: flock
lion: pride, tribe, sault, sowse
llama: herd
locust: host, plague, swarm, cloud
louse: colony, infestation, lice
mackerel: school, shoal
magpie: tiding, gulp, murder, charm, tittering, flock
mallard: sord, brace, puddling, flush
manatee: herd
marten: richness
minnow: shoal, steam, swarm
mole: labor, company, movement
monkey: troop, barrel, tribe, cartload
moose: herd
mosquito: scourge, swarm
mouse: nest, colony, harvest, horde, mischief
mule: barren, pack, span, rake
nighthawk: kettle
nightingale: watch, flock, route, match
orangutan: buffoonery
ostrich: flock
otter: romp, bevy, lodge, family, raft
owl: parliament, stare
ox: yoke, team, drove, herd, nye
oyster: bed, hive, cast, culch
parrot: company, flock, prattle
partridge: covey, bew
peacock: muster, ostentation, pride
penguin: colony, rookery, parade, parcel
pheasant: bouquet, nest, nide, nye, brood, covey
pig: drove, litter, drift, flock, hoggery, herd, sounder
pigeon: flight, loft, flock, dropping
plover: congregation, wing, leash
polar bear: aurora, pack
polecat: chine
pony: string
porcupine: prickle, family
porpoise: school, crowd, herd, pod
possum: passel
prairie dog: coterie, town
quail: bevy, covey, drift
rabbit: colony, nest, warren, bevy, bury, drove
racoon: nursery, mask
raptor: cauldron, kettle
rat: horde, mischief, rabble
raven: unkindness, congress, conspiracy, parliament
reindeer: herd
rhinoceros: crash, herd
rook: building, shoal, congregation, pack, parliament
salmon: run, bind, gib, school, shoal
sardine: family
scorpion: bed, nest, colony
sea horse: herd
seal: pod, herd, school, trip, rookery, harem, team
shark: shiver, school, shoal
sheep: drove, flock, herd, drift, fold, mob, pack, trip
skunk: stench, surfeit
snail: escargatoire, rout, walk
snake: bed, knot, den, pit, nest, slither
snipe: walk, wisp
sparrow: host, flight, quarrel, tribe
spider: cluster, clutter, venom
squirrel: dray, scurry, colony
starling: murmuration, cloud, chattering, clutter
stork: mustering, flight
swallow: flight, rush, swoop
swan: bevy, wedge, flock, game, team, ballet, regatta
swine: drift, sounder, herd
swordfish: flotilla
termite: colony
tiger: streak, ambush, hide. ambush
toad: knot, nest, knob, lump
tortoise: creep
trout: hover, leash, troup
turkey: rafter, posse, gang, dole, flock, raffle
turtle: bale, bevy, nest, dule, turn
turtle dove: pitying
toucan: durante
viper: nest, den
vulture: wake
wallaby: mob
walrus: pod, herd, huddle
wasp: nest, knot, bike, swarm, colony, pail
weasel: pack, gang, sneak
whale: gam, herd, grind, pod, shoal, school, mob
wild boar: sounder
wolf: pack, rout, route, horde
wombat: mob, warren
woodcock: fall, covey, plump
woodpecker: descent, gatling
worm: bed, bunch, clew
wren: herd
yak: herd
zebra: herd, cohorts, crossing, stripe

Feb 14 2012

Happiness, productivity, and brain chemistry

This is a great video sent to me by a friend (thanks Jeff!).  Shawn Achor not only has some really interesting points about the way the brain responds to being happy, but he’s quite funny too!

Flash seems to have some odd behavior with "Ted" videos – you'll probably get an error about not being able to load languages.  Just click OK, the video will play just fine anyway.

Feb 5 2012

WordPress migration from Windows 2003 IIS to a Linux Ubuntu appliance (Debian)

This took me quite a while, and you may have noticed the downtime on this site as a result.  I thought I’d share my process and solutions in case anybody else is trying to do something similar.  These are my working notes from the migration, so please excuse any lack of polish.  Word to the wise: Don’t do this if you are in a hurry.

  • Installed Windows 2008 R2 on a brand-new box, then enabled HyperV 
  • Created a virtual server, and installed a wordpress (turnkeylinux) appliance from .ISO file.  I set this up for 256M and gave it a modest amount of disk space.
  • Configured the virtual to have a legacy NIC and removed the Virtual NIC, as Ubuntu doesn’t support the virtual NICs yet.
  • From wordpress admin on my old server, exported to an XML file (and checked "include content")
  • Using wordpress admin on new appliance, imported the XML file. This set up WP with just IP addresses instead of machine names, which is perfect for now.
  • Installed Arjuna theme on new WP (I wanted the new one to look exactly like the old one)
  • On checking wp_content/uploads, it looks like the export/import process already moved those images and things – a pleasant surprise. I thought I was going to have to transfer those manually.
  • In my browser, I opened new and old sites in different tabs (using IP addresses), and marched down "plugins" – adding plugins to new box, and configuring them where possible.  I have quite a lot of plugins (about 25) so this took a while.  Also, I suspect these plugins are what was contributing to my memory/swap usage issues below.
  • Using Firefox/FireFTP, transferred contents of wordpress /HLIC folder to the new box. This folder contains images cached by one of the plugins (If I link to an image on the web, this plugin grabs a copy, puts it in this cache folder, then updates the html so I am not reliant on external websites to serve those images).
  • Created old.inaneworld.com DNS and pointed to the old server, added to IIS. As of today that old server is still alive, so you can hit it if you want to compare, though obviously no content is being updated there.  I’ll probably decommission that next month.
  • Changed hostname of linux box to www.inaneworld.com
  • Edited /etc/postfix/main.cf so that outgoing emails would be happier (then did "postfix reload"). Changed "myhostname" to inaneworld.com – this makes outgoing email come from user@inaneworld.com
  • I upgraded the virtual to use 600M of RAM but I’m still having "hang" problems.  Ubuntu and HyperV don’t play well together so you can’t make it a “dynamic memory” virtual.  Ubuntu will never request more memory, so it’ll stay at whatever your starting allocation was.
  • Memory usage seems fine (check with "top"), but swap seems exhausted. This makes little sense, but I'm adding more swap via a swap FILE:
    • apt-get install dphys-swapfile
  • This seemed to help, but didn’t solve the hang problem.  Technically, it doesn’t “hang” anymore, it just responds so slowly that you think it’s hung.
  • From net.wisdom, and my own observation, the default apache2 configuration is very memory hungry, so tweaks are needed:
    • The Apache2 config file is /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
    • I Changed KeepAliveTimeout to 3
    • In the mpm_prefork_module section, I made it look like this:
      • StartServers 1
        MinSpareServers 1
        MaxSpareServers 5
        MaxClients 50
        MaxRequestsPerChild 5000
    • Then, I restarted apache:
      • /etc/rc6.d/K09apache2 stop
      • /etc/rc6.d/K09apache2 start
  • Note, to keep an eye on this, fire up "top", and then type G followed by 3 (must be capital G). This displays memory usage in descending order.

It's been a couple of weeks now and I have no hangs, and performance seems to be good!  I hope this information will be helpful, and best of luck to you in porting YOUR blog!

Feb 3 2012

“The Strange Game”, our latest release: You Can Run

As you probably know, I’m involved in a music project called “The Strange Game” with my friend Ellis. 

We have a new song called “You Can Run” which we released late last night.  Click HERE to give it a listen, and we’d love to know what you think.

This has also been released on Jango.com and ReverbNation.com

Also, while I’m at it, our song “In The Bedroom” was released recently on those sites, plus is available for purchase as a single on iTunes

Feb 2 2012

Dangerous toys from our youth

Continuing on the theme of the last couple of posts, let’s reflect back on toys we had as kids which parents wouldn’t DREAM of letting near their fragile Gen-BW kids these days.

I ran across a blog (The Poop) which had a great article on this: http://blog.sfgate.com/parenting/2007/08/17/recalling-toys-from-my-youth/

For those of you too lazy to click the link, we were exposed to the following horrors: BB guns, Explosives (Model rockets and chemistry sets), Firestarters (Easy Bake Oven, Lite Brite), Cutters (Snoopy Sno Cone machine), Anxiety-Attack Provokers (Perfection, Operation), Heart Breakers (Sea monkeys, x-ray glasses, pretty much anything you could order from a comic book), Low Tech (sharp sticks)

I can’t believe we are still alive!

Jan 31 2012

Windows Azure – MSDN Spending limit

Nicely done, Microsoft!  Um, but…

With the MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) subscription, you get a certain amount of Azure computing time to play with to learn how it works and develop applications.  Pretty neat stuff!

One issue was that if you accidentally used too much in terms of time/resources, you’d get billed.  Microsoft has handily solved this by imposing a spending limit of $0 on your account (see their blurb on this HERE).  If you accidentally go over your monthly freebie allotment, they shut your stuff down until next month. 

If you want to make sure your stuff never gets shut down and you are OK with getting billed, then you can remove this “spending limit”. 

However… that’s when a little Microsoft gremlin creeps out of the web page and says “once removed, the Spending Limit feature cannot be re-enabled”… um… excuse me?  Are we (well respected Microsoft software developers) to believe that it is harder to flip a bit to 1 in our account record than it is to flip it to 0?  How absurd.

If I were in charge, it wouldn’t work this way.  I would allow the user to set an arbitrary spending limit ($0 as well as anything else).  This spending limit could be set/reset by the user at any time.  Now THAT would be a very handy solution.

So, bottom line for Microsoft… A+ for the concept, C- for the execution.

Jan 31 2012

To all the kids who were born in the 1930’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s!!

Ok, so this isn’t original, it’s been kicking around the net in one form or another, but my previous post reminded me about it so instead if listening to me whine, here it is for your convenience:

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because……

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!   CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

Jan 27 2012

Generation “Bubble Wrap” – Gen BW

We had the “baby boomers”, then “Generation X”, then “Generation Y”… I think today’s crop of kiddies should be called “Generation Bubble Wrap” (or “Generation BW”).  It appalls me how ridiculously over protective parents are these days.  Surprisingly enough, I even have a couple of examples :-p

In an elevator today, I rode up with a woman and her small child.  Of course, the child naturally wants to push the button for the floor, so Mom says “push 5”.  The child reaches out and Mom shrieks “NO!!! Don’t use your finger, use your elbow!”  ROFL  Really?  It was one of the hardest things for me not to bust up and ridicule the woman.  So, I’m doing it here instead.  As I mentioned in my Quick! Santiize That! posting, immune systems are wonderful things, but they need exercise.  This poor kid is probably kept drenched in hand sanitizer 24×7 based on Mom’s response.  I predict the kid will grow up needing therapy for obsessive compulsion disorders like constant hand-washing, and will probably die an early death by her poor body being attacked by some small bacteria that manages to get through, which MY generation wouldn’t even notice because we actually have an immune system.  Do you remember the ending to War of the Worlds?  That’s how the aliens died.

Last week, my wife and I were watching HouseHunters (or something similar) on TV.  If you haven’t seen the show, the format is that some person or couple is shown 3 houses (on camera, who knows how many they really see), and then they decide between them.  The heart-palpitating fun for the viewers is to try to guess which one they are going to pick.  It’s seriously nail-biting stuff, folks.  Anyhow, I digress… This couple was looking at the 3 homes and comparing the pros/cons.  There was one house in the group which met all of their requirements wonderfully, but they didn’t get it because it had a couple of stairs (split-level), and (gasp) sharp corners on things (fireplace, breakfast bar, etc), and they were worried about their child.  We had to hit pause, look at each other and say “Really?  What complete morons”.  I mean sure, I can see that you might want to avoid a house with a large 200ft unfenced sink-hole right in the middle of the back yard, but come ON now.   Short of wrapping little Tommy in bubble wrap after dressing him in the morning, the kid really needs to learn to be careful not to run into things, not to touch hot stoves, etc, etc.  What’s the best way to learn?  Experience.  Do it once, it hurts, and the kid doesn’t do it again.

From checking around with other old farts in my generation, it seems to be fairly common that we weren’t molly-coddled as kids.  We’re pretty healthy adults as a result, and the amazing thing is that most of us have both of our eyes, most of our fingers, limbs, etc.

On the other hand, when I think about it from a survival angle, I guess I’m glad that this generation will be such wimpy losers.  I’ll never have to worry about getting mugged by young thugs when I’m pushing my walker down the street.  I’ll just sneeze and that’ll send them shrieking and running, Purell bottles a-pumpin’