Flutterby™! From 2003-03-01 to 2003-03-31

From Instapundit: The next level in branding Synergy.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Art & Culture Toys ]

We saw Russian Ark last night. The entire movie is one continuous shot in The Hermitage. It's a fantastic acheivement, amazing choreography and hand-held camera work come together in a film that really needed a hell of a lot more background of the history of Russia for us to get. Great eye candy, but after a while it was just more events that we weren't making the connections for. If you've got a good background for Russian history, this might be for you. If you love period costume, likewise. Otherwise I thought it was a movie done because they could do it, an incredible accomplishment, but low on the entertainment scale.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Movies ]

After a day in San Francisco, we headed over to Berkeley to catch the opening of Sacred Profanities. It was somewhat disappointing. The stand-outs were the David Steinberg photographs, but in general the rest of the images and sculpture focused on the genitals and missed the emotion. The party was a little too crowded, so we bailed to go to the movies back in Marin.

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture Bay Area California Culture ]

Did my first caving and rapels this weekend. What a rush! Fellow Burners Clem and Pam were great guides. The first time over the edge is an insane adrenaline rush, the second time is a blast. I'm a little sore this morning, but feel great and can't wait to do it again. This pic is a time exposure, inspired by Dan's pics.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

Over at Sgt Stryker's Daily Briefing there's a report of a woman in uniform getting hassled in Oakland. I'm still of the opinion that war in Iraq is inevitable, but mainly because of the mistakes of a bunch of bozos. Anyway, having become more aware recently of what various people will give to maintain the culture that I call home, I must remember to personally thank the next person I see in uniform.

Speaking of which, Dori links to a report that quite a few of the British "human shields" are leaving Baghdad now that they've realized that they don't get any say in what they're shielding, and are in reality going to be positioned around mixed-use or military installations. Again, over at SSDB, Sparkey looks at the Geneva convention and asks "Human Shields or Mercenaries?".

[ related topics: Bay Area History Sociology Current Events California Culture War ]

Brad is sponsoring the "Best Heterosexual Weblog" category over at the Anti-Bloggies. I don't generally go in for the whole weblog scene any more, but since Brad has graciously offered to throw in six beers I'm sure y'all will do the right thing when voting opens on March 15^th.

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture Weblogs ]

It's totally out of left field and completely hilarious. If you enjoy asian films of any kind you will like this. There are several sub stories that interleave at a level you almost never see anymore. It has something for everyone whether it be using live shrimp as a sexual prop or cooking the perfect ramen. Tampopo is a 10 out of 10 on the flutterby wetness scale. It's all good.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Food Theater & Plays ]

From Sony Classics (Think Crouching Tigger Hidden Dragon) comes this complete and utter let down of a film. I had high expectations I admit when I rented this film but I am very good at adjusting those expectations as most of the scotchnight crowd will attest. This film still sucked in those forgining eyes. The protagonist is a complete tool and the entire film is the boring middle part where you wait for something to happen. The director heavy handly smacks some lesson of morality at you but ummm we have the 700 Club for that. Those of you using me as a contrarian indicator go rent Beijing Bicycle and enjoy.

[ related topics: Movies Pedal Power ]

While your patching your Sendmail security holes. You might take a look at this rather clever way to Cause spammers pain by bogging down their connections. I like it.

[ related topics: Open Source ]

Okay, I can say pretty much unequivocally that solder is not my favorite language. I've spent the day diddling about with various hardware issues, I'm trying to set up a mouse to have an optical input instead of a button, and this should be trivial, but I'm never sure whether my IR LED is lit, and when I give it the current the specs say it wants my 1/4 Watt resistor gets amazingly hot (but the voltage drop over the LED looks right), and the change in voltage across my phototransistor is so slight that I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, 'cause I know all this stuff was easy when I did it in the game port of an Apple ][ back in High School for physics class, and... sigh. At this point I'm about ready to go back to mechanical switches.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Children and growing up Hardware Hackery Dan's Life ]

Through the SHS announcement mailing list, I learned that audible.com has a weekly radio broadcast hosted by Susie Bright. You can download (using their own plugin app - which doesn't work with Mozilla) each show to any of a number of portables or for burning to a CD.

The CD method made my morning bus trip to school much more fun. Next on the agenda (in addition to next week's show) is The Silmarillion. If this all goes well I'm looking at eventually getting the Audible Advisor Springboard module for my Visor.

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture Technology and Culture Journalism and Media ]

So the name's been elided 'cause with the situation going tenser this person would probably shy away from public attention and I haven't explicitly asked for permission to talk about this recently, but yesterday a couple of us get a response to a "ping" email saying basically "I'm fine, I'm in Haifa which should be fairly safe 'cause nothing's going on here". This morning SF Gate reports "15+ killed in Haifa blast". Said person in Haifa is a little more cool-headed about such things than us Northern California yuppies, but the (with apologies to Warren Zevon) "what combination of lawyers, guns or money do you need?" emails went out this morning. I expect to get a "no worries" email back soon, but here in my plush existence I worry.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area Current Events Guns Currency ]

Doc linked to Bernie's write-up of Cuboro. When I was a kid, our doctor's office had some marble race track contraptions that had been carved out of solid logs. The Cuboro toys are little wood blocks with holes and grooves cut in them that let you build your tracks on the fly. Pricey, and my personal construction tastes have turned to more raw materials, but they look like fun.

[ related topics: Nostalgia Weblogs Health Machinery Fabrication ]

Snicker. The Shadow sent me Walmart.com - The Hobbit: Or, There and Back Again. They seem to be having a little problem with... well... something. I hate to give away the gag before the link, but this one isn't going to last long. The description reads:

On the Battersea Reach of the Thames, a mixed bag of eccentrics live in houseboats. Belonging to neither land nor sea, they belong to one another. There is Maurice, a homosexual prostitute; Richard, a buttoned- up ex-navy man; but most of all there's Nenna, the struggling mother of two wild little girls. How each of their lives complicates the others is the stuff of this perfect little novel.The adventures of the well-to-do hobbit, Bilbo, Baggins, who lived happily in his comfortable home until a wandering wizard granted his wish.

Boxed hardcover bound in green leatherette with gold and red foil stamping, two-color typography, and five full-page color illustrations by the author

[ related topics: Humor Books tolkien moron ]

Okay, thanks to some goading from Brian I solved my frustration. So, to hook up an optical switch for a mouse button on a "Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical" OEM version, take off the two feet furthest from cord end of the mouse, unscrew those screws, under the two feet closest to the cord there are two plastic tabs, and the top comes off. Clip the aesthetic LED on top of the main board, and attach a 10 Ohm resistor (to give 60mA to the LED, about half of its typical, but plenty bright) in series with the IR LED to those leads, short lead of the IR LED to the pointed end of the LED symbol by the leads you just clipped. Pry free the board with the buttons on it so you can get under the switch you want. For the right switch (with the cord end away from you), the positive lead is to the inside. Take that to the short lead of the phototransistor, and the other side to the long lead.

The phototransistor is extremely sensitive. Ambient light will close the switch. A layer of cardboard, like the backing to the component bubblepack, will not dim the light enough. I have the pieces mounted in brass, and interrupted the gap with a piece of sheet brass to break the beam.

Note for those who'd try it: An optical mouse does not appear to make a terribly repeatable position sensor, but will work for me in conjunction with a stepper motor to catch gross errors.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Robotics Work, productivity and environment Fabrication ]

I don't mean to sound like a commercial, but the aforementioned S100SMC 3 axis stepper controller from StepperControl.com has been updated, with two general purpose outputs and limit switches for each motor.

[ related topics: Robotics ]

Dave had a link to an InfoWorld article quoting Don Box, who's an architect on Microsoft's .NET team:

"Specs are like bodily orifices: Everybody has them and they all have certain unique characteristics. But just writing a spec means nothing. If you write a spec that no one implements, did it ever really specify anything?"

Which is a sentiment I totally endorse. But the article finished with:

On Monday, to show that solidarity exists at least among developers, he coaxed an IBM software engineer on stage and made him pose for a picture while he kissed him on the cheek.

Anyone remember The Godfather?

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Software Engineering ]

As reported on Fucked Company, Gateway (I think it's the computer company) has a patent on a "System for personalized settings":

A method and system for adjusting the settings of an information handling system based on the individual user preferences of one or more users is disclosed.

Filed on June 19^th, 1998. Alas, I didn't publish My Color Scheme Code until September 15^th, so I suppose that doesn't count as prior art. I wonder if I'll be getting a "cease and desist" for that or the ability to specify comment order or text box size?

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Flutterby Meta ]

Recently in a discussion about fashion and color, Charlene asked "do you have any color blindness?" It's a topic which comes up often when I'm discussing fashion and color. Anyway, I can say "not that shows up in any of these 24 tests for colour blindess". Interesting are the ones where the "color blind" can see the patterns and we normal sighted folks can't.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Fashion Physiology ]

Charlene had some friends in from out of town who had a few free hours, so we went down to Golden Gate Park to visit the Japanese Tea Garden, which was a nice serene visit (except that the 10 year old was really wanting attention and making lots of noise to get it), and then over to the California Academy of Sciences, which I'd never been to before, but which has the "Gary Larsen Gallery" with a bunch of Far Side cartoons and annotations of the scientific principles contained therein (no, really), and a pretty cool (although we were a bit rushed) aquarium, which we will go back and investigate further. A fun day out, although between staying up late talking last night and getting up early to experience this stuff before they had to leave we're now bushed. And I used that term even before the reign of George the elder.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Bay Area Flowers ]

It was a beautiful Saturday, Fricks cave is only open once a year (it's a major bat home) and cavers from all over meet for an 'open house'. It's an easy and fun cave, there were even a few kids along and lots of neat people. Add a trip to 'On Rope 1', a Mexican Resturant and a 4 wheel drive "road" to another pit.. Wish I'd started this stuff years and years ago..No Gary Larsen cartoons, but scribbles and pictographs from Civil War soldiers and Native Americans worked better in this venue.

[ related topics: Photography History Travel ]

I'm spending a few minutes this afternoon putting together a jukebox app that's controllable via a named pipe that spawns simple players. My intent is to put this in that Via Eden. But a quick ldd of mpg123 and ogg123 reveals all sorts of intertwinglements with assorted libraries. Is anyone else interested in building a player and maybe sharing code and compiles, specifically starting with figuring out the easiest way to build a static compile of these two apps or something else that'll play Ogg Vorbis files easily?

[ related topics: Free Software Music Dan's Life Embedded Devices - Via Eden ]

You know how sometimes you want to get a photo out of a scene soooo badly? I carried my full camera bag into the city and the day was boring and clear, so I grabbed the "sunset" filter out of my bag, a graduated orange, and tried playing with the clouds over the city. On the right is yet another shot of the San Francisco skyline from the boat on a clear day, on the left is playing about with the filter. I'm not saying it's a good thing, just saying it is.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Architecture ]

Burning Bird on Uncompromising Individualism.

[ related topics: Libertarian Civil Liberties Community ]

A few days ago, Phil and I were talking about the state of surveillance in this country, dancing around definitions of "police state". Larry has an interesting tale of insurance fraud that adds a little more fuel to the fire. When we worry about a police state, I think most of us are less worried about the police having information and knowledge than that if you give them that power they'll abuse it. That or we're all just blind to the incremental advancements.

Along those lines (well, kinda), remember the "Candyman child porn ring"? Turns out the FBI lied to get the warrants on that.

[ related topics: Business Privacy Sexual Culture Current Events Law Enforcement ]

While I'm meta-weblogging real quick this morning, two other things worth noting. First, Cam is back, and he's got some perspective on being an American just back from Siberia. And Diane wants the world to know that she's not a bully.

I've expressed some displeasure before to some of the drawbacks of being a part of these larger United States, and with what I see as the coming changes in the economic and R&D climate I'm pondering a bit not only what state I'd like to live in, but whether my long held assumptions about the U.S. being my best chance for opportunity are still correct. I think they are, and I'm willing to accept that this administration is a temporary swing, but I'm a little more open than I have been.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Politics Current Events ]

Crap. I really don't wanna do more war blogging. I want to get on with my coding and stay the hell out of politics. But Stryker talks about torture, and Rafe does the same "in light of the capture of Khalid Shiekh Mohammed", and both are against it. That two folks who I see as coming from different places on the political spectrum feel that way gives me hope, even if the talk radio crowd seems to be in the "pull out his toenails to get him to talk".

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Civil Liberties War ]

Booyah! I got "the touch", baybee! Charlene just called asking "what does 'disk boot error, insert system disk to continue' mean?". So I walked her through turning the computer off, giving the case a good hard thump next to where the drive is mounted, turning the computer back on, and it worked. We're talking remote intimidation of technology. No need to applaud. Really.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

End of an era: Feds to demolish Mustang Ranch.

"It would take too much money to rehabilitate the buildings because they're of shoddy construction. They certainly didn't pump their profits back into the buildings," Struble said.

It's a shame that even in Nevada prostitution isn't legal enough that people can build a real business out of it. I know someone who worked there a while ago, and it sure seems to me like building a venue where you could support your staff, not be afraid that someone is gonig to come raid your buildings in the middle of the night, so feeling like you couild invest in them, would be empowering for all involved.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Current Events Architecture ]

Scoble pointed out that Microsoft's Tablet PC page is giving away a tablet a day 'til the end of March. Since one of these running Linux would be sweeeet, and they'd pay the "Microsoft tax", I've been entering. Or trying to. If the reliability of that page, even when accessing it with IE, is indicative of what you can do with web apps on the Microsoft platform, count me the hell out.

[ related topics: Microsoft Cool Technology ]

Daniel Dennett takes down postmodernism:

Getting it right, not making mistakes, has been of paramount importance to every living thing on this planet for more than three billion years, and so these organisms have evolved thousands of different ways of finding out about the world they live in, discriminating friends from foes, meals from mates, and ignoring the rest for the most part. It matters to them that they not be misinformed about these matters--indeed nothing matters more--but they don't, as a rule, appreciate this.

This is in a site called Butterflies and Wheels that looks like it's worth regular trips back.

[ related topics: Butterflies Theater & Plays Space & Astronomy ]

It occurs to me that among those pro and con for the war on Iraq, many of us have specific fears. So here's your chance for an "I told you so" in a few years. Make some predictions about what you think a U.S. invasion and presumed military victory will result in for:

• The Kurds.
• The liberalization movement in Iran.
• Jordan's position as sometime peacemaker in that region, especially with respect to attitudes of Jordan around the Iraq invasion of Kuwait..
• The government of Saudi Arabia.
• The new government of Iraq, possibly in several parts.
• Evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and revelations about who really used gas in Halabja.
• Israel's moral credibilility (and if I hear one more "the ragheads are your enemy too" ad from the American Jewish whatever I'm gonna scream).
• The Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• The price of oil, Halliburton stock, and whatever other economic cynicism you want to play with.

I'll try to participate later, and as always feel free to link to predictions on your own web sites in the comments.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Ethics History moron War ]

Wow! Dave Coffin has C source for a whole bunch of RAW digital camera image file formats, of specific interest to me is the Canon D60, but he's got Sigma, Minolta, Fuji and Nikon in there too. This means I can read RAW files under Linux.

[ related topics: Free Software Photography Open Source ]

Today's Boondocks nails my experience of "the news".

[ related topics: Humor Current Events ]

Paul Theroux writes in praise of the older woman: Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.

The classic situation is nothing long-term; indeed, she might not particularly want to see you afterwards. The preliminaries, the half-truths, the confidences, the wooing — all these are dispensed with. There isn't time; she comes straight to the point and then goes back to her life. She is doing to you what older men do to younger women.

What I find interesting as I hang out with a few friends who are retirement age is that younger women seem to be seeking the same thing that Theroux sees as so desirable for the younger man.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

From Borklog which got it from Lars Pind, an email on the cocoon mailing list about software engineering and community building:

The good old Software Engineering practices they teach you in college are bullshit: making architecture decisions without continous reversibility is expensive because design constraints change too much. Those who want to apply hardware engineering practices miserably fail.

One of the advantages we have over the hardware folks is that our research costs are our fabrication costs. If we do incremental testing, ala Extreme Programming, especially with languages that allow for quick prototyping, then we're doing what CAD and finite element analysis packages do for mechanical engineers.

But I still call my self a "software developer" and not a "software engineer".

[ related topics: Open Source Software Engineering Community Education ]

The picture didn't turn out nearly as cool as I thought it would, but the clear days on the bay have been replaced by high fog today as we brace for a storm due to hit the SF Bay Area tomorrow afternoon, and predicted to continue in waves all weekend. This is good, because we've gone from being well over the usual rainfall in December, to well under now.

The sign points out that this isn't just a sweet zone, or a super fine zone, this is a "double fine zone".

[ related topics: Photography California Culture ]

Been burning the candle at all three ends but see the light at the end of the tunnel(hope it's not a train). Looks like war blogging is more fun than Dan admits or perhaps it's work avoidance behavior but he's been a posting machine(yay Dan). Meuon got the Spelunking bug! cool you need to get out to California more. Did someone say raw tiff? Instead of the usual colapsing in bed I decided to play with my underused toy(sony dsc-f717)and took some night shots of the Carquinez Bridge from my backyard. The amazing thing about this shot is that it was taken at 11:30 at night and the sky looked pretty close to black to my eyes. Photon Magnet indeed (yes it was a 10 second exposure with tripod but still). And as long as it doesn't cause a bandwidth problem (the sucker is 14+ megs) raw tiff here

[ related topics: Photography Todd Gemmell broadband Work, productivity and environment California Culture Machinery Trains ]

In another forum, Dan's been trying to get me to divulge lurid details of my trip to Las Vegas and Utah. So here, Dan, is the prettiest woman I saw in Nevada. Nice figure, but she was bit hollow when I spoke with her.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Travel Las Vegas ]

I'm sorry, but cell phone battery indicators with a whopping 4 gradations should not be log scale. My mistake for not putting it on the charger last night, but I've carried it for two days and it was just down to 3 bars from 4 this morning, in the 4 hours since it's gone dead. With no use.

[ related topics: Wireless Dan's Life ]

Over at FactoVision, there were some deriding words about a guy busted for 300 lbs of marijuana after being pulled over for speeding.

Some years ago, probably somewhere between 1988 and 1990 because I think Kermit was my passenger, I was driving home from kayaking on the Ocoee, and as we came on to I-75 from the 64 bypass there were a gazillion cop cars lined up across the bridge and down the entrance ramp. At least 15. We thought it was kinda weird, but being long-haired hippy types with kayaks on the roof we weren't about to do anything to arouse attention, so we continued on our way. A few miles down the road we were in the left lane passing some semi-trailers when a sport-ute of some sort came up behind us, flashing headlights. We thought this was aggressive, but aware of the gazillion cop cars behind us went for the left shoulder rather than speed up to pass the trucks. After that vehicle passed we got back out, still trying to pass the trucks, when the cop cars came up behind. Again we went for the shoulder, this time stopping to let everything go by.

A little closer to Chattanooga we saw a whole bunch of police activity on the shoulder.

The papers later reported this as "a routine traffic stop" in which some large amount of cocaine was seized. I mention this because now any time I see "routine traffic stop" I'm very aware that this is probably just another case where they couldn't get a warrant and spooked the guy into speeding so they had an excuse.

[ related topics: Drugs Privacy Law Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Chattanooga Whitewater ]

The latest Japanese TV show that I expect to kick major buttock over here, at least in cult circles, looks like American Gladiator on acid: Takeshi's Castle looks something like Mario Brothers played in real life. Here's a machine translated page with still captures.

[ related topics: Games Technology and Culture Television ]

What if you wanted to make a city real fast. Cargo Container Building might be the perl of construction. Think whipupatude with steel.

[ related topics: Cool Science Perl Machinery Fabrication ]

While I find myself in the bizzare position of defending Bush foreign policy, I don't think there is a person alive(well not one that could sound out the previous sentence)that could say they like recent developments in domestic goverment. The Free State Project is an interesting idea and I like the idea of people trying to take back their own goverment. Some ideas are too extreem in my opinion but I tend to be a centrist when it come to politics.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Okay, so I finally took another look at the Opera browser - primarily so I can say "tested in Opera". (I looked at Opera a few years back, but they didn't have an advertiser version then. You either paid or it stopped working after 30 days or so.)

I've been working on some classy fade-in effects for my professional site (they're not live yet - still on the development server). But they don't work on Opera. No huge surprise there. Neither the IE- nor Mozilla-specific code I'm using are part of the W3C standard. But why is my image missing entirely? A little digging reveals that Opera ships with it's default setting to masquarade as IE5/6. Whatthefuck?! A nice feature to have, I admit. But how many people actually know that? And how the hell am I supposed to make sure my pages look good in your browser if I don't have any way to tell that it's actually you??? This is the kind of bone-headed decision-making we're used to seeing from the MSN division at the Evil Empire. I am not impressed.

[ related topics: Business Web development Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Marketing ]

Phil asking "what's that ugly car?" lead to my musing about the most underappreciated automotive engineers. The guys who made the cabin quiet on the Lexus with gold rims and shaking windows cruising the 'hood. The folks who tune the suspension on a Cadillac. I don't know why I'm exposing myself as this horrible stereotyper except that I felt like I needed a bit of an intro to this fascinating article on the culture of "Sideshows" in Oakland.

[ related topics: Bay Area Sociology California Culture Automobiles ]

For a while Todd and I were working on a game, but we've both gotten distracted with other things, and after a while I realized that working on games was the wrong approach because there wasn't any game I wanted to play. I know a couple of you got hooked on The Game Neverending, and Columbine routinely talks about MMOGs, so a few poached links.

Mars Saxman had a link to Golublog's Mars and Mansions which captures some reasons that might explain why I find the idea of computer games less compelling.

Greg Costikyan has a weblog that I've checked in on occasionally, but Rafe recently pointed to an exchange with Warren Spector following a speech at the recent Game Developer's Conference. You can read three parts of the exchange in reverse chronology starting with Specter vs. Spector.

[ related topics: Games Todd Gemmell ]

While I've been stonewalling Todd on an easy install, on the bus this morning I made a first pass at a Wiki for the Flutterby CMS. If you use the underscore quoting thing in a message, it'll link to a big knowledgebase that you'll be asked to fill in. There are some gross bugs right now, but I'm at work and can't fix 'em til I get home, so deal with the ugliness.

[ related topics: Content Management Flutterby Meta Todd Gemmell ]

So bouyed on by Ken's "that one was free, 'cause it's their bug" .NET success this morning, I figure I should learn a little: Any of you .NET cats out there know what the idiom is for condition variables? Locks are no problem, but it seemed to me like condition variables were caught up in some funky notion of thread protecting classes and I didn't chase it any further 'cause the .NET semaphores did what I needed. But condition variables are so damned handy when you're doing threaded apps (which should be "never", but that's a rant about the capabilities of operating systems and interprocess communication) and I haven't found them searching the knowledge base.

Christopher Boyce, aka "The Falcon" of The Falcon and the Snowman, out on parole.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Hey Dan, you're not planning a trip to Hong Kong any time soon, RIGHT??

[ related topics: Coyote Grits Current Events Travel Hong Kong ]

To those who wonder how Iraq could have lost track of the few weapons that have been found so far that clearly violate the U.N. agreement (and I'm not talking about borderline judgement calls like the missiles): U.S. Navy is trying to track down ex-workers to help figure out what might be buried at Hunter's Point. Between this and things like the live ordinance found at Roseville a few years ago, it's easy to see how weapons can slip through the cracks.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Guns War ]

As many of you know, I've been undertaking a daring journey lately. I no longer carry a cell phone. I check email about once a day. I spend hours at local coffee shops - without a laptop. I read paper books and spend countless hours working math problems with pencil and paper (btw, I've always hated mechanical pencils). I try to walk whenever possible and I drive a vehicle that'll survive a blast from an EM-pulse weapon (and one that I've had the engine completely apart).

This weekend, at the tail-end of my Spring Break, I attended the Southeastern Commision for the Study of Religion partly to hear Dr. Ralph Hood talk about snake handlers and partly to see what the session titled God is One: Mathematics, Kabbalah and Zero was about. As one would expect, the majority of the conference was Christian Bible scholars ruminating over this verse or that of the Bible - but a couple of the tracts were focused on decidedly no-Christian meanderings of thought. While there I picked up a copy of Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age and have been plowing my way through the sermon. Much of it sounds like the normal Xtian preaching about pagans lacking morals - but it is well researched and footnoted. And may serve as a nice starting point to further explore the issues concerning a technology-oriented society...

[ related topics: Religion Books Work, productivity and environment Mathematics Chattanooga Eric's Life Conferences ]

Rafe Colburn has an interesting Perl versus Java comparison, focusing on the philosophical differences between the approaches the two languages take. He illustrates with some code from Blosxom which at first glance seems fairly obscure. He presents a Java version and says:

Clearly the Java code is much more readable, and that's why I like it from a maintainability perspective. That said, if you're really up to speed on your Perl, it's amazing the sorts of things you can compress down into one amazingly byzantine looking line of code.

I differ. Read through those 12 lines of Java) code. Take the time with "perl -le 'print ...'" to figure out what the one line of Perl code does.

Now, imagine maintaining a huge system. You non-programmers think of it as trying to organize a large book. Realize that this is an idiom you're likely to see a few times in this book. Even though the first time through it takes twice as long to understand that phrase, in subsequent passes through the text you can grasp the meaning of the code in one line. The Java equivalent would be like reading a book that said "converted from one language to another" rather than "translated" every time the topic came up.

Dave Winer goes further in his link to Rafe's screed and says:

If you use an outliner to edit your source code, his multi-line Java example shrinks down to one line, just like his Perl example.

I think this is untrue too. Emacs and VisualStudio .NET both have code-folding in them. We can quibble over whether those are true "outliner"s, but the outliner hides the functionality: "There's a 'for' loop here, but I don't know what's inside it." Perl still lets you know what's going on, it just says it concisely. And Perl offers you the tools to figure out what's going on fairly simply.

[ related topics: Dave Winer Perl Software Engineering ]

Thanks to Dan's invitation awhile back to join the Flutterby core(?), I'm slowly getting sucked into Blogging. The Furrygoat Experience pointed me at an RSS Feed Reader Directory. For those who, like me, devoutly hate the rampant webifization of absolutely everything under the sun, there are several (for Windows, anyway) application-style readers.

I also think I'll keep my eye on Spaces, which is a PIM very much like Outlook (or Evolution), but with a different take on the organization of and relationship between data.

[ related topics: Free Software Weblogs Technology and Culture ]

Dear MAILER-DAEMON provided a much-needed laugh.

[ related topics: Humor moron ]

I'm sooooo sorry. I didn't link a google search but I did trick www.google.com and it's causing quite bit of hits on the www.flutterby.com server. I'm going to go find some of the more painful punishment links previously posted on Flutterby and glue my eyes open a la clockwork orange. Please welcome new voices that would add to the signal ratio and try to ignore the noise.

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta ]

It's been a long journey.. starting with deciding to live, and go to _)^(_ last year. The latest installment is becoming a 'real' vertical caver thanks to a great course by Steve and Bruce at On Rope 1. I remember when we bought the Virtual Building, and Dan seriously made comments like "..could rappell off the roof and fix the windows.." and I thought he was completely insane. Now I understand, and can do it myself, with a rack.. with an 8.. with a Munter hitch and a 'biner.. and can climb back up a few hundred feet of rope, using nothing but knots.. as well as ascenders. It is possible to self-evolve, overcome a fear of heights, and like it! Note: The caving/climbing world is making efforts to "Americanize" a lot of the French and European words used for things.. the new Political Correctness issues are at work.

[ related topics: Politics Photography Microsoft Coyote Grits Invention and Design moron Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment ]

This one's for Debra, sent by Barry in another forum where he said "Folks there [Winnipeg] don't have a lot to do...". Man Pierces Record with 702 Needles:

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - With speed-metal music on his headphones and a picture of his deceased mother beside him, a 34-year-old Canadian pinned down the world record for body piercing on Wednesday.

Finishing with one in each nipple, Brent Moffatt pushed 702 needles into his body in a little less than eight hours. Most went into his legs and feet.

Now, how to categorize this...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events ]

Headlining it as dan over-estimates intelligence of coders, on my oft-quoted "XML is the subset of SGML that Microsoft's developers could understand" remark, John over at Genehack points to Tim Bray's XML Is Too Hard For Programmers. He's got some good points, but I think he misses the big one: XML is harder to write than to read. If you realize that XML will generally have a specific application, then building a system that just throws exceptions when the XML doesn't map nicely to the data structures you were trying to build with is just fine. Yes, we don't know how to do this easily yet, but we have a bunch of idioms, and the better ones will start to filter out shortly. I've written at least one system which creates Cstructs and was a joy to work with. Well, as much of a joy as C code can be.

The hard bit is that writing valid XML is non-intuitive and often means fixing far-reaching data quality issues that involve high level meetings and getting the database administrators to do stuff. And because the accountability is one level removed, those writing XML often don't have to eat what they've cooked, it's a frustrating feedback loop to get people to get their output correct.

[ related topics: Web development John S Jacobs-Anderson Content Management Microsoft ]

Sigh. I shudder at the thought that this clown is part of our legal appeal of last resort. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a conference on constitutional protections for religion, talking about freedom during wartime:

"The Constitution just sets minimums," Scalia said after a speech at John Carroll University in suburban Cleveland. "Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires."

[ related topics: Religion Privacy moron Law Civil Liberties ]

Ted Leung references some musings over at mamamusings about introverts and extroverts and shares a bit of his own opinion. Both also link to an article in The Atlantic.

I've always considered myself an definite introvert, but I find myself identifying with many of the extroverted viewpoints expressed in these comments as well. Most especially the frustration I feel in recent years at K's refusal to discuss issues verbally. And I found extremely enlightening the observation that introverts don't vocalize thoughts until they are complete and/or finalized - which describes her to a "T". In the end, I must agree with Ted's final comment that "you can't go on not talking to people forever", however.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Shawn's Life ]

Just to break up the text a bit, a random image. With the M.V. Mendocino out of service for a few months for a hull replacement, they've been filling in the the slower boats. The last few times I've caught the 8:10, it's been late enough that the 8:35 M.V. Del Norte has passed us. Another image, better framed, but slightly further away.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Bay Area Current Events Boats Machinery ]

Poach from Debra's lovely site is the delicious pun Bondage case in Binding Arbitration (fixed the links ....sowry)

[ related topics: Law ]

Hokay. We are back to Orange Alert but before you cover your children in plastic and duct tape your spouse(oh wait we do that during blue alert) there is a Government Information Page to tell us how to conduct ourselves should Saddam back up our toilets in retaliation. Lucky for us, some kind soul wrote a guide to understand the goverments guide. (links poached from the scotchnight list)

[ related topics: Children and growing up moron Douglas Adams ]

Sting nets return of North Carolina's copy of Bill of Rights. Ya know, I've been wondering where the Bill of Rights has been hiding, it's odd that it took the FBI to get it back... Actually, this copy had been taken from the North Carolina statehouse during the Civil War, and a collector wanted to sell it to the National Constitution Center museum in Philadelphia.

[ related topics: History Law Current Events Law Enforcement Civil Liberties ]

So. The war in Iraq has begun.

I understand the reaction of anger. I think that's a lot of what has us attacking Iraq when the Osama bin Laden issues remain unresolved. What I don't understand is why people think that acting like an asshole promotes peace.

"We don't want to alienate people. I hope people realize that political murder merits action that inconveniences them," said Quinn Miller, 32...

Inconvenienced for what? So that "150-200 protesters, carrying banners with the image of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara" can tie up traffic and cause the associated rise in pollution that all those cars stopped and idling bring? Oh yeah, that guy sure kept "political murder" to a minimum. I'm sorry, but this morning's actions in San Francisco have pushed me that much further towards being "for" the war, if we don't have enough information to make the decision on the merits of the data and simply have to side with the people who seem sanest in this moment, then cry "havoc" and let slip the dogs.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area History moron WTC/Pentagon attacks California Culture War ]

Meanwhile, in Colorado, helicopters have begun to deliver food and explosives to..., oh, okay, it's just a bunch of skiers stranded by an avalanche across their only access road, but I thought the parallels were spooky.

[ related topics: Food Current Events ]

Those of you who have contacted me looking for Dylan, I've talked with him, he should be getting back with you shortly. And he is okay.

[ related topics: Coyote Grits ]

Anyone out there got suggestions for an online credit card processor? Charlene's business is about to launch, and while we initially thought we'd be going mainly retail, it's become clear that we'll need a direct-to-consumer web presence. So, anyone out there got suggestions and experience with an online credit card processor?

[ related topics: Dan's Life Consumerism and advertising ]

Just 'cause some of you Pixar fans might have a 13" Woody: Disney recalls Woody doll sold in Florida at various Disney resorts.

[ related topics: Pixar Current Events ]

Had a great time at San Francisco's Famous Burlesque at The Make Out Room last night, with the Cantankerous Lollies, one of the performers from Hot Pink Feathers, and Gorilla-X strippin' down to the pasties. We'd dropped down to the Thai place right next to the Odeon, and ate in the Odeon 'cause there was this great band doing a sort of middle-eastern flavoured metal/electric-blues thing, ended up back at The Make Out Room a little late to get a seat, but still had fun.

Apropos of the current situation, burlesque provides a lot of gags. "This is Gigi, she's Freedom." Snicker.

[ related topics: Humor Erotic Bay Area War Burlesque ]

The SF Bay Guardian has an article on a Pakistani man living in the U.S. who faces deportation, which could very well result in his death. Unfortunately, the article doesn't go into why he's facing this deportation, just focusing on his life, and while I'm very aware that there's a lot screwed up with the immigration situation in the United States I'd have liked to see a little more detail about what issues lead to this particular problem.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

Fox news reports:

U.S. Marines hauled down giant street portraits of Saddam Hussein in a screeching pop of metal and bolts Friday, telling nervous residents of this southern Iraqi town that "Saddam is done."

Except that these images were much newer, isn't this kinda the same thing that the Taliban did to those statues in Afghanistan?

(Note to the humor impaired: I'm not serious. Mostly.)

[ related topics: Religion Humor Current Events War ]

Sometimes I have to toss up a pic just to remind Dan about TN. This "secret" waterfall made the cover of a book, so it's pretty well known, but it's nameless... listed in the book as the "Falls on Rock Creek." I shared some laughs and a bottle of Chardonnay with some friends there today.

[ related topics: Books Photography Nature and environment Wines and Spirits ]

If you're building an online presence for your business, some suggestions:

1. If you buy a Google ad, make sure it doesn't give an ASP error.
2. Don't keep me from browsing if I don't have cookies enabled. Especially if the reason the cookie doesn't stick is that you specified it wrong. This means you, Staples
3. Offering a price per case, and then specifying the quantity as tabs per pad, pads per carton, cartons per case, is helpful, but... somehow annoying.
4. Similarly, if you tell me "Sold and Priced in lots of 10 sheets (450 tabs)" and offer me "100" for "$14.20", does this mean I get 45,000 for $14.20, 4,500 for $14.20, 100 for $14.20, or what? Especially since I'm expecting to pay $.015 to $.04 per item.
5. Frames bad. Especially if I'm browsing on a 1280x768 screen and can't see enough of the product listing to make a decision.
6. Entrance tunnels bad. Entrance tunnels that redirect my targeted Google search to your front page even worse.
7. If you show me the product I want, and give me a "check catalog for price and quantity" link, I should not get "no items found" when I click that link.
8. Don't make fill in a 45 entry form to get an order of magnitude price to see if I'm going the right direction with my investigations. Show me some sample items you've done for other customers and let me see how much that cost.

Each of these goofs has not only wasted my time, but cost one or more companies (sometimes amazingly more) a potential sale today. And what is it with, in several categories, the Canadian companies getting stuff right while no American company can. We're paying a mint in shipping on a few products simply because the Canucks can actually effectively put their products on the web. Yeesh.

[ related topics: Web development New Economy ]

As the protesters gathered at Justin Herman Plaza this morning, the police were parked in front of Noah's Bagels, getting fed. No fewer than 7 TV trucks parked on the concrete there, apparently they were expecting more than the 3 or 4 that were still there when I went by on Friday evening. And there was also a reasonable amount of air traffic already, which means we're probably in for the drone of hovering helicopters again today. Probably be a bunch of cute young female high school students milling around outside the justice building filling out forms come lunchtime.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Technology and Culture Bay Area Current Events Law Enforcement Television War Justin Herman Plaza ]

Lt. Col. Tim Collins of the Royal Irish battle group, urging his command into battle:

We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people, and the only flag that will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Don't treat them as refugees, for they are in their own country.

Brian Whitaker points out that all is not as rosy as the U.S. propaganda machine would have us believe, pointing out several failures of politics in which the U.S. Marines raising the flag over Umm Qasr was just one example:

To have reached such a position against an adversary who is demonstrably one of the world's most disgusting tyrants, to have transformed him into a hero figure, and to have transformed the American flag into a symbol of oppression, is not only unfortunate but reeks of political incompetence.

[ related topics: Politics moron Journalism and Media War ]

While moving servers in the back room.. looks like we jiggled the power cord on Flutterby. My apologies.

Makes perfect sense now that someone else has said it: Michael Totten linked to Daniel Drezner: Why the Baathist resistance may be a good thing. As the fight begins to go house-to-house, one of the quetions that arises is "how do we know when we're done". After all, the big problem with regime change is changing the hearts and minds of the people so that they won't tolerate such a government again. Well, that and arming them effectively so that they have the tools to resist such a government, but that's a mixed bag.

So, basically, the more of the undesirables who pop up waving weapons and saying that they're not likely to be part of a free and open government, the easier time reconstruction will have later.

[ related topics: moron Current Events Guns War ]

Diane reprints and comments on a letter from a friend: Analogies and snapshots for a troubled time. More thinking on our reactions to the war.

[ related topics: History ]

Where is Raed? is the view of the war from a resident of Baghdad. Facinating perspective (for those, like me, who sit secure in our homes a world away).

[ related topics: Weblogs Current Events Journalism and Media ]

On a lighter note, Big White Guy runs Project Chopsticks. Pictures of chopsticks. Some of them are really cool.

[ related topics: Photography Hong Kong ]

Whoah! How'd I miss this? Debra mentions me in Sexblogs: Confessions of an early adopter.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Dan's Life Current Events ]

Fudge. I think I've torqued the power connector on my laptop. Damn damn damn damn damn. Damn.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Just because I've been remarkably remiss in coming up with anything for Flutterby, here's a /. interview with Paul Kocher that's worth a quick read. For the geeks among us, there's nothing you didn't know already, but I like cultures where ROT-13 is used appropriately and immediately obvious to the participants.

Meanwhile, I'm digging through the hell of .NET and digital cameras and such, with occasional forays over into embedded device control with Linux, and bemoaning the temporary loss of my laptop so that I have to deal with all sorts of pain in reconfiguring and working with devices that just don't do stuff as well as the laptop does.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Open Source Work, productivity and environment Embedded Devices Cryptography ]

Soldering in a toaster oven. Looks great for surface mount devices. As I work on smaller and smaller projects this will come in handy.

[ related topics: Robotics Machinery Cool Technology ]

The Texas sodomy law is being tried at the Supreme Court. This Scalia guy is wacked scary:

"It's conceded by the state of Texas that married couples can't be regulated in their private sexual decisions," says Smith. To which Scalia rejoins, "They may have conceded it, but I haven't."

And

Breyer notes that during World War I people also thought it "immoral" to "teach German in schools. ... Immoral is a hard line to draw."

"There is a rational basis," insists Rosenthal.

"You're not giving us a rational basis," snaps Breyer.

"The rational basis," says Scalia, "is that the state thinks it's immoral. Like bigamy or adultery."

"Or teaching German," grins Breyer.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture History Sociology Law Current Events ]

Hyping DotBombSquad which now publically ridicules the Chattanooga Technology Council website.. hosted in Canada.. with a very broken website. It's bad enough they can't keep the website up..but at least it should be hosted in Chattanooga. They don't even support the local technology industry in this simple way. - They want all of you wonderful technology companies to consider relocating to Chattanooga: which has an amazing quality of life in many ways, good cost of living, lots of recreational outdoor activities, some neat people.. and a Government and 'powers that be' that just don't undertstand the basics of technology, yet they want it for your above median incomes and the Tennessee tax laws that make 'work for hire' subject to sales tax, as well as internet access, web design, software development, consulting (in technology, not law or other areas). Comments?

[ related topics: Politics Coyote Grits Software Engineering moron Work, productivity and environment Chattanooga Net Culture Graphic Design ]

The challenge was "pictures of a piece of paper". Here are Ruby's images of paper. Cool photographs.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Maybe XML Doesn't Suck. Hey! I said maybe. I think the concept of XML is cool and "maybe" some day the implementation won't suck.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management ]

Wanna play arm-chair general? Here is an Intel Site with reports written by Ex-spooks.

Have you ever wanted to make a duct tape rose. Well here is a site to increase your mastery of the dark arts.

[ related topics: Flowers ]

Okay I think I've been one of the few people in Blogspace that's been clearly Pro War(meaning I support the explicit action of liberating & rebuilding Iraq). I'm pretty sad right now and have that pit in my stomach that you get when you have to fire someone or punish a child. You do it because you know it's right but you don't like doing it. With that said, I see things that worry me about how this is being executed. Notably, Rumsfeld almost openly threatening military action against Syria(eeeeesh) and General Myers response to the question of Why did coalition forces advance to surround Baghdad so quickly? Because we could This reminds me what Shiva told the last living warrior when he asked her "why did you destroy the world?" Because I can. So to balance out the war, here is a picture of a field of wildflowers I saw yesterday

[ related topics: Photography Todd Gemmell History Pyrotechnics Mythology War ]

Okay, we've had a few spammers start to drop drivel in the posts. The most recent in Todd's flower picture. Is it time to start editing? Or do I need to find some sort of system to make sure that people are vested in the system before they start posting, maybe make their first post require moderation?

I guess it's this latest round of "blogs will change journalism" stuff that's bringing 'em out of the woodwork. Time to bring back Joel Furr and his "The Internet is full, go away!" shirts.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Flutterby Meta Todd Gemmell Journalism and Media Net Culture ]

Dan had heard an interview with Lillian Faderman author of Naked in the Promised Land. It piqued his interest and knew it would pique mine since it was about how she became a burlesque performer. Instead I was highly disappointed. It was the typical woman complaining about how her childhood was so awful and that stripping was the only way to make enough money to give herself a college education. After her college education she had all the right breaks and she lived happily ever after. As you well can see this is not a story I would recommend.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Sexual Culture Education ]

Our 'Art District' is about to undergo an expansion, yet I have to admit I relish it often, just the way it is and am proud of the way it is nicely integrated into our community via walkways and bridges. Here, a driftwood horse is restrained from escaping by a fierce gate early one Saturday morning.As it expands, and becomes more 'touristy' I hope that it keeps the personal ambience that it has now and does not become cold and institutional.

[ related topics: Photography Art & Culture Community ]

Planned Parenthood is pissing me off. Every time I send them money, I get a letter asking for more money. It sucks that under this administration they're feeling the pinch, but so is every other organization I give to. If I thought I could afford to send them more, I would.

And while I'm ranting about non-profits, I give money to The Nature Conservancy so that they can buy and hold land. I really don't need more full-color glossy stuff coming from them telling me all about it.

I think the EFF does it as right as any of the groups I give to: Occasional email updates, and they don't seem to pester me for money nearly as often as the others.

[ related topics: Politics Consumerism and advertising ]

Reported from William Gibson's weblog:

HEARD ON SKY NEWS

"Umm Qasr is a town similar to Southampton", UK Defence Minister Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons yesterday. "He's either never been to Southampton, or he's never been to Umm Qasr", said one British soldier, informed of this while on patrol in Umm Qasr. Another added: "There's no beer, no prostitutes, and people are shooting at us. It's more like Portsmouth."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs Current Events Beer War ]

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs ]