Flutterby™! From 2003-12-01 to 2003-12-30

Wow, I needed that. A few days away. Took the good ol' sedan well off the pavement at least once, spent some time out where the tumbleweeds blow across the road and the dust from ancient lakebeds spirals towards the sky. Saw lots of volcanic rock. Full details coming in a bit, right now I'm back to trying to deliver some hardware before mid-week. Hopefully the system I'm developing for will arrive sometime today.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Dan & Charlene's November 2003 Oregon Trip ]

My laptop is out of disk space. 38 meg 16 bit TIFFs from the Canon D60 are taking their toll. But even aside from that, the thousands of images shot with the small camera are also looking for space (and yes, the snippet manager is starting to take shape), the colo box is rapidly filling, and I want two copies of everything.

So while I should probably coordinate with someone to automate some off-site replication from my house server, I also need to ponder:

1. Does anyone out there have experience with FireWire hard disks and Linux? This would be an easy way to give me extra portable storage for the laptop, handy on treks like the one we just took.
2. Does anyone know about archival CD-R blanks? A good source for the long-term gold based ones like Kodak uses for PhotoCD disks and claims are good for a century or so if stored reasonably?

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Archival ]

Yesterday morning I woke up at 5:20, misread the clock, and so I ended up with two cups of coffee on the 6:45. Sunrise over the Bay Bridge looked pretty danged cool, so with a cup in my hand I pushed open the door to the open area on the bow, stepped around the corner, and discovered that the venturi effect from 30 mph winds on a coffee cup has to be seen to be believed. And there was a rainbow back over Sausalito.

On another note, anyone who's ridden the San Francisco to Larkspur route has the voice of James permanently ingrained: "Okay, Larkspur, nooooow boarding." Weeks away from retirement, he died of heart problems. Eat dessert first, kids, ya never know when you're not going to make it to the end of the meal.

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

Okay, we'll work backwards, just because I want to get this one up quickly. On our trek we came across from Bend into Eugene on Saturday afternoon, tried to find cool stuff in Eugene, but it wasn't happening. I was reminded of Iowa City, a conservative base, and a bunch of rebelling college kids, but in this case the college kids have gone totally into the "we're such victims" / "social justice" mode that... well... there are pockets, but they weren't happening that Saturday night. So we pointed the car south. In Roseburg, we decided "what the hell, this could be really cheesey", and headed out west to the Umpqua Valley Festival of Lights. Totally worth the $7 per car cost of admission. They've taken a park or high school or somesuch (couldn't tell in the dark) and done it up with Christmas lights, many of which have fairly simple 3-4 frame kinds of animation. This shot doesn't do the carousel justice, but the baseball scene was completely inspired. Totally recommended if you happen to be near Roseburg, Oregon.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Animation Automobiles Education Dan & Charlene's November 2003 Oregon Trip ]

Whew. At long last the hardware finally arrived, mostly correct, and I can test my stuff. And it works! So I can add a "implemented servo driver circuit and software for a stepper motor and a quadrature shaft encoder" line to my resumé.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Dan's Life Embedded Devices ]

Peter Merholz has a good rundown of the current San Francisco mayoral race that's worth reading if you're interested in how politics wavers between principle and practice. This is great background for for the news that the email asking Gonzales supporters to protest Gore's visit for Newsom's campaign came from Newsom's office.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Current Events California Culture Gavin Newsom ]

I'm posting these backwards in small chunks. To see the whole thing in sequence (kinda), you can check out the November 2003 Oregon Trip topic once it's all posted.

Because of the difficulties with making reservations on Thanksgiving evening we called ahead to Hunter's Resort, recently purchased by a guy from New York who by his own account is trying to slow down and adapt to life in the country. Steve says Ed is the only TV show he watches religiously, because the bowling alley they film it in is right next to his house back east, but I think there's something a little more common about the experiences.

He lets a local guy run the restaurant, which means it's way too cheap to be sustainable (and, while it was the most we paid for a room on the trip, $55 isn't bad for a place with a winter-usable pool), although reasonably good with very nice service. After dinner we floated in the hot springs fed 105F degree pool (being careful to not slip on the ice surrounding the pool). The next morning we spent some time looking at the neighboring geyser (appears to be capped, but we forgot to ask) which erupts every minute or two, scaring the ducks, then wandered over to the Lake County Chamber of Commerce to talk to Cora (I think I got her name right). Given the snow on the ground we decide to postpone rock hunting to a later trip (lots of sunstones and agates and similar semi-precious stones) and head north.

First stop is at the Abert Rim, a 30 mile long 2000 foot high rift along a fault line. We gawk for a bit, then head up along the other side of the valley, tumbleweeds rolling across the highway, dust blowing up from dry lake beds, up to Fort Rock.

Fort Rock State Park is an old volcano that bubbled up into an ancient lake, and then half the wall eroded, leaving a semi-circular boundary in the middle of a huge plain. Cool to walk around in, look at all the variations in rocks.

That evening we headed up to Bend. Took a look around Bend, decided to head over to Eugene the next morning. The trek over to Eugene had about quarter mile visibility the whole way, the scenic route was already closed for the winter, so we had to content ourselves with waterfalls right along the trail. As previously mentioned, we puttered around Eugene for a bit, decided that wasn't working for us, and drove south, explored the covered bridges of Lane county (separate update coming for that), and then stopped in Roseburg.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Food Television Dan & Charlene's November 2003 Oregon Trip ]

The slimeballs are at it: SF bar stops hosting bands that play original music because ASCAP is threatening them. Obviously there's some room for interpretation, but the bands and the bar owner claimed that the songs they're alleged to have played never happened.

[ related topics: Music Bay Area ]

Yuck. Arrive JFK 2003-12-08 05:35 EST, depart JFK 2003-12-08 20:30 EST. And I wish there were a place I could really vent...

I'm posting these backwards in small chunks. To see the whole thing in sequence (kinda), you can check out the November 2003 Oregon Trip topic once it's all posted.

We're descending towards route 395, just crossing Hat Creek, and Charlene says "Is that a cave?" Big spray of gravel as I drop the car into the shoulder and brake (yes, I got danged good at braking hard on gravel...), whip the car back around, and find that the county has put a nice little fishing park across the creek from the road cut of... We think it's "diatomite". It's this seam of a very soft chalky rock, lots of graffiti scraped in it, and as you can see by the picture of me holding it extremely light. The cave has square sides, so I'd guess it was a quarrying operation of some sort, but the rock is really cool, and now we're hooked on cool rocks.

So the next sliding to a stop (actually a fast U-turn and then an "oh darn I hope I can turn sharp enough to not blow a tire on that rock...") happened at this pass above an incredible gorge. So I wandered across the street to stare south at Mount Lassen and the northern Sierra while Charlene looked at the striations and patterns in the rocks on the road cut. Then I notice that beneath the slide on the far side there's an old road of some sort. And looking upstream I see a beautiful falls with a little old bridge right below it. I think there's some hiking to be done here at some point. And above the north end of the parking lot this huge bird wheels and turns, and combined with the earlier visit to the Delevan wildlife viewing area, we're hooked. Unfortunately, I forgot the 300mm lens, so we're stuck with the 200mm lens for birding. Not optimal, but enough that we've got some memory assistance.

We drop down into Alturas, the junction of 395 and 299. Those of you who've known me for a while have heard me rave about 395 further down. Just south there's a wildlife viewing area, so we drive south, check it out, see this bird that's so spectacular that we don't realize until later that there are deer in the picture. That prompts us to look a little further at our maps, notice that there's another area just to the west of us, which leads to more "wow, look at..." moments, most of which we didn't get pictures of because it was just too spectacular to be worried about.

395 north to Lakeview is beautiful. More spectacular roadcuts, some things that looked like tufa towers. Alas, in our rush to get to Lakeview we didn't stop for pictures of those few, thinking there'd be more of it.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment California Culture Travel Automobiles Maps and Mapping Birds Dan & Charlene's November 2003 Oregon Trip ]

Jay pointed to The Most Powerful Diesel Engine in the World! Take a look at an engine with ladders down into the crankcase, with 3 foot cylinders that have almost a hundred inch throw. Cool.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

Jay attributes this one to us, but I don't think we linked to it yet: The Atlantic on the space shuttle Columbia's last flight. In reading through it, I'm struck by the similarities to some flaws that I'm correcting right now, some of them my own. There is an easy trap to fall into, especially in software where we're often building tools for specific purposes that we test for the known case, a few boundary conditions, and then ship: if it works, it must be correct. And this is amplified by software, because we don't have a lot of manufacturing issues; if it works then burn a hundred thousand copies and be done with it.

As I go through the hassles of supply chain management for actual hardware, I get a better handle on how systems go wrong: "We can't get that part but I can build an equivalent out of..." becomes "...you can build an equivalent..." becomes "we don't have time to get the designed parts and these parts are equivalent anyway", and since they work, they must be, right? But systems are combinatorial, and that shortcut here becomes something I don't want to deal with, and the next thing I know I'm trying to suss out from some user's interpretation of the failure that something I'd filed as equivalent and ignored has become a failure point. In fact, I'll probably subconsciously try to bury any data that might point to that substitution or glossing over because my ego's on the line: at some point I said they were equivalent.

The reality is that those of us who work on tight development cycles have learned to accept a certain level of failure. "Here's the workaround", "Sure, we could re-engineer that part, or the user could just...", "I don't want to refactor that code because I might introduce bugs, so I'll just kludge around it." And in software you can get away with this almost all the time. Hardware catches up a little more often. And those "little more often"s eventually catch you, even if in the short term they let you run with lower cost.

But I find myself learning, even if slowly, that it's okay to say "no" to customers and managers, even when processes take several times longer to do right; and the longer the feedback loop between the decision and the correction, the more important it is to take the time. Also, there's no such thing as an occasional glitch; either it's right or it's not.

Because failure is always an option, and we have to be conscious to not choose it.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Aviation Software Engineering Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment ]

Filed for future reference, 'cause there's lots of cool links in the discussion (happens when an article doesn't make the main page): Ask /.: Finding Airfoil Data For Amateur Projects?

[ related topics: Aviation ]

When I was living at the Virtual Building, I enjoyed working what I called a natural schedule. I'm a morning person, and I'm at my best going to bed early, and getting up at 4am (without an alarm clock). I've been working at home lately, and have gotten back into that schedule again. It's a joy getting up feeling good, and applying myself while my head is clear of distractions. It makes me consider, what of our daily schedule that is normally imposed by society is actually harmful to health and productivity? I've got a few friends that also work at home, and like me, a natural schedule seems to evolve that often includes an afternoon siesta, and they are either early people, or late people for their best times. Other countries (Portugal for example, according to my dad that lived there for a while), seem to have such schedules. as many Flutterbarians also have flexible life schedules, I was wondering, what schedule are you 'at your best' at?

[ related topics: Health Coyote Grits Work, productivity and environment ]

Mike Gunderloy on email technologies:

• Outlook 2003 Add-in: Video E-mail - See, here's the problem with casually referring the HTML E-mail as the "spawn of Satan": when something like this comes along, there is no stronger term with which to condemn it.

Mark Morford on the recent Abercrombie & Fitch catalog brouhaha:

Oh hell, let's just spell it out: All major catalogs are softcore porn. Just because they lack nude postcoital models does not make them any less explicit or depraved.

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture Microsoft moron Consumerism and advertising Mark Morford ]

Well this explains a hell of a lot about Republicans: Jokes activate same brain region as cocaine. Original reference in: Mobbs, D., Greicius, M.D., Abdel-Azim, E., Menon, V. & Reiss, A. L. Humor modulates the mesolimbic reward centers. Neuron, 40, 1041 - 1048, (2003). Abstract, Full Text.

[ related topics: Drugs Humor Nature and environment Physiology ]

By now you probably all know that Santorum is "that frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex". I've been following the evolution of the word in Savage Love, but Pursed Lips points out that there's a new website devoted solely to the topic, so if you have any questions you can head on over to SpreadingSantorum.com.

Speaking of such things, Borklog says: When GoatSe meets modern publishing. Ya know, I think I actually am interested in reading that book, but... eeeew.

No, really. Eeeeew.

If you aren't familiar with goatse, consider yourself lucky and I'm not gonna link it.

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture Personal Lubricant ]

My gawd - fear overcomes me when I consider these people are in charge - http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/43517.htm The ownership of ASHTRAYS is now an actionable offense.

Which leads me to money - I have been thinking - The govt requires us to use their paper money but outlaws carrying it in useful amounts. Where will this all go?

Time to reread Atlas Shrugged, again I suppose just to make me feel better.

Ziffle

[ related topics: Politics Objectivism Currency ]

I'm posting these backwards in small chunks, this should be the first chronologically, although I am going to have a few out of sequence, like a "Covered Bridges of Lane County" entry. To see the whole thing in sequence (kinda), you can check out the November 2003 Oregon Trip topic once it's all posted.

North I-5 in the fading light, just shy of Willows. We're aiming for Redding as a place to stop for the night because we want to drive 299 over the mountains while we've got light, to see the scenery. So we've got a little time to kill. We've tried driving through Williams, but the only thing of interest we saw there was a place where old buses apparently go to die, so we're still looking about for anything interesting in this flat central valley, when Charlene spots a brown sign that says "Wildlife Viewing Area".

It's the Delevan wildlife viewing area, a part of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex. They have a driving loop. I think "how cheesey and touristy is this going to be", but it turns out that the car makes an effective blind, and the road is through the marshes in a way that makes the viewing spectacular. The area is on part of the migration flyway, and there are gobs of birds of all sorts of different colors and shapes. We resolve to come back sometime when we have more time.

Day Two. 299 east out of Redding, up into the northern end of the Sierra, or the southern end of the Cascades, I'm not really sure (but by the middle of the trip I've discovered reason to find out). We're tooling along through hillsides and small towns, along a river, when all of a sudden on the right this structure appears. I think it's a gold stamping mill, left over from the days of the rush.

As we climb up the hills it's plain that we're in logging country, but this area looks a little too logged out. Sure enough, we find one of those blue "Scenic Vista" signs and there's a kiosk in a new stand of trees talking about a big fire up here back in 1993.

At Burney we take a left to travel down 89 for a bit, for a stop at McArthur Burney State Park, home of Burney Falls, a 129 foot high set of waterfalls nestled in a canyon carved from the basalt. The varied rocks layered through the falls, and some of the interesting fields get us started in discussions about geology. Little did we know. It's also starting to get cold up here...

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Travel Birds Dan & Charlene's November 2003 Oregon Trip ]

Daniel Drexler:

We need a good human model... and a good fluid model.

5 Geek Social Fallacies - Worth a read, even if we all already know these. (Thanks Judy).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

No real pics, some things you just don't want to haul a camera around for. Yesterday we did a quick trip to Ellison's cave.. quick being 10-11 hours.. complete with a couple of "short" (100-200ft) rappell's and climbs, and the major one of 600 plus feet. (link to famous pic) Your mind tells you some pretty odd stuff while climbing up that much rope. But it will convince you to keep climbing. :)

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Photography Robotics Travel Embedded Devices ]

Just in time for writing those Solstice newsletters to the family, the most unreadable type font extant. It is based on one used by the aliens in 12 To The Moon, a noted Sci-Fi stinker from 1960. May the Great Coordinator be with you!

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Writing Typography Graphic Design ]

This one's for Diane! A totally cute picture of a rat crossing a wire lead me to the Xtreme Rat Challenge. Alas, those pages don't seem to have pictures of the rats in action.

[ related topics: Photography Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Nature and environment Current Events ]

I thought the ash tray policemen (one of the banned words) was awful but recently I read

"The Language Police" by Diane Ravich.

For any one who wonders what is happening to America (one of the banned words) this is a must read. A significant book. READ THIS BOOK!

All text books and test given to school children in the US are filtered through the language police. the word Man is disallowed. As are any thing that might offend anyone, except of course white males.

Examples:

• Women cannot be depicted as caregivers or doing household chores.
• Men cannot be lawyers or doctors or plumbers. They must be nurturing helpmates.
• Old people cannot be feeble or dependent; they must jog or repair the roof.
• A story that is set in the mountains discriminates against students from flatlands.
• Children cannot be shown as disobedient or in conflict with adults.
• Cake cannot appear in a story because it is not nutritious.

The "little woman" is disallowed. The strong tall male is not allowed. Caucasians are only depicted negatively. Mothering is out - since males can not participate.

Everything written before 1970 is not acceptable - no joking! Well I have noticed not much written after 1970 is any good so there you go!

The first step in wiping out Political Correctness and multi culturalism is identification - once identified we can conceptualize the evil - this is a good start, for all mankind. A must read, God Dammit (also banned words)

An excerpt from page 40-41:

In 1990, the New York Times described an author and an illustrator who couldn't take the shifting mandates anymore. The writer explained, 'Maybe it was the messenger at the door with another set of guidelines, updating the set she had received from the publisher a few days before. Maybe it was the elaborate recipes for an ethnic and racial mix in the cast of characters.' The article quoted an artist who stopped accepting textbook assignments in 1986 after receiving the latest instructions from the publisher for an illustration:

"'It's etched in acid in my mind. They sent 10 pages of single-spaced specifications. The hero was a Hispanic boy. There were black twins, one boy, one girl; an overweight Oriental boy; and an American Indian girl. That leaves the Caucasian. Since we mustn't forget the physically handicapped, she was born with a congenital malformation and only had three fingers on one hand."

"'One child had to have an Irish setter, and the setter was to be female....They also had a senior citizen, and I had to show her jogging."

"I can't do it anymore."

Like a character from Atlas Shrugged, eh?

This is why I say that all professors of universities should be elected. Yes its an awful option, but it might help in the short term to weed out those people and allow a flowering of ideas. Of course there should be no publicly funded local schools or universities at all but understanding that requires enlightenment, and we are far from that.

Ziffle of Mankind

[ related topics: Ziffle Religion Burning Man Children and growing up Quotes Politics Objectivism Books Sexual Culture Health Antidepressants Invention and Design Political Correctness moron Writing Law Enforcement Art & Culture Education New York Race Handicaps & Disabilities ]

I'm running a bit behind on my blogging and news, but I had to pass this along: The fine folks at Awasu (makers of a truly marvelous RSS reader, although it is platform dependant) mentioned that the Jhai Foundation would be demonstrating their bicycle-powered wireless computers on December 2nd in San Francisco:

The system as conceptualized is based upon low-power embedded (PC-104) computers running the GNU/Linux operating system and supporting 802.11b wireless communication (often called "WiFi") to create a communication link over the mountain range to the nearest town having electrical power and telephone access. The existence of a growing body of open source software supporting such wireless communications was central to this decision.

Sorry I didn't pass it along in time for anyone to make it to the demonstration :-(

[ related topics: Free Software Wireless Open Source Cool Technology Embedded Devices Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Flush with my microcontroller successes and barely coherent due to my lack of sleep from the trip to deploy it, I've been searching for a few things. Looking for information on current sensing lead me to Rob Paisley's model railroad electronics pages, specifically his various transistor throttle circuits go step-by-step through the sequence so I can understand the whys and wherefores of each component. But in my searching I've also learned that knowing a lot of this is like knowing assembly language, especially since I'm planning on driving everything from a microcontroller and software anyway: it seems perfectly reasonable to just get something like a LMD18200 3 amp H-bridge motor driver with internal overload protection and a current draw output and not worry about designing my own circuit breakers.

Relatedly, I'm looking for a good practical intro to electromagnetic actuators. I've been thinking about ways to build a cheap robot that goes beyond just repurposing an RC car chassis or similar. The big problem is that as you add axiis of motion, prices go up. Yes, I could build yet another hexapod that shuffles like a tank, but why? And doing a hexapod right takes 16 motors or more. I could do a two legged walker that shuffles in 3 or 4 axiis, but the 11 or 12 (3 ankle, knee, two hip, times two) to do it right starts to cost a lot.

What about a snake? Drop a small wheel on each segment, drive the joints between each segment with two electromagnets and a fixed magnet. Driver circuits become easy, especially if the stall currents on the actuators is low. If it's long enough I'd bet it'd be pretty good at some terrain that'd give anything else of equivalent articulation a lot of trouble. Scales nicely, could be built small or large. Probably not something I'll get to soon, but worth just letting a few background neurons play with the idea a bit more.

[ related topics: Robotics Machinery Embedded Devices Trains Toys ]

John Robb pointed to Rajesh Jain's link to Edward Hugh and Marcelo Rinesi: Brain power is getting cheaper all the time. At first I was going to take on the premise:

But the 'new new economy' way - one that recognises that well-educated human minds are as much of a commodity as any standards-compatible central processing unit - involves software written by bright maverick programmers (maybe tucked away in an East European 'transitional economy'), the incredibly cheap communication infrastructure of the Internet, and literal warehouses of Indian mechanical-mental workers typing away for what to us may appear as bargain basement wages (but which are still more than they could otherwise earn).

to point out that the point of education is to do to human minds what assembly lines did for manufactured goods: Create a constant process for producing a given level of quality with some fairly standard distribution of input materials. Thus, yes, "well-educated human minds" are destined to be a commodity.

But the real point of the article isn't so easily summed up, and I'm not even sure if the authors were able to express it as well as they could: it's not that the mind is becoming a commodity, it's that your competitors are becoming better at leveraging the mind. Fall behind on that process by thinking that labor and thinking are cheap when you chase those costs overseas and you'll get tromped by someone who manages to leverage those assets more effectively, no matter how little you're paying for the people.

[ related topics: New Economy Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Education Economics ]

Borklog needs comments so we can compare results over there: A (fairly simple) grammar quiz. Don't be intimidated by my 10 of 10.

[ related topics: Language ]

Meuon is a homeowner. This is the view from every main room of the house.. and the deck.. and.. It's small, 1375sqft, and needs some work (like a new deck and steps.. and..). But it's mine. Now I have really set down roots in Chattanooga. After I get moved in, and some things cleaned up (nothing has touched the yard in a year), I'll be posting some good detailed pics. Ya'll are welcome. 1031 Lower Brow Road, Signal Mtn, call first if it's after dark.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Coyote Grits Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Chattanooga ]

Wow. So I've got this model railroad that I started building ages ago, and I've decided it's time to get a glass top on it so I can move it back into the living room and not just have it a mess in the middle of things. A stop at TAP Plastics says they want about $140 for the piece I'm looking for, but it's not as scratch resistant as glass, and I kinda want a coffee table. So I slap "glass tabletop" into Google, and get $238.40 for 1/2" glass from GlassOnWheels.com, but when I fill out their online form they email me telling me they'd be glad to deliver it to my home for $588.00, or have me pick it up from a shipping destination with a loading dock for $379.50. Huh. Pick up the yellow pages, a local vendor wants less than $200 for the same piece, tells me that if I support the edges (probably a good idea anyway) I can get away with 3/8" for $140, and they'll help me fit it in the car.

The more I learn about this "e-commerce" thingamabob, the more skeptical I get.

[ related topics: New Economy Trains ]

In the jubilation over the capture of Saddam Hussein, let us not forget that Osama bin Laden is still at large.

[ related topics: Current Events WTC/Pentagon attacks War Dictators ]

I put it to you, the jury: What could possibly be cooler than a titanium spork?

[ related topics: Food Toys ]

I've been mostly working off my laptop, but recently I've realized that it's a bit underpowered for some image editing and similar tasks. Yesterday I slapped a switchable drive tray in my big beefy Windows XP box so that I could install Linux on a second. I name my machines after Ayn Rand characters (this is being served off "dagny").

This morning Jay linked to a list of Wikipedia pages about diesel engines which lead to a list of Technologies in Atlast Shrugged which lead to Characters in Atlas Shrugged. I'm thinking "conway" is the right name for this dual boot machine.

[ related topics: Free Software Objectivism Dan's Life Microsoft ]

You may not have noticed, but Blogshares disappeared, now it's back, it's still very slow, but... I've got an account that's worth about B$13 million there, not huge by Blogshares standards, but large enough that it might be able to do... something. Are there any players in the audience who can think of a good way to blow that account? And yes, "trade it back and forth with me so that I get it all but in the meantime we blow some tiny stock into the stratosphere and confuse all the big players" or some variation is a good place to start.

[ related topics: Weblogs Economics ]

Saw this at lunch on the side of a passenger van, it left me wondering if in the wake of allegations of late trading and preferential treatment for large clients at Schwab that small investors were getting "schwindled".

[ related topics: Photography Economics ]

Yes! We're celebrating two successes tonight:

After lots of work and struggle, Delightfully Cherished, Charlene's business, is now open. If you're into the elegantly erotic, these products might be a good place to start.

And Charlene was also offered the job she wants, working with developmentally challenged kids in a local school. She's accepted the position.

[ related topics: Erotic Dan's Life ]

Just in case you haven't already seen it: Texas woman busted for hawking erotic toys. Ahh those enlightened southerners.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law ]

As the situation in Iraq changes on a daily basis, we are begining to get more information on the first part of the war. In particular, the LA Times has pieced together the full story of Thunder Run (registration required, try laexaminer password laexaminer), the fierce battle in which 975 US soldiers captured Saddam's main palace while surrounded by 5 Million Iraqis. It certainly was no cakewalk, and almost turned into another Mogadishu. An amazing, terrifying story.

[ related topics: History War Dictators ]

I drove into work yesterday to carry in some sheets of plywood for our rig (the logistics of that convinced me that $75 for a delivery is a bargain), and ended up driving Phil home just a little late. On the way we got to talking about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, he asked if I'd ever seen it, so we ended up over at his house watching the "check back in with a few of the makeovers several months later" episode.

Two things:

1. About what they did to the the poor blond guy whose ponytail they lopped off: 1994 called, they want that hairstyle back.
2. Zippered shirts? It was kinda like seeing Burt Reynolds jumpsuits, only without the body hair.

Relatedly, over at 8 Bit Joystick while reading the entry about the capture of Saddam Hussein I realized something very sobering: I'm only a shave, haircut and grooming session away from looking like a genocidal dictator.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Work, productivity and environment Fashion Clothing ]

A hundred years ago today the first controlled powered flight put together by people with PR skills happened. Powered flight had been happening for probably 5 years, controlled gliding for longer, but putting both together and adding someone who knew how to talk to the press didn't come together 'til December 1903.

[ related topics: Aviation ]

Our friends at the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that medical marijuana grown by the consumer is okay because it doesn't involve interstate commerce, and therefore is not regulateable by the U.S. Congress. Won't last long, but it's cool that people manage to tie the silly legal system in knots occasionally.

[ related topics: Drugs Politics Law California Culture ]

Simon Blackburn writes in defence of lust:

Even in the rigid atmosphere of Catholic sanctity, the best that mystics could do to express their ecstatic communion with God or Christ was to model it upon sexual ecstasy.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture ]

Nothing appearing on the front page this morning, so I figure we'll do a little filler. View from the 4:45 ferry on the way home last night. Was feeling like some meat, so I stopped at the store to get some steaks, when I got a call saying "plans have changed". So we ended up with some shuttling to urgent care to help a friend who's caught between the seasonal flu and pneumonia. And then we were up late taking care of getting the wrinkles out of some of the systemic issues with the Delightfully Cherished accounting systems.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Public Transportation ]

This is a little premature, but I wanted to make sure we get the message out. December 20^th, that's this Saturday, is the birthday of Bunni. Back on the 2^nd she said:

I have two wishes. Not big wishes. One of them is on december 20th I want to get twenty comments on this blog. That is my dream people. So teach your cat to type. Write a comment under an assumed name. By whatever means necessary but on my birthday post, I want those 20 comments...

So on Saturday I want everyone who possibly can to scramble over there and give her her 20 "happy birthday"s.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Idle Words has a great ramble on early aviation, the Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and how the patent system affected aircraft development.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Cool Science Aviation ]

Last night we gathered at Phil's house to watch the first in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (long version) on a projector borrowed from work, tonight the second, Saturday we'll go out and see Return of the King. I'm not sure the longer version is a better movie but it is a different one, some of the "true to the book" bits dragged a bit (And was that bit about them getting gifts in Lorien in the original movie? I kept waiting for Galadriel to whip out a brain for the scarecrow and courage for the lion). It takes some damned good actors to pull off some of those lines, Sean Astin is awesome. There was a little less catcalling than I expected, so Charlene and I made do with some snide quiet comments back and forth to each other, but overall I'm pumped for the next installment tonight and the conclusion tomorrow.

[ related topics: Books Dan's Life Movies tolkien ]

Wow. We're working on a fairly complex .NET app that uses lots of permissions and groups and services and... well... Windows 2000 just sucks at distinguishing between local users and domain users and sometimes will log you in as one but grab a permission set from the other and... there have got to be a whole lot of security holes left in that bit of code. Windows XP seems to have fixed most of 'em, which surprises me.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Microsoft Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment ]

I really need to code a job listing service for Flutterby, but... a friend has mentioned an entry-level project manager opening over in the Emeryville area. Email me for details.

[ related topics: Heinlein ]

Oh yeah: Yesterday's ferry ride home was on the newly refurbished and returned to service Mendocino. Damn that's a nice boat; fast, quiet, smooth, good seating layout and with lots of windows. Can't wait for weather which encourages me to sit up on the sun deck which now has seats and shelter. This afternoon I'm trying to arrange things so I catch the high speed one again.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area Current Events Boats Public Transportation ]

Yes, it is a slack day before Christmas week, I've handed in all my (considerable) recent expense reports, and my boss and I pretty much agree that our mods to the rig this week have turned it into something that's pretty danged close to a deployable product. So productivity today is essentially hanging out 'til the guy who will be building our circuit boards comes in so I can talk a bit with him, and then bailing for home. A hodgepodge:

• I've found what looks like a great recipe for fruitcake ("Christmas Cake" if you're a brit) over on K5.
• Those wonderfully inclusive folks over at the American Family Association are wondering about your opinions on same sex marriage and are promising to present the results to Congress. You know what to do.
• Remember that suggestion for a new World Trade Center design that circulated shortly after the attacks, the one that looked like a fist with an extended finger? Compare to one view of the design for rebuilding the trade center unveiled today.

[ related topics: Politics Books Photography Sexual Culture Current Events Marriage ]

MoveOn.org has apparently bought some TV time during the week of the State of the Union Address early in '04 and has held a contest for artist-submitted 30-second promos to be shown during those slots, delineating the policies and failed practices of Bush in 30 Seconds. They were astounded to receive over 1,000 entries. They've posted many (most? all?) of them at a site where you can view up to 20 new ones per day and vote on the ones you watch in 4 categories; the 15 finalists will be submitted to a panel for the final selection.

Some of them are silly and amateurish (and I'm glad to report that those tend to receive the lowest scores). But some are darned good, and extremely effective. Two of my favorites so far are What are we teaching our children? and Three Strikes, You're Out.

[ related topics: Politics Technology and Culture Movies Invention and Design Art & Culture Television ]

We're searching hard for ideas for a few more gifts for the rat boys, and I ran across this one: Every Man's Battle : Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. I'm amazed that the Amazon listing hasn't been overrun by pranksters... yet.

[ related topics: Religion Books Sexual Culture ]

Yesterday Charlene and I went up to Santa Rosa to bum around. Interesting city, I've a feeling we'll be visiting again, although the weather sucked so wandering around too much was out. One of the stops was the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center. Pretty cool in a historical sense, Peanuts really was funny back when he was willing to be a little more mean (and therefore expose a little more about human nature), and it was cool to see some of the early endorsements: One was an ad for a Kodak Brownie, offering instructions on how to take close-up pictures; if people were figuring that out then and making some of the goofs I've talked 'em through today, there's strong evidence that people are becoming stupid.

[ related topics: Humor Photography Dan's Life Art & Culture Comics ]

Charlene had a client this morning and the hiking group bailed, so I'm sitting in Aroma in downtown San Rafael talking to a guy who pointed me to Other Power, home of the Hamster Powered Alternator. Looks like a good resource for alternative power systems.

[ related topics: Cool Technology ]

Just got back from Return of the King. Stunning. Maybe I can say something more coherent later.

[ related topics: Movies tolkien ]

Hope the CA contingent of Flutterby is all okay, along with their worldly possessions. (A friend vacationining in the area alerted us to the news just before her cell succumbed to the overloaded phone system.)

[ related topics: Earthquake ]

I've made rumblings recently about resurrecting the model railroad. Even dragged the layout I'd been working on out of storage, cleaned things up, and started on some scenery. Then we realized that there just wasn't a reasonable space to put it in. So I spent an evening researching options for even smaller layout designs, and was starting to think about a small switching layout on a shelf board when I discovered T-trak. N-scale track and rolling stock, single-length modules are a little over 12 inches long, the form factor is perfect for shelf railroads, yet can be expanded out to multiples of that and built up to a foot deep, and it beats a shelf railroad because you can drag these things down to the train show and run 'em with someone else.

The Unofficial T-trak page is a good place to start, I built a couple of modules last night with a wallboard knife and 1/4" birch plywood, but I've got one of the Shape Master T-trak modules on order at Feather River Trains so I can try to match up with their joiners. It's a super small space, but as one page I ran across said: "think of it as haiku."

And Feather River Trains is a new model railroading hobby shop up in northern San Rafael that looks like it's going cool directions. Still small, still new, but worth checking out if you're in the north bay. Further south, Trackside Trains down in Burlingame is my N-scale vendor of choice.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area Trains Toys ]

Court rules that two people can be convicted for the same crime. This is bizarre; I can understand how the ruling came about, but...

Whether you view today as a good time to go cut some new tracks in the powder 'cause there's no one else on the slopes, as a culmination of a month long celebration of capitalism, or even (and I know one or two of you read Flutterby) as a remembrance of the birth of the son of your deity, have a good day.

[ related topics: Religion Sports ]

Thanks, Jay! See Kottke and Zeldman take on the design of Google's home page in this ancient MetaFilter thread. Snicker.

[ related topics: Web development moron Graphic Design ]

From: American Family Association <afapetitions@lists.afa.net>

To: Dan Lyke <danlyke@flutterby.com>

Subject: Over 600,000 have voted on marriage poll

Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 17:59:00 -0600

Dear Dan,

Participation in America?s Poll on Homosexual Marriage at www.marriagepoll.com continues at a steady pace. As of noon Saturday, December 28, the results were as follows:

- I oppose legalization of homosexual marriage and "civil unions" total votes: 201913

- I favor legalization of homosexual marriage total votes: 378689

- I favor a "civil union" with the full benefits of marriage except for the name: 52238

If you have not already voted, go to www.marriagepoll.com to do so.

Be sure to forward the poll on to your family and friends.

Only votes that have a valid email address associated with them will be counted. We will be purging those with invalid email addresses, which may cause poll results to change somewhat.

Sincerely,

Don

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman

American Family Association

P.S. Please forward this email to at least one friend.

++++++++++++++++++++++

You are receiving this mailing because you took action on an AFA-sponsored poll, petition, or action alert. You are subscribed to afapetition as danlyke@flutterby.com.

In keeping with our privacy policy, AFA may periodically contact you regarding issues of concern to the family. Rest assured that your subscription e-mail address will be kept in the strictest confidence. We do not divulge, nor make available to any third party, our subscription list. Your privacy is paramount to us!

If you do not wish to receive further communications from us, go to (address elided, I wanna stay subscribed) to unsubscribe.

Questions or comments about AFA? Contact us via email, phone, fax, or postal mail by going to http://www.afa.net/contact.asp.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Sexual Culture Marriage ]

Folks who've seen my work room know that "disorganized" is an understatement. This has been further compounded by the fact that I like to hang out and do hobby sort of stuff near where Charlene's working so that we can chat while we do stuff. So after much hemming and hawing and discussion we decided to rearrange the house and see if we could find a better format. We've decided that the living room will really be for living, and the spare bedroom will become a parlor sort of space.

Of course this time of year in Northern California means that to do anything outside we have to carry stuff out and work while it's not raining, and be prepared to lug it all back in when the drops start. But in between massive cleaning and organizing in the past few days as we try to figure out what can fit where, we've built 4 sets of shelves, cut down a desk and chair to be Charlene's perfect height, and I've built myself a workbench. A bunch of hardware still needs to be mounted, a few lights, a power supply, a small vice or two, an airbrush compressor, I'm considering putting tool racks on the inside of the outer doors, and there'll be a lot of parts bins on the shelves, but overall I'm not too unhappy with how it came out. Because of dodging raindrops and time constraints there are some rough edges and harsh alignments and some external (covered) screw heads (after the third time the whole thing fell apart 'cause we couldn't leave it in one place for the glue to dry...), but it doesn't look half-bad. As you can see the front of the work surface folds back in (I'll cut a hole further back for the vice to disappear into) and it all closes up to look a little less utilitarian.

I'll probably eventually decide that I want some sort of cover on the lower part, but that might just end up being a curtain (which could double as a parts bib when I'm working with the fine stuff...).

Tomorrow we do large dump run #2. It feels good.

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

I still haven't found value in Friendster, but a few folks have obviously found value in it, and many are frustrated that Friendster keeps subverting some of the mechanisms that thy've ben using to bypass the lack of grouping capabilities. If you're looking for alternatives, Kelly passed along not Friendster.

[ related topics: Sociology Net Culture Social Software ]