Flutterby™! From 2004-04-01 to 2004-04-30

Little trip down memory lane: A thread over at NScale.net sent me off in search of the GEX 40010 Schnabel Car that I saw several times, since my dad worked at the GE power transformer division in Pittsfield Massachusetts. Nothing cosmic, just a big honkin' piece of machinery.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Dan's Life Machinery Trains ]

Christopher Rasch had a link to Malcolm Gladwell on Judith Rich Harris's research which suggests that peers have more to do with how children turn out than parents. That lead me to The Nurture Assumption website, which is mostly mentions for her book, but it sounds like there's a bunch of interesting thinking down that road.

In an email conversation a while back someone referred to Chattanooga as "a great place to raise children". My instincts were that if I were raising kids I'd do everything I could to give them peers from an upscale area, but I then (and now) believe that parents can make a huge difference. This suggests that those instincts were more correct. And could throw all sorts of fuel on the notions of bussing and desegregation.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Chattanooga Education ]

You should just go read Medley for political coverage, but one entry caught my eye. It links to The American Prospect: Credibility Gap, which, among other things reports on a paper that takes beliefs in simple falsehoods (and facts which even the Bush administration has admitted are false) and correlates those to support for the war. From the article:

Support for the war was found to be highly correlated with the possession of false beliefs on these three matters -- 86 percent of those who believed all three supported the war, as did 78 percent of those who believed two, and 53 percent of those who believed just one. Among people who knew the truth on all three scores, just 23 percent supported the war. One key finding was that misinformation about the state of world opinion was the single strongest predictor of support for the war.

[ related topics: Politics History moron Journalism and Media War ]

Oh. My. This freakin' rocks, and I'm going to have to make this for someone's birthday. Shamelessly filched from Borklog, the Thorax Cake...

At this point Barbara May came home from a party and helped me move the cake to its final location so I could attach the intestine, which was to be trailing out of the rib cage so as to suggest that the person to whom the thorax had belonged had been ripped apart, rather than carefully dissected.

I bent the jelly roll (which I was quite proud of; I'd never made that kind of cake before and I sometimes have problems with whipping eggs.

Warning: Although all violence is apparently simulated, the pictures are not to be viewed if you're squeamish.

[ related topics: Humor Food Food - Cake ]

Rundown from the Embedded Systems Conference:

Ran into Brian Warner, we're going to have to get together and do lunch. We also need a way to get a critical mass of folks on Petmail for some application, if you can think of a place where strongly permission based replacement for SMTP mail would be apropos, give a holler.

Also ran into John "USPA87419" Lewis, whom I haven't seen since we worked together on the Toy Story Animated StoryBook. He's been building a cute little video player.

Products that I thought deserved a look:

• 36 channel 500MHz 1M sample logic analyzer for circa $3k. USB to a PC for display. From NCI.
• I've loved the service that I've gotten from ExpressPCB, but the folks at PCB-POOL seem like they might have a good deal when turnaround times aren't so critical but price is.
• Embedded Solutions AG had an ARM7 with 16 meg of SRAM and 2 meg of flash on a card that fits into a 48 pin DIP socket for circa $100 quantity 1. This and a few other projects got me to thinking that what a whole lot of these companies are lacking is better marketing. More on that in a future post...
• Ever since I discovered that the materials used to make EL wire were available in silkscreen form I've been wondering about using 'em to make a raster display. Twist Semiconductor does high voltage drivers. I think they're a fabless shop, but if I ever get to the point where I think that that'd make a good product and would be worth getting funding to do a couple of thousand devices they're worth having in mind.
• International Rectifier looks like they've got some good servo drive chipsets.
• Net Chip has a USB slave to PCI device, which might make a good way to build big devices that can talk to the host PC via USB. This would be a good alternative to, say, HTTP over TCP/IP because it's easier for your average MIS flunky to configure (yes, I, alas, speak from experience on this...)
• Among the many vendors with 802.11b modules was Lantronix(http//www.lantronix.com/), but with most of these devices, just as with the ethernet to microcontroller devices I saw last year, I couldn't shake the feeling that implementing your own protocol stack and building that part of the software into the device is better than layering in another stage.
• I got a demo disk for some simulation software from Vector CANtech for looking at CANbus networks, I'll have to see how helpful that looks.

And I'm thinking there'll be some really cool stuff to come out of ZigBee^tm. Transceivers for $4 in low quantities with antennas that can just be printed on to the boards, super low power consumption, lower data rate than Bluetooth, but a lot more range and plenty of throughput for many of the applications for which I find wireless interesting.

[ related topics: Wireless Robotics Software Engineering Marketing Embedded Devices Conferences ]

Jeff passes along Norman Koren on digital camera sharpness. Some good notes, taken from experience.

I keep trying to make sense of the people who pull out the theoretical line pairs per mm on a given film and convince themselves that this is the basis of comparison for film to digital. It's like they've no understanding of the whole lens and camera stability system, and they simply cannot see grain.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Obligatory political note of the morning: The DiIulio letter:

On October 24, John DiIulio, a former high-level official in the Bush administration, sent the letter below to Esquire Washington correspondent Ron Suskind. The letter was a key source of Suskind's story about Karl Rove, politics and policymaking in the Bush administration, "Why Are These Men Laughing," which appears in the January 2003 issue of Esquire. On Monday, December 3, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said that the charges contained in the story were "groundless and baseless." After initially standing by his assertions, DiIulio himself later issued an "apology." Esquire stands strongly behind Suskind and his important story.

A long letter from DiIulio follows, and it's fascinating.

[ related topics: Religion Politics moron ]

Nashville bar blacks out nipples on menus:

Nude women have been on the menu at The Sutler for years, but the Nashville pub covered up the 19th-century Victorian photos after being warned they might be too racy for state law.

The Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission decided Wednesday that only one photo showing a woman's genital area was off-limits, but by then every nipple on the menus had been covered in black marker.

I can't find it now, but I seem to remember linking to an article ages ago where some college women got off of an indecent exposure charge because technically their genitals weren't actually visible...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events ]

Oh yeah, other idea of the morning: Among my gazillion other projects, I'm writing this über photo organizing software, which can arrange things geographically, by subject, by date, and so forth. One of the things I've been thinking about building is a little GPS logging device that plugs into the flash socket on a camera and stores the current position whenever the shutter is clicked.

My "duh" moment: All I need to do is interpolate the image time from the digital image with the trackpoint times from a conventional GPS device.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Software Engineering Maps and Mapping ]

OK, so we've decided maybe now is the time, since the kitchen is paid for (and will be certified as inhabitable on Monday if the city inspection goes as expected!), to investigate getting a T1 line to our house. I'm not entirely sure where to start: every site I review seems to assume we're a business and markets its services accordingly. Anyone have any wisdom or experience to impart as we begin investigating T1 for home use? (Or should we proceed in a different direction entirely? We already have DSL service and it's too slow and occasionally too flakey for our needs.) And what's this "scalable T1" stuff?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama broadband Economics ]

I realize a lot of you out there in Flutterby land are into cooking. And there's a large intersection between those of you who cook, and those who live in the south. A warning: The recipe for dinner rolls in this month's Southern Living may cause explosions, fire and injury. The warning is also available from the Southern Living website.

[ related topics: Food Current Events Pyrotechnics ]

So I'm going to the umpteenth for some stuff we're going to be selling on EBay, and part of that is going through the identity validation which gets a credit report on you and then asks all sorts of nosy stuff that you may or may not remember. So I'm trying to recover stuff about a Discover™ Card account I haven't used in ages, so I go and see if I can log in, and I discover that:

We're Sorry.

Your password can be 5-10 letters, numbers, or a combination of letters and numbers, with no spaces or special characters.

Please use your browser's "Back" button to return to the previous page and re-enter your password information.

Sigh. I've got an idea, why don't we just put my account information on a flashing billboard over the I80 morning commute?

[ related topics: Dan's Life moron security ]

To make sure I've got a handy place to check on it, our listing for 6 spools of 3/16" green decorative rayon cord on eBay. Gulp. Now we see how this thing works.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

There was a mention at Medley and later another at Backup Brain of There Goes the Neighborhood: Why home prices are about to plummet--and take the recovery with them. Which, of course, is something I've been predicting for the better half of a decade now, so I'm left with something of a quandary: It's fairly plain that the optimists generally win, but I'm also realizing that my timing is wrong and that understanding that the house of cards is unsafe doesn't keep people from getting some good use out of the paper building. Obviously my being "right" in seeing the meta-situation isn't helping me to exploit the underlying dynamics.

Some re-thinking of certain positions is in order.

[ related topics: Politics New Economy Economics Real Estate ]

The advent of cell phone headsets made the initial problem difficult; it was that much harder to tell the lawyer from the insane, but the current popularity of yoga means that yuppies are now carrying around yoga mats and the absence of a bedroll is no longer an indicator one way or the other...

[ related topics: Wireless Consumerism and advertising ]

In the usual "looking for mindless entertainment" mode after digging through taxes on Saturday, we rented On Edge. It's figure skating meets This Is Spinal Tap, following the dreams of 3 figure skaters at a rink in Southern California as they claw their way to the regionals.

As of this writing there are two reviews of On Edge over at IMDB, one appears to be written by a publicist, the other by a figure skating judge.

Which is the movie's main flaw: It goes over the top in kicking at the figure skating judges, which is funny as hell (especially when the panel at the final showdown is composed entirely of Olympic medalists doing their send-ups of skating judges), but if you've never paid attention to the politics will probably get completely missed or just look mean-spirited.

It's also got Jason Alexander doing the "Seinfeld made me rich so now I'm doing my indy film dues" thing, unfortunately he doesn't really work as a sympathetic Zamboni driver who believes himself instrumental in the successes of each of the contestants. In a movie this over-the-top he could have been the clueless schmoe whose actions happen to work out, or he could have been the otherwise absent father figure, but somehow he never clicks in either role.

There were a few laugh out loud moments, but I never cared for the characters the way I would in a Christopher Guest film, and a little too often I found myself thinking "there's a skating in-joke that I didn't get". So while it wasn't nearly as cool as Simon Costa and Ruckus down at Cafe Amsterdam on Friday night, it was just fine for a "stay home and veg" movie.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Movies Coyote Grits Writing Law Work, productivity and environment Heinlein California Culture Sports Skating ]

Damn. I had this great rant centered around the alleged Address to the United States Congress on March 23, 2004 by Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon in which he says:

But in the context of Heaven's providence, I am God's ambassador, sent to earth with His full authority. I am sent to accomplish His command to save the world's six billion people, restoring them to Heaven with the original goodness in which they were created.

where I was going to propose that if they're going to let random religious cranks address Congress and claim to be the messiah, sign me up! After all I've got the Jesus look in the long hair and the beard, and I wear sandals...

But no, I can't find reference to the Rev. Dr. in the March 23 Congressional Record Extension of Remarks, Senate Daily Digest, the Senate Congressional Record or the House Congressional Record. And a quick news.google.com search turns up... well... evidence that the Washington Post Reliable Source edits columns after they've been posted. John Gorenfeld points to Atrios pointing to the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification of U.S.A., specifically the program and host committee, but since that website appears to be just another Unification Church front I'm not sure I'm going to call it credible.

So, alas, despite Bill Humphries' disclaimer that it didn't look like an April fools prank, I have to chalk it up to the Rev. Dr. Moon making the address "in spirit" or otherwise corporeally disengaged from his alleged audience. Which is a shame, because Bill points to a great suggestion made by veritas in Atrios' comments:

So, let's crucify him next Friday and see if he rises again.

All was not lost, because that Google search did lead to Sometimes Jesus calls, sometimes Ted sends e-mail, a quick rundown on messiah-hood today.

[Edit: As Diane pointed out, I unfairly maligned The Washington Post when I meant to denigrate the blatant Unification Church front]

[ related topics: Religion Politics Humor moron Sociology Current Events ]

So has anyone out there had a positive experience with recruiters, or think that recruiters and/or job boards are reasonable places to broaden prospects? My experience on both ends is that they're just additional cost inserted into the process, but I'm trying to get a broader view of the job situations in various areas. I don't want to cut off any prospects by signing up with a recruiter, but I really want to look widely rather than just taking the first thing that pops up in my circle of friends.

(Still employed, just wondering...)

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

QOTD, from someone who undoubtedly wishes to remain anonymous:

Our motto: As reliable as Windows itself.

[ related topics: Quotes Dan's Life Microsoft ]

The Angry Economist had a link to a message by Stephen J. Turnbull, not all of which I agree with, but the sound-bite stood out:

If you have a job because somebody else is prohibited from offering the product at a lower cost, you're not on salary, you're on welfare.

And yesterday over at Open Knowledge crasch linked to John Stossel's Confessions of a Welfare Queen: How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars.

Oh yeah: This might also be a time to point out that the Kerry campaign is lying when it claims that a net 3 million jobs have been lost under Bush. Since there's been an expansion of 700k jobs in the public sector that's really only 2.3 million. I'm so glad the Republicans are the party of smaller government.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Economics ]

Anti-news: Sex is good for you. In particular, yet more evidence that ejaculations help prevent prostate cancer. In fact this may be a rehash of previous evidence, I'm too lazy to go back and check right now, but I will quote one call-out:

Australian epidemiologist Graham Giles at the nonprofit Cancer Council in Melbourne said one of the big remaining questions was the effect of frequent orgasms during one's teenage years. Like early childbirth in women, a lot of orgasms early in a man's life span may be "like running an engine," he said, prompting youthful cells in the critical region to "fully develop into a whole lot of nice prostate cells."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Health Current Events Physiology ]

Hey, here's a good idea: Pleasanton hooks up a stoplight to delay speeders.

It's all a little too much for Ken Pattee, a 52-year-old construction inspector from Livermore who sometimes rides his Harley-Davidson down Vineyard Avenue. He said he doesn't feel good about the electronic eye.

"It's depriving you of another one of your liberties -- going fast," Pattee said. "If they implement it everywhere, there will be nothing but red lights. Nobody does the speed limit."

Huh. I think I've heard the Doppler shift as this guy cruised up our street.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Automobiles ]

FAA approves one year spacecraft license for the Scaled Composites vehicle SpaceShipOne.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Current Events Cool Technology ]

Over at Medley there was a link to Who Is That With Jeremy?, a web site by a parent who's photographing their kid with as many celebrities as can be found to hold the child. I wouldn't deem it worthy of a link, except that some perverse part of me kept thinking that there really needs to be a crossover with the Little Gray Guy

[ related topics: Children and growing up Humor Sexual Culture ]

This morning Daze had a rundown of weblog coverage of the coming Ashcroft war on porn after linking to a Baltimore Sun article on the Justice Department spending copious dollars trying to prosecute "obscenity" on Tuesday. Today Debra mentions it, and suggests that everyone read The Government Versus Erotica: The Seige of Adam & Eve(previously mentioned on Flutterby), advice that I second.

But at least as insidious, Cobb had a link to The Strange Case of the Hanover High Shocker, in which a high school principal attempts to edit the memories to be stored in a yearbook.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Privacy Sexual Culture Free Speech History moron Law Current Events Journalism and Media Law Enforcement ]

E-Week Story on how Micro$oft is Embracing and Extending Open Source, just like the famed Halloween Document of 1988 said it would. - It takes lots of hutzpah to actually do the evil things you told the world you were going to do, and to be so freaking big and powerful that the world just goes 'more business as usual'. Scary.

[ related topics: Free Software ]

A reader who wishes to remain anonymous forwarded along this French art-y porn site. I'm still looking through it trying to figure out what I think of it, it interests me more in an intellectual sense than anything else because in playing with tight and unusual camera angles it gets me thinking about various ways to visualize, but I'm not finding that those angles are terribly effective.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Art & Culture ]

Tomorrow we're leaving for a week on a road trip. We plan to start by heading south, probably down I-5, then cutting over towards Bakersfield and up over Tehachapi Pass. I'd like to see the Tehachapi loop, and in looking for background I discovered that California had an "El Gobernador" long before our current governor: It was a 4-10-0 locomotive built in 1884 to haul loads over the Tehachapi route. There's a drawing and a picture linked to from a talk about the Southern Pacific Railway shops in Sacramento, but except for its size it's somewhat unremarkable.

... kinda like ... never mind.

[ related topics: California Culture Travel Machinery Trains ]

Hey Meuon, next time you're beating around the west in your truck (or I'm feeling like desert mountain biking): Off The Beaten Path in Southern Nevada. Cool finds with lat/lon and similar in the deep desert, mostly only 4WD or other off-road vehicle accessible.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping Maps & Mapping Bicycling ]

Dan Savage gets a marriage license:

The clerk called over her manager, a nice older white man, who explained that Amy and Sonia couldn't have a marriage license. So I asked if Amy and I could have one--even though I'm gay and live with my boyfriend, and Amy's a lesbian and lives with her girlfriend. We emphasized to the clerk and her manager that Amy and I don't live together, we don't love each other, we don't plan to have kids together, and we're going to go on living and sleeping with our same-sex partners after we get married. So could we still get a marriage license?

"Sure," the license-department manager said, "If you've got $54, you can have a marriage license."

The nervous clerk spelled our names wrong on the first marriage license she printed out, and when she tried to correct it, her computer crashed. So another clerk took care of us--a nice woman who appeared to be a lesbian and who got the joke. She issued us our marriage license while her manager watched.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Marriage ]

I don't know if I'll have a chance to update Flutterby for at least a week. Tonight we go out with friends, sounds like Thai and bowling, tomorrow morning we run down the checklist one more time, move the electronics to the 110v system I just put in the vehicle, hop in the car and point it south and vaguely east, stopping when we see something interesting. I expect that after day one we'll be counting the miles between gas stations let alone trying to find free 802.11b, so y'all are on your own.

The house is being watched by teenagers with mad 1773 5|<!11z who will pwn you if you invade their space, so the only thing we're concerned about is that the cats won't get heard over the sound of gunfire and explosions in the headphones and therefore might get hungry, but cats have a way of bridging the pain of that virtual world with the real one.

See ya in a week. Hopefully with cool stories and purty pitchers. Be good, or if ya ain't then name it after me. Dan out.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Photography Dan's Life Space & Astronomy Automobiles Dan & Charlene's April 2004 Desert Trip ]

An attempt at explaining the 10 dimensions and Calabi-Yau manifolds. - You might want to be on some good mind altering drugs when you read this.. "Like so much congealed fat, we are prevented from escaping the brane and going into the higher-dimensional soup. -- Only gravity is allowed to do that."

[ related topics: Drugs Health Mathematics ]

"Consent required story" at Register.com. I get mixed feelings on this one, I'm both glad that a 'search warrant' would be required for "Big Brother" to log/intercept such things, and when I have had to 'sniff' in the middle, they always had a search warrant. In this case, I am amazed that they threw out the case due to the two party consent rule. My personal opinion: don't post to the web or via e-mail or anywhere electronic anything you don't want on the front page of the local newspaper. And don't think this ruling will help you, they'll just get a search warrant, or in places like Rhea County TN or Cleveland TN, the Judge will probably just post-date one as needed.

[ related topics: Privacy Spam Law Journalism and Media ]

Logged because of Dan and friends current and past affiliation with Disney/Pixar: Disney lost on Alamo and Home on the Range - So Disney seems to be loosing it's edge, vision, magic, etc.. I'm curious as to how much control over such projects the man at the top (Eisner) really has. He gets the blame, he's not loved.. but I really think it must be actions and decisions made lower down the ladder that are really sucking. Of course, the leader usually sets the tone and the corporate culture for success and/or failure. Have all of the good underlings left for more fertile pastures? Are those left stuck in a mundane mode, afraid to take a risk or taking the wrong ones?

I've recently been dealing with some people that have lost motivation and are looking for new directions, a cause. Dispite reams of 'management how-to' books and MBA's, successful business seems to rest an an elusive quality, the belief that you are on a mission, a winning team and that success for the whole team rests on you believing in doing your part, plus just a little more.

If we could just bottle that feeling.. spray it as needed like air freshener.. overcoming the stench of stagnation and pheremones of fear. Dan is seeking it, I'm trying to create it, other friends have just changed jobs (after 10+ years) looking for it. It's 2am, why am I working so late to loud music on the Fenders when I theoretically have loads of time? because I get more done under the pressure, real or manufactured, 2am at 100+db just feels like I need to get this done, like there is the energy of success just around the corner.

If I can find/create/bottle it, I could probably sell it to Eisner for nearly anything I can dream of. He probably either smells of apathy or failure... his fault or not.

[ related topics: Pixar Interactive Drama Books Music Animation Coyote Grits Invention and Design History Sociology Work, productivity and environment Graphics California Culture Clowns Databases ]

Link stolen from a friend's website: VibeRider.com - I always thought the purpose of a Harley was it was a large, kick start, vibrator. I guess the smooth running rice burning clones, and even the newer Harley's need a little help. Hence the high tech, motor RPM synchronized Vibe Rider, with "special effects" and a 'full power override'.

Can you control a cycle at 70mph with a woman having an orgasm on the back seat? Not the woman in my life.. Explain that one to the paramedics, if you (and her) survive.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Sports Bicycling ]

Johnny Chung Lee has published instructions for building a $14 steady-cam. Just the thing for aspiring video students and hobbyists.

(I know I got this from a blog, but I've lost track of which one.)

[ related topics: Movies Invention and Design Journalism and Media Video ]

Dan's not here, but we can still talk about fashion. Apparently, the "hot new trend" of Japanese women wearing fake see-through skirts (may not be work safe, depending on your work) is itself an urban legend. According to Snopes, the pics come from cheap porno mags that often claim to have taken them with a special camera that can see through clothes.

I don't see any reason this fashion couldn't become a reality, though - with the additon of a line of firm male cheeks on jeans, of course.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Graphic Design Fashion Clothing ]

Just heard from Boing Boing that "Weird Al" Yankovic's parents have died of carbon monoxide poisoning. I'd like to join Xeni in wishing Al "Condolences, and much admiration and respect".

[ related topics: Humor Music ]

The bell tolls for thee SCO. Everyone has been pensively waiting for SCO to produce some silver bullet of evidence to back up their case. Well as time has gone on it's become incresing obvious that not only do they not have a case but they are guilty of the lowest of low practices in our overly litigious society. The VC(Bay Star) would have quietly tried to sell their interest first (it's all about saving your ass at this point) so obviously nobody is around to dump more cash over the event horizon into the now infamous SCO

[ related topics: moron Law California Culture Linux ]

8 days. 2,317 miles on the odometer. A range of 9,500 vertical feet. From hot desert sagebrush to aspen forests in snow, granite to sandstone to limestone, flat for tens of miles to a narrow two-lane road along a crest with a few hundred feet of drop-off on either side and no shoulder, lots of dancing half-naked women to hoping we didn't break down because we weren't sure there'd be anyone along for days.

It was a great road trip. More pictures over the next few days.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Travel Dan & Charlene's April 2004 Desert Trip ]

Apologies for the delays in more pictures, I'm back at work with lots of stuff to do (and out of town visitors with their misbehaving laptops, seen more Windows XP bluescreens this morning than...) and I'm sorting through a gazillion images (but making progress on my tools).

However, I have a bunch of popped-up links that I want to make a note of. Eastbound on I-80 through Nevada at 75MPH (and yes, I really did drive the speed limit) we saw a "historic district" sign, so we pulled off into Wells, Nevada. The historic district was a bunch of old buildings in various states of repair (one old bank for $59k that was actually quite spiffy) and partial tenancy that was kinda cool. I took a bunch of pictures to make a model railroad diorama.

But what impressed us about this town is that in so many desert towns you get the feeling that people live there because it's their last resort. Wells is obviously populated by people who live there because they really want to. There's a lot of vibrance in that rundown town, and even though it's waaaaay out there, I'm looking for an excuse to go back sometime. They had a brochure pitching their new business park, lots of flyers on the local culture and history, and even though on a Saturday the place was shut down there was still something about it that made us both slightly intrigued.

There's the Wells Chamber of Commerce, the Wells Nevada Online Page, and this amusing tail from 1943: Quarantined in Wells. Yes, they still have two brothels.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Sociology Work, productivity and environment Trains Architecture Dan & Charlene's April 2004 Desert Trip ]

The SF Chronicle talks to people who think marriage shouldn't be limited to just two people. Or at least that's how they couch it, it's a fluff piece on polyamory.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Marriage ]

Larry's locked up, in one of those "raise bail money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association" stunts. The MDA isn't one of my first-tier charities, but if Larry's speaking well of 'em I might have to take stock of my finances...

[ related topics: Health Handicaps & Disabilities Economics ]

Yep, Dan thinks he's a large format photographer again (although, in my defense, the full res version of this looks sweet too). This was a ways up Hidden Canyon in Zion National Park. As the mouth of this canyon is hundreds of feet above the valley floor, the trail up involves sections cut out of the canyon wall, with lots of slippery sand on the rock, and chains to hold onto. Not as exposed as, say, the final cables climbing Half Dome, but still out there. But the reward was worth it, there'll be more pictures from this stretch.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Dan & Charlene's April 2004 Desert Trip ]

Tara (of PR Bop and ResearchBuzz fame, along with some more mainstream endeavors), thought I'd be interested in a press release from MyPublisher, Inc. announcing an "80 photo paperback book for $9.95". My neighbor is just going freelance with photography, and among the products he's considering offering is a hardbound collection of wedding photos. I'd want to learn a little more about their process so I can get a feel for the archival qualities of the finished product, but this might be something to recommend to him.

This also seems to be a next step in the way of a lot of services, provide a "web services" interface to do what the counter-people at a shop would normally do, and I need to find a way to classify them.

[ related topics: Books Photography New Economy Archival ]

East Bay Express piece on Joseph Kramer, known for founding The Body Electric school and who got the California Department of Consumer Affairs to approve a certificate program in "Sexological Bodywork" (although I'm not seeing such a thing on the California Department of Consumer Affairs site). Interesting for the notes on Kramer's attempts to redefine the boundaries between sex work and massage, and for the take of the author of the article:

And that's when it dawned on me. Whether out of fear or circumstance, Kramer has effectively inverted the mental and physical dimensions of sex. Whereas many of us have sex lives that are physically simple but emotionally complex, Kramer has attempted to reverse that order. With all of his emphasis on specific strokes, breathing, and personal, nonpartner engagement, he has tried to transform sex into an act that is physically demanding, but interpersonally safe.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area Consumerism and advertising Physiology ]

Help! Anyone know what it means when a Windows 2k machine runs for some apparently random amount of time, then tells me that LSASS.EXE has unexpectedly quit with some error number (1073807364 and 128 are the ones I've personally logged) and counts down 60 seconds before it restarts the computer?

I've run several different versions of LSASS.EXE, checked for unknown processes in the process list, looked in the usual places in the registry for viruses and similar startups, and run http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ . The machine's behind a firewall, which makes me believe that it's not one of the assorted DOS attackes that target bugs in LSASS.EXE (and the firewall isn't showing untoward traffic), and it will do this even logged in as a generic user with nothing running. And it's not consistent.

I'm running so low on ideas that we're down to swapping around RAM. Anyone? Pleeease?

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

If I knew a lawyer who could get me a patent idea of the moment:

In the recent trip there were plenty of roads that had a lot of different speed limits. In the desert, a road that's 65MPH, dropping to 35MPH, then back up to 55MPH and down to 45MPH as it goes through towns and different terrain is the norm. I didn't often miss the slow-downs as I knew to expect 'em, but I did sometimes miss the speed-ups, and it'd be nice to have something that goes "bing" when it notices that the speed has dropped from 45 to 25.

I know that the FCC has reserved some frequencies for automated road info, but that's going to be years from being deployed.

It occurs to me that the code to recognize a speed limit sign is fairly simple. Point a cheap camera out the right side of the car, find a white blotch in between two vertical lines, wait for it to get to the right size and then compare it with reference images. You could probably do all of that in one FPGA, maybe even on an 8 bit microcontroller depending on your camera interface. Cheap webcams are $20 retail, you probably want to feed the rows and columns off the CCD straight into the FPGA, so this thing could be built for peanuts.

Then add to your in-car nav system a little "current speed limit" display. In fact, you could even tie it to your cruise control so that the car slows automatically when you come into town.

[ related topics: Travel Automobiles Embedded Devices ]

Woman fired by military contractor for published photograph of flag-draped U.S. coffins. I'm passing no judgement on her actions and not changing my position on the U.S. involvement in Iraq, but the image on the cover of the Seattle Times deserves a look. If only because someone thought that such images are bad policy.

[ related topics: Politics Photography Current Events War Seattle ]

I have a need to drop in a little something out of chronological order. I promise I'll get around to the trip soon, but this ties together with my recent experiences in a way that I wanted to get up here. This is the view from the back of our camp site just outside of Zion in Springdale Utah.

We got there fairly early, after a day of driving through Nevada, and then crossing over the range into Utah. The difference in feeling between the two states was amazing, and it was only after setting up the tent here, on Tuesday, and spending (quite) some time listening to the creek burble by and staring at the changing colors as the sun set over the sandstone walls around me that the vacation really sunk in.

And I thought "what the hell, I could chuck it all, come out here and get some evening job and spend mornings in this and be quite happy for many years."

Skip to last night. I was building circuits and cases, and in the process I had to drill holes in a bunch of boxes. Align jig, clamp, drill, change bit, drill, move clamp, repeat. And I thought "damn, this is tedious", then I realized "wait, this is the same sort of stuff I did when I punched a clock in my first job out of High School", then I knew why in all the previous opportunities to chuck it all and go live out where it's beautiful I've had to go the other way.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Work, productivity and environment Travel Dan & Charlene's April 2004 Desert Trip ]

There's a disparaging term for model railroad track layouts that cram a whole bunch of track in a small area. Model railroads need to have selective compression, even at the 1:160 of N scale a mile ends up as being 33 feet, but those who aspire to recreating real railroads look askance at the 4x8 sheet of plywood with as many loops and squiggles stuffed in as possible.

Which is why so many railroad buffs come to the Tehachapi Loop, because if there's a "bowl of spaghetti" trackplan in real life, this is it. The first photo on the left shows the same train emerging from the tunnel as the tail end passes across the top. The second photo is an attempt at an overview, but it doesn't really capture just how convoluted the line is as it climbs over Tehachapi Pass, because there's a strange "S" curve an other zig-zags below.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Trains Dan & Charlene's April 2004 Desert Trip ]

I've mentioned companies like eMachineShop, and extensively used ExpressPCB, but when MyPublisher hit my inbox I realized something critical: The "give away software that sends data to your service" replaces the guy behind the counter who knows stuff at your local specialty shop with something better; there's no ego involved and no feeling of time wasted in my playing "how much would idea X cost?" And while those guys behind the counter are great in their specialty, if you're trying to adapt devices from their industry to something else they're a drain.

Yesterday's J-list email update was about vending machines in Japan, coincidentally Borklog linked to PhotoMann Travel Photography - Images of Vending Machines In Japan, and I realized that if you look at the self-checkout systems at stores like Wal*Mart and Home Depot and the automation of the customer-client relationship at Prada, it's clear that the next jobs to get automated are in customer service.

[ related topics: New Economy Consumerism and advertising ]

Happy Friday. Not so muchm as a political statment as just showing how much fun a person can have remixing sound bytes. I give you Fuzzy Math

[ related topics: Politics moron Heinlein Mathematics ]

My readings of Doonsbury have been far and few between, but Aeire (author of Queen of Wands) alerted me to the recent controversy surrounding the latest plot twist, and provided an insightful look at why this is such a big deal - both for the artist and the readers.

(For those who desire a bit more detail [one of] the Doonsbury main, and apparently well-loved, character[s] lost his leg in Iraq this week.)

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Journalism and Media Art & Culture Comics War ]

As reported third hand by the person who had to go back to the purchaser and say "uhhhhh... no.", a conversation:

Purchaser: Hi, I'd like to buy this server class machine with Windows 2003 Server, a $500 additional option.

Dell Salesdroid:Great. But that configuration only has an 8 meg video card. Would you like a 64 meg one for not much more?

P: Sure!

DS: Okay, but that card doesn't work with Windows 2003 Server, so we'll put Windows XP Professional on the machine.

Upselling the video card in a server machine? Sure, whatever, that's the way salesweasels get bigger commissions. Nearly talking their potential customer out of the half-a-k bit of essential software for a few tens of dollars in a video card? That's one fucked up commission structure and one dweeb who needs a good trout slapping.

[ related topics: moron Consumerism and advertising ]

Post office ending sponsorship of cyclist Lance Armstrong:

Spokesman Gerry McKiernan said the agency has decided to go "in another direction" with its advertising. Asked if that meant some other sport relationship, he said "it's possible."

Hmmm... Hockey: We'll beat the daylights out of your dog and any kids in the yard before smashing your mail through your window? Football: It'll take us three or four tries to get that letter down your driveway, and if we don't make it to your mailbox we'll kick it over your house? Basketball: We'll trade in that blue uniform for a tank-top and brightly colored mohawks? Figure skating: Express mail will be delivered on time only if you bribe the French judge?

[ related topics: Current Events Consumerism and advertising Sports ]

Some of the most exciting writing I've ever read has been in good science popularizations. Back in high school in the mid-60s, for example, I read a book by Asimov on the possible changes to be wrought by understanding DNA that electrified my young mind, and turned out to be amazingly prescient. The venerable classic The Microbe Hunters , written nearly 70 years ago, reads like an adventure thriller, where you start cheering when Walter Reed proves that mosquitos are a disease vector, and cry when Pasteur saves the lives of Russian kulaks bitten by rabid wolves.

In the Telegraph of London, Richard Dawkins discusses why science writing is so ignored by the literary cognoscenti, and what makes a science book great. It comes down to A) makes things simple, but not too simple; and B) find the fact or number that amazes the reader, and lets them touch the sense of wonder that motivates the scientist.

[ related topics: Books Cool Science Writing ]

I mentioned that the trail up to Hidden Canyon in Zion National Park was carved out of the cliffs, with slippery sand on the rock acting like ball bearings, and chains to hang on to to counteract that lack of friction. Here Charlene finishes out such a stretch where I've gotten to a wide enough spot that I felt comfortable yanking out the camera.

The views from the trail were spectacular. There'll be a large update of wildflowers from the whole trip later where I'll include the small stuff, but many of the walls of Zion are like those at Yosemite, just in sandstone.

Also amazing are the number of trails across the way carved into those cliffs, we had to haul out the binoculars once or twice to verify that that funny colored spec moving across the face across the canyon was a T-shirt and not some bizarre slow-moving scarlet bird.

One of the cool things about getting off the pavement in a national park is that if the trail has a specific destination, as you go you start to become friendly with the folks you're leapfrogging along the way. So we had some good exchanges as we climbed over some of the more treacherous obstances on our way up Hidden Canyon. The canyon was narrow and mostly sandy-bottomed (I'd hate to get caught in it if there was water there), I only had problems going over one obstace, mostly because I was wearing Birkenstocks and carrying a camera pack and a camera around my neck, and the particular move was one that most people who'd braved the earlier obstacles had turned around on, a face climb 10 feet or so above a shallow pool. Others had more trouble earlier on, but there was a good comraderie as we suggested routes and footholds along the way.

We found the promised arch, nestled on the right side of the canyon, actually rather inconspicuous. But it was icing on the cake of cool polished sandstone formations and towering cliffs:

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Travel Dan & Charlene's April 2004 Desert Trip ]

I'll leave the final update for Bryce for last, since those pictures just trump everything else. We left Bryce on Friday morning looking to head up Highway 12 to Escalante State Park, continue on to spend the night near Salt Lake City, head out over the salt flats in the morning so that we'd be in Reno and easy striking distance on Sunday for home. The first place we hit was Kodachrome Basin State Park, but as we were about to turn north into the basin Charlene noted this thing called Grosvenor Arch a few miles off the pavement. We were ahead of schedule, and by serendipity filling in an "off-pavement driving survey", so we pulled the ol' sedan into the dust and headed into the backcountry.

The double arch was very cool, large high limestone in some cool formations, and the drive out there was along some pretty spectacular cliffs. We're now thinking I need to get a 4WD vehicle and we need to spend some time exploring the wilds of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, out beyond the pavement and the parks. In fact we were considering taking some of the back roads out to Highway 12, but the Maxima is distinctly not "high clearance", I was a bit concerned about one of the tires, and we were trying to keep to a schedule.

We did, however, chalk up at least two water crossings more than most SUVs make in their lifetimes.

After everything else, Kodachrome Basin State Park was something of an anti-climax. If we'd taken the time to hike around a bit I'm sure we would have seen more, but we decided to get on down the road.

Second to Bryce, but only by a little bit, was the petrified forest at Escalante State Park. We started up the "nature trail" with the guide, and that lowered our expectations. Then we ran into someone who turned around because there was "one little piece up there". So we considered it as a walk in the sun on a nice day among the piñons. In fact, when we first saw shards we started scouring the ground for more of the little shinies. We should not have been so hasty.

If you go, be sure to take the additional "trail of sleeping rainbows". This is where you run into huge shattered sections of pentrified trunks strewn along the trail. Sliding down gullies where every step is another portion of prehistoric log, with bright reds and obsidian blacks and glossy whites. Well worth the strenuous down and up.

Next: A few images from vast red and white expanses of the canyon lands (not many, Charlene was tired and I realized we need to make a trip back to fully explore that region), Bryce, and maybe a return to Wells, Nevada.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Travel Automobiles Dan & Charlene's April 2004 Desert Trip ]

Sometimes working with 'normal' people, especially GUI-FrontPage/centric web developors and true 'end-user' applications becomes especially frustrating. It was bad enough when, on the conference call with 60 salespeople who are supposed to use this site, several of them could not spell demo (dee ee em oh) to login.. but then, in addressing, yet again, the same issue with the web interface developer as always, it took 90 minutes to explain and teach him how to manually type in a single <A HREF=... in the right place on his front page generated web page to enable all of the wonderful 'magic' of the back end database. Normally, I would have just done it myself, but when I get done, I do not want to talk to these people every time they massage the sites graphics and verbage and it was important to get the web-dude to be able to do this without me. I know how 'special ed' teachers feel now.. It takes lots of time and repetition, examples, explaination of why case is important, and no it's not the same if you put a space in the filename... and.. and... But finally, the light bulb goes off, he says: "Oh! This is what you were trying to get me to do last week!" and the page he uploads to the site not only looks the way he wants, but it actually works as well. He is ecstatic, I am relieved, I glowed.. I beamed.. I felt as if I really accomplished something today. It's easier working with the wonderful people I normally work with, but there are seldom 'Light Bulb' moments. I think we all need more of them.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Coyote Grits Space & Astronomy Law Work, productivity and environment Graphics Conferences Clowns Databases ]

Aaauuugh! I came home to test some VPN stuff with a client that I was having trouble getting through our firewall, fired up the XP box for the first time since the vacation, and figured that before I tried to connect as a trusted machine to a client network I should check the process table... A few observations:

1. The rat boys are banned from using my Windows XP computer until we come to some sort of agreement that involves years of indentured servitude.
2. The true cost of Windows includes subscriptions to virus and adware cleaning applications.
3. I don't care what people say, if a teenager can mess up a system this badly then Windows is not user friendly.

Screw it. I'm moving everyone I help set up a computer over to Linux, there's no longer any excuse to put up with this crappy excuse for an OS.

[ related topics: Free Software Children and growing up Microsoft virus broadband Open Source moron ]

In cleaning up the mess (I can understand teenagers getting pr0n malware, but the infamous purple gorilla who wants to be your friend and Internet Optimizer? I'm sorry, you n00b l4m3rs were so pwn3d.) I looked at Flutterby in IE. Ow. I'm sorry about the magnifying glass icon. It's mangled so that IE doesn't make it quite so ugly now. Sometimes I forget just how badly Microsoft sucks.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Dan's Life Microsoft moron ]

Start spreadin' the news, although I don't really wanna be a part of it. I'll be in the big apple wed-thu-fri, back Friday evening. As you can tell I'm happier than a pig in sh... well, anyway, it'll be sporadic unless everything goes swimmingly and I actually have time to update Flutterby from Manhattan.

[ related topics: Dan's Life New York ]

And we Yanks think ourselves patriotic: According to a Korean Central News Bureau story quoted in the Guardian, many people caught up in the recent train explosion in the Democratic People's Republic died trying to rescue some of the portraits of the "Great Leader' (Kim Il-song) and the "Dear Leader" (Fat Boy) from the collapsing buildings. With true British aplomb, the Guardian points out that the stories "could not be independently verified."

[ related topics: Quotes Current Events Trains Fabrication Dictators ]

I'm not sure what comment to add to this, so: From the cover of Women's Wear Daily of Friday, March 5, 2004:

Helmut Lang's sizzling collection this season was inspired by that universal symbol of sexiness, the French maid.

Wow. You too can pay way too much money to look like the domestic help.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Fashion ]

Just to keep y'all interested while I'm fretting over router config changes made remotely and when/if parts are going to get released from customs: Via Borklog, pictures and video from a Sodium Party:

Which brings me to a safety warning: Sodium is really rather dangerous. If we had been anywhere within 15 feet of this explosion, it would have sprayed us with molten sodium and sodium hydroxide. Even a tiny amount in the eyes would have been a serious medical emergency. That's why I built a device that let me release it in a very controlled way from a great distance: If you want to do anything even remotely like this, you should take similar precautions.

[ related topics: Cool Science Video ]

A few weeks ago I downloaded the two books by Rick Cook available from the Baen Free Library. Not high literature, but good "my brain is too toasted to do anything else" escapist reading, and I think the free availability had its intended effect: I'll probably be buying the rest in cheap paper for boring plane flights.

The general theme is: Silicon valley hacker gets transported into magical realm, discovers that magic can be manipulated in programming terms, with assorted geek in-jokes. But what struck me most was how much attitudes about software have evolved in the decade and a half since these were written. One of the lead quotes he uses is:

The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with an idea.

Recent experiences make the first speak to me, but I remember that point at which I switched from looking down on the users, even in jest, to trying to accomodate them. And I'm not sure that in the race between applications programmers to build more idiot-proof software and the universe building more and bigger idots that we're in any way winning, I just found it interesting to be exposed to that historical precedent.

[ related topics: Quotes Books Software Engineering moron ]

Damn it. I enjoy bar food, a good plate of fries and a sandwich involving large quantities of meat and cheese to complement a good dark beer: all good. Except that since whatever change I had late last year that's leading me to get my weight down, I regret it in the morning. It's not like I feel actively bad, it's just that I kinda think I really should've had a salad. And I need to change my breakfast routine. Here's where I start pondering ways to structure my life the way it was back in the glory days, where I was getting tens of hours of hard exercise a week... Sigh.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Health Food Beer Physiology ]

Anyone remember when FedEx defined reliability and service? In talking to my office, I'm told that this is the Nth package that was guaranteed pre 10 AM delivery that didn't make it, in this case it arrived in New York at 11:29 and is "waiting for courier". Flight leaves at 4:45. Dan's adrenaline level: high.

[ related topics: Coyote Grits Invention and Design Aviation Law New York ]