Flutterby™! From 2004-12-01 to 2004-12-30

Just got back from seeing Polar Express. About the time when they've arrived in Red Square and are mingling with the cheering proletariat (no, really) and the young boy is trying so hard to believe in the cult, Charlene leaned over to me and said "this is the suckiest movie". Yes, that's a direct quote. My response was something on the order of "it's like being stuck in the mall from hell."

Okay, maybe we went in with expectations that were too high. The book has been a classic (although this movie may destroy it for all the parents who go see it). But from motion capture that made the characters look downright creepy to a bad story glued on to the framework of the book to one too many roller coaster sequences to Tom Hanks just not being right for some of those voices, this is definitely one to skip.

Stick to the version you've already built with your imagination in conjunction with the book, and if you must see the computer graphics bits, I'm sure that the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater show will have a reasonable sample.

We definitely should have seen The Incredibles again instead.

[ related topics: Animation Movies Graphics ]

Derrida bashing has a long history here at Flutterby, and I'm perfectly willing to pile on when others are kicking him, so today offers an opportunity for two pieces: The Derrida Industry... looks at attempts to revise his place in history:

The obituary author may, indeed, be ignorant of the history of philosophy, but certainly no more so than Professor Scott, whose ignorance extends to the present: there are no "appreciative quotes" from "American philosophers," because American philosophers thought he was a fraud, a betrayal to philosophy's grand history.

While I'm dubious about "philosophy's grand history", it sure is fun to see a con man finally get his come-uppance. A less lambasting article over at The Nation looks at Maxime Rodinson and Jackie (his birth name) Derrida. Both compliments of Arts & Letters Daily.

[ related topics: Political Correctness Pop Culture ]

Mark Morford does his usual silly rambling on Kinsey, the movie, and its effects on the culture. This got me largely because of this paragraph:

So then. Forget the alarmist headlines. Ignore the shrill faux-moral groups who live like sad trolls in places like Colorado Springs who deign to tell you what sex and God and love is supposed to be about despite how they haven't seen their own genitalia since about 1987. The Great Sexual Revolution 2.0 is coming. Deny it at your peril. Bring extra batteries.

I'm not sure it's 2.0, because, after all, the phrase "free love" entered English sometime back in the 1800s, but I have been thinking about where all that energy of the '90s went.

A long time ago, both in real years and in terms of personal development, I had a non-sexual experience that was life-changing, used some interesting and intense psychological techniques, and I remember thinking at the time "what if you could harness some of that role-playing and other intensity into sex?" Well, then along came the Internet, and I discovered that, indeed, people were, but I didn't always like the trappings and overtones that people brought to it. So while I read alt.sex.bondage and explored that culture, it wasn't until I discovered neo-Tantra that I thought I'd found a home.

But many of the "new age" aspects of that grated on the side of me that was increasingly seeking rationality, I had issues with the fact that "new age"ers seemed to be always trying to sell their latest MLM supplement products or overpriced home appliances, and...

...and eventually I developed some issues with trust and motives and basic psychological health with several people in some of the communities I was hanging out in. And except for Charlene, I never really met anyone I "clicked" with, really felt I could trust and connect with, in those circles.

I think I've seen the same basic movmement in the general culture. The SHS mailing list and numerous others that were once vibrant are now dormant. Interesting discussions on the relationships of sex and power and such have been replaced with Bay Area exhibitionists volunteering their modeling services on Tribe.net's photography forums. "Swinging" has gained a new prominence, but it seems that in those circles quantity of partners has replaced the search for exploring the headspace.

And it's not like I'm looking for more partners, and maybe that's the realization that most of us who were so excited during that time eventually came to. That sex is really a head game ("the nice thing about a mind fuck is you can't catch anything"), and healthy head games are built on relationships based on a hell of a lot of trust, and lots of trust is hard to come by. But I've still got my eyes open for that ultimate community.

[ related topics: Religion Photography Sexual Culture Dan's Life Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Ethics Bay Area Sociology Current Events Net Culture Community Mark Morford ]

CBS and NBC deem church ad welcoming gay couples "too controversial":

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Similarly, a rejection by NBC declared the spot "too controversial."

Note especially that bit about "the Executive Branch". Talking Points Memo has more.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Sociology Current Events Marriage ]

Admitting to a long-term covert practice, Netherlands hospital carrying out euthanasia for a few terminally ill babies.

[ related topics: Ethics Current Events Peter Singer ]

So after long ramble on sex and culture today, here's a quick look at Unkle Paul, MC of sex related events. I've mentioned Paul Nathan in the context of Dark Kabaret and his enterprises with magic.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area California Culture Burlesque Paul Nathan ]

The ether is in the midst of a mass poisoning as holiday specials pollute the nation. However, it could be worse: A listing of the Worst Holiday Specials ever. I'm just sorry they left out A Chuck Norris Chistmas Carol.

[ related topics: Television Paul Nathan ]

Red Hat's Robert Young is fond of using the "ketchup analogy" when talking about the Red Hat brand, so fond that for a while it was a running gag; at some panel Linus was reported to have said "not the ketchup story again...". It's even mentioned in the company trademark guidelines.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about why there's been no innovation in the flavor of ketchup, only in the packaging, in over a century.

This isn't strictly true, there are niche brands: we use a sweetenerless ketchup (ie: tomato paste, vinegar, cassia bark (aka "cinnamon"), celery seed and probably some other assorted spices), and the health food store has variants with assorted sweeteners besides corn syrup, but compared to, say, mustard, it's been dead static.

A good look at marketing, the perception of flavors and tastes, and tradition.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Free Software Health Open Source Food Consumerism and advertising Sports Marketing Copyright/Trademark ]

Abstinence programs present false, misleading information, lawmaker says:

Rep. Henry Waxman says federally funded abstinence education programs that are used in 25 states contain false and misleading information about contraception, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases.

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

Over at Brainwagon, Mark linked to a large collection of gingerbread house patterns. The problem with gingerbread houses is that making all that work pay off requires a party that works in ways that mine never do, but making them is way cool, and as I start to cut out the cardboard i always forget that gingerbread is not a precision construction material, so relying on someone else's experience to temper my desire for more intricate gables and porches is a good thing.

[ related topics: Food Art & Culture Real Estate ]

San Francisco's old standby stripper-ad paper, The Spectator, got sold, and the web site stopped updating. But they're back, with new content, although it looks like it'll dribble in sporadically here's a preview for the now done (alas, we missed it) Dark Kabaret, with pictures of The Lollies.

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture Bay Area Burlesque Paul Nathan ]

BORG2 is an attempt by many prominent members of the San Francisco arts community to revitalize Burning Man. http://borg2.tribe.net/ has some interesting interplay between some of those folks and people in the Burning Man Organization.

[ related topics: Burning Man Bay Area Sociology California Culture Community ]

The Grey Sweatsuit Revolution:

The battle against fashion needs to be fought differently. We cannot simply dress weirder than the mainstream in an attempt dull our sense of complicity with western consumer society. Dissent through conscious differentiation simply feeds the fashion system by providing it with fresh expression to appropriate.

(Thanks, Lyn)

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Fashion ]

For a while now, my Windows XP Professional box has had boot times in the quarter of an hour range. Recently I've started actually using it for work, and it's been amazingly sluggish. I've been through the process table and the registry with a fine toothed comb, both by hand and with several spyware and virus checkers, looking for anything out of the ordinary, and come up empty handed. The one thing that nagged at me was that the hard disk I was using had occasionally given me trouble on some machines, but it seemed like this one was a combination IDE controller and drive that worked.

However, it finally got annoying enough that I decided to take the plunge and replace the only remaining thing that I could imagine might be the problem. So I used the outrageously priced (but on the shelf today, and if they come through with rebates less outrageously priced) Norton Ghost to transfer to a new 160 gig drive.

Damn. Now I'll no longer scream "don't you dare!" when people talk about trying to make Linux boot times like Windows XP boot times. It's now actually a usable system. Hot freakin' dawg!

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft virus Open Source ]

Yow. Bill was on this morning. A sample:

Mark: What is grits, wheat or something?

Dan: No, it's corn treated with lye.

Bill: The opposite of a Republican campaign ad: lies treated with corn.

[ related topics: Politics Dan's Life Food ]

So the lesson of late last week, and what I have to solve today: Lattitude and longitude have somewhat nebulous definitions, altitude is even worse, and a phrase that I formerly thought was born of ignorance, "GPS coordinates", is actually more precise than saying "lat, lon and altitude". More explanation on what all of that means when I figure it out. I'm sure Eric is snickering about now...

I just hope this planet and its close environs is the only place this software ever has to model...

[ related topics: Software Engineering Space & Astronomy Maps and Mapping ]

Why what I'm working on may be important: New account of Pat Tillman's last minutes describes friendly-fire horror.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Work, productivity and environment War ]

I understand the idea behind Google Ads generating themselves based on the content of the page. It allows the advetisements to be tailored to the content. The problem comes when the content calls for a gentler touch.

Case in point is this story from The Times of London, which tells the sad story of a British attorney and his American friend who were hiking on the slopes a volcano in Nicaragua when they apparently fell off a ledge and persished. And right next to the tragic report is a Google Ad for Kon-Tiki Nicaragua Tours, promoting trips to "Granada, Leon, Volcanos, lakes. Good prices!" Particularly since you'll save the return fare.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Law Justin Herman Plaza ]

Since that previous "you've got to be kidding" elicited at least one "tell me more", another update on geography:

Lattitude and longitude are angles from some "center" position somewhere down near the middle of the planet. There are three ways to get that "center" position:

1. Take straight down, like with a pendulum, from your current position, go some known number of miles (ie: "the earth has radius X at sea level, we're at sea level + Y") in that direction, and call that center.
2. Take the axis of rotation of the earth (say, gauged off the stars) for the center of longitude, and something judged off the motion of the sun over the seasons for the center of lattitude.
3. Take an imaginary ellipsoid (ellipse in 3d), try to make that best fit the known surface of the earth, and then use the geometric center of that ellipsoid.

That first option is handy, you can calculate most of what you need from right where you're standing. Unfortunately, the inside of the earth isn't homogenous, all the same consistency or density, so if you take a bunch of plumb lines from different places on the earth, they won't converge at a single point. You'll accumulate error because a big hunk of granite near the surface in your vicinity perturbed "down" ever so slightly.

The second solves that center issue, because you're finding center based on the entire mass of the earth. Of course this might move around a bit as, say, someone on one side of the globe builds a reservoir up in the mountains.

The third is handy once you've discovered space flight, but it makes sea level, the reference point for so long, no longer a good measure of altitude.

The obvious problem with the third is inherent to the other two as well: The earth isn't spherical, so even if 90 degrees and 0 are always at the same place because you've chosen the same center, the intervening positions can be off.

But that's okay, because up until recently we've been mostly concerned with positions in one region. So we'll use local systems that maybe match up with another system in a place that's in the center of where we're interested (Kansas got a lot of attention), and then use an ellipsoid that matches our region of interest more closely, and ignore the fact that it's a little different than the other system around the coastlines or the edges of our region of interest.

What this means is that when you say "lattitude, longitude and altitude", this can be in one of literally thousands of the various permutations of those three ways of finding the center of the coordinate space combined with the various different reference ellipsoids combined with the notion of the "local zero", or where this coordinate space matches another.

The differences between these spaces can be hundreds of meters, especially in altitude. Luckily GPS works in one of those spaces, but only with an accuracy of about ten of meters in lattitude and longitude, less in altitude, and aerial photography, local maps, and surveying information may be in any one of the other spaces.

And then, because the local earth surface appears pretty flat to us, we want to map these things down to something in two dimensions on a nice handy grid where we can use a flat ruler to tell the distance between two points, and it gets really hairy.

[ related topics: Photography Aviation Space & Astronomy Graphics Maps and Mapping ]

This is either a fascinating bit of sociology, or an indication of the effectiveness of technology, I'm betting on the former: IE users four times more likely to click on ads than Firefox users. (thanks, /.)

Original press release here.

[ related topics: Business Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Current Events Consumerism and advertising ]

Wow: U.K. evangelical Christian organization has radical change of heart on "curing" homosexuality:

After ten years, however, six spent running residential discipleship courses, followed by years of weekly group meetings, it was increasingly clear that however repentant people were, and however much dedication and effort they put into seeking change, none were really ‘successful’ in the long term in ‘dealing with the deeper issues’. This is not to say that people gained no benefit! Many matured greatly. A few married (though their same-sex attractions remain an ongoing issue for them). But the kind of change everyone really hoped for – to re-orientate and reach a point where their struggle with being gay was over – remained elusive. We never saw the fruit we longed for.

(Thanks to Respectful of Otters who got it from Roz Kaveney.)

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Sociology Marriage ]

A date that will live in in infamy (MP3). (courtesy of Russell Holliman)

[ related topics: History War ]

Hey, got a question for ya! What do you call a leader who dresses in faux military garb, complete with epaulets and name over the left breast, and has pictures on billboards emblazoned "our leader"?

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events ]

As the anniversary of the death of John Lennon comes up, we can expect to see a number of published tributes to the great musician. But, I'll wager, none quite so strange as Uri Geller's description of how the Space People visited John at his apartment in the Dakota building in New York.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy New York Real Estate ]

Woot http://www.osdir.com/Article2845.phtml

Just hoping Sony will continue to license from Palm for their PDAs (crossing fingers)

My youth finally died this afternoon. The TV in the coffee room at work was on CNN, and an ad for E-Trade online stock brokerage came on, asking if you wanted a broker who gave you the service you deserved. It was a pretty standard message, only the music in the background was Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane belting out "Revolution". I suspect if they had realized back in 1967 what would have happened to their music they would have leapt from the Golden Gate Bridge.

[ related topics: Music Technology and Culture Art & Culture Television Economics ]

Grrr... As I ranted, the new address requires a new cellphone. Because of coverage issues, my option is Cingular. The Nokia 6620 has been highly recommended to me (partially because it's a Symbian reference platform). So I go through the hassle of ordering, trying to figure out just what the hell the marketing speak of "Media Plus package" means in real world terms, and get to the address page.

Of course the address page says "we won't ship or bill to P.O. Boxes". This is somewhat of a problem, because we don't have mail delivery out in the boonies. But, no worries, my postmistress will be a little put out but I can, in a pinch, use a ZIP+4 code. But nooooo, they only allow 5 digits. So I fumble through trying to figure out what they will and won't allow in their address field, finally stumble on a compromise that gets through their regular expression parsers and should still get my bill actually delivered to me, click to go to the next page, and get told that my session has timed out.

Note to Sprint: What would it cost to put a repeater on Mount Barnaby, and can we just add that to my bill?

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

In the spirit of Elf Sternberg's call to "balkanize usenet" (which doesn't seem to appear on the web any more), here's a call to "balkanize Google".

We're searching for some supporting evidence for an essay for Charlene's class, and we're looking for studies on physical activity and anger management. The number of cheesey "health" sites with "work out, you'll feel better" advice, or curriculum suggesting the same, is immense. It'd be really nice to be able to teach Google that almost always when I'm searching, I'm not looking for mass-market sites, to find ways to reduce the web to that fraction which I actually care about.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Health Net Culture ]

QOTD from the Motivational Interviewing section of Evidence-Based Focussed Psychological Interventions:

Studies have shown that the behaviour of the therapist has an influence on treatment outcome

I should bloody well hope so. Despite my skepticism about psychology.

[ related topics: Quotes Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

From Jerry Kindall comes illegal engineering, a history of safecracking, but it also lead to the rest of Tim Hunkin's fascinating and quirky site. Where else are you going to find detailed diagrams of exploits like making flying sheep:

In 1976, Wilf got us the job of making 400 pyrotechnics sheep and pigs for the Floyd's animals tour. A 6 inch mortar fired a cardboard tube about 250 ft into the air, when a delay fuse ignited a second charge that blew out the tissue paper animal

or pictures of coin operated animations, including a nutcracker which "works well on really tough nuts like brazil nuts, but tends to pulverise walnuts."

[ related topics: Animation security Art & Culture Pyrotechnics Cool Technology ]

...or, with apologies to W.C. Fields, "I don't drink water; fish fuck in it." The requirements for what I'm working on are going through a political phase, so I'm spending a lot of time reading through documentation and trying to get a background so that once I know exactly what I'm doing I can ramp up really quickly, but not implement a lot of stuff that'll get thrown away. It's pretty draining stuff, and I needed a break, so I got on the bike and tooled out Sir Francis Drake to the Inkwells.

There was a little salmon action at those falls, nothing photogenic, but another spectator on the bridge there told me to head up the fire road across the bridge. Lots of fish in the shallows:

And on the way back I snapped a picture of "downtown", for those of you who doubt my claim of "the boonies".

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

Ever get in one of those libertarian discussions where one of the examples of places we need rules is for roads and traffic? Turns out that might not be as true as we've thought:

In Denmark, the town of Christianfield stripped the traffic signs and signals from its major intersection and cut the number of serious or fatal accidents a year from three to zero. In England, towns in Suffolk and Wiltshire have removed lane lines from secondary roads in an effort to slow traffic - experts call it "psychological traffic calming." A dozen other towns in the UK are looking to do the same. A study of center-line removal in Wiltshire, conducted by the Transport Research Laboratory, a UK transportation consultancy, found that drivers with no center line to guide them drove more safely and had a 35 percent decrease in the number of accidents.

(thanks to Dave's Picks)

Obvious trade-offs not mentioned in the article: This is trading traffic throughput for safety, 3 to 0 doesn't seem like it's statistically significant until there's several years of data.

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Automobiles Bicycling ]

In case you don't read /., here's one they linked today: San Francisco In Ruins: The 1906 Aerial Photographs of George R. Lawrence is an article with some fascinating pictures of San Francisco after the 1906 quake, with some pictures of the kites and camera used to take them.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area History California Culture Earthquake ]

A father pedals with his 13 year old son from San Francisco to Los Angeles down Route 1, and reminisces about finding their rhythm on a Highway 1 tandem trip:

By the second day, scenery was yesterday's news.

"Scenery at 2'oclock,'' the teenager announced matter-of-factly from the rear seat, as we passed by yet another postcard-worthy spectacle, this time the glorious Point Sur lighthouse and the attendant sunset which, to maintain my tenuous credibility as a teenager's father, I tried not to make a big deal about.

No kid ever owned up to being impressed by scenery.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area California Culture Travel Bicycling - Tandem ]

Since I'm working at home, and since much of what I've been doing recently hasn't been heads-down coding, I've been getting into audio from the net to provide a little background chatter for the voices in my head. The gems so far are MarkV's dispatches from Brainwagon, good geeky stuff, Russell Holliman over at mobilepodcast.org, with his dry sense of humor, and for music I like Coverville, actually licensed music, and as the name implies lots of covers, both great and so bad they're good, and The Rock and Roll Geek Show.

So as I've been poking about, I noticed that Susie Bright mentioned having some stuff over at Audible.com. And even though I've found her more recent books thin at best, I figured I'd see what the deal was. $5.95 for 23 minutes.

I'm not averse to spending a little money here and there, and the aforementioned gems are going to get some support from me (I think I owe MarkV dinner anyway), but... dayumn, that's a lot of money for 23 minutes. And it's hard to tell from Audible.com's subscription options what the long-term costs of subscribing are. I think I'll stick with donations to the aforementioned gems and keep looking.

[ related topics: Humor Books Music Sexual Culture Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Currency ]

MarkV has two great notes on "podcasting" and the net in general. Scripting News, Trade Secrets and Ego:

Duplicating existing big media on handheld devices isn’t innovative or interesting, just as having traditional journalists publish blogs isn’t interesting. What is interesting in my mind is the ability of everyone to participate in the exchange of rich media to communicate with each other. And we can do that now.

and Why is podcasting important?:

Being provocative or negative is one way to generate traffic, but it doesn't generate culture.

Both are worth reading. And while you're reading about how weblogging has really changed the world, hop on over to uBlogger: a universal way of creating any weblog content from anywhere (thanks again to MarkV). It is not, alas, a product announcement. The critical bit was:

Blogging isn’t separate from reading. Or taking a photo. Making content and blogging content ARE NOT SEPARATE ACTIVITIES...

One of the things I've noticed in my work reading is that I'm taking notes that look an awful lot like weblog entries. And I keep realizing that I need my snippet manager. Charlene's class ends Monday night, so I can get back to the photo manager, which still needs its "exchange photos and meta information with peers" functionality, but has the configuration wizard in now. Hopefully before the new year I'll be able to lay at least that beginning on my beta testers.

[ related topics: Weblogs Invention and Design Sociology Current Events Journalism and Media Net Culture ]

Oh yeah: The other thing I wanted to add to MarkV's Why is podcasting important? is: One of the reasons we believed in the hype of the .com boom, that there was all of this inefficiency in the economy that could be removed and we could see huge growth, is that there is an amazing amount of inefficiency in the economy.

I haven't found the cite for this, and maybe someone could give me the exact reference, but apparently the comment was made by an author at BloggerCon that if Amazon sold one of his books, he got like a buck and a half. If they sold it through his affiliate link, he got well over twice that. The process of delivering customers for that content was twice as remunerative as the process of creating the content.

That sure looks like room for optimization to me. And if we could deliver that wasted money straight to the creators, rather than blowing it on the distributors, we could support people further out on "the long tail", and get more that's directly pertinent to our lives.

[ related topics: Books New Economy Net Culture Economics ]

With the recent geography discussions about map projections, I thought I'd show off a little. This is a cartogram, a map that uses area to represent a statistic, showing relative "vote value" during the 2004 Presidential Election. The vote value factors the number of electoral college votes a state gets and how much influence an individual vote in that state had on the outcome. That is, a state like Ohio in which an individual vote held alot of sway was worth more than a vote in Texas, where if you didn't support Bush, you might as well have stayed home. There are also cartograms for population and number of electoral college votes.

[ related topics: Politics Education Maps and Mapping ]

Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination: Documentation by Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Photographers, a fascinating look back to not as long as we'd like to think ago.

This reference aid includes all the known images of discrimination signs found in the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information file of photographic prints. This list was compiled in response to frequent patron requests for such images. The list is updated as additional images are discovered.

[ related topics: Photography History Race ]

Nerd alert, feel free to skip this. A common trick when using the Python bindings for GTK is to use the Glade library call signal_autoconnect on a map of the functions of an instance, like this:

class_methods = self.__class__.__dict__

for method_name in class_methods.keys():

method = class_methods[method_name]

if type(method) == types.FunctionType:

callbacks[method_name] = new.instancemethod(

method, self, self.__class__)

Unfortunately, this only gives the methods of the current class, not those of the superclasses. The superclass information is held in the array self.__class__.__bases__, each of which has a .__dict__ that can be iterated through similarly (and a complete solution will want to iterate through all of the parent classes). Discovering that danged .__bases__ member was a pain.

[ related topics: Python ]

QOTD, which might capture some of my lack of super enthusiasm about podcasting:

I think this is the first time that religion has found a technology on the Internet before pornography.

— Chris Joffee

From today's edition of Adam Curry's Daily Source Code. How hip and forward thinking can it possibly be?

[ related topics: Religion Quotes Sexual Culture Weblogs Net Culture ]

One of my promises to myself with the new job and working at home was that I was going to spend more time doing non-computer stuff. Hasn't happened yet, but Charlene's English composition class ends tonight(!), and maybe I can get back to a normal schedule, and start playing with the N-scale model railroad stuff again.

With that in mind, I'm not sure I can use this technique down to 1:160, but over at Borklog there was a link to how to make a really small orange. Maybe a grapefruit?

[ related topics: Dan's Life Trains Toys ]

I once heard somebody say that of all man's constructions, only bridges look like they were grown naturally. The latest example: The Millaume Viaduct the world's highest highway bridge, just opened in France. Utterly gorgeous.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Art & Culture Architecture ]

Two CG-ish notes. Had coffee with another Dan yesterday evening, talking about some longer-term stuff, but while I've seen a few sketches of what he's been working on over the years, last night was the first time that I got the full demo. Wow. If you're doing character animation, have a bit of an R&D budget, and are willing to take a little risk, this tool has some amazing ideas; drop me a line, tell me what kind of stuff you're working on and I'll get you in touch with him.

Aaaand, also got the seasonal call for SIGGRAPH helpers. If you're in the field and haven't been dragged into reviewing yet, you know what to do.

[ related topics: Animation Graphics Conferences ]

QOTD:

C++ is the closest that males can come to the pain of childbirth.

— Mark Dalrymple (of Borklog)

For several years I've been up in higher level languages or down in C. Now I'm working in C++, and while I understand all of the design decisions which lead to C++ I'm now thoroughly convinced that there's room for a higher performance language than Java or C# which takes some of the things that we've learned from Python and Perl and gets compiled into native code.

[ related topics: Quotes Perl Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Python ]

after previously reporting that they'd open sourced their player firmware, /. reports that Neuros Audio has released the schematics for their player.

Now that I've got a full-time gig, it looks like I'm not going to be doing anything for ZVue after all (and I need to call 'em up and see if they want their player back), but one of the things I was looking forward to was the opportunity to build a player that dealt with spoken content better, that'd let me bookmark, export those things as edit lists, that sort of adjustment; exactly the sort of enhancements that "podcasting" needs. I've got way too many other things on my plate, but it sounds like maybe there's an opportunity for a player that can communicate backwards to the aggregators and with other tools.

Update: Tom Lokovic had a link to Rockbox, open source firmware for some of the Archos players.

[ related topics: Music Open Source Cool Technology ]

Dang it, a few months back (I think) I recommended on Flutterby a graphical disk space tool for Un*x machines that gave you pie charts, let you drill down, was super handy. And now I can't find it. Anyone remember what it was?

[ related topics: Dan's Life Linux ]

Listened to Barry Schwartz's lecture at Pop!Tech 2004 titled "Less Is More" on the ferry this morning, and I was struck by... well... the lack of rigor in his argument, for one thing, and his generalizations that what's good for one is good for all, but...

One of the assertions that Schwartz makes is that relationships with other people are more valuable than choices. Not too hard to argue. Then this morning I was looking for information on how to configure my window manager a bit better, and I realized something: Un*x users depend on community to narrow their choices from a staggeringly huge array of options. Windows and Macintosh users depend on a company.

I haven't developed a thesis as to what this means yet, but I think there's the germ of an idea there, that using Un*x like operating systems requires a community and shared knowledge, otherwise the array of options is just way too large to contemplate. This may also have implications in understanding the economics of each of these markets, as Mac users also clearly have a sense of belonging.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Microsoft Macintosh Community Economics ]

One of the annoying things about Adam Curry is that just when I think I've got him pegged as a stoner who got lucky, he does something that indicates that there's more behind those pink glasses than his pop-culture self lets on. In this case, it was quoting Robertson Davies, which lead me to assorted quotes by Robertson Davies, which lead me to this reminder of how much I enjoyed re-reading The Cornish Trilogy a few months ago:

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

[ related topics: Quotes Books ]

"What'd you do to relax last night, Dan?"

"Well, helped Charlene do some baking, then settled down to do some light reading that included the phrase 'Consider the gradient of the energy-momentum four-vector, in a frame where spacetime is flat...'"

Although if I'm understanding this right it makes some pretty complex concepts almost understandable, and I hope he gets it published.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Mathematics ]

From the Times of London: new dangers from "Le Bling Bling". Aren't you glad you're not a tawdry fashion plate?

[Ed: Dan put in what he thought was the right URL]

[ related topics: Health Fashion ]

16 year old films sex with his girlfriend, now up on child pornography charges. Somewhat hard to garner sympathy, as he sent it out as revenge for a breakup...

But there exists a bit of a legal grey area when it comes to teenagers filming themselves in sexual acts. While teenagers older than 14 are legally allowed to have consensual sex, it is illegal under child- pornography laws to distribute material showing teens under 18 engaged in sexual acts.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Law ]

ROAR

http://216.77.188.54/coDataIma...2/folders/178793/1353399ball.jpg

Tell me..... you honestly havent dreamed about this?

Alabama Circuit Court Judge Ashley McKathan wears robe embroidered with ten commandments:

McKathan told The Associated Press that he believes the Ten Commandments represent the truth "and you can't divorce the law from the truth. ... The Ten Commandments can help a judge know the difference between right and wrong."

And people wonder why many people in this country are ashamed of their nation.

[ related topics: moron Law Current Events ]

Strippers in San Antonio to be required to wear permits:

Tempest said wearing a permit might give away too much information to the customers. "What scares me is we do get a lot of these guys taking it too far -- they forget that this is just entertainment," she said. "How do we know that these guys are not going to try to obtain very personal information about us?"

[ related topics: Sexual Culture moron Current Events ]

Sometimes the Pixar folks are positively garrulous about what they're working on, sometimes they're pretty mum. Bill hasn't been saying much about what's been happening in shorts since Boundin' went to film, but I just got a hint about what he's up to: a new Epcot attraction Turtle Talk with Crush. Interesting about this:

It's here that the real magic begins. At first, most members of the audience seem to think that they're watching yet another movie. Until -- that is -- Crush begins calling on individual members of the audience. Saying things like "You. Little Dude in the third row. The one with the bright orange shell. How are you doing this fine morning? Are those your parental units seated directly to your left? You mom's a total babe."

So I need to corner him and ask: How dynamic is this? Someone back stage who sounds like Andrew Stanton? Or do they have enough recorded that they can get a few folks out of the audience by combining a few clips?

[ related topics: Pixar Interactive Drama Animation Movies ]

A review of the new book Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show. Looks promising.

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture ]

Okay, I admit it, we've been listening to Christmas music. And, yes, half of me agrees with Columbine that Christmas music is a dark horror, I think that much of that hatred of the genre stems from it really being specific instances of a genre we wouldn't listen to much anyway, repeated eternally: I bet if we heard any other Bing Crosby tune eight times a day we'd be just as ready to disembowel people with whatever sharp object we had at hand.

But Banu Gibson singing Zat You, Santa Claus? once or thrice a year works just fine for me. I can even do with a Santa Baby or two if it's not the baby-talk Marilyn Monroe version, and I'll sit through Handel's Messiah. Especially the chamber music sized arrangement.

But the upshot of all of this is that while for the past few years the audio system has been primarily used by Charlene for massage music, I'm having to deal with the mass of CDs. So I finally moved cables around enough that the (fanless, only moving part is the muffled hard drive) house server now sits on top of the amplifier and CD player, running MPD as well as serving us up our files. And I've picked back up on the process of digitizing audio, trying to remember to slap in a new CD occasionally.

So this brought up the usual questions, with disk space so cheap why am I bothering to compress stuff? But as I go through the collection some of my old questions about copyright and such come up. For instance, I've got a couple of CDs of Dylan's that need to be returned to him if I ever hear from him again, do I digitize them and listen to them and remember to delete them when I give 'em back? And I know I'm going to loan a Capitol Steps album to a friend, how do I interest them in the music while being careful about maintaining the licensing issues of playing only what I have physical media for? And, if I did digitize these things as uncompressed and set up a reasonable backup and media migration strategy, should I even bother to hold on to the physical media except for licensing issues?

Yes, these sound like ridiculous things that I shouldn't be worried about. But I do take intellectual property seriously, and I think there are going to be opportunities in examining these paths.

[ related topics: Music Dan's Life Invention and Design Sports Pop Culture Copyright/Trademark ]

So while I've been whining about moving reference points and survey lines, I've been ignoring the other issue: What happens when the land is moving? It turns out that California law covered that in the Cullen Earthquake Act, but this act is being interpreted as applying only to sudden movements, not long slow slides. SFGate covers some of the current issues involved: When property lines run through the front door: The slowly shifting ground in the Berkeley hills area means the land that's yours today may be your neighbor's tomorrow.

[ related topics: Bay Area Law California Culture Earthquake Real Estate ]

I got the latest Reason magazine, and it had an article titled "Cut-Rate Diplomas" by Paul Sperry(not online yet) that raised my hackles a bit. It targeted one particular government employee who was, apparently, incompetent, but who rose to her position on the basis of credentials issued by some box top U called Hamilton University. What pissed me off about the article is that he blamed the fake diploma mills rather than the system which depended on some outside credentials.

I'm not quite sure how to tie these two things together without being insulting, but The Chronicle of Higher Education has a really interesting article on plagiarism in higher education: Four Academic Plagiarists You've Never Heard Of: How Many More Are Out There?

While this article delves into a few cases we uncovered, our reporting suggests that what we found is not exceptional. Indeed, an editor at History News Network receives so many tips about purported plagiarism that he now investigates only those involving well-known scholars.

So, an idea: All of this flack over P2P file sharing has raised the stakes in copyright infringement pretty high. Is there any way to let some of that whoopass loose in academia?

[ related topics: moron Current Events Education Copyright/Trademark ]

Gingerbread Computer

[ related topics: Food Art & Culture Cool Technology ]

After spending three months on the road this summer in a 1994 Nissan Pathfinder and spending over $2000 on fuel to keep it moving, my wife and I decided to buy a new car. Intially we were tempted by the Honda Civic Hybrid. It actually rides alot nicer than the gasoline-only Civic because of the weight of the battery pack in the back and the virtually silent engine. However, the complexity of an automobile that uses two separate motors and recovers power from the brakes, was a little too much for me to stomach.

After a little more shopping around, we found that the Volkswagen Jetta TDi gets comparable mileage (42mpg city, 49mpg hwy), and does it all with an engine that is simpler than a gasoline engine - no ignition system! I had always wanted a diesel to convert to run on waste vegetable oil and a little research openned up my eyes quite a bit. What I thought would be a bizzarre experiment in automotive tinkering is actually much simpler!

First, a little history: Rudolf Diesel patented the Diesel engine in 1892 (yes, the technology has been around a loooooong time). The premise was to create an engine for farm implemneted that could be run on fuel made by the farmer. It ran on 100% peanut oil but could also run on any similar oil: corn, sunflower, rapeseed, even lard. It works this miracle by increasing the compression of the cylinders and doing away with the ignition (spark plugs, distributor, etc), using the compression to ignite the fuel. Although you can run a diesel on straight oil, some simple chemical processes can convert the oil to Biodiesel fuel. You can make Biodiesel fuel yourself from vegetable oil (even used oil from McD's) by mixing with lye and alcohol.

The real surprise came when I found out that Biodiesel is being made available, not by cooky shade-tree mechanics, but also by some pretty big players and has been in use by quite a few organizations. Furthermore, it's available at the pump in numerous places around the US, including several in Eastern Tennessee and even one in Chattanooga.

I now drive a VW Jetta Wagon with a diesel engine that gets over 40mpg and I can fuel it locally with a 20% biodiesel mixture, which currently sells for $1.899/gallon.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Chattanooga Automobiles Machinery Marriage ]

SFGate visits Power Exchange for the holidays: Whether it's Sexmas or Spanksgiving, sex party patrons will seize just about any chance to make merry.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

Over at Pursed Lips, Debra has an entry where she looks at Kinsey and muses about what her web experience would be in the days of the Comstock laws. It's some worthwhile musing. Heck, "community standards" have changed a hell of a lot in the past decade and a half; I remember BBS operators being tried for obscenity in whatever jurisdiction the prosecutor thought would be most advantageous, something we don't really think about much nowadays.

However, one of the recent memes has been that the "culture war" is over, and "conservatives" lost. This is a view most often put forward by the aforementioned "conservatives" (ie: David Horowitz quoted in this article). Another debating tactic I've run into recently is those same people saying "look at all we've given up, you should compromise too".

Yes, we've made tremendous strides in the past 50 years. But in terms of the macro scale of cultural change we've taken a beachhead at Normandy, and we've still got to get all the way through France and a good portion of Germany before we take Berlin.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture History Sociology ]

As an atheist raised with a lot of Jewish culture, with a bit of Methodist thrown in for good measure, I've never really been able to accept Christmas. This year, however, I realized something: Just as Christianity has appropriated the symbols of other traditions and rituals for its holidays, heck, they didn't even bother to change the name of Easter, so consumerism has appropriated symbols and rituals and from Christianity and other cultures and turned it into a celebration of consumption.

And I'm way more okay with that than I am with trying to convince myself, all evidence to the contrary, that it's about the birth of the messiah.

On another note, one of those traditions is the train around the tree. Around our tree it's my dad's old A.C. Gilbert American Flyer(none of that newfangled Lionel) S-gauge trains. These guys, amazingly, survived his childhood, and mine, and even stand up to the occasional toddling visitor we have here.

These are particularly apropos because A.C. Gilbert was "the man who saved Christmas", for reversing the opinion of the Council of National Defense in 1918 that parents should buy War Bonds rather than toys.

But what struck me as I was setting up the figure-8 that loops around the tree and a neighboring table leg or two was how toys have changed. There have always been war toys, so this isn't a screed against green plastic army men or die-cast tanks, but Charlene and I recently went into a Toys-R-Us and spent some time searching for Play Doh, and in the process searched through an amazing amount of action figures and the like. Where the children of my dad's era and before were inundated with toys of construction and transportation, I believe kids these days get a much higher ratio of figures of combat and fighting to those of creation and commerce.

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up History Sociology Consumerism and advertising Machinery Trains Fabrication Economics ]

A while back on the ferry, I met a woman whose husband runs Bambino Woodworks, and it's taken me this long to get around to checking out the website (I'm going through the last of the "don't want to deal with it right now" boxes from the move, and ran across the flyer).

Some gorgeous rocking horses, and some nice tables if you're into a heavy wood look. In fact, I've been trying to figure out some sort of substructure to turn this piece of bowling alley I've got into a table, I'll have to investigate this more, he's got some tables that look like the legs would work really nicely on that.

[ related topics: Art & Culture Furniture ]

A spooky little movie from Honda shows the latest version of their ASIMO walking robot. This is fascinating, since walking is very hard; it takes humans a couple of years to figure it out properly, and we're designed for it. The gait is remarkably lifelike, although I wish the movie showed it turning. I look forward to seeing the next version walk over uneven ground instead of a carpet.

[ related topics: Robotics Cool Technology Artificial Intelligence ]

A San Francisco institution ends: The Night Cabbie has decided to both stop driving cabs and to stop writing his column.

[ related topics: Bay Area Writing California Culture ]

Love is: Your Girlfriend wants to 'go to the mall' the day after Christmas.. in Atlanta... and you go.

In reality I had a good day, didn't spend much except food and gas. I'm not much of a mall-ite. But there was one amazing store, with a line out the door and lots of people buying things, the day AFTER Christmas. The Apple store in Lennox mall was shoulder to shoulder.. And what were they buying? iPod!. What is amazing is that they are announcing the new Mac's as a product "from the creators of the iPod". I have to give Apple some kudos for marketing and hope they continue to do well.

Me? I just stuck a 1gb CD card in my Zaurus, wishing I could stick a 20gb drive in it..

[ related topics: Apple Computer Music Invention and Design Food Consumerism and advertising Macintosh Marketing ]

I followed a link from /. about some guys who are trying to figure out how to land a "wing suit" (for those of you not up on skydiving, some background on the wing suit). What bothered me about this was:

The two were able to gather data using GPS systems attached to Luigi that tracked exact forward speeds, exact fall rate and glide angles needed for a safe landing.

I believe that landing a wing suit involves forcing a whip stall from a fairly high speed, probably over a hundred miles an hour, and getting to that point involves some pretty accurate tradeoffs of altitude and horizontal speed. GPS accuracy is 95% of samples within ten meters or so. I've never cratered from 30+ feet, but I've limped for quite a while after hitting ground from lower.

Anyone else see a problem here?

But this isn't the only place that people are depending on GPS when they probably shouldn't be. I've been told that I've got a relative who uses it to find a river mouth in surf when he's fogged in, riding the dory in from fishing through a relatively narrow inlet. Sure, he hasn't had a problem yet, but...

I worry a bit, but then I tend to be something of throwback when it comes to trusting my life to technology.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Ethics Maps and Mapping ]

Hey, here's a good idea: Homeless Hardware is a place to give away computer hardware to a home that wants it. Must be free, although you can charge for shipping.

[ related topics: New Economy Net Culture ]

We had to do a bunch of driving around and shopping kind of stuff today, and while we were in the car Charlene read Onward Christian Ex-Gays to me.

Infiltrator looks in on a few Christian groups that help misguided souls pray their way out of the gay lifestyle. Right here in the Bay Area.

It's often really easy to laugh at other people's spiritual paths or therapies, and quite often that sort of "I'm pulling one over on them" humor makes me cringe, but I enjoyed this one and laughed a lot.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Sexual Culture Current Events California Culture Automobiles ]

SFGate.com reports that Carol Queen wants your old porn in an update on the status of the Center for Sex and Culture.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology ]