Flutterby™! From 2005-08-01 to 2005-08-31

At 1:30 I'd taken two Valerian capsules and was still staring at the ceiling, so I got up and started to program. It's been a productive night, I ripped out and recoded the things I wasn't sure of, and while I'm waiting on the final build (and have done some incremental testing in the mean time) I feel like I have the whole problem in my head and understand it.

Hopefully I won't wake up tomorrow discovering that this was only a dream, or it was half a dream...

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

And now for something completely different: "recreational, kinky elephant sex" (link is work-safe ;-)

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Comics ]

We've talked a bit about Frank Lloyd Wright over time, and from the Chicago suburbs comes another sad story about living in a work of art. According to the Chicago Tribune, a couple saved a Wright-designed mansion in the 1950s and made it a showplace. Now, the owner is a 91 year-old lady with Alzhiemers and the roof is falling in. She wishes to live out her time at home, and the county's Public Guardian, who looks after her affairs, will ante up $14,000 to give it a standard issue asphalt roof. Local preservationists want to do the roof with Wright's fired clay tiles, which would cost $250,000! The Guardian says that if they want it, they gotta pay for it.

We have seen this problem in Illinois for a while now. People who bought Wright houses for a song in the 50s, when he was considered little better than a crank, can't afford to fix them up now that he's revered. Since many are listed as landmarks, even fixing the bathroom needs special approval and authentic restoration. Tradesmen hear Wright's name and triple their rates. The story of the curse of the White Elephant comes readily to mind.

Of course, Wright houses are more prone to this, since he did a lot of private residences. Its not likely that a century from now we will have scads of Frank Gehry bungalows needing their tinfoil redone.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Art & Culture Community Architecture Real Estate Architecture - Frank Lloyd Wright ]

I wrote XML is like a straitjacket for a mailing list, and realized I should put it up here too.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Software Engineering Archival ]

Reports on the recent discovery of a 10th, trans-plutonian planet mention that the finders are referring to it as Xena, as in the Warrior Princess. While it seems unlikely that the Astrophysical Union will accept that name, it does give us an opportunity. What should we call it? Charon, the ferryman of Hades is an obvious name, but it has been given already to as distant planetoid. Since the new object has an orbit that takes it from the most outer darkness to the relative warmth of Pluto's path, perhaps Persephone would do. Or should we go farther afield? Any suggestions? I personally like Chomsky, since the object is icy, useless and is on a wildly eccentric orbit.

[ related topics: Cool Science Space & Astronomy ]

Wow. Y'all have already seen this by now, but: Airbus A340 slides 200 yards past the end of Toronto runway and explodes, all 309 people on board survive and evacuate safely.

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events ]

Dori reports that Healdsburg now has wireless "'net", but that the access is apparently web only. Punching holes into firewalls points us to HTTP Tunnel, which implements RFC 3093, originally presented as a joke, for tunnelling TCP/IP over HTTP. Get that running, and anywhere you can get a web connection you can connect to the net.

[ related topics: Wireless ]

This one's for Jeff: Dave had a link to this page which has assorted video of Sabine Schmitz, who is described as "the fastest taxi driver in the world" for the trips she gives to people around the N¨rburgring Track. The reason this one's for Jeff? Watch her blow by motorcycles in tight turns... in a diesel powered delivery van. It all started when a student she was teaching was really proud to have made it around the track in under 10 minutes, and she said "I tell you something: I do that lap time in a ...".

Usual TV show editing, but still quite cool. The other video, a real-time chase cam of her doing it in her own car (in heavy traffic) is spectacular, the only thing I wish had been added to that is her commentary as the motorcycles won't pull over to let her pass. And if you follow the links around there's another one taken from inside her car which shows that whole "scrubbing speed with the sharp twist at the beginning of the late apex turn" technique absolutely incredibly.

[ related topics: Sports Automobiles Video ]

David Steinberg's latest, Comes Naturally #157 (August 2, 2005): What I Did on My Summer Vacation: A Jaunt into Sexual Disneyland, takes a visit to the 2005 Las Vegas Lifestyles Convention, a large gathering of swingers. I'm not sure why I found it compelling reading, but I did.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Gambling ]

Got some extra vacation days you have to use before the end of the year? The Guardian has some suggestions for unusual tours and holiday spots that that are definitely off the beaten track. My two favorites are the Austrian Alpine nudist resort with special rates for February, and the tour of Chernyobel, Ukraine. The latter takes you within yards of the sarcophagus covering the blasted reactor, as well as through the ghost towns of the Dead Zone. A tasty lunch and use of a geiger counter are included.

[ related topics: Nudity Travel ]

Things in rubbers.

[ related topics: Humor Photography ]

Cam and Damien are trying to get on the show "The Amazing Race", and have started Blogger Twins to try to attract the attention of the producers. Here's some linkage for you guys.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett ]

Smoky Smith, last Canadian awarded the Victoria Cross, dies. The article is well worth reading, this guy was a serious badass. Promoted to corporal and busted back to private nine times, single-handedly held off three tanks, two self-propelled guns and about 30 infantry. This is the sort of guy Lee Marvin wishes he could have played:

Smith heard he'd won the Victoria Cross about seven weeks after the fight. His reputation as a party animal preceded him. Military police were sent to take him to the ceremony with King George VI in London.

"They picked me up in Naples or somewhere and they put me in jail,'' Smith recalled with his trademark grin.

"`Don't let him loose in this town. Don't let him loose. He's a dangerous fellow.'

As I said, read the whole damned thing:

"Try to do this as often as you can,'' said Smith, who used to kill enemy troops with a half-metre-long, Indian-style warclub bristling with nails.

"You never know when your last sunrise is going to be.''

[ related topics: Guns War ]

$20 million in federal dollars allocated to private developer for SF Bay ferry service, both of the local representatives say they didn't do it, all of the local transit services say that it's impractical and the proposed route has too many environmental concerns, fingers are pointed at Don Young (R-AK) and James Inhofe (R-OK). So if you're a constituent of either of those politicians, no that they're not just bringing tons of "PORC" ("Projects of Regional Concern") to their own districts (Don Young is legendary in these circles, including $238 million for a bridge to serve a town of 8,000 which is already served by a 10 minute ferry), they're dishing it out elsewhere.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Current Events Public Transportation Alaska ]

Went out last night to see Batman Begins. A perfectly watchable movie, a characterization that falls in a different place than either the dark knight or high camp. Better than I expected, but not spectacular, the angst and emotion that could come from a superhero story, even (or perhaps especially) this one, were downplayed for the action.

One of the teasers beforehand was for Dukes of Hazzard. I admit, I enjoyed the few times I saw the TV show when I was a kid, and then when I moved to Chattanooga I realized that it wasn't so much a satire as a documentary, and it was even better. So, against all evidence, I held out a little hope for the movie.

However, it seems that Dukes of Hazzard is one of those movies that's going to be fun because of the reviews. Every once in a while there's the chance for a reviewer to really cut loose. Mick LaSalle says "The filmmakers couldn't buy a laugh in a burning poppy field." Rotten Tomatoes on Dukes of Hazzard has more if you're really a glutton for punishment.

[ related topics: Nostalgia Movies Nature and environment Television Chattanooga ]

This one's for Eric:

A Norwegian prison has stopped giving yoga sessions to inmates after finding that some of the prisoners became more aggressive and agitated, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Maciej Ceglowski takes on the space shuttle in A Rocket To Nowhere. Well worth reading.

[ related topics: Politics Space & Astronomy ]

It was time... to get away from people, computers and the house for a while. Nancy was in Minneapolis for a couple days and I was it a futz. So I threw my Hennessy Hammock, a some food and water in the kayak (1 or 2 person 15' Perception Sundance II - nice all-around boat), and went for a float down the Tennessee River from Suck Creek (in front of the house) and ended up at Hales Bar, where Topspin and Ann (and Alex) picked me up Saturday and we had a good lunch on Lady Jane's resturaunt (floats on a barge).

It was a nice trip, I enjoy sleeping in the hammock, and was looking forward to finding someplace to spend the night along the river. Ugh.. There are several 'primitive' campsites cleaned out along one section of the river. The two I stopped at were so trashed I decided to clean them up.. so I gathered trash and bagged it, but thanks to the badly improvised and abused facilities at each, I was not going to stay at either. I wish I had had a shovel with me. Later, I found a natural clearing near a stream inlet that was perfect for hanging a hammock, a very small fire to warm up some chili, and I was good for the night.

I'd been on the Tennessee a lot in a pontoon boat, and even a few times on fishing boats and jet ski's. While paddling a river like that, you get a completely different view of it. Quietly cruising down the shadowy treeline I saw a lot of birds up close, a few fish, and for the very first time in my life, two river otters along the bank. But mostly it was boringly peaceful and serene.

Still, the amount of trash stuck in the nillfoil marshes and shoreline, ranging from floating gatorade and beer bottles to actual trash bags full of trash apparently dumped from passing boats was disheartening. I'd picked up almost a full large trash bag of stuff that was just 'nearby' during the trip.

Yet, when the fall colors come out, I'll have to do it again and take Nancy.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Food Beer Chattanooga Sports Travel Pyrotechnics Boats Machinery Whitewater Birds Real Estate ]

Hey Scoble: You want to convince me that Microsoft isn't the suckiest suck that ever freakin' sucked? Then fix your damned validation servers. I've been trying to get a blasted update for this piece of crap for a while now, I've paid my hundreds of dollars for a damned XP license, and every time I try to get some freakin' support for this shit I get:

Why did it not validate?

It appears that our activation servers are not functioning properly. Please return to complete the validation process at a later time.

We hope that you'll return later to retry the validation process so that you may enjoy the full benefits of genuine Microsoft software.

While that's just fucking great that you assholes can't run a goddam IT center to save your own freakin' customers, that leaves me trying to get some software running on this lousy ass excuse for an "operating system" while being left out in the cold.

Despite, yes, paying you schmucks waaaay too damned much money for buggy crap! And it's not even being a good games platform right now.

Damn, having a Mac and a Linux machine as my primaries for a month or two have made me see the light. Windows sucks. Microsoft sucks. And every apologist who isn't screaming that Redmond needs to be nuked back to flat obsidian in order to save us from more of this annoying unnecessary and frankly freakin' incompetent horror sucks.

That is all.

[ related topics: Free Software Apple Computer Games Dan's Life Microsoft Open Source Software Engineering moron Macintosh ]

2 Canadian Men Marry for Tax Benefits.. and they are straight / heterosexual menu. "There are significant tax implications that we don't think the government has thought through," Pinn said.

[ related topics: Politics moron Sociology Current Events ]

There are things in life that, if they are said, must be said anonymously. Situations that require that sometimes we offer up polite fictions, because those involved might react in ways that are not good for them if they hear us at our most exasperated. However, that does not stop my need to scream occasionally, even if said screams are virtual.

There is an occasional participant here who runs a free weblogging service, someone with whom I disagree about religion but with whom I nevertheless find common ground. There is an alias I've occasionally used. If these clues aren't enough to point you in the right direction, and you want to read me ranting incoherently about some of the things in my life that are frustrating and that aren't Microsoft Windows, email me and I'll send you a URL.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Holy cow! Jerry Garcia died 10 years ago today, which means that this is 10 years since I moved to California from Chattanooga.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area Chattanooga ]

When men feel that their masculinity is threatened, they fall back on old stereotypes. Or at least undergrad Cornell students do:

"I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq war more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle," said Willer said. "There were no increases [in desire] for other types of cars."

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

Dubya says that "intelligent design" should be taught in classrooms, and Donald Rumsfeld claims that Iranian weapons have been found in Iraq, although he's unwilling or unable to state how he knows that they're Iranian.

I think these two are related...

[ related topics: Religion Politics moron Current Events Guns ]

So, you find a note saying that there's a bomb on the plane. You divert to the nearest airport, taxi the aircraft to a remote location, and evacuate the plane? Nope, you make them sit in the airplane for an hour. I'm a little unclear on the decision making process: Either you think there's a bomb on the plane, in which case catching the person who planted the note (and who is probably no longer on the plane) is more important than the lives of the other 140 people; or you don't, in which case why not just sequester the passengers when the plane lands in the normal place?

Via Dave's Picks from Bombs Away by Becky Akers.

[ related topics: Aviation moron Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Mary Anne Mohanraj makes it into the local papers: Sexing Sri Lanka How a Tamil immigrant girl grew up to become an erotica queen and new voice in South Asian literature. I just started her latest, Bodies In Motion, but, alas, won't be able to make it to the reading tonight.

[ related topics: Books Erotic Writing ]

The Prior-Art-O-Matic, automatically generating prior art.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Humor ]

This afternoon we leave on our Alaska trip. Alaska Airlines to Seattle this evening, thence on to Petersburg tomorrow morning. Staying at the Morning Mist B&B in Petersburg. Sunday and Thursday we're going whale watching, Monday we're going to see the icebergs at the base of Le Conté glacier with Kaleidoscope Cruises. Thursday evening we get on the Alaska Marine Highway ferry, Friday morning we have a quick two hour stopover in Sitka, and Friday evening we arrive in Juneau. We're staying at Driftwood Lodge in Juneau. Saturday morning we do the X-Trek helicopter flight up on to the glacier, hike around, and ice climbing, with NorthStar Trekking, and on Monday we fly back.

We're taking the hybrid tandem for exploring Mitkoff Island and Juneau, I've got three spare tubes and a folding spare tire, just in case. We're hoping we'll get a chance to meet Marilyn Frink Jordan George because we both loved her book. We'll probably end up with either an official or unofficial tour of a fish packing plant. And other than that, we're going to hang out in a strange and severe land with no expectations.

See y'all on Tuesday week hence.

[ related topics: Books Nature and environment Aviation Travel Seattle Bicycling - Tandem Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska Aviation - Helicopters ]

Popular Science and Popular Mechanics have become product press release rags, yet I'm noticing a new class of weblog and print magazine taking on the tinker/hack mainstream: Make: seemed interesting enough I subscribed to the dead tree edition, and am pleased with it and the site. Another favorite of Nancy's and mine is Ready Made. To me, they seem to be about 'control' and that you can make/build/create/modify/re-use things yourself that suit your needs. They seem to espouse the things some of us learned in High School shop class so many years ago, that are no longer being taught in schools. They also show normal people doing things that are just a little rough around the edges, and say "it's ok", as opposed to the thoughts that everything must be polished and perfect. Then comes a whole genre of TV shows, ranging from making custom choppers, Monster Garage/House, Junkyard Wars, MythBusters..

So is it just me, or are we becoming a nation of tinkerers again?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Weblogs Technology and Culture Invention and Design Television Real Estate ]

Just an 'Aaaarrrghhh!' - working with a client that prints a web page, circles one missing period, scans the whole page into a PDF and e-mails it to me. Instead of 'Hey dummy, you missed a period on page: ____'. Sure, we've gotten much more efficient with all this technology, haven't we?

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

It all looks speculative, I mean, it looks real early in the process for something that may actually work, but it's still a heck of a lead: Crocodile blood may yield new antibiotics (that kill HIV). I hope it works out well. - It's an interesting read:

" They tear limbs off each other and despite the fact that they live in this environment with all these microbes, they heal up very rapidly and normally almost always without infection, "

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Coyote Grits Nature and environment Invention and Design Theater & Plays Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

A list of: To do nude, or not to do nude. Might be useful for those going to: Burning Man.

[ related topics: Burning Man Erotic Sexual Culture Nudity ]

A good article (Wow, from ZDnet!?!) with more than one side of the story about Linus and the Linux Mark Institute wanting licensing, and/or a statutory declaration waiving any claim to exclusive rights to its use.

Australia's a little different then the US, and in order to trademark Linux, which we all pretty much agree Linus should own that name, he has to get the people currently using the name to essentially agree that the term as used in their companies names, is not soley theirs to use. And.. you have to show and prove that you are taking measure to protect your trademark to keep it.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Free Software Open Source Software Engineering Current Events Civil Liberties Copyright/Trademark ]

I want to capture some computer screen output - that is record some things going on on the screen. I found this great program called Camtasia which works well. It allows easy recording, editing of the file, etc, and will output in AVI.

But I am a neophite at this. How do I put this on to a VHS or Beta format for displaying on a TV? What is the best screen resolution, size etc. for this? Is AVI what I really want for this? Is there a better choice of tools for this?

Ah yes, in Mayberry we are always behind the technology, can anyone help a dual citizen - that is Flutterbarian/Mayberrian?

Thanks,

Ziffle

[ related topics: Ziffle Technology and Culture Software Engineering Television ]

Mooched weak wifi signal. Can't talk much. Something like this, only much, much more so:

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip ]

Back from walking around the Mendenhall Glacier, if there has been a disappointment on this trip that trek was it, but it was still very cool.

To tide y'all over, here are some shots from our trip up to Le Conte glacier back on Monday. Sorry about the thumbnail sizes, I'm still working stuff out. This one's one of a large number of cute little beasties sitting on icebergs.

This is us in the stern of the boat right off the face of the glacier. We watched in calve on the far side. This one's particularly active, it moves about 36 feet a day, so sit there for an hour or so and you'll see something peel off. We were also unsure in going just how close to the face we were going to be able to get, often the ice clogs up the inlet such that you can get... well... we got fairly close, were sitting there, then Barry started the engine and we thought "awww, but it's been a great day", and then...

We'll rave further later, but Barry of Kaleidoscope Cruises is awesome, and you should all go book trips with him right now. He took us further in than we ever expected, dodging the little ice chunks all the way in to the face.

There have been days of hundreds of shots coming off of the cameras. These are all Charlene's (I'll fix the database later). As we sort and sift and find the keepers over the next few weeks I'll be deluging Flutterby with shots.

Now I think we're going to walk down to the Juneau docks to find something to eat and see a bit more of how the cruise ship tourist sees Alaska. From what we know right now, we far prefer our method, and we'd do the Petersburg stretch again in a heartbeat. And another shout out to Mel and Sherry of Morning Mist B&B in Petersburg, who went overboard in making our stay there absolutely incredible.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Travel Boats Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska ]

The wifi signal keeps fading in and out, so I'm grabbing bandwidth as it appears. The more we explore Juneau, the more we wished we'd either done this area first, when our expectations were low, or just stayed in Petersburg. Here's Devil's Thumb from the Petersburg harbor.

[ related topics: Photography Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska ]

Another iceberg, a big one with lots of birds on it, calved from Le Conte glacier.

[ related topics: Photography Birds Archival Alaska ]

Because, you know, 40 tons of flying mammal hitting the water is cool!

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip ]

The bald eagles have been limited, the salmon are dying off after spawning and the eagles have all gone for the streams in the hills. This one's on a nav marker at the edge of Petersburg's harbor.

[ related topics: Photography Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska ]

I learned something today while looking for some 'bad web design' examples to use in an upcoming presentation: Don't use certain file/directory/script names, because the ad-blockers are blocking them. Nancy's had this issue with one of my sites from work (using Norton), and I did not know why until now: Bad File/Dir Names is useful, but: don't confuse web design with sex is funnier to read.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Coyote Grits Work, productivity and environment Graphic Design ]

I mentioned that the glacier trek was somewhat of a disappointment. When I first contacted Northstar Trekking, we were unsure about whether or not Charlene was up to the demands of the longer trip. I talked with them for a while, and was convinced that it wasn't going to be that strenuous, that we could take alternative routes if necessary, and I came away with a feeling that she'd be just fine with it.

[Edit: this part appears to be my fault, the confirmation email has me at the time they stated] Comes the morning of the trip, we discover (after waiting outside for the van) that they rescheduled 45 minutes later without contacting us. We arrived at the office where they had gear laid out. The shoes they had available for Charlene were way too large, and when pressed they admitted that they didn't have shoes in Charlene's size, despite being informed of that size several months ago, and that she can't use her own boots because their crampons don't clamp on to the fittings.

The shoes themselves were ratty, I had to get new liners because one of my lace loops was worn to the point where it would have broken had I put any pressure on it. So I was putting on my second set of boots when I looked over at what they were trying to do for Charlene, and discovered that in their haste to get her suited up they'd actually bent some of the plastic down into the boot in such a way that they'd never get the boot on, and Charlene's "ow, that hurts" was testament to doing it wrong.

Hustled out to the helicopters, Charlene's shoes still were not right. So when we got to the glacier, the slowest person there had ill-fitting shoes that hadn't been adjusted properly, we spent time on the glacier doing that, and even after that they were still so painful that she had bruises on her ankles the next day.

Lee, the guide, did a really good job of mollifying the group over the slow pace, but the rest of the group wanted a more athletic experience than even I was into. Glaciers are full of detail, and I had questions to ask and fine points I wanted to observe, but the guide felt that he wasn't able to let us separate to take alternate routes, or even for the two of us to go back to the base tent when we passed back close to the landing zone.

So in the end I think none of us on that trip were really happy with the experience we had, for which we'd each just paid on the order of $450 a person. We felt like we were hustled through as commodities, that as a matter of company procedure the individual experience wasn't nearly as important as upselling and moving people through.

So, as fun as the helicopter flight was, and as neat as being on the glacier was, I can't recommend it. It's a very pricey commitment and there's a strong chance that either you'll end up with painfully bruised ankles, or that you'll be wanting to hike faster. Either way you'll lose. And we've got lots of suggestions for experiences that that much money will buy that are equally cool.

If you want the helicopter flight, I think that's pretty much a commodity, but frankly I'd get a float plane flight over one of the less populous glaciers. If you want to hike on the glacier then go buy a set of crampons and head to one of the places where you can hike in to glacier access, either on Mendenhall (there's a three and a half mile hike from the visitor's center that puts you on a slope you can climb down to get onto the ice) or one of the glaciers further north. That way you get to wear your own boots, which fit, and go at your own pace. I recommend gloves, if it hasn't been raining recently the surface of the glacier is said to be fairly sharp, and rain gear.

However, on to the trip. This was the first time in a helicopter for both of us, and helicopters are cool. Charlene is pushing me to buy computer peripherals, we're going to get a joystick, pedals and a collective pitch lever so we can set up a simulator, and we're going to talk up a friend or two with helicopter certs to see if we can buy flight time for them to practice with us in the aircraft with 'em.

Charlene says "you should pick my shots, 'cause they don't have windows in 'em." She was sitting in the right rear, behind the pilot, I was in the middle rear. so my shots all have head and airframe in 'em. So obviously, this one is mine. One of the cool things about glaciers is their fractal nature. From far enough away, they look like all of the features are along the length of the glacier. The ice has to be at least a thousand feet deep for the glacier to form, and they're pretty good at carving out the width of the valleys, so there's little lateral turbulnce in the coloring of the glacier. As smaller ice flows pick up rock and silt along their edges and merge into the larger flows, vertical bands of fine silt color the glacier.

Okay, now back to Charlene's pictures. As you get further down on Mendenhall Glacier, it's over a mile wide, but up towards the top of its thirteen mile flow there are smaller glaciers feeding off the ice field (which was hidden in the clouds when we were there) down into the valley.

Closer, the main features are horizontal striations as the ice flows over deep ledges, which cause lateral cracks and crevices. These are more pronounced at the steep sections and in the turns where, like a whitewater rapid, the outside edge is smoother, the inside edge is more turbulent and sometimes even forms eddies. And closer the rugged blocks and cracks of the steep parts start to become apparent,

It's hard to tell scale. This is an image from standing on the glacier, but it took me quite a while to figure out what the scale was.

and the cracks ("mulan"s) range in size from a few inches to human sized

That last one shows another party further up the ice fall. Next entry will be up-beat again, I promise!

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Aviation Travel Boats Shoes Whitewater Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska Aviation - Helicopters ]

I know, I promised the next entry would be upbeat, but it didn't work out that way.

I've whined before about hotel reservations search engine spammers. Phil Ringnalda points out that O'Reilly is aiding and abetting them, and in the comments to that entry, Shelley says that she's making her car payments that way. I've got mixed feelings about this, I've considered taking some advertising here and leveraging this domain's search engine placement, on the other hand I've tried to plan a vacation around these search engine spammers and double dealers, and it's a royal pain in the ass.

So at the very least I'll be running through and adding rel="nofollow" to all O'Reilly links on Flutterby, and I'd strongly suggest anyone else with a website start thinking about ways that we can leverage our own ranking to make the commons a better place.

[ related topics: Web development Weblogs Ethics Spam Consumerism and advertising Travel Net Culture ]

Okay, here's something upbeat, over at Pursed Lips, Debra is back and updating!

Fuel for Dan and Todd's Bandwidth Bet: Mark Cuban says broadcast TV will never die.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Todd Gemmell broadband Television Dan and Todd's Bandwidth Bet ]

The good folks over at Sensible Erection alerted me to the news that a nun has been reprimanded for wild dancing. Luckily, they also provided a link to scans of the pictures.

And if that's not enough, now San Francisco can lay claim to the dirtiest porn ever, as a dump truck crashes into an adult store.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Bay Area Current Events ]

Stolen from Dave for Mark: Take me out to the equation, a quick rundown of baseball stats.

[ related topics: Sports ]

My photographic goal for this trip was to take snapshots that illustrated the trip; personal images, not art. Good pictures are hard, especially with wildlife, and I wanted this to be a trip of experiencing what was there, and bringing back memories of those experiences, rather than try to compete with the coffee table books. Charlene did better in this than I, she remembered to get that picture of ice all around with the boat for context that I put in that entry a few back, but I'm particularly proud of this sequence because it gives a sense of how close the whales approached the boat, and what it was like to be there:

I haven't rambled about the captain or the boat yet. The Island Dream is a 28 foot aluminum hull diesel powered cruiser. It's set up for cruising, it's about the perfect size for two people to indefinitely explore the islands of the northwest, so with 6 people plus the captain it could feel a little cramped, but instead it feels cozy, like we've all squeezed in to Barry's living room while he shows us the stuff that he thinks is really cool. And Barry is smart, knowledgeable, and clearly loves his materials.

But Barry also doesn't have canned spiels, he answers questions and engages in conversations and has favorite things to show you, but in the three days we were with him we heard the same facts when folks asked questions that we'd already heard the answers to, but we didn't have that sense of a lecture that it's so easy to fall into when you're answering something for the umpteenth time. Don't go with Kaleidoscope Cruises expecting "tour guide" mode, this is for people who want a more in-depth experience; go after learning a little bit about your subject and expecting to ask questions.

[ related topics: Photography Travel Boats Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska ]

I've been working on setting up a MythTV box for the last year or so. After saving up for some of the parts (a Hauppauge PVR-350 TV encoder, a 200gb hard drive, etc.) and a couple of install attempts I discovered that the extra computer I had wasn't fast enough - the "live" TV paused every so often as it spooled to the hard drive.

A couple of days ago, I finished all the troubleshooting, installation and configuration with a new-used Compaq Deskpro and plugged it in to the TV. Overall the end result was a bit of a let-down.

While it's cool to finally see everything on my TV after all this time, the output is not anywhere near the clarity I'd expected from an S-Video connection. The video stream is a bit grainy but watchable The menus on the other hand are so fuzzy that it's nearly impossible to make out the name of the shows in the program guide.

Furthermore, it has now been revealed that I can't record a show while watching anything else (e.g. live TV or a pre-recorded show) with only one TV encoder card installed. I've never felt the documentation was clear on this point, but one of the reasons I opted for the higher-end PVR-350 was because it handles both encoding and decoding. I reasoned that this meant it would be able to record while watching. I was wrong.

So once again, I've set up a MythTV box only to be delayed by a disappointment/obstacle. I'm not giving up yet (I have some ideas to try to improve the output quality and I'm looking at buying another card), but definately feeling frustrated.

[ related topics: Free Software Technology and Culture Open Source Television Shawn's Life Linux ]

crasch had a link to this video which blends a song from The Sun with clips from Beautiful Agony (full disclosure: that's an affiliate link, if two of you sign up I get access for a month), a web site full of videos of the faces of people masturbating. There are a few free samples, and it's worth looking at because...

I'm on the email lists of a couple of porn PR people (big shout out to Brian down at BSG Public Relations). I get a reasonable number of "what's happening in the industry" emails, some of them with pictures, and while I've got an "I [heart] pornography" bumper sticker and like naked people and sex, most of what I see in those press releases depresses me. It's like there's a sub-fetish, just like leather or latex or what-have-you, of people into a certain look and set of expressions that just leaves me cold.

I've thought about this a bunch, every time there's the "let's make some hot porn, rather than what's available" discussion it ends up being that those involved aren't really willing to pay for porn, they're just especially not willing to pay for the genre that's currently out there. I fall into that camp, but this stuff...

Not worth $100/year for me, but it's pretty cool!

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Video ]

Homesick at 2am. - wondering how often they'll update this area on maps.google.com over the next few weeks.

Jen sent Nancy and I a postcard on the way to Burning Man, where she is to meet up with Dave and other friends. We both felt it, hugged and I told Nancy I was going next year and she was invited. She knows what I meant. Last year was a fun trip, and as great as the burn itself is, just being on the road, exploring, visiting, searching out that kewl local eatery in the middle of no-where... calls out and says 'come play with me'. This year is odd, Pam and Clem are going to Madagascar for about a month, Jen is going by herself (meeting Romeo in Utah) and I'm trying (and doing well) to establish a business. Nancy is working a great job.. and we have already travelled a lot this year, and will soon be doing more... and yet I feel the urge deep inside to 'unravel'.

[ related topics: Burning Man Work, productivity and environment Heinlein California Culture Travel Maps and Mapping ]

Despite deciding against the cruise ship experience, we thought it would be cool to spend some time on a big boat tooling around the islands, so we booked a leg from Petersburg to Juneau on the Alaska Marine Highway. This particular route left at night, went over to Sitka, then back through the islands to Juneau.

The hardcore ferry riders sleep on deck chairs in the solarium, or pitch their tents on the deck (and then try to secure them from the wind), we got a stateroom. While there were some cool conversations on the boat, and there were some cool views, since we'd already seen quite a bit of shoreline, I'd consider flying. By the time you add a meal or two to the stateroom the overall cost is comparable to a flight.

We didn't get good sleep that night, so we ended up skipping the Sitka tour. Of those we talked to about Sitka, it sounds like we missed little; Alaska's coolness is in its scenery and its people, not its architecture from a bus in the early morning. Instead we had breakfast (given what I'd heard about ferry food, surprisingly good and in-line with Alaska food prices), and watched the fish jump (yes, in that first image I actually caught one in the air, they were that numerous, the second is a context shot for the first) and the purse seiners operate:

One of the criteria we used in dismissing the cruise ship experience was the notion that we'd have to dress up for dinner to please the cultural mores of a bunch of midwesterners. Those interested in karmic retribution will note that we did eat on a ship with a dress code for the dining hall: "Please: Shirts & shoes required for service in cafetera. Thank you!"

If standing out in the wind got to be too much, there was a rather nice observation lounge, all the way around windows, comfy seats (but no sleeping).

And while I said I'd skip it next time, the views were pretty cool. So maybe doing it once is a good thing.

[ related topics: Photography Sociology Boats Public Transportation Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska ]

One of the guys I talked to on the ferry was the bus driver for the Outstanding in the Field bus tour. They're tooling around from farm to farm bringing in celebrity chefs to cook dinners from supplies local to the farm.

[ related topics: Food Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip ]

I'm back in the market for a job, either as a classroom IT trainer or a writer of end-user manuals, and I'm searching through places like Monster.com. Perhaps this is to balance the karma of getting unemployment, but one of the things I dread is reading vague, stupid and badly spelled job descriptions like this one. I expect a certain amount of boilerplate due to legal requirements, but why oh why must I suffer through terms like "..create task enablement deliverables"? Also, what constitutes "high-level"? 10 meters? 7.9 on the Richter Scale? 98.6 Celsius? Argh!

[ related topics: Writing Law Heinlein Economics LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

FBI demands library records in Connecticut under "Patriot Act".

[ related topics: Books Law Enforcement Civil Liberties ]

Let's get the other negative from the Alaska trip out of the way so I can go back to the good stuff: Juneau. We got into town on Friday evening and wandered down to the wharf to find something to eat. Total culture shock. We ended up in a place called "The Hangar", although it appears not to be a chain it totally had that "mall restaurant bar food" feel, and I couldn't tell if it was the band or the sound system, but from where we were sitting the folks behind the mic... well... it was food, late enough that we were grateful their kitchen was open, the food was actually good (once the waitress got my order right), and we carried on.

After the helicopter trip, we wandered down again, this time when more stuff was open. I had no idea. Our friend Jeanne had said "oh, every town in Alaska has a jewelry store", and we... well... in Petersburg there were two galleries, and I think both of them had a jewelry counter, so we'd thought we'd seen the jewelry store.

We knew that the cruise lines own many (if not most) of the tourist shops in the towns with deep water ports for the cruise ships, but the feeling that I was stuck in some gross parody of Pier 39 was overwhelming. As we wandered from T-shirt and trinket shop to overpriced mall-style jewelry store I eventually said that my life was too short and too precious to spend too much more time there.

Since petronius took my "bunch of midwesterners" bait [grin], I figured I had to include this telling bit of linguistics; you can figure out a lot about a place's intended customers by how they advertise.

The funny thing was that none of the people we talked to in Juneau who were on cruises seemed to be enjoying them. They all said "it's not a great way to see Alaska, but I'm with family, so..." or something similar.

Sunday we woke up late, kinda bummed out, but we'd heard about Glacier Gardens, so we hopped on a bus and had a great day. Glacier Gardens started out as the growing gardens of a guy with a landscaping business, and is now a showcase for his work, along with 600 or so vertical feet of more native vegetation. For $20 each you get a guided tour, and the tour guides are fairly knowledgeable, so we learned a bunch about local flora. The photo on the left there is the stemp of Devil's Club, a plant we heard a lot about but didn't see until here. Note how nasty that stem looks, and there are spines on the leaves, too. The first image below is Devil's Club with berries, a little further back for identification.

The rest of the place is a showcase for the landscaping business, and a venue for evening events; everyone we talked to for directions and bus tips said "I haven't been there, but I hear weddings there are beautiful". And normally we're not much on treacly wedding stuff, but the flowers and gardens were beautiful, and the ability to pick some knowledgeable brains about native plants was very fun.

One final note: We stayed at the Driftwood Lodge, with a view looking out over the Governor's mansion. The place was decent, inexpensive, as advertised had a kitchenette, and the neighboring restauralt, "The Fiddlehead", was decent enough that we ate there several times. It also surprised us because one of thir morning options was sautéed brown rice and veggies.

Still managed to get our orders wrong, a common issue we had in restaurants in Juneau, but the staff was friendly and the food tasty.

[ related topics: Photography Food Travel Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska ]

Flutterbarians generally don't talk about family things, I've noticed, unless they involve significant others, jobs, or travel. I have two sons who are an important part of my life, and tomorrow I put the older one on a plane as he leaves for college for the first time. This is one of the most bittersweet transitions I've ever experienced. Please indulge me for a moment.

False modestly aside, I think I've done well as his parent. He probably had good raw material to start with, but I am so very proud of the confident and bright young man he has become. And he has eversomuch more to learn about and give back to the world.

Except for clothes and his computer monitor which will be properly stowed at the last minute tonight, he's packed. And I've created my commemorative weblog entry about this passage. I'd like to think I'm out of wistful tears but I suspect the trickle will start again tonight at the final sushi dinner.

Conscientious parents spend 18 years preparing their children for this leave-taking. But no one spends time preparing *us* for it. Tomorrow morning I wave him onto the plane and into his life, trying not to think of the kid-shaped hole being left in the fabric of my current life. My heart is bursting for this young man I am launching into the world.

I think it's called love.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Weblogs Sociology Education Clothing ]

While it's not nearly a success on the same level as Diane's, on Monday, coming back, somewhere between getting off the airplane and getting in the car, I set down my camera bag, because by the time I got home it wasn't in the car. We'd had some changes in logistics, and with all of the running around to deal with that I wasn't sure where it could be. On Tuesday I went over to the airport and spent quite a while wandering around, poking my head in offices, and then wrote it off for lost.

It wasn't all of my camera gear, I'd left my 70-200/2.8, a couple of primes, and one of my film bodies at home, but when I totaled up replacement for the missing gear in order to make the police report, I came up with a number somewhere north of $4.5k.

Yesterday evening, Oakland Airport lost & found called me. They'd found it. Nothing is missing. So a couple of "you guys rock!" and "wow"s out to the staff at OAK, including some unknown saint from the 30 minute parking lot.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Aviation Bay Area Law Enforcement ]

Two things struck me on our trip over to Le Conte glacier, which was the first time I'd really seen icebergs in the wild: just how blue they are, and how much variation and cool beauty there is to them. As we were coming back, having seen all of these icebergs on the way in, I was on the back of the boat blowing through bytes with abandon and a member of the family who rode with us was shooting film, and trying to ration herself, and still taking pictures.

The ice ranged from the fairly flat color to the transparent, including one really cool transparent one that was floating in such a way that when the waves passed through it it flickered light and dark colors, the shapes, colors and textures were really really cool:

Even from a few miles away, glaciers are awesome. They don't form unless there are a thousand feet of ice, and the fjord here is roughly 800 feet deep, so the initial face is two or three hundred feet high, and this one is coming down a particularly steep section, so there's quite a bit of slope above that.

From a mile or so away it's still hard to get a sense of scale, but we started to become aware of the sounds. This one moves over 35 feet a day, so sitting there for long enough we started to see things moving, chunks breaking off the face and such. The really spectacular ones are supposedly the large chunks which break off in that 800 feet underwater and surface, something we weren't directly aware of, but...

... up close the scale of the thing started to hit home. We'd also had some question over how close to the face we could get, beyond the usual hazards, icebergs which suddenly flip, calving and the resulting waves, that sort of thing, the tide and wind had come together to cause a thick ice flow between a mile and half a mile out from the glacier face. Barry threaded us in through this, but as we sat looking at the awesome face the ice closed in, and going back out was very slow.

One of the things that further cemented our belief that we chose the right way to visit the area was that we passed this cruise ship (a very small one, for those of you not familiar with such things) in the inlet, and later saw the passengers from that boat huddled together in life jackets and survival gear on their trip in to see the glacier. Yeah, I'm quite happy that we were eating smoked salmon and drinking tea; there's no reason to leave civilization for the scenery...

And while the glacier may be the major thing to see, it's not the only thing. It is, however, the source of much of the real coolness in the area. There's lots of water flowing down from the ice fields up in the mountains, and the valley was created by glacier, and you can still see the results of that.

Those last few shots show a really cool waterfall that appeared as we came around a bend, the way that different portions of it were visible as we came by were really cool.

And the ice has a really neat fracture pattern to it, this piece was destined for a drink, but you'll notice that it doesn't split in straight lines the way that ice in your freezer does, it breaks in these cool rounded bumpy patterns.

[ related topics: Photography Travel Boats Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska ]

Don't know how I missed this one, these little critters were hangin' out on the ice flows.

[ related topics: Photography Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska ]

I just got a note from Friendster about some upgrade, "...we've upped our photo limit to 25+...". I'm fairly sure no one cares anymore, but what they really need is to start working on services to tie Friendster in from other web sites, rather than continuing to try to be self-contained.

They won't listen, of course, 'cause everyone in the "social networking" space is trying to own the data, and thus they'll fade further into irrelevance and not be mourned when they disappear. But they do have options, and they could still save the company.

[ related topics: Photography Net Culture Social Software ]

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Dan & Charlene's 2005 Alaska Trip Alaska ]

I came back from Oh! Canada this week - the air plane is one of those small Bombardier Jets - made in Canada I think -

we had to wait while the pilot shut down the engines, so he could 'Reset the Electrical Sytem'

Now we discussed Windows on aircraft here before (how do I link to it?) (2005-01-26 15:24:21.432494-08 Fly by Wire)

So I sat there the whole time wondering if we were flying using Windows XP?

I mean I have issue getting the monitors to work with different audio drivers - so should I have worried?

It landed ok, but still.. shut down the motors to reboot the electrical system?

Ziffle, Eh?

[ related topics: Ziffle Music Microsoft Aviation Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment ]

Yesterday I went over the hill to hang out in a coffee shop with a coworker and get clear of the vibe of the house for a bit. On the way I switched on the radio, and was assaulted with pretty much content-free interviews with victims of Hurricane Katrina. After the n^th "things are bad", I started to wonder what's really happening. Jay pointed out Wikipedia's Hurricane Katrina entry. Short, to the point, links to detail information. Don't know what we're paying those news folks for, but we ain't getting it.

And as an ex-resident, Mark has had a bunch of entries, including a list of local news resources. Now, here's a question: As bad as everyone makes the situation in New Orleans sound, with the breached levees and a few feet of flood shy of losing the drinking water system overall, what are the costs to repair versus rebuilding the city in some place that isn't a disaster waiting to happen again? We've been pumping tons of federal dollars into keeping the river flowing in the right place by the city, and keeping the seawater out, and if the property damage is getting to the point where the long-term infrastructure will be destroyed, what's the point of rebuilding rather than writing it off for lost and just moving the whole place?

[ related topics: Nature and environment Current Events Hurricane Katrina Real Estate ]