Flutterby™! From 2005-09-01 to 2005-09-30

Even in Petersburg, a town that rightfully thinks fairly highly of itself, a question we got asked on our trip was "why Petersburg?".

Charlene said "I want to go to Alaska". I'd been planning a road trip up through Grand Teton and Yellowstone, but I re-targeted my research a bit, and discovered that Alaska's a pretty huge place. I had visions of everything from glaciers and the Inside Passage to Denali and Prince William Sound. Clearly this wasn't going to happen in one week. So I asked "why?", and she said "I want to see whales".

The coolest whales to see are humpbacks. They're more "whale like" than orcas, but still play more on (and above) the surface a lot. In winter they're found out by Hawaii and points west, but in summer the largest concentrations are in Frederick Sound.

The big cruise ships don't go to into Frederick Sound. The passage at the south end is either through Wrangell Narrows, which passes the larger of the Alaska Marine Highway boats with only a hundred feet to spare at some points and involves some huge number of course changes, or through "Dry Strait", which, you can tell from its name, is a place that even in a skiff you need to check the tide tables.

We looked at the high end cruise ships that get in some of the out of the way places, but discovered that same "trying to see too much" feel. As well, the price difference between the premium cruise ships with 75 to a few hundred people and a 50-70 foot yacht with 4 or 6 passengers is smaller than you'd think. So when our attempts to schedule a week with Alaska Passages (one such small charter operator) didn't work out, we looked to doing a land based trip.

Once we prioritized, we wanted at least two days of whale watching, and we wanted serious days, not two hours of jetboat thrill ride, and some classically Alaska scenery, Petersburg was the obvious choice: It sits at the base of Frederick Sound, close to the whales; it has a solid fishing economy so we were less likely to be overrun with Pier 39 style gift shops and more likely to get into discussions with authentic locals (that sounds patronizing, I don't mean it to be); it's right near Le Conte glacier, lots of icebergs and such; and it has regularly scheduled airline service, so it's easy to get to.

One of the things we missed when we wandered out to this park was the few thousand year old remains of fish traps that are said to be visible at a minus tide. We got distracted by cool stuff in the low tide muck:

The parts that aren't saltwater or mountainside leading directly to mile plus peaks are fields of glacier silt called "muskeg". The soil is acidic and very wet, and the plants which grow in it are interesting. The trees supposedly have a very hard and dense wood, when they can get enough nutrient to stand up straight, and fallen trees make a rich soil, other trees grow straight up out of the supine trunks.

In our later trip to Glacier Garden we saw some trees with exposed roots that we asked about, and were told that this was what happened when the host log had rotted away, as in:

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

Borrowed from /.: Miracle Mice that can regrow almost anything but the brain, whole limbs (with joints) and nervous tissue (optic nerve). There are other stories at Science Daily and another: here. as well as quite a few elsewhere. What is unique is they have transfered this ability to other mice and have apparently identified the DNA that makes this happen.

Could make the stem cell / fetal tissue debates old news.

[ related topics: Business Erotic Current Events ]

I spent a couple hours yesterday with some truly intelligent, interesting and wonderful people, even if they were technologically clueless. And then I ran into the "marching morons", at 30 minutes I was hoping to be able to inject an exit strategy.. and crawled away at just under an hour. At some point I considered asking this apparently successful businessman (no clue if he really was) who reminded him to breathe.. so I could stop them. If I had a receipt for that hour of my life I'd ask for a refund.

And then, icing on the cake, a great email flurry from a MCSE Certified (according to his .sig) who was wanting to know where the DTD was for the "Pseudo-XML" outputed by: FormMail.php as his system could not read the XML without a DTD. - I responded, it's just barely XML, but it imports into Excel and OpenOffice Calc nicely and the field setup depends on his form/html. In the following spasm of e-mails I realize he's just buzzword proficient enough to think that if I called it "Pseudo-XML" and it has XML in the name, it must be some kind of official thing, and his parting comment summarized: "How dare you create your own format!". He must be Indian. dots, not feathers. (oh, that was politically incorrect, sue me.).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development Content Management Weblogs ]

I think I've seen this before, but Jeff (and, Jeff, what's a current URL I should use for you?) forwarded along some really cool pictures of mammatus clouds in Nebraska.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I'm not going to pile on to the "response to the New Orleans disaster could have been better" bandwagon. One of my grandfathers' life's work was emergency response, I mentioned before that at 84 he was sent his "Fireman First Class" certificate, he worked with various New York agencies and the Red Cross in public safety and disaster planning.

When we last talked before his death, one of the concerns he had with one of the planning groups he was involved in was a storm surge scenario that could cause devastation in parts of Long Island similar to what's currently being seen in New Orleans. There are vulnerabilities everywhere, in hindsight there will always have been shortcuts that "should not" have been taken, money that "should" have been spent, and there is some potential disaster looming over right where you live that you are not prepared for.

And risk versus reward calculations are a tricky thing.

That having been said, the Department of Homeland Security offers as one of departmental realignments that it is tasked to:

• Improve National Response and Recovery Efforts by Focusing FEMA on Its Core Functions. FEMA will report directly to the Secretary of Homeland Security. In order to strengthen and enhance our Nation’s ability to respond to and recover from manmade or natural disasters, FEMA will now focus on its historic and vital mission of response and recovery.

Well, yes, it seems that adding another bureacratic layer of political patronage and graft above FEMA was a bad idea. Go figure. Hey, eighty billion bucks a year spent on "no fly" lists and whiz-bang security technology which doesn't work doesn't make us safer. Whoah. So contact your elected representatives and tell 'em that you prefer programs that work to political posturing.

And then make sure that you've taken care of yourself. Figure out how you're going to get water if everything goes to hell, and if you're in coastal plain that means either reverse osmosis or stockpiled water. Make an emergency plan; both Charlene and I have target locations in the event of something going bad and communications going down, hers involves her job so that makes that part both easier and harder. Have some extra canned food and dry goods in the cupboard. And just because of where we live we've got a couple of gallons of gas stashed that we rotate through as we get low, this isn't always possible to do safely.

Finally, just as we're hearing reports of tourists who were told not to evacuate before the storm arranging their own evacs, and then having those vehicles commandeered, understand that what the authorities tell you is a guideline. My years of swift-water experience have taught me that with a little bit of experience and caution my own judgement is as good or better than most police or rescue people. Use their commands as information in making your decision, but don't assume that their judgement is better than yours, and sometimes you have to say "yes, officer", and then do the right thing anyway.

And if you're in a place where the cops have been notoriously corrupt for decades, then, yeah, assume that they'll be looting too.

[ related topics: Politics Food Law Enforcement Hurricane Katrina ]

It's good to know where our tax dollars will be going:

Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Hurricane Katrina Real Estate ]

I was going to hold off on posting what I think are the last of the Alaska pictures until some of them had scrolled off the front page, a few hundred images loading isn't the vision of fast and lightweight I've always tried to keep for the front page. But here we go, one last dump:

We got on the tandem and pedaled the 18 or so miles south down Mitkoff Highway to Blind Slough. The views of the Wrangell Narrows weren't as cool as I was expecting, but it was still a really nice ride. Stopped off at the fish ladder, which had all sorts of "at your own risk" signs, and climbed around some really dodgy broken down stuff to see what was there. Tooled along the past the late season wildflowers:

In a region ruled by boats and aircraft (one of the high school projects is surveying the aforementioned Le Conte glacier, which involves helicoptering in), and with plenty of local elevation for water pressure, we discovered the equivalent of writing your name on the town water tank: A long straight stretch of highway covered with high school names type graffiti. No real way to get a feel for it except riding down it, or capturing it from the air.

And then wandered down the boardwalk (because without the boardwalk, crossing the muskeg would be very difficult):

To Blind River Rapids, where the fish were jumping, and one or two other tourists were hoping the bears (which didn't appear to us, except in footprints) and the sea lions weren't going to make an issue of fish allocation:

On the way back we stopped at the newly opened The Trees RV Park & General Store at mile 10.2 on Mitkof Highway (907-772-2502 if you're ferrying your RV about the southeast), for some water and conversation. Sat and drank and talked while the ice machine was hooked up, marveling at the pluck of folks who'd been opened less than a week and whose store had a full stock of perishables. A very nice day.

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

The American Taliban, in words and pictures.

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

Next time I take the faster glass and use the camera image processing settings a little more proactively. And maybe buy some extra memory so I can shoot 'em in raw mode:

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

QOTD:

You know, if we had a rational drug policy, we'd be dropping dozens of bales of marijuana into New Orleans right now.

[ related topics: Drugs Quotes Politics Hurricane Katrina ]

I have Charlene wanting to buy cool peripherals for the computer! Specifically, she wants to set up a helicopter simulator. Anyone out there with flight simulator experience have suggestions or experience for pedals and other controls? (Larry?)

I don't think the budget right now will handle any of the FLYIT products, but by the time you total up a complete set of CH Products pedals and sticks maybe something like the CopyCat simulator controls aren't too far out of the price range, and Steve's Helicopter Controls look pretty darned nice if I can get the use of my deck back before the rainy season hits, and I could do that with a $20 joystick! I've even got half a sheet of 3/4" birch ply in the basement looking for a project.

Any suggestions for helicopter simulation software? X-Plane has at least a Jet Ranger, I've found a few different models for Flight Gear, but I don't know how good their respective simulations are. I'd probably prefer something we can run under Linux, but I'd even consider Microsoft Flight Simulator if it's reasonable. Everything I'm reading says that X-Plane is the best microcomputer simulator for fixed-wing aircraft, but I haven't found anything that goes into details about how their helicopter models are.

[ related topics: Microsoft Open Source Aviation Aviation - Helicopters ]

As gas prices yo-yo for all the wrong reasons, and as I am cleaning up and organizing my two large rooling toolchests of automative-ish tools that have been stored in my Dad's garage and are now in mine. I daydream about buying a very small junker car and the idea of making an alternative fuel/hybrid/electric/biodiesel/fusion/dilithium crystal vehicle. It would only have to go 60 miles round trip to be useful in Chattanooga, but it would have to be powerful enough to make it back home halfway up Signal Mtn at the near end of it's capacity.

Still, a small electric car, maybe with a multifuel diesel charger? It'd work and could be quite simple. Revisiting Otmar's website makes me think about starting to collect parts for something like his Porche 914.

Chances are slim I'll get farther than this web post, but it has me thinking and I'll be keeping my eyes open for a donor vehicle or two. Heck, I gotta finish my recumbent tandem bike first... The real issue is not the cost and availability of the gas, but pyschological options from the gas industry. I just want OPTIONS.

[ related topics: Coyote Grits Work, productivity and environment Chattanooga Travel Automobiles Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

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

How to cook an egg with two cell phones and an AM radio.

[Edit: on reflection, obvious hoax: see comments]

[ related topics: Cool Science Food ]

I got the usual bogus Paypal message in my email asking me to click on the resoundingly secure HTTPS link that was in fact directed to a location in .to. Curious as to its location I went here to look it up and found it to be Tonga. After thinking of some Paypal sysadmin sitting under a palm tree, being served mai tais by a tawney beauty, I looked at the other codes. The most interesting was .um, which covers the United States Minor Islands. Does this include Rhode Island?

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

In light of the helicopter simulation interest, the World Helicopter Championship 2005. If you're into such things, I hate to hot-link but the movie shows some of the precision they're talking about, from the abstract of the English translation of the rules:

So, during a difficult route of about 200 kiloemtres, the crew has to find isolated and multiple points lost in the field or in forests and also to drop 2 bags symbolizing food or drugs on ridiculous small target's(sic).

But doesn't talk about the sequence showing someone looping a Hughes 500E from this collection of images.

[ related topics: Aviation Aviation - Helicopters ]

It appears that many in my circle aren't familiar with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I first ran across my new deity in an Open Letter to the Kansas School Board which offers up His Noodly Appendage as one of the alternate theories of Intelligent Design. It also points out that global warming has been accompanied by a reduction in pirates, so to reverse this trend we need to dress in pirate outfits and say "aaarrrr" a lot. Parrots are a plus.

So it is as a devout Pastafarian that I offer up Flying Spaghetti Monster: The Game, a link which I stole from Brainwagon

[ related topics: Religion Politics Humor Games Flying Spaghetti Monster ]

I am starting to grok that, for many of the same reasons, Space^(tm) is following the path of the internet and becoming commercialized. Unlike the 'net, however, where you must play reasonably well with others to be a functional part of it. Such constraints are not the same in space, and commercial entities of various (multiple even) nationalities may soon run into problems like: 2 companies both want to place and operate a satellite in a particular sweet spot for communications, and the one that was there just got knocked out of orbit somehow. As companies like Bigelow Aerospace and SpaceX pick up where NASA was, and as other countries foster similiar private industry, I will hope they play together well in Outer Space.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Astronomy Heinlein Net Culture ]

The struggles and frustrations of being an uncle continue, but maybe photography using a geranium leaf as the light sensitive imaging material will capture Forest's attention (Thanks to Mark).

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Cool Science ]

Wash. Post Article on a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons - as a PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE and for destroying stockpiles of WMB/Nuclear/BioLogical/Chemical weapons. WTF? No reason to prove they did or did not exist, 'cause if they did this there would be little or no traces. I would also expect the rest of the world to retaliate.

We have met the enemy, it is us.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Guns ]

Ahhh, blessed freedom. Forest was otherwise occupied last night (and should be most of this week), so we got an evening to ourselves. We went down to Cafe Amsterdam for Simon Costa's open mic night. It was good to have a night out, and quintessential Fairfax: Opened with Jory doing funny, had everything from two young sisters (as in the eldest was 11) reaching pretty high and not quite nailing the notes or the rhythm, to Chris Brown who'd just flown in from playing a stadium show with a Skynyrd tribute band opening for Twisted Sister down in San Antonio ("I was riding in the truck with our gear over from the hotel and the producer guy says 'yeah, we sold thirty five thousand tickets'" and "stacks of Marshalls this high!") and was working on some of his own stuff. We left after Larkin Gayl's set; there'd been the usual background chatter going on but when she started singing, with a voice you could spread thinly on scones and an accompanist (Eliot somebody?) on a bowed saw, the whole place went dead silent, and as she finished we realized that no matter how good the rest of the show was we weren't going to hear anything better that evening.

So Larkin's got a show with a bunch of other women ("we're gonna femme the place out") next Thursday, the 22^nd, at Peri's in Fairfax. Based on what I heard last night I can recommend that. See some of you there?

And Jory was pimping his new studio (check out the article in Mix magazine), if you have such needs I've got it on good authority that he's found the perfect sound after many others have failed.

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

Yesterday I needed a bit of out of the house, so I wandered down to the Lagunitas general store, bought myself a Marin IJ, and hung out. yesterday's Six Chix was apropos enough to our life right now that I clipped it for Charlene.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area ]

I mentioned wanting some helicopter simulator flight controls. I went out and bought a cheapie joystick with a twist rudder, tried to fly the default helicopters in FlightGear, and quickly realized that that wasn't going to work. I looked at Steve's Helicopter Controls, thought "hey, I can do that, and I'm willing to completely sacrifice the joystick" and put something together with an emphasis on materials on hand and quick completion.

These are the results.

There's work left to do:

• I need to put a setback on the cyclic stick and attach the original handle with buttons on that, so that you don't have to sit far forward when flying.
• I need to adjust the throw on the collective a bit.
• I'm still trying to figure out the right sensitivity for all controls.

But overall it's working fairly well. I used an old derailleur cable for the collective because I didn't want to extend any analog cables. The collective folds up vertical to put the whole thing beside the computer table. The pedals are adjustable because I didn't know how long to make 'em, and until I can get drawings or get in a real cockpit to measure I'm going to make the cyclic setback adjustable too.

Fixes for next time:

• Find a cheaper source for nylon bushings.
• Either use 3/8" threaded rod for all axles, or support both ends. I'm currently using 1/4", have let two people sit at it, and someone has already stomped on the pedals enough to bend axles slightly ("light touches!").
• More space in the cyclic box to allow for longer bellcranks on the potentiometers so that I can have finer throw adjustments.
• Figure out and build stops for limits for all of the sticks early on. I didn't know this time, but now I should be able to get specific.

Other cool homebuild cockpit resources:

• A full cockpit with chair that folds into a cabinet.
• The Simple Sim is another full cockpit design.
• FSCockpit has various notes on building your own.
• A simple hack to build a collective.
• Beta Innovations and Mindaugas have electronics interface stuff for building more complex cockpits. The latter has some free schematics and code, I haven't looked at the USB joystick interface spec but it seems it would a a good thing to use the full throw of the potentiometers and do quantizaiton and range stuff in the firmware.
• The R22 Cockpit Project is about building a simulator inside a salvage crashed actual Robinson 22 cockpit.

But having pedals and a long throw cyclic instantly put me from "dang, this is impossible" to "this is hard, but I'm starting to get a feel for it". I'm afraid I am going to have to break down and buy Microsoft Flight Simulator, the folks at Hovercontrol.com use it, and Dodo Sim's Realstart 206 Jetranger reality add-on runs on it.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Microsoft Aviation Cool Technology Aviation - Helicopters ]

I went over the hill today, and in the car was listening to the Roberts confirmation hearing. Both more and less informative than I'd hoped, although several times he clearly came out against individual rights. But I suppose any nominee from this administration needs to be evaluated from a "sucks less" position. But at least as he danced around issues he wasn't boldfacedly denying reality or history.

Unlike Microsoft: Dori catches Microsoft blatantly attempting to rewrite history. Hey, Scoble, call me when Microsoft does something good that wasn't already done by Apple or the open source world elsewhere and just blatantly ripped off.

[ related topics: Free Software Apple Computer Politics Microsoft moron Civil Liberties Macintosh ]

Q: What is the only amphibian found north of the Arctic Circle?

A: The Wood Frog

Cold. Hard. Real. City of God - Just caught on late night Movie Channel. Even with subtitles, well worth watching. Not necessarily a 'great' movie, but visually stunning with a story and 'taste' to be experienced.

Watched it while wrapping up things as Nancy and I head to S.F. for about a week. Nancy's focus is friends Shawn and Lia having a baby (hopefully at home with midwife), I'm hoping to spend some chill (or not-chill) time with Dan and Charlene this weekend. With luck, maybe we'll meet some other Flutterbarians, but some of our schedule depends on a baby, who should be announced any minute.

I'm looking forward to the trip, in many ways, Nancy and I have a blast individually and as a couple travelling (home life ain't shabby either..), we both love the world, people, and a little adventure.

[ related topics: Religion Movies Coyote Grits Bay Area Travel ]

Katrina: The Gathering.

[ related topics: Humor Games Hurricane Katrina ]

In the "told you so" department: US-CERT Cyber Security Bulletin SB04-252:

Diebold GEMS Central Tabulator 1.17.7, 1.18

A vulnerability exists due to an undocumented backdoor account, which could a local or remote authenticated malicious user modify votes. No workaround or patch available at time of publishing. We are not aware of any exploits for this vulnerability.

GEMS Central Tabulator Vote Database Vote Modification

Medium

BlackBoxVoting.org, August 31, 2004

Those who've had dealings with CERT will understand my reluctance to believe that that last statement means anything at all.

Open source and paper trails, kids!

[ related topics: Free Software Politics security ]

What's been fun about this one is seeing how many different headlines it gets: New study federal study about sexuality says lots of things, with some headlines pitching it as "lesbian encounters up!" and others as "teens having more oral sex!". The NCHS site for the paper has more. I'm not excited enough about it to bother reading the paper because what I've seen of the questions so far makes me think it's poorly designed.

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

This one's for Dori: the firefly-class Serenity out of Lego^tm.

[ related topics: Movies Model Building Joss Whedon - Serenity / Firefly ]

Nancy and I spent some social time with Dan yesterday, including a trip to some nearby redwoods... The pics were OK, but in looking at them, I really wanted to smell the smell again. Mmmmm.. It brings back childhood memories of living in Tacoma Washington. You can tell Dan's been spending a few hours cycling.. with the area's he's living and been cycling in I can sure understand why, great scenery and the air feels and smells great.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Coyote Grits Sports Travel Pedal Power Bicycling Seattle ]

Pastafarians take note: Monday the 19^th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day! (props to HGR1219 for the reminder)

[ related topics: Religion Humor HGR1219 Flying Spaghetti Monster ]

Sean, Lia, Nancy and I made it to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art today. Lia is an art/architecture/design kind of person and it's one of her favorite places. - Nancy and I have both had our senses of art tweaked by Burning Man, and had a lot of fun there. Yes, we found things we liked... a little true awe at some artists works. But we also saw a lot of stuff that belonged on the Playa, only it would have had to be better constructed to hold up, and it would have to be better art to be noticed above the background noise art at Burning Man. Big differences: At MOMA, just because the art is obviously functional and has a crank handle to make the orbs rotate does not mean you should even consider cranking the handle. In fact, just examining the mechanism closely gets one of the many 'monitors' watching everyone like a hawk to grow a third eye that tracks your every move until you leave their 'security zone'.

At the Burn, or even LEAF, such things are there for you to play with appropriately. At MOMA, you can't even take a picture of the 'nameplate/description' so that you can easily look up the artist you liked when you get home.. because a photo of that white paper printout with the artists name and textual description of the item might be misconstrued as "art". That leaves me posting the great artistic pic of the day as: "Pregnant" Nancy and Lia in San Francisco.

[ related topics: Burning Man Hardware Hackery Photography Robotics Bay Area Art & Culture California Culture Graphic Design Embedded Devices Birds Architecture Race ]

Imagine you have a Windows machine. Imagine you have a nephew who comes to stay with you for a while. Said nephew might play games on said Windows machine. In fact, said nephew will probably start changing desktop and window settings, putting up busy backgrounds that obscure icons, moving icons around on the desktop, making you consider buying a second monitor just to manage the "Start" menu. At some point you might have a use for the Windows machine again, so you might say "this is time to create an account for nephew on that machine", so you create the account, and then as you try to look at what to move across, and dealing with the registry settings and logins of all of those games, you think "wait, this'd be easier if I just copied a few shortcuts and renamed those accounts so that the new one was mine and the old one was his..."

Well, you'd be wrong. Because, you see, when Windows "renames" an account, it just sets an extra alias string in the account, and when logging on just looks for the first account with that name. So using either "Forest" or "Dan Lyke" logged in to the original account, and... well... until I get him off my machine and back to his own (currently in storage until they've got a place to live), I log in to my computer as "Forest" and he logs in as "Dan Lyke".

Ya know, not only do I know how to do this in Un*x, I know it's possible, even easy. In Windows, I'm fairly convinced at this point that it's not really possible to rename an account.

[ related topics: Games Dan's Life Microsoft moron ]

Oh my. I might have to go into town twice this week. I'd mentioned that Larkin Gayl is playing Peri's this Thursday, but I just wandered down to mail some letters and saw a flyer for Pink Sabbath at the Iron Springs Pub & Brewery on Wednesday. I haven't been in there since they remodeled, I can't imagine the acoustics being all that good, but ya just gotta be willing to get out for a band that proclaims "For those about to folk, we salute you!"

Addendum: I see they're playing Papermill Creek Saloon this coming Saturday! We could walk to that show, if we can occupy Forest. And when I mention that Fairfax California has three venues that have live music seven nights a week? Yeah, Iron Springs isn't on that list, nor is Book Beat, and I think even Nave's has bands occasionally. As soon as we get the house back, I'm going to go back to getting my lip back in shape (I was actually getting to the point where I could blow a note before all hell broke loose here) and seeing if I can dust off my trumpet chops, 'cause I kind of like the idea of this much live music flyin' around.

[ related topics: Music Dan's Life Bay Area California Culture ]

Given that I'm living off of savings right now in order to get work up and running, I can't justify some of the little projects I want to get up and running, so consider this part of some wishful thinking: Mark Paschal muses on making a DHTML map.

[ related topics: Web development Maps and Mapping ]

Meuon's in town, we're hanging out at San Anselmo Coffee Roasters, and I have to admit that it feels good, for once, as a Californian to be able to gloat about gas prices.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture San Anselmo ]

The Tandem@Hobbes mailing list has had some traffic recently after someone found this tandem for sale (prior art appears to be back into the late 1980s, at least), accompanied by this wonderful English description:

Taste: “Shuangjie” brand bicycle ridden by double persons wishes lovers under heaven riding on a same bicycle with touching feeling, husband accompanied by wife, enjoying recreation by both father and son, riding with romance, pizzazz, pleasure of harmony and unification and pride differing from others.

The compact design set off a flurry of "how closely can you pack riders together", which lead to this tiny little triplet (and how the riders fit on it, which must be one of those things you just can't do publicly outside of San Francisco), and a recumbent/upright/prone combo.

[ related topics: Bay Area Art & Culture California Culture Graphic Design Pedal Power Bicycling Marriage Bicycling - Tandem ]

FBI recruiting for new anti-obscenity squad:

"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture moron Law Enforcement ]

C++ gotcha of the moment: In one file, have a global that looks something like: vector alongX(1,0,0);, in another file, have a static or global that is initialized as vector up=alongX;. Problem: there's no guarantee of constructor ordering.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

QOTD, stolen from Leo who was quoting Rachel Strutt from last month's Boston Magazine: "Knitting is the new Yoga."

[ related topics: Quotes ]

Building "...a fully-automated sentry gun, capable of picking out a human target and accurately tracking and shooting him or her in the heart." With a web cam and a BB gun.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Cool Technology Guns ]

Suppose for the moment you just bought a house with a Hot Tub and a Pool, and you loved them dearly. And suppose that you want to be able to turn the heaters, automatic covers, and pumps on and off from your office so they were ready when you got home.

Does any one know how this might be done? I envision a web page with real time feed back, but I do not know where to start...

Ziffle

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

Uhhh... I'm wondering if someone over at NOAA is having some image manipulation fun at our expense. This is the image just snagged from this Hurricate Rita cumulative wind distribution page.

[ related topics: Erotic Current Events Graphic Design ]

Oh yeah: About three years ago I snapped some pictures of a rocket launch out of Vandenberg that my neighbors had hollered at me to come out of the house and see. Happens again at 7:24 tonight. I think I'm going to arrange to be on the east side of White's Hill so we've got less of a chance of fog. Worth stepping outside for if you happen to be on this coast.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Space & Astronomy ]

The NSA is paranoid - a patent for spreading out shredded paper amoung multiple containers. and another patent for determining relative location to vetted locations by latency and ping time. - Might be to to add some random packet latency code into your firewalls. (just kidding).

[ related topics: Intellectual Property ]

This entry is just to coalesce a few things at the top of our Alaska trip topic page: In Petersburg, we went whale watching and to Le Conte glacier with Barry Bracken of Kaleidoscope Cruises, stayed with Mel & Sherry Stockton at the Morning Mist B&B, and strongly recommend Marilyn Jordan George's Following The Alaskan Dream: My Salmon Trolling Adventures in the Last Frontier for a good intro on what it's like to live in the area.

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

At this point in my life, doing HTML/PHP/JavaScript/etc.. tricks is a decent way to make a living. Lots of flex time, the ability to travel and still make some dough, and hosting is starting to make some residual recurring income. I've given up being a purist about many, MANY things. But this morning, a good paying customer had me add a 'texttail' (animated text following the cursor) on two of their sites. I did it, he's happy. But for some reason, I feel dirty. It's just SO tacky. But what I have learned is, for some things: tacky sells. It's just a way to connect with some target audiences.

[ related topics: Animation ]

Ahhh, that wacky Bay Area real estate market: Why own when you can rent?:

From my knowledge of real estate prices, I knew I'd pay at least $500,000 to buy the place. My taxes alone would be $500 a month. My monthly payments, if I put no money down and got an ultra-attractive 5.1 percent interest rate over 30 years, would total $2,700. With $500 a month for maintenance and another $150 for insurance, my total carrying costs would be close to $4,000 a month.

That's not bad, but I can rent the whole place for $1,600 a month. That's a cash savings of $2,400 a month.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Economics Real Estate ]

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials:

Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

[ related topics: Humor Health ]

The SF Bay Guardian's "Our top 20 favorite things about sex this year" was kind of bland, but it pointed towards $pread Magazine: Illuminating the sex industry, which looks like it might make for interesting reading.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington releases its list of the 13 most corrupt politicians in Washington (thanks Dave).

[ related topics: Politics Ethics Current Events ]

Well, we already know that the reports of the sniper shooting at the helicopters was a fabrication, as were the reports of evacuees trashing rest stops and abusing volunteers. Now the The Seattle Times runs down what the conditions at the SuperDome were really like:

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalled the doctor saying.

The real total?

Six, Beron said.

As the real picture of what happened in New Orleans dribbles out over the next few months, think a bit about what various factions might have been feeding reporters and news sources rumors in order to paint something that wasn't really there.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Journalism and Media Hurricane Katrina ]

Meg Sanders, who was a close friend of my wife, was killed last week. I know that sometimes these newspaper articles might seem overblown, exaggerating the person or their accomplishments. I have to say that this Boston Globe article doesn't tell half the story. Meg, at 23, was an amazing person and the world will never know the extent of the loss...

[ related topics: Current Events Journalism and Media Machinery Marriage ]

The Journal of Religion and Society just published Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies, which makes some interesting observations:

The positive correlation between pro-theistic factors and juvenile mortality is remarkable, especially regarding absolute belief, and even prayer. Life spans tend to decrease as rates of religiosity rise, especially as a function of absolute belief.

This Times Online article about the issue has some further quotes Gregory Paul, the author of the study:

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Health Pop Culture ]

I've been very happy with the coverage and service from Verizon over the past two years, so when they sent me some 'customer loyalty' coupons/discounts on a new phone, I looked at their website and realized I wanted to see some in person. So today I swung by their store outside the mall and played a bit. Picked out the LG VX8100 with Bluetooth, 1.3mpx Camera, "Vcast", MiniSD card, etc.. with a value pack that included a Car Charger and Jabra Stereo/mic headset. And bought a Motorola Bluetooh headset. I picked a new service plan offering for less $ and more time/features.. and then started to play. :)

Considering this is not one of the PDA Phones, I'm impressed. Got it surfing the web and doing POP/SMTP e-mail off of my server pretty quickly, it's got the normal PIM functions, Calendar, etc.. (that I never use) and one Suprise Feature: No-where on the box did it say MP3 player, and the documentation says nothing about the ability to play MP3's, yet the buttons on the outside front cover of the phone seem to imply such functionality. I bought a 1GB MiniSD card for it, copies some MP3's to it. Yet when I tried the play button, it kept coming up 'no music available'. I played with the phone a bunch more, even took a couple of pics and saved them to the SD card (ugh, camera phone pics suck) to make sure it was reading the SD card. Put the SD card into my laptop, and the phone made 3 directories: my_pix,my_flix,my_sounds. I tried putting an MP3 into each directory.. no luck, still got 'no music available'. So I made a directory on the card named 'my_mp3' and put MP3's into it. - Poof! Plugged card back into my phone and it when I hit the play button a play list popped up of the files I put in the MiniSD card, hit play again and this sucky bad music comes out of the phone, plug in the Jabra headset.. WOW! They sound very good, very listenable. and there is a kewl eye candy visualizer on the screens.

It was obvious when I bought the it would do streaming video and music on demand via Verizon's pay extra VCAST service, and several cellphone websites list in the specs that the phone would do MP3s.. but not 'how'. As I start digging online, seems there is a plethoria of hacks for this phone to enable features not enabled in the default phone config from Verizon. So.. I'm a very happy gadget addicted geek and just had to share.

[ related topics: Wireless Music Photography Spam Invention and Design History Journalism and Media California Culture Automobiles Video ]

Why patents are evil and wrong in one simple concept: lawyer seeks to patent movie plots (via More Like This).

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Movies Law ]

I tried the "lookup the top 100 songs from the year I graduated high school, strike out the ones you wouldn't listen to" meme, and ended up with... well... one or two I might not turn the dial to avoid if I heard 'em come on the radio now. Dave got a better year.

But Columbine stole this idea for a journal entry from M'ris, and it's one I figured might be worth a shot. Long entry in the comment.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Time interviews Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon:

TIME: Let's talk about your respective fan bases. A lot of them self-identify as kind of on the geeky side.

NG: I think the fan base is literate. You need to be reasonably bright to get the jokes and to really follow what's going on. That, by definition, is going to exclude a lot of people who will then get rather irritated at us for being pretentious and silly and putting in things they didn't quite get. But it's also going to mean that some of the people who do get the stuff will probably be fairly bright.

Speaking of which, I'm in the process of re-reading the first three books of George R.R. Martin's series to be up on the story when A Feast For Crows comes out on November 8^th. Yeah, I know, I may not actually get out to see Serenity or MirrorMask this weekend, but that sucker's already on order at the bookstore.

If you're into long sweeping soap opera with lots of characters and lots of squabbling with those you thought were the good guys becoming bad guys and vice-versa, I can recommend the series. Just be warned.

[ related topics: Language Books Movies Neil Gaiman ]

This is Broken.com - Worth a gander, especially regarding interface design.

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

It's not a joke, once you see what it does: PocketMod. It even has games, and a unit converter.

[ related topics: Games ]

Huh. I was flipping through 'blogs, stopped at Violet Blue's page, and she had a link to Urban Pinup:

LastNightsParty's Urban Pinups are non-professionals eager for an alternative to the false, airbrushed beauty of the fashion industry.

Something about that phrasing brought back Hugh Hefner talking about "the girl next door". It seems that "amateur" is the recurring trend that attempts to breathe life back into porn, and that something about the process of becoming commercial leads to "...the false, airbrushed beauty of the fashion industry."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

You may not have noticed, but Opera, the web browser, is now free. I've been paying for it for years, but on my seldom used Windows XP box and the Mac I'd just been using Firefox, 'cause it was free and still had the critical features (ie: tabs). Even though I had to retrain my fingers to switch browsers; not that hard 'cause most Mac apps use the "alt" key where other platforms use "control", and I'd already trained myself to use the longer Emacs key sequence alternatives where keyboard mappings differ.

Anyway, I just popped up Opera on the Mac and realized why I'd paid for those several licenses I've bought: Much faster, smaller system footprint, cleaner window decoration designs. Suddenly the 1.6 GHz PPC OS/X box finally snaps the way my 800 or so MHz Transmeta Linux laptop does. Now that it's free, it's really the cheapest way to upgrade your computer.

Now if I can just figure out what's going on when this machine hard power crashes so I can give Apple a reasonable bug report to help 'em with their crash recovery, I'll be happy. I've reinstalled the OS twice this week. And does anyone else have the issue where their power adapter just shuts off occasionally?

[ related topics: Free Software Apple Computer Microsoft Macintosh ]