Flutterby™! From 2006-02-01 to 2006-02-28

Hey, does anyone out there have experience with TrueCrypt? Among my near-term projects is a distributed backup system, letting me share disk space with others and vice-versa for off-site data reliability, and I've been looking for something that would make a decent encrypted file system for this purpose. Still not sure quite how to tie transfers into it running on a remote system, but...

[ related topics: Cryptography ]

Because I've nothing else of value to say today: Somewhere in February 1998 I sent the first email to Newwwsboy which inaugurated the dynamic portions of Flutterby.com. I had some pages I'd migrated from www.chattanooga.net, but that was the first weblog post here. It was probably a little later in the month, but in years past I've forgotten it altogether, and there was nothing else going on here today.

So, happy 8^th birthday to Flutterby, a little web site that started out as a pean to my ego, and while that's still a large component of it, I'm happy that it's managed to transcend me, and become a place that challenges and informs me. I started it for two reasons: I wanted to not pester people with forwarded email of stuff I found cool, but more importantly I wanted to build the web site that I wanted to visit.

Thanks to all of you who participate, both in comments and on the front page, and who've helped make it that.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Weblogs History Chattanooga ]

Last weekend we went to a local school fundraiser: Bingo night. I felt 70 years old and Catholic, but we had a lot of fun. One of the issues, however, is that a room full of kids is loud, and I started daydreaming about cheap ways to build a large display to put the numbers up high, rather than just being written on a low and easily obscured white board after they were called.

Mark V had a link to a note on using a cheap digital watch to build a projection clock. Not an immediate solution, for one thing the main problem with projection systems is building a cool light source that's bright enough to make a difference, but one which has me thinking...

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Movies Race Archival ]

Via Hgr1219: The Napmosphere looks really cool in that high concept "happy employees are productive employees" sort of way. It's part of the Power Napping concept page, which has a couple of those "that sounds completely impractical and yet kind of cool" notions in short-term sleeping.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment HGR1219 ]

Also via Hgr1219: The O'Reilly Network "What Is" pages, a bunch of quick intros to tech which looks worth a scan now, in case there's anything on there that you've been promising yourself you were going to learn a little bit more about, but also as something to stash away for when you have that "I've heard that buzzword twice now..." moment.

Along those lines: Tech Recipes looks like it has a bunch of "how do I...?" that would be handy for those "I don't really have the time right now to answer this tech question from my acquaintance, so I should send them off to..." moments.

[ related topics: HGR1219 ]

If you're not already a Pastafarian, then this will mean nothing to you: What happens when The Flying Spaghetti Monster meets hentai, part of the amazing collection of culture at DildoArt.com.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Erotic Flying Spaghetti Monster ]

For whatever reason, I can't comment on meuon's original post, so I'm going to have to do a new one. After some thought over a bowl of tomato artichoke soup at Rembrandt's, Asha and I came to the realization that the recipe must be much, much simpler. This is what I tried tonight:

This makes sense because I'm sure the wait staff at Rembrandt's just replenishes the pot throughout the day by adding entire containers of the ingredients. It always stays the right ratio. I didn't drain my artichoke hearts so it came out just a little thin.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Food ]

Two fascinating articles snagged from John Robb:

• What happens when you don't use the current boom in the prices of single family homes in calculating economic growth. You know how it feels like we've been in a recession for the past few years even though the numbers say otherwise? (source)
• What do we do when, as a society, we've made all sorts of concessions and special legislation to large telicom based on promises of future growth and capabilities that haven't been fulfilled. Remember this when the carriers of the legacy of Bernie Ebbers go to your state legislature or federal legislators askingforyet more special treatment. (source)

[ related topics: Politics broadband History Sociology Law Economics ]

Wednesday was spent hashing out a new schedule with work, and we've very little slop in it between now and SIGGRAPH, so I won't have much time to play with TurboGears, a web application framework that looks a lot like Ruby on Rails, except with Python, and I won't have time to switch the colo box from Apache over to LightTPD.

But both look awesome.

[ related topics: Free Software Web development Open Source Invention and Design Python ]

...died at the Alamo:

Later, we talked about another famous frontiersman, Davy Crockett. When I asked what happened to him, the teacher replied, “Oh, he died at the Alamo.” The same went with Jim Bowie. He made a knife, then died at the Alamo. I began to wonder, “Did every American die at the stupid Alamo?”

[ related topics: Humor History ]

Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure are You?

YOU ARE RULE 15!

You're a very helpful rule! You allow the attorney to amend their complaint once as a matter of course at any time before the answer is filed, and also allow amendments in other cases. If a claim relates back to the original transaction or occurrence outlined in the complaint, you can amend the complaint, even though the statute of limitations has run. Like a good friend, you're always there to help out in a bind.

Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?

brought to you by Quizilla

[ related topics: Games Law ]

Talking with Dave Barry about podcasts, weblogs, and the future of newspapers.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

For those of you following foreign news at home: Here are those cartoons with drawings of Mohammed from the Danish newspaper that are causing all of those quarrels, along with a backgounder on the situation:

Meanwhile an international organization of Muslim intellectuals has threatened to mobilize “millions of Muslims all over the World” to boycott Danish and Norwegian products unless the Danish and Norwegian government condemn the publication of the cartoons, which is called an “attack on the Muslims of the World and on the Prophet.”

Yeah. Apologies if you're one of the Muslims who isn't a raving nutcase, but if you are, can you petition the Danish and Norwegian governments to make a strong statement and shut these lunatics up, maybe by claiming trademark infringement or defamation of character or something? Because, frankly, they're making this peace loving hippy think that superior firepower may indeed be the solution to the problems of the Middle East.

[ related topics: Religion Humor moron Current Events Journalism and Media ]

Bahahahaha! So, this guy in Orlando walks up to a marked police car, and asks the uniformed officer inside if he wants to buy cocaine, and the cop busts him. What the story doesn't say is that this apparently indicates that enough Orlando cops are buying their rock from street dealers that those in the trade expect uniformed policemen to be approachable customers for coke deals.

Man, the poor cop who busted this guy is gonna be in a world of hurt when his using coworkers come down on him for destroying their sweetheart setup...

[ related topics: Drugs Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Over at Backup Brain, Dori has some words about BlogHer, and my responses in the comments are verging on the flame, so I'll move part of the discussion over here. I said things like:

You see where this is going, right? You have a site that bills itself as "Where the women bloggers are" and in the end boils down to "...of ... relevance to the women who participate in and read BlogHer", ie: whatever we feel like including.

For the most part, I see the site as reinforcing the worst of pre-feminist female stereotypes, and I'm not even a fan of some of what feminism wrought. Maybe I've happened on it at its bad times, but the twice I've loaded the page I've gotten a general vibe that makes the magazines in supermarket checkout lines look positively enlightened.

However, even with a largely tech focus and pretty locker-room atmosphere, I'm amazed every time I go down the right-hand bar at the sites from my bookmarks and see that women are fairly well represented in those links. So maybe it's just that I take a post 1950s view of gender roles, and the prejudices that arise from such expectations, that's making me so sour on their endeavors.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Community Social Software ]

Just got back from seeing Brokeback Mountain. We'd put off seeing it until we heard that it was a story that stood on its own merits, not just "the first mainstream gay love story". We were both very disappointed.

Both of us felt that the actors weren't up to the task. Some of the bit side parts went fairly well, but the primary roles, Heath and Jake, came off without subtlety, and neither of us was able to empathize with them. The direction depends too much on the grandeur of the background, but the music plays off it so directly that I could doze off (despite seeing it mid-day) and just wake up for the good nature shots. The dialog felt flat (especially since we'd just watched the pilot and first episodes of Firefly the night before, more rambling on that as Charlene and I get further into it), and in the end we're asked to feel sorry for one character who's never managed to accomplish anything in his life, and love is the least of those failures.

If you want a slow paced movie done right, rent Tender Mercies. If you want a cowboy movie, there are lots of cowboy movies. If you want a gay themed movie, we can start at But I'm A Cheerleader and work down. But this one didn't succeed for either of us at any level.

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture Movies Nature and environment ]

I was catching up on geek satire on The Register and found a story on the Jack Hammer Johnson. An interesting control device for adult toys.

Betty Freidan dead at 85

Okay, you demonic forces, you finally got me. Sarada dragged us over on Friday night to watch the Firefly pilot, and we were there 'til midnight & change last night, got through episode 8 ("Jaynestown"). Yeah, it's addictive, but I can stop any time I want. Really.

Having that quippy dialog, and that sort of "western" setting, is probably part of why we disliked Brokeback Mountain so. It's hard to have quiet stoic cowboys match up to witty banter and motivated likeable characters.

Anyway, not worth reviewing it 'cause the rest of y'all have already seen way more than me, but... well... we'll be watching the rest of 'em.

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

Somewhere between twenty five and thirty miles and hour, as the road zig-zags between the chill of shadow amongst the redwoods, and the comfortable February sun over the green hills of the rainy season, there's a certain balance. The wind catches my chest, pushing upward, my butt floats over the seat, and even though I'm down in the drop bars there's little pressure on my hands; it feels like I'm flying in close formation with the bicycle, it and I have similar intents as I lift my shoulder, catch a little more air, and bank through the turns.

For a time expectation perfectly matches reality, the physics and the fantasy are as synchronized as my body is with the bike and the bike with the road. And life feels very, very good.

[And the topic picker chose "Erotic" and I was tempted to keep it...]

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bicycling ]

http://forums.studentdoctor.ne...wthread.php?t=67019&page=1&pp=25

Adventures in the ER:

"The Law of Inverse Value: the less you contribute to society, the greater the trauma you can sustain with minimal to no physical sequelae, including falls from 3 stories, stabbings (chest, neck, head, slashings to the face), gunshot wounds (chest, neck, pelvis, leg, traumatic arrest (only to be killed 7 years later in a separate GSW incident)), and high speed MVC's, unrestrained, where multiple people in the other vehicle are killed."

"No matter how badly constipated you are, a vodka enema is not a good idea."

"Oh if you come in with a salsa jar in your rectum, don't give the staff a fruit cake as a thank you present."

"When attempting a self-circumcision do not use dry ice to numb the area... and when the dry ice sticks to the... a.... area, do not attempt to remove the ice with boiling water."

If your dentures do not stick to your gums, probably not a good idea to superglue them on!

Ahhhh Mayberry is so -- 'sane'.

Ziffle

[ related topics: Ziffle Interactive Drama Nature and environment Wines and Spirits Community Food - Cake ]

In light of Diane's statement in the comments yesterday that she didn't know what "Firefly" was, and since there's been mention (1/2/3) of it here before.

Firefly was a TV show that aired 11 episodes (14, including a long pilot, were shot) and was canceled in 2002. Despite the fact that 14 episodes were shot, the pilot was apparently never aired, quite a bit of the story was aired out of order and... well... I can understand that nobody figured out how to market it, because, frankly, I'm still not sure why I find it so compelling. And if I'd seen it out of order, I'd probably not be nearly as anxious to find out what happens next.

Serenity was a 2005 movie with the same actors, characters and settings that (hopefully!) wrapped up a bunch of the Firefly storylines.

It's "Gunsmoke" or "Bonanza" meets "Star Trek" if Han Solo were Captain Kirk and the dialog were written for the live stage. At times I want to say it borders on ironic camp, but somehow it isn't, because even when the scenery and setting is pushing the boundaries of my credulity, the characters just have so damned much heart.

The setting is half a decade after the end of hostilities between the Alliance, the powers of civilization, and the denizens of the outlying colonies, somewhere on the borders of human expansion through space. Settlers on these newly terraformed planets and moons are living subsistence lives, with horses and dusty agriculture and six shooters, and livestock and fresh strawberries are the items valuable enough to be smuggled.

Enter the characters who live somewhere in the middle of this economy and its political situation, captain and crew of "Serenity", a Firefly-class spaceship (of which, we're told, there are forty thousand plying their way between these outer planets), paying for fuel and goods with whatever sorts of jobs they can pick up on the fringes (and apparently making a fairly good living, even though we only ever see the jobs gone wrong).

It's a character study with laugh out loud dialog, it's subtext in lines that seem to be saying exactly what you think the subtext already is, it's unabashed melodrama played straight, it's overwrought phrasing that's still in character for a strong silent type. It's a setting of absurd contrasts that somehow works.

Mal: "We're not gonna die. We can't die, Bendis. You know why? Because we are so...very...pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die."

And I'd tell you more, but I'm already regretting that I picked up some of the spoilers from the movie (and how long has it been since I've cared about spoilers in any medium?), so I'm being really careful to just read the Episode Guides (and associated scripts) for the episodes we've already seen. Because we're doing a bunch of "wait, what's that character's motivation..." type discussion, for which we've been referring back to the scripts.

So I can recommend tracking down the DVDs with the show on it and starting with the pilot episode. And if it feels a little campy, know that it accepts that, and even with that when Kaylee (the ship's mechanic) pats the side of the ship and says "that's my girl", there manages to be a hell of a lot more heart than when Heath says "I can't quit you, Jake" in Brokeback Mountain.

Firefly Wiki, IMDB page for Firefly the TV series, IMDB page for Serenity the movie.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Technology and Culture Movies Star Trek Television Economics Joss Whedon - Serenity / Firefly ]

Wandered up to meet one of my neighbors today, Fon Davis of Fonco Creative. He's got a production he's pitching around that would have lots of model effects, and we talked a bit about some of them and... well...

I'm going to have to see if I can squeeze an export into our software, 'cause it'd be lots of fun to animate robots using our system...

[ related topics: Robotics ]

Poor Arnold - but Cornelius is coming back!

http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

MarkV muses on 15(!) years at Pixar. Nothin' cosmic, but a little nostalgia there. Congrats on finding your place there!

[ related topics: Pixar Graphics ]

Good to know, 'cause that's our cell phone carrier and we've got a bunch of rollover minutes: Cingular changes rollover policy, when switching plans only the last month's extra minutes get carried.

[ related topics: Wireless ]

12 year study shows no effect from low fat diet on heart disease and stroke in women:

"People shouldn't be disappointed by the studies,'' said Marcia Stefanick, a Stanford University School of Medicine professor and a co-author of all three papers. "It's just a wake-up call that simply reducing your total dietary fat is not enough."

Uhhh, how about "a wake-up call" that much of what we claim to know about nutrition is snake oil and bullshit and until we have a much better handle on biological processes, especially, say, those that create bloodstream cholesterol, we should probably refrain from prescribing overarching solutions to problems we don't yet understand?

[ related topics: Health Physiology ]

George C. Deutsch resigns from NASA. Deutsch, you may remember, was the Bush "science advisor" political advisor who wanted NASA to change "Big Bang" to "Big Bang theory" on all of their web pages, do similar things with discussions of evolution, and suppress discussion of climate change and global warming.

Turns out he also lied about graduating from Texas A&M. As the Sensible Erection entry on this said:

The absurdity of a NASA official denying the Big Bang aside, I feel kinda bad for anyone who has to lie to convince the world they were smart enough for A&M.

And it's worth noting that the efforts of a weblog brought about this little change for good in national politics.

[ related topics: Politics moron Space & Astronomy ]

Aha! This very useful article on parsing XML with Apple's Cocoa XML Parser was written by Mark Dalrymple, an occasional participant here, and it notes that:

The last common case is expanding entity references, like < and >. There is the kCFXMLparserReplacePhysicalEntities flag you could give to the parser which supposedly will expand the basic entities, that doesn’t really work (another “unsupported feature”), so you have to have code to expand the basic entities, as well as any other entities your XML might be using (which somewhat defeats the use of the XML services as a general XML parser).

uhm, yeah, ya know, it's not a freakin' XML parser unless it handles entities, and if you're going to way the hell over-complexify the API for stupid string and file handling, including all sorts of wacky ways to manage character set encoding (although, surprisingly, no obvious ones for "how many bytes is this string going to take in this encoding?"), why did Apple think it appropriate to ship this horrible excuse for an XML parser? Except for all of the freakin' complexity around this thing (none of which I'm using), what they've actually bothered to implement is probably an hour and a half's worth of work, but given the state of the documentation, figuring out that they just slapped together a framework, including some flags which silently don't do anything (but make you think that they might) it takes several hours to figure that out!

Hey, Apple: You're not as bad as Microsoft, I'll give you that, but ... yeesh... next time I will be going with the open source API first. And when you hear that, think strongly about what your value add on a platform is.

[ related topics: Free Software Apple Computer Microsoft Open Source Software Engineering moron Work, productivity and environment Macintosh ]

Right on! "What next, bearded one?":

I demand that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Indonesia and Egypt apologise to me. Otherwise I am unfortunately forced to threaten, beat up, kidnap or behead their citizens. Because I am somewhat sensitive about my cultural identity.

I feel offended.

[ related topics: Religion Free Speech Sociology Current Events ]

HGR1219 forwarded me this little piece about designing a new H-bomb at Lawrence Livermore labs, which I figured I'd tie together with the reports of the new Gatling guns that they're putting in at the lab. I know I'd feel safer if I lived across the street...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Guns HGR1219 ]

Remember that old game "BattleChess"? LoveChess, it's like BattleChess, but with fucking.

[ related topics: Humor Erotic Games ]

HGR1219 also passes along: NASA Sun Earth Media Viewer, which includes the ability to flop back and forth between images that pull from different spectral ranges. I wish it'd hold zoom and pan position when switching images, though.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Astronomy HGR1219 ]

FactoVision had the following exchange:

Mike Rothstein: Heh-heh, heh-heh, hey Beavis, this guy's name is Boehner.

Danny: So according to this article, Boehner wanted Bush so he smoked a Blunt without DeLay!! heh-heh, heh-heh.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Some words should not be abbreviated.

[ related topics: Humor ]

So if tough new rules have gone into effect today about disposing of potentially hazardous "e-waste", noting that landfills could become (further) contaminated from chemicals leaching out of electronics, batteries, etc., how come we are expected to transport the stuff to some disposal site somewhere? I honestly don't mind being informed that I must recycle this stuff: I'm happy to do that. But in my town, "recycling" = (company shows up on Monday after the trash people and before the yard waste people, and picks up bins of sorted stuff to recycle). If I have to recycle my "e-waste", come to me to get it (maybe once a month, maybe once a quarter, but not "never"). Don't make me find some friend with a pick-up truck who's willing to take me to all the various recycling places to drop stuff off... during limited hours on limited days each month. Feh.

The pile of "stuff" I've collected behind the house that can't be thrown away and has to be recycled at some special place is getting pretty big (tires, used oil, batteries, fluorescent tubes, old paint cans...). And is probably leaching in my local groundwater already, sigh....

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Television Machinery Currency Real Estate ]

My Spam folder in my Gmail account was approaching 1000 items, so I decided to clean it up. The interface, by default, only lets you select the number of emails displayed (50) before deleting. I noticed that Gmail was giving me related advertisements each time:

Vineyard Spam Salad - Combine grapes, spam, peapods and onions in large bowl

Ginger Spam Salad - Serves 1, refrigerate overnight

Spam Skillet Casserole - Broil until golden

etc...

[ related topics: Spam Food Monty Python ]

The truth about Bush and abortion:

Every sentence was an outright lie. And last week, two federal appeals courts said as much, declaring the law unconstitutional. The two courts -- one in San Francisco, the other in New York -- were the fifth and sixth federal courts to reach the same conclusion since Bush signed the act into law.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Invention and Design Bay Area California Culture New York ]

Peter Halasz, a well-known Hungarian theater director with terminal cancer, is going to lie in state and hold his funeral while he's still alive:

"It will be informal, but we have a routine - we have the form, the ritual, with funerals," Halasz said.

"But it won't be religious at all."

He added that it would be his "last appearance".

"After it, in a few days or weeks, I will depart," he said.

"I am terminally ill, and by the prediction of doctors the progress [of the cancer] is quite visible. This will be my last appearance."

[ related topics: Religion Theater & Plays Sociology Current Events ]

Oooh! Fun! Scooter Libby has started to talk:

"We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors," Fitzgerald wrote.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Interesting. What did historical swords weigh? (via Antigravitas) Less than you'd think and, perhaps surprisingly, with a different idea of balance than most modern attempts at reproductions.

[ related topics: History Cool Technology ]

So over the past decade the U.S. has given over $200 billion in tax breaks to the telecommunications industry with the promise that we were going to have fiber to every home. As a result, we're slightly ahead of Slovenia in terms of broadband uptake, while our telecom carriers appear to be lying about how much they really spend on us.

It is with that in mind that I think you should go check out the results of an experiment which shows that Snails are faster than ADSL.

[ related topics: Politics Humor broadband Current Events ]

Today's Penny Arcade is notable for someone of my acquaintance who may single-handedly be responsible for the widespread current use of the word "shenanigans" in online culture, which was used to describe links when he couldn't find anything nice to say about the content he was getting paid to shill in online forums.

[ related topics: Sociology Consumerism and advertising Net Culture Community ]

Diane pointed out some folks wanting to take a little action on Valentine's day to remind Google that dealing with China may not be profitable. I'm not sure that this'll be big enough to make a solid impact, but Google's search results have been faltering of late, and forcing myself to try out some Google alternatives for a day can't hurt.

[ related topics: Photography ]

The military always has a policy for everything. In this little PDF from Lackland Air Force Base, Special Forces troopers are instructed how to get their beret to look sufficiently martial. Among the tools needed are some disposable razors to shave the nap off the felt. I would think that in this age of advanced technology the Pentagon could order de-napped felt right from the factory. I suppose this is the modern equivalent of the "50-mission crush" B-17 pilots cultivated while bombing the Krauts.

[ related topics: security Fashion Military ]

An interesting story in Sunday's Chicago Tribune: A poor single father tries to do what's best for his kids by getting them into a good public school. The problem is that he's a cokehead, generally irresponsible, and borderline brain-damaged. He means well, but has trouble keeping it together. A government supported program tries to help by setting him up with what amounts to a parent; a very tough woman who basically browbeats him into doing the right thing. It's almost painful to see a grown man being bossed around this way, but he really seems to need it, and his kids are getting their one chance not to end up like him. My question: is this what it will take to end the cycle of poverty we see right now? Not money, not jobs programs, but just running somebody's life?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Education ]

Boy, ain't this a metaphor for foreign policy or somesuch: Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter.

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

Hey, do you think Flutterby has 553% of the median of Pixar weblog readers?

I've rambled a couple of times about how the Pixar-Disney merger was about how Disney had lost its soul to the beancounters, and was needing to buy a corporate culture. I take it back, because Pixar has apparently been turned over to the beancounters already.

[ related topics: Pixar Business Movies moron Current Events ]

Saturday night we wandered over to the San Geronimo Valley Community Center to hear Solstice. We got there just on time and the place was packed, there were two seats on the side in the front row, right in front of a speaker. I'm not normally a front row person because I like my music a lot quieter than most venues do it, but we sat down and...

They only used the sound system for the introductions, and in this day of monstrously over technofied music it was really really nice to have seven voices, no electronics, an occasional tambourine or clap, and one hell of a show. The set went from classical jazz to funk with a lot of northern European folksongs in the middle, and they're definitely on my "see them again" list.

[ related topics: Music Community ]

A Chronicle article on Peter Berlin, subject of the new film That Man:

"The downside of mainstream acceptance of gays is that gays themselves become more mainstream, more conformist," John explains later. "San Francisco once had a gay underground full of brilliant eccentrics and artists like Peter Berlin. I would love it if kids initially attracted by the sex and fashion angles of the documentary would clue into Peter's iconoclasm and his fearless individuality."

The film looks like an interesting study of someone who refined the need to be admired by others through art into a science.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area Art & Culture California Culture Fashion ]

I got this with a "I'm not going to post this one on my blog, but I think you'd be interested:", Why don't guys buy sex toys? I'm not sure I've come up with many valid reasons yet, but thinking about 'em sure is fun...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Must-read: National Security: The Attack on the Constitution by Jim Marcinkowski.

[ related topics: Weblogs Law Civil Liberties ]

I think that most of y'all who'd want to read this have already Joss Whedon speaks out about the future of television

In a stunningly cost-effective move, CBS will air How I Met Your Biological Mother, That Bitch, which is just old episodes of How I Met Your Mother with snarkier narration. HBO’s Westminster will continue the trend pioneered by Deadwood and Rome by making 19th-century England really dirty and weird, like Jane Austen with Tourette’s. (Actually, I can’t wait for that one.)

And, stolen from Borklog, here's a Serenity comic with actual muppets. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8.

[ related topics: Humor Television Joss Whedon - Serenity / Firefly ]

Happy shallow and consumerist interpretation of romance day. On the other hand, this is the one VD you can share with your partner...

In the vein of the day, Daze Reader directs us to a video of The Wet Spots singing "Do You Take It?"

...'cause you're beautiful and curvy but unless you're kinda pervey...

The Wet Spots have been previously mentioned on Flutterby.

[ related topics: Humor Erotic Video ]

Because I've spent the last few days digging through some Mac specific code, I think it's time to revisit October 1999, when I wrote Objects and APIs To What End?.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Macintosh ]

The World Food Programme's "Humanitarian Early Warning System" is reporting daily spread of avian flu. The incidence-tracking world map (.pdf) is especially sobering.

I found a dead bird in my garage last night. Honest to goodness, I had a moment of mild mental weirdness. I replenished my three 55-gal. drums of emergency water a couple weeks ago, but of course that's just prudent, living in earthquake country. (Right?)

[ related topics: Music Food Earthquake Maps and Mapping Birds ]

I linked to those cartoons depicting Mohammed which are allegedly causing all of the violence, which lead to correspondence informing me of another mirror of said cartoons at the amusing URL http://www.pissonthekoran.com/ , but I think the Israeli Anti-Semitic cartoon contest is probably the best response I've seen yet:

“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” said Sandy “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”

I think, based on the efforts of Amitai Sandy, that the Israelis just won this round hands-down.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Political Correctness ]

Not your mama's 'birds and bees' / The zoo's X-rated animal sex tour is graphic, kinky:

"Animals do everything we do, but they do it a little differently," said Tollini, draped in a pink boa with pink hearts. "The only thing I couldn't find was cross-dressing."

Tollini spent 24 years in the zoo before retiring last year. She's seen bondage, polygamy, group sex, homosexuality, sex with inanimate objects and pedophilia.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Nature and environment Birds ]

How about some politics today?

• Ethanol's a Big Scam, and Bush Has Fallen for It isn't really about Bush, it's about the fallacy of ethanol as an alternative fuel, one that's politically popular because of the diverse constituent base it serves, but practically untenable.
• I'm about halfway through The Myth of the Rule of Law, some good reading about how this notion of law as a truth apart from the humans who administer it and interpret it is actually bad.

[ related topics: Politics Law Current Events ]

Over at Weird Ass Shit, the rev linked to AssInTheBox.com

Enjoy sending a completely original spring loaded surprise to those on your A-Hole list... They will receive they're specially gift wrapped glossy white box, cut the fancy bow and KA-BOINNNGGG! A custom made Spring Loaded Ass in their face will shock and surprise them!

[ related topics: Humor ]

Sometime after coining the word Santorum (I'd reiterate the meaning, but I got a bunch of "eeew, I didn't have to read that" last time...), Dan Savage said that there's no more room for naming sex acts after politicians (especially since Robert Anton Wilson did it so effectively that one time). Except that... well... Violet Blue may very well be on to something:

...the meme has begun: "Cheney" is now code for facial comeshot. Usage: "I'm going home with a bottle of champagne to play Cheney with my boyfriend." Hornboy asks, is it specifically an unexpected comeshot? Good question. Either way, when it's a faceful of spray, it's definitely a Cheney.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Coyote Grits Bay Area Marketing Conspiracy ]

Okay, all of you Python and crypto geeks: What's the best way to call PGP/GPG functionality, including key generation, from Python?

[ related topics: Monty Python Cryptography Python ]

NetCraft deserves some Kudos for some incredible stats and reading.. and this gem: DogFood which has some interesting numbers, and an old article re: GWB's website (hosted in Chattaboogie).

[ related topics: Current Events Archival ]

Woman participates in gang bang, then goes to cops screaming rape. But there's a catch: The whole thing was on video.

But Fullerton police refused to file charges. The suspects had voluntarily turned over the sex video Moonier had described. It showed no gun, no threats of violence and no force.

In fact, the woman not only directed action at times but complimented penis sizes, complained about the lighting...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Enforcement Video ]

http://igotshotbydickcheney.com/

RadioShack CEO drives final nail in coffin:

"Our business model for many years has been based on high-margin, slow-moving products," Edmondson said during an investor presentation. "These products are taking up valuable space in the store that can be much more efficiently utilized."

"Because KB Toys has been so profitable that we believe there's more room to compete with cheap plastic commodity toys", he did not continue.

[ related topics: Business moron Current Events ]

Alec sent me a link to Game Maker, which looks like it might be an easier yet intro to writing simple games, if PyGame is a little beyond your audience.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games Software Engineering ]

In a conversation on the Chugalug mailing list I mentioned that a longstanding dream was to convert an old mechanical typewriter, like the one I learned to type on, to work as input for my computer. Chad Smith followed up with some links:

• http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/underwood/
• http://www.multipledigression.com/type/
• http://www.ahleman.com/Props/ElectriClerk.html

[ related topics: History Cool Technology ]

An SFGate article about out of control teenagers seems like a perfect place to hang a little rant: We were at a showing of a couple of short works at the local high school, one of which Zack figured prominently in (a short film adaptation of a Stephen King story). At intermission we were talking to various folks, and a parent said "so, is that everything you were in?" And I watched as a young man tried to tell his mother that, yes, that may have been everything that he appeared in, but he'd been involved in the creation of all of these pieces, that these were his friends, and, in the subtext, couldn't his mother spend the additional 45 minutes for the second half to keep in touch with his interests?

I was blessed by parents who took an intense interest in my life, so my baseline is pretty high, but when I watch exchanges like that I have zero sympathy for the parents who come home early to discover hundred plus person parties.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies ]

There's a new kind of restaurant in China:

Situated in an elegantly restored house beside Beijing's West Lake, it is China's first speciality penis restaurant.

Here, businessmen and government officials can sample the organs of yaks, donkeys, oxen and even seals. In fact, they have to, since they form part of every dish - except for those containing testicles.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Food ]

Elf had a link to Miracle of Science, a web comic about a future where evil geniusness has been discovered to be a memetic disease with known stages, and a cop with a past is teamed up with a partner from Mars, the secretive planet with the group mind, to hunt down one such before he takes over the solar system with giant killer robots.

I'm enjoying the archives, but as interesting are some of the links in the authors' comments down below. One of the topics mentioned was Haidinger's brush, a phenomenon which indicates that we can actually see polarization.

[ related topics: Cool Science Comics Physiology ]

Screaming down the slippery slope department: Policing Porn Is Not Part of Job Description: Montgomery Homeland Security Officers Reassigned After Library Incident:

Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.

The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words "Homeland Security." The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.

Reassigned? Excuse me? "Reassigned"? What ever happened to "fired"? Isn't there some law which would let us incarcerate law enforcement officers who so clearly and specifically overstep their bounds? "Reassigned" my ass. (via /.)

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture Law Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Net Culture ]

What I should really do is set up some specific accounts for commercial sites from which I actually want to receive email, but... Why don't PayPal and eBay include a user definable field which they include in the subject line of every mail that they send to me. That way I can give them a secret which only they and I know, and I can nuke every other email purporting to come from them?

[ related topics: Spam ]

This video is not playable in your country.

[ related topics: Free Speech Video ]

This episode of Ctrl-Alt-Del saved off for one of those days when I'm doing fourteen versions of a recipe...

[ related topics: Humor Food ]

An SFGate article on how learning disabilities are being used to extort private school tuitions out of school districts. And, yes, I've seen the effects that one of these struggles has had on a class, and it ain't pretty, nor is it economically sustainable.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Education ]

It's been cold recently. The last few days the snow level has been down into the Berkeley Hills, which means that the upper slopes of the about 2,600 feet of Mount Tamalpais have gotten a good dusting. This morning's hike went up from the Mountain Home Inn to the summit. We epected to find a little bit of snow in the shadows, which we did, but as we went up we had to revise our expectations upwards:

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

I once wrote serialization code for a program Dan and I both worked on. Instead of a single point of failure, I made the routine allow different levels of functionality based on how well the serial code was cracked and spread the test code throughout the program. So, with an almost good serial (which was encoded with information printed on every report), you could start the software and go through the main menus. But you'd get a message when you tried to actually edit anything. With a slightly better serial, you'd be able to edit in some screens and not in others and get other odd messages - maybe even printed on reports.

It appears that Apple has done something similar with Mac OS-X for Intel. This is actually a great way for Apple to know if their software is being copied. Hide cute poems inside the OS that get displayed as you get deeper into hacking the system. Apple knows the hackers would start telling their friends and the meme would grow. I'm sure Steve Jobs is loving it!

On another front, I downloaded the desktop version of Goowy. It looks cool but still has a way to go. I get OS-X/Vista style user functionality on any desktop that can run Flash. What's missing are some basic UI things like window resizing. And a disk icon I can drop stuff into would be way cool. I suspect they'll be snatched up by Google any moment now...^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H...make that Microsoft... They are using ASP as the server backend.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama Humor User Interface Coyote Grits Software Engineering Macintosh Marketing Cryptography ]

MarkV looks at Michael Desmond's 10 reasons to upgrade to Windows Vista. The one thing that seems to be holding my dad back in his adoption of open source is the fact that OpenOffice.org doesn't allow search and replace operations to span paragraph boundaries, but our usage patterns have let us sidestep that. Aside from game players and the occasional vertical app, I'm running out of reasons to keep slopping money in the Microsoft trough.

[ related topics: Free Software Humor Games Microsoft Open Source ]

This weekend I took a little time and played with TurboGears, which is basically an aggregation of a bunch of different Python toolkits. I'm impressed, SQLObject looks like a great little database abstraction that I'll be using in other Python applications, Kid is an HTML templating language that looks like it's up to the level of the one I wrote for Flutterby, and MochiKit "... makes JavaScript suck less". All of these talk rather nicely to CherryPy, the web development framework.

However, the reason I'm making this entry is that I wanted a place to hang the Yahoo! UI Library, a bunch of JavaScript code for hacking together web applications, and the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library a cookbook for using those things.

The one potential down side is that these probably use XML to communicate with the server, and the TurboGears integration uses their own more simply parsed protocol, but I believe that in my searching around there was mention of integrating the functionality that's not already into MochiKit in.

[ related topics: Web development User Interface Content Management Databases Python ]

We've got ourselves a little ol' bike race goin' down in these parts, and at lunch today I wandered over to Olema to see the pack go by. That means the two guys on the left, a long wait, and then the hundred or so rest of the pack, all in one tight bunch, and then wait for all of the support cars to go by before crossing Route 1 to get back to my car. I think the bike to motorized support vehicle ratio was roughly 1-1, which seems like it's important on some level, and damn that's a lot of waiting and watching for very little.

But the conversation with others hanging around a bit was good, and I dropped back to put the Point Reyes Seashore Lodge & Conference Center sign in the shots of the pack 'cause I was talking with the folks who ran the place, and they were trying to get pictures they could use.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Sports Automobiles Bicycling ]

A fascinating excerpt from Mich[unknown char]le de La Pradelle's Market Day in Provence makes this look like a fascinating book on marketing, cultural myths, and attempts to maintain a feel of community in an era of mass markets and bulk production:

The piecemeal look of this selling arrangement also strengthens the impression that we are not dealing with a professional tradesman here, but rather with a peasant of the sort Chayanov described, who occasionally comes to sell his surplus on the market.

[ related topics: Books Sociology Consumerism and advertising Marketing Community Economics ]

Dave pointed out what looks to be the canonical nude calendar list. From personal assistants to farmers to the women of curling to ladies from the Atwood senior housing center...

[ related topics: Nudity Current Events ]

I saw Wes Felter's takedown of William Safire's relatively unresearched ramble on weblog jargon, and ignored it because, hey, who really expects accuracy from mainstream journalists anyway, right? But John had some further unkind comments about the piece, and asked:

The other aspect of this is that if Safire is talking about weblogs, we’re at the point where the carcass is being dug up and tossed over the shark — so where’s the next thing?

Uhh.. cue me in when you find it, hey? And one of the reasons I'm looking at various alternative web technologies even though that stuff is completely antithetical to my primary focus (3d software in C++) right now is that I'm hoping that I'll see the new forms evolve from that playing.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Weblogs Invention and Design Software Engineering Journalism and Media ]

Can anyone out there verify this?

Microsoft recently made a change to the licence agreement saying that a new motherboard is equal to a new computer, hence you need to purchase a new Windows licence.

The article goes into a little more detail, but...

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Invention and Design moron Consumerism and advertising Archival ]

In the wake of the Muslim cartoon frenzy, a Flickr user, Dane58, is starting a one-man consumerism frenzy: Fight Islamo-Fascism, buy Danish.

Which brings us to Borklog referring us to Jesus, the Musical. The fact that Christians aren't killing people in large scale riots speaks volumes. That video is by one Javier Prato, a video director who's done some fun stuff that's worth a few glances.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Video ]

Ooooh meuon: Explorers Discover Huge Cave and New Poison Frogs. To fully appreciate the size of the cave, you have to check out the picture of the two helicopters parked inside it.

[ related topics: Photography Aviation - Helicopters ]

Because we have a Food - Cake topic: Mike's Amazing Cakes, sculpture (apparently) done in food. Almost a little too sculpturey. (via Must See HTTP)

[ related topics: Art & Culture Food - Cake ]

Linux and other Un*x sorts of people interested in playing with Apple's Bonjour/ Rendezvous/ whatever they're calling it right now might want to look to Avahi.

[ related topics: Free Software Apple Computer Open Source Macintosh ]

So I'm now a few weeks into using Ubuntu with the default Gnome desktop, using Opera as my email client. And I completely understand how one feature can be a deal-breaker on switching platforms. Whining continues in comments...

Okay, John and whomever else: I probably don't need a full web development framework, but what's the right templating system to use for Perl development? I've got something that'll need to be done fast, I'm proficient in Perl, but it's not a personal project, so I'll want it written in a system that will leave a good impression on future users.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Perl Open Source ]

I love watching how different people work with various GUI's and input/output devices. This is an interesting video of some neat code using a multi-input touch screen, and there are more linked to this one. Sure the touch screen is neat, it's what and how he does things that is interesting to me.

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

Two recent court decisions are split on legality of tracking you via your cell phone:

It's also unfortunate because it demonstrates that the FBI swore never to use a 1994 surveillance law to track cellular phones--but then, secretly, went ahead and did it, anyway.

This came via Jay), who mentions GPS, but it's important to note that this current situation isn't using GPS, it's just using signal strength and triangulation from the towers, and that their accuracy with that (I'm told by a guy who develops apps for it) is about half a block.

[ related topics: Wireless Current Events Law Enforcement Maps and Mapping ]

Notable because this is the proper libertarian response to such things: Southwest Missouri firefighters watch as fire hits nonmember (alternate):

MONETT, Mo. - Rural firefighters in southwest Missouri stood by and watched a fire destroy a garage and a vehicle because the property owner, who was injured battling the flames, had not paid membership dues.

Unfortunately, I'm also getting a vibe off this that someone might have actually told the property owner the score had he not been Hispanic...

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Current Events Race ]

Rebecca Blood pointed to: DRM and the tech industry's "girlie men":

If only I could've been there to stand up and clap:

"Why are you such a bunch of big girls?" asked Birch. "Why don't you tell the content owners to just get stuffed?" He continued unabated: "You're too seduced by the content industry, Hollywood is not even a $10 billion industry. Hollywood is small compared to the telecom industry. Why don't you take a stronger line? Consumers don't want DRM at all. You can't sell DRM."

Now he's a little understating things, I believe that $10B is just movies, and there's TV and the behemoth that is the record companies cartel (and they're tied in to the consumer electronics companies), but...

I think, to some extent, that this is exactly what's happening with Google Video, and they're not even having to make an up-front investment. But as we continue to watch Firefly(up to "Trash", kind of disappointed by "Out of Gas" through "War Stories", "Trash" got the feel back, but didn't advance the plot much) I'm looking at a number of small projects I've seen that, with a little bit of seed money, could be made cheaply and outside the Hollywood system. I'm not sure what the economics of the process are, whether the bandwidth is becoming cheap enough that net distribution can compete with broadcast (see the Dan & Todd's bandwidth bet topic) but if the big chip players want to be in the consumer electronics market, if Intel wants to make it into the living room, this would definitely be one prong in the effort to drive that push.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Movies Todd Gemmell broadband Current Events Television Video Economics Joss Whedon - Serenity / Firefly ]

Dang it, there's a pair of journal entries talking about the sociology of online games that I want to point you towards, but they're behind a password, and you'd need to read other stuff to get the context, and... well... Hopefully I'll be forgiven for a couple of excerpts, 'cause rather than give them the full-fledged response they deserve I'm going to slap something up here. The first one talks about the lack of conversation in online worlds, saying that

I want to go online and talk to people that I don't have a venue to connect with in the real world.

I realize that in this age it's kind of silly to be talking about getting into online computing, but twenty years ago that's why most of us who were seeking out online communication were there. The BBS allowed us to get beyond the few kids at our own schools who maybe shared some technical interests. Piracy parties were at least as much about extending the limited communications available in the days of 300 baud modems and "mass storage" meaning two floppy drives as they were about exchanging software.

But twenty years later, life has changed, interconnected computers are ubiquitous in a way that only the most optimistic of us imagined way back then, and I think many of us have made a critcial mistake: We associated the message with the medium.

But really, the BBS and the Internet over a decade ago was as much filtering mechanism as it was a medium. Connecting to a BBS required a certain level of geekiness, seeing the beauty of Gopher, Usenet or a MUD took an ability to abstract that meant that we found other people like ourselves there; only people who thought like us got there.

Similarly with weblogs in the late '90s: Nowadays every teenager has a Livejournal and I only smile wistfully a little when Jay lumps Flutterby in with himself in the "Z-list", but when Ev was a Johnny-come-lately and I was one of the A-listers urging Diane to get off her butt and come to dinner, webloggers in general were cool because there was a certain something that caused us all to overcome the difficulty of the medium in order to talk with each other.

(Aside: I remember a conversation with Cam where one of us said "there's this guy in Florida who keeps sending me all of these great links, and I keep telling him to set up a weblog..." and the other said "you mean Jay?")

So where does that leave us now? Well, I gave up on games half a decade ago. I mean, they're fun to play and all, but the ability to fire up a computer to play a game isn't a reasonable filtering mechanism, at least not for the people I want to talk to. I mean, sure, I could imagine such a game, I suppose, but I've got so many fun projects on my desk that I can't imagine mousing in front of a screen every day and... well... if I'm looking for better ways to connect with people, it's going to be through extending media like Flutterby, building constructs like that in which we can connect with others of like minds, not by creating artificial worlds which take me further away from living in the physical.

There's more in those two entries which, alas, I can't link, but I'll have to address the second point, on text versus speech as a communication media, in another post.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Interactive Drama Games Weblogs Net Culture ]

Blog Article talking about a patent issued for the " Methods, systems, and processes for the design and creation of rich-media applications via the internet" and looks like it's very broad. Although it is focused on a system where such content is created online with specific tools, it looks like a lot of things could be impacted.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Weblogs Journalism and Media Net Culture Graphic Design Archival ]

http://www.dice.com/beingit/

"The user interface needs a little work!"

"Works on my machine!"

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

Why I wouldn't trust my enterprise to a Microsoft platform (and why I'm damned glad to no longer be programming on it) #54312: notYET became a viable platform sometime in 2003. An Ask /. post wonders about migrating to .NET 2 from .NET 1.1. They put so little thought into their framework that, 3 years later, the API is changing yet again.

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering moron ]

A few folks, including Polly, have emailed me stuff about The UAE running our ports deal that's currently being re-examined. Given that The Whitehouse is already run by the Saudis, I'm not all that averse to our critical infrastructure being controlled by companies that are critically intertwined with ...

Well, anyway, what I really meant to say is that what bothers me about this is more that we've allowed our economic system to degrade to the point that it's more reasonable to outsource port management than to do it in house. It has to be profitable, otherwise people with enough money that they jump Lamborghini's for fun wouldn't be investing in it, but it's running a shipping (literally) and receiving operation. Why don't we have that knowledge here in the U.S.?

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Economics ]

I'm not sure that any of Flutterby's readers are the initial target market for this product, but since I've watched it go through development and think it'll be really cool once the folks marketing decide to loosen up a little bit on the content creation, behold the Cricut, a relatively inexpensive desktop label cutter.

[ related topics: Movies Consumerism and advertising Marketing Economics ]

T-shirt slogan idea that came to us driving home the other night:

I give good hug

[ related topics: Humor Clothing ]

Sensible Erection has been on a juggling kick recently, and I had to point out two dramatically different styles. On the one hand, there's Michael Moschen, a decent juggler who does impressive things with showmanship. You've undoubtedly seen him doing the "3 balls inside a triangle" set of moves, or even some dramatic single ball play. But my reaction to his work is largely "yeah, given the right lighting and a month to get my chops back, I could do that".

On the other hand, Vova and Olga Galchenko are amazing jugglers not for how they present what they do, but simply what they do. Just jaw droppingly amazing precision.

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

Whoohoo! Two forced remove-the-battery reboots on the Mac this morning! And I wasn't even running Maya. I must be doing something... right?

[ related topics: Sports Macintosh ]

I think I've mentioned that I thought it would be cool to do the 2006 Climb to Kaiser. Last spring I thought it was reasonable to target it this year, but the hassles of life last summer crept in, and I haven't been on the bike nearly as often as I'd like.

I went out today, climbed Pine Mountain, dropped back down to Alpine Dam, climbed up to the Bolinas ridge, zipped down Ridgecrest, dropped into Mill Valley, and then back home. The results are... not good. I did about fifty miles, a bit more than 4,000 feet of elevation, my average speed was only about 12MPH (need to be able to goose that to 16-17MPH), and I hurt. The grind back up White's Hill on the way home was agony.

So I must do more of this. Much more.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bicycling ]

Charlene's over in the central valley, and she paid a visit to her older brother who's an avid cyclist. So he asked if I was up for this year's Climb to Kaiser. When I described yesterday's ride to her, she said "we should budget for another bike for you".

I sent a taunting email to the hiking list yesterday, the proper response to which would have been "let's do Temelpa or Big Rock Ridge" (both of which are steep sustained climbs), but not only was there no testosterone fueled competitiveness in response, nobody wanted to hike this morning. So I made a run out for some groceries and stopped in several different bike stores.

The first thing that struck me: Bike salespeople get a credibity boost if I get the impression that they ride. You don't have to regale me with your exploits of 25,000 vertical feet in a day, but don't do the "somewhere between audiophile and Comic Book Guy" thing. Especially not if you're trying to sell athletic gear.

So... In at least the last 15 years, I've done two over fifty milers, one on my $20 garage sale special and one on a steel frame with shifters on the downtube. I could feel the difference between those, and I can feel the difference between those bikes and our Cannondale tandem, but...

Do any of y'all have experience with modern frame and wheelsets? If I go new, I know I want the Shimano Ultegra 10 speed drive train, but I don't know if I want double or triple in the front. What I really don't know are issues of frame and wheel choice. It seems like the most efficient frames are aluminum, and fairly light for their price, but I haven't, and probably won't have a chance to, put 70 or 80 miles on an aluminum frame, a carbon fiber frame, or one of the two hybrid styles, to see what the ride differences are like over the longer term.

So, can anyone comment on that? And tell me if I should go for new 10 speed components, or wait for something used and 9 speed to come around? And any experiences of double vs triple? And ramble on wheelsets a bit?

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

I popped over to eBay to look at bicycles. Why don't search engines have an easy "exclude everything from..." option. A way to say "oh, this is a dealer selling off-brand bicycles for roughly what they'd be retail" would cut my category from thousands of items to wade through to a few tens, and would probably give me a better chance of locating the jewels.

The seller's ranking is fine, and if you haven't done your research or just want something with the appropriate check marks on the "has it column" their product is reasonable, but after the second listing I can tell that I'm not interested in anything from them, and they've got tens of items up for bid. If I could clip that down quickly...

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Net Culture Bicycling ]

Seems apropos: The other woman has two wheels.

[ related topics: Humor Bay Area Bicycling ]

Yowza! It's been a bad month for Dori and Tom, and now their home town Healdsburg has a mysterious ninja attack. Luckily the ninja wasn't bulletproof.

It's been fifty years since Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech to the 20^th Party Congress in the Kremlin, in which he denounced Stalin, acknowledged flaws in the Soviet System, and started trying to reform the U.S.S.R. (despite the fact that he was part of the worst of Stalinism: "My hands are covered with blood. I did everything that others did."). The speech is worth reading today because of what it tells us about a strong centralized government, about politics of personlaity, and a history that so many seem completely willing to forget.

Nina Khrushchev, his great granddaugher, talks a bit about the speech that she calls "the third most important event in 20th century Russia":

Just as Russia sits between the East and the West geographically, Russian politics is also in between: always on a narrow line between black and white, right and wrong, reform and dictatorship. Russians have lived for generations under an essentially despotic system of government that is constantly trying to modernize itself through more (Peter the Great, Stalin) or less (Khrushchev, Mikhail Gorbachev) authoritarian means.

But even our reformers are only lesser dictators. At bottom, our people and our leaders share a belief that only authoritarian rule can protect the country from anarchy and disintegration. They support a "strong" state, in which decisions come from the top and citizens are left to tremble with respect and fear.

Roy Medvedv's commentary points out that:

...the problem with the de-Stalinization process was that, although the truth was partly revealed, no answer regarding what to do was offered. After the Congress, it became clear that the communist gospel was false and murderously corrupt. But no other ideology was offered, and the crisis that began with Khrushchev’s speech lasted another 30 years, until Mikhail Gorbachev took up his mantle of change.

Repeat after me, kids: Government is an illusion in the mind of the governed. Dictators don't take power, they are given power. This is one of the reasons that the First World War was followed by the Second, and this is why our current struggles in Iraq haven't been as simple as "wipe out the existing command structure". Because that command structure, that government, that dictatorship occurs when people believe in it, believe that the alternative to that evil is even worse.

Although sometimes "worse" revolves around boo-ya nationalism that's just an extension of fat guys on a couch talking about sports teams as "did we win?".

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics History moron Current Events Fashion Race ]

In light of reminiscing about Stalinism, some recent abuses of power:

• Cop tickets student who honked at cop for abusing his flashers to run a red light (In Chattanooga).
• Cronies of Tom DeLay order up IRS audit of organization that exposed his misdeeds.
• Florida cops threaten people who ask for complaint forms.

[ related topics: Politics Law Enforcement Chattanooga ]

From Saturday's bike ride, a couple o' kites setting up on the shoulder of Mount Tam for a little slope soaring over the clouds, probably to land down on Stinson Beach, below that layer you see off out over the Pacific.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Aviation Bay Area California Culture ]

If everything goes right, I just bought a 2005 Cannondale Six13 with Dura-Ace shifters and brakes, TruVativ Carbon Roleur cranks and Easton Tempest II wheels off of eBay.

It doesn't include water bottle cages, and since I'm discovering that while the CamelBak is fantastic for hydration I probably need a bottle full of sugar water (maybe even with electrolytes!) to give my body fuel to burn, I'll need to put a cage on the bike. Unfortunately, on a bike like this that means that one of those ridiculous carbon fiber ultra light weight holders would be right at home. I may have just become one of those poser gear weenies that I've scoffed at.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bicycling ]