Flutterby™! From 2007-03-01 to 2007-03-31

I'm not gonna point fingers or nothin', but in the wake of the blinky devices with batteries in Boston, a couple of people asked why those concerned couldn't just call the Mayor's office and get permission.

Well, ya see, it turns out that doesn't matter, 'cause Boston's police department just likes to scream "the sky is falling!". In this case, the Boston police blew up a traffic counter because it looked like a suspicious package. Yep, it was apparently put there by another branch of the Boston city government.

Please, if you live in or around Boston, find ways to point out the idiocies being done in the name of "security". Hell, if you're in a park or public space and need a rest, don't sit down for too long lest you be deemed a "suspicious device" too.

[ related topics: moron Law Enforcement Boston - stupidity and authorities ]

For a variety of reasons I don't advocate purchasing from Amazon, but if you do, sometimes you'll run up against an "I need to boost this order by a few bucks to get me cheaper shipping" situation. In that case, Filler Item lets you search by price, and iSearchBetter.com puts better filtering and organizing on top of Amazon's search.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Economics ]

David Chess rambles on the cultural importance of gender identity, with forays into Second Life.

(And does anyone else notice that although Diane posts here occasionally, she hasn't updated her blog in a while and is probably spending lots of time in SL?)

[ related topics: Sociology ]

Dabid Lebovitz asks "Should You Go To Culinary School?", and in the process lays out, even if indirectly, a list of questions and motivations that anyone considering a career direction should investigate. And he talks a little bit about the current trend of convincing people they'll have good jobs so that the school can suck every living penny out of whatever federally backed loans the applicant can get:

Another friend worked in admissions for an expensive private culinary school and was forced to attend seminars in 'recruiting techniques' that would make a Ron Popeil infomercial look tame. She was told to ask if they had any family pictures in their wallet. And when they opened their wallet, check to see if there were credit cards, which they could mention later as a source for the down payment.

As Zack looks at art schools, I'm acutely aware of some of this trend...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sociology Education ]

Okay all you computer language geeks out there... Internationalization (I18n) has just been dropped in my lap. It's not an immediate thing, but I should be educating myself and making suggestions. I've done enough stuff with XML that I've got a good grasp on UTF-8, but I need a little guidance:

• Programming language symbols in non-ASCII characters (ie: variable names in Japanese or with accents): Good or bad idea?
• Extended C++ string packages? Any good ones? Do we write our own? Is the standard library's C++ string interface suitable?
• Internally, do we use variable width characters (ie: UTF-8), is UTF-16 a reasonable compromise or do we still have to worry about variable width given that the full Unicode spec has 17 times 2 bytes worth of characters in it?
• lex and yacc?

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

The Woodworker's Club of Houston has a technique for making band-sawed boxes that I think I want to try with the jig saw. Don't know if the blade's thin enough, but looks like it's worth a try.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

By now, if you run around the geeky sites, you've probably seen that Sony has "blackballed" Kotaku. Like me, you probably wonder what the hell that meant. In sort, Kotaku is a gaming news web site, they went to Sony for confirmation of a rumor that they were going to publish, Sony sayd "Don't publish that", Kotaku did, and a Sony rep said:

...we will be canceling all further interviews for Kotaku staff at GDC and will be dis-inviting you to our media event next Tuesday. Until we can find a way to work better together, information provided to your site will only be that found in the public forum.

The whole thing is worth reading, but let's go a little bit beyond the meager implications of games. Let's go to, say, the Whitehouse press conferences, and think about who's invited and why...

[ related topics: Politics Games Current Events Journalism and Media Conferences ]

Colorado to use inmate labor on farms because immigration crackdowns have resulted in a labor shortage.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Manifesto for a New Literary Movement in Speculative Fiction, linked to by Elf who paraphrased:

The pessimist sees the space princess as half-clad. The optimist sees the space princess as half-naked.

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design Nudity ]

Stolen from Bill Humphries: Yoram Bauman, Ph.D. "The world's first and only stand-up economist" (you'll have to click through to see his disclaimer on that statement), translates Mankiw's Ten Principles of Economics (video). There's also a text version, but the video is worth it:

“Macroeconomists have predicted 9 out of the last 5 recessions.”

[ related topics: Humor Video Economics ]

Vasectomy: $400. Speechless look on her face: priceless.

Dating... a full contact Sport.

Gavin Newsom to change policy after San Francisco proclamation honoring a gay porn studio is issued:

But the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition sees it differently. The group issued a statement Thursday condemning Newsom and the other officials for honoring what it called "one of the largest producers of explicit homosexual porn in the country."

Yeah, and? Gavin Newsom, if you have any backbone at all you'll tell these bozos to take their hate-mongering attitudes back to their backwards little closed minds and stuff-it. And we find that there are area politicians who do have a little bit of principle:

The proclamation was written by Neighborhood Services staffers after they learned state Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, and city Treasurer Jose Cisneros had issued similar commendations.

I don't know who in the SF Comical is starting to run stories with this slant, but if we can get Violet Blue to spearhead something that makes Newsom look like the spineless idiot that this incident shows him to be, I'll get behind it!

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area moron California Culture Gavin Newsom ]

I hvae never been that excited about coding from a command line. Starting with edline in DOS (well after Processor Technology cassete tape systems it did seem better!) to writing C code using an editor (!) it was a continous cycle of edit, compile, run ... Even with a great editor like Brief it was very time consuming.

Dan mentioned Delphi around 1991 but of course it wasn't Microsoft so I rejected it. Bad decision, and I finally discovered Delphi and spent many years building code visually, dropping components onto forms, connecting databases using properties all RAD Visually. A big difference. I used to demonstrate Delphi by building a complete simple application for Windows using only one hand on a mouse. Big difference from the old days.

But Borland was managed poorly, and they spent years sucking the profits from Delphi for various stupid ideas. Their best people all left and went to MS and built C# and so forth.

Over the years it pained me to see such a great product being destroyed. My heart was with Delphi and the guys who believed in it and worked on it. It was a great product (except for more recent versions). I went to two Borland confrences and listened to the management lie to us.

I discovered Php was just about the C language hidden inside some html, but its still a learning curve for us non-genius programmer types. I know about this as I have had several genius types work with me and its awesome to watch.

After Borland had run all the profits and future out of Delphi they tried to sell it but did not get what they wanted, and in my opinion, facing a potential wholesale exit from Borland of all their talent they aquiesced and created a subsidiary called CodeGear to develope and market their IDE's and such including Delphi.

The new company has begun to 'right the ship' as they say, and fixing things that should have been fixed long ago, adding new features and getting the product current. It could be seen as a fool's errand but piece by piece, step by step they are doing the right thing and staying in communication with their world wide customer base, which was not always the case.

But the best thihng for me is that they are about to come out with 'Delphi for Php'. From the advertising and the buzz this is going to be hot. There are Php Ide's but none like this. A Visual RAD Php product. Just like Delphi! create a new app, drop some components on a form, click run and bam - an application! Drag a database to a form, connect some fields to visual components, and bam - databse app.

I for the first time in many years will buy a product from Borland, er ... CodeGear and expect it make me a lot of money.

The purists will resist but I have found my nirvana I hope.

EWeek

Delphi For Php

Just right for us old programmers not quite ready for the old programmers home.

Ziffle

[ related topics: Ziffle Humor Microsoft Movies Invention and Design Software Engineering moron Writing Law Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Machinery Currency Education Pedal Power Bicycling Databases Economics ]

Fudge! There's a fantastic teaser in the Chronicle of Higher Education about Jingbei Hu, and his diaries as a young boy during the cultural revolution in China which says he's going to put those diaries online (hopefully in English translation), but I can't find 'em. At any rate, the article and small excerpts are worth a read:

January 27, 1971: "If we dedicate all our lives to the socialist revolution, letting the Communist Party and the People decide how we can make the most of our time, our futures are sure to be affluent. Thinking of this, how can I possibly feel blue?"

Especially in the context of the deciderer informing us that his job is to make the decisions.

[ related topics: Sociology Economics ]

How the world really shapes up, more maps with their areas adjusted by other statistics.

[ related topics: Current Events Maps and Mapping ]

Bit twiddling hacks, or "things that you probably shouldn't do because the compiler is smart enough", but are good to know. (via Brainwagon)

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Anyone heard things about Lua? Rafe reports that 40% of Adobe Lightroom is written in it, it's the scripting language behind World of Warcraft, and as software development goes more and more towards "write most of the app in something other than C/C++" I want to stay ahead of the curve on this stuff.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

William S. Lind: The Non-Thinking Enemy, on evaluating your opponents on the battlefield (via John Robb).

[ related topics: Politics War ]

An article about the glee that lottery officials are feeling about the $350+ million jackpot in tonight's drawing had this gem:

The result: The state lottery revised its forecast for sales in the current fiscal year, which ends in June, from $3.6 billion to $3.2 billion. That means $1.13 billion to public education rather than $1.27 billion.

Lottery spokesman Rob McAndrews said the state lottery takes problem gambling seriously and spends $100,000 a year fighting it. The agency is airing public-service announcements on radio and television all month.

Giggle. I'm bettin' that the lottery billboard on I-80 westbound just after the Bay Bridge costs 'em more than that.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Gambling ]

Yesterday in St Petersburg FL, a seed sprouted from the muck. This is important for me, as it now provides a seed for as the say, for a new Islamic View because it is ideas which do and will change the future.

"We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.

We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.

We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind."

For the rest: http://secularislam.org/blog/p...21/The-St-Petersburg-Declaration

It has to start somewhere - now they have something to rally around!

[ related topics: Religion Privacy Weblogs Ethics Invention and Design Political Correctness moron Civil Liberties Gambling Alaska ]

The news has been full of reports like this one about how the FCC is levying huge fines against radio station companies over payola. Amongst the items in the settlement will be half-hours of air time offered to independent music producers to showcase their work.

My problem is this: How does the FCC get the power to either encourage or discourage independent music? Is promoting garage bands a new form of public service? Yes, I know most radio is pretty putrid, but why is the mix and provenance of the music a Federal affair? This has been going on since the 50s, but I still don't get it.

[ related topics: Music Civil Liberties Radio ]

Maybe it's just that I live in Marin County, and that Drake high school has such a cool and well developed drama program, but I can't possibly imagine how fucked up and clueless the school administrators would have to be to do this: Three students in Cross River, New York high school suspended for saying "Vagina" during reading from The Vagina Monologues.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Bay Area Theater & Plays New York ]

Fired U.S. attorneys felt politically pressured:

In perhaps the day's most dramatic testimony, Iglesias told senators he felt sickened when Domenici hung up on him after being told that indictments in a corruption case against Democrats would not be handed down before the November elections.

"He said, 'Are these going to be filed before November?'" Iglesias recalled. "I said I didn't think so. And to which he replied, 'I'm very sorry to hear that.' And then the line went dead."

[ related topics: Politics Law ]

We could have used this when we were in college and tryng all those delicious drugs of the day.

https://store.tv2art.com/index.html

[ related topics: Drugs Health Education ]

The latest in potato cannon technology: the SGTC Supah-Valve, a dump valve good to 120PSI:

"The more i play with it the more i like it, it seems to work with my 3" barrel just fine, it will dump my 6 gallon air tank pressurized with 100 psi in a fraction of a second and like you noted, it's LOUD. ..."

I have a no artistic talent, and am in awe of people who can make art, real art, out of just about anything. Scott Wade is an artist using the dust on car windows as canvas and medium. He'd be incredibly busy at Burning Man, which reminds me: We're going, tickets have arrived...

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Microsoft Art & Culture Automobiles ]

I'm trying to figure out the best hotel to stay at during the 2007 AAG National Meeting. The conference is at the Hilton San Francisco on O'Farrell a couple blocks from Union Square. There appears to be a plethora of little hotels around the area at under $100 but I wanted to find something with two beds for under $100. I came across The San Francisco Town House which even has free parking - but it's two miles away. So I've figured I'd check out the public transportation system...

I started on the BART page - which was helpful because I now know there is a BART station a few blocks from the conference but it doesn't go anywhere near "SF Town House" (which is near Fort Mason and the Presidio). So I tried to find out about busses and ended up on 511.org. There appears to be about three dozen different bus systems in the Bay Area - all with their own rate structure. When I looked at a map of the two miles between "The Town House" and the Hilton, it map view showed about 40 different bus routes and no way to click on the one I wanted. Entering the addresses into the "trip planner" helped. What a nightmare!

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Travel Trains Maps and Mapping Conferences Public Transportation Real Estate Furniture ]

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/267035526.html

Well of course this was not written by me; far from it :|

On Christian as an Adjective, a little essay on the problems of Christian identity from the perspective of those who aren't.

[ related topics: Religion Writing ]

An anonymous blogger is publishing items unflattering to a local politician. Local politician wants to out them so he can have them declared an illegal political action committee. Fortunately for the local politician, the local newspaper is is doing all in its power to help him discover the fiend. Apparently freedom of the press is still guaranteed only to those who one one.

[ related topics: Politics Privacy moron Current Events Journalism and Media Civil Liberties ]

Anti-news: FBI has misused and abused the Patriot Act, Newt Gingrich was having an extra-marital affair while going after Clinton, and a Stanford swim coach has been manipulating the publishing of results based on practice attendance, not actual performance.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Law Enforcement ]

A cute little article on Felton California science teacher Preston Q. Boomer

"It didn't look dangerous," she said. "Of course, that was before the guillotine."

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

I've often said that I'd hapily give my medical records to the major credit card companies if they'd stop sending me some of those absurd card offers until after I had my lobotomy. I've said that half in jest, but there's a bit of reality in there: I want to know about products that are genuinely useful to me, and I'm not averse to giving information to vendors who want to develop a relationship with me: Tell me about things I'm genuinely interested in, and your advertising isn't wasting my time.

I used to think that products with fixed pricing were rather monopolistic, but as I've been drawn into the cult of Festool I've started to see some of the wisdom of controlling pricing: Vendors can't differentiate themselves on price, so they have to find other ways to be special.

The boxes the Festool tools come in are well laid out: They stack (and clip together), the tools actually fit in them, often with room for basic additions, they're sturdy and well designed enough that people actually buy them with out the tool inserts for general purpose use. They just have one flaw: The label showing what tool is in the case is only on one end. We've now put hand-written labels on the other sides of ours so it doesn't matter in which orientation they go in the closet, but...

An online vendor, McFeely's ("the square drive screw authority"), is giving away full color customized labels for your Festool containers. In one swoop they've acknowledged a problem in a product they sell, fixed it, offered me something of value, and in exchange gotten critical marketing information from me: my name, contact info, and what tools I own.

It hasn't gotten them a sale yet, but in one simple act they've started to build a relationship with me, given me something useful so I'm inclined to go to them when I need something they sell, but also gotten information from me so that they can tailor sales pitches to my needs, and rather than wasting my time with scatter-shot advertising give me actual value in their solicitations.

Other vendors of all sorts of products should take note.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Marketing Woodworking Festool ]

Bought a Wii and the Cars game at [Big Box] yesterday. Hadn't played with state of the art digital toys in a few generations, and I have to admit. I'm impressed. For about $300 total, it's quite a package, and the star is that wireless remote, with the overall interface and design of everything being a co-star. It's wifi-worked out of the box, downloaded a very good Opera based web browser, and even surfed some web sites very well. The games, Wii Sports as well as Cars, aren't aiming for full on virtual reality simulation. They aim for -fun-, as in frivolous, frolicking and funky. Mii's (the virtual self in the games) are hilarious. I was suprised how well the Wii remote works as a steering wheel. No, it's not a force feedback accuracte steering wheel, but the games (so far) don't require that level of finesse either. Kudos, Nintendo. Well done.

[ related topics: Wireless Games Space & Astronomy Art & Culture Graphic Design Aviation - Helicopters ]

In case I hadn't mentioned it, I've been a biological uncle for about a year and a half, and figured it was time to start doing uncle-ly things. To me that meant road trip to Las Vegas, but he's too young to properly appreciate drunken debauchery yet, so I'm building him a rocking horse instead.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Woodworking ]

Greg Kennedy juggling inside a clear plastic cone.

The Great American Book Giveaway has come through again, with a copy of The Dollmaker by Amanda Stevens, looks like a dark mystery set in Lousiana.

[ related topics: Books ]

NASA's twin STEREO satellites have sent back an all-too-cool video: a solar eclipse as seen from deep space. No goggles necessary.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Astronomy Video ]

The US Government will pay to help people with old analog TVs get digital TV signal converters:

The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) said it is setting aside $990 million to pay for the boxes. Each home can request up to two $40 coupons for a digital-to-analog converter box, which consumer electronics makers such as RCA and LG plan to produce. Prices for the box have not been determined, but industry and consumer groups have estimated they will run $50 to $75 each.

Why are we spending taxpayer dollars so that people can watch television? And if we're going to pull this sort of legacy compatibility sort of bullshit, what about the various DRM schemes that are making older music players incompatible?

[ related topics: Politics Music Technology and Culture moron Consumerism and advertising Television ]

California Congressman Pete Stark has "come out"... as a "a Unitarian who does not believe in a Supreme Being".

[ related topics: Religion California Culture ]

Wave Bubble: A design for a self-tuning portable RF jammer:

An internal lithium-ion battery provides up to 2 hours of jamming (two bands, such as cell) or 4 hours (single band, such as cordless phone, GPS, WiFi, bluetooth, etc). The battery is rechargeable via a mini-USB connector or 4mm DC jack (a common size). Alternately, 3 AAA batteries may also be used.

Not that I'd ever condone the use of such things...

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Wireless ]

Spurred on by Columbine's admission to having missed two of the questions, I took the Am I Dumb? test, which claims that I'm smarter than 98.18 of respondends in answering all of the questions correctly. Which shocks me slightly, not that I'm 98^th percentile, but that 100% on this test isn't more like 75^th percentile, issues with metric conversion not withstanding. Especially since at least one typo made me re-read the "obvious" answer and fix it.

Dan Savage takes Garrison Keillor to task on gay marriage.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs Sociology Marriage ]

Proof that torture doesn't work? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed stops short of confessing to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa and Bambi's mother, but only just barely. Yeah, some great intelligence we got outta that guy...

[ related topics: Politics moron WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

Where to draw the line pops up yet again: In North Carolina, 3 Sentenced for Castration `dungeon':

Superior Court Judge Dennis Winner said it was difficult to call the dungeon's willing patients "victims," but he said six castrations performed there were certainly a crime.

"I think this is a type of perversion that cannot be tolerated by society," Winner said during a sentencing hearing Thursday.

So, say, botox, killing off portions of your face, is fine, but cutting off your nuts isn't?

[ related topics: Law ]

Ya know, ya just can't make this sort of stuff up. And it scares me: Kyle Sampson, counselor to John Ashcroft, talked about firing U.S. attorneys:

we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. attorneys -- the underperforming ones. ... The vast majority of U.S. attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc.

Valerie Plame points out that if she's not safe, no undercover agent is:

"If our government cannot even protect my identity, future foreign agents who might consider working with the Central Intelligence Agency and providing needed intelligence would think twice," Plame said in response to a question.

Indeed. And, on another note (sorry), KDFC, a Bay Area classical station, has pulled an ad whose copy included:

In his new bestseller, Chris Hedges challenges the Christian Right and its dark ideology. He challenges their religious legitimacy and makes a compelling case that these zealots have merely found a mask for fascism in patriotism and the pages of the Bible.

so we'll plug the book here. That's American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, by Chris Hedges.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Books Bay Area moron Law ]

The Renter's Manifesto: Why home ownership causes unemployment. (Via crasch)

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

Busy freakin' weekend. Got some code I need to have done by Monday (have I mentioned that Carbon sucks?), and Alan, Charlene's developmentally disabled brother, is coming to stay with us next week and we've got downstairs cleaned up enough that we're going to put him there, but first we need handrails. Unfortunately, the stairway is narrow enough that we don't want permanent handrails, so I'm in the midst of a detachable handrail system that can deal with 200 lbs of force in any direction.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Macintosh Handicaps & Disabilities ]

How Installing Apple's Updates can Render Your Mac Unbootable and How You Can Prevent it (thanks, Lyn).

[ related topics: Apple Computer Macintosh ]

I still need to veneer the edges of the mounts, and I've got a boatload of clean-up to do, but my removable stair rails are in place, solid and functional.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

This one's for Diane: Mother Jones: This Guy Can Get 59 MPG in a Plain Old Accord. Beat That, Punk, on the culture of "hypermilers", and getting over 120MPG from a Prius (and 180MPG from an Insight) (I'm now not sure where I got this from, but over at Brainwagon, Mark linked to it).

[ related topics: Sociology Current Events Automobiles ]

Interesting essay and long set of comments on the situation in mortgage markets. One way or the other it looks like the real estate industry is going to get a bail-out and the people who behaved responsibly are going to end up screwed with the bill.

[ related topics: Economics Real Estate ]

Got a couple of hundred acres to plow and a few hours to kill? The Williams Brother's farm's Northern Manufacturing Company 16V “Big Bud” 747 tractor. A hundred thousand lbs and 900 horsepower of heavy machinery:

The Williams Brothers use the tractor for cultivation purposes, pulling an 80 foot cultivator. The tractor can work more than one acre per minute, at speeds up to 8 mph.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Machinery ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo

[ related topics: Movies ]

All of a sudden, I've been having to deal with time syncing multiple users in multiple time zones on multiple continents in a pseudo-calendaring addition to an already complicated application. And I've gotten quite an education on time zones, or rather, what we wish were time zones. Did you know that time is extremely relative? Even in the USA: Indiana alone has 6, yes 6 slightly different time zone regions. Alaska has 4, Kentucky 2, and the Navajo Indians have their own version of Mountain Time. Other countries include time zones that are not always hours apart, per approx 15 degrees of longitude, but break things up into smaller chunks, 30 minute (Newfoundland Canada, Iran, Afghanistan, Mumbai India, Cocos Islands, Central Australia...), and reportedly even less (15 minute increment, reportedly parts of Pakistan, Nepal, Western Australia). Fun things happen when you realize that New Zealand, normally UTC+12, has daylight savings time for a UTC+13 correction after I had referenced an authoritive looking website that said it was only -12 to +12 which had made sense.

What is really fun, is the Linux Server, PHP and MySQL are not always in agreement on what to do with some of the odder time issues. I'm opting to use and manipulate all date/time info in MySQL, it's not more right, but it's easier to apply consistently.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Invention and Design Education Databases Alaska ]

Did you know that there's a feature length documentary on the Helvetica fonts? But what's really cool, is font haiku:

i shot the serif

left him there full of leading

yearning for kerning

--- djm

And much more.

[ related topics: Movies Typography Graphic Design ]

A cute little rundown of the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case currently in front of the Supreme Court:

Suppose,'' said Justice Stephen Breyer during Monday's arguments, "this particular person had whispered to his next door neighbor, "Bong Hits for Jesus, heh, heh, heh.''

Admit it. There's a comment you never expected to hear from a Supreme Court justice.

[ related topics: Religion Drugs Humor Law ]

This is citizen journalism as it was meant to be practiced: Talking Points Memo readers are collaboratively going through the 3,000 pages of documents that the Justice Department released on the firings of U.S. Attorneys, and finding dirt.

[ related topics: Politics Law Journalism and Media ]

Bad: Struggling with trying to track down a very occasional bug that may or may not be related to my code. Good: Doing so while listening Alex Depue's fiddle interpretations of "Yes" on YouTube. He's also got some sample tracks on Alex Depue's myspace page and, although there's nothing there right now but some monstrously overdesigned flash with no content, Alex Depue's web site. (Via Dave Goodman)

[ related topics: Music ]

Kelly Johnson's 14 rules for managing the Skunk Works.

[ related topics: Aviation Work, productivity and environment ]

Whoah: From an email on the Chugalug mailing list, take a look at this Google Maps location. Apparently there are places where you can hack in a "z" value of up to 23 in the URL and get some interesting results.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Larry points out that everyone's up in arms over the firings of the the U.S. Attorneys, but nobody's riled up about the FBI overstepping their bounds in their use of the National Security Letters. Here's an article about the FBI's abuse of said letters, and probably deliberate destruction of paper trails. My personal opinion is that the FBI has been doing this sort of stuff for just shy of 99 years, and there's no political will to clean out that organization.

And in case you missed it, I stuffed a link to Daze Reader's rundown on the two prosecutors who appear to have been fired for being unwilling to prosecute obscenity cases in the comments to yesterday's entry about the topic.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture moron Law Law Enforcement ]

While we're talking about misdeeds of law enforcement officials, crasch had a link to news that that Orange County cop who abused his powers and ejaculated on a motorists sweater... uhh... "got off", the jury dismissed felony charges, presumably mirroring the "she wanted it" attitude of the defense attorney, who said "“She got what she wanted, she's an overtly sexual person.”:

In a secretly-recorded phone call to Laguna Beach police shortly after the incident, Lucy recalled that she'd told Park she had no license. Park began "rubbing himself up against me," she said. "Then, he said, 'What are we going to do here, Lucy?'"

Park unzipped his pants, took his penis out and got an erection, she explained. "Basically, the officer made me give [him] a freaking hand job and he let me go. I'm so freaked out about it."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events Law Enforcement California Culture ]

The Stranger video: Jesus goes to the porn convention:

"Have you ever been nailed in all three holes at once?"

Stolen from crasch.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Sexual Culture Video ]

Yay: COPA (Child Online Protection Act) struck down:

In his ruling, Reed warned that "perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."

Heck yeah.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Civil Liberties ]

Stolen from Jay: Poly people I can do without. Charlene and I met in a community where there was a lot of poly stuff going around, and we left that community for various reasons, but part of why I drifted away from it was that I saw some of those patterns pretty prevalently.

However, just because those things are particularly prevalent in poly communities doesn't mean that they're unique to them, a lot of those clues look like things that happen in two person relationships all the time too.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Community ]

Last night had a conversation with someone who's gotten into the whole real estate thing in a big way, from the side of wanting to become a mortgage broker or somesuch. She was talking about a deal where two couples owned a house for about a year, one of the couples had decided they couldn't hack the payments anymore and walked away from it, and the other couple was considering defaulting on the place. She was trying to put together some sort of situation where another person would come in and take over payments in exchange for half the future equity.

To put it another way, someone who couldn't pass through even today's relaxed credit checks to assume a couple of hundred thousand dollars in debt on the assumption that real estate was going to continue to appreciate exponentially.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but the mortgage crisis is overwhelming credit counselors (Via Rebecca Blood).

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

Must read: My National Security Letter gag order.

[ related topics: Politics Civil Liberties ]

Just in case you missed seeing it, Here's the 53 second recap of 300 (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies ]

[EDIT: Crap! Petronius, I tried to fix this, but somehow mucked it up! Can you insert the right link?]

A US journalist in Iraq goes looking for ex-communist Iranians in Northern Iraq, but ends up accidently having lunch with textbook Marxist-Leninist Khurds. A strange tale of ideological purity and Middle Eastern hospitality.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Military ]

Two upcoming shows you Bay Area folks might be interested in:

• Asylum Street Spankers at 12 Galaxies on the 31^st. Think The Capitol Steps, but with an Austin/Seattle/SF vibe rather than an east coast/D.C. one. And overall better musicianship. I'd really love to hit this one, but we already have tickets for Kirsten Greenidge's play "Rust" for that evening.
• Michael Klapholz in Larkspur on the 15^th. Another one that isn't going to fit in our schedule, but should be a good show.

[ related topics: Humor Music Bay Area California Culture Michael Klapholz ]

Wow! What do you do when your party's leading figure is so mired in controversy and incompetence that you know he's going to drag down the 2008 elections? Chuck Hagel (R-NE) mentions impeachment as an option. I guess the Republicans figure that if Dubya's in office next year he'll drag the whole party down.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics moron ]

Because they just emailed asking permission to use a picture of mine: Weekend Sherpa is a collection of weekend get-aways in the San Francisco Bay Area.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture ]

Pandemonium, the well named cat, is nesting in my bill basket, trying to knock my glasses off the desk, again.. and perusing Tom and Dori's "JavaScript and Ajax". When I started doing JavaScript, their 4th edition was cryptic, yet good solid basics that I was looking to understand. As I look though version 6. I find myself going: "Well, you -could- do it that way.. ". The book is up to date, has useful examples and more advanced techniques, yet still clearly shows how things work and glue together well, even some basic AJAX techniques. (I love the things you can do with XMLHTTPRequest!).

And if I can't find something on my desk.. I get on my hands and knees and see where the cat threw/hid it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Photography Work, productivity and environment Television ]

crasch had a link to a fun little rant which could use a few fact checks: Patrick.net: US Housing Crash Continues. But this is a context on which to hang something I learned last week.

Among the financial instruments being pushed around the Bay Area are "equity positions". Can't keep up with the payments on your house? Lost a few tens of thousands of dollars in equity over the past year and your ARM is now shooting up because you owe more than the house is worth? Sell half of your house to someone willing to take on half the payments.

Looking to get into the real estate market, but have bad credit, can't afford that pesky downpayment, or the fact that buying a place would cost two or three times renting? Just assume a portion of someone else's mortgage, knowing that because housing will continue to skyrocket you'll be locking in today's prices against tomorrow's boom.

And all of this was pitched to me as a good idea, with a straight face.

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

I was going to lay this one on Mac OS/X, but I think there's enough hate to go around.

1. First off, to the Apple developers: It's great that y'all leverage off of the GNU utils for your development environment. It's nice that when your development is hopelessly broken we can fall back on to the tools over which your systems are just a shell and use them, because at least they're well tested and developed and relatively bug free. It's nice that when XCode chokes on its own vomit that I can run GDB on the executable somewhere down there inside the application bundle and figure out what's really going on. Bur it sure would be nice if y'all were consistent about shipping relatively up-to-date versions.
2. Now on to "autoconf" and "automake": If these tools are supposed to do things like help deal with version and system differences, how come the hardest part about compiling any project is always getting the version and configuration of these two tools right?

Grrr....

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Software Engineering Macintosh ]

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society life-sized whale web page. Scroll around a huge picture of a blue whale.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

I've been on the web long enough that I forget what most magazines are like, but I recently ended up with a "free" (I still have to pay for disposal...) subscription to Bicycling. In the past I've seen that magazines generally run on an editorial schedule of a year or so, reworking similar material every 12 months so that people new to the topic aren't lost, and so that the editors can track the business.

Well, Bicycling seems to run on an editorial schedule of a month, but it might even be half a magazine, 'cause every time I pick it up I keep thinking "wait, haven't I read this already?". The obligatory fawning over their major advertisers, the same "ultimate" workout plan that promises to get you buff and sculpted before the next issue arrives, the only thing that varies is a featured ride location, and if you've spent any time online you've already read better accounts of riding that stretch anyway.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Bicycling ]

Uh oh: Some disturbing news from down under:

SISTERS are doing it for themselves – at least they are in Queensland where a sexuality survey showed that women with no partner could achieve orgasm more easily than those with a man on hand.

So does this say something about Australian lovers, gender relations in general, or what? (From Sensible Erection)

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture ]

Survey Of OpenGL Font Technology, and Fast Text in OpenGL. I wanted to slap together some simple test apps, and I'm having trouble getting some of the signals stuff in GLGooey to compile, and I'm looking around at other ways to quickly prototype graphics apps.

[ related topics: Graphics Typography Graphic Design ]

Some of y'all are probably seeing a forwarded email titled "1 sheet of paper". The artist is Peter Callesen, and it's well worth some poking around his site. Cool art.

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

I first became aware of Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech" (why I cancelled my ETech presentations) through Tom Negrino's post yesterday. Since then I've also seen Lyn's sidebar, RC3 linking to Laura LeMay, and Bill Humphries's entry on the topic, which points to Min Jung Kim: It’s Awful. Yes., which points out that:

It’s just the first time it’s happened to someone that you know.

It sounds like there's some password theft and extreme trolling going on, and I'm not sure what all the backstory is, although if Dori and Tom vouch for someone I'm gonna take their side.

But I do want to say that there's an awful lot of the vibe of a web site that can be determined through social means. Sometimes that requires keeping a lower profile (as Flutterby's robots.txt attests). It also means that "you own your own words" isn't a defense: It's incumbent on all of us to "frown at racism" (as one historical example), and to make sure that while we have open discussion, we don't let certain attitudes get out of hand at our parties. Even in the most charitable interpretation for everyone involved, we each get to determine whether or not we get trolled by how we react to the trolling.

Now if y'all will excuse me, I'm thinking I should probably be a little more careful about certain security issues.

[ related topics: Weblogs Net Culture Community Race ]

While we're looking at (Republican) political posturing: McCain Lashes Out -- At McCain. Giggle. (Via Lyn)

[ related topics: Politics Humor moron ]

MarkV had a link to IFW-Dresden Superconducting Maglev Train Models. Well worth a watch.

[ related topics: Cool Science Cool Technology Trains ]

Among the projects I'll never finish before the heat death of the universe, I've got a copy of "The Threepenny Opera" in German. I haven't used German since I left Waldorf school in 7^th grade, but I'd like to pick it back up, and reading Bertold Brecht in the original seemed like a good place to start. So right before bed I'm adding a new line or two, with a German-English dictionary, penciling in the words I don't know.

When we get to Europe I'll have all the words necessary to be a Moritatensänger (one who sings ballads about notorious criminals at street fairs), but will scare the hell out of anyone when I try to ask where the restroom is.

It feels weird to be using a paper dictionary, but I happened to go back and notice that Harold McGee is recommending Google Books as a way to search the paper version of On Food & Cooking. The world evolves.

[ related topics: Language Books ]

Dear new social networking site of the moment,

It's great that you've opened up a new venue on the web for people to search for me, and for me to publish information about myself. Really, it is. However, you might want to try out the seventeen people in Idaho who aren't already doing that, rather than targeting high profile weblog publishers via a "pay to send email to webloggers" service.

Because frankly, when I see you advertising your new site, I think "oh, joy, yet another freakin' place I have to keep up my contact information updated". You don't use OpenID, so it's also yet another freakin' user name and password I have to remember.

So, some notes to new social networking sites:

• I already have my web presence. I'm happy to help y'all out, but I've no desire to do work without getting paid for it. If you want to include me in your directory, that's great, I'll publish a vCard or whatever file on my site, keep it updated, and you can poll it to keep your contact info updated.
• I will not remember yet another name and password. Use OpenID, both providing an ID and using an external ID, or go home.
• This month I've gotten 5 reminders from nearly dead social networking sites, and two requests to join a new one. You're one of the latter. At least two of the former were also focused on business users. If you're not going to give me a compelling reason to sign up, make sure that your contact to me has a friend's name associated with it so that there's at least one other person there that I'd care about connecting with. If I wanted random "wannafucks" from Brazilians, I'd keep my account on Orkut active. If I was too lazy to ask the same question of friends of friends, I'd keep Friendster active.
• Make a decent web page. Get your character encoding right so that I don't see lots of "?"s in diamonds all over the place because your designers were too lazy to do their homework.
• It's great that you're "the only system that enables you to be searched and found through traditional search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask)", but your PageRank is 0. Not "lower than Dori, Tom & Sean's cat", but zero, the big old goose egg. Do I care that you'll be somewhere in page 349, down below some of even the most egregious link spammers, while searching for "Dan Lyke"?

There are all sorts of things that might make me sign up for a new social networking service. Acknowledging that I own my own data and leveraging off of things that I publish on my own site is one of them. Offering innovative new APIs that I can hack applications to talk to is another. Yet another stupid business card exchange service... well... that was old hat in the last millenium.

[ related topics: Weblogs Consumerism and advertising Net Culture Social Software ]

Hey, you know those US Attorneys who were fired for allegedly "underperforming"? Yeah, one of the ones that the Bush Administration thinks is competent (which, as we've noted before, may just mean loyal to Bush (presumably over the law or the Constitution)) just cost the U.S. government a hundred million bucks.. The judge in the case is apologetic:

"I've come to the conclusion, very reluctantly, that I have no authority to order restitution," Friedman said. "I hope the government will appeal me."

but the plea bargain papers noted the wrong statute.

[ related topics: Politics moron Law Civil Liberties ]

Hey, anyone out there got suggestions for a simple example based intro to LDAP? I just want to set up an LDAP server with a couple of users in it that various applications (Scarab, Crucible, FishEye, a few Apache protected files...) can talk to for authentication. I don't want to have to try to figure out what "sn: and "cn:" means, I just want a simple sample "ldif" file into which I can stuff a multi-word user name (ie: "Dan Lyke"), a user login id ("danlyke") and a password, run ldapadd on it, and know that I've got a reasonable chance of success of logging in if I point one of those apps to my LDAP server.

Hey, remember that the Bush appointee to head the Office of Family Planning was an anti-contraception wacko? Eric Keroack has resigned as head of the Health and Human Services Office of Population Affairs:

"Yesterday, Dr. Eric Keroack alerted us to an action taken against him by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Office of Medicaid. As a result of this action I accepted his resignation," Dr. John Agwunobi, assistant secretary for health, said in a terse statement Thursday evening.

Alerted to this by a NARAL news blurb

[ related topics: Politics Health Sociology Current Events Archival ]