Flutterby™! From 2009-04-01 to 2009-04-30

S.F. teachers urged to emulate Jimi Hendrix:

"Remember the first time you heard Jimi Hendrix?" reads the cover of the district's new 51-page education guide. "Our plan is as transformational now as his music was then!"

Given that Hendrix died of an OD at 27, maybe this is a way to keep the staff fresh and not have to worry about paying out for those pesky pensions?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Music Invention and Design Bay Area Education Douglas Adams ]

Copyranter has an ad from 1965, Raquel Welch pushing a product called "Wate-On", with the headline "I Can't Afford To Be SKINNY!":

"Often we skip lunch and dinner and so, often I rely on Wate-On Emulsions and Tablets...for their weight sustaining calories."

Snicker: New Archie McPhee Service: Blogging and Twitter explained to parents:

Have you given up trying to get your parents to understand your blog, let alone Twitter and Facebook? We're here to help. Hire us, and we'll have a patient ten year old call your parents and explain the intricacies of social networking and micro-blogging to them. ...

And you may have noticed that I'm now mirroring my Face/Twit/Identi.ca/whatever status updates here. I'll probably be judicious, specific @replies and such won't go here, and I plan on splitting this stuff out to separate RSS feeds over on Flutterby.net when I get that stuff written.

[ related topics: Humor Weblogs Net Culture ]

Sean pointed out Netcraft: Deluge of Browser Security Issues Drives Mass Migration:

Netcraft has observed a surge in popularity of the Lynx browser, particularly since the recent Pwn2Own competition, which was held at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver last month. During the course of the competition, security researchers once again exposed fresh vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

Sean asked

I wonder why people are choosing Lynx over Links ( http://links.sourceforge.net/ ).

I have both those browsers installed on my laptop, and I use Lynx 'cause the interface is cleaner, and because the majority of tables on web sites are used for layout that's superfluous. And because my fingers know the Lynx keystrokes, and I have trouble doing the simple stuff I want to do in Links.

[ related topics: Web development Current Events Net Culture Graphic Design ]

Wrong Tomorrow, attempting to build a database of predictions in order to hold pundits to their prognostications.

[ related topics: Databases Economics ]

Area 404, the best of web page not found error messages.

Via ThinkGeek:

Squeez Bacon® is simply the tastiest bacon food product ever made. Did you know that it's rumored ABBA met while eating Squeez Bacon® sandwiches? And even IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad (we've heard) never travels without a case! He loves it on his American style meatballs. Ojojoj!

[ related topics: Food Law Food - Bacon ]

Two interesting ones from Sociological Images. The most recent points to "The Female ... Parts" graphic in this Onion article, but proving that satire is dead, points back to this earlier entry highlighting a disturbing ad for an internet service that promises to filter out "inappropriate content".

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Net Culture Physiology ]

Follow up to my urban hacking notes on trying to make Petaluma data re-purpose-able. The city uses Accela to track building permits. The forms that Accela uses are largely JavaScripted, but a little judicious use of Wireshark and WWW::Mechanize and I managed to make it give up some secrets. No guarantees that these links will stick around for long, but...

If you pull up a page that allows you to overlay GeoRSS, such as http://googlemapsapi.blogspot....rss-support-added-to-google.html or http://openlayers.com/dev/examples/georss.html , you can paste in

http://www.flutterby.net/petaluma/buildingpermits.rss

to their source, and go browse the last two day's building permits on a map.

No cron job is keeping that updated right now, there's lots that could be fixed, bla bla bla, that's just a quick and dirty "hey, if you made it easier for us to get to the data..." demo.

[ related topics: Content Management Maps and Mapping Databases ]

Dan: Silly Q: Water mains at 95PSI, house could run at 35. How much energy could we extract from daily water use?

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

Massachusetts State Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein (D) is attempting to criminalize nude photos of anyone over 60. Marti Klein and Marc Randazza say most of what I would.

[ related topics: Politics Photography Sexual Culture moron Nudity Current Events ]

Dan: The nice thing about the Obama approach to the economy is that, after 8 years, it's okay to hate Democrats again.

[ related topics: Economics ]

I'd appreciate it if anyone with a second set of eyes and a little JavaScript experience can tell me why the Google Map embedded in http://www.flutterby.net/Petaluma isn't displaying the GeoRSS feed layer. Thanks.

Never mind, found it, bad API version specification.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Robotics Embedded Devices Maps and Mapping ]

Princeton philosopher Peter Singer has had a few mentions here. I thought I'd written up a review of the one book of his I read a few years ago, which I thought could have been read as satire; it wasn't so much a set of arguments that made sense as it was discussion which showed how loopy his premises were (even though, presented on their own, most people would happily adopt them).

Anyway, included here mostly for completeness, Philip Greenspun looks at the silliness of Singer's latest screed, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty.

[ related topics: Books Community Philosophy ]

Twit of the moment, in response to Barack Obama's statements to the bankers:

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Igor wrote:

Yes we can

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Leaving Fairfax at 9 for a ride up Mt. Tam via Alpine Dam. Anyone else want a climb-fest with a killer descent? Show up.

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

Today's ride was leisurely. Stayed within 10MPH of the speed limit. Mostly.

YouTube video: How to make a solar cell with powdered sugar donuts and tea. Turns out powdered sugar donuts use a lot of titanium dioxide to get that whiteness, and with that and a little bit of ingenuity you can make thin film solar cells. Via MarkV's 3,000th post over at Brainwagon.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Video Photovoltaics ]

Why GM is in trouble: GM and Segway unveil collaboration with two-person... uh... something.

[ related topics: Automobiles Segway/Ginger/IT ]

It seems like the basic problem with this economic crisis is that the finance guys are all telling us that there's a crisis, but none of them really seem to be taking it seriously. They're leaving it to the politicians, who are just throwing money at the finance guys. Obviously, there's nothing personal at stake here.

There's a scene in one of the episodes of "Firefly", "The Train Job", in which the Firefly crew are backing out of a deal. They have the bad guys tied up, there's a hatch opened, the engines are running outside. Captain Mal starts this long speech: "Now, this is all the money Niska gave us in advance. You bring it back to him. Tell him the job didn't work out. We're not thieves. But we are thieves. Point is, we're not takin' what's his. Now we'll stay out of his way as best we can from here on in. You explain that's best for everyone, okay?"

Bad guy #1 defiantly replies "Keep the money. Use it to buy a funeral. It doesn't matter where you go or how far you fly. I will hunt you down, and the last thing you see will be my blade."

Mal shrugs, says "Darn", extends a foot and pushes the bad guy out the hatch where he's sucked into the engine intake. Mal turns to bad guy #2 and starts the same speech: "Now, this is all the money Niska gave us in advance..."

Bad guy #2 interrupts with "Oh, I get it! I'm good. Best thing for everyone. I'm right there with ya."

If Obama wants to live up to the campaign rhetoric, I think a similar scenario involving Marine One and the various muckety-mucks in the Treasury Department would do wonders for his approval ratings. I'm a big fan of the justice system and all, but the previous President softened me up to the notion Executive Privilege; you know, sometimes the leader just has to be the deciderer.

[ related topics: Politics Machinery Economics Joss Whedon - Serenity / Firefly ]

I've written some code to manage Flutterby.net, and in the process started using Perl's Moose and Mouse object packages. I'm totally in love, this makes Perl a reasonable OO language, pretty much takes away all of the advantages I thought Python had.

Except that I don't see the details of how to do introspection, which I can mostly work around, but... Is there a Moose/Mouse capable database system that'd deal with object persistence easily?

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Work, productivity and environment Monty Python Databases Python ]

The Speech Newspapers Need to Hear

"The best thing some of you can do is get out of the way and make room for the next generation "

seekingalpha.com has become one of my favorite sites - they allow unknown authors to contribute and its a mix of ideas. Here they discuss how the newspapers had 20 years to adapt and they didn't and now they are angry.

Went to the latest meeting of the Sonoma County Woodworker Association, this meeting was hosted by Craig Collins at West County Design, and he showed us around his showroom (nice furniture, also some interesting concrete surfaces from Bohemian Stoneworks), and then around his shop and some of his current challenges, including a set of (14?) chairs, with some good insight into his design and development process, and a walnut table with some fairly complex joinery in the curved legs. Definitely worth a visit if you're out near Valley Ford, and I need to just get to every one of these meetings because the two I've been to so far have had great presentations, and there's always good discussion.

Craig also mentioned (raved about) the Bodega Bay Fishermen's Festival Wooden Boat Challenge, and this seems like one of those things that simply must be done. Teams of 4 people, 2 sheets of 3/8"x4'x8' CDX, 2 2"x2"s, a handful of 1x2s, a box of deck screws, a bag of nails, ductape, caulk, rope, a sheet of plastic, and 3 hours. Only power tool allowed is a drill/screwdriver, which would make things more difficult for my shop, but I think this could be justification for replacing the cross-cut saw I destroyed when I didn't realize there was a layer of concrete under the tile counter top in the kitchen that I was reworking...

So I need to find 3 other people in my area interested in this sort of silliness. Apparently at race time it ends up bifurcated into two groups, the square ended ones (ie: folks who are happy to get their "boats" to float) and the pointy ones, and one of the square ended ones won this year because they start first (which means passing difficulties) and have an abbreviated course. Craig commented that, once you got the boat to float, a good portion of the competition was on the strength of your propulsion. Without actually having seen how the field lays out, seems like a time to take advantage of that "square root of the waterline" thing, an open kayak or C2, 16 feet long with minimal rocker, using the 2"x2"s for paddle shafts seems like the thing.

[ related topics: Bay Area Boats Fabrication Furniture Woodworking ]

When I first moved to Chattanooga from Connecticut, the line was that Tennessee was roughly 15 years behind the northeast. Now the guys at FiveThirtyEight.com look at Gallup Tracking surveys on gay marriage issues to try to predict when each state will vote against a gay marriage ban, and it looks like Tennessee is catching up: The trend is that they're only 12 years behind the New England states, 11 behind California's expected behavior.

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture Chattanooga Marriage ]

Almost exactly coincident with my hacking my status update script to post to Flutterby along with Facebook and Twitter, I started finding my Twitter feed to be too spammerific to follow. I've started unsubscribing people, if you're one of those folks and actuallyu read here, my apologies, but if you read Flutterby I probably already read your blog feed anyway, and you were probably just posting to Twitter what was happening there.

Twitter at its most useful seemed like a slow IRC snark between a few interesting people. Then it became some sort of re-tweet (sorry, "RT:") fest, with TinyURLed links that didn't have enough context to tell if I'd either read them before or would be interested in them, or blatant spam. Waaaaay too many content-less "how to promote yourself" (on Twitter, no less) articles.

I think there may be something useful in the basic concept, I'm still watching the feeds of a few folks, similarly for Facebook, but that sense of "oh, look, this is kind of clubby like the early days of weblogging" is gone. Updates that mirrored here weren't really working anyway, I'll probably drop them into something monthly on Flutterby.net for posterity (yes, I have a few RSS feeds working there, kind-of), but I'm starting to get way too many people trying to follow me who are just trying to sell their product, and with whom I've no idea if I want to create a relationship (And I'm not sure how many more vendors I can afford a good relationship with, Rockler's already suckered me into a few daily specials I probably should have held off on...).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Content Management Weblogs Spam Work, productivity and environment Monty Python ]

For Jeff: Cleantech Blog reports on the first all electric 24 hour endurance motocross race.

[ related topics: Automobiles Cool Technology ]

From the Huffington Post: "John McEnroe Ponders His Prostate".

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

Bob Quick, Britain's most senior counterterrorism officer, forced to resign after carrying a secret document in plain sight where it was revealed when he was photographed by the press, causing a set of raids to have to be executed early. Remember John Deutch and his bungling with the CIA? Looks like Britain one-upped us.

Elin Roberts, researcher at Newcastle University's Centre for Life, claims bacon sandwiches are a hangover cure. Is there anything bacon doesn't do?

[ related topics: Education Food - Bacon ]

Charlene and I have been keeping track of a film that was, during production, called Winston, and is now called Touching Home. It was written and directed by twins who grew up out in the San Geronimo valley, and we hung out and watched 'em shoot when they were filming in Forest Knolls and Fairfax.

Today's IJ has an article on the Miller brothers talking about Touching Home at Novato High, and mentions that they'll be at Book Passage on May 5^th, and will be showing the film at a big event in San Francisco on June 6^th.

They've also got a book coming out, we've already got it on order, but we'll probably end up buying another copy to get the tickets to this event. More at InOrInTheWay.com.

[ related topics: Books Movies Bay Area Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Beer California Culture Archival Winston ]

Just a few random that I think deserve notice:

• Debra Hyde asks "What if you threw a culture war and no one came?", while musing on the amusing aspects of conservative... uh... teabagging. Too bad someone else got there first for that word.
• Columbine has been at the fiction recently, there's a fun conversation in a diner and a re-imagining of James Bond.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology ]

The good news: The New York Times titled it Crisis Altering Wall St. As Stars Begin to Scatter, but I think John Robb's "Talented grifters leave the big banks for new scams" is a better headline.

The bad news: Obama's State Secrets Overreach, via Medley and via RC3. And if you haven't been following the ways in which the Obama administration is following the worst excesses of the Bush years of legal overreach, well... maybe I should be linking to more of that here.

[ related topics: Politics Law Current Events Economics ]

Marilyn Chambers, porn star and one-time Ivory Snow model, dead at 56 of unknown causes. A report of Chambers' arrest on February 1, 1985 at the O'Farrell theater:

The bust was a disaster. So many jailhouse officers posed for snapshots with the actress that it delayed her release. Then the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Even worse, when then--Chronicle columnist Warren Hinckle ridiculed the city's war on smut, the police arrested him too, 12 days later. The charge: walking his basset hound without a leash.

New York Times: Keeping Up With Being Kept, looks at sugar daddy relationships in the context of SeekingArrangement.com, with some interesting notes on power and economics in relationships.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture History Law Enforcement Economics ]

Giggle The Onion: Study: Children Exposed To Pornography May Expect Sex To Be Enjoyable (video). Via Chris and via Marty Klein, and a number of other places.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Humor Sexual Culture Video ]

Aha! Every once in a while being on the porn PR mailing lists gives me a good giggle: Twitter grows by 9¾ Inches

[ related topics: Humor Erotic ]

One of the things I've hacked together recently is a little Perl script that searches through Petaluma's Accela Citizen Access database, extracts recent building permits, geocodes them, and outputs them to a GeoRSS feed for inclusion into various online map services.

It's kind of a proof of concept for ways to re-think how Petaluma is approaching its data publishing. There are strong and weak reasons why raw data isn't getting published right now, and I'd like to find ways to build up citizen created applications around information that the city has so that we can set up a symbiotic ecosystem for publishing data and interpreting it.

So I've started to pay attention to geography stuff, especially where geocoding services or map data is available for free for inclusion into such apps. This Where 2.0 Preview - Tyler Bell on Yahoo's Open Location Project looks like it might have some interesting leads, even though it starts out with the wonderfully ignorant:

Location can be a vague concept to pin down. To a surveyor, location means latitude and longitude accurate to a few millimeters ...

Thanks to experiences with GPS accuracy and talking with Eric, I've found that I can gain tremendous credibility with people who locate stuff for a living if I acknowledge that latitude and longitude are generally not the primary way location gets described. Especially to surveyors (one of the fun comments out of a recent meeting was "surveyors never tell you where something is, they issue an opinion..."). Luckily, Tyler Bell, the subject of the interview, seems better informed.

Bonus link: Aaron talks about Python, maps, clustering Flickr apps, and Amazon EC2, which includes this great quote from John Allspaw:

You know what is ASTRONOMICALLY FUCKING EXPENSIVE? Leaving an EC2 instance running for two weeks doing nothing, by mistake.

Careful with your cloud computing, folks.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Maps and Mapping Databases Python ]

I've mentioned that I've started to get interested in hacking on government data. Charlene and I did some graphs from various historical Federal and State data a few months back, but government at that level is something I don't much have the patience for. Too much boneheaded appeasement for me to get excited about playing those games. The local level, though, seems like something I can enjoy playing with as a hobby.

So I've started to talk to folks in and around the city government, and, for the most part, I'm being met with tremendous enthusiasm. Everyone wants to see more citizen involvement, most of the data is supposed to be public, but no one uses it, and the idea that any of this stuff would become valuable, rather than just filed away for the archives, is exciting. They're already doing what they can to pull disparate departments together and get them all on common databases, and then share that stuff with the world. They have an application that allows looking at the various GIS data. They broadcast meetings of the various councils and advisory councils. However, they're having a hell of a time justifying all this stuff that feels pretty core to the notion of open governments when only a few citizens actually take advantage of this stuff. The only time anyone cares is when issues get all NIMBY, and though they won't actually say it, I'm guessing that's the same fifteen people each time.

Here's the problem: I need to find a couple of other hackers who'd like to figure out ways to do interesting and educational things with city data. I'd like to find ways to create an open source sort of approach to evaluating and reporting city information so that we can transcend the limited ways that the local paper gives us "news", so that we can go back to original sources, and so that we have a better dialog among the residents (because the level of discours on the local paper's forums is pretty weak).

So I'm trying to figure out how to put together a "government data user's group", and publicize it. I'd like to keep this a group interested in data more than issues, I don't want yet another group of "progressives" or "patriots" trying to control the discussion by talking louder or asserting things that don't stand up to research. I'd like to find applications, users of those applications, and people to implement them, that could be more than a novelty.

Any suggestions on how to write the flyer and how to publicize the call?

[ related topics: Open Source Current Events Community Databases ]

Philippe Petit plans wire walk in undisclosed midtown Manhattan location.

If you haven't seen Man on Wire yet, do.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Tweet of yesterday, Eric Wagoner:

How about instead of waving teabags you buy local food, patronize local businesses, and bank with hometown banks. They don't get bailouts.

[ related topics: Food ]

Not sure how I feel about Jason Calacanis: We Live in Public (and the end of empathy) (hat tip). On the one hand he's got some interesting notes on the interface between public and private, especially as it relates to weblogs and social networking sites, on the other hand, his notes on the breakdown of empathy seem to me to be mostly about people trying to build one-sided relationships with a broad public by being exhibitionist.

I think I've been pretty "out there" on Flutterby, but I think my relationships with the people who participate here are stronger because of it. I think I've been careful to not be an attention whore, props to TC for showing us what that meant when we had the ill-fated second hit on "French Military Victories", and I think the generally "private is public" stance here has served me well.

So, to view his message differently: Maybe the scorn he describes is a result of the subjects assuming that those relationships are one-sided.

[ related topics: Weblogs Theater & Plays ]

Inside the 4chan hack of the Time 100 poll, or is this just a put-on based on interesting results?

There's a proposal running around to get San Francisco into the business of selling medical marijuana. Here's an article:

"The mayor will have to hash this out with public health officials," press secretary Nathan Ballard said. "It's the mayor's job to weed out bad legislation. And to be blunt, this sounds pretty bad."

Giggle.

[ related topics: Drugs Humor Bay Area California Culture ]

I have exactly ONE thing I need to have Java 1.6 working in a web browser for, as a virtual KVM for a nice server. Using Firefox and Ubuntu 8.10 on a brand new laptop. It works on my desktop and other laptop, they have older versions of the JRE already installed. Java "changed" there is no longer a "sun-java6-plugin" and manually linking the files into the /plugins directory has not worked. I just started to download the IBM version of Java 6. Can in be worse? Filled out lots of forms, that won't accept my work e-mail address because it's mike.harrison@.. and I died laughing when I trued to download the .tgz file because it uses some funky Java downloader, which required Java... Which is what I was trying to install. I found the plain http download link, and am waiting for the download to finish. ps: I own: mysticjava.coom and mysticjavacafe.com which are for sale, but I am so tempted to make them into a "yet another java sucks" website.

[ related topics: Spam Invention and Design Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Java ]

The ACLU has published the Bush administration's Office of Legal Council secret memos ("the torture memos"). If your stomach can't handle the details, Glenn Greenwald has the high level view, including calling out this paragraph:

State Department Reports. Each year, in the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the United States condemns coercive interrogation techniques and other practices employed by other countries. Certain of the techniques the United States has condemned appear to bear som resemblace to some of the CIA interrogation techniques. In their discussion of Indonesia, for example, the reports list as "[p]sychological torture" conduct that involves "food and sleep deprivation," but give no specifig information as to what these techniques involve. In their discussion of Egypt, the reports list as "methods of torture" "stripping and blindfolding victims; suspending victims from ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor; beating victims [with various objects]; ... and dousing victims with cold water." See also, e.g., Algeria (describing the "chiffon" method, which involves "placing a rag drenched in dirty water in someone's mouth"); Iran (counting sleep deprivation as either torture or severe prisoner abuse); Syria (discussing sleep deprivation and 'having cold water thrown on" detainees as either torture or "ill-treetment"). The State Department's inclusion of nudity, water dousing, sleep deprivation, and food deprivation among the conduct it condemns is significant and provides some indication of an executive foreign relations tradition condemning the use of these techniques.

Remember, these are things that our State Department has been calling torture, but the Bush administration condoned it, and the Obama administration has said:

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.

Maybe we don't prosecute those who "were only following orders", but can we prosecute some of the DOJ folks who put 'em up to it?

[ related topics: Politics Nudity Law Civil Liberties Salon magazine ]

The Marin IJ proposes slogans for various Marin towns

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

One of the things that's a struggle with capitalism as it's commonly touted is environmental issues. I think that if we could properly account for environmental costs, and bill them where they're "spent" rather than allowing them to be deferred, a whole lot of that problem would go away.

Here's one: Health risks of shipping pollution have been 'underestimated', one container ship emits approximately the same amount of sulphur oxide gases as 50 million cars.

Billing that environmental cost appropriately might even do a bit to iron out the various trade imbalances that currently plague our economy.

[ related topics: Health Nature and environment Machinery Economics ]

I normally don't get to geek out very much any more, but between the machining and the fact that this is a wall-e case mod, it fascinated me flipping through 19 pages of this person's process. Sorry about the Russian, but the pictures really say it all.

[ related topics: Photography Law ]

Busy day with lots of stuff happening in the back yard, moved the bike shed, including some snazzy diagonal cut doors to try to match the existing motif, and moving and restacking the entire lumber stash: Damn we've got a lot of really nice wood.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bicycling Woodworking ]

Yesterday morning I met Dave (Who's just been nominated for an Emmy, potentially his 4th) down at a pull-out beside Nicasio Reservoir, and we rode down the hill by the dam, along the beautiful Platform Bridge Road, up over the Olema ridge on Sir Francis Drake (where I saw the remains of a big chunk of red oak countertop, that I went back for later, quite a bit of project wood in that), and then up over the coastal ridge to Limantour. This side of that road is just a nice prolonged climb, the other side is a set of steep descending rollers, up to 17%, and I kept it (just) under 45MPH (25MPH speed limit) because that's what my nerves could handle.

Gonna have to do that one more often, we left the turn-out at 8:30, made a stop at Bovine Bakery, and were back at the car before noon. And that climb back up those steep rollers from the beach to the ridge is one hell of a workout, especially since Dave's got a compact crank and I don't.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Bicycling Woodworking ]

Festo autonomous robotic penguins, part of the Festo Bionic Learning Network. (Via SE)

[ related topics: Robotics Education Video Festool ]

YouTube video: Inspired Bicycles - Danny MacAskill April 2009, filmed in (and around) Edinburgh by Dave Sowerby. The Mefi entry calls it "Bike Parkour", and indeed. I'm not sure if it's inspiring, or just jaw-dropping amazing. Trials riding taken to... well beyond... the next level.

[ related topics: Video Bicycling Parkour ]

Paper invites going out to a whole bunch of you for whom I have addresses, but I know I've missed some people, and we're up for meeting new people!

Charlene and I met on Memorial Day Weekend of 1999. Seems like the tenth anniversary of that is a good time for a shindig! So, Sunday May 24^th at 2PM 'til whenever, we're going to have a celebration of our partnership, the house, and a general party at our place. RSVPs would be appreciated so we can plan food (and maybe figure out alternate plans if it looks like we're going to have more than 50 or 60 people, which is possible).

And if you can't make that weekend that's okay, we like visitors at other times too.

Ages ago my Dad forwarded an email of "reasons why men die younger than women". Another example: How to inflate a tire on your 4x4 using spray starter fluid and a match. Via Kottke

[ related topics: Cool Science moron Video ]

Okay, got some older PDF files that are scans of paper documents. Tried:

convert /home/danlyke/Desktop/fund-summaries-part-1-thru-s-68.pdf fundsummaries.pnm

gocr fundsummaries.pnm

and got some leet speak-ish text out of it, but nothing great. Anyone done this?

Charlene and I are once again at the end of our contracts and looking at new cell phones. I don't IM, I'm not following anyone Twittering "let's get together" information enough for that to matter, my iPhone toting buddies generally love their phones, but I hear things like "no, I don't carry my phone on the bike, I'm afraid I'll damage it", and "If I actually entered text, I'd get a Blackberry instead".

The only toy features I can really see wanting are a decent camera, though I usually carry a Canon G9 anyway, and I think it'd be cool to be able to regularly download GPS tracks of where I've been (automatically sync with the camera images, for instance).

I see that AccuTracking will do that for $10/month, EfficaSoft might do it. Any other "must have" features, or is a cell phone still a cell phone and we should just upgrade one phone from this stupid LG and keep the Nokia that works fairly well?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Photography Invention and Design Maps and Mapping Bicycling iPhone ]

"Spokane to detonate squirrels ..."

The Rodenator Pro pumps propane and oxygen into the tunnels of squirrels, then sends an electric spark that causes an explosion. The shock waves kill the squirrels and collapse their tunnels - but in a humane way, the agency said.

Via JWZ, who pointed to video of the Rodenator Pro in action. The Rodenator home page proudly proclaims "as heard on the Rush Limbaugh Show", and I thought "yeah, that seems totally like the right demographic".

[ related topics: Nature and environment Video ]

This one's for Debra Hyde: The Dirty Secret of a Legendary Rare Book. The Seven Minutes by Irving Wallace was published in 1969, a novel about an obscenity trial concerning a fictitious book by a fictitious author. Another publisher got advance notice of this, and published said fictitious book.

Girodias was ordered to destroy all 150,000 copies of the book's print run. In practical terms this was done by tearing off the front covers to provide proof and pulping the now defaced books.

Thus this book, with it's great backstory, has become one of the most rare and desirable books in all of erotic literature.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Books Erotic ]

YouTube video of a portable tablesaw made with a Festool saw and an MFT-3. Via TalkFestool, where it was pointed out that some of his safety procedures were a little lax.

[ related topics: Fabrication Video Woodworking Festool ]

Just a shout-out to Taylor at Fruit in Hand for his awesome work on our back yard. Late last week we were looking at renting equipment and figuring out the right thing to do to pull the beds into something reasonable and I started wondering if, after all the hoop jumping, it wasn't just the right thing to do to hire someone to take care of bed prep. We were initially thinking of hiring a few day laborers, but we've had two friends recently who... had some issues, so we looked around for a more rooted experience and got Taylor and his cousin, who arrived this morning with a truck full of compost and a tiller and made quick work of the back yard, and were not only knowledgeable about planting and growing things, were willing to take the book on biointensive gardening that Charlene had been reading and rework their procedures to match (though they didn't have to change much).

They're wanting to do general garden management, but they did great work just getting us set up. Recommended if you're in the Petaluma area.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Gardening ]

I'm looking for a beater pickup. We're getting the Jetta Sportwagen TDI for Charlene, and that'll be her commuter and our road trip car, and since I don't drive much other than road trips it'd be great to have something to, for instance, drag loads of manure or rental equipment or lumber around in. So I'm watching Craigslist North Bay Cars & Trucks by owner to get a feel for what's out there, and maybe jump on something.

The first thing to which I should not succumb is the lure of the classic. The most awesome was a 1929 (I think) Model T truck, done up in white (clearly not the original paint), but I could repair it, or at least the wheels and a good portion of the frame, in the wood shop, and it's not like we need to get to the dump quickly. Also in there are all the '50s trucks that run, their owners like to advertise that they'll do 60 on the highway, some of them even have 4 speed transmissions! My neighbor has such a beast that he uses for utility work (and his daughter has one that she's using as a platform for building a camper), and I keep thinking "a little wire brush work, about 20 cans of Krylon and...", but: no.

The second temptation are the cars that it'd be cool to have, from the old T-birds to an '80s 528e for dirt cheap; I loved the one I once had, get the engine rebuilt and... well... the old ones would be just for show, we don't have the garage space, and the 20 year olds can't really be insured for what they're worth to me, and what the hell am I doing I don't need another car anyway?

The puzzlers are things like the red '04 Ford F-150 that keeps showing up for $4k, but each time from a different location and with a slightly different description. Makes me wonder what the scam is, but not enough to run it to ground. Anyone else know? Is this as simple as a "lure people into a meeting and mug 'em for cash"?

[ related topics: Automobiles Woodworking ]

Here's an interesting look at how governments lose their way and become oppressive: Reducing street sweeping in San Francisco is costing the city money:

"Why would we save $1 million to lose more than $3 million?" asked Supervisor David Campos, noting that the city also raised parking fines from $40 to $50 in August to make more money.

Because with less street sweeping the city is writing less tickets to cars parked on the street during street sweeping times. While I like clean streets (and appreciate the street sweeping schedule in Petaluma), it sure seems like Mr. Campos is only a few steps away from implementing some sort of municipal "Simon Says" in order to raise money

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Civil Liberties ]

Howl! In response to the safety concerns in that video of the home-made Festool tablesaw that I linked to, my Dad sent along this FineWoodworking blog entry which embeds a YouTube video of a guy who's restoring an old tablesaw and doesn't yet have a starting capacitor. Starts a little slow, so you can skip forward to where he's putting the bucket of sand on the 2x4...

(No, no blood and gore in the video, it's just a little Rube Goldberg)

And, to all those 'net commenters who are denigrating the guy's safety techniques, yea, no hearing protection is kinda silly, and using the fence with the push sled... well..., but in terms of filming that startup sequence, I'm still trying to get the cojones to film the last kickback I got on the router table as an educational experience. I know where the wood's going to go, my fingers would be well clear 'cause of the push sticks, and I think the video would be very instructive (the setup seemed like the obvious way to do the cut and the results surprised the hell out of me). This guy's just entertaining and educating us.

And, yes, I say this as the guy who once suggested to my Dad that rather than asking me to run all the way to the basement to throw the breakers he should just short the circuit... And my Dad did.

[ related topics: Humor Video Woodworking ]

David Steinberg muses on a Laura Berman appearance on Oprah:

Berman's basic argument was that it's important for teenage girls to learn that they have the power to give themselves the wonderful experience of orgasm, rather than thinking they need to go to boys (or other girls) for that kind of pleasure, or confusing the thrill of their first orgasm with being madly in love with whoever happens to be their sexual partner at that special moment. Berman went so far as to recommend that mothers buy vibrators for their daughters to help them get the most out of their self-pleasuring experiences and discoveries.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture ]

So nothing ever happens in Mayberry eh?

Source

[ related topics: Movies Chattanooga ]

Busy weekend. New sod in the back yard

Butter & Eggs Day, including the parade

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And, among other things today, finally installed the interim shelf for the office, I figure it'll be there a year or two before I finally get around to the built-ins. Assorted plywoods, laminated curved maple front edge that taught me a whole lot about laminating, and that if you're gluing laminated curves, you don't have enough clamps.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Nature and environment Invention and Design ]

Sociological Images: Have you stopped killing your spouse? is a repost of the same entry over at Montclair SocioBlog, a look at the USDOJ statistics on "intimate homicide".

In the 1970s, almost as many men were killed by their wives as women were killed by their husbands. Both numbers have gone down, but the number of women killed by their husbands has only gone down a little bit, the number of men killed by their wives has dropped amazingly. Interesting, as I scroll down that page a bit, it looks like the vast majority of the drop has been with black men as victims.

[ related topics: Mathematics Marriage ]

Ask MeFi: Crimes committed by Ferris Bueller (and his friends) during his Day off:

I'm actually planning an attorney training event about how to handle juvenile criminal record expungement cases, so I need some adorable and sympathetic examples of teenage crime. After all, if Ferris (and his friends) had been successfully prosecuted for all the things they did it would have been such a tragedy.

And the MeFites rise to the task, with statute cites and everything.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law ]

Jonathan Cantin wrote that Mannatech was selling overpriced sugar pills and that Mannatech is selling holy water and now Mannatech has sent him a cease & desist letter.

It's just the usual lawyers blustering and hoping you won't read it closely silliness, but I thought he needed a little search engine juice.

Reading this guy's code comments reminds me of working with meuon. Instead of verbalizing his opinion though, this guy actually comments his code with it.

[ related topics: Quotes Macintosh Philosophy ]

http://shouldibeworriedaboutswineflu.com/

I really appreciate the youthful enthusiasm the Obama administration has brought to the Federal Government. But, for the sake of all things progressive, please stop these sophomoric acts... You want a photo of Air Force One with the Statue of Liberty in the background? Ever hear of Photoshop?!? I mean, the movie industry can mock up aliens and spacecraft that look pretty darned real. Photoshoping airplanes in flight is probably one of easiest tricks to pull off. I bet it would take any half-decent graphic artist maybe two hours of billable time. Which I bet is a heck of a lot cheaper than what it costs to launch Air Force One - not to mention two fighter escorts - or the cost of panicking Manhattan and shutting down hundreds of businesses!

[ related topics: Photography Movies Aviation moron Space & Astronomy Art & Culture ]

Snicker. I should add "Escalade" to my Craigslist search RSS feeds just for the LOLs. Not linked, 'cause it'll disappear anyway, but an ad for a 2002 Escalade with 14k miles and 18" subwoofers contains text like:

... it's my uncles he got locked up and he has to do 10 more years so it has to go we need the money to pay bills. He put more then $10,000 dollars in just the sound system it was all installed at Cartronics...

but the sound system's batteries or somesuch have rundown and it needs $1.5k to get them running again. Don't that just reinforce every stereotype about Cadillac Escalade drivers imaginable?

[ related topics: Humor Automobiles ]

In Victorville California they are winding the clock backwards...

Tearing down new houses because?

[ related topics: Invention and Design California Culture Real Estate ]

I've got to go play with the Chattanooga Chamber and regional mucky-mucks todays. UtiliFlex was nominated for a Kruesi award. Funny, we have to buy our own lunch, for a table (8x50). It is yet another Chamber revenue creation event. HTS/COL used to belong to the local Chamber. and then the "pro-local-business" chamber supported the then Mayor in an attempt to take over the local water company. I took my membership plaque back to the Chamber in person and raised quite a stink about it. Later, they supoprted the City ala EPB into competing against private business for phone, internet and cable TV... Once upon a time, I thought things like the "Chamber" were important, they probably are still are in some ways, but not the ways they used to be. Still, it's ironic and just a little funny. I'll try to behave today. I promise.

[ related topics: Business Chattanooga Conspiracy ]

Large sections directly quoted because it's a press release and I can do that: "Cannabis Science Inc. Reports on Prospective Life Saving Treatments for H1N1 Swine Flu and H5N1 Bird Flu in View of the Current Global Threat":

SAN FRANCISCO, Apr 27, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Cannabis Science Inc. (GFON 1.30, +0.05, +4.0%) , an emerging pharmaceutical cannabis company, reported today on the current state of development of its whole-cannabis lozenge in response to Homeland Security Administration Secretary Janet Napolitano's declaration of a public health emergency to deal with the emerging Swine Flu pandemic. The Company's non-toxic lozenge has properties that could alleviate many of the symptoms and harmful effects of the H5N1 bird flu and H1N1 swine flu viruses, and has offered its assistance to HSA today in a letter to Secretary Napolitano. The Company has offered to produce up to 1 million doses of its whole-cannabis lozenge, and provide them to HSA for distribution at cost.

Dude! Doooood.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Bay Area Current Events ]

Karmasheetra, like Twister, but more so, and in convenient bed sheet form.

[ related topics: Erotic Furniture ]

New York Magazine: Jonathan Van Meter writes about Gay Talese and Nan A. Talese in the context of Gay's upcoming book on their marriage. You, of course, remember Gay Talese from his 1980 participatory chronicle of swinger culture of the '70s Thy Neighbor's Wife, and Nan A. Talese has her own imprint at Random House with a number of well-known writers.

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture Sociology Writing New York Marriage Real Estate ]

Giggle. Cracked: If everything was made by Microsoft.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron ]

Every once in a while I think "maybe it'd be fun to ride in a race", and then... Video of a bicycle crash in the Wente Criterium in Livermore. The commentary has some good things to remember when riding in groups, especially since (and I'm trying to avoid spoilers) the circumstances of the camera bike going down were rather incidental to the main crash. Via.

[ related topics: Photography Pedal Power Video Bicycling ]

Copyranter has pictures of an amusing Museum of Sex blowjob balloon promotion, taken from Direct Daily's posting of a full-sized mailer from MoSex.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Art & Culture ]

I've been liking coding in Perl with Moose, but KiokuDB seemed like a damned lot of complexity for a distinct lack of usability and there didn't seem to be other options that worked easily. I just want something to toss objects into and pull 'em from an SQL database that I can use from other contexts and write SQL to query (or write your create statements separately).

Continued in the comments...

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Software Engineering Databases ]