Flutterby™! From 2010-09-01 to 2010-09-30

For the most part, I'm okay with no longer being a river guide. There are things that are fine when we're self-destructive twenty somethings that I'm cool with having grown out of, even if it doesn't mean scaring the crap out of the rookies by surfing Grumpy's, or swimming into Double-Suck when most paddlers are happy just to get through it in their boat. "Yeah, that rapid that scares the hell out of you? I body surf it for fun on Sunday mornings."

There are, however, occasions where I get little twinges of "damn, I wish I were back on the Ocoee" (and willing to take the punishment and in good enough shape to swim the thing), as is the case every time I hear about the Bubble Baba Challenge, because running the Ocoee on an inflatable sex toy would be as badass as body surfing Double-Suck.

Violet Blue has a roundup from this year's race with YouTube video from a participant's perspective.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Robotics Chattanooga Sports Whitewater Video ]

A New Hampshire high school student, Kyle Dubois is suing his shop class teacher, Thomas Kelley, for allowing Mr. Dubois to shock himself:

During class on March 11, Kyle Dubois willingly placed an alligator clamp on one of his nipples while a second student placed one on his other nipple and a third student plugged in a cord providing electricity, sending an approximately three-second jolt through Dubois, police said in a statement following an investigation of the incident.

Uh. Yeah. To be fair, the article mentions that the suit alleges that the teacher egged the kid on, a previous article says more on that:

"There appears to be somewhat of a conflict in terms of what the students are saying and what the teacher has said on the record," O'Connor said. "My job will be to sort out what is the truth."

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

Despite the amount of posting online I do, I'm a bit of a privacy/security nutcase. The difference being what I choose to be private is possibly different from other people. I'm reading a summary of: this that includes: " a new privacy leak in residential wireless ubiquitous computing systems" and "..can observe private activities in the home such as cooking, showering, toileting, and sleeping by eavesdropping on the wireless transmissions of sensors in a home, even when all of the transmissions are encrypted. We call this the Fingerprint and Timing-based Snooping (FATS) attack".

And I had to laugh. It transcends my paranoia by large factors, has a kewl acronym, and my immediate response is: This is part of why mission critical command and control systems should not be wireless. Even minor home area networks and especially security systems. It's really easy to disable them with RF noise.

Walking around with Nancy last night, I joked about what I should have right after 9/11 was started a security consulting company. It's part of what I do now with some clients, but it's more of a perk. If I didn't like my customers and was more predatory consultant-ish, I'd be rich. Makes me think a small RV full of wireless/wired sniffing gear would be a great way to travel and work.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Privacy Invention and Design Food Work, productivity and environment Cryptography ]

I know we have at least one person whose spouse is a hockey fan here. RT @fpaynter:

Hockey's first gonad guard, the Cup: 1874. First helmet: 1974. It only took 100 years to realize that a man's brain is also important.

[ related topics: Sports ]

Violet Blue: Comment Period Now Open on .XXX – Make Your Voice Heard. Here's my letter:

I'm writing in opposition to the Proposed Registry Agreement for the .XXX sTLD by ICM Registry. The .XXX sTLD should be rejected.

• The .xxx TLD is opposed by all potential customers. There is no evidence of support in the adult entertainment industry and community for support of .XXX, despite ICM's assurances.
• The .xxx TLD is opposed by anti-porn religious organizations.
• The .xxx TLD is opposed by thought leaders in the technology and by civil liberties organizations including the ACLU.
• There is no concrete, agreed-upon definition of “adult content.”
• There is a serious concern that .xxx is a slippery slope towards a content ghetto, where regulations, especially outside of the U.S., will push any "offensive" content into a space that's more easily blocked. Even inside the U.S., Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Mark Pryor (D-AR) have introduced legislation to make the use of .XXX compulsory for all web sites that are “harmful to minors.” This phrase has been used in the past to attempt to censor basic health information.
• .XXX raises serious issues around spurious and unsupported TLD’s in regard to the impact of ICANN on rulings on civil and human rights, and ICANN’s role in content-based discrimination.

In light of the above, I object to .XXX and urge ICANN to reject .XXX.

[ related topics: Religion Erotic Sexual Culture Health Free Speech History Political Correctness Space & Astronomy Writing Civil Liberties Community ]

Reddit thread of bad science jokes:

So Helium walks into a bar and orders a beer.

The bartender says, "Sorry, we don't serve noble gases here."

Helium doesn't react.

Further down the thread we find a response from "planetfour":

He He He

Groan. Via.

[ related topics: Weblogs Beer ]

Bjørn Lomborg has decided that there's no more money in being a climate change skeptic, so he's switched sides. Normally I try to hold off on some of the snarkier MeFi threads, but in this case I think it's justified: Via this MetaFilter thread.

[ related topics: Nature and environment moron Global Warming ]

Canon announces that they've built an 8"x8" CMOS sensor

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Sighting Half Dome from Mt Diablo.

[ related topics: Yosemite ]

Remember when we mentioned the Parrot AR.Drone. The Parrot AR Drone iPhone controlled helicopter ships Thursday, $299.

[ related topics: Aviation - Helicopters iPhone ]

Ages ago, Chris had mentioned this documentary, and then SE linked to the Google Video version of Born Rich. A documentary by Jamie Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, about him and his friends coming to grips with their lives. Some interesting soul searching. And some extremely shallow people.

[ related topics: Video ]

N.Y. Times: G.O.P. Recruits Street People to Run on Green Ticket in Arizona. Which really doesn't bother me all that much, because, you know, someone's urging all of those mentally ill people to split the G.O.P. vote with the whole Tea Party thing anyway, seems like politics as usual, no?

“These are people who are not serious and who were recruited as part of a cynical manipulation of the process,” said Paul Eckstein, a lawyer representing the Democrats. “They don’t know Green from red.”

[ related topics: Politics ]

Just a shout-out for the Sonoma County Museum Artistry in Wood show. Charlene and I just got back from the judge's comments evening, some fantastic work there.

[ related topics: Law Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Woodworking ]

Pavlovian conditioning: Classical Conditioning at BGSU (YouTube 1:39) (Via MeFi)

[ related topics: Humor Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Video ]

Coffee of the moment at Aqus: Organic Blue Dragon. Should be a movie, Bruce Lee meets Woody Harrelson.

[ related topics: Movies ]

http://www.innocentpony.com/

News report video, Orlando Sentinel story:

Orange County Sheriff's spokesman Jeff Williamson said the pony was later declared "non-threatening."

Geeze, if they blew up the "non-threatening" stuffed pony, what do they do to clowns in Orlando?

[ related topics: Current Events Video Clowns ]

Oh fuck me. I've done a lot of converting C# to C++ over the past half year, and look: MonoTouch, C# and .NET for iOS (iPhone/iPad) devices.

[ related topics: iPhone ]

Washington Post: Some say bypassing a higher education is smarter than paying for a degree.

"There's a billion other things you could do with your money," Altucher says. One option: Invest the money you'd spend on tuition in Treasury bills for your child's retirement. According to Altucher, $200,000 earning 5 percent a year over 50 years would amount to $2.8 million.

(Via Crasch.) It's mainstream media, so of course they don't have any statistics, just anecdotes, but...

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Education Economics ]

Stock photos show how not to use a table saw.

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs Economics Furniture Woodworking ]

NY Times: Resale Fees That Only Developers Could Love, on the latest scam to get tacked on to real estate title covenants.

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

The Quantified Self, a blog looking at tools for measuring your own mind and body.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Gizmodo: Chattanooga to get 1 gig fiber.

[ related topics: Chattanooga Net Culture ]

Musopen is trying to build a library of free recordings of public domain music. Dan Sanderson has dug into this a bit.

[ related topics: Music Open Source ]

Hey, the New York Times is finally acknowledging the problem! Rick Perlstein: A Broader Media Problem:

The problem is that elite media gatekeepers have abandoned their moral mandate to stigmatize uncivil discourse. Instead, too many outlets reward it.

No. Shit.

Relatedly, in the comments to Ta Nehesi Coats in The Atlantic: Because There Are No Bigots..., commenter PeterBautista points out that the reaction to the Park51/Cordoba House community center development isn't necessarily one of reaction to the project itself, it's a reaction to the media coverage:

If you aren't from NYC, though, and you don't read the paper regularly, then your knowledge of the Cordoba center is more likely to come from hearing "ground zero mosque!" over and over again, very loudly, from our media noise machines. ...

So rather than pointing and laughing at those who oppose the project, we should be livid and irate at any "news" outlet that has adopted the "ground zero mosque" moniker given by Newt Gingrich and the similar attention whores.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Ethics Current Events Journalism and Media New York ]

Jake's Wimshurst machine and how to build it

Last night's project with Sage (neighbor kid): Getting a garage sale RC car working. Not letting that kid drive for real any time soon.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Automobiles Model Building ]

Stored here because this is easy enough to do with Sage, the kids at Vida Nueva, or other circa 10 year olds with short attention spans: How to make a simple Van de Graaff Generator (and just so future search could find it, I'd usually mis-spell that as "Van de Graf").

[ related topics: Children and growing up Machinery Fabrication Model Building ]

What of you could "print" things out of Foam and they just floated away

[ related topics: Movies ]

Harold McGee on using sodium carbonate rather than lye for flavoring baked goods, and you can make the stronger alkali sodium carbonate from sodium bicarbonate, baking soda, by baking it on foil for 250 to 300°F for an hour.

(Which will also come in handy for when we start using red cabbage juice as a pH indicator for various chemistry experiments)

[ related topics: Food ]

Argh! I hate server migration, I hate Apache's config files, and pretty much the world right now. On the plus side, flutterby.net works now.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Jim Henson in 1968 on making puppets and muppets (YouTube video), preserved here because it's yet another good kid activity. Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

The Unseen Sea, some beautiful lime lapse video of the Bay Area. From Simon Christen, who has some fantastic HDR stuff on his site. Thanks to MarkV and Arun Rao.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Video ]

Science Based Medicine has a fantastic rundown on the mercury (in vaccines) causes autism hypothesis. Via Kottke.

[ related topics: Health Physiology ]

Reasons for continued high unemployment? If money is cheap, is it a good time to replace labor with capital spending on machinery?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Machinery Currency ]

So there was a helicopter crash on Pike's Peak. I thought it worthy to pass on for two reasons:

1. They were filming a Pike's Peak attempt by an autonomous driverless Audi TTS, making the robotics and automation fan in my perk up a bit.
2. In the "how badly distorted are my perceptions" department, there was talk of difficulties in rescue crews reaching the crash site, I saw the picture of the helicopter wreckage at the side of the road and thought "what? I've seen video of people driving the whole thing in less than 12 minutes."

[ related topics: Robotics Invention and Design Automobiles Video Aviation - Helicopters ]

And PetalumaOpen.com is migrated to the new server. Remaining is Flutterby.com, MapATrek and scotchnight.*, because of email complexities.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Two t-shirts of note:

• I see Ian McKellen joined in the anti-Pope march in London today.
• Jesus Had Two Daddies

(And since the last time I saw Ian McKellen I was standing next to a group of leather bois, that makes that second T-shirt a double entendré...)

[ related topics: Religion Humor Clothing ]

Bunnie's blog had a link to a JavaScript based transistor level simulator of the 6502 that shows each trace status as the clock cycles. Awesome.

[ related topics: Weblogs Television ]

"So, it's talk like a pirate day. Okay, um -- "Hey, I downloaded a movie from a torrent site. It sucked."" -- Paul Palubicki

[ related topics: Movies ]

One reason to be scared of databases: North Carolina sheriffs want access to computerized medical records without a warrant.

[ related topics: Privacy Databases ]

Salon: The smart Dutch take on teen sex.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Pop Culture Salon magazine ]

ask.metafilter: How Did My Coffee Cup Get Here, a response on the details of container shipping.

Mike Jarvi is a woodworker who likes to work in steam bent wood. What may not be obvious is that the bench in picture #1 on his web site, with the curved leg braces and the 90° legs, is cut and bent from a single plank, and that's still a single piece of wood, the only joints are those 90° legs to the top, but the legs, the top and the curved leg supports are still one continuous piece of wood. Here's a video of him making that bench. Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Video Woodworking ]

A few weeks ago, prompted by Tracy Clapp posting pictures from his recent Gauley trip (my notes from the Gauley back in the day) on Facebook, I went searching for a few old whitewater buddies online. I found 'em, but only after several clicks of "gulp" when their names showed up in incident reports. They were the lucky ones, or perhaps the skillful ones but I'm not so sure, they were on the scene Z-dragging the bodies of their paddling buddies out from undercuts, not the ones who'd gotten pinned.

At any rate, it's fairly clear now that back in the day, before that fateful day on the Ocoee when I was running with Travis and Norman and some guy we met at the take-out from Knoxville and I decided that it wasn't my limit but I no longer needed to find where that limit was that it was just a matter of time before I was part of one of those operations. That's when I started paddling an open boat.

Having said that, however, stuff like this still gives me one hell of a raging hard-on: Fred Norquist and Evan Garcia bring you the sights of Ashlu Box Canyon (video).

[ related topics: Chattanooga Sports Travel Boats Whitewater Video ]

Posies Cafe: Groupon in retrospect, about why they're playing hard and firm with expiration dates:

In short, to dear Lucinda and anyone else that comes in with a Groupon in hand, please know that our respectful decline of your coupon is not personal. It’s because we cannot afford to lose any more money on this terrible decision I made, and the only saving grace we had was an expiration date.

Many years ago I was talking with a restaurateur about coupons and coupon cards, and he mentioned that they're the worst way for a service-oriented business (like a restaurant) to attract customers, because the people coming in are worried about price, and only ever come once.

Seems like Groupon is teaching this to a new generation of business owners.

[ related topics: Food Economics ]

Smelting your own iron. Found because of the news that Terry Pratchett smelted the iron for a sword he made (with help) to go with his knighthood, picture of said sword at the bottom of this news entry.

(Sensible Erection entry, MeFi entry)

[ related topics: Cool Science Current Events Terry Pratchett ]

The United Farm Workers of America is looking for legal workers to work on United States farms: TakeOurJobs.org. A July article about the site says:

Since June 24, at least 4,000 people have responded to the application, said Rodriguez. Some are serious responses and others are hate mail. "Only a few dozen have really followed through with the process," he said.

[ related topics: Business Law Current Events Work, productivity and environment Currency Economics ]

In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, U2 Manager Paul McGuinness, attempts to make the world feel bad because of his "great artists" not being compensated for their efforts. (Note: the link is to GQ Magazine's UK site where the article is free, Rolling Stone has it stuck behind a pay wall - great example of the internet routing around such things).

McGuiness' thesis has several significant faults:

1. Music, as an art form, is dependent on the "music business" for it's survival
2. "Great" artists deserve great compensation
3. There is no conspiracy by the telecoms to undermine the "music business" (yeah, WTF?)

The fundamental flaw is that art and business can co-exist. Sure, the music business has allowed a few voices (artists?) to enjoy world-wide exposure. But business is business, which means the measure of "greatness" is inherently the return on investment.

Music existed before there was a "music business". Music will continue to exist long after the "music business" as we know it today is long gone. And for 99.99% of musicians, their compensation will be largely unchanged. Will this prevent great music from being made? I don't even think I need to address than question. Great art is made for art's sake.

As for the telecom conspiracy? McGuinness is seriously mistaking correlation for causation. Yes, the telecom (and internet) companies' income and profits are rising proportional to the music business' losses. But that's because telecom/internet is a new, growing industry that happens to be disruptive to the basic model underpinning the music business (distribution of information on physical media). It's not like General Motors buying the street car systems and tearing up the tracks. Google isn't funding BitTorrent and the Pirate's bay.

McGuinness needs to realize that he has a distorted view of reality. Like Bono, he's got his rose colored glasses on too much of the time. Yes, U2 makes some pretty good pop music. Some of it may approach what one could call "good art". I'd even go so far as to say that U2 and Bono have done a really good job creating a kind of "pop performance art" of the stylized do-gooder rock star that will likely be remembered for decades. But I surely don't feel sorry for him now that the stage upon which this performance has been played is being torn down.

[ related topics: Music Art & Culture Net Culture Conspiracy Economics Public Transportation Government ]

I have been pretty cocky about the Flutterby system's ability to keep malicious code out of user entered stuff, but I should probably re-evaluate that, especially in light of this: the Twitter JavaScript exploit that circulated and was fixed this morning.

[ related topics: virus Invention and Design Current Events Gambling Archival ]

Maps: Europe according to stereotype.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

University of Toronto student flies a human powered ornithopter. They used a tow car to launch, and then managed

...sustaining both altitude and airspeed for 19.3 seconds and covering a distance of 145 metres at an average speed of 25.6 kilometres per hour.

Videos here

[ related topics: Aviation Pedal Power ]

The Queen of England is now rather more officially on the dole:

It places the Palace in a weak position in its current negotiations with Government for an increase in Royal funding. Last night constitutional law experts said the memorandum could be used by ministers to force the Queen to cut back on her spending or even make her fall back on her considerable private wealth.

Someone's gotta have run the numbers on the various castles and tourism, but surely they could find more compelling residents of those castles? Seems like Elton John could probably be convinced to pay to live in one of 'em, and he'd make a far more dynamic queen than the current resident or her offspring.

[ related topics: moron Theater & Plays Current Events ]

Irate at this "nobody saw the crash coming" narrative. Bullshit artists rewriting history to try to maintain undeserved credibility.

[ related topics: Art & Culture Woodworking ]

"I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery." --Aldous Huxley. And I'd add: mushrooms.

Anyone know the license status of independent implementations of SMPTE 421M (aka WMV3 or VC-1)?

Army Col. Lawrence Sellin, a Green Beret, fired after griping online about PowerPoint.

He was ordered home after penning a snarky poke at PowerPoint briefings for "cognitively-challenged generals" running NATO's "bloated" command, where "you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a colonel."

Here's the rant at Army Times.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Why your friends have more friends than you do (and why your lovers have had more lovers than you've had, and...) Via crasch.

[ related topics: Sociology ]

An errant Metafilter comment worth repeating:

That said: sigh. I got bored with it after it all became about the Transformative Power of Love and Children. It's valid, I'm sure. But goddamn if I don't hear it over and over and over again, like a pop song that never leaves the airwaves. There are other stories of people growing and maturing that have nothing to do with starting a family. One of the things I really like about the Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind is that it involves the hero ditching his wife and kids because OMG ALIENS. It's hard to find stories like that nowadays that don't end up being saccharine morality tales.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Sociology Marriage ]

From the Just in Case Department: The United Nation's Office of Outer Space Affairs has appointed a Malaysian astrophysicist as the official First Contact person in case we encounter any extraterrestrials. I just hope she doesn't invite them over for dinner.

[ related topics: Cool Science Space & Astronomy Law Current Events ]

Owner of Segway, Inc., dies after plunging into a river while riding a Segway. He was also chairman of Hesco Bastion Ltd, a manufacturer of protective barriers.

And I'm just gonna leave it. right. there. (MeFi thread, SE thread, Segway blog announcement)

[ related topics: Current Events Segway/Ginger/IT ]

Larry passed along this rather pretty bicycle wheel truing stand, for next time I've got a little spare time and space in my workshop.

[ related topics: Bicycling Woodworking ]

U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet:

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

Apparently "change I could believe in" got strangled at birth.

[ related topics: Privacy Net Culture ]

QOTD: Former French justice minister (MEP) Rachida Dati's slip of the tongue:

"I see some [foreign investment funds] looking for returns of 20 or 25% at a time when fellatio is close to zero."

Someone's YouTube mashup of the video, alas that quote is a translation, but it sounds pretty close.

[ related topics: Quotes Movies Current Events Monty Python Law Enforcement Video Economics ]

On my run this morning, I was listening to the This American Life episode with Adrian Schoolcraft. Adrian Schoolcraft was a cop in Brooklyn who started wearing a recorder and exposed some pretty amazing systemic corruption and lying in the NYPD, and now finds himself harassed by the NYPD as he's taken shelter in his father's house, 350 miles away.

So I was happy to have that balanced by the news that "A Harford County Circuit Court judge ruled this afternoon that a motorcyclist who was arrested for videotaping his traffic stop by a Maryland State Trooper was within his rights to record the confrontation."

[ related topics: Law Current Events Law Enforcement Civil Liberties New York Real Estate ]

OpenOffice.org has forked, probably in light of pressures from the Oracle takeover: The Document Foundation.

[ related topics: Databases ]

http://www.hemstech.com/ With GPL'd Dev kit. Hey Dan, weren't you building your own?

This morning my iPhone wasn't charging. Two trips to the Apple store later it still wasn't working, they offered to replace it for $200, or upgrade me to a 4 and extend my contract for two years for $260 or so.

So I went to the fly-by-night kiosk in the middle of the mall and bought a prepaid regular cell phone, and with some chicanery involving SIM cards I ended up with a basic LG phone again.

If, in 3 or 4 months, I decide I really can't live without a smartphone, I will have broken even, and I can research better options in the intervening time.

Should I get another smartphone, this one will have:

• a straight USB connector, none of this freaky proprietary crap
• a cap for that connector, even if it's just a rubber plug
• a plastic screen, even if that means resistive and not capacitive multi-touch
• probably a physical keyboard
• a corporate attitude that's less content restrictive
• no iTunes, preferably it'll just mount as a drive on my Linux computer for getting photos and media on and off of it
• it should work as a phone

I need to see how that Nokia N900 stacks up in this.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Wireless Open Source iPhone ]

U.C. Davis Food Safety Laboratory: Cutting Board Research, or: wood cutting boards are better than plastic.

[ related topics: Food Woodworking ]

Violet Blue makes the http://www.2600.com/googleblacklist/

[ related topics: Phreaking ]

Object Disoriented Programming (hat tip: Columbine)

And, yes, I too once had a great experience with Glgooey and then wanted to use something and C++ had evolved in a way that no longer compiled it and I didn't bother to fix it and push the changes back upstream and... yeah.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

(over-simplified) Anatomy of a Typical Phone Conversation. It's not a humor link, it's not what you think it is, and it's worth clicking. Via.

[ related topics: Physiology ]

Over on Lileks.com he has a strange video. It's a piano roll of "Rhapsody in Blue" recorded by Gershwin himself and replayed on a modern instrument that better reproduces the dynamics of the original performance. This is how Gershwin wanted it played, heedless, fast, jumpy, exhilirating. As Lileks says, its not so much a recording as a sceance.

[ related topics: Music Art & Culture Video ]

"Extend Linear Shafting Travel Life by 50%" Yes, that's the subject of a *legitimate* sales email I just got.