Flutterby™! From 2011-05-01 to 2011-05-31

With me paddling, my team took First Place in the race portion, and Best Craftsmanship, in today's running of this year's Bodega Bay Boat Building Competition. Pictures at http://www.flutterby.net/2011-04-30_Boat_Race

Since this was the first year our team competed, I expected that we'd finish. I did not expect to sweep the field. I am, however, now thinking about ways to win in some of the other categories. The crowd favorite went to a really cool paddlewheel boat, and the Titanic award seems to go to the most spectacular sinking. Trying to win that could be a real challenge...

[ related topics: Photography California Culture Sports Boats Machinery Whitewater ]

The guy who live-twitted the raid.

And the two jokes I haven't seen repeated everywhere: @Mattarz:

So, gays admitted to the US Military and less than a year later, Osama's dead? Bitches get stuff done.

And @bortflancrest:

I hear they found Bin Laden because he had his real address in his PSN account.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

To be printed for one of the Family Build Night kids: Making a red oak board bow, by Sam Harper. I hope, beyond all hope, that he has enough patience to see this through.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Nature and environment Sociology Woodworking ]

AskMeFi thread on making sauces, preserved here 'cause sometimes I need a little inspiration for cooking & food.

[ related topics: Food ]

SFGate: For-profit colleges face lawsuits, U.S. scrutiny (talking specifically about the California Culinary Academy):

"This rate is a lie," the suit states in regards to the school's placement rate. "The placement statistics included non-professional entry level jobs like prep cooks, $8-$12 an hour line cooks and Starbucks baristas. That culinary degree was not a pre-requisite or even relevant for many of the included jobs."

I couldn't help but notice on our recent visit to Vancouver that Zack has himself a kickin' job cooking in a kitchen without a culinary degree.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Food Heinlein Mathematics California Culture Education ]

Ali Brown on her Forbes blog: Are Women Less Tolerant of the Bullshit That Comes With “Success”?

Via Shawn:

My question is; why aren't *more* people (of all genders) intolerant of "The Bullshit That Comes With “Success”?"

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

In 1997, my wife spent six months hiking the Appalachian Trail. She carried everything she needed on her back. It's a source of frustration for her when she thinks about the clutter of stuff that fills our three bedroom house.

Andrew Hyde is a tech startup advocate and serial entrepreneur formerly from Boulder. He embarked on a personal experiment reducing everything he owns to 15 things. Of course, the number 15 is somewhat arbitrary because it doesn't itemize the contents of his toiletry bag or apps on his iPhone 3GS. But Andrew can carry all of his physical belongings in his backpack (which does count as one of the 15 things) as he explores the world. His Twitter updates are like Uncle "Traveling" Matt's post cards to Fraggle Rock.

If you had to reduce your life-stuff to a minimal number of things, what would be on the list?

[ related topics: Nature and environment Current Events iPhone ]

Maybe 'cause I just spent several days hanging out with family, time in the shop making toys with my nephews reminding me of time in my Dad's and Grandpa's shops making toys, working with my Dad at the boat building competition reminding me of all the skills he taught me, getting a good dose of nostalgia for all of the amazing things my childhood was, the Google Chrome: Dear Sophie ad (YouTube video) made me tear up a little.

Via Sean Leather's Google Reader feed.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies Sociology Work, productivity and environment Boats Machinery Video ]

Whole Foods, near the ice cream, heard kids decide on "Ultra Chocolate" and thought: "Directed by Melvin Van Peebles?"

[ related topics: Children and growing up Chocolate ]

Yesterday I stumbled across this video of casting a bronze sword, via MeFi, and had a little bit of an epiphany.

The school I grew up in had the philosophy that the only thing an intelligent child can do with a complete toy is to disassemble it. My nephews, who recently stayed with me, have a decent dose of Waldorf in their upbringing, and I was impressed by their ability to enjoy abstract toys. Even if I did cringe inside when they took the gorgeous hardwood we were making trucks with and said "mommy can paint this really well", because she can, but, you know: hardwood!

And on Sunday afternoon, my Dad and I disassembled the first boat that my team had built for the practice session for the competition. I've promised to help one of our Family Connection kids build a boat this summer, and after we'd removed all the screws and busted apart the glue seams, I thought: why don't I just take these parts, buy a little fiberglass tape, and we can build the boat that way?

I guess my realization was: What's the matter with building things from LEGO bricks? It helps to understand where materials and processes come from, but at some point in getting bogged down in making bronze swords from scratch, as cool as that is, we lose the abstraction that makes it possible to build bigger cooler stuff.

And that leads me to thinking that maybe we'll put off the "learning to cut plywood with a bevel using a Japanese pull saw" off a few years, and replace that with "learning to slap some resin and fiberglass on a joint to reinforce it, and using a respirator and a sander to clean it up", at least for now.

[ related topics: Drugs Children and growing up Interactive Drama Movies Sociology Lego Mindstorms Boats Machinery Fabrication Education Video Philosophy Woodworking ]

I have tried, twice, to steel myself to take the Pew Research Center for People and the Press: Political Typology Quiz, but I just can't suck it up to answer the horrendously badly phrased questions. For instance:

STATEMENT ONE	STATEMENT TWO
Racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can't get ahead these days	Blacks who can't get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition

Uhhhh... "I don't like ice cream because I dislike strawberries" vs "peaches make yoghurt taste bad" anyone?

[ related topics: Politics Cool Science moron Law Furniture ]

Given that I'm immersed in transportation: @ftrain talks about the moral superiority of the streetcar http://www.ftrain.com/lfjfe.html

[ related topics: Ethics Public Transportation ]

Media Matters fact-checks the first Republican presidential primary debate.

Aside from the civil libertarian flavor provided by Paul and Johnson, the candidates mostly stuck to Republican talking points on issues like foreign policy, gas prices, and health care costs that have already been debunked.

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Health Journalism and Media ]

Woodworking and spherical rare-earth magnets: a hand-cranked animation thingie machine.

[ related topics: Animation Movies Woodworking ]

Looks like Neurowear is developing EEG controlled fashion accessories. Their first product is the "necomini" cat-ear headband. Videos at Neurowear's YouTube channel.

Borkopolis: Balloon tools I use. Balloon twisting is yet another hobby I've dabbled in but haven't gotten serious about and don't really have time to pursue. But it is cool to see someone else's kit.

Chris Aitchison: You are NOT a Software Engineer!

You are not a Software Engineer. You do not build skyscrapers. You do not build bridges.

You grow gardens.

You are a Software Gardener.

This is particularly relevant because I am aware of a software project that's going to fail. It's a government funded one, where the agency involved has a very thorough engineering specification document and culture, and the project is totally unsuited to that methodology. What they need is two smart guys who can code something up, try it against a couple of potential customers, iterate fast. What they've got is half-way through two and a half million bucks, they're just starting to talk to users, and no code written.

You've gotta plant those seeds early.

[ related topics: Software Engineering moron Sociology California Culture Gardening ]

Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity? Miller & Goldman (2001)

These findings demonstrate a counter-intuitive relationship: nations that require more vaccine doses tend to have higher infant mortality rates.

On a little more re-reading of this: Looks like a couple of guys running vaccine trends against pretty much any other data set they can find, and popping up a publication when they find a positive correlation. I'd need to read a bit closer before I definitively made a claim, but a few other Goldman papers suggest that there's a whole lot that doesn't get controlled for.

[ related topics: Beer ]

Euthanasia Coaster is a "Logans Run"-esque Concept Rollercoaster for going out with a big grin on your face. Kinda gross, intriguing and worth remembering when your kids take you to the amusement park for __ day.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

"Also, avoid radium, turns out it kills you" XKCD on Women in Science http://xkcd.com/896/

Financial Times: Why Don't People Live In "Liveable" Cities?

[ related topics: Content Management Theater & Plays ]

That's not OCD, you're just a slacker.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Listening to "Book of Mormon" streaming on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/...ast-recording-the-book-of-mormon

[ related topics: Books Pop Culture ]

When I am the world's most wanted fugitive with nothing to lose and large resources with which to equip my hideout, I will not make it designed to be a bitchin' little Counter-Strike Source map.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Writers are often spoken of as "having a voice." What happens when you lose it, literally? Chistopher Hitchens is dying of cancer, and in Vanity Fair he tells with his customary eloquence what it is like to begin to lose the power of speech. Some people continue on; film critic Roger Ebert has lost his voice but has turned into a blog star. Others, like Hitch, must view it in the narrowing focus of short time. Highly recommended.

[ related topics: Weblogs Writing Art & Culture ]

Sometimes I wish the media would bite it's collective tongue so we could see just how far a politician would take a misappropriated metaphor. Even better, someone should have shared the rest of Langston Hughes' poem with Rick Santorum but not tell him the source. Maybe the man who's name shall not be Googled would have borrowed even more from the poem written by the possible homosexual and well-known Communist, Langston Hughes.

[ related topics: Politics moron Journalism and Media ]

FCC Commissioner approves NBC-Co mcast merger, then quits to become Comcast lobbyist.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Google lobbying Nevada to allow self-driving cars:

Since the car drives itself without human input, Google is asking for an exemption that would allow occupants to text while sitting behind the wheel.

This transportation stuff I've been working on is interesting because there's going to be a big shift in how we think about automobiles shortly. To now, we view texting as a distraction from driving. In 20 years, we'll view driving as a distraction from texting.

[ related topics: Current Events Work, productivity and environment Automobiles ]

Daily Beast: Facebook busted in clumsy smear attempt on Google.

Snicker: The Daily Mash (.co.uk) — Crackdown on drivers who don't vote

Transport secretary Philip Hammond said he wants to give the police new powers to target young, aggressive drivers who have never heard of him.

Mr Hammond believes too many decent, middle class people are being victimised for doing nothing more serious than repeatedly breaking speed limits deemed safe by people who have thought about it for much, much longer than you have.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Bay Area Current Events Law Enforcement ]

In the middle of a distribution upgrade on a server 2500 miles away is a bad time to have network hiccups.

[ related topics: broadband ]

Hmmm... Google: investigating the legal issues around deploying their self-driving cars. Facebook: helping Zynga make more off of Farmville.

[ related topics: Law ]

Shadow passed along this suggestion that a recent bill outlawing bestiality in Florida may have outlawed sex altogether, referencing Southern Fried Scientist's suggestion that:

So if you’re living in Florida on October 1, 2011 and would like to have sexual intercourse with a consenting adult, please check with your veterinarian or local livestock breeder first to make sure you abide by ”accepted animal husbandry practices, conformation judging practices, or accepted veterinary medical practices.”

Alas, Election Law Blog suggests that the bill makes a deliberate distinction between "persons" and "animals". This being Florida, we do have to wonder where the Michigan snow birds fall in that taxonomy.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Child-Freedom Birds Archival ]

Columbine tossed this in the tumblr feed, I think I saw it but I'm not sure it registered as solidly as it should have [Edit: we mentioned it in the recent Cloud Computing entry]: Coding Horror: Working with the Chaos Monkey:

Which, let's face it, seems like insane advice at first glance. I'm not sure many companies even understand why this would be a good idea, much less have the guts to attempt it. Raise your hand if where you work, someone deployed a daemon or service that randomly kills servers and processes in your server farm.

Now raise your other hand if that person is still employed by your company.

I think this gets wonderfully to the ideas that I was unable to articulate in the "Software Gardener" thread. Plan for failure. Heck, deliberately introduce things that make your system unstable so that you have to correct the system around those flaws. Modern complex systems cannot be modeled before hand. They're more complex than a 767, and they have a working life before the requirements completely change, or someone decides they need another wing or two, measured in months. We can't treat these things like bridges, we have to treat them like living breathing monsters that can turn on us.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Aviation Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Archival Woodworking ]

Holy crap these are beautiful: David Ramsey carves horse sculptures out of wood burl.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Interesting. Mike Rowe's Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation

[ related topics: Politics ]

The clue "1200E71" was scratched into the archaic box with a dozen DB9 Serial Ports. It was a crucial clue as I tried to establish communications from a new 64bit system with 2gb of ram whose purpose is to translate SMTP to 1200 baud TAP as alphanumeric pages. Mostly for regional medical staff whome aren't allowed to use a cell phone. Hopefully, this kludge of Perl, C and MySQL is in it's final resting place, a retirement home for archaic yester-tech. It queues up messages and spoon feeds it down that serial port, into a hulking remnant from another era that struggles to keep up.

The NOC tech thought "1200E71" was l33tspe@k, but did not understand what it meant. It is -very- elite speak, harking from an age of technology from before he was born, or had a my_ page. I just want to say "thank you" to whomever was there before, and may have spent hours trying different bauds, data bits, parity and stop bits.

[ related topics: Wireless Perl Open Source Invention and Design Databases hubris ]

Why do I hate the AP? This article about a paper by Carl Wieman about teaching methods for undergraduate physics really makes me want to find the source material, but though they pull in an unrelated person for commentary they don't tell me where the paper was published, or where they pulled in the quotes from.

However, if Carl Wieman said this:

"Lectures have been equally ineffective for centuries, now we have figured out ways to do it better."

Then he and I agree on a core element of the university experience.

[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama Education ]

"An ounce of prevention..." bla bla bla, but how much for a couple o' kilos of it, and can we put a dealer network together for this stuff?

[ related topics: broadband ]

Once again, failed to parse Perl's MooseX module with the capital letters, and came up with a mental image I wish I'd avoided.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source hubris ]

Little exercise this winter, & persistent back pain all week, riding the Petaluma Century Ride to Change Lives tomorrow. I predict pain.

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

What a pleasant little hundred miles on the bike. Pt Reyes Station, up to Occidental, meandering back home to Petaluma.

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Helping you make sense of business jargon: http://unsuck-it.com/browse/

The new primativism comes to web page design: The Looonng Website. Just keep scrolling.....

...and then try this one!

[ related topics: Web development Graphic Design punishment link ]

Free thesis idea: Document the economic damage resulting from "Connect on LinkedIn" spam to mailing lists...

[ related topics: Spam Monty Python Economics ]

The Yellow Deli opened on Pearl Street. I'm not going to go into the details other than to say for a city where Mork from Ork could walk around without garnering a second glance, the latest franchise of the Twelve Tribes will fit right in. The Boulder Weekly has a great, in depth piece.

[ related topics: Religion Food Community ]

Via spl's Buzz feed, via sjoerd_visscher: RT @seldo: Somebody has written a PC emulator in Javascript. You can run linux on it, right in your browser. Mind == blown.

Now to install Firefox in that system and run a PC emulator in it!

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

BBC News: Amputee Patrick demonstrates his new bionic hand. HT: Jay.

[ related topics: Health Invention and Design Current Events Monty Python ]

BBC News: Coffee 'cuts prostate cancer risk' US study suggests. Here's Harvard's press release on the study about coffee and prostate cancer and the paper itself:

...Men who consumed six or more cups per day had a lower adjusted relative risk for overall prostate cancer compared with nondrinkers...

I love the stuff, but six cups is a little more than I can take. Of course there are other ways to lower your prostate cancer risk that have been previously mentioned on Flutterby: 2003, 2008, 2011.

[ related topics: Health Current Events Monty Python Archival ]

Brainwagon: My trip down memory lane leads me back to TOPS-10 and the PDP-10 has garnered some interesting comments. Rupert Goodwins note spoke to me a bit about innovation, especially since I've been looking at that in the context of big high risk mass manufactured engineering projects recently:

t’s interesting, those comments about an OS devoted to micromanaging its own resources. It puts me in mind of the OSI/ISO TCP/IP wars, where things like X.400 were designed by committees of Big Company telco-ites to be rigorously compatible with the layered control-minded bureaucracy in whose service such things were rightly to be retained. SMTP et al were smart, quick, dirty and unrestrained – if you wanted to do the job, it was there to help you. Both could profitably have learned from each other, but I’m so glad the long-hairs won. If only for a while, perhaps.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Heinlein Travel ]

As If Anyone Cares: My Dream Job is worth a read, especially in the context of Eric's comment on "So where are the GI Scientists".

I think all of these things are part of a general fragmenting of knowledge. The traditional publication mechanisms are now largely irrelevant to anyone working in the field. I've been amazed in the stuff I'm looking at that technologies that I thought everyone knew and were well established, like agent based flocking algorithms and image processing to read signs, are imagined as deep future by people who are completely up to date on the general engineering in their fields.

In that So Where are the GI Scientists thread, Ed finishes up with:

However I think there is an underlying issue as I noted, in that GIS as an academic subject is in danger of becoming a purely vocational discipline, solely concerned with the application of existing tools ..

Who is going to develop the new software tools and analytical methods of the future ?

Here's another random thought: I'm currently playing with JavaScript. JavaScript documentation falls into three camps:

1. You don't need anything else. (ie: Dori & Tom's book).
2. My über framework is the one true way, you should use my funky notation to find your objects rather than document.getElementById
3. "I included this plugin and it worked".

I'd really like something in the middle, something that lets me build on tools that understand when the page has actually fully loaded, and give me some <canvas>-able widgets, but don't try to hide the basics under yet another level of silly indirection.

It seems to me that this problem of finding my level of abstraction may be the same thing that GIS is going through, where the social structures around the technologies are still too complex to allow for a path through them, and if you want to contribute to the field, rather than use the tools, it's easier to just reinvent the wheel.

(Totally ADD digression: Managing this is part of what's made Perl great.)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Perl Open Source Nature and environment Invention and Design Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Heinlein hubris ]

"If the Internet were a Twinkie, drama would be the oily sheen that oozes from its pores." -- Dava Butler

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Net Culture ]

Karen's ms cptr was doing terrible things, so I stuck ubuntu linux on it to try to recover her working data before it went up in smoke. Ubuntu's now running flawlessly, and when I plugged in an old HP laserjet 1000 that's hadn't worked since Win 98, it popped right up. Why does anyone who has the choice stick with MS?

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Work, productivity and environment Sports ]

It's the Superbus! No, silly, not Lucius Tarqunius, it's a gull-winged 250 km/h piece of ... uh ... public transportation. Two things of note, the first is that the Superbus Concept page says:

Superbus is a new concept for sustainable mobility, which consists of a new vehicle, new type of dedicated infrastructure and new logistics. For this new concept, all of the intelligence and innovation is put into the vehicle, whereas the dedicated infrastructure, where the Superbus runs at 250 km/h, is made of relatively cheap concrete roads.

It's important to note that this "innovate with the vehicle rather than the infrastructure" thinking is relatively recent. The IVI/IVHS/"highways of the future" that have been failed ideas since the 1930s are all about special infrastructure, and there are very clear economic reasons why roads won out over trains for most transport.

The second is that the YouTube video is hilarious 'cause they took all of these shots of this super-futuristic "250 km/h" vehicle and then played them back apparently in slow motion. You can totally imagine this thing beeping while it lowers itself to pedestrian level at a bus stop, or crawling through stop and go traffic on city streets.

At any rate, I look forward to this thing bottoming out on the hills and running over pedestrians in my neighborhood shortly. And I'm sure that 250 km/h will make for absolutely stellar fuel consumption per passenger mile numbers. Thanks, Larry.

[ related topics: Weblogs Movies Robotics Invention and Design Sports Machinery Embedded Devices Trains Birds Video Economics Public Transportation ]

Stephen Colbert's Free Speech Problem: The comedian runs up against campaign-finance law in an attempt to lampoon the Supreme Court.

Campaign-finance laws are so complicated that few can navigate them successfully and speak during elections—which is what the First Amendment is supposed to protect. As the Supreme Court noted in Citizens United, federal laws have created "71 distinct entities" that "are subject to different rules for 33 different types of political speech." The FEC has adopted 568 pages of regulations and thousands of pages of explanations and opinions on what the laws mean. "Legalese" doesn't begin to describe this mess.

[ related topics: Politics moron Civil Liberties Government ]

Spoon Blog: FAQ For My Students: The Rapture

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

RIP Tom West, made famous in Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine(which, I think, did tremendous damage to the practice of software development, but was a really good read), also Jessamyn's dad.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Software Engineering ]

Harbor seals can sense not only the wake of an object that has moved through the water, but distinguish between shapes of the object creating that wake. (Via the Economist)

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Supreme Court: Schwarzenegger/Brown-v-Plata rules that California's prisons are overcrowded, cruel and unusual punishment, and California needs to release 30k inmates. Of particular note, Scalia's dissent:

There comes before us, now and then, a case whose proper outcome is so clearly indicated by tradition and common sense, that its decision ought to shape the law, rather than vice versa. One would think that, before allowing the decree of a federal district court to release 46,000 convicted felons, this Court would bend every effort to read the law in such a way as to avoid that outrageous result.

Good to know that the strict constitutionalist is willing to "bend every effort to read the law in such a way" as to pervert both the rule of law and the Constitution in favor of "tradition and common sense".

(via MeFi)

[ related topics: Law Civil Liberties California Culture ]

More on how to age: SFGate: Skateboarding keeps 76-year-old rider on his toes

Interesting. One of the things graphic design nerds wank over are schematic transit maps. I'm trying to figure out if it's worth paying the $31.50 (and then passing it on to Eric when everyone around here has read it), but Mind the map! The impact of transit maps on path choice in public transit apparently finds that geometric distortions of such maps strongly affect travel time.

This article says that the paper says that in London:

...the map effect is almost two times more influential than the actual travel time. In other words, underground passengers trust the tube map (two times) more than their own travel experience with the system.

Something to think about when developing topologically correct but not to scale maps.

[ related topics: Graphic Design Maps and Mapping Public Transportation ]

Today's woodworking badass: YouTube user Noho91:

Please try to laugh at my groundless woodwork, odd woodwork / jig.

I am specialized in laughter woodwork, but let's do pleasant woodwork play with care safely.

How to make easy wooden bolt and nut, cutting the threads on the bolt by hand and the threads on the nut with a home-made bit chucked up in a drill. Apparently he decided that cutting the bolt threads by hand was tedious, 'cause there's also a video of cutting the threads on a router table (with comparison of how smoothly he was able to track his reference lines with a smooth table surface vs a piece of sandpaper clamped to the table).

You see his first "how to make a wood ball" video and think "that's cheating", but then you see how to cut a wood ball with a drill powered ad-hoc lathe and a small handheld router.

But it's not all just amazing technique, I'm going to steal some ideas from his wooden crane toy.

[ related topics: Movies Machinery Fabrication Video Furniture Woodworking ]

Public transit as video game: Cities in Motion

This trailer's better than the one on that page: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2axSNLBhCs

[ related topics: Games Video Public Transportation ]

Echoing Jeff's feelings about human control of cars: Brad Ideas: Dodge leading human resistance to robocars.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Automobiles ]

Gulp. Shadow passed along this little video on the hazards of lane splitting (yes, the cyclist walks away from it): http://www.break.com/index/bik...mmed-between-bus-and-car-2063180

[ related topics: Automobiles Video Public Transportation ]

Thiel Foundation awards $100k to 20 teens to encourage them to pursue entrepreneurial ideas rather than attend college.

[ related topics: Education ]

So is this AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile going to go through? My contract is up, and I don't wanna end up back with AT&T again.

OK Cupid: 10 Charts About Sex. Fascinating. Note the odds someone enjoys giving oral sex.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs ]

From a list I lurk on about a guy that promoted his security consluting companies website:

How can you expect to be taken seriously when your Web site doesn't have pictures of attractive, multi-ethnic women in business attire pointing at holographic displays of random binary digits?

I thought it was an excellent summary of the expected cliche website for a specific type of company...

[ related topics: Photography Sociology ]

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two Office Suites diverged, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Does anybody have thoughts on Open Office vs Libre Office?

Video of a CL145 firefighting tanker aircraft from Quebec demonstrating near Martha's Vineyard. The second half of the video shows a few scooping runs, all sorts about that process became clear when the water started pouring out of the side of the fuselage of the airplane.

[ related topics: Movies Aviation Television Video ]

Find-A-Grave: one of my great grandfathers.

I hate when the strawberry density in my pancakes is so high that they don't hold together... no, wait, I don't. Never mind.

Dr. Jen Gunter: Oprah signs off and doctors everywhere rejoice

Among other claims to fame, Petaluma is the home of American Graffiti. We've got a bunch of old car culture here. I occasionally think it'd be cool to have a vehicle suitable for tooling around town in, and fantasize about building a pedal powered quadricycle version of some old vehicle that'd be a good way to go shopping and fit in.

Bob Ferry has built a 1906 Oldsmobile Model B Runabout replica. That looks like a classy way to get the groceries.

[ related topics: Books Sociology California Culture Automobiles Pedal Power Public Transportation ]

Winscape appeals to me because I'd like to wake up in a new place every day and still be in the comfort of my own home. Seems like a pretty neat project, I especially like the interactive part of it. It's sort of gimmicky for now, but I could see some real potential using something like Kinect instead of a Wii-mote and necklace.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Television Macintosh ]

Ah, the joys of changing code on a production server. Should be back to normal now.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment ]

Anyway, the reasons for the code changes was that JT ran into a problem when trying to post this: "Winscape appeals to me because I'd like to wake up in a new place every day and still be in the comfort of my own home. Seems like a pretty neat project, I especially like the interactive part of it. It's sort of gimmicky for now, but I could see some real potential using something like Kinect instead of a Wii-mote and necklace."

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Out West Garage, owned by Maria do Céu, is a Petaluma institution, and though we ended up with vehicles that they don't service, that was a factor when Charlene and I were last car shopping. Today I ran into Darrell Grisham, one of the mechanics there at Aqus, and commented on the filmmaking magazine he was reading over lunch. We got to chatting, and he showed me an ad they shot: Thank You, Maria.

[ related topics: Movies Automobiles ]

Downloaded Ubuntu rather than Xubuntu, by mistake. Installed it anyway. Who thought Unity was a good idea?

Workshop: Engineer #1 is unavailable for 3 weeks. Engineer #2 says "go conventional". Architect says "should be 2 hours of engineer time".

[ related topics: Architecture ]

"So screenwriters are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind."

Deteriorata: "You are a fluke of the universe, you have no right to be here" (YouTube). (Wikipedia background, Text, with Desiderata for comparison).

[ related topics: Movies ]

The Netherlands recently hosted something called the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge, in which a bunch of vehicles and some specially equipped infrastructure engaged in "platooning" behavior, closer following and presumably some smarter cruise control behavior.

These demonstrations are similar to ideas that have been floating around since the 1930s, and as I've mentioned previously they're kinda silly because they ignore two three things:

1. Equipping a secondary set of infrastructure, traffic signs and signals that broadcast their state, roads that have some embedded track in them, is a ridiculous premise: You're going to have additional cost, fragile equipment, low uptake of machinery that can take advantage of it, and we've got problems with potholes, is anyone going to notice that the batteries in the smart stop sign that's never seen a vehicle that can communicate with it have gone dead?
2. Deer, pedestrians, and the mattress or tire that just blew off the truck in front of you don't have transmitters.
3. Adaptive Cruise Control is already being deployed without cooperative communication between vehicles, it's been estimated that just 10-20% of vehicles in heavy traffic using such a system can eliminate the stop-and-go traffic jams.

Obviously at this point you know that cars are starting to understand traffic signs, as in the new Ford Focus, but sometimes it's cool to see what's happening behind the scenes, as in this video of a system reading lanes and road markings.

Bonus: Infiniti's Blind-Spot Intervention System is tied into the electronic stability control to apply brakes on the opposite side of the vehicle if it detects you steering into an obstacle in your blind spot.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Robotics Invention and Design Automobiles Boats Machinery Embedded Devices Video Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Ezra Klein: What happens if congress goes home?:

Our belief that we have a long-run deficit problem is based upon the belief that congress will pass laws that increase spending and that cut taxes--that it will repeal the Independent Payment Authorization Board’s authority to try to make Medicare more efficient, that it will repeal the Affordable Care Act’s tax on high-cost health plans. Given that the fear is based on a belief that some future congress will bust the budget, it is hard to see how we can address this fear through any possible piece of legislation today--for no congress can bind its successors.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Weblogs Health Government ]

Saved not because there's much new in this, but because it's a useful coverage all in one place: EDN: Automobile sensors may usher in self-driving cars

[ related topics: Invention and Design Journalism and Media Automobiles ]

Argh: I hate when I discover a new set of search terms that opens up a vast new vista of knowledge, and can't see how I missed it before.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Looking at vehicle driver behavior models. Amazed by the lack of validation against real data of the ones in the literature.

Lie-Nielsen. Festool. Fein. Hock. Whatever. Happiness is a four foot long crowbar.

[ related topics: User Interface Woodworking Festool ]

Ugh! Forgot the camera, and my phone seems to have eaten the pictures. Grrr. But the boat Jake built yesterday is really cool!

[ related topics: Photography Boats Machinery ]

Yesterday's activity: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-05-29_Building_a_boat_with_Jake

[ related topics: Boats Machinery ]

Today's field trip: Toothpick sculpture and ball run, all in one! http://www.flutterby.net/2011-05-30_Rolling_Through_The_Bay

[ related topics: Travel ]

Now this, friends, is how you do software engineering: Roadway Human Factors and Behavioral Safety in Europe

... INRETS has a considerable financial investment in this model, which has been developed over 10 years with a 3-year break because of other internal priorities. Only now are validation studies being conducted for the model. ...

[ related topics: Software Engineering Economics ]

Wired Science: Ads Implant False Memories

Wired: The Revolutionary New Birth Control Method for Men. Appears to be a reversible chemical vasectomy, developed in India, that may be making its way to the U.S.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

You know what I hate about single sign-on? Screw-ups like Yahoo which have made those services (& Flickr, etc) completely unusable. Grr...

San Francisco Bay Area cyclist? Check out the The Bay Citizen's Bike Accident Tracker, and an article introducing it complete with pretty graphs of dubious statistical significance.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Bicycling ]