Flutterby™! From 2011-10-02 to 2011-10-31

Our first sweet potato harvest http://www.flutterby.net/2011-10-01_Sweet_Potato_Harvest

[ related topics: Food ]

Dan is learning more about the properties of tempered glass. Includes shattering! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNFOUNKzWUI

[ related topics: Movies Education ]

Experimenting with microwaving Ivory Soap for Family Build Night http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1DYLsZv2Ds

[ related topics: Movies Sociology ]

YouTube video of a wood body hand plane cutting what looks like a 10" wide curl

[ related topics: Movies Video Woodworking ]

Jake Bayless has some musings and pictures from the GranFondo bicycle ride through Sonoma County

[ related topics: Photography Community Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Two quick reads on the fannish migration from Delicious to Pinboard, thoughtfully provided by Skud: Pinboard Blog: The Fans Are All Right, on assimilating a large wave of new culture into a social site; and Personal Fanon: When Bookmarks Were In Mustache Land, a recounting of the migration as a greek play.

Presented mostly so that Columbine can pass them over to Nonelvis.

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

A couple of JavaScript links. The first two were recommended by Elf Sternberg:

• Coffee Script is a Ruby like language that compiles into JavaScript. It's written in JavaScript and runs under Node.js, a command-line/stand-alone environment for JavaScript.
• Douglas Crockford has a lot of writing on JavaScript

Two from Dwayne Anderson:

• Backbone.js "...supplies structure to JavaScript-heavy applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing application over a RESTful JSON interface." I'm not sure what all that means, but Dwayne said "I can't overstate my love for this library. It's completely changed how I write client-side code."
• Underscore.js is a set of functional programming libraries.

Okay, one more:

• Showdown is Markdown for JavaScript.

[ related topics: Language Books tolkien Nature and environment Software Engineering Writing ]

It is fascinating how celebrity can give itself up to stupidity so quickly these days; Warhols's 15 minutes now seems an eternity. Case in Point: the Wonderful Pistashio Nut Company runs a series of light-hearted commercials with various famous people in green shirts or hats showing different ways to crack open a nut. The latest one features those world famous litigious losers, arch-WASPS and living Tom of Finland cartoons the Winklevoss Brothers, in green ties. Maybe it helps grind the edge off their image, but I myself would prefer to lie low for a few years.

[ related topics: Movies Law Television Social Software ]

One of the problems with Tumblr is that there are a ton of cool pictures which are impossible to trace back to their sources. Thus it is with this picture of a lingerie clad woman carving phalluses out of branches. "Woodworking" clichés aside, I'd love to see more context for that, if only to see more from the mind of the photographer.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Woodworking ]

Wi-Fi Patent Troll Won't Sue Individual Users...Yet, After Cashing in On Coffee Shops, Hotels and Restaurants.

A possible next career move for me is to be a patent troll. Seriously. Team up with a friend, he's got some lawyers signed up who will pay for provisionals and give a portion of winnings for any potential litigation.

What can we do to return innovation to software and computing, to get this software patent trolling bullshit (and a good portion of the hardware patent trolling bullshit) out of the realm of possible again?

Because frankly, right now, it's impossible to be a small software developer. You have to have a couple of million dollars in your war chest to bring products to market, just to fight the illegitimate patents.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Food Software Engineering History Economics ]

The Real Zack Morris: The State of the Art is Terrible.

Also:

Linus Torvalds's Lessons on Software Development Management.

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

Tweet OTD: Phil Hagelberg (@technomancy):

The naming of Oracle NoSQL is bound to cause confusion; let's save some time by agreeing to refer to it as "Oh no!"

[ related topics: Databases ]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2.../programming_skills_java_bubble/

"Java stored procedures went from sex to herpes in about six months, and of course Oracle now owns Java. That would scare me, it should scare you."

I snorted and laughed.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Software Engineering Databases ]

Pink Visual: Adult Entertainment Studio Launches API for Web, App Developers.

The PVAP(i) says:

Over the years, Pink Visual has received a lot of feedback from people saying something like "You guys have all this great metadata; why don't you do {X} with it?" PV APi is your chance to put your own idea where that {X} is! Use our data for SEO, use it to create a pornstar index. the sky's the limit!

I think I'm probably not that imaginative, but someone must be...

Steve Jobs: 1955-2011 http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

[ related topics: Apple Computer Macintosh iPhone ]

Why can't I find the Ron English version of "Here's to the crazy ones" on YouTube?

Sonoma: Is there any forum where there's good critical thinking discussion over the claims made on the SMART train web site and whitepapers?

[ related topics: Machinery Community Trains ]

TEDx1000Lakes - Chuck Marohn - The important difference between a road and a street http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XRjatW_N9M

[ related topics: Movies ]

Princess Bride Cast Reunion.

Shadow sent me a video that looked stunningly familiar. as it played along I was thinking "wait, I know I've seen someone do this before, and this looks like Stevinmarin's video style", and sure enough: The Impossible Nail Through Wood Trick is part of the Woodworking For Mere Mortals series.

[ related topics: Movies Video Woodworking ]

Booting hybrids from carpool lane backfires:

But engineering Professor Michael Cassidy and doctoral student Kitae Jang described a "cautionary tale" with far-reaching implications. When the regular lanes grew more crowded with hybrids, they said, carpoolers had to match the sluggish pace while moving in and out of their special lane.

In addition, Cassidy said in an interview, "You're not going to drive 70 mph in the carpool lane if the lane next to you is moving at 20. At any moment, someone can come into your lane."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

In space, nobody can hear you filling out forms. Gizmodo shows the customs declaration forms the Apollo 11 astronauts had to fill out when they returned to earth. I wonder if they had to use that anti-bug spray they used to spritz inside airliners returning from foreign parts?

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Government ]

Medley: Misattribution – Noted for the Record, on how a quote Eric Schmidt is reported as having attributed to Steve Jobs is really an Elizabeth Stone quote.

A number of people have compared Steve Jobs to Edison. If getting credit for things he didn't do but just popularized is what Steve will be remembered for, then, yeah: Sounds like Edison to me.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama Humor ]

Anti-news, but it's good to see in the mainstream press: Porn is good for society!

Women's rights are far stronger in societies with liberal attitudes to sex – think of conservative countries such as Afghanistan, Yemen or China, and the place of women there. And yet, anti-porn campaigners neglect such issues entirely. A recent study by the US department of justice compared the four states that had highest broadband access and found there was a 27% decrease in rape and attempted rape, and the four with the lowest had a 53% increase over the same period. With broadband being key to watching porn online, these figures are food for thought for those who believe access to porn is bad news.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Music Erotic Sexual Culture broadband Food moron Current Events Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Education ]

Holy shit: Must freakin' read: Steve Yegge's long rant on Amazon, Google, software development, and the failure of Google+ (Mirrored at YCombinator):

Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don't get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call. One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked: "So is it the Stalker API?" She got all glum and said "Yeah." I mean, I was joking, but no... the only API call we offer is to get someone's stream. So I guess the joke was on me.

Via SiliconFilter, Via MeFi.

Also rather amusing: He apparently wrote it intending to keep it private, but screwed up his circle settings. Google+ fail.

[ related topics: Books Food Software Engineering Space & Astronomy Current Events Skating ]

My life is a surrealist absurdity. Charlene just asked "could you get the yams out of the bathroom", and it made sense.

Hmmm... Thought I'd said this here, but I guess not.

RT @genehack: Rob Pike reports on G+ that Dennis Ritchie has died: https://plus.google.com/u/0/10...09339267/posts/ENuEDDYfvKP?hl=en

As @_Baylink on my twitter stream commented, you're reading this served from a machine running Unix written in C.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Sports ]

Microsoft says most Windows viruses are your fault.

[ related topics: Business Humor Microsoft moron Currency ]

Because nothing says humor like deformed vegetables, fresh from the garden: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-10-12_Amusing_Tomato

[ related topics: Humor Food Gardening ]

How the FRA is Regulating Passenger Rail Out of Existence.

Hat tip to Allen MacKenzie.

[ related topics: Trains ]

Wall Street Journal caught padding circulation numbers, writing favorable articles for pay.

Via SE.

[ related topics: Writing Journalism and Media Economics ]

Anti-news: We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former (NYPD narcotics) detective testifies

[ related topics: Health Current Events ]

For digging deeper: Shadow passed along this article about building a wireless bike brake, with some interesting notes about wireless messaging, reliability, and latency.

(And, actually, Shadow passed me the /. story.)

[ related topics: Wireless Bicycling ]

On this morning's run I listened to a couple of Planet Money episodes. Specifically, I listened to The Friday Podcast: What Is Occupy Wall Street?, and The Tuesday Podcast: The Future Of Energy.

In the former, they interviewed Robin Hahnel, a proponent of something he calls "participatory economics", a system which, as described on the podcast, gave me tremendous eye-rolling because it was very clear to me that his system, even as described, would very shortly evolve into needing some substantial futures market, and just for convenience's sake you'd shortly have a straight capitalist black market running on top of his little utopian dream. It seemed to me a particularly short-sighted academic view of the world, but this was pertinent because in a lot of the reading on transportation I'm running into the same sort of deliberate blinders.

In the latter, they talked about the future of energy with Daniel Yergin. In that discussion the moon shot and the atomic bomb came up as discussion of big government projects, as deliberately product/results oriented projects that were unlike what we need to accomplish in terms of changes in energy.

There are many different spins on the history of personal computing and on the history of the internet, but the myth which most resonates with me is a bunch of people experimenting at the fringes of technology. They're actually doing so without a whole lot of government help.

Yeah, I know, that view isn't terribly popular on the origins of the Internet, but hear me out: Back in the early '90s, I was working with various people on improving FidoNet, on building some real-time communications systems. Chattanooga had just gotten cheap ISDN, and people were starting to play with switching and data transfer on that. It was around this time that the Internet got opened up, and those of us who had been playing with BBSs decided to lease T1s and sell access and create a real-time network, but had the government not been involved a real-time network would have evolved shortly anyway.

You can, of course, find your own myth for the personal computer revolution, but this is the sort of change that we're going to need with energy. It isn't going to come from conventional thinking with tons of money thrown at it, ala Solyndra. It isn't going to be a big government project because, frankly, big government projects all fall prey to that sort of blinders thinking exemplified by Robin Hahnel.

If you're looking for policy on how to create large scale changes in society and technology, look to ways that individual small-scale solutions can flourish, rather than throwing big money at huge projects which will do one thing, accomplish that, and then disappear.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama broadband moron Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Chattanooga Sports Net Culture Community Currency Birds Economics ]

You have undoubtedly seen this by now, but just in case: A magazine is an iPad that does not work (YouTube). Or: a 1 year old compares an iPad to magazines.

In looking at what new technologies, like ebooks, one of the things I'm trying hard to do is to divorce myself from my past experiences with the tech they're replacing. There are lots of ways in which books are really handy, but this suggests that many of those are more in how I relate to and use books vs ebook readers, not in the actual capabilities of each.

[ related topics: Books Movies Invention and Design History Law Work, productivity and environment ]

RT @heathercorinna: Calling anarchy chaos is kind of like calling sex babies. Sometimes they happen via sex, sure, sometimes not, but sex ain't babies.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Sent this to the guys at work today, thought it was geeky enough prose to share.

Git Sensei,

Keys have been shared for it,

XXXXXX has /stage

a living clone of gitosis@XXX.XXXX.XXX:XXXXX.git

living in a cage.

We no longer see "subversion" as fit.

As git is all the rage.

http://git-scm.com/ says much about Git.

and little about Linus, it's humble mage.

Humbly I submit that we should all commit

our code to YYYY (xxx.xxxxxx.xx) as sage.

For Version 3.8, Subversion is dead, slain.

For Version 3.6, Subversion is doomed. aged.

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

A few pix from the hike up Hill 88 this morning. http://www.flutterby.net/2011-10-16_Hill_88_Hike

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

I'd seen this a few days ago, and it didn't quite hit my "post this" threshold, but Shadow reminded me: LA Times: GM pulls advertisement that offended cyclists.

I guess the reason I didn't post this previously is that I'm not sure where to go with it. Yeah, car advertising is generally crass and base and unfunny (see, for example, truck ads during any televised sporting event). However, unless we who are promoting alternatives can, for instance, suggest that cyclists get laid more often, we're up against... well... spit... humanity.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Automobiles Machinery Currency ]

Slashdong: The Pen15 Arduino Shield:

The Pen15 Board is a relatively simple Arduino shield, built specifically for sex tech and teledildonics research. At its core is a MOSFET, 2 resistors for current regulation, and a jack to hook up vibrators to.

And if you really love Emacs, Deldo - Vibration Control and Teledildonics Mode for Emacs (YouTube) (Can't just listen to the audio, there are a number of language sight gags in that, even if the visuals are SFW).

Via SE.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Erotic Sexual Culture Movies ]

For Eric: best of craigslist: Yoga mat for sale. Used once

Argh. Back & forth w/city. Feels like my shed/workshop is getting pushback because of the living roof. Must stay win-win positive.

Yay! Just talked to the Building Department, we're going to do it in 2 permits, and I get the first tomorrow! Woot!

Emptyage: Generation X doesn't want to hear it:

Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone.

Via Genehack.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Beer ]

I hate to support Amazon for anything, but @robkroese released Mercury Rises, the sequel to Mercury Falls, today: http://t.co/4fQvHEr4

[ related topics: Books Nature and environment Astronomy ]

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT): The Fed Audit, on the $16 trillion given by the Federal Reserve to various organizations. Via Unelected: Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts, which points out:

To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

Via Larry's Log: Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts

[ related topics: Politics Weblogs moron Current Events Economics ]

Disney Surprise Gone Wrong- We're not going to Chattanooga??? (YouTube)

Mommy? Are we really going there? Mommy? <sfx: crying>

Awesome.

[ related topics: Movies Chattanooga ]

GM: Self-Driving Vehicles Could be Ready by End of Decade

“The technologies we’re developing will provide an added convenience by partially or even completely taking over the driving duties,” Taub said. “The primary goal, though, is safety. Future generation safety systems will eliminate the crash altogether by interceding on behalf of drivers before they’re even aware of a hazardous situation.”

Via Green Car Congress, Via Transportationist.

Given that the various people with self-driving cars are saying about $500k per car, and randomly assuming Moore's law, I've been assuming that we'll be at a $2k or so premium per car in a decade and a half. Now that GM's making similar claims, I may have to revise that to half a century.

[ related topics: Politics Weblogs Current Events Journalism and Media Automobiles Archival ]

One of the things that eventually drove me away from Libertarian economics was the realization that at some point it becomes more expensive to spend the money on law enforcement than it does to spend it on other mechanisms of social change, and that there are chaotic tipping points and definite "tragedy of the commons" phenomena within those calculations. In order to help you predict when the successor to the guillotine will make its appearance, I've gone to The income inequality of France in historical perspective, and transcribed Table 3. Income distribution by social group in 1788 for your perusal:

Group		Population (thousands)	Income per household (livres)	Total income (millions of livres)
				'high'	'low'
(1)	Nobles and clergy	540		1,995	1,715
(2)	Bourgeois	2,160
(3)	Shopkeepers and artisans	3,240	600	486	486
(4)	Workers (non-agriculture)	1,500	200	100	115
(5)	Servants (non-agriculture)	1,080	100	100	115
(6a)	Small scale farmers	5,250	250	330	390
(6b)	Large scale farmers	2,250	880	494	584
(7)	Agriculture: day labourers and servants	10,150	160	400	460
(8)	Mixed workers (agriculture and industry)	1,800	300	135	135
Total		28,000		4,000	4,000

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Law Enforcement Currency Economics Furniture ]

Best letter of complaint ever:

On opening this epistle you will behold the work of a dejobbed person, and a very bewifed and much childrenised gentleman.

Best use of "rejobulate" I've ever seen.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Christopher Moore: "Both Qadaffi and Robert Palmer gone. Where will tall, red-lipped security babes get a job now?"

Jerome Strach: "If you remember anything about the Lockerbie bombing, then you might want to know that Gadhafi/Gaddafi is dead."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Heinlein ]

m passed along a laser cutting technique to make folding wood.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Cartoon Movement: Inside the favelas, a comic on corruption and the nature of local government vs the police and larger scale government in Rio de Janeiro's slums. Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Nature and environment moron Law Enforcement ]

Much of the rebar is in, on Monday should be able to schedule an inspection for Tuesday and reserve trucks & pump for Friday pour.

[ related topics: Heinlein Machinery ]

Wow. Rebar all tied down, sand to form top looks like it measures 6 3/16" at the shallowest. Will call for inspection tomorrow. Pix shortly.

Watch porn, help me do science.

I’m planning an experiment on the content of “women friendly/feminist” categories in major mainstream porn sites and directories. I don’t have the time, will or means to watch even 1/200 of it by myself, but I’d sure like some data about it and what, exactly, is included in this category. Here’s where you enter.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Gambling ]

Programming Language Checklist by Colin McMillen, Jason Reed, and Elly Jones. As interesting as a critique of new languages as it is a critique of new language critiquers.

Thanks to Columbine.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Software Engineering ]

While buying parts for Ufer ground for my shed, was told by guy at Maltby that the city would require a driven rod, too. Learning things...

[ related topics: Education ]

As promised, pictures of the rebar and forms from the shed: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-10-24_Workshop_Rebar_and_Forms

[ related topics: Photography ]

Bacon Roses. Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Flowers Food - Bacon ]

Comparisons of Japan during and immediately after the tsunamis, and 6 months later. Amazing how fast humans bounce back.

Via Sensible Erection.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs

Vimeo Video demonstrating the technique

[ related topics: Photography Graphics Video ]

Inspection passed! One portion of the slab is closer to the fence than I thought, unsure how that happened, but we can move forward.

Oh, look, blogs. msdn. com's "permalink.aspx" facility apparently doesn't mean what I think "permalink" means. Sigh. #msdnbrokethenet.

Sebastian Thrun and Chris Urmson on self-driving cars at IROS 2011 (YouTube, part 1 of 3), Part 2, Part 3.

A lot of really fantastic observations here, from the reality that the rules as laid out in the driver's handbook aren't actually practical for navigating intersections, to the notions that in vehicle behavior "We tuned ours for Pittsburgh driving" means that California drivers did a lot of honking at it.

And the unforeseen, like the fact that in one of the DARPA challenges, the JumboTron interfered with GPS receivers.

IEEE Spectrum article on the talks.

[ related topics: Movies California Culture Maps and Mapping ]

Best summary coverage of the police actions against Occupy Oakland that I've seen.

Hat tip to Genehack.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Bay Area Theater & Plays Journalism and Media Law Enforcement ]

Oakland policeman deliberately throws grenade into group of people trying to assist person injured in protest.

[ related topics: Movies Bay Area Law Enforcement Civil Liberties ]

Google: "We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests."

"law enforcement" quoted there in the title because the (I suspect, Oakland) "law enforcement" agency in question is clearly a gang of armed thugs with colors that happen to coincide with other police agencies.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

How to make the overlay/popup scrollbars in gtk in more recent versions of Ubuntu revert to normal scrollbars:

dpkg --list |grep "overlay" | cut -d " " -f 3 | xargs sudo dpkg --purge

Source.

[ related topics: Astronomy Java ]

Ah, spin: The headline reads "iPhone 50% More Efficient Than Android, Says Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, but then you look deeper:

The conference call from Sprint Nextel (S) was a factoid treasure trove for those debating Apple (APPL) v. Android and their operating systems. Hesse said iPhone users are likely to consume significantly less 3G than the typical user of a dual-mode 3G/4G device.

Apparently, in fact, Android users find their phones 50% more useful than iPhones.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Conferences iPhone ]

BBC News: How the Joy of Sex was illustrated:

In the summer of 1971, Britain had been gripped by the Oz trial, in which the editors of a satirical magazine were found guilty of obscenity for publishing a sexualised parody of the children's comic character Rupert Bear. (The judge was famously called a "boring old fart" in court by a defence witness, the comedian Marty Feldman.)

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Food Law Current Events Monty Python Comics ]

I used to like going through car catalogs and magazines looking at the multiferous accesories you could buy, which is a bit of a lost art. After all, where can you get an under-dash Kleenex (tm) dispenser these days, or an in-dash phongraph? However, the one I like is this item about 1907 auto accessories from BoingBoing. I particularly like the 6-person auto apron at the bottom of the page; now we know where the inpriation for Whak-a-Mole came from!

[ related topics: Art & Culture Automobiles ]

Yes! Foundation pour done, surface finished, contractor just went home. Long morning.

Pictures from Friday's foundation pour http://www.flutterby.net/2011-10-28_Shed_Foundation_Pour

[ related topics: Photography Heinlein ]

Okay, just gonna link to this MeFi entry and thread on evidence for and against the efficacy of bicycle helmets for later perusal.

[ related topics: Pedal Power Bicycling ]

The New York Times has printed Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Humor Invention and Design New York ]

DARPA and its predecessor agency is famous for inventing the Internet, but maybe they should be more famous for ingenious experiments in harnessing people's own cleverness. Its obvious that their competition for robot automobiles has jumpstarted the field, for instance. However, man does not live by hardware alone; sometimes he needs organization. This item from Popular Mechanics talks about the Scavenger Hunt. In October of 2009 DARPA announced that they were going to be distributing 10 weather balloons around the nation in a few weeks. The team that found all of them first would get $40,000. MIT did it in less than 9 hours! Their secret? They paid people. However, can some well thought out incentive system aid in quick organization after a disaster?

[ related topics: Robotics Net Culture Social Software ]