Flutterby™! From 2011-12-01 to 2011-12-30

A friend and neighbor from the San Geronimo Valley is currently off to explore. He bought an RV, rented out his house, and the next thing you know there are pictures on Facebook of him basejumping off a bridge in Idaho or somesuch. John's blog is USA on Forty Dollars a Day, he's currently in Bouse Arizona and has some musings on the people he's been talking to there.

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs Real Estate ]

Workshop progress: Galvanized nails in, needs reinspection, but I can start on insulation and wiring in the mean-time.

Ugh. Want to purchase from local vendors with products in stock, but can't tell if their specs are the same as the online versions.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Consumerism and advertising Economics ]

Little Rooster - the vibrator alarm clock.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Legalizing medical marijuana reduces traffic deaths:

The economists analyzed traffic fatalities nationwide, including the 13 states that legalized medical marijuana between 1990 and 2009. In those states, they found evidence that alcohol consumption by 20- through 29-year-olds went down, resulting in fewer deaths on the road.

The economists noted that simulator studies conducted by previous researchers suggest that drivers under the influence of alcohol tend to underestimate how badly their skills are impaired. They drive faster and take more risks. In contrast, these studies show that drivers under the influence of marijuana tend to avoid risks.

Science News recap of the press release. The paper itself.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Drugs Current Events Television Economics Government ]

Interesting: All Cafe Gratitude locations will close.

[ related topics: Weblogs California Culture ]

Okay, I know some of you are fans: This American Life: the sex tape.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies ]

Leaped out at me because Charlene's parents live in Sanger: DLM Farms Inc. of Sanger pays $7,516 to the victims, $3,700 to the Fresno County Department of Agriculture, and will pay $2,500 in federal criminal fines for spraying a bus full of kindergartners with KOCIDE 20/20 pesticide.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays California Culture Public Transportation ]

LA Times looks at the migrant workers who harvest marijuana.

[ related topics: Drugs Content Management Current Events ]

This evening at Family Build, tossing an egg carton airplane back and forth while watching one of our kids learn about center of gravity and pitch angle, I got further appreciation for how much support for self-directed learning I got when I was young. Thank you once again, mom and dad.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Aviation Sociology Education ]

MarkV at Brainwagon: How to lose $2400 in 24 seconds… with a story of my own. I saw the video come across the B&H Facebook feed, and shared it with one or two other people, but Mark's story makes the video more than about the loss of a camera.

(Direct video link)

[ related topics: Photography Video Woodworking ]

"rock star developer": Does this mean I can trash hotel rooms, show for work stoned, but have to have 8 albums go platinum to make money?

[ related topics: Drugs Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Travel Currency Aviation - Helicopters ]

Institutional Memory and Reverse Smuggling, on trying to help a large petrochemical company figure out the design decisions and reasons for elements in one of its older plants.

Via Medley

[ related topics: Graphic Design Gardening ]

Thought of the moment: Libertarian tendencies as an expression of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian ]

Aqus. Thursday afternoon. Get together and chat about urban planning related issues and ideas. Anyone?

I haven't whined about .NET for a while, so: Really, multiple consecutive button-up messages? How "up" can the button get?

Jeri Ellsworth: My First (Half-Life II) Crowbar (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies ]

From Shadow: Exposing the Delphi Technique in Public Meetings (YouTube), on how public meetings are usually run with a fixed set of choices in order to force the illusion of consensus.

"Trust the process, there's going to be lots of time for discussion."

Yep. I could rant a whole lot longer, but, yeah, this is exactly the process. And it's also important that we find ways to build a news organization to expose and explore the decisionmaking processes earlier.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Why @PayPal is wrong regarding @Regretsy, according to their own policies.

Please, people: Don't use PayPal!

Violet Blue: Why the problem with Siri matters:

The reason Siri got its pro-life association was that the program didn’t just return zero results for abortion clinics when it should have been. In multiple instances Siri directed users to pro-life “pregnancy counseling centers” whose primary motivations are to talk women out of considering certain sex-related healthcare options including abortion, contraception and more.

Yep. "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that" is quite different from "there are none", and "here's one" when it isn't.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Software Engineering ]

Dr Jen Gunter: How many sex partners did you have this year? And does it matter?

Yep, the CDC is, once again, off in the weeds and not playing with evidence.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Short panic where I thought I'd missed the inspector, but we're now on to exterior sheetrock! And continuing the wiring.

[ related topics: Douglas Adams ]

Bunnie's Blog: On Counterfeit Chips in US Military Hardware. Fascinating look at parts sourcing, electronics lifecycles, and design life spans.

[ related topics: Weblogs Graphic Design ]

Listening to the http://www.strongtowns.org/ podcasts. Recommended.

[ related topics: Pop Culture ]

Observation: Systems which break regularly are more resilient than systems which run flawlessly for long periods.

• The Impossible Project - new instant (ie: Polaroid-like) film
• Open Street Map fund drive
• Lyn strongly recommends Everything Is Obvious
• OpenChattanooga is a(sic) advocacy group working together to make local public data open, available and useful. claiming that the "City of Chattanooga Office of Sustainability" is a partner, but no link to that.

[ related topics: Books Weblogs Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Chattanooga Maps and Mapping ]

BEST Pole Dance Ever by Jenyne Butterfly (YouTube video, no nudity, great gymnastics)

[ related topics: Butterflies Sexual Culture Movies Nudity Sports Video ]

Just because you might have gotten all the way to December 6th without having the Christmas music completely suck the will to live from you, Justin Bieber — Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.

From the MeFi thread: "Wow. Steam punk, pop music, break dancing (including the robot!), auto tune, baggy pants, capoeira, R&B hooks and CGI elves. That thing was a complete stylistic clusterfuck."

Yep. Steampunk is dead.

Over the Thanksgiving break, we were down in Fresno and had various opportunities to be exposed to popular culture. Charlene's parents were caught up in the finale to "Dancing with the Stars". We ended up in Wal*Mart and Target. Events like that. The whole thing reminded me of why we try to avoid those experiences.

This, even more so.

(Which reminds me, one of the cameras has a picture of the "Paula Deen" shelf in the exercise section of the Target. Yeah.)

[ related topics: Music Photography Movies tolkien Robotics Theater & Plays Sociology California Culture Clothing ]

"Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. ..."

YouTube video of the speech.

[ related topics: Movies History Theater & Plays Video ]

Reverse Robocall: Spam your elected officials back. IT World article on Reverse Robocall.

[ related topics: Politics Spam moron Monty Python ]

Worth reading, especially today: NY Times: A Reluctant Enemy, a short look at Japan's Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of the Pearl Harbor attacks:

And yet even in the final weeks of peace, Yamamoto continued to urge that the wiser course was not to fight the United States at all. “We must not start a war with so little a chance of success,” he told Admiral Nagano. He recommended abrogating the Tripartite Pact and pulling Japanese troops out of China. Finally, he hoped that the emperor would intervene with a “sacred decision” against war. But the emperor remained silent.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: History Architecture ]

In the comments to my pondering about libertarians and the Dunning-Kruger effect, crasch linked to I Was Wrong, and So Are You — A libertarian economist retracts a swipe at the left—after discovering that our political leanings leave us more biased than we think.

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian moron Economics Archival ]

We're trying to securely move files from A to B, with a watchguard firewalll in the way. the Watchguards do not like SCP. It's answer was use FTP and SMB.

Our answer was a version of: ssh root@192.168.99.33 -p 99 cat /home/foo/stuff/export.zip >export.zip

Which worked: Almost 100 times in a row. Then the watchguard decided it did not like it. Still a useful trick. If I end up on the other end.. I may install a real firewall (dreaming).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Cryptography ]

Some days, the jokes just write themselves. Remember that old Monty Python sketch that began "A lot of people in this country pooh-pooh Australian table wines."? Australia OKs laxative agent as wine additive, using sodium carboxymethyl cellulose to clarify and prevent crystallization in white wines.

[ related topics: Wines and Spirits Monty Python Race Python Furniture ]

Keep giggling over buying 500 square feet of rubbers today, then remember that even though there were multiple pieces, it's just rubber.

Jon Skeet: OMG Ponies!!! (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail).

...but on October 7th this year, Argentina announced that it wasn't going to use daylight saving time any more... 11 days before its next transition. The reason? Their dams are 90% full. I only heard about this due to one of my unit tests failing. For various complicated reasons, a unit test which expected to recognise the time zone for Godthab actually thought it was Buenos Aires. So due to rainfall thousands of miles away, my unit test had moved Greenland into Argentina. Fail.

On how Unicode and timezones can mess you up. Via Sean Conner.

[ related topics: tolkien ]

Screwed up the remainder of the exterior drywall/firebreak. Accomplished a lot for all that screwing around.

I grew up going to a Waldorf school. I have mixed feelings over the whole Waldorf/Rudolph Steiner thing generally, but one of the sentiments that still echoes strongly in me is the belief that the only thing an intelligent child can do with a complete toy is to take it apart.

Wired: Geek Dad: The 5 Best Toys of All Time nails it.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

FBI is using Carrier IQ to spy on cell phone use. Apple's closed ecosystem, controlling what you can and can't run on your phone, seems to be good for keeping malware off the device. But I think with Carrier IQ and similar we're seeing the other side of closed devices and operating systems.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Wireless Current Events Law Enforcement Archival ]

Because you asked: More pictures of workshop progress http://www.flutterby.net/2011-12-13_Workshop_Progress

[ related topics: Photography ]

SFGate: NTSB: Cell phones should not be used while driving. The article is accompanied by a picture from an accident described in the text:

In August 2010, a pickup truck driver who was distracted by his phone rammed the back of a big-rig that had slowed for a construction zone. Then the pickup was hit from behind by a school bus, which was thrown into the air before it crashed down on the truck, killing the driver. A second school bus then slammed into the first school bus, killing a passenger who was in the back of the first bus.

As previously mentioned here on Flutterby, laws banning cell phone use while driving seem to have no effect on accident rates (among many many studies). Further, from the description of that accident, I understand how the pickup truck driver was responsible for hitting the big rig, I don't understand why his cell phone use is being blamed for the two school buses then hitting that accident hard enough to throw the bus up on top of the truck.

Methinks there's way way more to this story than we're seeing, and I wonder why this accident, even if the pickup truck driver had sent 11 texts in the 11 minutes preceding the accident, is being trotted out as the example.

Speaking of which, they mention the 11 texts in 11 minutes, which kinda gets you wondering: What's the baseline? The fact that we have this number doesn't tell us anything unless we know something about even correlations between texting frequency and accident frequency, and we apparently don't.

What's happening here?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Wireless Content Management Current Events Machinery Fabrication Public Transportation Archival Model Building Government ]

American Scientist: Freakonomics: What went wrong?

In our analysis of the Freakonomics approach, we encountered a range of avoidable mistakes, from back-of-the-envelope analyses gone wrong to unexamined assumptions to an uncritical reliance on the work of Levitt’s friends and colleagues. This turns accessibility on its head: Readers must work to discern which conclusions are fully quantitative, which are somewhat data driven and which are purely speculative.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Remember to carry a tape measure when I go to the lumber yard: Achievement unlocked!

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Stump the lumber yard and their distributor asking for parts from the manufacturer's installation recommendations: Bonus multiplier!

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Real life lizard plays squish the virtual ants game on a smart phone, with his tongue (YouTube).

[ related topics: Games Movies Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Bill of Rights Day: Celebrating 210 years of the Bill of Rights, 220 years since they were ratified. Time to up my ACLU donations.

[ related topics: Civil Liberties ]

Scott Kurtz and Brad Guigar lay it out for the newspaper comics and syndicate industry. And offer to help.

Dear Cartoonists Studio: This is not a prize. Anyone can put their comic on a webpage and populate it with ads from Google Adsense. GoComics.com isn’t promising (nor can it deliver) traffic. That has to be generated by the artist anyway, so why add a middleman? Also there is no such thing as an electronic-book publishing contract. That’s like selling freshman elevator passes on the first day of the spring semester.

Dear Syndicates: You are making yourselves look more and more out of touch with every passing day. The USC Anneberg School for Commincation and Journalism just released a study that predicts newspapers are gone in five years. If you want to survive beyond that cataclysmic event, you gotta figure out this online stuff soon.

Some good notes on relevance of the newspaper industry in there as well.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Books Journalism and Media Art & Culture Comics Rocky Horror Picture Show ]

Well beyond this right now, but taking a breather to post early morning pix: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-12-15_Workshop_Progress

And today's progress: More siding, and test fitting the sliding door frame. http://www.flutterby.net/2011-12-16_Workshop_Progress

Today's progress, preliminary door, wiring. http://www.flutterby.net/2011-12-17_Workshop_Door_and_Wiring

Because I am often harsh and critical on law enforcement, it does to expose the other side: Time: Officer Crawls Under Bus to Comfort Trapped Woman. Yes. Thank you, officer Kevin Peck.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Public Transportation ]

An interesting piece from Popular Mechanics: an analysis of the cockpit voice recorders from the Air France Airbus that crashed into the Atlantic a few years ago. It appears that a non-fatal problem with the airspeed indicators colluded with inexperience on the part of the co-pilots to bring the plane down. Most of the equipment worked fine, but somebody did exactly the wrong thing. The strangest bit is that the alarm system is screaming "Stall!" numberous times, but nobody seems to believe it.

[ related topics: Aviation Interface issues ]

Interesting: Witness for the prosecution against Bradley Manning testifies that none of the cables he found on Manning's computers were in the Wikileaks release. Via The Atlantic.

[ related topics: Law ]

Canon DSLR controller for Android phones and tablets.

[ related topics: Economics ]

Mark Hershberger sent along The Moth Presents Steve Burns: Fameishness (YouTube). I know I've listened to this before, probably as an MP3. It's the tale of the host of a children's show being named one of the nation's most eligible bachelors, and the resulting date...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Music Movies Pyrotechnics ]

The Penis Mom:

It all started way back in early November, when my 13-year-old's teacher sent an email to parents saying they were doing a little Pumpkin Chunkin’ – this is a very cool physics project where the kids launch pumpkins with a trébuchet. Awesome. Except the email asked for help setting up the trébuchet. Help from dads. That's right, dads. Are there any strong dads who can help? So if you know me, you know I’m cautious. I sat down at my computer to check the facts, first looking at the calendar to see what year we were in - yep, still 2011. So with time-travel ruled out, we were only left with the possibility that we had somehow slipped into an alternate universe, one where teachers have giant balls. Balls clearly big enough to toss such gender-biased questions out into the wind without concern for where they might land. And thus began my verbal rant. I am uncertain how long it lasted, however when I finally came up for air my husband/editor had made dinner, cleaned up, and put the kids to bed.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Technology and Culture Space & Astronomy Television Marriage Real Estate Furniture ]

Thank you so much, Alan: The EPDM rubber sheet has been lifted on to the roof and spread out. Oh, and: Passed the rough electrical this AM.

HIV vaccine developed in Canada given approval by the U.S. FDA for clinical human trials

[ related topics: Current Events Trains ]

Relevant today: California Energy Commission Procedures For Proper Installation Of Insulation

[ related topics: California Culture ]

Our house guests, high school and college age, are in the process of nuking their Facebook and G+ accts in favor of email, Tumblr and blogs. End of the social media bubble?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Education Real Estate ]

Shadow forwarded along the very customized bookcase. I spend a good portion of my design time trying to not do that.

[ related topics: Graphic Design Gambling ]

Yesterday, learned how to cut and drill glass bottles with a teenager. It's probably good for society that making a good bong is difficult.

[ related topics: Drugs Children and growing up ]

Jason Kottke runs down a whole bunch of reasons you probably want to avoid GoDaddy for your web hosting.

Kind of a cake: Evil marzipan pig is evil.

[ related topics: Food - Cake ]

Bobbing for Apples up in the foothills, or: how we spent yesterday: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-12-25_Yuba_River_Christmas

Maximizing Shareholder Value: The Dumbest Idea In The World — Forbes.

Via Philip Greenspun

Prices affect parking less than San Francisco expected:

On the SFpark pilot program which sets up variable pricing for parking, and a smart phone app to help people figure out what the pricing and availability of parking is.

[ related topics: Bay Area Software Engineering California Culture ]

USA North called for the excavation warnings for the electrical trench. Insulation inspection passed. On to roof assembly!

RT @zookoo:

“C++: the plus signs are actually arrows. They only look like plusses because they're POINTED DIRECTLY AT YOUR EYEBALLS.”

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson ]

Brian May's (Queen) Guitar was something he and his dad made? His mom's knitting needle as part of the "whammy bar"? Impressive craftsmanship and unique design elements. None of it was patented, licensed, or controlled like an invention with investors. Yet the use of it made him a good living, and many people copied aspects of it, for the good of Rock and Roll.

[ related topics: Music Graphic Design ]

It's 2011. I just custom created yet another xml_encode function to created nicely nested xml array data... according to a specific entities thoughts of XML. Yet the built in (PHP) json_encode/json_decode handled the nested arrays perfectly, in a manner that all JSON users seem to agree on.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Mathematics ]

Pictures from this morning's exertions! http://www.flutterby.net/2011-12-29_Workshop_Progress

[ related topics: Photography ]

Disappointed that "sheetrock" has nothing to do with bedding or electric guitars. Started laying floor, moved wallboard inside.

Crusher Ave and Picard Ln, just down the street from Ryker Ct. Picard Ln also intersects Warp Drive.

[ related topics: Star Trek California Culture Maps and Mapping ]

Okay, started the floor. Pix from inside: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-12-29_Workshop_Addendum

Actual headline: "Santorum surges from behind in Iowa". Obligatory link to Santorum. In other news, RT @BorowitzReport:

Other countries care for their mentally ill. It seems cruel to just let them wander around Iowa.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Linked because on my list of hobby things to do is build wooden toys for various charitable causes: CPSC Launches Registry for Small Batch Children’s Product Manufacturers, which allows you to bypass some testing for lead and other heavy metals in toys when you know all the products you're putting in to the toy are safe, and when you have revenues of less than a million dollars and have made less than 7,500 units in the prior year.

More details at US Consumer Product Safety Commission — Small Batch Manufacturers and Third Party Testing. The registration page is at http://www.saferproducts.gov/

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area Consumerism and advertising ]