Flutterby™! From 2012-01-01 to 2012-01-31

Posting this from my T-Mobile Android phone. Real time panoramas, upload images via standard web forms, hard keyboard, I'm really liking it.

2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York affirms lower court ruling allowing police departments to not hire applicants who score too high on intelligence tests

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Enforcement New York ]

The upcoming Ford Fusion midsize sedan and Explorer SUV will have lane departure warning systems, bringing LDW into mainstream vehicles from the luxury and commercial markets.

[ related topics: Humor Automobiles Community Economics ]

Print Me If You Dare. Rewriting printer firmware with arbitrary code through printing malicious documents...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics ]

Implementation of MITM Attack on HDCP-Secured Links, In which Bunnie presents a legitimate use for the HDCP master key, which was leaked but which has been suppressed via the DMCA. The legitimate potentially commercial use means that the DMCA is now a questionable strategy for suppression of the key.

The implementation inserts video into an encrypted video stream.

[ related topics: Weblogs Cryptography Video ]

How does anyone get a small technology company where one person is the main intellectual property asset, to scale beyond the capabilities and capacity of that person, without re-inventing everything. I'm looking for answers, resources, books, how-to, friendly blunt advice... unfriendly (but constructive) advice..

[ related topics: Books ]

So apparently, somewhere between Ubuntu 11.10 and the Perl community, perl-suid has disappeared. What's the modern accepted alternative if you want to, say, have a CGI script (run from Apache as www-data) write data to a directory (like an image upload)?

I had been piping in to a suid Perl script whose job it was to do the security and data integrity checks before writing the file. Do I now build a C wrapper to do this?

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Perl Open Source Writing Heinlein Community hubris ]

Mad Art Lab — Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits

Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor on Tumblr.

[ related topics: Erotic Art & Culture ]

Prediction: In 20 years, the idea that radio communications (ie: DSRC) is a reasonable research track for autonomous automobiles will be ridiculed.

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

Pretentious Title: How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day. Some good notes on productivity, and quantifying your own behaviors to create a feedback loop.

Via Love My Muse.

[ related topics: Writing Work, productivity and environment ]

So, uh, it looks like Romney's squeezing out Santorum in Iowa? Eeew.

John Carpenter's The Thing remade as a clay stop-motion animation with penguins in 2 minutes.

Bonus track: the "making of" video.

[ related topics: Animation Movies ]

My Craigslist special Thomas Ultra Air-Pac 1.5HP compressor appears to have died. After using it for the framing nailer for the workshop, I turned it on after a few days off and it runs continuously without generating more than 65PSI. The one problem I had with the compressor was that it was super freakin' loud.

So I'm in a quandary. I'm now used to a compressor for the shop. I currently use it mostly for pin nailing and blowing dust. I probably want something I can move closer to the house, for nailing trim. I'm also thinking about how it might be nice to have something that can drive a spray gun or do light sand blasting, but that's kind of the other direction, towards a big heavy fixed compressor (I do have 3 220v #10 ga circuits in the shop that I don't yet have a use for...).

Quiet is good. As I write this I'm thinking small and portable is good, because what I want is something I can fire up for a few nails or staples, and drag in to the house, which kind of says that I should just buy an HVLP system when I want spray finishing. And it's just me, so the most I'm going to be driving is me using a framing nailer, and I'm a fairly methodical user of nail guns. Keeping a big tank charged all the time seems like a waste.

This Fine Homebuilding request for quiet air compressors has a couple of suggestions, the Rolair JC-10 is claiming 60dB(!), That thread seems to think highly of the Makita MAC700, at 80dB, and the Thomas Air-Pac T30, although the Thomas Air-Pac web site says they're not accepting orders right now.

Anyone got thinking on air compressors for my applications?

[ related topics: Ethics Pyrotechnics Guns Real Estate ]

45 minutes with a rented demolition hammer and the top of the electrical trench is open. Also fixed the air compressor. Getting closer!

At some point I realized that the anti-abortion folks weren't after Roe v. Wade, they were after Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court decision that decided that the states don't have the right to prohibit birth control for married couples because of a right to privacy within the marriage. The current Republican presidential primary campaign has reaffirmed this in spades. Salon: Rick Santorum is coming for your birth control points out Santorum's statements on the topic.

[ related topics: Privacy Sexual Culture Sociology Salon magazine Marriage ]

In the warm afterglow of recent holiday shopping, a few words about bad checkout page interfaces. My pet peeve? Credit card number entry that doesn't say whether or not you need the spaces between digit groups.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Interface issues ]

After copying and pasting too many mangled URLs from the address bar of Firefox 7, I finally entered about:config and set browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false in order to show the "http://", and browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled to true to not grey that portion out.

Dear Mozilla: Next time y'all are begging for donations, I'll remember that rather than optimizing memory use, or fixing crashes, you're putting development effort into bad interface decisions like this.

[ related topics: Open Source ]

On the basis of Lyn's recommendation, I picked up Duncan Watts's Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know The Answer. I have to admit I'm not as excited about it as Lyn, but I am going to go back and re-read the second half of it to make sure I can better quantify why.

Watts makes a good case in the first half of the book that in examining data after the fact we tend to build stories within our mythological structure that reinforce why those correlations exist, and why that data reinforces our worldview. Even when that data happens to be random or made up. He does some decent takedowns of Malcolm Gladwell, and hits the Freakonomics guys with some well-deserved glancing blows.

It's the second half of the book that disappointed me. Not that I take issue with "binning" or some of the other techniques for evaluating consumer behavior, it's that he gets a little too self-promotional about what he's been doing for Yahoo! research, and seems to conflate the online world and the physical one in ways that I'm not sure hold true. As I said, I'll have to re-read.

I also raised eyebrows particularly at his discussion of scenario planning. I've seen some horrendously bad scenario planning by people who claim to have been trained by Peter Schwarz himself, but Watts's critiques of it use cherry-picked anecdotes that seem to be from people who ignored how the scenarios are supposed to be run.

Having said that, I will be re-reading the second part and trying to write up a better critique of it, and there are a few people I'll be sharing it with.

[ related topics: Books Law Consumerism and advertising Community ]

Columbine has an entry about fairy tales rendered as architecture, copying the image from Rapunzel's tower, see also Baba Yaga's tower and Jack's Beanstalk

[ related topics: Food Birds Architecture Real Estate ]

Testing my social media updater with picture uploading.

[ related topics: Photography Journalism and Media ]

Whoops, sorry, did something really bad to the CMS somewhere between these 3 systems... Still screwed up. Maybe fixed now?

[ related topics: Content Management ]

New Hampshire Republicans sponsor a bill to force legislators to show how proposed legislation draws from the Magna Carta:

Vita admitted he needs to "bone up" on the content of the charter, but said "it's a document that still functions." He views the bill as similar to efforts in Congress requiring all legislation to cite constitutional authority.

New Hampshire House Bill 1580

1 New Section; Magna Carta References. Amend RSA 14 by inserting after section 39-a the following new section:

14:39-b Magna Carta Reference. All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived.

2 Effective Date. This act shall take effect November 1, 2012.

Via Metafilter.

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design Civil Liberties Cryptography Real Estate ]

Feminisnt: Highlights from my bizarre FBI file, and how to FOIA your own

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Testing my social media manage with a cell phone HDR of downtown Petaluma

[ related topics: Wireless Photography Journalism and Media ]

Testing my social media manage with a cell phone HDR of downtown Petaluma

[ related topics: Wireless Photography Journalism and Media ]

Women's sexual satisfaction may improve with age.

The study, published in the January issue of the American Journal of Medicine, looked at such sexual satisfaction-related factors as hormone use, frequency of arousal, lubrication, orgasm and pain during sexual intercourse along with sexual desire and satisfaction among 806 women ages 40 to 100 (median age 67; 63 percent post-menopausal).

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs ]

Columbia is returning the U.S. citizen teenager who was mistakenly deported over a year ago.

How Jakadrien got to Colombia is a mystery to the family. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency maintains she was arrested in Houston for theft and told them she was an adult from Colombia.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sociology Pop Culture ]

Psychology Today — Is DSM 5 A Public Trust Or An APA Cash Cow?

The Carlat Psychiatry Blog — APA Threatens to Sue "dsm5watch" Website

The author of the blog titled "DSM 5 Watch" got a threatening letter and has changed its name to Dx Revision Watch. Sure seems like the former name accurately described its function, referred to a specific trademarked item, and didn't try to dilute the brand. Boo on the APA.

Not that I've got much love for psychiatry.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Weblogs Movies Mathematics ]

Earth Rights Institute — A Mercifully Brief Chapter on a Frightening, Tedious, But Important Subject, in which James Howard Kunstler suggests that we make a mistake by taxing buildings at the same rate which we tax land:

Under our current system, a vacant downtown city lot is taxed much lower than a lot with a thirty-eight-story office tower on it. The owner can afford to pay lower taxes year after year, perhaps even for decades. This is called the holding cost. It is in the interest of such a speculator to allow whatever buildings that exist on his property to decay. Not only do his property taxes stay low, but he can enjoy the added benefits of depreciation on his income taxes as well. (Buildings depreciate, land does not.)

I got here via the "Friday News Digest" on the Strong Towns blog, which praised it, but I have to wonder: If you discount the value of the building, then aren't you just encouraging mini-mansions with no lots? Seems like this sort of tax encourages greenfield development of exactly the sorts of oversized buildings on no lot suburbia that those praising these sorts of policies want to avoid.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Weblogs Current Events Heinlein Civil Liberties Architecture Real Estate Government ]

Trying to come up with half-time work for the next year or so. Anyone need the fractional services of a geek like me?

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Masterworks Wood Bicycles. Might be worth a trip to Danville to see in person.

Via Fine Woodworking.

[ related topics: Travel Bicycling Woodworking ]

Dan's probably posting this at the same time I am. Goblinbooks has a satire piece: I Was Shitting You People - A Message From Ayn Rand

To Whom It May Concern

I gave my lawyer instructions to release this message after my death. A joke I concocted when I was a kid has gone way, way too far. The most important thing you should know is this: Nothing I have ever written was meant to be taken seriously. You really don't want to build some kind of philosophy around Atlas Shrugged, okay? I'm sorry if I caused any trouble.

[ related topics: Nostalgia Objectivism Humor Scientology Philosophy ]

You don't use Google/Gmail/.. It uses you.

Whomever (especially the guys at Oracle Financials that do this) decided that normal humans should be able to extract data from a live database as a spreadsheet, save it, email it to other "normal" users to edit, and then upload the results back into the system at some point should be sprayed with glue, feathered, furred and manacled to the wall at a furries convention for a weekend before being sprayed with catnip and given to lions and tigers at the zoo.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Databases ]

LA Magazine — Between the Lines, an essay on the history of automobile parking.

[ related topics: Writing Automobiles ]

This is hilarious: jwz points out that the HDMI TVs he's using at DNA Pizza are playing simulated "snow", which then led him to a source for TV Static Stock Video.

This freebie pack includes six different TV static shots with two quality options to choose from. Check out the preview above, then either download the 720p Photo Jpeg version or the 1080p Pro Rez version from the links below.

For all your simulating the artifacts of old analog systems on modern digital electronics needs.

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs Technology and Culture Television Video Economics ]

Via Columbine: First cases of totally drug resistant TB in India:

“After thoroughly checking their prescriptions, we found that three of them had received erratic and unsupervised second-line drugs. They were often given in incorrect doses by multiple private practitioners to cure their multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB,” Dr Udwadia said. “The mortality rate of MDR, XDR and TDR-TB is 30%, 60% and 100% respectively.”

Patients with TDR-TB are put on a salvage regime - they are either asked to undergo surgeries or put on experimental drugs and antibiotics such as Linezolid. The antibiotics can have dreadful side effects like neuropathy which damages a single nerve or nerve group that can lead to a loss of sensation of that nerve.

[ related topics: Drugs Erotic Health ]

Trench dug. Stops at Friedman's, Home Depot and Lowe's, but hope to smoke test the shop tomorrow.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Trench dug. Stops at Friedman's, Home Depot and Lowe's, but hope to smoke test the shop tomorrow.

[ related topics: Photography ]

The Transportationist on California's High Speed Rail Project:

In addition to Peter Gordon's point about slaves building the pyramids, I will reiterate Dick Soberman's (U Toronto) point that "the Pyramids have lower operating costs". I am sure three millennia from now people will visit the ruins of the earthquake-ravaged island of California to visit the random spurs of metal and concrete that were once a High-speed rail line which had operated for about a year before technology obsoleted it and the operator went bankrupt. This is much like today when veritable hoards of people visit closed Underground stations and other abandoned infrastructure. This future tourism (discounted to the present at an appropriate discount rate of negative 7 percent) is perhaps the best justification for HSR yet.

[ related topics: Weblogs California Culture Earthquake Trains ]

http://www.therestartpage.com/ Note particularly the way the cursor changes as you mouse over all of the reboot messages from the various windowing systems you may have used... And, holy crap, the buttons work.

This is digital archeology in a really really sick way.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Including Smith and Company, makers of various finishes used in boat and yacht restoration and preservation, including clear penetrating epoxy sealer (CPES), because Larry Kaplan, a boat builder who hangs out at Aqus cafe, recommended their products highly.

[ related topics: Boats Machinery Archival ]

On Sun, 8 Jan 2012 13:18:20 +0100 "Anton Josefsson" <email address elided> wrote:

Hello. I am currently working on a video game that I was planning to call Flutterby, but after a quick google search I noticed you had claimed it as a trademark. I was simply wondering if it was possible for us to use Flutterby as the name of our video game.

Hi, Anton!

I think it's fine for you to call your game Flutterby. Trademark is claimed for a specific purpose, in my case for a web publication, and as long as there's no deliberate intent to confuse potential consumers, it's okay to re-use names.

I claim trademark just to make sure that people don't try to take my domain names away from me.

Give a holler as your game progresses and I'll be happy to do what I can to help you with publicity!

Dan

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Interactive Drama Games Law Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Copyright/Trademark Video Java ]

Salon — The GOP's Bizarre War on Sex.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture History Salon magazine hubris ]

Took me 'till I was installing the breakers in the box to realize that single pole GFCI and Edison circuits were incompatible. Duh. Sigh.

Remember that study which supposedly claimed that professional violinists couldn't tell a Stradivarius from a modern violin? Not so much: They were asked which one they preferred, and were never asked to identify which one was the Strad. One of the participants goes into detail:

I was not asked to identify specifically which was the modern violin and which was the old violin; only which I preferred. If people are concluding from this study that "professional violinists can't tell the difference between modern violinist and old Italians," then I think we need a different study in which violinists are actually asked to identify that.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Weblogs Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Ouch, that was a $320 mistake. Acquired 4 2 pole GFCI breakers...

Dear customer who stuck up for his little brother.

Repost on Huffington Post.

Follow-up on the original post.

Want to experience Burning Man from the perspective of the undocumented immigrant? http://www.playazon.com/transport/coyote.html

[ related topics: Burning Man ]

This is not your typical internet quiz... I just took the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire to determine my chronotype. Not a surprise, I scored an MEQ of 29 which pegs me as "Definitely Evening" which is interesting because I gauged myself to be "Moderately Evening". The parameters around my sleep behavior actually indicate I'm more of a night owl than I ever thought. One thing that seems telling is that I should probably focus on exercising later in the evening rather than trying to get up early before work.

I stumbled over to the questionnaire after listening to John Medina's chapter from Brain Rules on Sleep well, think well. Now if I can chart my homeostatic sleep curve...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment Net Culture Pop Culture ]

Trying to put 50in/lbs on straight-blade screwdriver drive breaker bolts is *hard*. 100A breakers installed in house panel.

[ related topics: Fabrication Real Estate ]

Threw the master breakers and nothing went bang! Lights are on in the shop!

Occasional pot smoking not harmful to the lungs:

For occasional users, smoking marijuana was actually associated with a small but statistically significant increase in lung capacity - perhaps caused by the deep-breathing pot smokers use to draw the drug into their lungs.

[ related topics: Drugs Weblogs Health ]

I don't have a smartphone with a camera, so I can't test this out... iOnRoad provides collision warning and headway distance monitoring in an Android/iOS app.

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish, on switching StreatEasy to open map systems.

TL;DR: We at StreetEasy decided to build our own maps using, among other tools, OpenStreetMap, TileMill, MapBox and Leaflet, instead of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to Google. And yes, the money pushed us into doing it, but we're happier with the result because we now control the contents of our maps.

[ related topics: Currency Maps and Mapping ]

And the HVAC guys just left, the new picture frame on the workshop wall now heats and cools the space.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Space & Astronomy ]

Whoops: Maybe that red wine isn't so good for you after all. University of Connecticut researcher Dipak Das who studied links between longevity and resveratol, falsified data at least 145 times.

The UConn statement says that:

The investigation was sparked by an anonymous allegation of research irregularities in 2008. The comprehensive report, which totals approximately 60,000 pages, concludes that Das is guilty of 145 counts of fabrication and falsification of data. Inquiries are currently underway involving former members of Das’s lab; no findings have been issued to date.

The summary of the 60k page report gives a chronology of the investigation and a look at a few of the images which appear to have been manipulated.

It also points to the Office of Research Integrity of the Department of Health and Human Services page on "Forensic Actions" for the quick examination of scientific images, which has a set of Photoshop actions for analysis of images for evidence of manipulation.

[ related topics: Weblogs Health Wines and Spirits Education ]

First layer of spackle!

Doh! First layer of spackle, with picture:

[ related topics: Photography ]

Damn. Heebe Jeebe Jungle Vibes is one of the stores that has really defined downtown Petaluma

[ related topics: Photography ]

SOPA strike:

On Jan 18th, sites will go dark to protest the internet censorship bills. Urge the biggest sites to join the strike: Sign the Petition. Participating? Add your site to the list, and spread the word.

[ related topics: Free Speech Civil Liberties Net Culture ]

Spray texture applied to workshop walls.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Elf has an interesting little ramble on "faculty tax", the notion that people get taxed on their abilities rather than being taxed on their achievements, and links to Mike Konczal: A New Metaphor for Student Debt Burdens: Faculty Taxes:

Enter student loans. On the theory side, we know from the corporate finance theory literature that higher debt burdens for firms “incentivizes the company’s executives. Manager must contemplate their future obligation to repay creditors on time…this threat of illiquidity has a positive disciplining effect on management.” And on the empirical side, we know that, from Jesse Rothstein’s work, ”that an extra $10,000 in student debt reduces the likelihood that an individual will take a job in nonprofits, government, or education by about 5 to 6 percentage points.” Both effects push people to max out earnings above, like a faculty tax would. Fascinating.

[ related topics: Politics tolkien Invention and Design moron Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Education Government ]

A few details could be polished, but Android location "to do" elements with Astrid and Locale are awesome.

I hate painting! However, OSH was closing out 35 year exterior grade paint dropping at half-off, and the workshop is now painted!

(Charlene has suggested that I clarify: The interior of the workshop is now painted)

Lumber rack and french cleat rail in

[ related topics: Photography Trains Woodworking ]

More workshop progress: Starting to move in! http://www.flutterby.net/2012-01-16_Workshop_Progress

Pandoc — a universal document converter. Converts various text-ish formats, like markdown, HTML, LaTeX, PDF, RTF, and more to other text formats. Looks like it might be a step towards solution to some of my annoyances with trying to edit in OpenOffice or LibreOffice when I'll be exchanging documents with Microsoft Word users.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron ]

Disaster porn: The Atlantic has a collection of pictures of the grounding of the cruise ship Costa Concordia.

[ related topics: Photography Machinery ]

Shadow passed along Ask Slashdot: Open Source vs Proprietary GIS Solution?. It suffers from the usual fanboyisms and geography ignorance (and wow does /.'s current rating system appear to be broken), but a few things to dig up later:

• Cloudmade has a bunch of downloads of country outlines.
• Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.
• uDig is a GIS framework for the Eclipse IDE

[ related topics: Free Software Software Engineering Astronomy Current Events Graphics Mathematics Maps and Mapping Java ]

Yeesh. The $100 price point for streaming network cameras is 640x480 at 20FPS? I thought I lived in the future!

[ related topics: Photography broadband ]

Hmmm... Drive in my home server died, and modern Linuxes no longer support Via EPIA devices. Rethinking my network config.

[ related topics: broadband ]

Okay, we're back, but y'all need to do your part to stop SOPA and PIPA.

• Additional information about the SOPA/PIPA strike
• EFF: How PIPA and SOPA Violate White House Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation.
• The Oatmeal animated comic explains SOPA/PIPA
• SOPA Track.com — Check how your congressweasel or senator has taken a stance on SOPA or PIPA

[ related topics: Animation Free Speech Race Real Estate ]

Neil Gaiman's Journal: An open letter to Washington from Artists and Creators.

[ related topics: Art & Culture Neil Gaiman ]

Yes, even more SOPA/PIPA: The Day The LOLcats Died (YouTube)

[ related topics: Movies ]

Matt Haughie of Metafilter talks about SOPA/PIPA and some DMCA harassment he suffered.

Whoah: Newt's a swinger? Marianne Gingrich, Newt's ex-wife, says he wanted an "open marriage". Quoted because I think there's quite a difference between "open marriage" and "honey, either we get a divorce or I'm going to go get some on the side".

[ related topics: Quotes Politics Sexual Culture Sociology Marriage ]

New York Times — Arthur S. Brisbane — Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

Dear Mr. Brisbane: The world has seen entirely too much of journalists badly rewriting press releases. You want to know why I don't give a damn if the newspaper industry dies a horrible grisly death? You want to know why I don't subscribe to the NYT online edition (and, yes, I do pay money for online content)? This. In spades.

The fact that the New York Times even has to ask this question shows how corrupt "the fourth estate" has become. So, Mr. Brisbane: Fuck yes. And the New York Times should also not confuse telling the truth with finding an alternative viewpoint.

Because otherwise you're worse than Fox News, because you don't actually take a stand for something, you're just republishing lies.

Via Brown Eyed Girl, who also links to Jay Rosen's response to this and the subsequent Brisbane hair-splitting.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Current Events Journalism and Media Television Currency New York ]

As the sideshow that is the Republican presidential primary winds into full gear, the various smear campaigns against Barack Obama have started returning. Just this morning I got yet another forwarded email that attempted to revive the Obama birth certificate and "Connecticut" social security number and all sorts of other goofiness.

There are reasons to be displeased with Barak Obama's presidency, to be sure (NDAA, extrajudicial execution of American citizens, and so forth), but in a field of right wing wackjobs (ie: everyone but Rommney and Paul), an ideologically honest if politically inept guy who's still got some questionable stances on freedom (Paul), and a guy who's entire platform seems to be disavowing everything his political career has been up to now (Romney), I think it's important to evaluate the least of the evils.

To that end, I suggest Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's long game will outsmart his critics:

Obama’s foreign policy, like Dwight Eisenhower’s or George H.W. Bush’s, eschews short-term political hits for long-term strategic advantage. It is forged by someone interested in advancing American interests—not asserting an ideology and enforcing it regardless of the consequences by force of arms. By hanging back a little, by “leading from behind” in Libya and elsewhere, Obama has made other countries actively seek America’s help and reappreciate our role. As an antidote to the bad feelings of the Iraq War, it has worked close to perfectly.

Via David Chess, who includes some of the criticisms I think are worth revisiting.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Privacy Games History moron Civil Liberties Government ]

Posting this from the workshop's WiFi http://www.flutterby.net/2012-01-19_Workshop_Progress

Shadow passed along this report that nails and tacks were found along the Australian "Tour Down Under Challenge" bicycling event route an hour before the racers were due to roll through.

Sabotage is suggested.

[ related topics: Current Events Sports Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Former Senator Christopher Dodd turned MPAA CEO and lobbyist threatens to cut off campaign funds:

"Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd told Fox News. "Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake."

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Heinlein Currency ]

With the news that porn performers in the City of Los Angeles will now be required to use condoms, Brad Guigar has a modest suggestion for moving porn production to Philadelphia.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Health Theater & Plays Current Events Work, productivity and environment Community Rocky Horror Picture Show ]

RT @elfsternberg:

Rick Santorum's new fundraiser project is acronym'd CUM? He's the world's most elaborate performance artist, right? https://t.co/EnkPUAfe

Indeed, the link leads to https://www.ricksantorum.com/unite/ which proclaims a "Conservatives Unite Moneybomb". Wow. We're meta³ here.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Theater & Plays Art & Culture ]

RT @lturrentine:

4K of IBM memory found in my grandpa's pole barn, captured in a 692K photo. #mindblown http://pic.twitter.com/nUGM5ff8

The picture is totally worth clicking through for.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Photography Robotics Embedded Devices ]

7xx-RFC: An RFC for a new series of HTTP status codes covering developer fouls.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Net Culture ]

You know those scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies where Legolas is waving around his bow, pulling arrows out of his quiver and firing, and then repeating that, in fluid motions? And how it all looks like CG bullshit?

This woman empties her quiver swiftly and methodically (YouTube video), and another video where you can see more of her and the target.

Via this Sensible Erection thread.

[ related topics: Movies tolkien Robotics Embedded Devices Video ]

Whoah: 9 out of 9 U.S. Supreme Court Justices have decided that police need a warrant to plant a GPS tracking device on your car.

[ related topics: Privacy Law Enforcement Automobiles Maps and Mapping ]

RT @rtraister:

Rand Paul refuses pat-down at Nashville airport on way to an anti-abortion rally in DC. Because keep your hands off his body. Happy Monday!

Rand Paul in pat down standoff with the TSA in Nashville:

The TSA version of events is that Paul triggered an alarm during routine airport screening and refused to complete the screening process (pat-down) in order to resolve the issue. Paul was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement.

Rand Paul is pro-choice on toilets, anti-choice on women's health issues.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Health Aviation Law Enforcement ]

The Flickr photos and videos of Wanda Sowry, automata maker.

Via LumberJocks: British Pub scene Automata by Wanda Sowry. Video of the pub scene in action.

[ related topics: Photography Video ]

Hmmm... The SF Gate front page currently has "Rare photos of Joe Paterno" followed immediately by "Why cockfighting persists".

Of course I saw someone posit yesterday that he's not really dead, it's just horseplay.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Salon magazine Woodworking ]

Brad Templeton has some interesting notes from Santa Clara University Law Review conference on the legal issues of autonomous vehicles.

Also links to an MSNBC article on the conference.

[ related topics: Law Current Events Education Conferences Rocky Horror Picture Show ]

So, wait, Overstock.com is charging 5% more than the manufacturer's web site? Uh... Credibility: lost.

Anyone have experiences with network or IP cameras with 2 way audio and Linux clients?

[ related topics: Free Software Music Photography broadband Open Source ]

Wait, Twitter's automatic link "shortener" just made my tweet longer. Stupid link shortener idiocy.

[ related topics: hubris ]

Norman W. Edmund, founder of Edmund Optics and Edmund Scientific, 1916-2012.

[ related topics: User Interface ]

Another get together for folks interested in urban planning. 4PM Thursday at Aqus in Petaluma.

Rob Malda's review of Star Wars Uncut: The Director's Cut led me to Star Wars Uncut: The Director's Cut (YouTube).

The concept: Star Wars Uncut asked people to shoot 15 second segments of the original Star Wars. This is a bunch of those edited together. It's amazing.

[ related topics: Star Wars Movies Robotics Space & Astronomy Embedded Devices Aviation - Helicopters ]

Nat Torkington: The President's challenge: What more does government want — or deserve — from the tech world?

In the wake of SOPA/PIPA, a statement from the Whitehouse says:

Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue websites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists and rights holders. We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important challenge.

To which Torkington responds:

All I can think is: we gave you the Internet. We gave you the Web. We gave you MP3 and MP4. We gave you e-commerce, micropayments, PayPal, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, the iPad, the iPhone, the laptop, 3G, wifi--hell, you can even get online while you're on an AIRPLANE. What the hell more do you want from us?

[ related topics: Books Music Free Speech Invention and Design Aviation moron Law Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Civil Liberties Net Culture Currency Race Archival Real Estate iPhone ]

Just ordered a Wansview NC540W network camera for the shop. No H.264, but motion JPEG, web interface, pan and tilt. We'll see how it works.

[ related topics: Wireless Photography broadband ]

Electrical inspection done, need photo sensors on outside lights, and wall plates, before the final on that permit.

[ related topics: Photography ]

An In-Depth Case Study on the Pretty Lights + BitTorrent Partnership, or: How a music artist embrased Pirate Bay, BitTorret, and piracy, to become successful.

Via Sensible Erection.

[ related topics: Music Law Art & Culture California Culture ]

Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here.

[ related topics: Robotics Automobiles ]

Shadow forwarded along UT San Diego/Wall Street Journal: More riders trying 'fixie' bikes with one gear, many risks, and I didn't think it was that important, but it's been sitting in an open browser tab, and...

They're illegal in many places. Laws in most states where fixed-gear riding is popular – including New York, California, Maryland and Oregon – require that bicycles be equipped with a brake that enables the operator to make the braked wheels skid on clean, dry pavement. Still, fixed-gear cyclists and lawyers in those states argue, often successfully, that the rider should count as the “brake” if he or she is able to achieve the same effect.

and I had a half-formed thought that related to that article on autonomous cars that I just blogged, which had a bit about the technical challenges to bringing these things to market and a huge bit about the legal challenges to making our driving that much safer and more convenient, and...

Today I had an electrical inspection for my shop. The city is requiring me to install motion and light sensors on my exterior lights, or to change them from standard screw-in Compact Fluorescent to something else. There's enough spill-over from the lights in the back yard that we can't go to bed with them on. Motion and light sensors seem only make it more likely that I'll leave them on. So I'm about to be out $50+installation time for some pieces that I'm just going to yank out when they go bad, if not before, after the inspection is done.

As I said, it's a half-formed thought, but I can't help but feel that these are all indications of flaws in our legal system somewhere.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Law Current Events California Culture New York Bicycling Economics Archival Furniture Government ]

Koushik Dutta of the CyanogenMod team proposes an alternative to the Android Market, in which one could get "one click root apps, emulators, tether apps, Visual Voicemail apps", as well as the other apps.

[ related topics: Economics ]

NY Times: Paying a ‘Sports Tax,’ Even if You Don’t Watch:

Although “sports” never shows up as a line item on a cable or satellite bill, American television subscribers pay, on average, about $100 a year for sports programming — no matter how many games they watch. A sizable portion goes to the National Football League, which dominates sports on television and which struck an extraordinary deal this week with the major networks — $27 billion over nine years — that most likely means the average cable bill will rise again soon.

So not only are you paying out the nose for local tax breaks, additional policing costs, peak-load traffic, and other externalities to host their stadiums in your town, if you pay for TV you're also funnelling money into the giant economic sink that is professional sports.

I got to that via JWZ's rant about DirecTV's "deceptive business practices", which is also interesting because his reasoning for wanting to pay for television is the timeliness of the delivery of the product: To be watching what other people are watching.

The "something for the water cooler conversation" effect is part of what drives my bandwidth bet with TC, something I really need to dig deeper on the stats of.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Games Weblogs Technology and Culture Movies broadband Software Engineering Journalism and Media Television Sports Currency Economics ]

Okay, I hate to link to the New York Times, but two in one day: NY Times: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work:

“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”

Yep. To design a change now, you have to fly to China so that you can figure out how you can make the supply chain support that change. How long do you think we're gonna maintain our lead?

[ related topics: Apple Computer Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Graphic Design Fabrication New York iPhone ]

NineBullets.net: Lana Del Rey: Chicken McNugget, or McRib. A little musing on manufactured music that draws some good similés with food.

[ related topics: Music Food Birds Archival ]

@borkware: "Hereby staking my claim on the code-review term codenoscopy."

@bagelturf: "@borkware Call yourself a Groktologist."

David Ogilvie writes to Ray McCalt:

I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.

[ related topics: Writing ]

First World Problems Rap

[ related topics: Movies ]

Mess with cyclists and they will mess. you. up. Police: Man shot teens in self defense.

A 16-year-old boy was shot and killed and another teenager was wounded by a man they tried to rob as he rode his bicycle along a Schuylkill River trail Wednesday morning, police said.

Thanks, Larry.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Weblogs Current Events Law Enforcement Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Energy.gov: where information goes to die. Dawn Stover goes seeking information on Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository on the Energy.gov web site, comes up with some problems.

Open data is hard for a lot of reasons, but I think a big one is that so many people still don't get the web. PDFs have slowed down the process of building useful electronic documents a whole hell of a lot, and learning how to move beyond the paper world into data even as minimally structured as HTML is something that eludes many web publishers.

It's a whole new mind set, and as anyone who's tried to navigate newspaper web sites effectively can tell you, something that people mired in the old processes are not coming over to easily.

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

Burgled in Philly

When John Davidson’s apartment gets robbed, he learns that the easiest way to get his stuff back is to have one drug dealer lie to another drug dealer while he lies to the police

[ related topics: Health Real Estate ]

Just learned that in Australia "hacker spaces" and communal workshops go by the name "Community Shed". A whole new sociological vista opens.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Community ]

Hey, if someone out there could go to http://002forb.nwsvr.com username "guest" password "guest" and tell me if they see my workshop, that'd rock. Thanks.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

If 2012's Oscar Nominated Movie Posters told the truth

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies ]

My dad introduced Off The Mark into my regular morning comics, and it gets giggles.

[ related topics: Comics ]

I'm going to be doing some photography for one of Asha's projects - yoga, not salads. I want to set up a good lighting system for the project. I could rent a real studio kit for a reasonable amount but I'd also like to try to assemble a kit using stuff that will see more use. I've done yoga photos for her before but we used a studio and completely rearranged the track lighting. I don't think Asha realized how lucky we were to have a space with 30-40 spots on tracks, so her expectations are higher than she realizes.

The crux of the question is:

1. Can I get away with taking all our table lamps and placing them in the room (with or without shades)?
2. Should I get 3-4 portable halogen work lights? If so, should I add some diffusion?
3. If I use lamps, like clamp-on portable work lights, should I use incandescent, halogen or fluorescent bulbs?

And has anyone tried just using bed sheets for backdrops and diffusers as opposed to hitting Michael's for a bolt of muslin?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Fabrication Furniture ]

They say chicken soup feeds the soul, but they don't say what it feeds the soul to. Lovecraft was an optimist.

[ related topics: Food Birds ]

Because my dad asked, picture of the garage reorg.

[ related topics: Photography ]

First day in years at a "real job": off to do amazing things in the operations group at Sonic.net!

[ related topics: Heinlein ]

@midendian says

I missed this: truckers using GPS jammers to block their fleet managers prevented GPS approaches at EWR.

About this article about the FAA gearing up to do GPS policing that talks about problems near Newark International Airport with GBAS for tests using Continental Airlines equipment doing augmented approaches.

I'm not sure where the "truckers" and "fleet managers" assertion comes from, but even if it's some other source it's still interesting that GPS jamming is an off-the-shelf thing.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Aviation Current Events Maps and Mapping ]

A bunch from Shadow (well, okay, two and one that I got to from following a link):

• Wired looks at Ritte Van Vlaanderen bikes, seems like they're primarily about the graphic design and marketing plan, but it's an interesting little look at even that.
• BOXX Corp makes a little box shaped electric motorcycle, although the Engadget post that sent me off looking uses "bicycle". There is, however, no "pedal it" option.
• Yike Bike is a super lightweight folding electric motorcycle.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Marketing Graphic Design Pedal Power Bicycling ]