Flutterby™! From 2012-04-01 to 2012-04-30

API Relay - I seem to be using things like this a lot lately, and have made a couple of custom ones for other people. So I figured I'd share a fairly generic example. CURL and PHP are two of the most useful things on the internet.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

Spent the day helping Rancho Cotate HS students build a boat, in preparation for them being competition in the Bodega Bay Fish Fest boat building competition.

[ related topics: Boats Machinery ]

'I'd like 11 and a half tons of resin, please': the artisans behind the artists

Via MeFi

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

Tom and I took the prototype the Rancho Cotate High School students built yesterday out for a little spin on the Petaluma River.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Whitewater ]

Zenni Optical Rocks and deserves some link love this morning. I lost a pair of computer glasses on my last trip, so I ordered 3 pairs (cheap glasses means I buy spares and leave them at work an home) of the exact same model and prescription. Or at least, I thought I did. Turns out I fat-fingered part of the prescription just a little and they sent an email confirming the slight prescription change from previous orders. A quick exchange of emails and they updated my order this morning. Good customer service and a great value product.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Travel ]

My Dad forwarded along 20 words to learn for Scrabble. Unfortunately it's split over 21 pages, which is annoying. So, a summary if you're not totally into it:

ZA, XI, YO, AA - yes, you should know all the two letter words, especially those with high point value words. Nothing like playing ZA, XI or JO two ways on a triple letter score. Similarly: avoid vowels next to triple letter scores.

There's a lot of focus on sometimes obscure high-value bingos, MUZJIKS, CAZIQUES, BEZIQUE, FLAPJACK, JOUSTED, QUIXOTRY, JUKEBOX, CHUTZPAH that I don't worry about two much. Too much focus on bingoing means a lot of rack management and low value plays in other places. Not. that squeezing those words into everyday conversation necessarily hurts

AERIE - Charlene could have used that in Saturday night's game, where, for some freakish reason, she was getting all the vowels and I was getting the consonants.

FAQIR, BEZIQUE, QANAT, QUEUE - You already know a lot of Q words, the ones you need to know are the ones without U in them. QAID and QATAR are a good start.

ZAX - Ooooh, that's a cool one. I'm quite shakey on my 3 letter words, and we both agree that mindlessly memorizing 3 letter lists is how you turn in to a Scrabble nerd.

WAGYU - may be time to update our dictionary..

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Scrabble Gambling ]

At this point you've undoubtedly seen this everywhere else, but: Dmitry Grinberg ran Linux on an 8 bit Atmel AVR microcontroller, actually both the ATmega1284p and the ATmega644a, by writing an ARM emulator and running Linux under the virtual ARM machine.

[ related topics: Free Software Hardware Hackery Open Source Robotics Writing Sports Embedded Devices ]

Ann Romney on complaints that Mitt Romney seems "too stiff": “we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out.”

Or just get him away from Santorum.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Terrorists have bombed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Michigan, news articles carefully avoid the words "bomb" and "terrorist".

[ related topics: Current Events ]

MarkV suggested: The Alinea Project, in which Allen Hemberger cooks from the Alinea cookbook, with lots of pictures (some awesome, some distracting).

[ related topics: Photography ]

The chairman of Cato Institute's board of directors talks about a potential Koch brothers takeover:

The stakes are high. Would transforming Cato from a libertarian research center into a policy shop for the Kochs' political operations make any sense? The answer from Cato's fiercely independent donors, scholars and stakeholders worldwide has been unequivocal: No.

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian moron ]

So if, like me, you checked in at XKCD yesterday and thought you got the joke... check out this XKCD discussion forum topic (lots of duplication, but lots of c aptured images) or this Reddit thread (a quick rundown of the discovered factors) to see some of how deep it apparently went:

As geary and same3chords (via googledocs) mentioned, it's using the referrer (your "ideology"), and/or geographic location, browser, ISP, and OS to determine which comic you see. Many comics also change depending on the magnification of your browser (your "glasses prescription") or your browser's window size (your "browser window size"... okay that one was straightforward).

via MeFi

Wondering if Apple's "blackouts, seizures and numbness" disclaimer is an attempt to sound cool: "iPad, just like alcoholism."

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama ]

This Is Carpentry — The Elegant Ellipse. Including an easy jig for routing ellipses.

Christopher Moore as provided a reader's guide to his new novel Sacre Bleu. If you're at all interested in the art of the late 1900s, there's a lot there.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Art & Culture Douglas Adams ]

The Independent — Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all.

"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.

He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression."

What's most amazing isn't that he lied in order to topple a regime he hated, or even that those lies were amped up to provide Colin Powell's U.N. Security Council presentation material, it's two-fold:

1. That U.S. intelligence officials didn't corroborate that data, that they had such a hard-on for war that they just went blindly ahead on the say-so of one disgruntled person.
2. That those same bureaucrats are largely still doing what they've been doing.

[ related topics: Politics History Current Events Guns ]

Rick Santorum thinks California Universities don't teach U.S. History, apparently while campaigning in Wisconsin he said:

“I was just reading something last night from the state of California. And that the California universities — I think it’s seven or eight of the California system of universities — don’t even teach an American history course. It’s not even available to be taught.”

Sorry, Rick, both the University of California system and the California State University system offer American History classes, and, in fact, require them or testing out of them for graduation, at all their campuses except for U.C.S.F, because it's a medical school.

Santorum is either a liar, or depending on liars for his information.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Weblogs Bay Area California Culture Education ]

Out of context quote of the day, from this LumberJocks entry on a Moxon style vise:

Could gain a little by Sinking the nuts into the backside.

[ related topics: Quotes ]

Nancy forwarded along this awesome article (with pictures!) on the Twin Beaver airplane. [Edit: April Fools, but still awesome!]

[ related topics: Photography Aviation ]

So that last entry reminded me: If anyone's interested in a home in Beaver, Utah (home of "Beaver Liquor"), our neighbor will be putting one on the market shortly. I know one or two of you have made "screw this, I'm moving to southern Utah" noises occasionally...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Economics ]

The 'Girls Around Me' Problem Isn't Just About Data, but Sexism:

Another consequence of the trend to only talk about data and not society, norms, politics, values and everything else confusing about the analogue world is the victim-blaming implicit in most of these articles. The cause of the problem? Women sharing data. The solution? Women need to better control their data (in fairness, Madrigal also asks what companies can do about this, but does not come to any answers; the burden is left on women). This data-centric view of "data-sharing-is-bad and control-your-data" borders on blaming the victim instead of criticizing the sexist culture that makes this data dangerous in the first place.

Kashmir Hill makes this point when stating, " 'You're too public with your digital data, ladies,' may be the new 'your skirt was too short and you had it coming.' ...

[ related topics: Politics Books Invention and Design Sociology California Culture ]

The Victorians and the Blow Up Doll Femme de Voyage

Yep: Munich mayor says switch to Linux is much cheaper and has reduced complaints.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Current Events ]

Local Freecycle had "Supplies for Elder Cats". I'm envisioning these as the lurking horrors in the shadows ala Lovecraft's Elder Gods.

[ related topics: hubris ]

Mill Valley Herald: Decisions are made by those who show up, redux. Yes. This. We can point out that public comment periods are overrun by the clinically paranoid, but the reality is that those are who your committee members, commissioners and council members are hearing from on a regular basis.

Sigh. Government is not guided by people who'd like it to remain on its course, but those who'd like to twist it to their own ends.

Via The Greater Marin.

[ related topics: Bay Area moron Woodworking ]

After a Twitter exchange, David Edmondson of The Greater Marin Blog, had a challenge for me:

@danlyke Care to draft an Unsuck GGT piece?

I don't know that I have the background in urban planning to unsuck the entire system, so let's talk about what would unsuck it for me. I've put my proposal in the comment after the break.

[ related topics: Weblogs Bay Area ]

The command line app that the users prefer just grabs the web interface, strips the formatting, and prints it. #suckitwebdesigners

I went to the Front Range Pythoneers meetup tonight to hear a little about PyCon. Learned a bunch - including seeing some cool dancing robots, a few videos on maps in Python and a call to Stop Writing Classes.

But the best part of the meetup was after the discussion devolved into a debate about languages. One person stated, "The problem with Ruby is all the Perl developers got involved." To which came the epic reply:

If it doesn't look like line noise, then it's not a real programming language!

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Robotics Software Engineering Monty Python Maps and Mapping Python hubris ]

Extreme Tech takes some guesses and does some back-of-the-envelope calculations on the scale of porn web sites.

Then you need to multiply 90 megabytes by the number of monthly visits — which is around 350 million for Xvideos. This comes to around 29 petabytes of data transferred every month, or 50 gigabytes per second.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Ouch for the indie booksellers: Google cancels Powell's ebook contract, the rumor is that all of Google's electronic books partnering with independent bookstores will be similarly canceled.

I actually just bought my first Google e-book through their partnership with Copperfield's, but I understand completely: I like that we've got a local bookstore, but I'm eschewing physical books these days, and Copperfield's didn't really bring anything to the transaction: I found out about the book online, I had to jump through hoops to find the book in a way that credited them with the appropriate affiliate codes, and in the end both my actions and Google's were charity for a business model that's extraneous.

[ related topics: Books ]

Foreign Affairs: Hacks of Valor: Why Anonymous Is Not a Threat to National Security.

Evidence of banned antibiotics, arsenic, acetaminophen and diphenydramine in commercial poultry:

In a joint study, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) and Arizona State University found evidence suggesting that a class of antibiotics previously banned by the U.S. government for poultry production is still in use. Results of the study are published in Environmental Science & Technology.

Via The New York Times.

[ related topics: Drugs Invention and Design Food moron Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Education Birds New York Model Building ]

I recently took a new job that involves a commute. I looked at the Visa bill last night, saw how much I'm spending on gas now, and made a new commitment to trying to figure out how to get taxpayers to subsidize my commute, so now I'm back to trying to figure out the bus thing.

Continued in the comments.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Heinlein Public Transportation Woodworking ]

So, wait: before the income tax, the federal government raised money primarily through import tariffs? Hmmm....

[ related topics: Politics moron Currency ]

This current "OMG! Pictures of my kid! Horrors! Privacy!" trend gone too far: Parents call school photo 'offensive, degrading'. Photographer takes class picture. PTA informs photographer that two kids parents didn't sign picture consent forms. Photographer removes one of the kids, but the other kid is in the picture in such a way that it can't be easily elided from the image, so photographer puts a cartoon face over the kids.

Hilarity Outrage ensues.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Privacy Political Correctness Current Events ]

Rather than copying and pasting: MeFi post on the apprehension of a driver who hit a cyclist and tried to drive off. YouTube video of the incident.

And three cheers for Richard Gubish, Jr., driver of the LANTA bus.

[ related topics: Movies Video Public Transportation ]

RT @Hexmode:

Fiscal responsibility: Actions speak louder than words imgur.com/QNI2F.jpg

Yep.

RT‏ @TheThomason:

The horn on a Prius is just a recorded voice saying "I'm not mad at YOU, I'm mad at the SITUATION."

[ related topics: Music ]

Cyclist hits pedestrian, SFGate.com runs days of speculation and investigation. Car hits ped, one small story, below the fold.

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

I'm getting ready to install a system in French West Africa. Getting the UTF8/Latin1 issues in the system took a day, and it's looking pretty good once I translated all the latin1 encoded translations to full UTF-8. But numbers are kicking my ass. So much of the system is accounting, and the system really really wants a decimal delimiter to be a period. Numbers. That I know of, it's the most common thing between all our societies and languages, and the french want a comma where there should be a period. So much of all of our systems want a period for the decimal and strips commas from numbers. It's going to be a long week.

[ related topics: Cryptography ]

Thomas Kinkade, dead at 54.

Art's great nudes have gone skinny

Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano has taken some great (and, to be honest, not so great) paintings of nudes from the past and reimagined what they would look like if their bodies conformed to what the 21st-century thinks of as an ideal of beauty. The results are revealing – and quite shocking in what they say about our modern attitudes to women's bodies

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic History Art & Culture ]

Awesome license plate (Thanks @Paul_E_Ester)

Ben Hammersley: Check Against Delivery. My speech to the IAAC.:

In fact, given that the efficacy of Richard Reid as a terrorist didn’t depend on his being able to detonate his shoe at all – as arguably the downing of that flight would not have lead to the years of airport hassle and distress for millions of people – and simply in using our own overreaction against us, I’d be willing to take a bet that this sort of judo move would be something Anonymous would do, as they say, simply for the lulz.

[ related topics: Aviation Shoes ]

The Vincent Zandri Vox: Hate Amazon? Well Read About What Random House Did to Me and My Family...

[ related topics: Books Sociology Real Estate ]

Boat building practice with the Rancho Cotate High School students.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Boats Machinery ]

Why some Civil War soldiers glowed in the dark. On war wounds and bioluminescent bacteria saving lives.

[ related topics: History Archival ]

The boat the Rancho Cotate High school students built today:

[ related topics: Children and growing up Boats Machinery ]

Take 2: the boat the Rancho Cotate students built,yesterday:

[ related topics: Photography Boats Machinery ]

A Facebook post of the United States Postal Service Plan to Profitability: 5 Year Business Plan February 16, 2012 got me to pondering: Is our continued subsidy of the USPS akin to the way we've subsidized roads and other infrastructure out to the middle of nowhere: There was a time when it was reasonable policy to tax the city dwellers heavily in order to subsidize the rural lifestyle. Expansion of the nation was a big deal, getting people out there to stake claims so that when the Spanish or Russians came in and tried to put down settlements there were already people with a vested interest in supporting the United States occupying those territories. Nowadays, though, it seems like the only thing we get from subsidizing sprawl is more automobile use and pollution. It's time to re-think our massively subsidized transportation infrastructure, and part of that may be re-thinking how we subsidize package delivery.

Something I found striking: The graph of USPS First Class mail Volume vs Real GDP from 1973 to 2011, from page 5. Notice how strongly those lines diverge as of 1993.

[ related topics: Politics Photography Current Events Automobiles Economics ]

I did not "get" Instagram even before they were acquired by Facebook for $1bn. But my Android phone lets me upload to my blog. iPhone thing?

[ related topics: Weblogs iPhone ]

Every jump of the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard, seasons 1 through 6.

Those of you who are male and a certain age how have an ear-to-ear grin that you just can't shake.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Via Larry: Transportation Nation: Killed While Cycling: Why So Few Fatal Bike Crashes Lead to Arrest in NYC.

[ related topics: Weblogs Sports Pedal Power Bicycling ]

So is the pink ribbon a trademark of the Komen foundation? I found ribbon on products in our pantry, want to know if I can buy those again.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Interactive Drama Copyright/Trademark ]

RT @Genehack:

Shit for which I am officially too old: figuring out yet another fucking Wiki markup syntax. Just allow HTML too already, dammit.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson ]

RT @Columbine:

Did you ever notice that all inspirational nose-to-the-grindstone quotes about creativity are from people who have already made it?

...:

You don't hear any writers or artists who are still stuck in the creative gutter giving little inspirational asshole pep talks ...

[ related topics: Quotes Writing Art & Culture ]

The economy must be looking up, the UK, at least, is entertaining less conservative ideas: Guardian: Open relationships: the people making it work (hat tip to crasch).

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Economics ]

Community Computers (707) is an organization here in Sonoma County (Santa Rosa) that does computer refurbishing and services for low-income computer users. Stashed here so I can find it again.

[ related topics: Aviation Community ]

What bothers me isn't that I have to do this, it's that someone else has done it, many times, & didn't make it easy to replicate their work!

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar is Here! The calendar is a response to Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahady being charged with "violating morals, inciting indecency and insulting Islam".

Via Bust.com

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Nudity ]

Jeri Ellsworth goes to Hawaii and plays with hot lava (YouTube)

[ related topics: Movies ]

Groupon deals boost the number of online reviews, but lower their scores.

They examine this effect in more detail by pinpointing reviews that specifically mention the words "Groupon" and "coupon". "Reviews mentioning either keyword are associated with star ratings that are 10% lower on average than reviews that do not, while the very small fraction of reviews mentioning both keywords are more than 20% lower on average," they say.

[ related topics: Weblogs Space & Astronomy Aviation - Helicopters ]

Eric suggested Weather Spark. Holy cow, this is the way to publish a data set. Lots of cool tools to explore!

I've been grumbling about ubiquitous computing and integrating interfaces into our everyday life, but I'm not sure about this...

Working Nintendo Controller Coffee Table. Nice woodworking, too!

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Furniture Woodworking ]

6 7 Rules For Recording Police, or, really, anyone in a public area.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

n+1: Raise the Crime Rate.

Tennessee state senators have approved an update to the state's abstinence-based sex education that defines "holding hands" as a gateway sexual activity.

And just to make sure you need that brain bleach: Juxapose with Google Images search for "George Bush holding hands". You're welcome.

[ related topics: Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Chattanooga Education ]

Okay, this seems like it may have some flawed methodological issues, but who am I to let stuff like that stand in the way of reinforcing my prejudices: The Atlantic Cities: Big Box Stores Linked To the Presence of Hate Groups

RT @Suddain:

Tell someone you love them today, because life is short. But SHOUT it at them in German, because life is also terrifying and confusing.

Nest officially answers patent lawsuit: 'Honeywell is worse than a troll'. Nest makes a smart thermostat. Honeywell has been making the same damned thermostat for something like a century, and just keeps resubmitting their patents without acknowledging that the previous submission of their patents is prior art.

Patents are broken.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Art & Culture ]

Wood porn! Savage Woods of Austin Texas has some absolutely spectacular looking exotic wood.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Woodworking ]

Shadow forwarded along this CBS News article that embeds a YouTube video of the "Cogoo Turntable Rider". As The Cogoo Turntable Rider web page says:

The Turntable Rider is an epic bicycle accessory which converts a bicycle into a musical instrument.

The bike wheels, become jog wheels.

The handbrakes, become sound pads.

Mix and scratch at will.

This is apparently a project to drum up interest for the Cogoo Bicycle Sharing Service

[ related topics: Movies tolkien Robotics Invention and Design Current Events Embedded Devices Pedal Power Video Bicycling ]

SafetyTat temporary QR code tattoos for your child. Now with 700% more fear mongering than before...

No, apparently this isn't a parody. Via Nonelvis's screen cap of the web page.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

All these New Urbanists who went back to grad school multiple times because what they'd been taught wasn't making sense: UR DOING IT WRONG!

[ related topics: Children and growing up Invention and Design ]

Oh MySQL: I've been using actual databases for so long that I'd forgotten about '80s era DB design. Carefully counting VARCHAR()s.

[ related topics: Open Source Graphic Design Databases ]

Actually, higher education is *often* a replacement for common sense (h/t Joe Maisel).

[ related topics: Education ]

The Atlantic: Why Civics Class Should Be Sexy.

Imagine a curriculum that taught students how to be powerful -- not only to feel empowered but to be fluent in the language of power and facile in its exercise.

It would teach them that civic power -- the capacity to effect desired outcomes in common life - can derive from ideas, wealth, status, charisma, collective voice, and control of violence. It would show how power throughout our country's history has been exercised and justified, for good and for ill.

[ related topics: Aviation - Helicopters ]

"Access Turbo Tax Downloads & Unlocks" - gamify your taxes? When do I get to level up?

[ related topics: Politics Government ]

Really, @TurboTax? It's a credit card number, you couldn't figure out how to take the spaces out on your end?

This would be easier if their team-mates showed up...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography ]

New York Times OpEd: A Veteran’s Death, the Nation’s Shame. For every U.S. soldier killed overseas, 25 veterans commit suicide.

[ related topics: Invention and Design New York ]

Frame and panel for Charlene's students to do a (moveable) mural

[ related topics: Photography ]

Sawzall and computer destruction for education! For the students! For art!

[ related topics: Photography Art & Culture Education ]

And with the last peremptory challenge of the day, the People thanked and excused juror #116

Great, Canonical Launchpad proudly announces that it's OpenID and I can log in to other places using it, but *it* is not a relying party.

Beagle Bros Software Repository: http://beagle.applearchives.com/ and https://twitter.com/#!/beaglebros . You know who you are.

[ related topics: Nostalgia Software Engineering ]

You know that problem where the test presupposes some level of ignorance. We've all had this problem, the high school physics tests which asks "why do AM signals travel further than FM signals", a question predicated on frequency, not signalling mechanism, and knowing of applications which use AM and FM signalling on the same band means you're likely to give an answer the teacher wasn't looking for.

(And, yes, I respect my high school physics teachers, but Mr. Chesto should have been smarter than to ask this question in this way... In his defense, he did back down quickly when challenged.)

Education is full of this sort of thing, I know that Charlene's recent college classes have had me tearing my hair out with "the teacher wants this answer, but here are cites which support this answer being more correct".

Turns out that Florida's Science FCAT test is institutionalizing this sort of idiocy and penalizing schools for having smart students.

So according to the Test Development Center, it appears that it is acceptable to use scientifically correct answers for wrong responses on the Science FCAT as long as FLDOE does not expect a fifth grader to be educated enough to realize that the wrong answers are scientifically correct.

Via /..

[ related topics: Children and growing up Weblogs Education hubris ]

Interesting read: Michael Abrash on working for Valve

The idea that a 10-person company of 20-somethings in Mesquite, Texas, could get its software on more computers than the largest software company in the world told him that something fundamental had changed about the nature of productivity. When he looked into the history of the organization, he found that hierarchical management had been invented for military purposes, where it was perfectly suited to getting 1,000 men to march over a hill to get shot at. When the Industrial Revolution came along, hierarchical management was again a good fit, since the objective was to treat each person as a component, doing exactly the same thing over and over.

And Jeri Ellsworth has just announced that she's working for Valve...

[ related topics: Nature and environment Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment ]

I've been writing more and more Python code lately. Being an old C hack, I find Python to be a lot of fun. I can write essentially the same code with fewer syntactical errors due to the over-use of punctuation in C. But Python isn't C and my resulting code tends to be pretty slow. For instance, I recently wrote a function to return the next occurrence of a character in a string that isn't inside double-quotes. In C, it's pretty straight forward:

int findUnquoted(char * s, char f) {
  int q = 0;  // Means "not inside quotes"
  
  for (int i = 0; i < len(s); i++) {
     if (!q && *s == f) return(i);
     
     if (*s == "\"") q = (q + 1) % 2;

     s++;
  }

  return(-1);
}

This is pretty snappy because of the way C let's you work with memory pointers. Of course, this is the source of the worst kind of C bugs. This code assumes 's' points to a valid, nul-terminated string. If it doesn't, this could easily become an infinite loop. It also assumes that len(s) is less than MAX_INT, which is pretty safe on most modern systems. The code is parsing XML and you're not likely to be parsing really long XML files on an 8-bit processor. My initial Python version looked very similar:

def findUnquoted(s, f):
  q = 0
  for i in range(0,length(s)):
    if not q and s[i] == f:
      return(i)

    if s[i] == '"':
      q = (q + 1) % 2

  return(-1)

But this was really, really slow. What's much faster is to rely on the string functions in Python (which are implemented in C):

def findUnquoted(s, f):
  p = s.find(f)

  if p < 0:
    return(p)    # Not found

  q = s[:p].count('"')

  if not qc % 2:
    return(p)    # Found with even number of quotes preceding

  # Special case of being inside quotes
  nq = s[p:].find('"')

  p = p + nq + 1 + findUnquoted(s[p + nq + 1:], f)
  
  return(p)

Which is much, much faster but still has some poorly handled conditions, like if f is found inside quotes but never outside. But I am parsing XML files and looking for the closing '>' so I don't expect that condition to ever occur in valid XML. What is interesting is having to think of the problem on a higher level of abstraction. In C, it's a matter of walking through the characters in the string and monitoring my state. In Python, I am considering what the quotes mean relative to the search. In fact, I probably wouldn't have used the modulus operation in C if I hadn't done this Python version first. This is a fairly subtle example of how Python encourages higher abstractions. But when you combine the higher abstractions with the efficiencies inherent in an interpreted, dynamically-typed language, you start to experience quite noticeable boosts in productivity. And carefully written Python need not be much slower than good C code. Next on the to-do list is to play with map() and list comprehensions. }

[ related topics: Monty Python Python ]

Typo OTD, from Stern fails to win $300M payday in Sirius suit:

Sirius XM, which now has more than 21 subscribers, acknowledged the ruling in a securities filing Tuesday.

[ related topics: Gambling ]

Pilot sends plane into dive after mistaking Venus for oncoming plane.

Or, as Zoya Naskova said on Facebook: "Venus has driven many a man into violent plunges"

[ related topics: Astronomy Woodworking ]

Pondering the push to bring broadband to rural areas and the "digital divide", vs subsidies of rural transportation that led to car culture.

[ related topics: broadband Sociology California Culture Automobiles ]

So there's this thing where the U.S. Secret Service was down in Columbia prepping for a Presidential visit, and a prostitution scandal erupted. Long-time readers of Flutterby know I'm not particularly averse to prostitution, relationships have many transactional components and I think heavy restraints on trade tend to bias the playing field, in the case of prostitution those restrictions tend to bias against women.

So here's what bugs me: There was a $25 charge for the additional room. The scandal apparently erupted because two of these assholes were looking for a "2 for the price of 1" deal, in the range of $40-50.

What bothers me, of course, is that a couple of douchebag cheapskates were balking at paying the provider of the services less than twice the additional room charge. I mean, maybe they could expense the room charge, but... yeesh.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture History Law Current Events ]

We've got a friend couple who loves cruising. They'll catch the cheap routes in the spring and fall when the cruise lines are shuttling boats between the Caribbean and Alaska, and are regularly trying to get us to come along.

Frankly, I can't imagine anything more horrible. It seems to me like being stuck in Las Vegas, without being able to escape to Valley of Fire.

Anyway, I kind of keep my eyes open for the horrors of cruise lines, so I admit I'm a little biased, but here's one: Two fishermen are dead after a Carnival Cruise Ship captain apparently ignored the warnings of passengers and steamed on past a drifting boat. Other versions of the story: Tumalo Woman Has Tragic Encounter at Sea — Spots Small Boat in Trouble; Cruise Ship Doesn't Stop, Cruise company investigates claim that ship ignored stricken fishing boat — Passengers say they alerted crew of Star Princess – part of Carnival Corporation – to fishermen adrift in Pacific ocean.

[ related topics: History Space & Astronomy Current Events California Culture Pyrotechnics Boats Machinery Gambling Alaska Aviation - Helicopters ]

crasch forwarded along This article about building machine tools using cast concrete. Will have to investigate further, I'm not sure how you flatten ways and slides with concrete, but even if you end up putting angle iron on the concrete body to give a machine-able surface, this could be a good idea...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs ]

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/KATU-147866735.html

"A man who said he was fed up with being harassed by airport security stripped to his birthday suit while in an airport screening lane Tuesday evening and was arrested."

I've had that thought run through my mind.. standing there in line. One person doing it is crazy. two might be gay or sexual, 50 and it's a movement or uprising. The trick would be to entice the rest of the line to do it at the same time.

Queue the folk music: http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/alices.shtml

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Erotic Sexual Culture Aviation Food Current Events Pop Culture ]

Oh, @Opera: I love you, I really do, but having to write different jQuery code for inconsistent behavior with checkboxes dulls that ardour.

Dumt & Farligt - Phantom Flex Highlights - 1080p (YouTube) - things destroyed in slow motion

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Jennifer Abel — guardian.co.uk — The TSA's mission creep is making the US a police state: The out-of-control Transportation Security Administration is past patdowns at airports – now it's checkpoints and roadblocks.

[ related topics: Aviation History Law Enforcement ]

WSJ: Why All the Locals Are Lounging in the Hotel Lobby.

[ related topics: Travel ]

Whoah! Rohnert Park has a roller derby team! Maybe we can see the Resurrection Girls in May? http://resurrectionrollergirls.org

My experience last year with various government bureaucrats assigning far more weight to "NASA research projects" than said projects could possibly support has me linking to this with extreme trepidation, but I do believe that processes like this are our most likely path forward in terms of mechanisms for converting solar power to stored energy:

NASA Ames Research Offshore Membrane Enclosure for Growing Algae (OMEGA) project, NASA Lunar Science Institute OMEGA project, via a Phys.org reworking of a press release.

Basically, trying to grow biofuel oils from algae in processed wastewater.

[ related topics: moron Space & Astronomy Astronomy Current Events Photovoltaics ]

The Atlantic Magazine: Why you can't get a taxi. It's a pimp piece for the Uber car service, but it also addresses some of the issues about car services that are going to have to be addressed if we're going to move further towards urban living with shared rolling stock.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Automobiles Trains Economics ]

Google Earth publishes community created maps from the Public Lab archive, those maps involve kite and balloon based amateur aerial photography.

The Public Laboratory looks like an outgrowth of The Grassroots Mapping project, which I believe is part of Jeff Warren's efforts. Jeff has been mentioned on Flutterby before: here and here

[ related topics: Photography Community Maps and Mapping Archival ]

Codeporting.com - "Convert your .NET source code to Java". As Mike Gunderloy observed: "...now you have two problems."

[ related topics: Open Source Software Engineering ]

Freakin' brilliant: Apparently there are calls for the resignation of Swedish Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Roth over this blackface animatecake (YouTube). The artist is black and describes the work as part of "... revamping the blackface into different forms, and thereby criticizing it (YouTube), and I've gotta say that the "holy shit, that's offensive" first reaction it got out of me suggests that it's pretty effective art, especially as, digging a bit deeper, it appears that the artist was looking to make statements not only about race but about genital mutilation.

Jallow Momodou writes about the cake and Sweden's racism in the Guardian, showing that there are several layers here.

But I also love this reaction: Africans shocked by uncivilized antics of European savages

“The only people calling for her to resign are European liberals hiding behind a thin veneer of civilization,” explained Burundian sociologist, Descarte Tugiramahoro. “We Africans are not shocked in the slightest.

“All she’s doing is engaging in two ancient European rituals: giggling at people who look different, and symbolic cannibalism, as introduced by the Catholic Church. It’s all completely normal.”

Via Metafilter.

[ related topics: Religion Movies Political Correctness Sociology Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture California Culture Race Philosophy Food - Cake Woodworking ]

Remember when The International Olympic Committee stripped Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati of his medal because he tested positive for marijuana, and we all giggled over marijuana being termed a "performance enhancing drug"?

ESPN looks at marijuana as a performance enhancing drug in light of the Oregon Ducks Rose Bowl victory.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Theater & Plays Sociology California Culture Sports Education Flowers ]

How can y'all say there was no Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awarded this year. The the Huffington Post doesn't publish anything else.

I used to think that publications like Popular Science were contractually obligated to print a blimp cover once a year. However, the idea never dies. Behold the Tethered Energy Blimp.

[ related topics: Cool Science Aviation ]

Text Editors in the Lord of the Rings.

[ related topics: Weblogs tolkien Archival ]

FB commenter John Buday referred to Christopher Moore's appearance in Petaluma this evening as "heinous flockery". Win.

So the DNS Changer Working Group, which is trying to help people gracefully recover from a virus/attack that changed people's DNS servers, has sent out press releases pointing people to their web site. here's an example [Edit: was formerly an AP article].

You go there, and what's the question you really want answered? "Am I infected." That is the primary use case for this web site.

Continued in the comments...

[ related topics: virus Law Work, productivity and environment ]

http://itunes.so-nik.com/ Podcast URL extractor gives you an RSS feed URL for an iTunes only podcast.

[ related topics: Content Management ]

Yes, I do have a set of decorative solid brass nuts.

[ related topics: Photography Model Building ]

Carl Coryell-Martin tweeted "Vastly more readable summary of the UC Davis Pepper Spray Debacle: http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/459368.html original: http://reynosoreport.ucdavis.edu/reynoso-report.pdf (I've read both.)"

That Brad Hick link starts out:

You know how every time somebody in law enforcement does something that looks bad, we're told that we should "wait until the facts are in" before passing judgment? Well, after Lieutenant Pike of the UC Davis Police Department became an internet meme by using high-pressure pepper-spray on peaceful resisters, the campus hired an independent consulting firm to interview everybody they could find, review all the videos and other evidence, review the relevant policies and laws, and issue a final fact-finding report to the university. The university just released that report, along with their summary (PDF link), and the final report is even worse than the news accounts made it seem.

[ related topics: Carl Coryell-Martin Food Current Events Law Enforcement Net Culture Marketing Education Rocky Horror Picture Show Government ]

Deserves a promotion to the front page from where Shadow left it in the comments: TSA - HELP YOU MAKE IT TO YOUR FLIGHT - Buck Howdy (YouTube).

(And a little linky love for Buck Howdy)

[ related topics: Movies Aviation Archival ]

The tweetbomb and the ethics of attention.

[ related topics: Weblogs Ethics ]

The new www.chattanooga.gov official website is about to be available for public access. I got a quick preview from Glen Austin and it sure is pretty. Glen says this is just Phase I, and there is a lot to do for the future. I was surprised to see a fair bit of content and functionality in the couple of minutes I got to click around.

It is not going to be accessible without a decent computer and a high speed connection. The background images are huge. Beautiful, but huge. 508 Compliance? Unsure. It will be interesting to see it morph over the next few months.

[ related topics: Chattanooga ]

Paddling the student built 7.5 footer they'll build for the competition

[ related topics: Photography Whitewater ]

That wasn't a brain fart, that was some severe cerebrointestinal distress.

Net migration from Mexico into the U.S. falls to zero.

The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—more than half of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped—and may have reversed, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of multiple government data sets from both countries.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Invention and Design moron Race ]

The New Republic: Tim Stelloh: Fighting Back:

...Between 40 and 50 percent of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands, boyfriends, and exes. And, for about half of these victims, police had been alerted to previous incidents of abuse.

There is, however, one exception to this grim trend: Maryland. Since 2007, domestic violence homicides in the state have fallen by a stunning 40 percent. What is Maryland doing that other states are not? The answer appears to lie with a former high school nurse, an ex-Washington, D.C., police lieutenant, and their ground-breaking efforts to protect the most vulnerable victims of abuse.

See also Royal Canadian Mounted Police: Program helps first responders save lives by David M. Sargent and Jacquelyn C. Campbell, PhD, RN. Jacquelyn Campbell is the Johns Hopkins University professor of nursing who developed the program described in that first article.

Also of interest, from the MeFi thread, National Center for Women and Policing Police Family Violence Fact Sheet:

Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10% of families in the general population. A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24%, indicating that domestic violence is 2-4 times more common among police families than American families in general. ...

Which makes the Maryland program that much more interesting and useful because it puts metrics and procedures in place for responses to domestic violence, rather than relying upon the judgement of officers that may be clouded by relationships with (and even just empathy for the motivations of) the abusers.

Further complicating: When Officers Die: Understanding Deadly Domestic Violence Calls for Service.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Invention and Design Software Engineering Sociology Law Enforcement Education Marriage ]

Saw a "Kony 2012" bumper sticker. Why not? He's closely aligned with the GOP platform, and is more electable than Romney.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

A very odd story from Wired Magazine: The stalking of Dan Lee. Lee is a Korean hiphop artist, who became very popular there and was starting to get a following in North America. Then an internet vendetta arose, with thousands claiming that his degrees from Stanford were faked, and that he was a draft dodger. When Stanford confirmed that he was a graduate, Korean bloggers claimed that some other Dan Lee actually graduated, and they began finding other people in the US named Dan lee and demanding they confess. The upshot is that Lee had his career destroyed and his life threatened, sending him into isolation.

The strange part of this story (among many strange parts) is that the impetus behind the campaign is coming from two main sources, Lee's cousin who apparently is furious that Dan was a slacker in high school and now is more successful; and a Korean-American blogger who lives in Chicago who also is convinced that Lee came by his acclaim unfairly. Its like the Hatfield/McCoy feud conducted by Tiger Mothers/Fathers. In the US most hiphopers try to hide their middleclass roots, in Korea they trumpet them.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Music Art & Culture Net Culture Education ]

Princeton Alumni Weekly has a short write-up on Douglas Massey and his theories about immigration. In short: The militarization of the border has turned what used to be a seasonal work-based migration, where workers flowed freely across the border, and then back, into a more settled migration all across the country. Without the ability to go back and forth, those who come here for work have a bigger incentive to stay.

Thus the big "anti illegal immigration" push has led to more permanent immigrants from Central America.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Work, productivity and environment ]

The Gloss: My Parents Are Nudists (Or As They Say: Comfortablists).

[ related topics: Nudity Sociology California Culture ]

David Simon: I meant this, not that. But yeah, I meant it. On cultural discourse, The Wire's legacy, race, drugs and... yeah, like everyone is saying: worth reading.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Sociology ]

I find this interesting: Petaluma's Plaza North Shopping Center has a blog, in which they're doing things like highlighting vegan options.

I find it particularly interesting because at one point this sort of fluff "local color" piece was the sort of thing the weekly papers would publish, and now it's moving to the shopping center management. It'll be interesting to see how this stuff propagates through aggregators and search engines.

Somewhat relatedly, or maybe it's just 'cause I read them close together and am willing to pull links out of thin air, Dave Winer wrote about some event called "Hacking Society", in which he observed:

The best way to preserve Internet freedom is to use it.

That means creating a network that is of the Internet, only. Without any corporate ownership of rights to individual people's content.

The problem of aggregated demand means that economies of scale work, but there was a time when the Internet connected people's workstations together. This was actually pre my involvement, back in the Tim Berners-Lee days, but the notion that you'd run a server on the machine under your desk was the norm. We've lost that, in the rush to "cloud computing" and whatever else, and in the process the web has become more like television, a mediated broadcast experience, than the ways in which the pioneers experienced the web (or even, for those of us willing to spring for a phone line, the BBS scene).

What would happen if bandwidth stopped being the limiting feature, if we had gigabit to the home and sharing pictures with the family no longer demanded the intermediary of Facebook? Is it possible to move towards that vision? How can we change our visions of what might be to gain some of the freedoms that that world can offer?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Privacy Weblogs Technology and Culture Dave Winer broadband Sociology Work, productivity and environment Television Civil Liberties Net Culture Archival Government ]

Best explanation of one of today's XKCD http://xkcd.com/1047/ elements starts "For anybody wanting to think about this geometrically, draw the unit circle in the complex plane and mark the 14th roots of unity. ..." And did anyone else have to Google Jenny's Constant? Explanations at http://www.explainxkcd.com/2012/04/25/approximations/

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Bacon cookies. Not bacon flavored cookies, they're cookies which look like bacon, but I wanted this here for the cake category so that I had it for reference.

[ related topics: Food - Cake Food - Bacon ]

What happens when you provide a service that removes traffic from city streets, public transportation that actually gets used, that makes economic and energy efficiency sense? The SF Bay Guardian writes a whiny article about how awful it is that you're improving the quality of life in San Francisco.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Economics Public Transportation ]

RT @paplikaplik

With this Supreme Court, I'm pretty sure you could have universal healthcare and all the rest, as long as the police are administering it.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

• Family Misses Flight After TSA Gives Pat-Down To Girl With Cerebral Palsy
• TSA Screeners Will Stop Your Children, Not Your Meth.

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

Bus or Rail: An Approach to Explain the Psychological Rail Factor Milena Scherer, ETH Zurich, Katrin Dziekan, Berlin Institute of Technology (PDF)

The presented studies support the conclusion that how people think and talk about public transport modes reflects the schemata of public transport modes. Schemata are a useful background for helping design public transport systems. For example, thinking of barriers toward public transport use in general or buses in par- ticular, the schema shows that implementing small individual measures to improve bus service are not likely to be effective since the bus schema is highly loaded with emotional factors, based on experiences and habits. Considering the findings of Guiver (2007) concerning negative scenarios and the importance of contra argu- ments combined with the psychological model by Dziekan et al. (2004), we find it questionable whether single improvements targeting only one attribution can lead to higher demand. Overcoming one negative attribution is not simply a matter of creating a more positive image for a public transport mode.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Television Graphic Design Trains Public Transportation ]

From Violet Impudence.

[ related topics: Photography Archival ]

Yeah, all you Pixar folks have already seen the real thing, but: Pixar fans make real Pizza Planet truck. I've got a particular fondness for the Pizza Planet truck because one of my favorite scenes in the Toy Story Animated Storybook, and also one that involved a bunch of codec tweaking, was the gas station. The appearance of the Pizza Planet truck (and, if my memory serves correctly, some of the different states the vehicle could place the scene in) was a part of some of those codec tweaks, and the rest of the gags in the Woody & Buzz fight scenes were my favorites in the Storybook.

And, the number of in-jokes in and around that vehicle is pretty amazing, from the obvious "Uh, how do I get to Cutting Boulevard", to the license plate and... well, I've probably said too much already.

My only complaint with the vehicle these fans built is that it's a little too clean and shiny. I realize they tried to muddy it up, but my read on the truck is that you've really gotta rust those rear quarter panels almost through, and go at the tailgate with a sledge hammer...

[For the archives: direct link to the YouTube video]

[ related topics: Pixar Interactive Drama Weblogs Animation Space & Astronomy Graphics Machinery Currency ]

My projects don't usually have to look pretty, they have to work. When, nearing the end of many many months of work, one of the top three issues is: "Can you make -everything- 'Century Gothic'", I had to laugh.. because when they are down to that, it's almost over. Finally.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Awesom optical Illusions that are just dying (dyeing?) to become bathroom walls or floor tiles. I have some issues with the more subtle color ones, but most of them are very effective.

Starr Swindt and Tom Segura on this weekend's boat building competition http://www.ksro.com/Programs/K...gentry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10377507

[ related topics: Boats Machinery ]

Huh. Why did my location stuff stop working in Firefox? Grr...

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

The Lamplighter, by Charles Dickens, with weird typography. An experiment in memory state and pattern matching and short-term retention.

[ related topics: Typography ]

Awesome: "We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup app when his last name is used as the search term (which happens to be quite often now)."

Little Bobby Tables in real life.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Furniture ]

When we were shopping for toilets, I thought I knew everything possible about MaP scores of toilet effectiveness, on how toilet capabilities are measured in grams of soybean paste per flush. Turns out I was mistaken.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Headline: "Stories of Transformation... Communities Coming Together!" local gardening non-profit, or Circlet Press erotica anthology?

[ related topics: Erotic Community Gardening ]

Boat building!

[ related topics: Photography Boats Machinery ]

Concept: Boat building practice boats, Family Build Night kids, Petaluma Rivertown Revival Art Boat races. May need sponsors...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sociology Art & Culture Boats Machinery Race ]

Okay, think I'm going to have to read this given all of the charitable enterprises I'm currently involved in: Christianity Today — Wasted Charity: Why the 'compassion industry' is not helping the poor. A review of 'Toxic Charity'.

[Edit: Fixed the link! Thanks!]

Hat tip to Larry.

[ related topics: Religion Weblogs Movies ]

Charlene and I saw The Lucky One last night. Well crafted tearjerker that hit a bunch of tropes effectively. Recommended.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Meanwhile, at work, struggling with Ubuntu 12.04. Downhill slide since 8.something.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]