Flutterby™! From 2012-05-01 to 2012-05-31

I had seen this and let it pass, but Shadow reminded me, and I think the point that it's starting to make a lot of sense to implement personal surveillance systems is a good one: Video captures California hit and run on a cyclist, and leads to arrest.

[ related topics: California Culture Video ]

Via Larry: California Man Sues BMW For Persistent Erection.

[ related topics: Weblogs California Culture Automobiles ]

Just saw a tweet about flashers being insufficient near a school, then realized they were talking about traffic signals...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Woodworking ]

‎"but i’m telling you that the little love and revolution sandwich you have made has some fucking bacon in it"

[ related topics: Food - Bacon ]

The Atlantic Cities — The Invention of Jaywalking:

It wasn’t always like this. Browse through New York Times accounts of pedestrians dying after being struck by automobiles prior to 1930, and you’ll see that in nearly every case, the driver is charged with something like “technical manslaughter.” And it wasn’t just New York. Across the country, drivers were held criminally responsible when they killed or injured people with their vehicles.

Slate: The Crisis of Pedestrianism:

Simply by going out for a walk, I had become a strange being, studied by engineers, inhabiting environments whose physical features are determined by a rulebook-enshrined average 3 foot-per-second walking speed, my rights codified by signs. (Why not just write: “Stop for People”?) On those same signs in Savannah were often attached additional signs, advising drivers not to give to panhandlers (and to call 911 if physically intimidated), subtly equating walking with being exposed to an urban menace—or perhaps being the menace.

Via JWZ: A conspiracy of the auto industry, you say? Why that's just crazy talk.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Invention and Design Law Civil Liberties Automobiles Conspiracy New York Government ]

Worth reading: Anil Dash &emdash; How to fix Popchips' racist ad campaign

I think we can attack the process by which these broken, racist, exploitative parts of our culture are created. I think the people behind this Popchips ad are not racist. I think they just made a racist ad, because they're so steeped in our culture's racism that they didn't even realize they were doing it. (If you don't quite follow what I mean there, you need to learn about Jay Smooth's How To Tell People They Sound Racist.)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Robotics Sociology California Culture Embedded Devices Race ]

Amused that the emergency credentials stash for the biometric secured area includes a rubber Halloween severed hand.

Cheap-ass tools, 1 in a series. I think that section between 2" & 3" was done in pencil

[ related topics: Photography ]

Speech by Adrian Tan at NTU convocation ceremony — Life and How to Survive It

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Pictures of Seattle rioter wearing Nike sneakers while destroying Niketown store. One the one hand I want to say "oh, the irony", on the other hand, especially as a fan of barefoot shoes, I've gotta point out that if I'd paid all that money for cushy padded running shoes that were destroying my knees and twisting my ankles, I'd be tempted to rampage too.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Weblogs Sports Shoes Currency Seattle ]

Drafting (a standard road bike at 55 MPH) like a boss (YouTube Video).

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Video Bicycling ]

Marin kids. They tend to be overachievers. We know this, the culture of Marin County, California raises children with expectations that they will be the movers and shakers, the do-ers of tomorrow.

A few months ago, someone rappelled through the skylights of a San Francisco automobile dealership and drove off in a bright yellow Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder belonging to celebrity chef Guy Fieri. Recently it was found in a storage locker over in Richmond.

Said storage locker was rented to a San Rafael 17 year old named "Max Wade", and contained "...a potpourri of gadgetry, disguises and guns."

That article reads like the kid'll be optioning the movie rights shortly...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies Food Bay Area Sociology Civil Liberties California Culture Automobiles Guns ]

Gigabit fiber using laser pointers: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-20-9-9919

FCC says we have to more heavily re-structure how we subsidize rural living: http://www.fcc.gov/blog/fcc-launches-connect-america-fund

[Edit: Thanks to Lyn for catching me out on my fallacy]

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Pictures from this morning's "Homeland Security" raid in Petaluma. I feel safer... http://www.petaluma360.com/app...ITY&Lopenr=205030801&Ref=PH&pl=1

San Jose Mercury News story that actually has a little background, apparently they were after suspects in a shooting which killed 3 people in South San Francisco back in December of 2010, and this was an operation which was serving warrants at 12 locations.

[ related topics: Photography Community ]

Put away the bell curve: Most of us aren't average:

"If you had a superstar performer working at your factory, well, that person could not do [a] better job than the assembly line would allow," Aguinis said. "If you unconstrain the situation and allow people to perform as best as they can, you will see the emergence of a small minority of superstars who contribute a disproportionate amount of the output."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment Heinlein ]

The fun grammar of Technology Agreements: "You is defined in the third paragraph of this Agreement."

Thinkin' about my various Pixar friends who are currently evacuated because of a nearby hydrogen leak http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.../2012/05/04/BAOT1ODI2O.DTL&tsp=1

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Graphics ]

The headlines are screaming that Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Analysis of Website Categories Exploited to Deliver Malicious Code says that religious web sites are far more likely to try to infect your computer than porn sites, but it's worth looking a little bit at what and why and how the infections are spreading...

Interestingly, pornographic Web sites were not exploited much overall, accounting for 2.4% of all infected Web sites; however, infected pornographic Web sites were found to host a greater number of threats than other categories (except for Religion/Ideologies and Hosting/Personal Hosted Sites – see below). Ranked in third position in figure A16, approximately 25 threats were identified on each infected pornographic Web site, with 44% of these threats being identified as Trojans.

[ related topics: Religion Erotic Sexual Culture virus Net Culture ]

You know your day has taken a horrible turn when the conversation turns to Perl's difference between \[]->[0] and \${undef}

[ related topics: Perl Open Source hubris ]

Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline — suspensions drop 85%.

I want to learn more, especially because this is the population we spend a lot of time with.

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

Some pictures from this year's Bodega Bay Boat Building competition http://www.flutterby.net/2012-04-28_Boat_Building

[ related topics: Photography California Culture Boats Machinery ]

Feel like crap. Finished house plumbing, started laundry vanity, now to bake cakes for 4H.

[ related topics: Photography Real Estate ]

Two from Shadow:

The headline touts this as a "ridiculously loud" bike horn, but I'm not sure there is such a thing. It does have pipes. Piiiiiipes </cosby>.

The second is that a Texas state trooper has blown through a red light and hit a cyclist. When I was seriously street skating, we generally felt like the least safe drivers from a pedestrian/skater's point of view were Chattanooga city police, so I'm not entirely surprised. On the other hand, news is when things that aren't normal happen. Hope this guy is prosecuted for attempted manslaughter, but, ya know, same applies for lots of drivers.

[ related topics: Music Bay Area Current Events Law Enforcement Chattanooga Skating Bicycling ]

Chicago Tribune does an exposé on the lies the fire retardant lobby has sold to fill your home with potential carcinogens. Part 1 is here.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Current Events Journalism and Media Pyrotechnics Clothing ]

You may have heard that the CIA has supposedly stopped a new underwear bomb before it was used. What's most interesting from the AP in-depth piece:

They said the device did not contain metal, meaning it probably could have passed through an airport metal detector. But it was not clear whether new body scanners used in many airports would have detected it.

Whether or not the body scanners would have detected it is a moot point. What's important is that the body scanners were in no way involved in stopping the threat.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Aviation Clothing ]

Egads, Yahoo: You just don't care any more, do you? Trying to sign up for a mailing list, and I just can't do it.

Ugh. My flakey only a few month old Dell Vostro workstation has decided to crap out. Programming interrupted.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Wishing I could take a clue-bat to the designers who use the "load more stuff when you scroll to the bottom of a web page" JavaScript.

Iran's supreme Ayatollah Khameni just issued a fatwa against the faithful using antifiltering software on their connections to the infidel Internet. However, the Iranian Government;s own antifiltering firewall blocked the announcement because it contained the word "antifiltering" . Allah moves in mysterious ways.

[ related topics: Software Engineering moron Net Culture ]

Lunch conversation: Make sure you take your brand name and play a couple of rounds of Pictionary with it as the clue. e.g. "TouchWiz"

Holes in the Official Story About RMS Titanic.

On the Facebook link to it, Daniel Cottrell noted: "Did you notice how lifeboat 7 never hit an iceberg, and YET IT SANK TOO?"

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

John Hershey has more pictures from the Bodega Bay wooden boat building competition: http://flutterby.net/kULWhN

[ related topics: Photography California Culture Boats Machinery ]

LA Times — Jack Shakely: The worst way to judge a charity. On why administrative costs are not a good way to judge a charity.

This is especially relevant because Alan Allen has started Community Bikes Petaluma and roped me in to sitting on the board. One of the big things I'm pushing for is going beyond "we put butts on bikes" and trying to find ways to quantify how those bikes are changing the community. Judge us not by our percentage spent on administrative costs, it'd be awesome if Alan could draw some income from this non-profit, judge us on what we've done for the community.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Community Bicycling ]

Stored here for integration into my personal content management system: Musubi Manifesto:

Our principles are totally different from today's social networks whose business is to monetize users' data. We aim to create the best ecosystem for users, app developers, device manufacturers, and carriers. We believe openness and collaboration will lead to the best and biggest social network ever!

[ related topics: Content Management broadband Education ]

Wired Threat Level: Homeland Security Concedes Airport Body Scanner ‘Vulnerabilities’.

In March, meanwhile, a TSA spokeswoman said “These machines are safe” when asked to address a video by Jonathan Corbett, of Miami Beach, who allegedly had discovered a method tobeat the body scanners, which number 600 and are in about 140 U.S. airports.

Uh, yeah. Placebos are safe, too.

Links to Electronic Privacy Information Center: Classified Report Finds Vulnerabilities in Body Scanner Program, and the un classified version of the report itself.

[ related topics: Privacy tolkien Nature and environment Aviation Bay Area Software Engineering Video ]

Five Reasons Why Christians Should Not Obtain a State Marriage License.

Thanks, Larry.

[ related topics: Weblogs Sociology Gambling Marriage ]

Preconfigured WiFi man-in-the-middle attack with integrated rickrolling, complete device $90.

Article with more details and demonstration video. Via JWZ.

[ related topics: Video ]

The adventures of Julie D'Aubigny aka La Maupin, mistress, duellist, singer, and... well... if this story doesn't have a screenplay or 14 it bloody well should.

Wikipedia on Julie d'Aubigny, and I was turned on to this woman's story via nonelvis's link to Badass of the week: Julie D'Aubigny

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture ]

Morning commute, listened to Mike Lydon talk about Tactical Urbanism. Looked up online. Amused when kids these days only half get the web.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

The new DVD/Blu-ray copyright notice I'm sure they really MEANT to use.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Copyright/Trademark ]

When same sex marriage was a Christian rite.

Hat tip to Shawn.

[ related topics: Religion Erotic Sexual Culture Sociology Marriage ]

DSM-5: What's In, What's Out:

O'Brien said the group recognized that, anecdotally, many people meet most of the criteria for addiction to these behaviors. But the DSM-5 emphasis on scientific justification precluded listing them. Said O'Brien, "We looked at sex addiction, but there was no science at all. None."

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

West Virgina spent $22,600 each for 1,064 Cisco 3945 series routers using Federal stimulus funds intended to expand high speed internet access in less populated areas. This means that, as an example given in the article, the 4 computers in the Putnam County library have a big honkin' way-overkill router burning excess electricity. The Cisco sales agents recommended smaller routers, the state's office of technology recommended smaller routers, but West Virginia Homeland Security chief Jimmy Gianato pushed through the ill-advised purchase

"I'm not an expert on the technical side," he said, "but these have all kinds of capabilities and applications."

"Homeland Security", still your strongest source for graft, corruption and stupidity.

[ related topics: Language Books Cool Science Current Events Consumerism and advertising Net Culture Woodworking ]

Bernie Sanders, self-proclaimed "Democratic socialilst", is trying to cut $115 billion in oil, coal and gas subsidies.

Yep, GOP: The Democratic socialists are fighting you for a more laissez faire market.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Economics ]

Marketplace Easy Street: JP Morgan's Loss: The Explainer.

Anti-news: Being vested in a community, not a lack of anonymity, is what creates civil behavior (on the internet): Emotional persistence in online chatting communities Antonios Garas, David Garcia, Marcin Skowron & Frank Schweitzer

Which anyone who'd been on the net for a while could have told you before, say, the Google+ "real names" fiasco.

[ related topics: Ziffle Nature and environment Current Events Net Culture Community ]

"China" "Somalia" "Yemen" and "Nigeria" are terms that trigger DHS interest in your social network postings?: http://animalnewyork.com/2012/...ook-and-twitter-for-these-words/

[ related topics: broadband ]

Huh: "The sky was the color of television tuned to a dead channel" now means a deep blue...

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Television ]

Detroit News: New tourist attraction: Man-made river rapids. On how various Michigan areas are looking to rework creeks and rivers to create rapids for paddling

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Whitewater ]

Bay Area's Last Slaughterhouse Expanding, Petaluma's Rancho Feeding is going to upgrade to be able to handle hogs. This is great news for local farms, as it means they don't have to truck hogs to Redding for slaughter.

[ related topics: Current Events California Culture Machinery ]

Now that we have reliable DNA paternity testing, all of the angst in Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean" seems kind of quaint.

Radio control car that turns into a walking robot (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Automobiles Embedded Devices Toys Model Building ]

Sometimes, strange memories of my childhood surface. I got hit with the phrase "may your rice bowl always be full". It is usually a blessing. I also remember that it could be cast as a curse. Very zen/confucian/abstract is what I thought in my childhood. As an adult, with an overflowing rice bowl (not cash, but work and other things) I am realizing the other side of that blessing, the curse, is not so abstract, it is substantial.

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Work, productivity and environment ]

RT ‏ @isaiah:

Yahoo got their CEO from eBay? And he wasn't quite what he said he was in his description? No irony there. Nope. None.

What's most amusing here is that the embellishment was apparently about his undergrad degree. Really? People care enough about undergrad degrees that he thought it was worth embellishing?

from Samizdata: best theater review title ever.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

Quitting coffee because I suspected my allergy symptoms might be caffeine related would have been fine, had I not also moved 2 tons of dirt.

So there's all the harping on teen pregnancy and how we need to keep kids on the straight and narrow 'til we can get 'em married and employed (and we have idiocy like Tennesee's recently enacted gateway sexual behavior law which addresses hand-holding and kissing), but what if you followed the economic health of young women who miscarry? Apparently it isn't the children who lead to the poverty.

Slate.com: Teen moms: How poverty and inequality cause teens to have babies and not the other way around looks at Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment, Hotz, McElroy and Sanders.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Health Sociology Chattanooga Pop Culture Pedal Power Bicycling Economics Marriage ]

SFGate: Teens build fighter jet flight simulator for Maker Faire, a little piece about a couple of teens building a motion flight simulator cockpit with 360° freedom around the pitch and roll axes. Their web page is at The-Viper.org, and two of them are the DeRose brothers. I know their dad Tony from Pixar.

[ related topics: Pixar Privacy Animation Aviation Graphics Civil Liberties Government ]

The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death

Oh, MySQL, how you so look like a database, and yet aren't. Sigh.

[ related topics: Open Source Databases ]

Earlier tweet about gamifying support hold times to @MikeG1 was snark, but Supportify.com is taken. Damn it.

Heroes and Heartbreakers: Author Hope Tarr on Real-life Historical Heroines Who Busted Balls and Broke Outta the Box.

Hat tip to Debra Hyde.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Holyrood: A firehose of waste, nominally about the U.K, but a good reminder that we don't really have software development as a contracting thing down:

Take into account the evidence regarding large systems development, there is substantial research that proves the folly of large scale IT developments: “The success rate varied dramatically by total project budget: at less than US $750000 the success rate was 55 per cent; with budgets over $10 million, no project was successful” (SIMPL/NZIER 2000). “There is little evidence that consultants, IT companies, and public agencies, or many practitioners and academics, have learned one of the key lessons of IS failure – that large and ambitious projects should be treated with great caution or avoided altogether.” (Dangerous Enthusiasms 2006)

Designing sex toys for Mitt, Michelle and Rick. It's Wired, so a little more SFW than some resources, but it's about making butt plugs from popularity graphs.

(Typo: First pass at that read "butt pugs". I don't wanna know. I really don't.')

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Graphic Design ]

Listened to Andrew Burleson on my commute. Urban planners are the worst at post-rationalizing models to fit observations (ref: Duncan Watts)

Gonna have to make up a bunch of these: Urban plant tags http://www.carmichaelcollective.com/Urban-Plant-Tags

An interesting bit from New Scientist (resgistration required). In the 1980s a former British hairdresser and small time plastics manufacturer demonstrated on TV Starlite, a miraculous substance he created. It could be painted on to something and provide thermal protection up to 1000 degrees Celsius (~1800 Far.) The British Defense Ministry, NASA and Boeing all looked into it and thought that this little man actually was on to something, but he would never give anyone the formula, and refused to settle on a specific price for the rights. Then he died. There are a couple of tiny samples still extant, but nobody has successfully reverse engineered the substance.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Television ]

More mountain biking that makes you feel kinda dirty for enjoying it because you know you're just encouraging some twenty-something to engage in potentially self-destructive behavior. Shadow forwarded along the RedBull Devotos de Monserrate 2012 por Marcelo Gutierrez-Awesome downhill round in Monserrate (YouTube video), by way of NBC Sports: Mountain biker hurtles down 1,000 steps for our amusement (video).

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Video Bicycling ]

Austin Seraphin, who is blind, starts to learn how to use echolocation, and writes about his experiences in learning to "see" his environment in a whole new way.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Invention and Design Education Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Science Daily: First Gene Therapy Successful Against Aging-Associated Decline: Mouse Lifespan Extended Up to 24% With a Single Treatment. Using doses of a virus that had been modified to replace elements with a telomerase enzyme:

Mice treated at the age of one lived longer by 24% on average, and those treated at the age of two, by 13%. The therapy, furthermore, produced an appreciable improvement in the animals' health, delaying the onset of age-­‐related diseases -- like osteoporosis and insulin resistance -- and achieving improved readings on aging indicators like neuromuscular coordination.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health virus Invention and Design Bioinformatics ]

Triathlon World Juggling Record (YouTube video). Via Sensible Erection.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Video Clowns ]

Can someone with experience with OpenLayers take a look at http://www.flutterby.net/Map_Test and tell me why my base layers aren't?

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

If we stop saying "self-driving car" and start saying "autonomous vehicle", we can think of transportation in ways that transcend drivers.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Automobiles ]

NY Times: U.S. Issues Far-Reaching Rules to Stem Prison Rape. Here's a direct link to the Department of Justice National Standards to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Prison Rape (PDF). (Via MeFi)

US Department of Justice sent a letter to Baltimore police affirming the public's ‘right to record’. Here's a direct link to the letter to the Baltimore Police Department from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (PDF)

While courts have only recently begun to refine the contours of the right to record police officers, the justification for this right is firmly rooted in long-standing First Amendment principles. The right to “[g]ather[] information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’” Glik, 655 F.3d at 82 (citing Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 218 (1966)). The application of this right to the conduct of law enforcement officers is critically important because officers are “granted substantial discretion that may be used to deprive individuals of their liberties.” Id.; Gentile v. State Bar of Nev., 501 U.S. 1030, 1035-36 (1991) (“Public awareness and criticism have even greater importance where, as here, they concern allegations of police corruption.”). The “extensive public scrutiny and criticism” of police and other criminal justice system officials serves to “guard[] against the miscarriage of justice,” Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539, 560 (1976) (citing Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 350 (1966)), a harm that undermines public confidence in the administration of government. When police departments take affirmative steps to protect individuals’ First Amendment rights, departments “not only aid[] in the uncovering of abuses . . . but also may have a salutary effect on the functioning of government more generally.” Glik, 655 F.3d at 82-83.

Also Via MeFi.

U.S. Department of Justice prosecutes cop who raped woman who called 911 when the Milwaukee District Attorney’s office wouldn't.

As MeFi commenter Salvador Hardin remarked:

I'm...really out of practice reacting to positive civil liberties news.

[ related topics: Politics Photography moron Law Current Events Graphics Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Community ]

San Francisco Muni rounds down when collecting "on-time" statistics, so 0:4:59 counts as 4 minutes, which is "on-time".

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

Repair cafes counter consumerism with fixer movement. Via Alan, who's doing Community Bikes Petaluma.

[ related topics: Weblogs Consumerism and advertising Community Bicycling ]

They say it's only vanity that writes the plays we act, this one's for the garage utility sink

[ related topics: Photography ]

Tech Crunch: The Free Ride Is Over For Streaming Video. Yep, this is what I saw coming when we set up that bandwidth bet.

[ related topics: broadband Video Archival Woodworking ]

Charlene and I just finished soldering her design for a yoga person for her class's mural collage.

[ related topics: Photography Graphic Design ]

Annular Solar Eclipse May 20 2012 (YouTube):

Still pictures will be available at http://www.corypoole.com

700 pictures through a Coronado Solar Max 60 Double Stack telescope were used to make this video. The Telescope has a very narrow bandpass allowing you to see the chromosphere and not the much brighter photosphere below it. ...

[ related topics: Photography Movies Robotics Astronomy Embedded Devices Video Java Photovoltaics ]

Internet Man Does Not Want To Be On The Google Anymore. Racist douchebag internet troll makes horrible comments, gets quoted on the internet, discovers that he's being quoted, sends "I didn't give you permission to quote me" whines to site hosts. Site host says "bite me", but nicely.

[ related topics: Quotes Net Culture ]

Writing Perl POD documentation. You know what I really like? Switching gears into yet another markup language.

[ related topics: Web development Perl Open Source Writing hubris ]

The Sunlight Foundation: The changing complexity of congressional speech looks at congressional speeches since 1996 as analyzed by the Flesch-Kincaid test.

Today’s Congress speaks at about a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005. By comparison, the U.S. Constitution is written at a 17.8 grade level, the Federalist Papers at a 17.1 grade level, and the Declaration of Independence at a 15.1 grade level. The Gettysburg Address comes in at an 11.2 grade level and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is at a 9.4 grade level. Most major newspapers are written at between an 11^th and 14^th grade level. (You can find more comparisons here)

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Politics Weblogs Law Civil Liberties Gambling ]

I've been a little frustrated with the progress of a project at work, and this morning I suddenly had an insight: Yes, all of those Agile/Pair/Waterfall/whatever "software engineering" methodologies are snake oil (IMHO), but they're also a chance to get a step towards any accountable process in place.

The real challenge is breaking the process down into discrete steps and saying "here's what needs to be done next", and if the participants in the process aren't used to that discipline, if they're just used to "yeah, I can have that done in 2 days" (where "that" is a functional item laid out in some document without clear inputs and outputs), everything is a matter of wallowing through a bog, and there's a lot of wasted down time because people are hanging out waiting for "that" to ship.

So, if one were tempted to try to bring some sort of process in to an existing team, what mechanisms would one use... hypothetically... What's the current in-vogue "methodology", especially among Perl geeks.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Perl Open Source Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Machinery hubris ]

Written in response to Mark VandeWettering's Maker Faire Post-Mortem:

Somewhere around a decade ago, Charlene and I looked at going to Burning Man again, sat back, and said "you know, what we really want to do is to bring that sense of building wacky stuff, of spontaneous pot-lucks, of adventures in surrealism, back into our own communities".

I went to Maker Faire once, and I may or may not go back if I end up with a project that'd be fun to show off there, but I think the value of it is that it gives us a place to go because "that's really cool" and helps us to make the transition to "let's make this really cool".

I have three plywood boat hulls in my back yard, left over from helping some high school students learn enough boatbuilding and woodworking hand-tools skills to compete in the Bodega Bay Fish Fest Wooden Boat Challenge, that we're going to assemble a bunch of kids together and decorate as art boats (and maybe turn two into a pedal powered boat) for the up-coming Rivertown Revival.

I spent last Friday night with a couple of middle schoolers filling balloons with hydrogen, made by mixing aluminum foil and muriatic acid (HCl), and exploding them.

I whipped up some cardstock with various size holes in them so that some acquaintances could view the eclipse safely, and this has turned in to a "wow, I need to see a pinhole camera happen!" project on the list.

I've been trying to help a bunch of kids learn fabrication and engineering by leading a 4H "junk drawer robotics" curriculum.

None of these things are really "Maker Faire worthy", but they're all part of what I think the Maker Faire inspires, and if by publicizing it I can get the kids who come to my junk drawer robotics night to start to think a little more scientifically, to graph out their marshmallow trebuchets with different weights and different configurations, and come to me with a plan for a trebuchet large enough to toss a pumpkin, then I think it's making a positive impact.

So, yeah: You may not have brought any cool hacks to Maker Faire, but you brought a telescope and the knowledge to project a solar image, and you brought the enthusiasm that helps show some of the younger attendees that "hey, this stuff is really cool!"

And all of those people turning the movement into a commercial opportunity? In a world where every toy is complete, where kids don't put their own stories on to corn husk or rag dolls, but are instead given "action figures" with back stories, where cheap plastic "swords" and "guns" replace sticks found in the forest, we need partial solutions to help wean kids back to disassembling those complete toys to see how they work, and building their own alternatives.

Yeah, it ain't perfect, but every step towards "how?" and "why?" and, perhaps more importantly, "what if?", is a step in the right direction.

[ related topics: Burning Man Children and growing up Interactive Drama Humor Photography Robotics Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Heinlein California Culture Boats Machinery Community Guns Pedal Power Gambling Java Woodworking Photovoltaics ]

N+1: Fresno:

Fresno was a mistake from the beginning. ...

A little bit of a family story, mixed in with the modern history of urban renewal and growth in Fresno. The parts that I'd like to read more about are the various attempts to revitalize the urban core, because a whole lot of that seems relevant to the "new urbanism" discussions.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Sociology California Culture ]

Dear MySQL: Claiming the English language as reserved words kinda turns your interface from human readable to a machine interchange language

[ related topics: Open Source Databases ]

The stupid, it burns: SFGate: James Temple: Facebook IPO underscores shutting out the masses.

First off, calling if a "Facebook flop" is stupid. The IPO was priced appropriately, Facebook pretty much nailed the amount of capital they could raise. If the bozo sheep went and bought at that price and were shocked that it didn't double immediately, then, well, maybe that's a lesson in economics.

In fact, it's even a lesson in what is supposed to be, not just what is: IPOs are a way to raise capital for future expansion. They're not there to cash out or make quick bucks. They happen to also do that, but that's not what they're there for. And if you're complaining because other people as dumb as yourself won't pay more... well...

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Pyrotechnics Handicaps & Disabilities Economics hubris ]

What we did on Friday at 4H robotics: Boom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiWgL4acob8

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Heinlein ]

An introduction to Objectivist-C

In Objectivist-C, there are not only properties, but also property rights. Consequently, all properties are @private; there is no @public property.

[ related topics: Politics Objectivism Civil Liberties ]

The New Yorker: The history of management consulting. A mention of Matthew Stewart's The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting It Wrong and a look at the legacy of Frederick Winslow Taylor, Louis Brandeis and Lillian Gilbreth.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

A spammer who's trying a little harder sent me an email last night about how one of my archive links was busted, and would I like to replace it with a link to their content farm. I went back to look at the archive entry, and apparently Clay Shirky is breaking the web. Which would be fine if it were one person, but this will probably be the 15568^th entry on Flutterby (ignoring that when I went to a database backed blog I coalesced a whole bunch of "hey, these guys updated this week" updates), and a whole lot of that back catalog is now nothing but noise, contributing to the link spam, and not really contributing much.

Back when Flutterby started, I had this naive notion that by pointing out things of value on the web I was adding to the whole, creating a better place. Now, I think I'm just helping the link and content farm creators as they shovel yet more bullshit on us.

There are possible technological hold-overs I could apply to this, I've thought several times of trying to go back and categorize links and do some sort of trick on rendering where I kill links to the spammers and farmers and such, but...

I think the web is different now. Everyone's off to Facebook and Twitter and Metafilter and not updating their own site any more. We're back to more walled gardens rather than a vast interconnected knowledgebase.

I don't think the archives of Flutterby are adding value, but I'm not sure how to move forward. Should I hide everything over a year except to logged-in users? Remove them entirely? Attempt some heavier content management? Any suggestions?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Content Management Weblogs Spam Monty Python Graphics Databases Archival Gardening ]

Small Batch Curing and Smoking Bacon at Home

[ related topics: Drugs Weblogs Food - Bacon ]

Dear GOP: You can strip bike & pedestrian funding from the transportation bill, if you'd move road/car funding into the gas tax #neverhappen

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Automobiles Bicycling ]

Washington Post: Has the passion gone out of America’s fabled love affair with the automobile?

[ related topics: Automobiles Gambling ]

RT @SmashingMag (via @h_m_m):

We removed FB buttons and traffic from Facebook increased. Reason: instead of "liking" articles, readers share it on their timeline.

Reacting to the news that San Francisco is no longer even in the 10 gayest places in the United States", even being relegated to "the Colonial Williamsburg of gay" (Daily Show video), San Francisco has revamped its appeal to gay tourists with the tagline "49 Hours of SF: Out and About." (Via "San Francisco Attempts to Recruit Even More Gays to the Castro"), making it clear that there's more than just one weekend worth of gay to experience here.

"San Francisco's gay district is called 'San Francisco,'" claim the ads, which are running in Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, and Portland. The new $500,000 12-month campaign will also be targeted at Phoenix residents.

Portland? How about just a picture of some blue sky...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies Invention and Design Bay Area Current Events California Culture Sports Video Seattle ]

Bill Clinton poses with porn stars. I dunno, Bill, keep that up and you may be vying with Carter for "best ex-president".

[ related topics: Politics Erotic Sexual Culture ]

I don't often link to comics, but today's Least I Could Do? Yeah, that's why I built the workshop.

[ related topics: Comics ]

Because the MeFi entry was deleted, I'm going to pretty much copy whole damned thing:

Brian Banks was a heavily recruited high school linebacker, in between his Junior and Senior year. On July 8, 2002, Banks was accused of kidnapping and raping a female student and was forced to leave the team. He pleaded "no contest" to the charges and was in prison for 6 years, forced to register as a sex offender.

On February 28, 2011, his accuser “friend requested” Banks on Facebook, and ended up recanting the story. With the help of The Innocence Project, the rape conviction of Brian Banks was overturned.

The PDF of the full legal filing in the Brian Banks case.

I'm linking this here because I still find my experience earlier this year with jury duty unsettling, and I think this has many of the same issues. It sounds as though the young woman who was the accuser got caught up in a lie to explain being late to class and was railroaded through by the adults around her. I can imagine the political pressure the attorney from the DA's office was feeling, even in the face of inconsistent testimony and a lack of physical evidence, the media blowback to dropping a case like this would be huge. I can see the impetus to plead "no contest" vs spending the rest of his life in jail for how a jury might interpret "reasonable doubt".

And I want to figure out how we can work toward a society that fixes this. Part of that is working away from "slut shaming", so that it's harder to railroad a young woman into a lie like this. Part of that is taking to task people like Long Beach Poly High co-principal of the time Shawn Ashley for statements like the one that said Banks "will not be returning to Poly regardless of the outcome of any judicial procedures".

Oddly, one of those things is not coming down on Wanetta Gibson because if we do that then we're providing a strong disincentive for people to later come clean.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Nature and environment moron Space & Astronomy Law Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Sports Machinery Guns Trains Archival Aviation - Helicopters ]

Guys make funny video, post it to YouTube, Jay Leno runs it on the Tonight Show, NBC makes copyright claim and gets original video taken down.

[ related topics: Copyright/Trademark Video ]

RT @theGreaterMarin:

Poking around for info about the old Marin freeway plan I found a bridge from Tiburon to SF via Angel Island.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area ]

QOTD, Will Smith on his daughter:

"We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it's like how can you teach her that you're in control of her body? If I teach her that I'm in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she's going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can't cut my hair but that's her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she's going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives."

From this Parade interview via Shakesville quoting it by way of Medley.

[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama ]

Bwahahaha: Bloomberg News: Nigeria May Reduce Reserves of Euros to Minimize Risk.

Which, of course, led to the inevitable:

I am a Greek Prince desperately trying to get my money out of the country but because of restrictions on the amount of money one can take out of Greece I'm worried my vast wealth will disappear when my country is booted out of the Euro.

....

[ related topics: Humor moron Current Events Heinlein Currency ]

One of the projects for this weekend:

[ related topics: Photography ]

Charlene planing the sailboat chine

[ related topics: Photography ]

Hey, TC has put @WalnutKeep meat in @WFM_Petaluma's cooler!

[ related topics: Photography ]

A day of MySQL training. I'm reminded of that observation that the more knobs, the worse the engineering...

[ related topics: Open Source Databases ]

Successful first test of the lift to get the soil to the top of my workshop for the living roof! http://youtu.be/HRmmjsp0WDw

Reinforcing my preconceptions: Forbes: Tara Tiger Brown: The Death Of Shop Class And America's Skilled Workforce.

Shop classes are being eliminated from California schools due to the University of California/California State ‘a-g’ requirements. ‘The intent of the ‘a-g’ subject requirements is to ensure that students can participate fully in the first-year program at the University in a wide variety of fields of study.’ (a) History/Social Science (b) English (c) Mathematics (d) Laboratory Science (e) Language other than English (f) Visual and Performing Arts (g) College Preparatory Elective Courses. High school administrators are graded on their effectiveness to administer those classes through the Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation. Shop class is not included in the requirements, thereby not valued and schools consider the class a burden to support. Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) with 660,000 students in K-12 has already eliminated 90% of shop classes and it looks like the rest will be gone by the end of the 2013.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Software Engineering Mathematics California Culture Education ]

Bill would earmark PG&E fines for better pipelines. So PG&E would have to pay that "punishment" to do the capital improvements they should have done in the first place? Hmmm, Mssrs. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo and Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, what did the PG&E lobbyists do to sell you on this idea?

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture ]

Anyone know how to change file associations in (X)Ubuntu/LibreOffice so when I double click on a .DOC embed I can save the file? Pr does anyone have a command line tool that'll extract all files embedded in a .DOC file (preferred)?

[ related topics: Robotics Embedded Devices ]

I've been riding my recumbent again for a few weeks, trying to get back into some kind of shape. It's been a drag, I just have not been able to get cruising like I used to, and of course I have blamed myself for being very out of shape (partially true) and kinda depressed about it. I keep thinking this used to be easier.

Turns out I've been chronically underinflated. I'd just gotten used to it.

I've been pumping my tires up as hard as they would go, with my small bike pump. The feel hard with just a little give when I squeeze them, but I had not had a gauge handy. Tonight I used one of the free heavy duty bicycle repair stands bike pumps. These are stationed on the river walk and handle both types of valves and have a gauge.

=~30psi != 80psi - Wow, what a difference. I think my average speed doubled.

I've also destroyed the stock headset on that bike, and hope my new Chris King Headset shows up soon, should make turning smooth and easy again. I'll be picking up a new bike pump as well.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Television Pedal Power Bicycling Economics ]

ABC News article about a New York City school and sex ed for students with intellectual disabilities.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Current Events New York ]

The "kill list" is a shiny object.