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November 30, 2004

Afternoon snack

20041130.jpg

They only act like this for the camera, of course.

Posted by Mark at 08:21 PM

Intellectual property, part VII

Our application may never be worth $92M to anybody, but it was worth a small fraction of that to us. Enough for each of us to think we ought to try again.

Posted by Mark at 08:09 PM

40:02:28

At Rochasson around 23:26, I realized the whole run could be done in less than 40 minutes. So I let myself go down hill.

It feels out of control. Maybe I haven't done enough skiing.

Posted by Mark at 02:27 PM

November 29, 2004

Video capture, part VI

The SVCD I burned doesn't work on our livingroom DVD player. It might work on Mom's, however. Too bad I have to send the thing over there physically to try it out.

Posted by Mark at 10:52 PM

Video capture, part V

On my system at home is an old version of cdrecord without support for CUE files. So I'm burning an SVCD with cdrdao.

It doesn't directly support my CD-RW drive, so I'm using the generic driver.

The article recommending I try cdrdao also recommends I burn it slowly for maximum hardware compatibility. I wonder if this one will work in our livingroom DVD player.

Posted by Mark at 09:54 PM

November 28, 2004

Video capture, part IV

After all that capturing and transcoding, I now have a bunch of .mpg files. When I put them together into a single SVCD file, the result takes up 840 MB. I'll have to figure out how to cut the SVCD in half. Good thing Kino's default was one sequence per .avi file to start with on export.

Posted by Mark at 10:46 PM

Video capture, part III

Moving digital video to an SVCD is currently a slow process, even on a computer with components no older than a couple of years. The slow bits, such as transcoding from NTSC in 720x480 to SVCD format in 480x480 runs at no more than about half real speed on this AMD 2400+ system.

If I try a game of Quake at the same time -- the demo version runs on Linux -- the game's almost too choppy to play, and the transcoding slows to about 1/3 real speed.

Posted by Mark at 10:05 PM

Video capture, part II

Maybe all that running around is making me stupid.

20041128.jpg

The capture problem cause is what we term user error in the trade. I failed to understand Kino's relatively simple user interface, and started rolling the playback before clicking the Capture button.

Posted by Mark at 03:32 PM

Video capture

Right after the initial video capture buzz wore off, I lamented my lack of video literacy. There seemed to be no hope for me as a home cineaste. Mom later replied in email not to worry about editing the content, just capture the video, burn it onto CDs, and send it along.

Now I see why. There's an Elvis-fanlike audience for this stuff.

As I capture the raw footage from our last tape, Timothee has his eyeballs inches from the screen, eagerly contemplating willow tree branches blowing in the wind, laughing every time he or his siblings appear, generally wanting me to move away and let him sit in the editor's chair.

PS The worst part is that since I reinstalled my home system, I broke something in Kino's configuration or in how the video devices are set up. Kino now no longer manages to save anything I capture! Spent an hour with Tim slobbering away at my elbow and nothing to show for it.

Posted by Mark at 03:11 PM

1:16:32:91

I'm still deciding what I aim to run next year, and was weak yesterday, so I only ran back and forth to Chapareillan twice today, without extending the run at all.

My pace, less than 13.5 km (8 mi) per hour, is too slow for such short runs, but wouldn't be so bad if I could keep it up for 42.195 km (26 mi, 385 yds). At this pace I only feel a little out of breath at the hill crests between here and Chapareillan. The time includes refuelling at the halfway point, which takes about 45 seconds. I figure if I run for more than an hour I ought to drink something along the way. In a marathon setting, I'd probably be able to continue to make forward progress, even if only walking, while drinking something. At home I don't want to take my water bottle with me to Chapareillan.

This week I ran in running clothes, rather than sweats. When I started, the temperature was 4 degrees Celsius (almost 40 Fahrenheit). That's cold enough to feel chilled until I've run for 15 minutes, almost all the way to the point where I turn around in Chapareillan. The entire first quarter took about 18 minutes. The thing is, you finish in that direction on a long, fairly steep downhill drop. It's easy to get going quickly while hardly breathing fast.

Just before the halfway point, I stared having shoe troubles again, this time with my regular shoes. The front of my left foot hurt, as though the shoe were too tight. I tried loosening my laces. That helped a little for a while, but didn't completely resolve the problem.

Then I tried something Dana suggested during his visit, running down the center of the road. My shoe problems disappeared. Only problem was that running down the middle of the road doesn't work very well when there's much traffic. It breaks... well, I won't say my concentration, because I'm not really concentrating. I guess I could say it breaks my flow.

Maybe I should run along the Isere. I don't like the Isere route up here by Pontcharra, however. The path is too lumpy. Another possibility is running on bike paths. There's one in Pontcharra that I've never tried on a bicycle -- too short -- but perhaps for running it would be okay. The advantage with Chapareillan is that it's close by, so I don't have to run more than about 35-40 minutes without taking a drink.

Posted by Mark at 02:51 PM

Goals

Part of training is getting your goals set properly. Hal Higdon's intermediate marathon training schedules have you prepare for 18 weeks leading up to the race, or about 4 months.

I found one April run nearby, but it looks like something do after a marathon starts seeming too much of a sprint on the flats. The Balcon de Belledonne 65 km run takes you up and over the Belledonne range. Other runs around that time appear to be short ones, 15 km or less, so maybe I'll just do more long range planning for the Marathon de Savoie in September (unless there's a Grenoble marathon this year).

Posted by Mark at 10:05 AM

Words, part III

In addition to their being possiblities to do at least a Master's in library science without leaving my current job, maybe my current job isn't that many fields away from actual librarian jobs.

I've been reading this morning about Endeavor Information Systems, who sell library management software. And in looking through the job ads at the Association of Research Libraries, I saw one titled "Unix Programmer," somebody to hack the metadata systems at Brown University.

Posted by Mark at 07:55 AM

November 27, 2004

Fall ride, part V

This morning I went for a ride. The thermometer said 6 degrees Celsius (43 Fahrenheit) when I left. Although the northern half of France was apparently covered with low gray clouds today, we had sunny, if hazy, weather.

I've recovered almost completely now from whatever it was that disturbed my digestive system, but I had no energy and my heart felt weak. On the hills, I dialed back into the low gears and took it easy.

I keep thinking we must be getting down to the last good riding weather before the winter, but 6 degrees isn't too bad if I wear windbreaker tops and bottoms. There were lots of cyclists on the roads.

Posted by Mark at 05:46 PM

Thanksgiving, part III

Getting sick the way I did caused me to lose about 2.5 kg (5 pounds) in only about 24 hours, although I drank plenty of water and a little juice. Only 3 more days of illness like that, and I'd be at my theoretical marathoner's ideal weight. The trade off with that weight loss method is that you feel incapable of walking very far, let alone running.

I still feel a little too weak to run hard today, but maybe can take a gentle ride on the bike. The weather's okay so far.

Posted by Mark at 09:07 AM

November 26, 2004

Thanksgiving, part II

After celebrating Thanksgiving by cooking a big meal for everyone, I fell ill. From 11 pm to 4 am, I was vomiting and had diarrhea. Today I'm quite weak and get dizzy when I stand up. Maybe the illness was coming on when I went running at noon yesterday. I'd had a cramp running up to Rochasson and felt weak.

Luckily or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, I'd taken the day off today but had only to take care of Diane while Nathalie went to Grenoble for an appointment. Tim and Emma went to the school cafeteria for lunch. So far, I'm the only sick one. Diane seemed to have something Wednesday, but hasn't had problems since then.

Nathalie went to Grenoble for an appointment with a woman who is helping her explore what jobs to consider if she goes back to work. Diane will soon be in school. Nathalie's looking forward to getting back to work, but is apprehensive about looking for a job.

Posted by Mark at 05:21 PM | Comments (2)

November 25, 2004

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving in the US. We didn't cook a whole turkey here, just a turkey breast, about 80% of which is left over.

The children enjoyed it. They got to stay up late and make a fancy dessert.

I called back home, where eveyone had gathered at Mom's for Thanksgiving dinner. Yesterday they got 5-7" of snow and the power went out from just before 4 in the afternoon to 9 in the evening. First snow of the season. Tam said everyone was on the roads this morning because they couldn't get out last night.

Posted by Mark at 09:18 PM

Reading the doc, part III

At the outset of Leviticus, I had the option of switching to a book Andy mailed me, The Story of Christianity: Volume 1. The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation, by Justo L. Gonzalez. Leviticus starts by describing how to make burnt offerings, and feels kind of repetitive in the beginning, so I switched.

Gonzalez's book is interesting from the beginning, but I found Chapter 9, "The Teachers of the Church," especially good. Gonzalez writes about the work of Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian of Carthage, and Origen of Alexandria. All address the whole body of Christian doctrine with somewhat different approaches.

Posted by Mark at 09:14 PM

November 24, 2004

5:46, part II

The nurse was right. You can run the day after giving blood.

I was out for a gentle run, so I didn't have my watch. Planned only a 10k, but ran 14k as a tempo run. No adverse effects as far as I can tell.

Posted by Mark at 03:00 PM

Below the belt

Forbes is running an article summarizing research into additional dangers of being overweight. The headline problem is that being obese can put a crimp in your sex life:

Half of those seeking treatment for obesity said they sometimes, usually or always felt no desire for sex, compared to just 2% of those who were not obese. About four out of every ten treatment-seekers reported physical problems with sex; 41% said they avoided sex. In contrast, just 2.5% of the non-obese people said they stayed away from sexual activity.

When Dana was visiting, he predicted the big health risk target in the US after smoking will be obesity. I don't think he meant you'll have to step outside in the winter to eat your doughnuts. Whatever happens, the press probably won't treat it with moderation.

Posted by Mark at 08:52 AM

Warning labels

JWZ linked in his blog to some warning labels for textbooks. Here's as a thumbnail of the stickers:

textbook disclaimers

Colin Purrington, the guy who posted the stickers, apparently teaches evolutionary biology at Swarthmore. If you go to the page where he posts the stickers, you'll notice at the bottom the links to some organizations of folks who don't agree that theories of evolution should be the only explanation of life on earth taught in schools.

The strange thing about this issue is that if you observe it from one angle, you see opposition between scientists arguing that we proceed from observations and religious believers (mainly Christians?) arguing that we not ignore the word of God, which plainly explains that God created the world and everything in it. If you observe it from another angle, you see scientists arguing that we apply the scientific method and don't leap to conclusions, and religious believers arguing that we apply the scientific method and don't leap to conclusions. From still another angle, we see people who believe the succinct explanation and official dogma of evolution without themselves being able to show how observations support the theory, and other scientists who happen to be religious believers suggesting that we not rule things out just because they're out of line with the official dogma. Yet another angle has people who cannot explain evolution but believe in science arguing with people who cannot explain creationism but believe literally in the Biblical account of creation.

What role should belief play in our lives? What role should the scientific method play?

Posted by Mark at 08:42 AM

November 23, 2004

Intellectual property, part VI

C|Net and others are running articles like this one one why people like Linus Torvalds oppose software patent directives such as the one the EU is pushing.

David Arbogast comments, "Think about it... less protection for property means more copying and less innovation. Not the other way around." I have thought about it. It seems protecting good ideas from being freely shared strips them of their primary value, which is to provoke discussion, resulting in refinement, and thus even better ideas. This process is innovation.

In other words, copying, especially with slight variations, is part of innovation. Gee, maybe I agree with Bill Gates and that silly Freedom to Innovate campaign Microsoft had before they realized they are a monopoly and started paying the competition off to avoid lawsuits.

Posted by Mark at 08:46 PM

5:46

Didier reminded me on a convenient day. I went with him to give blood during the lunch hour.

My elapsed time was 5:46 for 468 ml ;-)

Posted by Mark at 03:22 PM

November 22, 2004

Looking tired, part II

Yet another person -- maybe it was Steve -- told me I look tired.

Nathalie bought me some vitamins that are supposed to reduce stress. B vitamins, magnesium, some mixture in blue gel caps. Could it be those?

Could it be that I'm waking up too early in the morning (6 am)?

Is my hair getting long and matted in the morning? Wrinkles getting more pronounced?

I Googled for look tired, but all I saw were blog articles. Except one article saying "aging is the culprit." And suggesting that I get plastic surgery.

Well, maybe not yet.

Posted by Mark at 08:49 PM

Broadband

Mom and Dana decided to get a cable broadband connection. It now seems to be working fine. Their new mail server also no longer bounces my mail from work, which is a nice side effect.

At the end of the bubble, perhaps there was a temporary bandwidth glut. People didn't want to pay as much as the providers were asking. Yet fast Internet access is something you start out wanting, then end up needing. A shame it's so expensive.

Posted by Mark at 08:29 PM

November 21, 2004

Arts, crafts, and TV

Tim and Emma are getting crafty today.

emma20041121.jpg tim20041121.jpg
diane20041121.jpg pot20041121.jpg

Two out of three ain't bad.

Posted by Mark at 04:18 PM

Remodeling, part IV

All we really did was paint the top of the walls and ceiling white.

remodelling20041121.jpg remodelling220041121.jpg

Nathalie also had Michel replace the old, rotting, white cabinets with some newer, not yet rotting, offwhite and tan cabinets we had from our old kitchen.

I put in a couple of new pyjama and towel racks.

Posted by Mark at 04:14 PM

Out of order

As mentioned on my day off yesterday, today was time for a longer run. My aim is to build up gently to marathon distance taking longer runs on Sundays. I want to see what problems I'll have to resolve as the mileage goes up.

Today I set out too late, at 10:45, to take a long run before lunch, so I only ran over to Chapareillan and back twice. That's less than a half marathon. I realized at 10 that I still hadn't changed the oil in Nath's car and so did that before going. Then in order not to sweat through the shoes I use all week, I wore a different pair.

Shoes are definitely one of the things that can go wrong. The ones I wore boxed my toes in. They're the right size for my feet. When I put the inserts in, however, they're too small. The first round trip to Chapareillan didn't turn up any trouble. The second trip though I started having a blister under the left big toe on the way out. Also, on the downhills, my right foot was getting squeezed painfully. My feet were so out of order even made my knees began to hurt.

Next time I'll wear my regular shoes, despite perhaps not managing to wash them before Monday.

I saw lots of cyclists. The temperature was about 8 degrees Celsius (over 46 Fahrenheit), the sun was out, and there was almost no wind, just occasional gentle gusts from the north. It had me thinking about going out for a ride after lunch, but my legs are sore. Saturday alone wasn't enough rest. My odd training run on Thursday followed by a particularly hard workout at the gym Friday meant that my legs have not completely recovered. I want to avoid injury above all.

Posted by Mark at 02:18 PM

November 20, 2004

Changing hosting

Matt's thinking of changing hosting providers for this site. Makes sense, but it may take me a little while to get everything fixed up to blog again. Not sure yet when he's going to make the change.

Posted by Mark at 09:06 PM

Online ads

How well do online ads work? Better than television and radio ads? Google Scholar brought me to an article by Chung-Chuan Yang in the Journal of Marketing Communications, but I'm too cheap to see anything more than the abstract.

If there were enough context to predict what a surfer would be willing to pay for, it seems like online ads could reverse the current model whereby those who want to advertise pay for space. Instead, content providers could find and pay advertisers for a right to push for them, then charge a percentage of sales. The better you reference, the more you make. Theoretically speaking.

I'm still not entirely convinced hawking and shopping are the right combination to optimize distribution. At least not for everything. Can what works for apples and oranges work just as well for software and books?

Posted by Mark at 02:56 PM

Research online?

I must've been making the point in email, not on my blog. One thing people have been yammering about as a recent big trend is how much easier it's becoming to access information. Of course saying, "I read it on the web," seems equivalent to saying, "And now for something certifiably crackpot."

Perhaps that's could be less true. At any rate, Google seems to want to help you search only in scholarly works.

I'm not sure what a good smoke test is, but you can turn things up. For example, a search for author:chomsky context-free languages, brings back some hits quoting him on "The algebraic theory of context-free languages."

It doesn't bring back ads.

Posted by Mark at 02:42 PM

Day off

Thursday, November 11 was the last day I didn't run or ride. So I'm taking today off to rest my muscles. Yesterday my calves were cramping up at the end of the workout. Tomorrow I'll try a longer run than usual.

Posted by Mark at 02:30 PM

November 19, 2004

Interruptions, part II

A week of interruptions. What I like the least about working in a lead role is the feeling at the end of the week that you haven't even managed to answer your email.

It could be worse. Didier turned to me in one meeting to say that Bill Gates allegedly receives 4 million email messages per day. Didier said Bill has a team of people who help him sift through the mess. I'm happy to receive on the order of 1/10000 as much mail as Bill Gates.

If I had 1/10000 as much money as he has, I'd quit working and drop down to less than 10 emails per day.

Posted by Mark at 08:56 PM

November 18, 2004

Muscle knots

Perhaps it's the cold weather, but I've had a couple of problems in the last two weeks with muscles tightening up. Last week it was the hamstring behind the knee.

This morning it was one of those muscles at the top of the back. It seized up when I was getting dressed. I felt sure it would hurt when I was running. As it turns out, my back felt better all through the run than it did for any part of the rest of the day.

Would endorphins explain that? Or is it just a case of warmer muscles working more smoothly?

Posted by Mark at 09:17 PM

Not bouncing

After wimping out halfway through a set of intervals with Matt yesterday, I decided to try is suggestion of learning to run more efficiently, starting today.

Matt's idea is that if you can keep yourself from bouncing so much up and down, you can focus more of your energy into forward movement. This you do partly by lengthening your stride.

So you try to keep your head level and to pull your legs apart more. I did that the first half of a 14 km run, but didn't try to run fast yet (30:30 split). Running like that makes my thighs work harder than they usually do.

On the way back I tried a few minutes alternation between lifting my knees up and pulling my heels up on each stride. I'm hoping to build strength. I also ran about 1.5 km again trying to keep my head and upper body from moving vertically, and did 5 quick intervals to break it up.

I'd like to build up to a marathon next season. I ought to be able to do that without injury.

Posted by Mark at 09:13 PM

Looking tired

Several people at work have remarked this week that I look very tired.

Yesterday evening Nathalie got upset with me when she was explaining what we should get the kids for Christmas, because she thought I wasn't listening. (I was. She was talking about a sort of electronic book reader for Diane.) Maybe I looked like I was drifting off.

Maybe it's better to look tired than to look angry. I saw myself looking angry in old videos of the kids.

Posted by Mark at 09:04 PM

November 17, 2004

Hard to read

Buckminster Fuller writes in an author's note for Synergetics that you need to go over and over almost the same ground in order finally to understand.

Friedrich Nietzsche explained in the preface to Genealogie der Moral that you'd better be a cow than a man to appreciate his work and in any case not a "modern person." Digesting his work requires "Wiederkäuen," rumination.

Ludwig Wittgenstein tells us right away in the preface to his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, "This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it--or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book."

Jesus's observation that "everything comes in parables" seems to stem from the same vein of warnings to the reader, warnings that it's not going to be easy.

Yet I get the impression these four men slaved to make their words as straightforward as they could, that they did what Kurt Vonnegut says is so hard, which is the work of making things simple for the reader. It must've been hard indeed when they started out.

Posted by Mark at 09:33 PM

November 16, 2004

Ivory tower

If anyone believes the French media are better than the US media, let him examine French mainstream media coverage of the problems in the Ivory Coast these days.

I see and hear plenty about how Chirac and the government are protecting the peace, blah, blah, blah. Very little about events on November 9. Le Monde claims the death of "at least 7 civilians" in a November 15th article, down from the quote of 50 dead, 600 wounded in a French military massacre of unarmed loyalists on November 10. The television and the radio are of course primarily concerned with the human interest stories around French evacuees, and Chirac's grandstanding at the UN.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not supporting Gbagbo, the rebels, or anybody in particular. Neither do I think, however, that the media are likely to do us much good in these situations. The value of looking at how the other guy does it is to get some idea of what your own blind spots probably look like.

Posted by Mark at 09:20 PM

Wolves and other stories, part II

Just in case I didn't make myself clear, the previous entry is not supposed to make sense.

It functions only as a counterexample to Luke's flippant assertion that we think in words, even though he shares an office with Rob.

Posted by Mark at 08:56 PM

Wolves and other stories

Over coffee this morning I failed to explain myself. This happens to me all the time. I do not think in words, but in something related to metaphors.

Karine explained that one of her children -- I think it was Thomas -- had been told a story about a wolf or wolves at school. When he came home he couldn't sleep before his parents opened all the closets and cupboards to show him no wolves were hiding in the house. Karine's husband David asked the teacher why they'd told the story about the wolves. The teacher responded children need to confront their fears, and they do that through these stories.

Gilles concluded that was true, that children need to confront their fears, or they remain too afraid to try anything.

Before he said that, I tripped over my words. But I saw what I later wrote down, an explanation Occam might have cut to shreds. In essence, Gilles's explanation is the surface explanation, put there to protect the hidden story from discovery, which is that somebody at l'Education Nationale was taking aim at the church, intentionally helping children build their superegos from flimsy fears of wolves and other unlikey happenings. The unconscious would respond to these fears; the children would first appear to become socialized. Other stories about scarcity, unemployment, etc. would round out the superego scaffolding.

But in the end, the ego would notice the flimsy core materials of the scaffolding, would put two and two together to deconstruct the superego, which would vanish once exposed. The ego would see the unconscious confused by the boundaries of the flimsy, fake superego, and begin the work of taming blind, unconscious drive. No God above, no demons below, only rationality remains.

Yet behind the hidden story hides another short story. Rationality is only a tool. It constructs nothing on its own, but disintegrates into its own relativism, and thus anarchy. In the absence of structure, the ego makes no sense, so it must disappear as well.

Thus at one level, the story about wolves is an object lesson in Zen Buddhism. I'm still looking for the hidden story behind Zen.

Posted by Mark at 08:52 PM

Uphill, downhill

Running up to Corenc from work and back took me a total of 45 minutes at a determined, but not particularly hard pace. On the way down I tried letting myself go, lengthening my stride as Matt suggested.

The downhill part felt strange. I find it difficult to release the brakes completely. Even my toes remain tense.

Posted by Mark at 08:14 PM

November 15, 2004

Words, part II

In my musings about going back to school I forget to note that I might be able to do it without leaving my job.

After all, I've already done it at ACCIS, where I got my Bachelor's degree in computer science. That represented plenty of work in evenings and on weekends.

Certainly it wouldn't make sense to try that for a doctorate, but it might work for a Master's. Something to consider as my objectives become clearer.

Posted by Mark at 08:58 AM

November 14, 2004

Fall ride, part IV

Yesterday was colder than today. When I left for Chambéry after lunch, it was about 7 degrees Celsius (almost 45 Fahrenheit).

Not only was the temperature slightly higher today, but also I was better prepared. Although I couldn't fit a hat underneath my helmet, I wore a windbreaker with a hood. I also wore a pair of very thin gloves under my normal cycling gloves. Finally, I wore windbreaker bottoms, too.

The difficulty today was the wind. Actually, I was lucky to have gone yesterday morning. The wind picked up later in the day and has been blowing down the valley from the north since then. Getting to Chambéry was hard work.

Posted by Mark at 04:48 PM | Comments (2)

November 13, 2004

Fall ride, part III

Today I rode the circuit up through Les Marches, Montmélian, and back through Laissud and Pontcharra. That circuit takes me on the order of an hour, riding swiftly but not to exhaustion.

This qualified as a cold weather ride. The temperature when I got back at 11:30 am was 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit). I went in the morning rather than the afternoon because it looked like it might get a little cooler and snow. Low, gray clouds covered up the sky and the wind blew chill and humid out of the north.

My trouble spots were fingers and toes. I rode for quite a while with clenched fists on the top of the handlebars. My gloves are rated to -5 Celsius, but maybe that's a post-windchilll rating.

I could also consider wearing a hat underneath my helmet. Having such a light helmet with big vents in summer's a good thing. In the winter it just turns all the sweat into icewater.

Posted by Mark at 02:36 PM

November 12, 2004

No pain, part II

My leg is almost back to normal after hurting it Monday. We had a good workout at the gym. Lots of people were on vacation today, so we had extra space and could work out with the medicine balls for the first time. Oof.

Posted by Mark at 03:20 PM

Mail server consolidation, part II

As promised, Sun IT folk moved my mail to a big server. I was pleasantly surprised, expecting things to go wrong, and they didn't for the most part.

I had one filter break. The error message said something about the filter being too complex. Maybe there's a configurable limit I exceeded somewhere. I get the impression the filtering was being done on the server side through IMAP, since I'm using the very same version of Thunderbird that worked before the transition. So I quit Thunderbird, split the filter manually in msgFilterRules.dat, and restarted Thunderbird. Appears to work fine now.

The big server seems snappier. That'll probably only continue until they move everyone over, however.

Posted by Mark at 03:15 PM

High end

Over lunch I listened to Eve talking about clustering market segments. If you've never heard of a cluster before, it's a set of computers functioning together such that failures don't bring services down. A service is something that a server provides, like email delivery, database access, web access, directory access, etc.

Anyway, in the cluster world, Sun has traditionally provided solutions for high-end customers. High-end customers have businesses that depend upon their ability to provide continuous services. When their services stop, they immediately start losing money, often lots of it. So they are ready to pay architectural insurance, buying duplicate hardware, running extra software, accepting the cost of high-end machines. Sun has also been in the business of providing Directory Server to this kind of customer.

Some of the money we may have been leaving on the table comes from people buying what marketing calls good enough products, in that they're good enough for people who want protection, but either have to do it on a very tight budget, or aren't in a situation so serious that they cannot afford a little risk. We sell more of this low-end hardware now. In fact, it sounds like we sell it more cheaply than competitors.

Marketing would like us to focus some energy on good enough software that perhaps provides less disaster protection but is expected to run on cheap hardware. At least two difficulties come to mind here:

It sounds like the answer to the first might be, "Listen carefully to prospects." We're doing a better job on that than we have been doing before. We can also benefit from looking at what our competition has settled for, since what we can do is often a superset of what they can do. And that sort of helps answer the second question. There's more to it than that, of course.

Posted by Mark at 03:08 PM

November 11, 2004

Words

At some point I will be able to stop working as a technical writer and go back to school.

Why? It's hard for me to answer the question, because ending up back at school seems so naturally right that I've never thought critically about it. Perhaps school fits my natural laziness. It's something I've been able to do well in the past. It hasn't been hard work yet. Of course, I've only done Bachelor's degrees (and one Maîtrise here in France). I've only partially rediscovered what others painstakingly researched long ago. They walked, then took leaky boats which they had to repair themselves during the voyage. I took commercial airlines, ate reheated meals on trays, and watched the in-flight films.

I've been working for 8 years at this point, perhaps getting even dumber and slower than I already was. Was my thinking always this dull? I cannot tell for sure. It probably was. Unlike a real writer, I don't have a need to write. (I do have a need to read. I also have a need to eat with no corresponding need to farm, hunt, gather, whatever.) Maybe I don't have a need to tell stories. I have however developed my ability to withstand drugery. My ability to withstand drugery is still quite weak compared to that of other people, but you should see how bad I used to be.

Where would I go to school? That depends on what I'd do there. Nathalie and I have been talking about vacation. This led me to ask the question, "What is your dream vacation?" She didn't answer. I realized then that a central divertissement in my dream vacation is a large, research library. The place is quiet. You feel a sentiment that you'd never run out of new books, the sated pleasure of wallowing in a mountain of precious volumes like a dragon in his lair. This research library, maybe during school vacation, I imagine near good places to bike, run, eat, and also near a functional hotel or appartment, somewhere that doesn't butt in on enjoyment of life with chores like raking leaves, clipping hedges, painting, and changing the oil.

How do you end up spending more time around a research library in real life? Well, you could do research. You could work there. Maybe you could work as a librarian, doing research yourself or helping other people to do research.

Googling distractedly, I find a couple of top-rated library science schools in the US. One is SILS at UNC. Another is GSLIS at the University of Illinois. One of the top rated schools here is near Lyon, ENSSIB.

The application for SILS requires of the applicant a, "Brief essay expressing why the applicant is interested in information or library science as a career (500 words maximum)." Hmm. I take that to mean they don't want people who've come to wallow in books, and only realize secondarily they must somehow earn their keep.

The first definition of "career" at Google doesn't mention money:

the particular occupation for which you are trained

(source www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn)

It's probably a good thing they don't mention money, since the pay is no doubt lousy. Google leads me to $34,901 average starting salary in 2000. That sounds like school teacher range. Furthermore the university towns where they keep the research libraries are typically expensive places to live. I think of my brother in Ann Arbor, for example. Hmm.

On the other hand, I started out for much less than that in Paris, and 8 years later have managed to get myself into a situation where the bills are so high $35K immediately conjures sensations of starvation and cold. Dismal starting salaries alone therefore shouldn't stop me.

I pause to imagine a world without "ravenous carnivore" salespeople around like the ones we're apparently trying to hire to hawk our (hard and soft)wares at work. In my innocent imagination, a library, like a church, is a place where people are fairly reserved, lost in their thoughts and investigations of other peoples' thoughts. Money might be an object of study, but not a direct consideration. It's not just a dragon's lair. It's an ivory tower.

Anyway, pursuing a career is simply doing that for which you are trained as an occupation. I guess that's better than what I've been doing, which is a lot of stuff for which I've not been trained. So why am I interested in information or library science as a career? More specifically, why am I interested in library science as a career?

Hmm. At this point, I realize that I don't really know what a librarian does. Guess I need to learn about that.

Posted by Mark at 03:38 PM

November 10, 2004

Mail server consolidation

At work, those of us physically far from headquarters are finally moving to our own Messaging Server. I wonder if we'll be able to get mail soon without having to get on the VPN.

Posted by Mark at 09:07 PM

Intervals, part III

It's funny how 15 minutes of exercise can knock you for a loop. I was slightly spaced out all afternoon after running intervals.

Matt later said maybe I shouldn't be working that hard this time of year when it's starting to get cold, but that once per week is probably not dangerous. I guess he used to do it a couple of times a week and ended up overtraining.

Posted by Mark at 09:01 PM

Intervals, part II

A few minutes ago, I ran the intervals training as Matt suggested yesterday. One of Matt's specific suggestions was to run 15 intervals, 40 seconds as hard as possible, then 20 seconds rest for each.

It's easier said than done.

40 seconds starts seeming like a long time after a few repetitions. And I start having trouble focusing enough to read the seconds on my watch. Near the end I cannot recover much of anything in 20 seconds. Right now, I feel completely wiped out.

Posted by Mark at 01:38 PM

November 09, 2004

Intervals

Matt and I went running today, although I'd hurt my leg yesterday at the gym. Feels like a hamstring problem, but is getting better today so I'm not very worried.

Matt suggests that I could get a lot more good out of my time by running intervals and then some longer runs once a week. He even says I might be able to fix my weight problem through serious interval work, because a body recovering from serious lactic acid buildup has high metabolism.

Posted by Mark at 06:11 PM

November 08, 2004

Situation appraisal

Following the training in problem solving last week, I started a situation appraisal. I identified 8 top priority concerns, three of which relate to my job. Of the others, two look to my future. Three center on relationships with other people.

Of the three that relate to my job, I can probably resolve two through email. That leaves one more, and it's at the core of what I'm supposed to be doing at work right now anyway.

The other five may take longer to resolve. All of them look hard to handle well. So why focus on work? Procrastination may explain more than I thought.

Work for which I'm paid seems serious, important. Responsible people encourage me to view it that way. I even encourage myself to view it that way.

Posted by Mark at 10:03 AM

Stories

Last night when Nathalie was watching ER (Urgences in French), I went out. I've read a couple of Michael Crichton's books. He tells good stories. ER pales compared to Andromeda Strain, though. It's like wine: If you produce too much, the flavor suffers.

The cinema in Pontcharra was playing 2046 by Wong Kar Wai. More good stories. I feel like I missed quite a bit the first time.

Would I still have gone had I known that it was a series of love stories? Would Nathalie perhaps have come with me? To the second question, I'd respond, "Perhaps not." She doesn't like to watch movies with subtitles even if she understands the source language. Neither of us speak any Chinese.

Posted by Mark at 08:38 AM

November 07, 2004

Fall ride, part II

This morning around 11 the sun came out and it must've warmed up to 13-14 degrees Celsius. At the time, I was cleaning up in the yard after having trimmed shrubs and couldn't get away to ride before lunch.

So I went out right after lunch. The wind started picking up soon after the sun appeared, wind blowing out of the north. On the flat, open stretches headed north to the bridge over the autoroute before Montmélian, I slowed to a crawl. The dry corn tassles bent back and flapped. Yesterday in the opposite direction at the same place, I was rolling in top gear at a quick pace.

I'd tried to get Nathalie to ride to La Rochette with me. She declined. I told here it would be more interesting than her exercise bike. She told me I'd ride too fast for her. I promised to ride slowly. She said the real problem was that on her exercise bike, she can always stop after a maximum of 30 minutes. She expected the ride with me to take longer than that.

Colette asked me whether I look at the landscape. I replied that yesterday I saw two turkeys running after a third turkey who'd found what looked like a green apple. I further remarked that today all the turkeys appeared to be hiding from the wind.

Borges once wrote that had an imposter wrote the Koran, he'd have filled it with camels for local color. When you live in the mountains and ride through vineyards every time you go out, you remember the turkeys competing for an apple, more than the peaks and grapes. That said, the country around here is lovely.

belledonne20040426.jpg

Posted by Mark at 04:46 PM | Comments (2)

November 06, 2004

Fall ride

Even today weather was still nice enough to go for a bike ride in the morning. I rode over to Chambéry, back through Myans, Les Marches, Montmélian, and Pontcharra on the way home.

Wind was out of the north, which made it fun riding home. Zoom.

When I reach Chambéry, I come out near the center of town. In fact, I go right by the Japanese restaurant where Nathalie and I ate about a week ago.

Posted by Mark at 10:17 PM

Reading the doc, part II

I decided to start now from the beginning again.

If you agree that you're going to ask questions when you don't understand, it's slow going. By comparison, Stephen Weinberg's First Three Minutes cosmogony runs on for 203 pp. according to Amazon. (My last numbered page is 188.)

Maybe I should be writing the questions down. Perhaps the answers appear later on.

Posted by Mark at 07:25 AM

November 05, 2004

Reading the doc

During the training on problem solving this week, I realized it's time for the doc guy to start reading the doc. So I tried reading the book of Job.

God must have realized his readers, centuries later, would have trouble making heads or tails of His work. My copy is the NRSV, so it's language I should be used to.

Then I saw in Mark 4:10-13:

When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that
'they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.'"

And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?"

Is Jesus teasing me? Or does he expect me to know Isaiah 6:9-10:

And he said, "Go and say to this people:
'Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking but do not understand.' Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed."

There's quite a bit of context with which I need to familiarize myself.

Posted by Mark at 09:57 PM

Weather conversation

Writing about the running and cycling I do is like talking about the weather. It's safe, easy to come up with something to say, and almost utterly devoid of interest.

It could be worse: I could be blogging for dollars.

On the other hand, it could be a lot better. I think I'll start a journal as well, which you'll never see, but which may someday generate something worth reading.

Posted by Mark at 09:24 PM

Crossroads

Dana summed it up the other day. I can run fast enough far enough that I've gone beyond what most people can do. But my performance is laughable compared to people who take running seriously.

I weight about 85 kg now. For a serious distance runner my height, I'm about 10.5 kg overweight. In the abstract, that's not so hard to change. Except that I've liked to eat too much for as long as I can remember, and I do not want to start a temporary diet. I'd have to change my lifestyle.

I'd also have to change my lifestyle to run enough to get good at it. An hour a day is probably not enough to move from 14-15 km/hr up to 17-18 km/hr. 17 km/hr translates to a 2:30 marathon, roughly.

If I want to make the change, I probably ought to do it while I'm still in my 30s. It's not going to get any easier.

Posted by Mark at 09:10 PM

No pain

In the last week, I dropped one day, Tuesday, but ran at least 5 out of the last 7.

My speed's not great. The best I did for a 10 km run was around 41:30. And I never ran further than 10 km.

However, the pain in my shins has not come back. The orthotics seem to work well. Should be able to increase my mileage now, or as soon as I stop cycling.

Posted by Mark at 09:00 PM

November 04, 2004

Comment spam, part VI

Perl/PHP Software Submitter was apparently one of the top referrers to this blog for October.

Maybe this explains some rashes of comment spam. asm@uinc.ru is the author's address according to the web page, seen as asm@vinc.ru on Geodog's blog. Is Eugene Blagodarny (Evgeniy Blagodarniy) the real author of this software?

Posted by Mark at 10:40 PM

What you cannot say

A blog is not a journal. As soon as you know you're not the only one looking at it, you exercise censorship.

Posted by Mark at 07:00 PM

November 03, 2004

Problem solving

At work, several of us are taking a course in problem solving. After a good day yesterday, I felt uncomfortable all afternoon. Borges wrote (Alastair Reid's translation):

It is no exaggeration to state that in the classical culture of Tlön, there is only one discipline, that of psychology.

We've discussed problem solving for two days. We tried exercises involving square doughnuts, contaminated film, incident sensors in a bank. I doubt we'll cover any case studies involving psychology.

Posted by Mark at 09:20 PM

What women want

Nathalie watched a film she'd taped the other day, called What Women Want.

In the film, Mel Gibson accidentally develops the ability to hear what women are thinking. Has somebody done the opposite, that is, What Men Want? (Maybe that would be too boring even for Hollywood.)

Posted by Mark at 09:07 PM

Comment spam, part V

Following yet another rash of comment spam, this one quite distasteful, I've decided to start closing comments for old entries, using mt-close.cgi, which I downloaded from David Raynes's site.

If you want to leave a comment on an old entry and cannot, let me know by email.

Posted by Mark at 08:57 PM

Procrastination

InformationWeek ran an article on Steve Ballmer's explanation of how Windows is cheaper than Linux, which begins:

Which operating system, Linux or Windows, is cheaper, more secure, and lower risk? Countless hours have been spent debating the question...

With so many real problems in the world to solve, why do we spend countless hours debating generalizations such as these? Does the answer lie in a proclivity for procrastination? How much would putting things off explain?

Posted by Mark at 07:55 AM

Comment spam, part IV

Yet another rash of comment spam.

This is getting to be a pain. MovableType's comment management doesn't seem to permit easy bulk deletion.

Posted by Mark at 07:41 AM

November 02, 2004

Admirer

Last week, Tim got a note from one of his girlfriends. She's apparently in love with him.

He went over to her house this afternoon to play, since they're on vacation.

That sort of thing never happens to me. Maybe my son's better looking and more romantic than I am. Maybe girls older than 8 just don't write those kinds of notes anymore. Maybe it's a combination of both.

Posted by Mark at 08:59 PM

Hotly contested?

Some journalist, speaking live (1:15 am) from New York about the US elections on French radio today, claimed this is the most hotly contested election since 1968. Both sides figure the world will fall apart if the other side wins.

In software, people argue bitterly about fine tuning, like which text editor you should use, typically vi or Emacs. Animosity runs inversely proportionally to the difference it makes in the real world. If the same logic holds for the elections, the mainstream candidates have done a good job toeing the line right down the middle.

One may wonder whether the half of eligible US voters who stay home react according to this rule as well, the way rats did in the lab when they put them in smooth-walled beakers of water to simulate helplessness. From the rats' perspectives, the situation was grave: They were going to drown. After they realized, however, that it was no use trying to climb the smooth walls to get out, they eventually calmed down. They gave up and accepted their fates.

When your only option is fine tuning, yet you realize you probably need new equipment, do you keep trying to tune in anyway?

Posted by Mark at 08:01 AM

November 01, 2004

VALIS

Over the last couple of days, I reread VALIS yet again. My paperback copy is starting to come apart.

Having read VALIS back to back with Labyrinths, I feel Dick and Borges dealt with essentially the same underlying theme, though with different language. Maybe that theme could be summarized as the quality of stories engrossing enough to lead you into forgetting they're stories while at the same time appearing obviously as stories rather than non-fiction.

Posted by Mark at 10:19 PM

Games

Emma and I played a board game this evening. It was just like playing all her other games, since she makes up the rules as she goes along. Tim by contrast is proud not to do that.

It seems that somewhere between age 5 and age 7, you start to want to play board games and card games by the rules. Maybe it's tied to the ability to read.

Posted by Mark at 10:12 PM

Back to work

Mom and Dana left for Berlin today. Tomorrow, I go back to work. The kids still have a couple days of vacation.

Posted by Mark at 10:10 PM