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August 31, 2005

Cosmic Encounter

I picked Cosmic Encounter by A. E. Van Vogt off the shelf at work because of the pulp fiction cover of robots with lasers boarding an 18th century pirate ship.

It tells the story of Nathan Fletcher, ex-Baron of something-or-other, who fell out of favor with the Tories due to his stance vis-a-vis free enterprise. (If I remember that right.) Fletcher turns to piracy for his livelihood. When we meet him at the outset of the story, he heartlessly offers a captured young Lady the choice between gang rape and drowning, hoping she'll accept the rape after which he'll drown her anyway. Not a bleeding heart type of guy.

After that time itself collapses into 1704 AD, and flops around some subsequently. The young woman dies and is reincarnated by 83rd century technology. Robots from the 25th century lose their Universal Mind and end up finding it in the voice of Nathan Fletcher. He eventually gets zapped, which makes him telepathic and starts him on the road to becoming a nicer guy, though he ends up clubbing a New Yorker from the 23rd century who, by virtue of his anti-gravity duds and other standard 23rd century gear, had set himself up to force the reincarnated Lady into becoming his mistress.

In other words, a romp of a story, Cosmic Encounter absolutely lived up to its cover.

Posted by Mark at 08:53 PM

Google Maps envy

Google Maps doesn't really cover France, yet. Gilles's theory is that the French authority who makes the best maps, IGN, would not be able to make money if Google posted their work.

Here's the current Google Maps satellite view of our house. Leaves something to be desired, doesn't it?

Posted by Mark at 12:15 PM

45:01/164

Tempo run this morning before things heat up. I ran a bit more than 10 km. Had to drop to a slow jog 5 minutes from the end to avoid going into a holding pattern in the Sun parking lot. Probably started off too fast.

By the 3rd quarter of the 10 km I ran 20-30 seconds faster than the day I did a 10 km in just over 40:00. Was running out of air at the end of that leg. On a more aptly paced tempo run I'd have been going a bit slower for longer.

Posted by Mark at 09:29 AM

August 30, 2005

Honesty in advertising

After reading the fine print, I got around to signing up for the marathon in Grenoble this Halloween. But I hadn't read the best part, yet.

It turns out we need to send copies of our medical certificates beforehand. That's the paper your doctor signs declaring he doesn't expect you to drop dead. I'm not sure why they aren't collecting copies of those when we go in to get our numbers, which is what they did in Lyon and even in Pontcharra. Seems like extra work for the organizers to keep track of it all.

In any case I was looking around for a fax number, and landed on a page covering the atouts (advantages) of the marathon run they're organizing for us. My confidence is slightly shaken by the statement right at the top that they're holding it in, "Grenoble, la ville la plus plate de France" (Grenoble, the flattest city in France).

Let's hope the rest of organization is a little less fast and loose than the advertising. Maybe I should carry a 10 euro bill in my shorts in case I need to buy my own drinks along the way.

Posted by Mark at 10:10 PM | Comments (2)

1:08:50/144

Easy 14 km (8.7 mi) run on a warm, 30 C (86 F) afternoon around the corn fields down in La Gache. We seem to be having the summer weather that was missing earlier in August.

I forgot my orthotics at work, so I put the insoles back and ran on those. No arch support. A few hours running without my orthotics shouldn't hurt too much. Nevertheless I can feel tightness in my calves, especially my right calf. I also have a sort of tiredness in my left arch.

Each day I get too busy at work to remember to call the folks in Montbonnot who make orthotics for runners. They'd have me run on a treadmill and evaluate my gait before building a new pair. Need to put that on my Todo list, since I realize there's less and less of a difference between my existing orthotics and an off-the-rack insole. Plus I only have about two months to get used to the new ones, even if they build them this week.

Posted by Mark at 06:17 PM

Another useless meeting

Nathalie had another unhelpfully depressing meeting with someone at the ANPE (French National Agency For Employment). This half day appears to have been an obligatory session for working on your resume and cover letters.

The guy running it seems to have been trying to convince Nathalie not to look for a job at all, even before she starts. What he said about her draft resume was in direct contrast to what another colleague of his at the ANPE recommended she do. He also counselled her not to bother looking in the area she expressly decided to consider on suggestion from other employment counsellors.

Nathalie said some people were helped there today, although lots dropped out. The people who were helped all knew precisely what they were looking for and either had just left school having trained to go into that specific line of work, or had been doing the same thing for 15 years, etc.

It's not clear to me why someone in that position would want to spend a whole Tuesday morning in a room probably without an Internet connection or telephone to mull over their resume and cover letter. My guess is that when you don't do much writing, you get rusty at it. Writing anything then seems so hard you need a huge amount of time to get started.

The same is probably true in getting back into the working (for money) world. Once out of it, you quickly forget most of us work at occupations:

• We would have no idea how to do had we not learned on the job for at least the first few months or years
• Could be done by just about anyone if they'd also had the time to learn on the job
• Involve very, very little in any way related to particular things we learned in school

Of course, if somebody found that out, not only would we all suddenly have job security problems, but also a bunch of other naked imperial flesh would become visible and they'd have to send people around to beat us up.

Posted by Mark at 12:57 PM | Comments (2)

Crafts

Nathalie has a meeting this morning. I'm staying home with the children. The main event this morning is crafts. Tim's made a box to hold crayons, pencils, and other things on his desk. Emma's made a picture from salt dough.

Diane's only involved now since they went outside to blow bubbles. Before that she wanted to watch Robin Hood, the Disney animated movie with animals playing all the roles. We've had that video maybe a month, and she's probably watched it 25 times.

Whatever I do, I need to remain ready for interruptions, often more than one interruption at a time. It's like a busy day at work, except I don't have any meetings scheduled.

Not as relaxing as when Nathalie's also here, however.

Posted by Mark at 10:59 AM

August 29, 2005

Productivity way up

BBC News has an article about Afghan opium production nodding off:

The area under cultivation for opium has dropped by 21%... But the actual output has not changed much and Afghanistan is still the largest producer of opium in the world, accounting for almost 90% of supplies.

Apparently "the international community has spent millions" on the war on drugs there since the war on Taleban in 2001. I wonder if the crime fighting international community has spent as much as the smack shooting international community tying off in dirty bathrooms for an Afghan fix.

Posted by Mark at 09:38 PM

Risk management

Paul Graham has an essay he posted recently on Inequality and Risk, in which he writes, "Decreasing economic inequality means decreasing the risk people are willing to take."

He means to say that if you raise taxes, less folks will want to do startups. That's no doubt true. Running a startup is probably as bad as raising a family of small children on your own. Of course the potential payout is much larger than anyone raising a family of small children on his (probably her) own, but since if I have to pay for them, your kids do not amount to a good investment for me, though your startup might be, I agree with Paul. Tough luck to single parents.

Anyway, Paul's a hacker, so I figured somewhere in there he would say he did it for the love of creating something, not for the financial power. I read along until I got to the financial security argument:

Like many startup founders, I did it to get rich. But not because I wanted to buy expensive things. What I wanted was security. I wanted to make enough money that I didn't have to worry about money.

Hmm. So what would you have been doing if you didn't have to worry about money in the first place, Paul? Bucky Fuller's been telling us we don't have to since at least Critical Path. What if you just didn't have to worry about it at all? What if you could do the startup thing, but it were like raising children, in that you get something out of it, even though it's hard work?

Posted by Mark at 09:01 PM

Not a dam, part IV

The tracks through Domène and Lancey have been cleared. I couldn't see them from inside the train. We went on time right through to Gières.

Somebody must've done a huge cleanup job. I wonder if they finished before the rain last Saturday.

Posted by Mark at 09:44 AM

24:41/144

5 km recovery run this morning after commuting to work with train and bicycle. The fog along the Isère just before 8:00 am masked everything.

My legs felt sore when I was going to sleep last night, and still tired today. That's to be expected, though.

Today I'm starting on the second half of the training for October, wondering whether my tiredness last week was due to overtraining or only some sort of illness.

Posted by Mark at 09:36 AM

August 28, 2005

1:00:23/177

This morning the conditions were comfortably cloudy and cool for almost the entire run. I decided at the outset to ignore my watch entirely and run according to how I felt for the 15 km de la Rosière.

Starting out, I got excited, went too quickly, and got out of rhythm. After maybe three kilometers however I felt okay. Running without looking at your watch is like waking up on a weekend morning where you have nothing planned, nothing hanging over your head. Highly recommended.

After about 5 km I was in rhythm and feeling okay. We passed some people camping who were either cooking or cleaning up. I couldn't tell which. At that point a guy a few steps ahead asked them jokingly whether this was the aid station. For some reason that struck me as funny enough to make me snicker. It was such a relief that I didn't have to take this seriously at all. I may have started to run a little harder at that point.

I started to make a game of catching up slowly with the next runner ahead of me. Luckily I'm slow enough that there's always somebody up there in front of me. It's embarrassing to pass someone, especially when they're looking at their watch a lot and you aren't. I know how they feel. When you're looking at your watch all the time during a hard run you're feeling late, worried you're not going to make it, wondering how long you can keep the pace. It's very serious.

The worst thing at that point is to have some idiot who's not taking it seriously go past you. I tried to be as unobtrusive as I could. Every time I got someone behind me it was a relief, and I could start working on the next person ahead.

Obviously I ran this too slowly to believe I can run a sub-3:00 marathon. McMillanRunning.com would predict 3:02:52 from a 1:00:23 15 km race. That doesn't matter. After today, I'm seriously thinking about running in Grenoble the same way I did today in Pontcharra. Just let the body figure out the pace and enjoy the run. Three hours is too long to feel under pressure, fat, and slow.

At the finish I had lots left. There was one guy about 50-75 m ahead when we came into the last 500 m. But he'd gone too fast and was starting to fade. I ran as hard as I could, sprinting the last 100 m. That surprised me. It was a real sprint. I caught the guy right at the finish line.

Posted by Mark at 06:37 PM

Get ready

It's about time to pay my 2 euros and get the number to pin to my shirt. Don't feel very up to a hard, 15 km run. If I feel tired starting, I can always just jog.

Posted by Mark at 08:39 AM

August 27, 2005

Cannot remain paperless

This whole week Nathalie's wanted me to buy a printer. Usually I make quick decisions, but this one seems virtually impossible, even though I was almost instantly certain we want a black and white laser printer.

I've studied the suggested printers at LinuxPrinting.org. I've examined various reviews. I've checked many printer descriptions and corresponding toner costs for those printers. I'm only a bit worried that I'd buy a printer not really supported through free software, but that's only a tiny worry these days.

My estimation is that we'll print 1-2 pages per day, that we will thus have to buy toner in 1 1/2 to 3 years, probably after the guarantee wears out on a cheap printer. But then the replacement toner on a really cheap laser printer is such that you'd usually do better to replace the whole thing. (A problem at least as bad with ink jet printers. Never buy an ink jet printer. In fact, never buy a printer if you can avoid it.)

So do I buy a somewhat more expensive printer and hope to keep it? Or do I buy a cheap printer and hope it doesn't break just after the 1 year guarantee runs out? Maybe I've already wasted too much time thinking about this.

Update: Just ordered the cheapest Samsung. I'm sure it'll break down like the other two printers I've bought in my life. I just hope the breakdown happens before the guarantee runs out.

Posted by Mark at 04:39 PM

FAT stuff that hangs around

When I delete a file on the MP3 player using the file browser on Ubuntu, the system "moves it to the trash," which appears to mean that it marks it as deleted in the File Allocation Table but leaves the file there on the device. You cannot see it in the file browser, but it's still there. You don't reclaim the space.

Great idea for big hard drives. But then you have to "take out the trash" even on your MP3 player. Maybe it should go ahead and prompt me when the media is a little flash over USB.

The real problem I see is in the trash itself. When I "empty the trash," the system throws out (permanently deletes) everything referenced as trashed. So I do this for my USB-connected, tiny flash memory at the same time doing it for the stuff on my relatively huge disk. It's like the natural way to clean up your desk being to throw out everything in the house you intend to remove some day.

Posted by Mark at 10:01 AM

To upgrade or not to upgrade, part II

Smooth upgrades to:

• Firefox 1.0.x
• Thunderbird (in general)
• MovableType 3.15
• Ubuntu 5.0.4
  (More of a migration, but all the apps I want worked better here with less effort, except for the Quake III demo.)
• Java Desktop System for iWork v. 2 beta
• Solaris (in general)

Rough upgrades to:

• Word 97
• FrameMaker
  (Any version. Even changing templates was a nightmare.)
• FrameMaker source to SolBook SGML
• Changing machines
  (Upgrading an entire computer)

I seem to remember rough upgrades longer than smooth upgrades.

Posted by Mark at 09:44 AM

To upgrade or not to upgrade

Apparently the 3.2 version of MovableType is out. I'm wondering whether to take the time to upgrade.

It's surprising how easily I accept updates when they're done for me, compared to how uncomfortable I feel when contemplating them.

Reflecting on this, I notice that as long as the configuration state I manage and my data aren't involved, I don't care. Upgrade away.

Whenever my data and the configuration state I have to manage is involved, there's a slighly perceptible allergic reaction, and a pretty strong desire not to go first.

The bar remains high for new features and bug fixes.

Posted by Mark at 09:34 AM

August 26, 2005

From 104% to 49%

The BBC News claims Internet growth has slumped, from 104% the year before last to 49% last year. Quite a crumple.

Only 5 years ago I remember Ed Zander saying Internet use was doubling every 4-6 months.

Pictures, people. Streaming home digital video of vultures settling behind starving young girls. Amateur peer to peer, DVD quality porn. We'll just be waiting patiently for a better opportunity in the stock market.

Posted by Mark at 10:13 PM

Kevin Carter's photo

When I dragged myself back from eating my lunch today, having listened to Tony talk about the wonders of grid computing for what seems like a long time, Luke had sent around the Pulitzer prize winning photo of a Sudanese girl snapped around 1994 by Kevin Carter, who later committed suicide.

The vulture appears to be waiting to eat the starving child. According to Wikipedia -- see the link -- the photographer had been "warned never to touch famine victims for fear of disease." But contrary to the story Luke sent with the photo, Carter's obituary on the web says the girl, "resumed her trek to the feeding centre. [Carter] chased away the vulture."

After the New York Times published the picture, it garnered Carter the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography:

"I swear I got the most applause of anybody," Carter wrote back to his parents in Johannesburg. "I can't wait to show you the trophy. It is the most precious thing, and the highest acknowledgment of my work I could receive."

Carter was feted at some of the most fashionable spots in New York City. Restaurant patrons, overhearing his claim to fame, would come up and ask for his autograph.

It seems that Scott MacLeod, Time's Johannesburg bureau chief, wrote that. Then in the same article, on paragraphs later, we asks, "How could a man who had moved so many people with his work end up a suicide so soon after his great triumph?" MacLeod says it was basically drugs and bleeding heartedness.

Another writer, Charles Paul Freund, sets the context of the picture this way:

Carter, a white South African, spent only a couple of days in Sudan. According to Susan D Moeller, who tells Carter's story in Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, he had gone into the bush seeking relief from the terrible starvation and suffering he was documenting, when he encountered the emaciated girl. When he saw the vulture land, Carter waited quietly, hoping the bird would spread its wings and give him an even more dramatic image. It didn't, and he eventually chased the bird away. The girl gathered her strength and resumed her journey toward a feeding centre. Afterward, writes Moeller, Carter "sat by a tree, talked to God, cried, and thought about his own daughter, Megan."

(Source still http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/odds_and_oddities/ultimate_in_unfair.htm)

That Carter one day saw himself in situations like that one, maybe multiple times, "Waiting quietly hoping to get a better shot," could never explain his suicide.

Posted by Mark at 09:29 PM

Manage yourselves

WSJ.com published an article about an initiative at Schlumberger to have knowledge workers govern themselves.

The creation of islands of democracy in a hierarchical capitalist sea was the solution to a business problem of significance to a company that primarily sells not things but services and expertise: managing and motivating technical professionals. In the late 1990s, then-Chief Executive Euan Baird "felt almost everything that had been tried had failed," says Schlumberger veteran Henry Edmundson.

Engineers, physicists, geologists worked well on individual projects, but the company hadn't a clue how to help them develop the professional sides of their lives. "If you can't manage these people," Mr. Baird decided, "let them manage themselves," recalls Mr. Edmundson. He was ordered to implement the idea.

I cannot tell from the article whether Schlumberger got rid of any layers following implementation of this initiative. Maybe they're keeping those managers around for the same reasons we always tend to put things in the attic for years, finally throwing them out only when we get ready to move.

Posted by Mark at 11:13 AM

3:26:42

This week's commute has been disasterous. Due to problems on the rails that prevent the train from going through the Domène - Lancey area, the train trip includes a bus ride.

The first day I got caught in that scenario, I just rode most of the way. That was Wednesday, when I decided as well not to run. Had a delivery at work anyway that day.

Yesterday I knew the rails hadn't been cleared, so I took the car. Today I rode down to the station for the 7:00 am train, but found out that the estimation things would be resolved "Wednesday evening at the earliest" actually didn't mean anything like "Thursday evening at the latest." It now appears that perhaps they'll be able to get it resolved before Monday.

So I rode back to the house, put my bike in the garage, and took the car. Nevertheless, I've ridden 3:26:42 this week.

Posted by Mark at 09:56 AM

29:21/161

A dismal performance for only a bit over 6 1/2 km.

Something is horribly wrong. Subjectively it seems to be getting worse.

Posted by Mark at 09:53 AM | Comments (2)

August 25, 2005

Waste

After some incomprehension, I finally decided to examine the README for the Quake III demo.

It turned out, I had at minimum to run the game as root (or sudo on Ubuntu). Also, I was linking with a library for... duh!... the wrong video card. So once I straightened that out, I could get it to work:

$ ls -l
total 4216
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    4096 2005-08-23 23:18 demoq3
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root    4096 2005-08-23 23:18 Help
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    2854 2005-08-23 23:20 icon.bmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    6852 2005-08-23 23:20 icon.xpm
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      43 2005-08-25 22:25 libGL.so -> /usr/X11R6/lib/nvidia/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 1851824 2005-08-23 23:20 libMesaVoodooGL.so.3.2
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      18 2005-08-23 23:20 MOVEDlibGL.so -> libMesaVoodooGL.so
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      22 2005-08-23 23:20 MOVEDlibMesaVoodooGL.so -> libMesaVoodooGL.so.3.2
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  554088 2005-08-23 23:20 q3ded
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  915988 2005-08-23 23:20 q3demo
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  915988 2005-08-23 23:18 q3demo.x86
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   13510 2005-08-23 23:20 README
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root   16204 2005-08-23 23:20 uninstall

Now that I've not played in a while, however, the game just seems like a waste.

Posted by Mark at 10:31 PM | Comments (2)

Haircuts

Nathalie took them in for the back to school haircuts today.

Tim decided he doesn't have the patience to look like Anakin Skywalker before he started wearing that Vader suit.

Posted by Mark at 09:50 PM

Andy's at it again

Speaking of things better than this blog, Andy's gotten active again.

Neat pictures from Kaua'i, including a snake that looks like an earthworm.

Posted by Mark at 09:38 PM

About the tagline

Just in case I have to commit ritual suicide after my next run, I wanted to make a quick note about the tagline of this blog, so future generations won't have to puzzle it out when my brother Matt won't tell them.

It is indeed named after the Mothers of Invention cover of Directly From My Heart To You with Don "Sugar Cane" Harris on the electric violin and vocals, which came out on the album, Weasles Ripped My Flesh.

That whole album is much better than this blog. So I hardly deserve to scam on some of his intellectual property. But Frank's too dead to frown and smoke cigarettes at me about it now.

Posted by Mark at 09:17 PM

1:02:05/175

It's official. I'm in significantly worse condition today than I was over a year ago, despite, or perhaps partially because of, my training.

This was for the old 14 km run out to the bridge and back. I held back a little going out, but not much. It took about 31 minutes. That was so distraughtening, it took me about 2 km to recover emotionally enough to stop my thoughts of giving up completely and walking back to work. The trick that worked for me in the end was mentally to dissociate myself from running, and think about something even more irritating.

That helped me get back to pushing it. I was looking for that feeling I used to have of being tightly focused holding a fast pace all the way back. It felt very rough today. I couldn't remember having worked that hard, but I guess I did. Now I'm running like a jogger.

A kilometer away from work, I bonked. A few hundred meters later I looked at my watch, which said my heart was still pumping away at 178 bpm, although I seemed to be moving like a dehydrated snail with a sprained back.

This "workout" completely deflated me. I stood under a cold shower for 5 minutes in an attempt to recover, but I still haven't come back to normal. Either I'm coming down with something like mononucleosis, or I'm overtraining.

Posted by Mark at 08:46 PM

Less is more

Forbes.com is running another good one. This time it's about Intel marketing "performance per watt" instead of raw processing power. Less is more.

In case you didn't notice, and couldn't ask Gilles, chip manufacturers, especially Intel, have been having trouble increasing raw processing power lately. When they do manage to increase processing power, the chips get hot as the blazes, meaning they radiate huge amounts of electricity in the form of useless heat. As a result the marketing dudes' laptops burn fingers of people clicking to the next slide, and knock down battery life from hours to minutes. Even more seriously, they make it hard to cool labs and data centers, so big customers cannot use the chips.

Intel fought that for a while, because they'd worked so hard for so long to sell everyone on the need to have really high speed processors. Think planned obsolescence.

Now even their marketing dudes have capitulated in the face of stubborn reality. Unfortunately if you think about this whole thing for a nanosecond or two, the answer to this marketing campaign is for people to buy older chips, or hang on to the old ones they have for longer. (Chips used to consume less power.)

I get this picture of Otellini going to a meeting of Intel investors. The investors say, "Profits are down. You didn't meet your target. What are you doing about it?" Otellini says, "We have a new marketing campaign. Less is more."

Posted by Mark at 08:16 AM

Less shelter

Forbes.com is running an article that notes US prosecutors are increasingly implementing "deferred prosecution" against companies who break laws involving money. However:

The obvious losers in all this are individual executives. "The company is in essence working with the government to build a case against the officer or the director. In the old days, you were protected by the company," observes former Assistant United States Attorney Michael R. Sklaire, now with the Washington office of Womble Carlyle. Companies, he notes, need to ask, "What kind of environment are you creating among your employees?"

And a natural answer is, "We're creating the kind of environment that is good for investors." "Deferred prosecution" protects investors from executives who went a bit over the top in zeal to make their numbers. Protecting the errant executive would be protecting the employee at the employer's expense.

As an investor, would you protect the rank and file at your expense, especially if they'd broken the law? What sort of signal would you be sending to the rank and file (and everyone else), if you protect executives who break the law, especially since the executive's primary responsibility is to serve the interests of investors?

Posted by Mark at 07:49 AM

August 24, 2005

Not a dam, part III

BBC News is running an article on the floods here in Europe. "Mudslides have blocked roads and railway tracks." Yup

They don't seem to mention France. If you've been following the French news, you know this is a drought year here. Maybe that's why they cannot tell us about the floods, yet.

Posted by Mark at 10:24 PM

Toast

Already, climbing on my bike to come home I felt tired.

By the time I got halfway up the hill just before Barraux, I was toast. At one point I looked down at the speedometer. I was moving forward at something like 8 kph (5 mph). Guess I'll have to take it easy if I want to enjoy running Sunday.

Or just take it easy Sunday.

Posted by Mark at 08:35 PM

No running today

Vincent eventually sent me a link to the update concerning how soon the trains might be running again. Not before tonight at the most optimistic, meaning certainly not.

So I need to ride all the way back home, my legs feel tired and my back is bugging me. And we're delivering a sneak preview of an upcoming version of Directory Server pretty soon. Guess I'll run again tomorrow.

Posted by Mark at 04:39 PM

Not a dam, part II

On the Belledonne side of the valley, things are apparently still quite a mess. Vincent told me this morning that 300 firefighters are coming in to help clean up some of the streets and railways, and to channel the water away from people's homes and businesses.

The SNCF didn't have any information posted about this. My train was late, then stopped at the station in Tencin, where busses waited to take people further. I guess either they don't have much more information than anybody else, or the people with information are already doing what they can dealing with the situation and don't have time to let anybody not directly involved know.

Vincent says the information in his town has been filtering orally through the mayor, who has held a couple of town meetings. Guess I won't try to take the train tonight or ride on that side of the valley.

Posted by Mark at 08:35 AM

August 23, 2005

Annexation

Dana found that a sizeable proportion of Mexicans would like to live in the US. We wondered if they shouldn't petition congress to vote to join the US.

Dana figures it might be seen as a problem by many current Americans, who'd worry we'd have to pay like West Germany paid for East Germany. It doesn't look quite the same, however. Reunification joined a bunch of people who spoke the same language and who'd already thought of themselves as a nation from about the beginning of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th.

Emotionally, adding part of Mexico to the US would be like German reunification only for very few people.

Posted by Mark at 10:10 PM

1984

Out of cheapness I accidentally bought the Penguin Readers Level 4 version of Orwell's book. The flavor is still there, however.

The humor's even better, like when you're reading the no-more-than-1700-word version of how the newspeak dictionary writers like Syme are, "destroying words -- lots of them, hundreds of them, every day."

We have lots of executive newspeakers in the business world, but nobody working on the dictionary except for Rob and Luke, and theirs is a part time effort.

I don't mind rats. Not sure what I expect to find when they take me to Room 101.

Posted by Mark at 09:45 PM

Not a dam

It turns out that all that water was from reservoirs simply overflowing. Nothing really broke.

Nathalie says they got the trains running again late this afternoon.

Posted by Mark at 09:30 PM

Broken dam, part II

Didier had some photos of the water today around noon. It was still flowing. The station was still under water:

xv doesn't seem to resize as nicely as The Gimp, but you get the idea.

Posted by Mark at 03:35 PM | Comments (2)

1:05:19/165

For this 14 km run, I started with Nigel and continued without him over the bridge on the road towards the Versoud where I rode back in defeat last night from Lancey. The Isère is full of muddy water.

Ran quite hard to very hard for some of the middle, finally getting to a heart rate of 188 (theoretically 97%), a beat higher than the last time I ran hill repeats.

Posted by Mark at 02:41 PM

August 22, 2005

Google rediscovers that paperclip

According to the BBC News, Google and is updating their desktop search software:

The revamped software will suggest web links, personal documents and images that might be relevant to whatever someone is doing with their computer.

The tool also automatically subscribes to feeds from weblogs and news sites that a user visits.

Umm, didn't Microsoft already do that sort of stuff with the paperclip in their Office suite? ("It looks like you're writing a letter.") Didn't virtually everyone who'd ever used it for more than a demo already agree that was a bad idea? Maybe they've been working too hard selling shares and their engineers are getting outflanked by their marketing dudes and management.

Posted by Mark at 09:58 PM

Broken dam

My commute home this evening left something to be desired.

It started out with a damp ride to the station in Gières. After waiting for a few minutes, we saw the chef de gare come out and talk to people waiting. My neighbor said it didn't look good, since the lights in both directions were red and stayed that way.

The chef de gare said there would be no trains between Grenoble and Chambéry, as the station in Lancey was flooded. That was a surprise, since it had only been sprinking all day and a bit this weekend. It was hardly a torrential downpour. I called Nathalie and suggested she meet me if she could in Brignoud in the car, halfway down the valley. It wasn't that I couldn't just ride the hour or hour and a quarter home, but it has started to get dark earlier and I've run out of batteries for my headlight and lost my little tail light.

The road on that side goes through the center of Lancey, which is uphill from the station. So I figured there would be no problem riding on the Belledonne side of the valley up to Brignoud. I took off at a brisk pace as it had started to sprinkle and I was cold. Riding hard, I got to Lancey fairly quickly. The rain was starting to come down harder.

In the center of Lancey, the traffic was backed up and people were turning around. I soon found out why. The main street down to the station was literally a muddy river. The firemen were evacuating people in a large, high truck with tractor tires. Other people were standing and watching, taking pictures or talking on their mobile phones to explain the situation.

"Yes, we heard the dam broke. There's water everywhere. No, you won't be able to meet me coming the other way. The whole road is blocked. The water is 50 cm deep in the middle."

I decided not to chance it and rode back towards work, where I found a pay telephone and managed to get Nathalie on her mobile.

Now I have to go clean my chain again.

Posted by Mark at 09:17 PM

25:19/155

Ran uphill in to the national road and back down. I think that's on the order of 5 km. Ran slowly saving energy for the harder sessions this week.

It's still raining. A shame to have cleaned my bike and my chain just yesterday but fine jogging weather.

Posted by Mark at 10:31 AM

S corps

Forbes.com is running an article on IRS investigations into potential tax evasion through S corporation structures. According to Forbes.com, the IRS says the tax shortfall was $300 billion in 2001.

In a nutshell, people set up S corporations to avoid double taxation of profits, once at the corporate level, once after dividends are distributed. S corporations don't get taxed at the corporate level, but instead all the tax is paid by owners on the gains made in dividends. Or the losses made, which are also passed on directly. Presumably if you're a big enough fish and wise enough, you can then use the losses to offset other gains you made. That of course logically doesn't do you any good... unless you need to reduce the size of the capital gains you have to pay tax on.

All of that is legit, although as Forbes.com recommends, "You will want an attorney." The laws get complicated. The investigations do not address the legitimacy of the legit part of course, but instead concern salaries and overstated losses. Some folks surmise there may be owners adjusting salaries to limit their tax burdens, and a few may even be claiming they lost more than they did to offset gains elsewhere.

Gee if I were an owner, I'd tend to see this as an advertisement rather than a warning.

Posted by Mark at 08:23 AM

August 21, 2005

Twice a day?

Now that I've come back to Tim Noakes book, The Lore of Running, I've arrived at the chapters in which he proposes specific training for various distances from 10 km to ultramarathons.

One of the things he seems to have done to increase his training load while still living like a normal human being is running to and from work. I read that and thought, "No, that's too much." But in fact it might be the way to do 100 km weeks, skipping the hill in front of my house by taking the car to the station, then running from the station to work in the morning and back in the evening. It'd be one way of breaking the runs into small bits except for planned long runs.

Mom and Dana wonder whether anyone would want to sit in the same rail car with me in the evenings. I doubt it would be much worse than what I'm already subjecting them to by biking. It's only about 8 km after all.

The time might get to be an issue, however. Will have to think more about it after October.

Posted by Mark at 06:29 PM

Slow Sunday

For some reason the day's already almost over, yet I've done so little. Managed to clean my bike, do some calisthenics, organize some papers, did some email, and read. That's most of it.

This morning Emma went swimming again. She spent the whole time in the deeper pool. The instructor says she doesn't need to go in the kid's pool any more, and she's convinced. She did go in for a few minutes after her lesson, however, to show me how she could swim underwater and do handstands and so forth. Very proud.

In the afternoon I tried to get Diane to take a nap. After an hour, I threw in the towel. Diane was triumphant.

Tim's watching Star Wars again. I think I saw him mouthing the lines. Nathalie's been working on a quilt. She bought the fabric when we were visiting Mom.

Posted by Mark at 06:19 PM

August 20, 2005

Afternoon at the movies

This afternoon it's been dark, windy, and sprinking, and both Tim and Emma wanted to go see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I didn't realize was a Tim Burton film until we sat down and it all started. That made it more worthwhile.

Both Tim and Emma enjoyed it, and so did I. Emma was just old enough to get scared and want to hold someone's hand at the parts where the pushy and gluttonous kids get theirs. There were lots of kids there at the 4 pm showing.

Most of them were eating candy and gum through the whole thing.

Posted by Mark at 06:20 PM

Ubuntu, part VI

I got mail from a guy doing Ubuntu, also named Mark. Mark's asking for my "help in formulating a national government strategy on Free Software for South Africa."

Sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure how I'd be able to help. I checked out the taskforce Wiki nevertheless.

IMHO, they're in serious danger already. Half the projects up there have left-leaning titles like "Labour Department" and "Public Services and Administration" although one is "National Treasury." But the real problem is you can search the entire front page without finding the words "military," "prison," "police," or even "market."

You'd be better off reading the latest Slashdot article about how British Soldiers Get Germ-Fighting Undies. Let's keep the focus on the important things in life.

Posted by Mark at 11:32 AM

Swimming pool, part II

Emma's taking swimming lessons. Although it rained this morning from about 6:00 am to 8:00 am, she still went for her lesson at 9:30 am. The air temperature was about 22 C (72 F), and the water temperature was 26 C (79 F).

She seemed to enjoy it, and said she did when she got out. Emma looked proud to have an audience, since we were all there. When I got done running I walked over to the pool and watched her.

She was with another girl about her age, but smaller and a somewhat better swimmer. When I arrived they were diving to get plastic rings from the bottom of the pool. Then they worked kicking both on their stomachs and on their backs. Finally they actually did swim without flotation devices, and even went over to the deeper pool. Both girls swam better in the deep pool, as they couldn't put their feet down and stopped. Looked like more work, though.

Posted by Mark at 11:16 AM

2:13:19/150

Stopped for two trains this morning. I ran the first four laps gently, then ran the last lap around Pontcharra as a gradual acceleration. I extended the first three, running out to the fire station, so this was about 27 km (17 mi) as planned.

I notice now that unlike this spring, where my legs got tired at around 18 km in late Feb., my legs don't really get tired in the same way, even at the end of a longer run like this one. I'm more likely to start out with tired legs, and I still have moments of fatigue or discomfort during the run, but nothing progressive after only 20 km or thereabouts. Maybe I'm just getting lazy.

Posted by Mark at 11:03 AM

August 19, 2005

Chomsky on Anarchism

My opinions have long been extremist. I tend not to fall in the middle of the spectrum. I recall being impressed at age 12 by the Third Reich and the level of control those guys had, even if they subsequently got demolished.

Later on in high school I believed in capitalism of the Ayn Rand variety, a meritocracy of loner individualists. My tendency until late 2001 was in that direction, though the older I got and the longer I lived in France, the more I "mellowed" from thinking the losers should get nothing to thinking the winners should act like guardians to the losers, keeping them from want, but without letting them get in the way.

At the same time, I was convinced we could have more winners by working within the system to improve our approach. Six Sigma was getting traction at Sun and looked like a great way to improve the processes that could lead even losers to deliver winning products and services. Capitalism was great after all, just look at my pay rises, at the price of SUNW, at how Telco Software was growing, and how excited we felt. Finally I got a chance to get involved in Sun's Sigma effort, getting training as a black belt.

In retrospect it was a rough time for an idealist to start learning about how great management can be. Sun was going through a first round of layoffs. The bubble had popped, yet we were all still in denial. People's bad sides started to show. Not only was the time ripe for politics, but I was completely green, working for an experienced manager in a difficult situation, a guy who even in the best of situations wasn't going to have lots of time to groom someone of dubious value.

I'm not, by nature, an eager manager anyway. By nature I'm a cynical dictator, partly because my own laziness and low motives are so obvious, partly because my patience is virtually inexistent. Management and parenting are for those reasons hard to appreciate. Put all that together with my idealism and I turned out to be a lousy fit for that black belt job.

Anyway, I found myself pulling up to work and having trouble getting out of the car. I might have been diagnosed as clinically depressed some of those days. I say that because I remember sitting in front of my screen in a panic, yet unable to move. I felt vaguely like killing myself, crying, storming out of there, but also felt completely out of touch with my emotions.

It reminds me of the summer I went to Richardson, Texas to sell books door to door. The worst part of that was one day late in the first week when my team leader took me around and I actually made a sale. This poor woman finally got her checkbook and signed. After that I got in my car and drove 22 hours straight back to my mother's house, almost falling asleep at the wheel near the end.

Finally, about the same time the World Trade Center buildings were getting blown up, I found a way out, going back into docs in the team where I still work now. Although the episode in Richardson turned me off to sales, it was only in late 2001 that I'd been turned off to hierarchy and authority. And the turn off was still not very clear.

Somebody, probably Rob, got me to read Howard Zinn's People's History of the US around this time, and also Chomsky's book on Year 501. Those hit an immensely receptive reader. Then I read the Art of War again, and Machiavelli's Prince, and a book on the GE way by Jack Welch. It was as though I could finally see everything that'd been written in invisible ink. The fnords were all there.

Someone watching from the outside would've laughed at my reversal, kind of like someone who quits smoking and then decides smoking is such a horrible thing, and how could anyone ever do it. Of course I'm very earnest and fairly stupid, so it took me a long time to see the irony, even though it's plain for everyone.

Only recently have I started to see the challenge we have to get ourselves out of this system based on heirarchies, authority, and coercion and alternately to get the system out of ourselves. In Chomsky on Anarchism, Chomsky makes the point that we might as well aim at this through gradual experimentation. Emotionally to be sure I have trouble with that, but I see the parallels in the real world, in software for example. Generally it takes one or more prototypes before you get it right, even if you do considerable thinking beforehand.

So the book is frustrating there, but encouraging in other areas. Chomsky has studied the history of people organizing non-coercive, non-authoritarian, participatory arrangements, and it looks to be getting easier. Years ago, people would get their heads bashed in, or would get starved out, or whatever. That's less likely to happen now, so there's probably more room than before for experimentation.

A funny thing about Chomsky's work, and Zinn's, and Hahnel's, etc., in fact about moving to more participatory, anarchic arrangements of social relations is how hard it is to start getting your mind around even the problems, let alone the solutions. A good place to start is any one of Chomsky's books on the subject. All these guys are teachers, though. They all make their points in very accessible ways.

For those who disagree with this stuff and see it as a load of bunk, I'd definitely recommend Chomsky's work, specifically Necessary Illusions. I'd like to see a reasoned rebuttal against that one, because it would be the start of an interesting and doubtless hugely instructional debate.

Posted by Mark at 09:19 PM

3:08:01

This reflects my time biking for 4 days of commuting this week. I rode 80.62 km (50.11 mi) at an average speed of 25.7 kph (16.0 mph).

As usual, the time and thus average speed includes any time the bike computer considers the bike to be moving, which therefore counts not only the downhill in front of my house where I maxxed out at 67.4 kph this week, but also some time logged at approx. 0 kph maneuvering the bike around inside train corridors.

This morning I felt jumpy. Must've had too much coffee before leaving. On the stretch along the Isère behind campus I decided to pick up my speed to what was roughly average Tour allure, about 47.6 kph (29.6 mph). On the flat that's so fast for me I probably couldn't keep it up for more than about a kilometer. Hard to imagine riding 4 hours at that speed, even if I could do much of it drafting on somebody else's rear wheel.

It's similar to the speed at which the top runners do marathons. 20 kph (12 1/2 mph) is the speed at which I run 200 m intervals. Maybe I could keep it up for 400 m. Once.

Posted by Mark at 09:06 PM

1:00:27/169

Ran uphill to Rochasson, then back down and along the Isère for about 13 km (8mi). Since the pressure was off, I felt great. And I ran fairly hard. My neck's bothering me a bit from running downhill too hard.

I found the MP3 player headphones don't fall out as easily if I keep it in the little pocket in my shorts, rather than on the arm band. My playlist script certainly causes some interesting segues, though. Have to find a moment to tinker with that.

Posted by Mark at 04:41 PM

Over 3000 miles

Dana's ridden over 3000 miles on his Gold-Rush recumbent bicycle, which looks something like this, although his has a hard seat back, not mesh, and no faring yet:

He got the bike last summer, so did all this distance in about a year. He says he never rides less than 20 miles at a time.

When I rode with him using his old Trek bicycle, I noticed how true it is that recumbent riders have an advantage on the downhills. Surely that advantage would be even greater on a long tour, since you wouldn't end up pinching nerves in your hands or wearing out your rear.

Posted by Mark at 07:57 AM

Bug scrubbing

The latest colorfully ironic technical term* to come to my attention at work: to scrub a bug. It means doing what you have to do in the bug tracking system to move the bug out of the "nobody responsible has even looked at this yet" state, to a state where although nobody responsible has actually looked at the problem in question yet, the bug report appears to show that somebody accountable has taken it around their neck. That is, for a scrubbed bug the bug report identifies a throat to choke if the excrement hits the air conditioning.

Bug scrubbing is closely related to hog washing, an utterly useless occupation undertaken primarily for the benefit of people observing from far enough away and only in such circumstances that they may indeed think pigs are mostly pink and fuzzy instead of covered head to hoof in grime most of their lives.

* We have lots of colorfully ironic (Orwellian?) management terms. In fact there are so many of them with half lives so short that Rob and Luke filled so much of their whiteboard they had to start erasing terms to be able to work.

Posted by Mark at 07:42 AM

August 18, 2005

The cost of free, part II

I tried Nvu from Linspire, which I guess is part of the supposed reason for getting you to pay what you'd get for free with Ubuntu, for example.

Very 1990s static pages. Tough to use compared to specialized tools like MovableType. But also tough to use compared to a text editor or general purpose web page editor like bluefish.

Sometimes free (as in speech and software) can be better than paying.

Posted by Mark at 10:37 PM

Time to relax

My legs are a little tired this week, and I know I have to run 40 km in the next 2 days. But in reviewing my actuals, I just realized I get to run slowly tomorrow (7:52/mi pace)!

Almost feels like a vacation.

Posted by Mark at 09:54 PM

Rsyncing to backup this blog

Troy Johnson wrote some doc on Using Rsync and SSH to backup stuff over the Internet.

Thanks, Troy. Seems to work very well.

This also gets me thinking about the kind of documentation you really want to find when you cannot (or in my case are too lazy to) figure out for yourself how to get things to work.

We do read those man pages, but they're not a very gentle introduction to anything.

Posted by Mark at 09:38 PM

How much would you pay?

How much would you pay for software documentation?

If you're like me since about 1998, it depends. I won't pay anything at all for documentation on a software product I bought. But then I haven't bought any software, except at work, since before 1998.

I will pay money for books that teach me programming, and even system administration. But I won't pay for the man pages, for example. Even though what I use more than anything else is probably the man pages.

So I guess I want them done, but expect not to have to pay. Like system software for my PC. Of course I wouldn't want to use anything I couldn't figure out, probably with free documentation.

It becomes a tough sell when you're a cost in a world that doesn't want to pay.

Posted by Mark at 05:34 PM

Blogging for work, part III

David Lindt mentioned in a meeting a couple of blogs around NetBeans done by writers.

So why don't I show you more Directory Server scripts and examples in this blog?

Hmm. That's a good point. Obviously if embarassment were an impediment, I'd never leave the house in the morning.

Posted by Mark at 05:13 PM

Ubuntu, part V

Looks like I spoke too soon about getting the VPN working.

In trying to prepare my second Ethernet card so I could use dnsmasq when plugging in laptops, I somehow overrode whatever was working before. I can still connect through VPN, but then none of the name services work. I cannot connect to anything.

Posted by Mark at 09:57 AM

Rainy commute

This morning it was raining when I first woke at about 5:48 am. So I went back to sleep, and ended up missing the 7:00 am train.

It was barely damp in Barraux when I went to catch the 7:52 train in Pontcharra. From Gières to Montbonnot, I rode through the aftermath of rain showers, so my chain may be rusting as I write.

For the run the sky was heavy but nothing came down. Now it's raining. I'm sure the ride home tonight will be a wet one. Should've looked at the weather forecast before leaving home.

Posted by Mark at 09:52 AM

26:13/163

This morning I felt irritable, and ended up running 6 1/4 km (about 4 mi) on autopilot. Now that I've run I feel much better.

If that was 6.25 km, my pace was under 4:12/km, suggesting that I'd be okay at a race pace around 85% max. heart rate instead of over 90% as I ran last Friday, for example. 90% is tough to maintain for an hour, let alone three hours.

Posted by Mark at 09:43 AM

August 17, 2005

36:55/149

Five hill repeats of about 1 minute, with warmup, cooldown, and time in between repeats (a minute or so to let the heart rate fall back to less than 65%). I ran these very, very hard.

Once I let my heart rate fall back to 50%, but that took probably over 2 minutes.

By the last repeat, I was exhausted. Came back very slowly.

Posted by Mark at 09:06 AM

JavaScripting a feed into static HTML

I'd been idly thinking about how to include a feed into an otherwise static page. Then I ran across RSS-xpress.

You add a smidgeon of script to the static page and your browser loads a table containing the RSS feed, such as your blog, from RSS-xpress. You can handle the formatting through CSS, and it's in a div if you want columns for example.

RSS-xpress is pretty limited. You configure only the formatting, and you get whatever's in the feed. No other control, since the browser's just getting the table generated from their server. But it sure doesn't require much development on your part.

Posted by Mark at 08:15 AM

Random playlist, part III

Looks like random is really not what I want.

Even if I were to add a line to normalize song volumes, some music just does not work during my commute at 25-30 kph. At that speed, which is not particularly fast, the wind noise drowns out most subtleties. Any music for which dynamics are crucial just dies. Maybe I should skip music while riding and listen to audiobooks.

Posted by Mark at 07:52 AM

August 16, 2005

Jobs in the US

According to an article at BBC News:

The health of the jobs market is vital for economic confidence in the US, with consumer spending remaining the biggest influence on American growth.

Wages however seem to have stayed flat. It's not entirely clear how that works when the "proportion of adults employed or looking for work which is at a ten-year low." Maybe some people leaving jobs are better paid than those getting jobs. That could definitely be the case as boomers move out of the work force.

Posted by Mark at 06:47 PM

1:02:30/146

A nice day to run 13 km (8 mi) at a relatively leisurely pace. The air was cool. Although it threatened rain, none has fallen yet.

Posted by Mark at 11:56 AM

Chilly

The commute into work was chilly. Got up too late to catch the 7:00 am train, but caught the 7:10. Shorts and a jersey weren't really enough. Most riders and even some walkers were wearing long pants and windbreakers. And it looked like rain.

But it's better than August 2003. Great for running.

Posted by Mark at 08:52 AM

Finding things in blogs

Shel Holtz wrote an article for webpronews.com on the difficulty of finding things in blogs. One of Shel's examples:

Sun Microsystems keeps all of its blogs on one page, but they're not organized in any way that makes sense. You can see recent posts to any blog along with a listing of "Hot Blogs" (dear God, when are we going to see an end to the overuse of the word "hot" on the web?). But if you're looking for a blog on, say, Java Studio Creator, you're back to using the search engine.

Dude, if you know what you're looking for, why are you browsing? Would you force yourself to read a whole book if you know you'll find the keyword you're looking for in the index?

You can get right to things at Google. Check out Java Studio Creator site:blogs.sun.com.

IMHO, the way to make information easier to find online is the present it in a standard format the bots can index, and maybe, if necessary, keep the page chunks from being too big for human beings to handle. Unless you're writing a web based application for specific user tasks, why do you presume someone could know beforehand what somebody else is going to be trying to find?

Posted by Mark at 08:36 AM

Insuring OSS liability

Steve pointed us to an article at ChannelRegister.co.uk covering the news that Lloyd's is willing to insure open source IP risk.

Perhaps this will take us in the direction of medical insurance, where a non-negligible portion of the costs come from health providers paying lawsuit insurance. I guess we were headed there anyway, but one can imagine the largest cost to companies of OSS becoming intermediated indeminification.

Now that's a real economic value add.

Posted by Mark at 08:29 AM

Random playlist, part II

Hmm. My playlist.py script was fun to write, and interesting as a novelty, but needs work. My collection is so Frank Zappa heavy for instance that in the first half hour of music this morning about 20 minutes were Zappa. Maybe I need a system of weighting somehow. But how?

Also, perhaps I should handle entire albums rather than songs. It's clear that most of the listening I've done since CDs come out has been albums in their entirety. Furthermore, if I gradually add audiobooks, then it makes less sense to split things up randomly by audio file.

Posted by Mark at 08:25 AM

At the library

Forbes.com is running an essay by Stephen Manes about the value of the information at the public library. Manes's:

biggest complaint is that some libraries' Web sites don't detail the amazing range of services they offer online until you cough up a card number. Memo to those insular institutions: Put the info in the shop windows out front and I bet you'll see a lot more card-carrying customers walking through the electronic doors.

In other words, his public library isn't public enough on line. Of course, Google had to put their library program on hold because publishers worried about their intellectual property becoming available for free.

As you might guess, I don't disagree with Manes. The value of good information grows as we share it. It's not entirely clear why the editors at Forbes ("Capitalist Tool") would run a top level article praising public services over the best the private sector has to offer.

Posted by Mark at 08:14 AM

August 15, 2005

Random playlist

I'm playing around with my MP3 reader and python. Python's a good language for handling lists and dictionaries and so forth, but I don't know it yet. So it took me some time to figure out where the pieces were for a short program that generates a random playlist of the size that fits onto my MP3 reader.

import glob
import os.path
import random
import shutil

MUSIC_SRC = "/home/mark/music/*/*/*.[mw][pm][3a]"

MAX_SIZE  = 516538368L  # Available blocks on my MP3 player when empty

MUSIC_DST = "/media/usbdisk/"

files = glob.glob(MUSIC_SRC)

list = {}

for filename in files:

        list[filename] = os.path.getsize(filename)

playlist = []

totalsize = 0

maxsize = MAX_SIZE

while files:

        song = random.choice(files)

        files.remove(song)

        totalsize += list[song]

        if maxsize > totalsize:

                playlist.append(song)

number = 1

for song in playlist:

        copyname = MUSIC_DST + str(number).zfill(3) + " - " + os.path.basename(song)

        shutil.copyfile(song, copyname)

        number = number + 1

I've had one problem with this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "playlist.py", line 29, in ?
    shutil.copyfile(song, copyname)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/shutil.py", line 48, in copyfile
    fdst = open(dst, 'wb')
IOError: invalid mode: wb

Huh? Forget it. I'm going to bed.

Posted by Mark at 10:58 PM

Plug-in cars

Some researchers have build highly fuel efficient cars -- up to 250 mpg -- according to Yahoo news. Highly fuel efficient as long as you only count the fuel actually burned in the car, at least.

The cars plug in to fill up batteries with electricity, and also recoup energy as stored electricity when coasting and breaking.

But it a lot of the energy comes as electricty out of a socket, how efficient is that? Assuming 30-80% efficiency at the plant, and losses are on the order of 7.5% or more by the time it finally gets into the car, is it actually more effective to burn the fossil fuel at the plant instead of on the road?

Maybe it is, especially if that car spends lots of time immobile in traffic jams. I wonder what the actually rating for electric cars would be in mpg if you count the gallons (or cubic feet of natural gas, or tons of coal).

The most efficient is probably still my bike, but it sure takes a lot longer. And it's no fun in the rain.

Posted by Mark at 03:08 PM

25:51/142

Ran down around the fields in La Gache today. I guess this run was on the order of 5 1/2 km.

Timothee was going on and on this morning about making cigarettes for some reason. He claimed to have created a delicious substitute, using dried grass.

When I ran past a field of tobacco, I noticed they'd already cut a few plants. I found a leaf that was only slightly dirty and chewed by bugs at the time, so I rolled it up and brought it home. Tim and Emma were surprised tobacco leaves are so large.

Posted by Mark at 02:37 PM

Yardwork, part IV

Trimmed evergreen shrubs and weeping willow branches, then dug up armfuls of weeds in the rose bed as I turned over the soil. That completes the obligatory yardwork for this long weekend.

Posted by Mark at 02:29 PM

August 14, 2005

Artists

Pictures Mom sent of some artists in the family:

These pics were all taken at Mom's this summer.

Posted by Mark at 11:46 PM

Too much

Just decided to unsubscribe from Google News as an RSS feed. Why would I do such a thing?

It's been almost 24 hours since I last looked at new blog entries on Bloglines.com. Google News had 200 new entries. Too much of a mediocre thing.

Posted by Mark at 09:01 PM

In the trees

After the yardwork was finished, Tim and Emma got to go to the place at at the col de Marcieu where you can do aerial trekking, going from tree to tree hooked to a cable.

They loved it.

Diane's a year too young for aerial trekking, so she trekked around underneath, chucking stones and handling sticks. She says she loved it, too.

Posted by Mark at 08:51 PM

Yardwork, part III

From just before 8 am until about 4 pm with a couple of breaks including lunch and two phone conversations, I worked in the yard. Finished trimming the big laurel bush, weeding 2/3 of the rose beds, mowed the lawn. It always surprises me how long that sort of work takes and how tired it leaves you.

Posted by Mark at 08:48 PM

August 13, 2005

Funny faces

Andy sent a link to Stephen Kroniger's site for the kids a while ago. They finally got around to looking at it. They loved the funny faces. Didn't want to stop and go to bed.

Posted by Mark at 09:03 PM

Vacation pics

The girls had a good time at the beach up north, even if it was not warm in Dunkerque.

Tim had a good time, too. He just didn't pose for the camera as much.

Posted by Mark at 04:31 PM

Ubuntu, part IV

Got the VPN client working on Ubuntu. Eventually I found out that I had to make a symlink:

/usr/src/linux -> linux-headers-2.6.10-5-386

I also had to find a version of the VPN client that was more recent than what worked for the 2.4.21 kernel. That one couldn't handle the 2.6.10 kernel on Ubuntu.

Works okay now though. I can start moving everything off the old Red Hat 9 system.

Not only that, but the camera works fine, even automounts like the MP3 player. (Though I did have to edit /etc/fstab a while back.) I was doing things out of order. The way to do it on this system is to plug in the USB connection, then start the HandyCam and move it to the play/edit mode.

Posted by Mark at 04:23 PM

2:04:26/148

Today's was my first long run in a while. I did roughly 26 km (16 mi) around Pontcharra under cool and overcast conditions at an easy pace. My actuals are updated to include times for this week. (Notice I'm running too slowly.)

This was definitely more fun than yesterday. I even treated myself to breakfast before going out, and sports drink while jogging. My legs felt pretty good, though with a bit of tiredness after the first 20 km and a few twinges in the knees. Part of the trouble may be my procrastination. I've run far enough in my current orthotics to break them down quite a bit. I have a recommendation on where to get new ones made -- sports doctors that have a treadmill to monitor your running and build them accordingly -- but I haven't yet called the doctors' office to set up an appointment.

Nathalie and the kids had an errand to run in Pontcharra while I was circling around the town. They cheered me on briefly on my second to last and last laps.

Posted by Mark at 02:26 PM

Foundation

Following up on a comment from Andy, I finally read the first of Asimov's Foundation stories.

This must be a book for boys. The story has fewer women than Star Wars. But it kept me turning the pages. Some of the devices seem unfair, like having Mallow film the encounter for which, year hence, he gets taken to court. Yet none of those tricks prevented me from wanting to find out what's going to happen next.

Psychohistory sounds like magic more than mathematics, but I guess Asimov's contemporary, Arthur C. Clarke, would explain that away and allow it in science fiction. And I guess I'd like to read the next one in the series.

Posted by Mark at 02:14 PM

August 12, 2005

Shallow diary

Technically I'm a professional writer.

As I write that, the image I get is one of God up there wiping a tear of laughter from the corner of His eye, never tiring of this long and painful slapstick comedy.

My readers are not laughing. Most are wondering why it is so long, what we used to do at work before email, and how come technical documentation got to be such an enormous haystack with most of the needles missing.

Let me remind you this is how I put food on the table.

From time to time, I hear from people who feel they might want to blog, but cannot quite get started. Some are afraid they will have to learn lots of complicated technical detail. (Not true) Others are afraid they will not have anything to say. (In that case, as Wittgenstein would advise: Take a vow of silence.)

Some worry what they have to say is not earth shattering enough. Perhaps not. Not all of us feel lack of verbal profundity is a sound reason to stop writing, since writing things down is a good way to figure out precisely what we should have been trying to say. Not only that, but also most of us start out so far from perfect that almost any practice makes better, even writing email.

Yet, okay. Let us say you have a point there, that by starting your very own online diary, you might be adding more noise than signal to the World Wide Web.

As Jean-Paul II said, "Be not afraid." The signal-to-noise ratio out on the web is so low you cannot make it worse. Google claims now to be "Searching 8,168,684,336 web pages." If you add a few thousand, no one will notice, except maybe your three friends, your mother, and God.

And He'll get another big kick out of your hubris.

Posted by Mark at 09:32 PM

15 km de la Rosière

Nathalie reminded me there's a 15 km run organized in Pontcharra on August 28. I'm supposed to run 19 km that day.

The fee is 2 euros. I guess I'll go ahead and go, with no intent to run hard. Should be fun.

Posted by Mark at 09:29 PM

3:02:50

That's a slightly low estimate, probably by about 5 minutes, of how much time I spent riding during my commute this week, over 4 days. Yesterday I didn't ride, but instead took the car, as I had to collect Nath and the children from the train station at 10 pm.

Three hours is also roughly the time it would take me to commute in the car, barring any traffic jams. (There wouldn't be any traffic jams here during the week in August.) I probably also spent about only slightly less than 3 hours in the train, however. In addition, I loose a few minutes each time I catch the train because I'm uncomfortable cutting it too close.

So taking the train roughly doubles my commute time, though it costs less than half as much.

My impression is that if we could catch the train at the station in Domene or Lancey, neither of which is currently open to the public, my costs and time would both drop. I was talking about that with a woman also doing the bike/train combination, but coming from Chapareillan and going to Meylan, though she sometimes works in Montbonnot. She felt Montbonnot was really too far from Gières, and that was preventing more people from taking the train.

She probably has a point there. Other than Serge, I know of no colleagues at Sun who take the train in from Pontcharra. Despite the traffic in the valley and the high costs of running a car in France it's more convenient for most to drive.

Posted by Mark at 09:12 PM

56:12/176

About 13 km (8 mi). I hope a little more. Too slow for that heart rate. Felt slow, uncoordinated, and fat.

Posted by Mark at 01:15 PM

Back to school handout

After schools in Indiana signing for Linux support, we now have some French Linux club handing out CDs to "Thousands of secondary schools students in the French region of Auvergne."

The club handing out the CDs has this logo:

According to their site, the club's goal is "la promotion des logiciels libres en Auvergne." (to promote free software in Auvergne) I'm too lazy to find out exactly what the ulterior motives are.

Posted by Mark at 08:33 AM

Dead legs

Commuted in on dead legs this morning, pushing the bike pedals around. When I go to run today I guess I'll see whether I have any oompf.

Posted by Mark at 07:52 AM

August 11, 2005

Methane from Siberia

GuardianUnlimited published a special report about global warming hitting a tipping point, beyond which the process could accelerate significantly.

Some scientists suggest, "The causal effect is human activity." Some suggest that natural processes are causing it. (Whatever it is, maybe we should've had reversible heating/air conditioning installed upstairs instead of just heating ;-)

Posted by Mark at 01:03 PM

27:44/153

Didier was planning to go out today but the rain convinced him not to. Nigel, however, came around at noon suggesting we go.

So we went around the 6 1/4 route, running a bit extra by starting at the door instead of the edge of the parking lot.

Posted by Mark at 12:56 PM

Finding things in email, part II

I found a handy tool for loading mail into my Gmail account, written by Mark Lyon. Of course I wouldn't want to forward anything confidential, but it could be handy for stuff from my home account.

Posted by Mark at 10:31 AM

Finding things in email

At work we're being encouraged to clean up our mail. So I just got a copy of stuff that perhaps should be saved:

% du -hs .
 551M	.

I have another ~800M at home. How should I find content in this mine of precious data? (Thunderbird's okay, but the search interface is still frustrating harder to use than Google's.)

Most of it is work mail, hence I hesitate to upload it all to my Gmail account just to have it appropriately indexed. But that's the sort of search interface I want.

Posted by Mark at 09:05 AM

August 10, 2005

4.0G  music

I've ripped about 75 CDs so far since installing Ubuntu. Even in MP3 format they take up enough room nearly to fill a DVD, 4.0G.

I'd like to find a CLI way to read the seconds of play for an MP3, but suppose it's just calculated as total size / KB/s. Don't see where that's stored, though.

Update: Rhythmbox claims I have "2 days, 19 hours and 56 minutes" of songs ripped.

Posted by Mark at 10:16 PM

Failures

A couple of CDs simply refuse to be ripped.

The first one is Holst's Planets. Philips put a sort of plastic coating on the disc for the label that stuck to the carrying case and all over the place when the case was overheating in my car most probably. I suspect that is somehow the root of the trouble anyway.

The second one is King Crimson Discipline. The disc won't play in a CD player either. Curiously, it doesn't appear damaged in any way. Maybe heat melted something.

I guess I shouldn't store compact discs in my car for very long.

Posted by Mark at 10:10 PM

Blogging for work, part II

Jen sent around a link to an article on Yahoo news about corporate blogging:

It is difficult to imagine today's I.T. buyers relying on nothing but a corporate blog before a purchasing decision.

At least that wouldn't be what that buyer covered his butt with afterward, "Well, it was supposed to be good. I read it was good in this corporate blog entry."

So loosen up. What you write in your blog can still get you fired, but at least it won't become the excuse when somebody buys the wrong thing.

Posted by Mark at 04:14 PM

Blogging for work

More people at work in my neck of the woods are wondering about blogging. If you're not a manager or a marketing dude and you're going to blog for work, I recommend checking out The Observation Deck. Not so you can do what Bryan does, because you probably cannot, but so you can get the idea of what blog entries for work might feel like.

You still might want to blog on a non-work server, though, especially if 99% of your entries are about cooking, running, family, home, etc., and only 1% cover things happening at work. Perhaps fewer people will browse to your individual entries, but if they're worth reading and Google can get there, people who need them will find them.

Posted by Mark at 11:34 AM

40:03/159

40-minute tempo run today. At the outset my legs were a bit tired. I've been going a little too fast commuting on the bike.

I decided to start with 15 min in the approx. 75% max. pulse range, then increase to about 81% for 5 minutes, then 85%, then 89%, then full speed ahead from 30-35 minutes, finally winding down at the end to a jog. Couldn't have done it without the heart rate monitor.

It's true that when you do it that way, very gradually speeding up and not holding your top speed too long, you end up refreshed at the end, ready for action.

Thinking about the idea of building up to 100 km/week, maybe I should do it without heart monitor or watch, even consider walking parts of it if I feel tired.

Posted by Mark at 11:11 AM

August 09, 2005

Actuals, part II

This is the seventh week of preparation for the Halloween marathon in Grenoble.
My actual training times are updated again.

It's tougher to get motivated for this second marathon than it was for the first. After this one I'll take time off training and just run instead. I'd like to gradually increase my mileage, but not under pressure.

I was thinking about that this morning: What would it be like to average 100 km/week? That's on the order of 8 hrs. running per week. Could my body take a 32 km (20 mi) run each weekend, and another 21 km (13 mi) run during the week? Perhaps something like 10 km + 21 km + 13 km + 16 km + 8 km + 32 km, for example, with one weekend day off a week.

Posted by Mark at 09:32 PM

1:02:54/151

13 km (8 mi) at an easy pace. Friday I should run the same distance at race pace.

The weather's cool now. So cool this morning when I caught the train that I had to wear a polar fleece top riding down the hill, and even then I was chilly.

Posted by Mark at 11:37 AM

Off the grid, part II

Found another one. This time it's Edgard Varèse. Here's the tiny album cover shot:

Not sure what to make of this one either.

Posted by Mark at 06:05 AM

August 08, 2005

Off the grid

I've been ripping my CDs so I can listen to them on the MP3 player. Most of the data is found almost instantly in the web database. One of the CDs was off the grid: Stockhausen's Mantra, a work for two pianists.

It's understandable, since Mantra requires a lot more concentration to enjoy than easier albums such as Stimmung or even Aus den Sieben Tagen.

Posted by Mark at 10:22 PM

Affordable weapons

I've been trying to come up with a witty remark concerning this one, but I cannot:

Cruise missiles have proven themselves in combat many times, but the U.S. Navy desired to drive down the cruise missile unit cost with a commercially-based, "cruise-like" affordable weapon missile—built entirely with off-the-shelf components and costing about a tenth of the cost of a traditional cruise missile.

Source: http://www.titan.com/products-services/abstract.html?docID=337)

Posted by Mark at 10:16 PM

The function of meetings

Another entertaining essay from Paul Graham, the link to which Roch sent around. Paul explains a bunch of things, including the function of meetings:

Per capita, large organizations accomplish very little. And yet all those people have to be on site at least eight hours a day. When so much time goes in one end and so little achievement comes out the other, something has to give. And meetings are the main mechanism for taking up the slack.

Hmm. Don't tell anyone else. It's funny how most of the people around here who really go to lots of meetings take the laptop with them. They're busy doing the other activity big organizations use to soak up the time you spend as a presence in the office: email.

As though there were not enough time in the day to do all the non-work we have to do, let alone the work that would actually be valuable to someone.

Posted by Mark at 09:40 AM

26:04/137

Gentle 5 km run in the cool morning weather. My upper body feels tired from cutting the hedges, I'd eaten about an hour before, then drank a bunch of water on arriving at work, and I had a bit of a sore throat this morning. So I took it easier than I usually do, and felt refreshed at the end.

Posted by Mark at 09:24 AM

August 07, 2005

Hedges, part II

Ouf.

Today I spent about 6 hours clipping and another half hour sweeping up leaves and short branches. Many of the branches I left sitting on the hedge along the side of the yard.

My back feels sore. By the very end I was getting cramps in a muscle in the middle of my back. The only part I didn't manage is the big ball of laurel next to the front steps.

Then I cleaned house. I'm exhausted, but at least I didn't have three little people displacing things as I straightened, scrubbed, and mopped. Looking forward to relaxing at work tomorrow.

Posted by Mark at 10:20 PM

Golden Heart

I'm ripping all the things I've wanted to listen to in headphones for a while. I'm almost glad to have those hedges to cut this weekend, even if I occasionally run into a nettle or two.

Just so you don't accuse me of listening to almost no music for adults, let me encourage you to get Golden Heart, an album Mark Knopfler released years ago for those of you who like the kind of clever lyrics you find in good country music, combined with understated humor, a touch of what some people would call the real blues, and lots of professional musicianship.

Posted by Mark at 01:47 PM

One Size Fits All

Oh, no, I don't believe it, another Frank Zappa album review.

While out there at the hedges, I'm listening to more music, reminded that if you don't have One Size Fits All in your collection, go to one of those places selling used CDs and get it. Or buy it used at Amazon.com.

Two versions of Sofa is perhaps more than enough, but how can you get through the day knowing you don't have a copy of Andy, Florentine Pogen, Inca Roads, Po-Jama People (that guitar solo alone explains why I'll never wear 'em), and San Ber'dino?

Posted by Mark at 01:37 PM

The cost of free

Somebody got a post up on Slashdot, where I almost never go anymore though I do scan the feed, linking to an article about schools in Indiana using Linspire, which is a commercial distro of Linux, GNU tools, OpenOffice, etc.

Huh? That's like Ubuntu, but costs a whole lot more. (And, I notice Edubuntu now, too.) What're they doing that for?

Support, perhaps:

Registered Users, Members, and Insiders can submit inquiries to Linspire Support personnel.

Issues are submitted via an online support form. You will receive an immediate acknowledgment of your inquiry. Our Knowledge system will usually select and send some potential solutions to speed the resolution of your inquiry. These resolve most common issues, and sometimes more advanced ones.

But rest assured we won't leave you with only a "canned" automatic system response! Your inquiry will also receive prompt attention by a Linspire support professional whose goal is to respond to and resolve issues within three business days."

(Source: http://support.linspire.com/support_policy.php)

I guess if you're the person making The Big Decision, you want the comfort of knowing some kid just out of college working at Linspire will get back to you in three days after Googling for the answer and trying out a few things, rather than you having to explain to your boss or the people who elected you or whomever that you went Googling for it yourself and spent 3 days trying to find the answer.

Of course, the Edubuntu people won't sell you support. They just put their contact information on that front page. None of that anonymous "one throat to choke" factor. Obviously taxpayer money is better spent on the commercial product.

Posted by Mark at 01:17 PM

August 06, 2005

Joe's Garage

Every couple of months I relisten to Joe's Garage, that long and silly album Frank Zappa did on the theme of a guy going downhill into appliance fetishism, getting thrown into prison for sexual vandalism about the time music becomes illegal. The whole album remains very accessible for one by Frank Zappa, because he keeps a tight rein on excursions into music to which you must listen carefully, and you can get a lot of smiles out of the surface humor before you do start listening more carefully.

On the other hand, Joe's Garage brings together some "pretty good musicians," who go from one amazing song after another. Having the MP3 player means I could listen to that in the headphones while doing something fairly mindless. That's the first time I've been able to listen to Joe's Garage in headphones in a while. A feast for the ears.

Of course if my mind were prehensile I wouldn't be reviewing Joe's Garage, but since it isn't, I guess that's okay.

Posted by Mark at 02:52 PM

Monologue vs. conversation

Ludo welcomes Michael Haines starting a blog. Tilly writes conversation starters like chats or href="http://tillybayardrichard.typepad.com/photos/concours_paris_bloguetil_/fenetre.html">this one. But it's not a French thing alone. More well known bloggers like Darren Barefoot and jwz regularly ask questions of their readers.

Wny don't I do that?

A long time ago I read a book in which this guy who'd been cryogenically frozen then resurrected in a criminal's body was selected by aliens to make a trip to the galactic center. Alone. They picked him because he didn't need much company, although he liked other people enough.

I really liked the story when I read it, and have been keeping recruitment in mind ever sense. I'm convinced this blog proves even to martians that I can keep occupied alone for long periods with very few meaningful outside stimuli. And I figure my inner ear won't get me disqualified as a space pilot, especially since the ship does all the flying.

Posted by Mark at 02:24 PM

Hedges

We're getting close to hedge clipping season, so I started already. Clipping hedges is not so bad, though it's a drag when you try to do so much of it at a time. It's even more of a drag when it's raining and soggy, so a cool sunny day such as today is probably the best I can do.

I'm working with the manual shears. Manual shears do not rip the leaves and branches as the electric shears do.

The toughest part can be cleanup. But if you clip often enough, not only do you run into fewer thick branches, you can also sweep up the debris in a matter of minutes.

Posted by Mark at 02:12 PM

1:12:59/158

This is a sort of easy week, finishing with a 16 km (10 mi) run. My legs felt tired starting out. I wanted to go before breakfast and finish before it got warm. For some reason I just didn't enjoy the run as much as usual.

Posted by Mark at 02:10 PM

August 05, 2005

2:17:54

I rode and took the train into work only 3 days this week. Tuesday and Wednesday it was too wet and sloppy.

The new tracks at Gières/Université now extend past the train station itself. Looks like it'll be possible in the coming months to take the tram into Grenoble from and out to the train station there, though the bridges to take over across the river are not yet particularly convenient for folks going to Montbonnot.

Posted by Mark at 07:59 PM

43:12/177

Ran hard for roughly, perhaps slightly less than, 11 km this morning in cool weather. This felt significantly faster than race pace.

Judging by my avg. pulse, 91% of max., this was closer to 10 km pace. But I felt okay after finishing.

Posted by Mark at 02:12 PM

Where Google's not enough

One of the blogs I scan sent me to an article on Recent Trends in Enterprise Search by Stephen Arnold. Arnold argues that:

Humans and human-like processes are needed to supplement or do certain types of taxonomy development, indexing, classification and analysis.

We do this at home all the time. Look in your kitchen cupboard. The dinner plates are probably stacked. The coffee cups are probably together somewhere else. The pots have their own place. The cutlery is similarly segregated. Where you actually put each class of item -- the specifics of your classification -- depends however on your particular way of handling meal preparation and cleanup.

You probably also organize your workspace somehow, and that organization corresponds to how you do your work, whatever it is. Your books and music are the same way. It's only when we want to share stuff that we need a shared organization protocol (Dewey decimal, Library of Congress, WWW, etc.), and indeed it's only when we want to share stuff that it makes sense to go through the trouble of using a protocol.

The more how we share information follows some sort of process, the more specific the protocol needs to be. If to use Arnold's example, "A lawyer working for the chief financial officer [needs] everything pertaining to a deal involving dozens of employees, several departments, and documents in all versions over a span of years," then a search engine using a PageRank algorithm won't be the right answer.

Yet I'm not sure humans need to do the indexing. Humans need to define the sharing protocol, though, and those doing the defining ought probably to be those very familiar with the process, able to define it formally or at least follow it intuitively in the same way as others follow it. That sharing protocol is likely to come out differently for each process in which information is shared.

So in the end I agree that Google's not always enough under our circumstances. Furthermore, maybe no finished general purpose search engine can be.

Trouble is, selling the idea that software has to be customized can be tough. As Linnea said, it used to be fast, cheap, or good, pick two. Now the choice is made: fast and cheap.

Posted by Mark at 07:41 AM

August 04, 2005

La Grignotte

Antoinette had us go to La Grignotte in Le Sappey for lunch, in honor of both Frank and Linnea being in town. A little expensive for lunch but delicious.

Everyone but me seemed to be having large fantastic salads with mountain ham, cheeses, but augmented with lots of interesting little tidbits. By 1 pm I was hungry so ordered duck breast which came basted in honey-orange sauce, with tiny green beans, a gratin dauphinois in which they'd hid pieces of salt ham, and a few nice side objects like a brochette of onions, tomatoes, and zucchini that seemed to be confit.

Recommended, but you should ride up there to the col de Porte beforehand to deserve it.

Posted by Mark at 08:21 PM

Hegemony or Survival

I started playing with Azureus again to download Gentoo, and was Googling for torrents for one reason or another. A link to ChomskyTorrents.org v.2 was on the first page, so I clicked through. Somebody had registered the audiobook version of Hegemony or Survival. Noam Chomsky gives us another hilarious, iconoclastic, well researched examination of the art of hegemony, also reiterating some potentially dire and likely consequences of the game.

According to Amazon.com, lots of people are buying Hegemony or Survival. But a whole lot more are buying Thomas Friedman's latest book about how you'd better get your butt in gear to compete in a global economy, one that will eventually bring prosperity everywhere at least for the winners. Even more are buying Harry Potter VI about "earth-shattering revelations that will have your head in your hands as you hope the words will rearrange themselves into a different story."

According to me, it's hard to listen to a book, especially one written by Chomsky. You can put Hegemony or Survival on the MP3 player and have it going in the car, but it's almost dangerous to follow along. I find myself fighting to keep up with the arguments and stay fully alert to road conditions. I can barely do stuff around the house and listen to an audiobook at the same time.

But I find most encouraging one of the citations Chomsky offers in the introductory chapter of his book:

The history of life on earth, [Ernst Mayr] wrote, refutes the claim that, "it is better to be smart than to be stupid," at least judging by biological success.

If that's really true, some of us have nothing to worry about.

Posted by Mark at 07:09 PM

Instant messaging and doc

One of the things I've heard said is that we read less and less when looking for information on how to do something. We search the web and scan the results. We'll read a couple of paragraphs at most. Old fashioned docs in book format can be used in that way, as long as the chunking is small enough and the writer had the presence of mind not to assume to much from chunk to chunk.

What do we do for folks who want to instant message someone for an answer? Charge by the minute, like Minitel?

What's more: What about systems for which we need basic mental models of how they work in order to get any good out of them? Training? Are we barking up the wrong tree writing down lengthy explanations designed to convey mental models? Should we give up on those treatises and write tutorials instead?

Posted by Mark at 05:25 PM

26:04/155

Approx. 5 km uphill and then back down again. Nice day to run.

Posted by Mark at 05:22 PM

August 03, 2005

$5.5M?

We were talking about spam at lunch today. We haven't had so much at work lately. Then what follows comes in, with subject My Last Wish:

Good day,

My name is Mrs. Karen Grant I am a dying woman who have decided to donate what I have to you.
I am 59 years old and I was diagnosed for cancer about 2 years ago, immediately after the death of my husband, Who had left me everything he worked for.

I have decided to WILL/donate the sum of $5,500,000(five million five Hundred thousand dollars) to you for the purpose of charity work, and also to help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows .

At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls right now due to the Fact that my relatives are around me and my health status. I have adjusted my WILL and my Executor is aware I have changed my will; you and he will arrange for the change of ownership of the funds as it is presently deposited in a strong trunk box, and lodged. the box in a coded Security company whose name is withheld basically on security and confidential purposes and would only be released to (you).

I wish you all the best and may the good Lord bless you abundantly, and Please use the funds well and always extend the good work to others. Contact my Executor Michael Bacchus with this specified email m_bacchus@atmail.com with your full names contact telephone/fax number and your full address and tell him that I have WILLED ($5,500,000.00) to you and I have also notified him that

I am WILLING that amount to you for a specific and good work. I know I don't know you but I have been directed to do this. Thanks and God bless.

NB: I will appreciate your utmost confidentiality in this matter until the task is accomplished as I don't want anything that will Jeopardize my last wish. And Also I will be contacting with you by email as I Don’t want my relation or anybody to know because they are always around me.

Regards,
Karen Grant

Out of idle curiosity, I check the mail headers. How about this?

X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse,
 please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - blazecast3.rdns.net
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [32530 32531] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - virgin.net

Is that for some sort of mail client plug-in?

Posted by Mark at 06:52 PM

Ubuntu, part III

One of the nicest surprises with Ubuntu Linux is the Wiki. I worked my way down that page this morning, setting up what I needed in the order that it was documented. Great! Perfect level of documentation for this user.

For DSL, apparently I was looking in the wrong place, and should've seen something in the Internet submenu. That should've been taken care of at firstboot. Not sure why it wasn't.

Posted by Mark at 03:16 PM

35:00/168

Tempo run at lunchtime. Ran softly for 15 min, then increased the pace each 5 min for the next 15, 5 min cooldown. Covered nearly 8 km, running very gently in the beginning to very hard from 25-30 min.

My body feels okay, but out of shape. Tried to relax into the pace while running harder. Outside it's still cool and damp.

Posted by Mark at 03:13 PM

Ubuntu, part II

Ahh, yes. This is Free Software, as in GNU and Debian.

Cannot play MPEGs, mp3s, no Flash, no Java, etc. out of the box. Not until you decide you want to install the stuff. I can see it's going to involve some more work. Looks very promising, though. Must sleep now.

Posted by Mark at 12:46 AM

August 02, 2005

Ubuntu

It took me longer to find the screws for the hard drive tray than to install Ubuntu. Only the iWork version of Java Desktop System installed faster, and that's probably because it reformats your hard drive without asking.

But Ubuntu also got me going almost right away with Nvidia setup, a pain two years ago. The only thing I had to figure out for myself was man -k dsl to find out how to set up PPPoE.

All in all, it seems easier than anything I've seen outside Sun's iWork CDs. I don't know if you can tell, but I have no terminals open in the screenshot, and the fonts look very nice.

Posted by Mark at 11:58 PM

Ann Arbor

Debra sent us some pictures. Here's one:

My brother's better looking than I am, but so far my genes are ahead of his. Of course for years I was taller than he was, too.

Posted by Mark at 09:42 PM

Resistance

Forbes.com is running an article about drug-resistant bacteria hitting US troops in Iraq. It's a terrible thing, and apparently epidemic.

The article also mentions a civilian contractor who got infected, so it's not just the troops. And:

Lt. Cmdr. Petersen says that NNMC's annual bill for the kind of antibiotics Locker [an infected patient] received has increased tenfold to $200,000.

I wonder how many Iraqi civilians have been infected. Considering the per capita income there, it sounds like the treatment for this one infection might cost on the order of a person's total income for life. I take back my complaints about health care reimbursement.

Posted by Mark at 07:13 PM

Aging

Our health insurance provider is upset with us. People seem to be getting older, going to the doctor more. One person even had the nerve to die, and event that, because of the coverage that person had, siphoned off quite a few euros from the premiums we and our employer pay. I wonder if some of our provider's actuaries got called up on the carpet.

Probably not. The ones who did the original calculations back in the 80s or whenever, back when stock options were like a money press and people were younger with no kids, good eyes, and whiter teeth, probably went on to higher and better things. Maybe they fired them all. Maybe actuaries got laid off. They're probably awfully expensive to keep around, quiet mathematicians sitting in front of PCs with statistics programs, putting confidence intervals around our life expectancies and how often we'll have children, get ill, or have a cavity that needs to be filled. Maybe they put the salespeople on commission.

If I were in sales, I'd go for that. Find someone in good shape this year, sell them the big plan, security, the whole 9 yards. Then get my commission and get out. Five years later the excrement would of course hit the air conditioning as Vonnegut wrote, but by then I'd be a Vice President in some quite savings & loan.

If you stand back and look at the situation, you'll notice how obviously reasonable the handling of it is. You get too old, your coverage costs too much. We'll have to cut you off since you're ruining our margins. All for one and everyone for himself, that's why so many of them call themselves "mutuals." Notice this is also the approach we're going to be taking more and more as entire societies as well.

Posted by Mark at 03:41 PM

45% die before 3 months of age

Dad sent a link to a BBC News item, One blog created 'every second'. According the the article:

Thirteen percent of all blogs that Technorati tracks are updated weekly or more, said the report, and 55% of all new bloggers are still posting three months after they started.

In other words, less than 2 million of the 14 million blogs out there are active, and 45% die before they're three months old. This blog is one of the 2 million. My paper diary is mostly empty. I type more readily than I write longhand. I spend hours everyday in front of a computer hooked up to the WWW through a browser window. Let's hope that's not typical.

Posted by Mark at 02:16 PM

49:50/160

This run was on the order of 11 km (7 mi, notice I'm using only 1 significant digit). It rained lightly the whole time as I ran the same route as yesterday, out along the river towards the bridge in the direction of Grenoble.

Good thing my old shoes are still on the shelf in the changing room and no one has thrown them in the trash. The path had turned to muck in spots. As I ran I could feel the muddy water seeping in through the sides of my shoes.

Posted by Mark at 02:09 PM

Lyon detours

Took Nath and the children to the train station in Lyon this morning, then proceeded to have an inordinately difficult time extracting myself from Lyon.

The difficulty was not that Lyon has a funny layout, but that there are lots of one-way streets, and that the map I have appears to label streets one-way randomly, without regard to how the streets actually run. You get the impression someone ran out of time labelling one-way streets, or was simply doing it as a draft check to see whether the labelling looked good in the finished copy, but then failed to go through a final edit. Didn't get into work until just after 11 am.

Posted by Mark at 11:44 AM

August 01, 2005

Patch

Believe this or not, I'd never had to use patch before. Then I found I'd been fixing Javadoc in the wrong workspace and had to move all those niggly little edits. patch came to my rescue.

One thing to keep in mind: If you want to work from a cvs diff, try cvs diff -c.

Posted by Mark at 05:45 PM

Coincidence

Only days after I post a picture including a guy I've not seen in years, my mother stops by the public library and finds a new book by his dad. Hmm. This is the third in a clump of improbable pairs, the second being Gilles having two 2 flats on his bike after a relatively short interval, including one where the tire was punctured by some sort of thorn. I cannot recall the first pair.

Posted by Mark at 04:01 PM | Comments (4)

26:26/150

Roughly 5 k (3 mi) at a gentle pace. The path along the river seems to be open again. I'm looking forward to running further along there where it's shady.

Posted by Mark at 09:28 AM

Taking the train, part VI

The temperature this morning was wonderful for a gentle bike ride. Furthermore, I could come to work on the 7 am train since the kids, on summer vacation, don't need to be anywhere at any particular time today. Arrived at work having barely broken a sweat and my mail's already taken care of (so far).

A guy on a recumbent rode past me on the way from the Gières station past the university. He seemed to be moving faster yet working even less than I was. His was one of those recumbents with the feet up high, out front. That's the first one I've seen along my commuter route.

Posted by Mark at 07:48 AM