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November 30, 2005
Illness, part II
Curiously the headache I had this afternoon closely resembled those from earlier this year around the time of the Lyon marathon, headaches relieved by Dr. Handtschoewercker when he clamped down on the back of my skull and then released his grip to push through whatever obstruction was preventing proper flow of blood.
I wonder if that's related to my sinuses and ears. My sinuses and ears have been troublesome for so long it seems normal to have a stuffed up feeling.
Posted by Mark at 08:39 PM | TrackBack
Illness
This is the second time I've been ill on a day off. It's as though it were planned. Don't recall the last time I called in sick, although I did leave early one afternoon last year or the year before last when coming down with stomach flu.
Woke up this morning feeling like I couldn't quite catch my breath, and I still feel like that. Weak. Decided I couldn't go running this morning, and don't think I'll go this afternoon. Slept after lunch but woke up feeling just as tired.
Posted by Mark at 03:02 PM | TrackBack
Bladder control
This morning I went out to clean off the cars. Somebody four-legged has great bladder control. You could see that in the snow. It looked like he'd climbed atop the hood of my car and applied urine with an eyedropper so he wouldn't use too much and wouldn't miss any spots. Then he proceeded to cover another 3-4 square yards of snow along the edge of the yard in the same manner.
Before it snowed and then warmed up enough for the animals to go out during the night I didn't realize that marking one's territory was similar to painting one's living room. For some reason it seemed like a few strategically-placed odors were all it took. Guess that was naively anthropomorphic thinking.
Posted by Mark at 08:47 AM | TrackBack
November 29, 2005
Organic cereal vs. sugar cereal
This morning I sat down to a bowl of organic cereal, made with 12% quinoa. Not sure why Nathalie bought it. This was the second bowl from the box, which was empty at that point. Not only that but also the cereal didn't taste that good. It reminded me of a joke Woody Allen told in Annie Hall about two women eating in a cafeteria or some cheap restaurant:
"The food's terrible here!""Yes, and such small portions!"
Allen's character said that joke's about life. The whole story's also in that organic cereal.
The message is that to get something that's good for you requires extra investment, and it won't be as pleasant as giving in to your childish urge to eat a sugar cereal (now made with whole wheat). You have to suffer more to get something good; you have to work for it. And once you get it, it'll be disappointing.
Since few end up eating the organic cereal, it'll remain a niche for masochists. It's obviously pointless. Just give in. You're not really doing yourself any good anyway in the long run. There Is No Alternative.™
Occasionally we do run into a case where the only choice is one or the other, true or false. Those cases however are not only rare, they are also tightly constrained. Most complex systems have many degrees of freedom. You see this turn up even in systems built strictly with true or false, like computer programs with feature creep, bugs, too many options.
So what about most of our human systems? The organic cereal vs. sugar cereal question remains an oversimplification.
Posted by Mark at 09:29 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Worldaround electricity, etc.
Jon Udell's radio blog from today suggests Web 3.0 activities like negotiating your own electicity sources and your own air taxi to wherever you're flying. He'd written about these things way back in 2004 and 2002.
Bucky Fuller proposed a solution in his 1980 book Critical Path. Back then we weren't all going to have to run personal Enrons. The idea was more that we already had the technology, 25 years ago and earlier, to build a worldaround electric grid with infinitely more upside than being free, "To expose my electricity consumption to price-sensitive management both by me and by a management service."
Posted by Mark at 09:10 PM | TrackBack
How to lower unemployment
As everyone knows, but nobody says out loud, the primary mission of the French ANPE is to reduce the numbers of people registered as unemployed... by whatever means necessary. Basically the most difficult way of getting you out of the stats is finding you a job, so they don't try to do that. It's considerably easier to eliminate you by having you jump through silly bureaucratic hoops until you give up or get eliminated for getting caught up in one of the hoops.
Nathalie worked 7 hours this month. That's not yet enough for her to be completely off the roll. So the first thing they tried, since they know from the information they required earlier that she's a mother of three children who are at home all Wednesday, was to set up a mandatory meeting in the middle of a Wednesday. They claim it's impossible to change the meeting time once it's arranged. By definition you are not employed, so therefore your schedule is wide open. They don't even have to ask you before requiring your presence at a certain time.
Another way they get you is to make it technically difficult to get the papers you must have in order to prove that you jumped through the useless hoops. Assedic.fr has some unpleasant features, such as a useless pop-up on the cover page that Firefox of course blocks by default, and scrolling text that gets garbled in Firefox. If you're out of work on the dole but want to be able to use the site, you still have to pay the Microsoft tax.
But they outdo themselves on the page that handles getting a version of the monthly declaration you need to avoid getting thrown off the list. You do your declaration online, then they generate a PDF for your printing. Unfortunately neither Adobe Acrobat nor xpdf can actually read or print the content of the generated file. And oh, by the way, you can only go through the process and generate the file once.
When you contact their tech support, they tell you how to configure your browser to accept the pop-up.
Posted by Mark at 08:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Robert Fisk on the Middle East
Miguel de Icaza posted a link to a talk by Robert Fisk, who covers the Middle East for The Independent. (Bio from Wikipedia)
Unlike NGF proteins, the topics are such that everyone has an opinion or two. Most of us have lots of opinions on whole ranges of subjects. The corresponding value of those opinions due to the law of supply and demand is predictably low. Fisk however seems to have spent considerable time and effort examining some situations up close. What's good is that most of what he provides in this talk are facts, i.e. he's a revisionist.
Posted by Mark at 05:40 PM | TrackBack
In search of
Another good article today, this time in the Column Two blog, about intranet search. Take the "few practical steps" from this one, cross it with my last post, and see what you get.
Posted by Mark at 03:06 PM | TrackBack
Public beta
WSJ.com has an article with one of the best quotes I've seen in a while, concerning public beta software:
"I deplore it as a consumer; I admire it as a marketing professional," said Peter Sealey, a marketing professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola Co. "I can't come up with anything else in the entire marketing world where marketers knowingly introduce a flawed or inadequate product [and] it helps grow your user base."
Somehow professor Sealey manages to explain the fundamental design problem of our civilization in only two sentences. It took Philip K. Dick a whole book.
Posted by Mark at 02:56 PM | TrackBack
Kudos to subversion
Recently I changed my password at work, the definitive version of which is stored centrally. I'd rather have one oft-changed password stored distributively, but we're still on Web 1.0.
After I did that, my mail knew to ask me, and my browser usually knew to ask me, but lots of applications that stored my password somewhere for their own purposes didn't. cvs was one of those applications. Maybe that's fixed in a more recent version, but I don't care to go upgrade my version just for that. subversion on the other hand did know, and prompted for the new password. How useful.
Posted by Mark at 01:33 PM | TrackBack
32:07/141
Gentle 6 1/4 km with Joanne, Nigel, and Phil over wet ground.
Posted by Mark at 01:22 PM | TrackBack
November 28, 2005
Infatuation and NGF proteins
The Register is running an article about scientific findings that love-related brain chemicals dwindle after about a year. It was probably faster than that when you were a teenager.
The researchers found that those starting a relationship experienced increased levels of nerve growth factor (NGF) proteins, which causes sweaty palms and the butterflies...Levels of the NGF protein in the 39 people (out of 58) still in the same new relationship after a year had reduced to base-line levels.
Nerve growth factor proteins? Sounds like something good for you, like something that would make you smarter.
Posted by Mark at 08:42 PM | TrackBack
Broadband subscriptions up in Europe
BBC News has an article about the boom in home broadband access in Europe. Apparently the boom's predicted not to last, with saturation coming when 60% of households have broadband. Maybe wireline services will top out at that sort of penetration.
This morning I was sitting across the aisle in the train from a teenage boy watching a music video on his mobile phone. My guess is that if we get to accessible wireless broadband, then the saturation point won't be 60% of households, but closer to whatever the penetration rate is for mobile phone-style devices, of which people may have several, such as a phone, a video device (personal TV set), a webtop, maybe a small digital music device, and things I've not thought of yet.
Posted by Mark at 08:22 PM | TrackBack
32:40/165
Back to the station in Gières. Thought I was late leaving work, so I ran fairly hard for these 8 km. It's a drag running in the snow at night. I'm sure 5 heart beats per minute are lost to the stress of feeling like I'm going to twist my ankle, step in a deep puddle, or slip and fall.
When I got to the station I had to take off my hat, gloves, neck warmer, thin windbreaker. The temperature was above freezing. I was a steam machine.
Posted by Mark at 08:10 PM | TrackBack
36:18/157
Jogged into work from the station in Gières. Commuting on foot looks incompatible with what I should be doing in terms of training, unfortunately. After reading up on the subject Saturday and Sunday, I'm planning base training with a focus of two 90+ minute runs per week and almost no speedwork. My aim is to build a solid aerobic base on which to add stamina and speed in the spring and summer.
Posted by Mark at 09:36 AM | TrackBack
November 27, 2005
Balloon ascent
Mom and Dana have moved into their new home. Mom shot a picture through the trees outside her window of this balloon lifting off. Diane thinks it looks good.
She also thinks she weighs "100 kilometers," which she claims is a lot. She's now riding her mom's exercise bike to get that weight down to 99 or 98 km.
Posted by Mark at 03:19 PM | TrackBack
Double or nothing
The New York Times online -- registration required, with some constraints that render it impossible for me ever to recall either my ID or my password -- is running an article about pension funds starting to push real money into hedge funds. If you thought having your index fund manager buy GOOG was a problem, you must not have money in a pension fund. According to the article, pension funds account for "40 percent of all institutional money," and their investments in hedge funds are growing exponentially.
Of course the author has to write something about how safe this all is, but it's driven by reasoning like that of the managers at General Motors:
The company is using hedge funds, along with other unconventional investments, in hopes of getting something close to stock market returns without the market's volatility, Mr. Dubrowski said. To pay out the $6.5 billion G.M. owes to its retirees each year, the pension fund must produce annual returns of a little more than 7 percent. Otherwise, G.M. will have to dip into the fund's principal. At current interest rates, G.M. cannot get those returns with bond investments, and if it tries to juice returns by betting on the stock market, it will have to cope with market swings.
Translation: We didn't know how to manage our pension fund, so now we're playing Ponzi games and buying lottery tickets in the hope that we'll be working somewhere else when stuff hits the fan.
My guess is that hedge funds play an appropriate role when they're used as hedges. In other words, when they're used to balance the risk of other investments supposed to provide the expected gains. Inevitably though they've given off the strong scent of tulip bulbs, and that scent has been blow into the noses of people "managing" your retirement money. Watch what happens as a few of them come back with early high returns.
(Early large winnings correlate with addiction to gambling.)
Posted by Mark at 09:47 AM | TrackBack
La chanson de Colombano
Ludo lent me this book, which is set in and around the village of Chiomonte over the Italian border from here. Alessandro Perissinotto wrote La chanson de Colombano after investigating this odd mountain song about Colombano digging a high canal, narrowly escaping lynching for the alleged murder of a family. Investigating the folklore of the mountains around here, Perissinotto'd heard an old woman sing the partially forgotten stanzas, and wanted to know more.
His investigations eventually resulted in this detective story. A young judge named Ippolito investigates the murders, then the reasons why some powerful folks might want Colombano dead. The perfect story for late fall, with winter descending from the mountains.
If you want to find out what happens, you'll have to read the Italian or the French translation. Amazon.com lists only two books by Perissinotto, Il testo multimediale and L'anno che uccisero Rosetta.
Posted by Mark at 09:12 AM | TrackBack
Bitter blue
We're halfway around the world from the sunrises in Kauai. There's nothing I have to tone down in these photos. The colors are clear and cold this time of year.
Bitter blue dawn this morning, and the sky remains nearly cloudless. All the heat seems to have radiated away into the sky. On the porch we'd left some crumbs for the birds. They must be looking for somewhere to warm up.
Yesterday the garage door was ajar. When Tim went down to get his boots and sled gear, he left the door to the garage open, and a bird managed to fly inside the house. It went to Emma's room where the morning sun comes in through the window. Nathalie says that already happened this week, and the bird crapped all over Emma's room. Maybe it was the same little bird, which must've been a male. He had some brightly colored yellow and blue feathers.
Posted by Mark at 08:58 AM | TrackBack
November 26, 2005
Music for running, part IV
In the dark and the cold, either you listen to music that takes you away from the conditions outside, or you listen to music that takes you even deeper into the dark, the cold, the winter nightmares. Larks' Tongues in Aspic is music of the latter kind.
Bill Bruford is reputed to have left Yes for King Crimson to explore the darker side of music. For a long time this album would've been classified as progressive rock, but it always strikes me as regression back to the time of Hieronymous Bosch and the inquisition.
What does that have to do with running? In normal, pleasant running conditions, probably nothing. It fits, however, with cold, stumbling, fog, gray light, and the general menace of early winter snow.
Posted by Mark at 03:04 PM | TrackBack
First snow, part II
Nath hadn't taken any still pictures of the snow. This is a quick one out the window upstairs.
Diane helped to put together a snowman this morning at school. He wasn't very high, but plenty round. Tim's now off to Florent's. He took his sled. We had trouble keeping him inside long enough to eat some lunch.
Posted by Mark at 02:09 PM | TrackBack
1:33:44/150
A relatively slow 19.6 km (12.2 mi) run this morning on the frozen streets and sidewalks of Pontcharra. Had to take small steps in spots to avoid falling on the ice.
In fact I did fall down, twice, but not during the run. Both slips were at the train station where I was buying my ticket for next week. I'm thinking of donating a bag of salt to the SNCF.
Posted by Mark at 02:04 PM | TrackBack
November 25, 2005
What I missed
This looks like the commute I missed this morning by taking the bike and the train instead of the car. Of course it took me more than twice as long to ride as it usually does, but there were lots of folks coming into work late. I think Christopher spent about 75 minutes going 10 km.
Too bad Nathalie didn't take any still pictures of the kids. They apparently played in the yard all morning. She shoveled out the driveway... a couple of times. Quite a bit of snow fell during the morning.
The folks who own businesses that depend on downhill skiing are probably feeling pretty optimistic at this point.
Posted by Mark at 08:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
10:15/159
This was the second part of the run home, from the station in Pontcharra up to the house.
I notice both running times are quicker than the corresponding times to ride the distance in the snow.
Posted by Mark at 08:20 PM | TrackBack
33:47/172
The back roads were still slick with ice and snow, so I ran home. This is the time running to the station next to the university. My heart rate was high for 8 km in this amount of time. I was afraid of sliding on the ice and falling on my knee or something. I was also running through snow for 1/3 of the distance.
Posted by Mark at 08:18 PM | TrackBack
First snow
The kids were delighted. 6 inches of snow this morning at our house in Barraux. I hadn't put the snow tires on Nathalie's car. Didn't even clean out the driveway. So they got to stay home from school and are probably out right now building snowmen.
My time to the train station from our house was 15 minutes. Luckily the train was late. I left 10 minutes early, but that wasn't enough. When the roads are clear it takes me under 4 minutes to get to the station.
From the station in Gières the ride was about 40 minutes. As long is it would take to run the same distance. I made fairly good progress along the Isère in fresh snow, but once I got to the road and the ruts created by cars, progress slowed severly.
Posted by Mark at 09:48 AM | TrackBack
November 24, 2005
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving to people celebrating in the US.
Tim said he wanted pumpkin pie. I might try to make some this weekend. Not sure I want to go to the trouble just to have him turn up his nose at the finished product.
Posted by Mark at 08:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
1 fix, 3 to go
A few days ago I listed the weak points identified when riding in the cold. So far I have one semi-fix, which is to wear not only a thin cap under my helmet, but also to wear a stretch fabric tubular garment around my neck and chin. Many cold weather riders suggest balaclavas. I want to keep my mouth uncovered, partly to breathe, partly to keep from having a sopping wet balaclava when I arrive.
I tried long underwear beneath my tights for knees and theoretically for ankles. That was a bad choice. This evening I was late, riding hard with the long underware pinching my knees, leaving my ankles unprotected. It did nothing for the wind, either. At least it didn't bunch up around the crotch.
My gloves, rated to -5 C, just don't do it when the temperature goes down to around freezing. not sure what to do there. Maybe I need mittens.
I may need something for my eyes.
Posted by Mark at 08:17 PM | TrackBack
When the NFS server dies, part II
After the server with my $HOME came back, Gnome was doing some really weird stuff. Boy, is there ever lots of stuff you have to delete to get rid of Gnome and start over...
Posted by Mark at 02:44 PM | TrackBack
53:57/153
Around the lake with Jerome. 11 km total, with the very last km fast. Cold weather.
Posted by Mark at 02:33 PM | TrackBack
When the NFS server dies
When the NFS server dies and nothing can be read in my $HOME dir, my ability to get things accomplished at work grinds to a crawl. That's a sign that I'm still in the industrial part of the economy, rather than pure services.
If I were pure services, like a manager, I could continue with just browser, email, and phone access. I would create product documentation, but would only enable others to do so.
Posted by Mark at 10:57 AM | TrackBack
November 23, 2005
More thieves and liars
From the ISP providing DSL, I got email that started out this way:
Pour plus de transparence et de simplicité, Wanadoo fait évoluer ses Conditions Générales de Vente au 21 décembre 2005.
11 pages of legalese with no change bars. I probably do have the old version somewhere, so I could spend a weekend afternoon figuring out how what they're doing.
The root problem is, you have no choice. If you're just a normal individual, you remain naked and defenseless compared to those with lawyers. If you're an ISP, you hire a lawyer to protect you from your customers. If you're a big customer, you hire a lawyer to protect you from your suppliers... and your own customers. We do it to our customers as well, giving them reams of contractual crap they have to agree to before using our products.
Isn't the rule of law great? It used to be even worse, though. Now they take you to court rather than beating you up.
Posted by Mark at 10:46 PM | TrackBack
Taxing frequent flyers
BBC News online has an article mentioning French government approval of Jacques Chirac's plan to add a tax to plane tickets "to boost aid for the world's poor."
According to an earlier article:
The tax will contribute to the International Finance Facility for Immunisation, a body set up by donor countries to buy vaccines.
There doesn't seem to be anything long term in view. I wonder which pharmaceutical company's going to be selling those vaccines. Maybe people at Air France and KLM should've contributed more to Chirac's last campaign for reelection.
Posted by Mark at 10:15 PM | TrackBack
Dumping the shopping cart
Granted I live in France and want to read books in English, which makes me unusual. But I just dumped out my shopping cart at Amazon.com. The cost of the books was about $49, but the cost of shipping -- to receive things in 36 days -- was $23. It just seemed like too much.
Amazon.co.uk may be a better choice, though they seem to have an expensive shipping scheme for Western Europe. And banks are starting to award themselves commissions for currency trading done on your bank card.
For some reason the books I was looking at could be had in English at Amazon.fr... except that you pay double. Maybe it'll all be good to Amazon shareholders, since they'll eventually make money in shipping and handling. Doesn't make me want to buy their stock, at a P/E of about 40, nor buy anything from their stores.
Posted by Mark at 09:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Spellcheck duel
Jean Véronis examined the spellcheck capabilities of the French version of OpenOffice vs. the French version of Microsoft Word. It turns out that OpenOffice, the free-as-in-beer derivative of Sun's StarOffice product, does about as well as Word, which costs money. In fact, Microsoft Office 2003 Standard Edition seems to cost 400 euros at Amazon.fr. Hmm.
Posted by Mark at 03:24 PM | TrackBack
35:45/147
4 km easy with Phil, then picked up speed for 3 km. Cold day with snow flurries. Not too motivated.
Posted by Mark at 02:42 PM | TrackBack
November 22, 2005
Tired and cold
Although I slept from before 10 pm to 7 am this morning, I'm still lethargic. Maybe it's some sort of bug.
This is the first week it's been freezing cold since probably last winter. Maybe it's a question of adjusting to the season.
Posted by Mark at 02:18 PM | TrackBack
A compliment
Joachim came up to me after the presentation Monday to say I'd managed to do an interesting presentation on a boring subject. He thought that was commendable.
Nobody fell asleep. I wonder if they do fall asleep while reading my documentation.
Posted by Mark at 02:11 PM | TrackBack
30:54/132
6 1/4 km fun run with Stu. Feeling tired, cold, and sluggish today.
Posted by Mark at 02:08 PM | TrackBack
November 21, 2005
1:04:12/168
A little over 14 km as a tempo run.
Feels like my shoes combined with the current orthotics could be one of the causes of my cramps during the Grenoble marathon. After running the hard part of the tempo run, I had the same painful feeling around the left ankle that preceded the cramps.
Posted by Mark at 02:36 PM | TrackBack
Inconvenienced, part II
Looks like the strike's planned for only about 36 hours, at least on the line I take to work. The tough part riding in today was the cold. It's frigid out there. Even my knees were cold from the outset.
But at least I don't have to sit in traffic. Guess I'll be doing that tomorrow morning.
Posted by Mark at 08:58 AM | TrackBack
November 20, 2005
Inconvenienced
After having avoided the car 5 days in a row last week I might have to take the car to work this week. For an hour I've been looking for the lightweight, windproof hat I wear underneath my helmet. Without that riding at subzero temperatures will be truly, almost dangerously unpleasant.
Also there's a strike starting Monday night. I cannot determine from the information online which trains will be affected and for how long. There's a chance it wouldn't make sense to buy a ticket tomorrow, since I might only be able to use it Monday.
Posted by Mark at 08:58 PM | TrackBack
Parecon
You can read Michael Albert's book, Parecon, online. Although you probably won't when you see the subtitle is Life After Capitalism. Just ignore this blog entry.
Albert's book discusses his vision of a participatory economic system, parecon. Parecon relies on planning, rather than markets, to drive production and allocation. But not central planning. A parecon has every participant involved directly and iteratively in requesting, allocating, producing, and planning. Albert starts from the premises Hahnel reaches in ABCs of Political Economy about what we want from the economy, applying the principles to arrive at parecon. He further compares parecon to market, centrally planned, market socialist, and bioregionalist economies to demonstrate how parecon better fits the principles from which he went forth. Of course if you don't agree on the principles, you'll reach a different conclusion, but the principles themselves are fairly well defended in this book.
Albert then explains parecon for the non-economist covering ownership, councils, job complexes, remuneration, and allocation, also providing a hypothetical parecon to give body to the abstractions. This vision, like an external specification in software, doesn't describe everything. Indeed, since participation is the the core of the system, participants are not expected to follow the vision exactly, but instead to adapt it to their circumstances and preferences. So long as an implementation fits the vision (external specification), it's still a parecon. Another way of looking at it is to say there are lots of different recipes for pizza.
Finally Albert rebuts criticisms of parecon that he's encountered, addressing questions about productivity and efficiency, but also about whether parecon would be too invasive, too inflexible, out of touch with basic human nature, or somehow generally impossible to implement.
The very last point addresses my own criticism. Albert's proposing a significantly different economy from the ones we have today. In software, you'd say some of the backwards incompatibilities are going to put the brakes on widespread deployment. For example, from the chapter on ownership in a parecon:
In short, we simply remove ownership of the means of production as an economic consideration. Property in the form of means of production becomes a non-thing.
Not that the rest of parecon wouldn't, but getting to the point where means of production are not owned would probably be hard to achieve in practice. Not because it would in fact be hard to switch, but that people who stand to lose their existing privileges of ownership would likely resort to force to return to the former circumstances, and the people who own the means of production have overwhelmingly more force to apply.
At least coming up with a realistic implementation would be interesting work. I wonder how it's been prototyped.
Posted by Mark at 06:33 PM | TrackBack
On the move
Mom and Dana have been out of contact for the last couple of days. They're moving to their new home, and are probably at Evelyn's. We no doubt have Evelyn's telephone number somewhere, but I haven't called. Hope their move is going all right.
Posted by Mark at 06:31 PM | TrackBack
Working from home
A guy needs an office. With a padlock.
I was trying to finish up my slideware with two girls climbing on my desk, one little guy trying to get me to read about how to catch bees and to write out my part of his homework-related interview of me, the TV blaring some Disney movie, my wife asking me to decide which cooking utensils to buy, and to sign the kids notebooks from school. Meanwhile, I was supposed to be making lunch. Some of the time was less interruptful than that, but I'm not misrepresenting overall conditions.
Posted by Mark at 01:48 PM | TrackBack
November 19, 2005
Minister Azouz Begag asks for data on race
The French Minister of Equal Opportunities, Azouz Begag, is asking legislators to overturn a ban on collecting data about race and religion, according to a BBC News article. Dad was asking about race and how people see it here.
Opinions are all over the spectrum, I guess, as they are in the US. But there's an interesting bit in the article I didn't know:
At present not a single member of parliament from mainland France is of African or Arab origin - although an estimated 10% of people are.
That's one of those telling little coincidences, like the fact that far fewer than 50% of elected representatives are women. How you change that is another question entirely.
Posted by Mark at 05:54 PM | TrackBack
Homemade pizza
The kids' favorite meal to cook is homemade pizzas. We start with the dough.
About 1 1/2 c warm water 3 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp yeast 1 tsp salt About 4 1/2 c flour
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water with olive oil. Add 1/3 of the flour, and mix until smooth. Add the salt. The kids should still be able to stir the dough at this point. As you add more flour a cup at a time, it becomes too thick for them.
But they can help knead if they wash their hands first. You knead the dough on a floured board or counter until it becomes smooth, elastic, and sticky again. Our kids like to slap it, roll it into a ball, tear it into pieces, and so forth. Once kneaded, the dough needs to rise for at least an hour in a quiet place like a cool oven.
While waiting you can prepare the toppings. Over time I've learned not to add too many vegetables, meat, fish, or cheese to any particular pizza. Each topping goes a long way. Today we have:
4 fresh mushrooms 1 small onion A handful of green olives 2 3-oz. pieces fresh mozarrella 2 artichoke hearts 4 oz. sliced chorizo 4 small hunks cheese Grated swiss cheese Grated parmesan cheese 1 can pizza sauce Garlic powder Basil Oregano Olive oil
We might add some canned tuna if it looks like there aren't enough toppings. I slice everything, except for the grated cheese. Thinly sliced rich cheeses melt about as well as when grated.
I roll the pizza crusts out on the same floured counter where I did the kneading. We always make small personal pizzas for the children, so they can add their own toppings. Usually we have 3 small personal pizzas and two large round ones.
On each crust I spread the pizza sauce, then dust with parmesan, garlic, basil, and oregano before adding toppings. It seems to work better if you put the cheese on next, before the rest.
We cook these in our oven turned all the way up, preheated. It usually takes about 15 minutes, but that no doubt depends on your oven. Let them cool a minute or two before slicing. Enjoy.
Posted by Mark at 05:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Mountain biking with Tim
After lunch I accompanied Tim to his mountain biking club. Pierre suggested last night on the phone that I'd go with the bigger kids to keep them in line. They were getting a ride uphill to a parking area on the way to the Granier pass from Chapareillan. But another guy Pierre expected to show up didn't, and so I tagged along with him and the four younger boys, including Tim.
Probably just as well. I'm a timorous downhill mountain biker, and don't see the point of going only downhill. We stayed mostly on the flats down by the quarry in Pontcharra. Around the lakes were they excavate the gravel are bumpy trails the boys enjoy. Then we came back up the hill behind La Gache, the one to the north rather than up the road in front of our house. That trail brings you out on the other side of Fort Barraux.
That trail is quite steep and rocky. The boys ended up pushing their bikes before we even left the street. The road there looks to me like an excellent short, straight climb for intense hill repeats or intervals. But when you're under 10 you don't see it that way.
Emma's been at a birthday party, and Diane's been painting. Diane was calm enough that Nathalie could finish one of her frames around a photo of a little girl looking in a mirror. Time to pick Emma up soon.
Posted by Mark at 05:07 PM | TrackBack
1:02:16/160
Started this off as a gentle run around the fields outside La Gache, and gradually sped up. I ran past the frozen tobacco plants four times, each loop being about 3.5 km.
Posted by Mark at 05:04 PM | TrackBack
Slideware blues
This morning while Diane is rolling around watching TV, I'm doing slideware to present Monday morning at work. OpenOffice 2, Firefox screen captures, and The Gimp are my tools. Easy to work with.
But it's not going to be a screencast. How much longer would it take to do that instead? What tools should I use (that work on Solaris and Ubuntu)?
Posted by Mark at 10:47 AM | TrackBack
November 18, 2005
Inside the event horizon
On waking up this morning I was convinced our universe is inside the event horizon of a large black hole. It seemed the edge of the universe was our view of the event horizon, expanding as the black hole collapsed. Compared to time outside, our time had slowed to a crawl. We therefore saw the event horizon as receding quickly.
Time was curiously backwards in another way, however, since the big bang was in fact the flipside of a big crunch at the center of gravity of the black hole, the moment in which matter collapsed to infinite density and therefore could only decrease in density.
Then I started coming to my senses, figuring my mind was playing lazy tricks on me. It couldn't explain expansion in all directions at once without some center of gravity for the black hole. So my dream was wrong. But why was I dreaming about that?
Posted by Mark at 08:38 PM | TrackBack
About 100 km
This week I rode back and forth to the train, so about 100 km. My mountain bike doesn't have a bike computer attached at this point, so I don't have any stats. I agreed to accompany the kids tomorrow on their mountain bikes as well, so I'm getting in a fair amount of biking this week.
Posted by Mark at 08:31 PM | TrackBack
24:23/172
Fairly hard 6 1/4 km, punctuated by a bio break. I felt cold at 12:30 when I ran, so wanted to get it over with.
Posted by Mark at 08:26 PM | TrackBack
Icy ride
This is the first commute in on the train where I saw frost on the cars before leaving. Weak points (re)identified this morning:
- Face and neck are not covered
- Ankles get chilled as shoe covers ride down and tights ride up
- Gloves (supposedly rated to -5 C) inadequate
- Tights provide inadequate knee protection
The jacket and hat are great, however, although they both make me look even sillier than usual. Why didn't people double over with laughter when Superman came out dressed in royal blue tights and a flapping red cape?
Posted by Mark at 08:53 AM | TrackBack
November 17, 2005
Pigs in Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver's book, Pigs in Heaven, tells the story of several people who lost family struggling through many difficulties to get back to it. After all the non-fiction, science fiction, detective stories, stories by guys, it seemed like the story got off to a very slow start. Kingsolver spends a lot of time getting you involved in her characters.
Kingsolver does such a good job, however, at making you believe her characters and at getting you to appreciate them that you get drawn in anyway. You keep reading to find out how Annawake's going to help resolve Turtle's custody, whether Taylor's going to fight so hard she ends up putting her and Turtle's lives into jeopardy, whether Alice is going to declare herself Cherokee or not.
There's a strong family message amidst the characters, showing one case where the family can work out a thorny legal problem and save the emotional day in a way that allows potential adversaries to live happily ever after together. At the same time the family is getting exterminated by the legalistic, individualist, anti-family tendencies in the surrounding society.
You don't have to go all the way from white America to the Cherokee nation to see that sense of family disappearing. It was obvious the first time I met my wife's parents in their home town, that family looks quaint already to my generation. The episode I recall was years ago. We were eating at the kitchen table in Nath's parent's house. Michel and Colette were catching up with the gossip about everybody they knew in Desvres. They seemed genuinely interested, eager to know who was up to what. For a male American of my background, it was a visit to an alternate universe. So was this book.
Posted by Mark at 09:54 PM | TrackBack
50:18/164
Ran uphill with Joanne, Stu, Jerome. When I got halfway to Rochasson, I ran hard to Corenc. Good workout.
Posted by Mark at 03:50 PM | TrackBack
November 16, 2005
Why tagging is useless after the fact
When you're a writer, you have to write about something. As a reader, you must know that doesn't mean you have to read what gets written. You certainly don't have to believe what gets written.
C|Net has published an article called, "'Tagging' gives Web a human meaning." The author's smart enough to leave the question open as to whether tagging is really useful. But why even write the article?
Sure, tags can be useful if everybody at an event like baychi05 wants to pull their pictures together in one spot. In other words, it's great when people agree on something up front. It's always easier to organize things when people agree up front, isn't it?
But when you come back to search for something, you didn't know you wanted to look for it. That's what makes Google useful. It helps you find stuff no one knew at the time you were going to have to look for. And it's like a hash. No matter how much is out there, you go (almost) straight to what you wanted, even though you didn't know you wanted it until just now.
Tagging's no help there. I get to do it with my own files, my own email, my own blog entries. I still wish I could search my work files and email with Google. That's also why there are so many techie entries on this blog.
Posted by Mark at 04:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
29:15/151
6 1/4 km jog with Nigel this morning. Taking it fairly easy, but I notice from my heart rate that Nigel runs more quickly than some of my other jogging companions.
Posted by Mark at 12:54 PM | TrackBack
November 15, 2005
Surfing the anti-empire wave, part II
BBC News is running another story on the Chavez-Fox tiff. According to the article, only 5 of 34 nations' representatives are opposed to turning the Americas into a free-trade area.
Posted by Mark at 08:51 PM | TrackBack
Quick bath
When I rolled home from work at about 7 pm, Emma was in her bath and Tim was watching a game show on television. By the time I'd shed my cycling clothes and set down my things, Emma was done. It was Tim's turn.
He used a variation on same ruse Matt and I used to resort to when told to brush our teeth. Basically, things can very easily be wet.
I said to Tim that he'd better take a quick bath, because I still had to take a shower before dinner. When I came into the bathroom, he had on his shirt and undershorts, and was making faces in the mirror. I went to the toilet, heard a big splash in the tub, and came back into the bathroom.
Tim was claiming he'd taken a bath. He was indeed dripping on the bathroom floor. Took him all of 15 seconds.
Posted by Mark at 08:12 PM | TrackBack
44:34/136
Fun run with Eve, Joanne, Phil, and Stu. Very easy after yesterday's harder run.
Posted by Mark at 06:01 PM | TrackBack
November 14, 2005
Don't see what is there
The commute this evening was... different. I have a reflective vest, head light, tail light, warm gear. But I couldn't see much, and couldn't hear anything given the wind noise.
The first long road I take was dark, although the moon is shining tonight. Riding a mountain bike is a good idea under these conditions, because you cannot avoid gravel and other crud when you cannot see it. My head light's dimmer than the head lights of oncoming cars along the autoroute where that road runs. Glad I'd already taken that road many times.
Next I leave the road and ride along the Isère around the university campus. It turned out to be more effective to navigate by moonlight through the trees, and avoid looking at in the dim glow of my head light altogether. The eyes can become accustomed to very little light. I left the trail for the road before it turned entirely to loose gravel.
When I got to the train station in Gières another rider who lives in Chapareillan and who takes her bike every day told me she'd heard they're planning to pave that gravel area in the next two weeks. Looking forward to that.
Posted by Mark at 10:06 PM | TrackBack
Surfing the anti-empire wave
French people took flak for a while after Jacques and a few others surfed the anti-US empire wave to unjustifyably high popularity by disagreeing with the Bush over the urgency of going to war in Iraq. For me, the goofiest part of that whole episode was "freedom fries." Didn't hear anything about "freedom toast," or a "freedom kiss," but then maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention.
Imagine the flak Venezuelans would be taking right about now for Chavez's rift with Fox over the Summit of the Americas. Check this out:
"How sad that the president of a people like the Mexicans lets himself become the puppy dog of the empire", he told an audience of supporters and businessmen in the Venezuelan capital Caracas.
(Source: BBC News, "Chavez and Fox recall ambassadors")
Did you notice that, grammatically speaking, Chavez supporters cannot be businessmen?
Posted by Mark at 09:31 PM | TrackBack
See what isn't there
Norm Walsh mentioned this curious optical illusion in his blog. Try it.
Posted by Mark at 08:50 PM | TrackBack
Daisy Miller
Henry James, Mom once said, was her favorite author. Maybe she's changed favorite authors since then. When I saw the opportunity at the bibliothèque anglophone to read just a little Henry James, I decided to pick up Daisy Miller.
Daisy I could not understand. Nor could I understand Winterbourne, the young American who falls in love with her, though he can hardly admit it that way to himself. All the cast of characters seem fiercely corsetted by social circles that leave Winterbourne, "as stiff as an umbrella," although he's young enough to be at university. Are we any different today?
Henry James's manicured English leaves me thinking, Yes, I'm much coarser than people were in his day. Or at least in his writings. Perhaps his is the world my grandparents remembered when they hankered for the good old days.
Posted by Mark at 08:09 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
49:16/167
Ran uphill to Corenc, then back down. I was able to settle into a fairly quick rhythm coming back which was nevertheless not unduly hard on the knees.
Posted by Mark at 02:46 PM | TrackBack
Web 2.0 now official
Dad sent a link to an Investor's Business Daily editorial in which the basic message is that Web 2.0, whatever that is, is now a reality because Bill Gates wrote email saying it's coming.
So it's now official. You can go on paying 86.49 times earnings for Google, because This Time It's Different!™
Posted by Mark at 02:42 PM | TrackBack
November 13, 2005
Cookies
Emma made cookies with me. We poured too much stuff in the muffin papers and they overflowed during cooking.
But Emma still enjoyed making them. She was very proud. I didn't manage to get her to do something between a very forced smile, and no smile at all.
Posted by Mark at 04:34 PM | TrackBack
Back on the train
My intention is to start commuting by bike again, starting tomorrow. Nobody's torched my car, yet. (Though according to Roger L. Simon's blog -- thanks, Andy, for the recommendation -- some of the leaders were planning to crash the Champs Elysées, so maybe they'll eventually burn my car and my insurance will get me a newer one.) I just need the exercise, and need to avoid getting into an automobile to go to work.
I now have town and trail tires, rather than nubbly offroad ones. And I have new lights, plus one of those flourescent vests that Nathalie convinced me to buy. What worries me more is sweating in my biking clothes, then having to ride home in the dark cold with sopping wet vest and tights.
Posted by Mark at 02:53 PM | TrackBack
No music for riding
There won't be any music for riding. For the ride this morning I tried music without too much dynamic range. It was clear before I started that I wouldn't be able to listen to Glenn Gould playing piano, or The Planets, or King Crimson.
After only a few minutes out I realized however that only on steep climbs would I be able to hear the sounds as real music. For all the descents I'm lucky to hear some of the percussion. Even at my average speed of around 30 kph, there's no such thing as low notes. All subtleties are gone. Turning the volume up further would perhaps be bad for my hearing. Maybe I need to download some of the stories from that SF podcast blog Andy recommended.
Posted by Mark at 02:30 PM | TrackBack
1:44:27
It was chilly for a bike ride, 10 C (50 F), this morning, but the sky was clear. I took the route out through Montmélian in the direction, more or less, of Albertville to whatever the place is called where I turn around and come back to La Rochette and Pontcharra. The circuit comes to 53.1 km. My average speed was 30.5 kph (19 mph), but I wasn't careful to ride steady. When my legs felt tired and tight I slowed down. When they felt good I sped up. I did hit 71 kph (44 mph) coming down a big hill. Also met a few cyclists coming the other way, and a pair of them taking it easy up a big hill.
After all that eating we did with Matt and Debra, I probably need to go for a 20 km run this afternoon, too. My legs muscles still feel tired, though. Cycling seems to be a good way to get exercise while my body repairs them.
Posted by Mark at 02:17 PM | TrackBack
November 12, 2005
Tough to adjust disc brakes
Putting the new tires on my bike's wheels took about 5-10 minutes. Then another 45 minutes struggling with the back wheel and its disc break. When you close the quick release, depending on the tension, it pulls the frame and brake enough to throw everything out of alignment.
So you have to start out of alignment, but just barely. The skewer has to be slightly off center, too, in a position that is midway between one natural position and another. Once the brake is aligned for a tire spinning with no weight on it, that doesn't mean it'll stay aligned when you sit in the saddle. It's likely to get thrown out of alignment as soon as you put weight on the bike. Very frustrating.
Posted by Mark at 08:38 PM | TrackBack
To Crest and back
Debra and my brother Matt left today to spend the last couple of days vacation with Debra's friends near Crest, which is south of Valence. Tim and Emma rode over there with us. It ended up taking all afternoon by the time we stopped for a snack and then in Grenoble to get smoother tires for my mountain bike and arrows for Tim's arc.
Posted by Mark at 08:35 PM | TrackBack
November 11, 2005
Music for running, part III
I've been listening to some old music. 1968 was in a way the apex of what Hendrix seems to have left in terms of studio work. And I don't think it's because he didn't get perhaps even better. Granted, Axis: Bold As Love includes music that still sounds good even after the hippies cut off all their hair, got married, eventually had grandchildren, and now watch that little stock ticker at the bottom of the CNN window. Even most of the tunes that didn't become classics, unlike the title song, If 6 Was 9, or Little Wing, tunes like Spanish Castle Magic, Castles Made of Sand, or One Rainy Wish come off as masterpieces of casual brilliance. But it sounds like this guy could walk in the room, tune the guitar, and more than half the time come up with something you'd still want to listen to again and again more than 35 years later. As though he didn't have to work at it at all.
Great for easy jogs and short outings like this morning.
So what's disappointing about Electric Ladyland must not really be Hendrix. I've concluded that by that time these guys were taking drugs long before finishing the job, mixing down to the master in a kind of purple haze that led away from tightly scoped content into a world of slack-jawed awe where even recording hiss sounds prophetic. Case in point: 62 seconds of mildly interesting tape noise called Moon, Turn The Tides... gently, gently away. Yes, he's a Voodoo Chile and a merman, but you wish you had a better recording than this one made on somebody's portable cassette recorder left to run in the back of the garage. And they claim the version I bought is remastered (presumably by someone sober and focused).
Posted by Mark at 05:32 PM | TrackBack
Paragliders
After lunch we went to see the paragliders jumping off the cliff up at St. Hilaire du Touvet.
Diane was ready to go with them. She saw them running down to the edge and wanted to go, too.
Posted by Mark at 05:15 PM | TrackBack
Our Friends from Frolix 8
Philip K. Dick published Our Friends from Frolix 8 in 1970. A couple of hundred years in our future, the struggle for power pits humans with giant brains against humans with psychic powers. They split the spoils in a sort of two-party system that leaves most of earth's 6 billion people, those who haven't evolved, out in the cold, in danger of getting locked up for crimes like drinking a beer, jaywalking, or reading subversive material.
One man has left on a spaceship to find alien help, which he eventually does. Yet the real story revolves around the shambling interpersonal failures, and in particular the doomed relationships of a regular guy named Nick, a tire regroover by trade who gets mixed up almost by accident in the drama of the world being more or less rescued.
Not PKD's best, but more mildly Kafkaesque commentary and an odd look at what it's like to be human. The loser's story is always as interesting as the winner's, and even most of the winners are losers.
Posted by Mark at 04:49 PM | TrackBack
More pictures
This morning we tried to take a few pictures. Nathalie wanted to have one of the whole family, but the children didn't want to stand still. Diane was running off on her bike. Tim wanted to have his scooter. We finally got them to stand still for a moment.
Emma also was taking pictures. I don't think this last one is one of hers, but is instead Matt not keeping his camera still as he snaps a picture of himself and Debra.
Time to head off to St. Hilaire for a walk. Must go.
Posted by Mark at 02:01 PM | TrackBack
49:30/164
Ran down the hill and around Pontcharra to the other side, then back the same way. If I remember right, that's a route I found for about 7 mi (11.2 or 11.3 km). My legs felt okay today at this pace, just a little tired.
Posted by Mark at 01:54 PM | TrackBack
November 10, 2005
André & Michel Quenard
Debra and Matt wanted to go wine tasting. We were received by Mrs. Quenard.
She didn't have any of the Mondeuse Vieilles Vignes left, but Debra wanted white anyway. The Chignin Vieilles Vignes that she liked best has a marked aroma of ripe apple, with mineral and apple tastes.
I also bought some Chignin Bergeron that reminded me of the 2003 Chablis from the wine fair last December in Grenoble. Fruity and round but light. The regular Mondeuse smelled of black pepper. I'm sure it'd be good with duck, or roast beef, or perhaps game, but also with gratin dauphinois, diots, or just ham and saucisson.
We'd been here all this time without venturing out to taste local wines. I guess I always feel like I have too much white in my cellar, not enough dark reds.
Posted by Mark at 08:53 PM | TrackBack
Turnips
Turnips are one of the vegetables that I hardly ate before living in France. It's a shame not to eat turnips at least occasionally. They're good vegetables and quite satisfying.
One way I make prepare them is like this:
6 medium turnips 1 tbsp. cooking oil 1 tsp. lemon juice Fleur de sel (or ground rock salt) Fresh pepper
Peel the turnips and dice them. The pieces should be small, not too thick. Heat the oil in a big, non-stick pan. Add the turnips and fry them gently until they start to carmelize, and have lost most of their volume. The pieces should be tender.
Deglaze with lemon juice. Pour into a serving dish, and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.
Posted by Mark at 08:40 PM | TrackBack
1:28:01
My brother Matt and I rode the bikes this afternoon to get some fresh air, covering 39.8 km (24.7 mi) on a circuit around through Montmélian, back to Pontcharra, out and back to La Rochette, and back home. It as getting cool near the end. The fall weather's with us, although we've not yet had frost.
Posted by Mark at 08:36 PM | TrackBack
November 09, 2005
Schema Repository, part XV
It wasn't until I turned off the computer and quit looking at the code that I could see my approach was the wrong one in many spots. Nathalie asked me what I was doing.
"I'm thinking.""I can see that. What are you thinking about?"
"Storing LDAP schema and documentation in a repository."
"What?"
Until now, I have had separate attributes to store the pieces of the object definitions. In other words, I have attribute types like schema-oid, schema-name, schema-must, schema-may. But I also store the raw definition. Not sure why I started down that road. It seems like I could have parsers for raw definitions that give the same sort of API as the attribute types would, but without the hassle of storing duplicates.
Then I have one big blob called schema-fulldesc for most of the documentation. And I think my schema-example attribute type is single-valued. Finally, my collections of objects don't have a memberOf functionality. I only saw I missed that when I started looking at man pages, wondering, "Okay, which collection would hold this one?" I don't think the attribute type entries even reference the container object class entries.
Oh, well. The first time you go through it is an exercise in figuring out more explicitly what you're trying to do. In that respect, writing software is much like any other form of writing. I need to block out time to revise.
Posted by Mark at 06:25 PM | TrackBack
Afternoon activities
Tim ended up playing tennis with Debra, rather than with Matt. Matt and I went for a short bike ride from the soccer field in Barraux, where we left Tim with Nathalie, Debra, and the girls, over to the lac St. André by Les Marches, then circling back around to Barraux. We only had 37 minutes to ride. 23 minutes of the hour we'd expected to ride was taken up by preparations, including getting the kids' bikes ready.
While I rode my mountain bike after my brother on my road bike, the kids rode around the stade and burned off some excess energy at the playground. After that, Tim had ping pong in Pontcharra, so we had to hurry back and get him ready. Emma had her dance class. We walked around Pontcharra, window shopping. House prices sure seem high right now.
There was gridlock in the parking lot as we left the gymnasium next to the junior high school in Pontcharra. I guess it happens every Wednesday at 5 pm, but I've been missing it since I'm usually at work. They're still going strong downstairs. Emma's ecstatic to have people who'll sit and play cards with her. Tim's juggling the piezoelectric plastic balls Matt and Debra brought, which are labelled ExperienceColumbus.com. Diane's eating all the saucisson we put on the table.
Posted by Mark at 06:10 PM | TrackBack
Visitors, part II
It was tough for the three children this morning. Aunt Debra and Uncle Matt were tired, and slept in until almost 9. Emma, Tim, and even Diane were asking when they were going to get up.
Tim and Emma both have activities today. Tim says before his table tennis club, Uncle Matt should take him up to the tennis courts in Barraux. Right after eating a couple of full plates of couscous for lunch. Looks like we might take a walk instead.
Posted by Mark at 01:34 PM | TrackBack
Getting late, part II
Nathalie and I were pleased to see the picture of the newest edition to the Poitou family last night. Hope Mom (and Dad) have been able to get some rest before everybody in the family comes to visit. Her sisters sure look tickled pink.
Posted by Mark at 01:30 PM | TrackBack
November 08, 2005
Visitors
Matt and Debra arrived at the train station in Grenoble a bit before I did, just before 5 pm.
They brought gifts for the children. Emma got the digital camera to take these pictures.
Posted by Mark at 08:35 PM | TrackBack
29:44/155
Ran a circuit around Montbonnot, starting out with Joanne. Johan couldn't make it at noon, as he had a meeting.
My legs are still in rough shape. But this was short, no doubt in the neighborhood of 4 miles. Maybe it's time to stick to the short runs until my legs are feeling normal.
Posted by Mark at 01:47 PM | TrackBack
Getting late
It's getting late, about 9:50 am. And Ludo's still not in the office, yet. I wonder if he's going to have some news for us soon.
Posted by Mark at 09:50 AM | TrackBack
November 07, 2005
Why torch your neighbor's car?, part II
BBC News has published yet another article on French youngsters burning cars and endangering the police officers sent in to stop them. They don't seem to mention what some guy from Le Monde was saying on the radio, which is that all the violence came to a halt last night during a televised soccer match.
Journalists don't seem to be able to approach the kids Sarkozy has called racaille. But they have been able to get this from the authorities:
Some countries, including the UK, urged their citizens to use "extreme care" if travelling in the affected areas.
That's right. If you're a retiree from the south of England planning a holiday this week in the ghettos of Paris or Toulouse, you can still go, but use "extreme care."
Other people are talking about "civil war." The same guy from Le Monde joined in with other journalists who've heard kids are breaking all the stuff to get their neighborhoods into the "Top 10."
Since the moral standards of those who bring us our newspapers, TV shows, and radio programs could never be called into question, they must simply be too busy to notice what they're actually saying. Thus journalists are battling each other to bring you exclusive, up-to-the-minute coverage of kids with questionable judgement competing violently for a spot on the Top 10 list of Gangstas in the News.
Posted by Mark at 08:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Tired
The long traffic jam, coupled with a bad run this noon, and followed by another day at work doing more stuff that seems like a waste of time ruined my mostly neutral mood of this morning. Dana suggested running can, "Take the edge off the sadness." I don't oscillate between happiness and sadness, though. The motion is more like earthquakes, but tripolar, occasionally sliding around between anger, depression, and mania.
What helps is to relax and think about the message of Dawkins's books. Basically you, I, and everything else that could be considered a living thing are disposable wrappers around the longer term content, which is information. If I were limber enough, I'm sure I'd find the "Best if used before: <date>" label.
Posted by Mark at 08:09 PM | TrackBack
43:49/175
The distance here is only 10 km. My heart monitor was behaving strangely, so 175 is wrong.
I started at a good pace. It felt good to run again. But by the halfway mark I noticed my legs are still quite sore from the marathon, so I had to slow down. In fact my thighs still hurt even 15 minutes after I've stopped, stretched, and showered. Must continue to take it easy for a while.
Posted by Mark at 01:20 PM | TrackBack
A record
Record time for driving the autoroute from Crolles to work this morning: 1 1/4 hours. That's less than 10 kph. Don't really know why. Maybe there'd been an accident.
Posted by Mark at 09:36 AM | TrackBack
November 06, 2005
Eyeshadow
This one I missed a couple of days ago when downloading photos from the camcorder.
I thought Emma was just taking random pictures and got Tim with his eyes closed. But if you look closely it turns out that his sisters had been making up his eyes with violet eyeshadow.
This afternoon I had the two of them trying to do my hair, first Diane, then Emma, then both. They didn't manage much, since my last hair cut was only a couple of weeks ago. But Emma still managed to put one of her pink elastic bands around a few hairs at the top of my head.
Posted by Mark at 06:08 PM | TrackBack
The Blind Watchmaker
The Blind Watchmaker is another book by Richard Dawkins. In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins looks at how good a job Darwininan theory does at explaining life on earth as compared with alternative explanations.
One of the things he did on his early 80s Macintosh was create a little program to generate when he called "biomorphs" and through a sort of not-so-natural selection whereby the user chooses a favorite at each alternative step. (Click here for Frits Beukers's Java applet version.) The biomorphs start as a single segment that grows by branching symetrically, with the branching governed by formula that can mutate a little for each generational branch. Dawkins originally expected to grow trees this way, but it turns out that all manner of stuff evolves. The critter on this blog entry is an example.
Dawkins gives fine arguments of how eyes, echolocation, and even DNA can evolve according to natural selection, and how it makes more sense statistically speaking to explain what we observe by natural selection than by any alternative he mentions, creationism being the most well-known, though a range of other alternatives have been taken more or less seriously from time to time.
Theories that hold up as well as natural selection, yet explain quite a bit, seem rare. If we define theory narrowly as, "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world," few -- quantum field theory, relativity, maybe plate techtonics -- come to mind that look as defensible.
Looking at this the other way around, an enormous amount of our beliefs arises from something other than very defensible theory. Of course some beliefs come from logical extensions of other beliefs. That's how we got to the fundamental theorem of calculus. That's also how we can follow a flying bird as it goes behind the house and then reappears on the other side. But I guess that most of our thinking falls in between understanding Leibniz and following basic motion. And most of that thinking is on shaky ground.
One aspect I liked of The Blind Watchmaker is shared by The Selfish Gene. Both books give a sense that even today's certainties are probably soon going to be a silly as yesterday's now seem. I'm hoping we can look back and laugh, rather than groan.
Posted by Mark at 05:21 PM | TrackBack
The doc is out there
This morning I've rebooted under Ubuntu 5.04 because I already have an rsync script set up there. What it does is gets the latest version of mcraig.org including this blog copied to my local disk. That way if anything goes wrong at mcraig.org, I can just copy the whole thing back up there.
So I run my script and boom:
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [receiver] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(359)
If you're like me, you have no idea what might have happened at line 359 in io.c. But you do have Google. Two clicks later, I get to an email answer from last Thursday:
I've noticed that somehow rights of some directories are changed during rsync-ing. So I've tried to reset rights (added write access for owner) in all directoris recursievely after each rsync try. I don't know if this was the reason but this is 1st time for more than 2 weeks now it succeeded!
Ah! Yes, it's true that I've probably been in there as a different user. A quick chmod -R and it works like a charm. Don't tell my boss I could be replaced by a web browser and Google access to the world's mailing lists. On the other hand, every time this happens I'm more convinced our internal mailing lists would be a big help to sys admins and developers everywhere.
Posted by Mark at 11:19 AM | TrackBack
1:20:57
Went for a bike ride over to Chambéry and back. (Avg. speed: 29.1 kph aka 18.1 mph) This is the first exercise since Monday night. My body still seems to be repairing itself. Either that or somewhere relatively recently in our family tree there was a giant South American sloth. Wikipedia says:
Sloths move only when necessary and then very slowly: they have about half as much muscle tissue as other animals of similar weight.
My appetite hasn't diminished in the past week, but I don't think I've gained that much weight. Maybe my back tire was flat and I didn't notice.
Posted by Mark at 11:05 AM | TrackBack
November 05, 2005
Bubble bath
Emma and Diane get along pretty well when their brother isn't nearby to pit one against the other.
Posted by Mark at 06:11 PM | TrackBack
Nathalie's day off
Nathalie worked this morning, teaching English. This afternoon, she's in Crolles at her lace class. So in a way it's her day off. Yesterday afternoon, she was able to leave Diane at school and go to her framing class for a couple of hours. She's making frames for pictures and lace pieces.
Luckily for me, Tim's got mountain biking this afternoon, so I have only the two girls for a couple of hours. Tim got a CD from his mom this morning, so Nathalie said I should take the girls to the store and get them magazines or coloring books. I figured Diane would take a coloring book, but instead she had her eye on a sticker book about princesses that came with 5 play rings. Emma got a thicker magazine of Barbie related coloring, stickers, and stories.
Now Emma and Diane are trading rings. It sounds pretty heated. I may not get to use the computer for long after all.
Posted by Mark at 02:00 PM | TrackBack
November 04, 2005
GUIs for spammers
A couple of my accounts got spam today from somebody trying to spoof eBay.com, saying that the account is locked, I cannot use eBay until I click the link, etc.
The link they wanted me to connect to is port 680 on the host with IP address 218.236.22.164.
$ host 218.236.22.164
Host 164.22.236.218.in-addr.arpa not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
$ nmap 218.236.22.164
Starting nmap 3.81 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2005-11-04 21:45 CET
Interesting ports on 218.236.22.164:
(The 1650 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
PORT STATE SERVICE
135/tcp filtered msrpc
139/tcp open netbios-ssn
445/tcp filtered microsoft-ds
680/tcp open unknown
780/tcp open wpgs
1026/tcp open LSA-or-nterm
1027/tcp open IIS
1029/tcp open ms-lsa
1433/tcp open ms-sql-s
3128/tcp filtered squid-http
3389/tcp open ms-term-serv
4444/tcp filtered krb524
17300/tcp filtered kuang2
Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 101.956 seconds
$
So other than them seemingly running Windows, what's up? I found a page that says a virus called RTB 666 uses that port. Looks like these folks can set up trojans running on other people's machines, then get the account info back through those trojans.
RTB 666 seems to have a GUI client in Polish. Here's the half-size thumbnail:
Click the image to see the MegaSecurity.org screenshots.
Posted by Mark at 09:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Why torch your neighbor's car?
The BBC News is running an article on the week of violence in towns in the outskirts of Paris. The media here in France have been carrying the story of course.
This morning I was flipping through radio channels on the way to work. Somebody from France Inter was interviewing somebody from the police. Earlier an announcer read a blurb about a talk radio program that was going to cover the banlieux. It came across in the same tone they reserve for talking about Corsica, which is to say it's some mostly foreign place they visit with a shiver, glad they don't have to inhabit.
My question is what does your outlook on life have to be before you decide to torch your neighbor's car? Imagine you feel so generally hopeful that you decide the thing to do is chuck a bottle full of burning gas through the closed window of a car that belongs to some guy who lives down the hall from you.
Posted by Mark at 08:53 PM | TrackBack
Lexxe search engine
Stu sent a link for something called the Lexxe search engine, which is supposed to answer natural language questions. It's Friday afternoon and I'm getting tired of this, so I asked it, "When will I retire?"
At the outset of a page full of useless and unrelated results, I got this:
Tip: Lexxe is not a dialogue machine. Please ask questions about facts.
About 25 years to go. Right, Kurzweil?
Posted by Mark at 05:57 PM | TrackBack
"Paru et pas vendu", part II
At the end of the marathon I was still cramping, moving like a snail. The picture says it all, you can almost see the cramp on the front of my leg.
The pain's nearly all gone now, however. I'd like to get back out there for a run. But if the rain clears up, I'm going to get on the bike this weekend instead, aiming at waiting a whole week this time before running again.
Several people at work have wondered whether my cramps were due to the lack of organization. I'm not at all convinced. My plan, when I get some time, is to look into the problem more carefully to see if I can isolate the major factors.
The thing is, if it's something I can easily fix, like stretching more, or not running too hard in the beginning, then I should fix it. Only after I've tried to fix what's under my control should I give up trying to fix it in advance.
Posted by Mark at 04:52 PM | TrackBack
November 03, 2005
"Paru et pas vendu"
The forum at Jogging-International.net has a long rant thread (en français) against the Grenoble marathon. Apparently even one the pace setters had to plead with spectators for water.
There's some suggestion that next time the run is put on, it shouldn't be with the same organizers.
I'm not convinced my cramp problem was directly related to the organization. Need to take the time to analyze the situation to see if I can determine the most likely cause to avoid in the future.
Posted by Mark at 09:35 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 02, 2005
Peace & quiet
Work has been relatively quiet in the last few days, I now realize. I've been able to sit here and hack at examples and doc for LDAP client developers without more than a few interruptions per day. It must be too good to last.
Posted by Mark at 05:36 PM | TrackBack
November 01, 2005
Day off, part IX
Today's a day off in France, All Saints' Day. You're supposed to go put flowers on the tombs of your ancestors, but we don't know anybody dead nearby.
Instead, Diane's still in her pyjamas although it's late afternoon. Emma and Tim are watching TV. Nathalie's working on some needlepoint. I've been fiddling with a new version of my LDAP schema repository, making a cleaner library of backend objects than I made before, starting from the top down this time.
Until lunch, I was having intermittent cramps. I haven't taken time to Google for what causes leg cramps and what can end them. The only thing I remember from Noakes was that studies showed runner who stretch irregularly are more likely to suffer from cramps than either runners who stretch regularly, or runners who don't stretch.
Posted by Mark at 05:28 PM | TrackBack
Lizard daydreaming
Nathalie didn't take pictures of all the children in their Halloween costumes, but you've already seen TIm dressed up as a Jedi knight.
Diane apparently swallowed 7 or 8 large pieces of gum. Tim wolfed nougat. Emma was apparently the most reasonable of the three. Their Jack o' Lanterns must be full of water by now from last night's downpour.