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December 31, 2005

1:30:00/166

Very similar route to Wednesday's, with some extensions. As you can tell from the faster heart rate, I went a bit further in the same amount of time. Ran some of the hills hard both up and down.

The big difference was in the weather. Today it was quite warm for this time of year, perhaps 8-9 C. Had to leave my hat next to the house almost right away.

Posted by Mark at 12:01 PM | TrackBack

December 30, 2005

Maximum density

Today there are only 15 of us in the house, with 7 under the age of 9 years. The moments when you can hear yourself think are few, far between, and fleeting.

Since French is not my native language, I can almost pretend not to understand. Nathalie says I close my ears. If you don't understand what is said, it resembles a bunch of birds chirping.

Posted by Mark at 12:40 PM | TrackBack

Michel's new toy

Michel bought himself a DVD burner for Christmas. He had me install it with some software to capture video and burn DVDs.

A DVD burner is an investment we'll have to make soon as well. They're no longer very expensive. The picture quality is about as good as a mobile news report, which is to say that it looks like regular television rather than home movies.

He's going to start editing the footage when everyone's out of the house and he has some time.

Posted by Mark at 12:36 PM | TrackBack

Colette's birthday

Yesterday 18 of us celebrated Colette's 60th at a nearby restaurant she'd chosen with Michel. Only about 4 h 15 m at the table, but the children had taken activities with them, and the folks at the restaurant put us in a special room where the noise wouldn't bother the other patrons. A great time was had by all, as they say.

The temperature was just right for a snowball fight afterwards, and there was plenty of clean snow next to the road, so nearly everyone climbed back into the cars with wet hair and cold hands.

Posted by Mark at 12:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

35:50/153

Desvres probably lies only about 10 mi as the crow flies from the English Channel, so the weather changes often here. This morning for my run the temperature was down around freezing, and the snow was blowing horizontally.

The roads weren't clean at all. Had a hard time finding firm footing without ice underneath the drifting snow. Kept having to blink to see. In the end I ran neither very far, nor very fast.

Posted by Mark at 12:26 PM | TrackBack

December 29, 2005

Many pictures, slow connection

Nathalie's new digital camera has many photos we'd like to show, but the connection's just too slow to upload them. Maybe soon.

Posted by Mark at 11:05 AM | TrackBack

36:13/153

Just a short run today over the hills around Desvres and out over to Courset. We're going out for lunch to celebrate Colette's 60th birthday a few months late.

Posted by Mark at 10:59 AM | TrackBack

December 28, 2005

1:30:01/151

Inclement weather in and around Desvres this morning. Hard to find clear roads with little traffic, so I ended up sucking down plenty of truck exhaust. One of the better places to go is the Course valley.

Desvres is all hills. At the end of the 90 min, my knees were starting to tire.

Posted by Mark at 01:59 PM | TrackBack

December 27, 2005

DSL envy in Desvres

We arrived, mostly without a hitch, just half an hour late in Lille.

Colette was wondering about DSL at home. Cegetel wanted to give her a 2 Mbit line. I looked up their stats at DegroupeTest.com. Only 458 m by wire from the commuter, 6 dB attenuation! They could have at least 8 Mbits, and here we are on dial-up.

Unfortunately the line cannot be degrouped yet. Still I should move up here. My connection would be almost as good as it is in the office.

Posted by Mark at 07:23 PM | TrackBack

December 26, 2005

More procrastination

While out riding, I thought more about Paul Graham's essay on procrastination. He's right about good procrastination being that you, "work on ... something more important," than the other things you could be doing with your time.

But I couldn't figure out how you decide what's important. Paul says you should drop the small stuff:

What's "small stuff?" Roughly, work that has zero chance of being mentioned in your obituary.

That's good in the sense that it fits for things like TV watching. Don't tell the kids yet that they don't have to go to school anymore. Maybe they shouldn't, but they might not come to the decision about careful reflection on their own obituaries...

...or about whether doing things that get into a eulogy are also procrastination, eulogies being governed by conventions and what we think other people would think is proper. Doing things you think other people will think was proper sounds to me like travel on the road to hell paved with good intentions. Paul writes of "the most dangerous form of procrastination" being getting a lot of the wrong things done. He leads back to the big question:

What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?

He ends up suggesting, "Let delight pull you." Dad used to suggest that I aim to do work I enjoy; Paul is suggesting that work also be ambitious.

So far my work, like the rest of my life, is the dangerous type of procrastination.

Posted by Mark at 06:42 PM | TrackBack

Star Wars on DVD

Tim's watching Attack of the Clones for the third time since yesterday morning. He says it's his favorite, except for the latest one. He doesn't have that DVD yet.

Of the others, he's watched Phantom Menace once and the (almost) original film once. They seem to have edited it. I walked in at one point and saw Jabba the Hut, who I'm sure wasn't in the first one before. Mom says they fixed some parts to make them jibe with the new trilogy.

Tim's conversation has taken a decidedly Star Warsian turn over the last two days. I also noticed his lips moving in sync with the actors for some of the dialogs.

Posted by Mark at 06:00 PM | TrackBack

Not music for running

django.gif Although a fire left him with a slightly handicapped fret hand, Django Reinhardt played amazing guitar. His fingers seem to dance around sighing bends and elegant vibrato when he takes the lead. His rhythm is almost more like backup piano in terms of richness of color. The album I have, Autour de minuit, also features Stéphane Grappelli's lyric fiddle. Those guys made great music together.

But it's not music for running. I listened to that whole album of songs between 3 and 4 minutes long one Wednesday while running long. It's better than Christmas carols any day. Yet it saps your strength somehow, like the violin on Vous et moi, plaintive, resigned, lonely. Even the upbeat parts are somehow melancholy. Now what you need as you struggle along in the cold on wooden legs.

Posted by Mark at 04:22 PM | TrackBack

1:21:59

Yesterday afternoon I went out on the mountain bike for an hour to get some fresh air. Coming back from the little lake outside Pontcharra, I took the hill up behind La Gache on one of the steepest Barrolin paved roads that disappears into an even tougher trail, strewn with fist-sized smooth stones. As soon as you hit those, it's only a matter of seconds before you have to get off and walk. I managed until the second hairpin. My legs were tired yesterday afternoon after Saturday's fast finish run anyway.

Today I decided to ride instead of run, my normal winter running clothes being packed away for the trip tomorrow. Even my shoes went in the washing machine.

It was about 5 C (41 F) when I set out for Chambéry. I took the route over the hill through St. André and down through Apremont, eventually over to Barberaz before catching the bike trail into Chambéry from the back. I came home through Myans. My legs, which were tight going out, felt like logs returning. There were flurries up in St. André and in town, too.

Average speed was a weak 28.5 kph (17.7 mph). For the last 3 days, we've been eating and drinking like there's no tomorrow.

Posted by Mark at 04:06 PM | TrackBack

December 25, 2005

Video confusion & conversion

Looking into the PlayStation problem further, you may go far afield enough to get to the VideoInterchange.com site where PAL, SECAM, NTSC conversion is explained:

Converting between different numbers of lines and different frequencies of fields/frames in video pictures is not an easy task. Perhaps the most technical challenging conversion to make is the PAL to NTSC. Consider that PAL is 625 lines at 50 fields/sec as opposed to NTSC's that is 525 lines at 60 fields/sec. Aside from the line count being different, it's easy to see that generating 60 fields every second from a format that has only 50 fields might pose some interesting problems. Every second, an additional 10 fields must be generated seemingly from nothing.

Of course there is no reason related to persistence of human vision for PAL to be different from NTSC, for example. 25 or 29.97 fps is already faster than the rate used at the movies.

Engineers in the US worked on NTSC around 1940. They joked that NTSC stood for "Never The Same Color" due to the color subcarrier frequency ending up unstable by design.

Walter Bruch of Telefunken Germany designed PAL, which did not have the same problem. Some folks seem to be able to see flicker since PAL only refreshes 25 times per second, instead of almost 30, but the brain compensates quickly. So I was wrong about the marketing. It's just that Bruch didn't come up with PAL until 1967, at which point the US had probably already built things out based on NTSC.

Later there was also SECAM:

SECAM was not developed for any technical reason of merit (as was PAL) but was mainly invoked as a political statement, as well as to protect the French manufacturers from stiff foreign competition. In that regard, they were highly successful!

(The source for the quotes is the VideoInterchange.com article mentioned above.) How soon will we get out of this mess of old hardware?

Posted by Mark at 11:57 AM | TrackBack

Why not to write reports

Paul Graham wrote up something most of us realize about procrastination. It can be both good and bad.

Most of my procrastination is bad. Going to "work," cooking, jogging, reading, blogging, chatting with friends, etc. Some of it I've convinced myself I almost cannot get around doing, like working for money. That seems like the central time-waster around which we organize the rest.

Within the bad, there is however at least one tiny hopeful gleam of good. I've given up sending email status reports. That sort of coincided with awareness of how much time I was wasting in email. It was an instinctive move, but now I have Paul to back me up.

Posted by Mark at 09:18 AM | TrackBack

Two princesses

Here are the two princesses in their new dresses.

emma-20051225.jpg diane-20051225.jpg Emma and Diane are both wearing lipstick from Emma's new vanity case full of adult makeup. They're also wearing a bit of lip gloss on their eyelids. Emma's still working out which makeup goes on which parts of the face. Yet she was truly happy to get more makeup, especially since this set is not for little girls. It's the real thing.

You cannot see them here, but both princesses have high-heeled shoes as well that go click-click-click as they walk along the floor downstairs.

Posted by Mark at 08:54 AM | TrackBack

Merry Christmas

20051225.jpg

Nathalie forced them to wait until 7:30 to go into the living room with the Christmas tree and presents. They were all assembled upstairs talking and waiting expectantly at 7:15.

By 7:45 it was all over. All the presents had been opened. I was hooking up the PlayStation for Tim, which turned out to be a complete disaster. I'd not noticed that Sony segmented their markets NTSC vs. PAL, so not only doesn't the PlayStation work with our television sets over here, none of the games you buy in Europe work with a PlayStation you bought in the US. My Christmas wish for marketing folks across the known universe is somewhat less than Christian.

The engineers skirted around their marketers with DVDs, however, so Tim's watching Star Wars. He laughed right away at the dubbing, which was done by different actors than the European French version. But the DVDs play all right now that the player is dezoned.

Emma and Diane are getting made up and trying on their dresses. Time to take more pictures.

Posted by Mark at 08:44 AM | TrackBack

December 24, 2005

Dinner for two

Nathalie decided this year we should let the children pick what they want for Christmas dinner. It's easier than trying to get them to eat what we pick, and allows us to enjoy at least part of our dinner.

She wanted me to make something special for us, however. I guess she's making the dessert, and turning out some foie gras on toast for the first entrée. My aim is to make two more dishes not too heavy, quick to prepare, and yet a sort of treat. For the second starter I settled on a salmon tartare, inspired by a recipe from a magazine Nathalie bought. It's a two-layer affair for which you get the tartare layer ready and marinating in advance. We didn't have truffles, but did have plenty of fresh ginger root:

For the top:
2 T walnut oil
1 1/2 T soy sauce
1 t sugar
1-2 T fresh ginger root
Wasabi
200 g fresh wild salmon
Paprika

For the bottom:
1/2 apple
Lemon juice
200 g celeri remoulade

Parsley (as garnish)

In advance you mince the ginger, then mix it with the oil, soy sauce, sugar for the marinade. I added a hint of wasabi since we have some. The salmon you check for bones and make sure it's dry, then chop it roughly into small cubes. The marinade was so dark I wanted a little paprika mainly for color. It should marinate apparently at least an hour in the fridge.

For the bottom you grate the apple, adding some lemon juice to avoid oxydation. Celeri remoulade is basically grated celery root that you blanch and turn into a salad by adding mayonnaise, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper. You mix the apple with that and build a bottom layer, which I'll do using the preparation ring -- don't know what it's really called -- to make a nice cylindrical pile on the plate, then I'll cover with tartare and garnish with parsley.

For the main dish, I'm doing individual beef tournedos in pastry. By keeping the pastry translucent-thin, I hope to avoid overcooking the meat. Otherwise this is basically boeuf en croute.

2 thick beef tournedos, not wrapped or trussed
2-3 T duck fat
2 small handfuls assorted mushrooms
Parsley
1 clove garlic
1 shallot
1 t dehydrated beef bouillon
1 T cognac or armagnac
80-100 g pâte feuilletée

Well in advance, brown the tournedos quickly on both sides in a very hot, dry, non-stick pan, then take them out to cool. Don't let them cook inside unless you want the beef to be well done.

Turn the heat down and add the duck fat, the mushrooms, parsley, chopped garlic and shallot. Add the beef bouilon and let these cook as the mushrooms lose their juice. Deglaze with the cognac or armagnac and let it catch fire to burn off the alcohol. Turn off the heat.

Roll equal halves of pastry out on a floured board until each is translucently thin. The pastry's not supposed to be a loaf of bread around your meat, just a crust that keeps the juices in. Put the pastry in the pan you'll put in the oven. It'll perhaps be too thin to move once you've added the meat.

Grind your mushrooms and so forth in a mixer to form a paste. Spread this paste equally on the middle of both pieces of pastry, so that each is the same size as the corresponding tournedos. Then put the tournedos on, and close the pastry. I'm guessing that I won't need extra salt and pepper because of the bouillon.

My plan is to cook this in a very hot oven and serve it with more mushrooms cooked lightly in garlic, duck fat, and seasoned with fleur de sel and fresh pepper.

Posted by Mark at 03:46 PM | TrackBack

1:33:57/164

Ran harder for the last third of this approx. 21 km route starting from the house and taking the longer loop around Pontcharra three times. This was more than 6 mintues faster than the last time I ran the same route, but my average pulse was 15 bpm higher.

Posted by Mark at 03:25 PM | TrackBack

Emma's shopping list

Look carefully at this scan of Emma's shopping list. Can you tell what we're supposed to buy?

emmas-list-20051224.jpg It's not clear whether Emma thought it would just be easier to draw her Pez dispenser with two ("2") sticks of Pez candies rather than writing "2 paquets de bonbons Pez," or whether she feared I would somehow misunderstand and perhaps come back with something she didn't want, like 2 packages of Ramen noodles.

Or a couple of transparent space mummies with a cat named Samedi who came along on the mother ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

She's handing off PostIt notes now, trying to convince her dad to build a replica of Devil's Mountain in our living room. They're coming from outer space to take us away.

Posted by Mark at 08:53 AM | TrackBack

/home at home

When I bought a new disk for the PC at home, I partitioned it right away and put the new Ubuntu on half of the new disk, leaving the old Ubuntu on the other disk. Then instead of using the existing /home, I started a new one on the new partition, leaving myself 40 GB for "files" on a second partition of the new disk.

It later occurred to me that I've been taking the wrong approach for years. $HOME never really changes. You carry it with you. Systems come and go every six months or so. Ideally I'd try out a new system probably every three months, maybe more often. The ones I want to try out on this PC, but haven't because I made such a hash of partitioning, include OpenSolaris -- Have we incorporated enough of the GNU stack yet? -- Gentoo, FreeBSD, a recent Fedora, maybe something exotic. Yet our $HOME files need to be in no danger just because I want to try out a new OS.

Backup would be simplified radically as well. I used to back up software that came from someone else. Only recently have I realized that unless you're the one making the software, you should not bother backing it up. Save your software. Save your config. Save your content. The rest you can download from somewhere. If you cannot download the software from somewhere and yet you rely on it, are you sure you're doing the right thing?

Posted by Mark at 08:34 AM | TrackBack

December 23, 2005

M is W upsidedown... well almost

Some of you notice that the little icon at MCraig.org is a serif M, reminding you of the Wikipedia.org serif W, which is actually a double V. Of course that was carefully planned like movie Satanists using upsidedown crosses.

Wikipedia delivers a valuable encyclopedic look at everything you could want to know. I deliver a worthless look at the mental equivalent of my own bellybutton lint. But the analogy is not perfect, because the kids' grandparents occasionally get a good picture, too.

Posted by Mark at 11:24 PM | TrackBack

Leaping to conclusions

Tuesday night I started seeing the darkness that comes out behind the light before you get depressed. There's a turn of mind under which whatever you perceive confirms what you suspect. I cannot think of the word for it. That turn of mind can lead you down into depression, up into mania, perhaps right into a conspiracy theory.

What is the word for that turn of mind?

A thought occurred to me then. It seemed like conspiracy theories are set up to keep us off the track of the secret organization that really controls everything. But that appeared on closer inspection to be an oversimplification. It had started to become clear I was being led to conclude a conspiracy theory of conspiracy theories by dark forces that had calculated how I would react, aiming to push me into adopting a narrow rationalist view from which the whole truth could not be glimpsed.

Manic and depressive states of mind can take on a topologically equivalent cast, the difference between coffee cups and doughnuts.

Posted by Mark at 10:53 PM | TrackBack

Constitutional, cultural differences

Nul n'est censé ignorer la loi, so you should already know this, but the current French constitution includes a prevision to legalize striking for most workers. In practice it seems like transport workers are probably more likely to strike than people in other sectors. I assume that if I ever went out on strike, my employer would either just find it amusing -- since all my work would still be there for me when I went back -- and laugh at me, or fire me on some pretext, or both. (I'm pretty sure my employer would in fact realize I was out, because the law requires that you give formal notice of your intention to strike.)

According to the BBC News, this is not the case for NYC transport workers:

The union had been faced with fines and jail terms for its leaders, as the law bans transport workers from striking.

You'd have to be in a difficult position indeed to want your crappy job so bad that you're willing to risk fines and jail for it. BBC News said the transport workers went back to work without a contract. Here in France, the talk is not about amending the constitution, but instead about mandatory minimum service. The idea is that you can continue to strike as long as you do the work anyway.

My take is that our management should go out on strike, threatening to come back only when we all agree to be easier to manage. They'd be out for quite a while, but we'd probably get a lot done in the meantime.

Posted by Mark at 09:47 PM | TrackBack

Still no Gmail, but only under Ubuntu 5.04

It's strange, I can no longer get to Gmail under Ubuntu 5.04. What is that? Some strange component problem under Firefox 1.0.7?

The interesting thing is, my Inbox gets read when I go to the personalized home page at Google. But when I try to get through to Gmail, I cannot do it.

Posted by Mark at 09:39 PM | TrackBack

How to of the day

Went to the top page of Google, where you can get a personalized home page, kind of like the portal we have at work. One of the categories I'd added was "How To" of the Day.

Today my top how to of the day is How to Write a Resignation Letter. They must've noticed we didn't get a half day off for Christmas or New Year's this year.

Posted by Mark at 04:57 PM | TrackBack

31:19/122

Very gentle jog with Karine and Phil in the late December sunshine. Hope the sun lasts and is out tomorrow.

Posted by Mark at 02:06 PM | TrackBack

December 22, 2005

The Straight Dope

Mom sent email about The Straight Dope. Slug Signorino, the illustrator, lives in the neighborhood from which Mom just moved. Apparently you can sign up there to receive jokes by email. Their claim to fame:

Fighting ignorance since 1973
(It's taking longer than we thought)

The curious coincidence is that while reponding to Dad in an email discussion, I looked up the US military budget at Google... and one of the top hits was this answer from Cecil of The Straight Dope. Here's an excerpt:

Top ten military budgets. The U.S. spends the most by far, but matters aren't as lopsided as your letter suggests. The WMEAT list (in billions): (1) U.S., $281.0; (2) mainland China, $88.9; (3) Japan, $43.2; (4) France, $38.9; (5) UK, $36.5; (6) Russia, $35.0; (7) Germany, $32.6; (8) Italy, $23.7; (9) Saudi Arabia, $21.2; (10) Taiwan, $15.2. The U.S. military, therefore, spends as much as the next six countries (not 16) combined, with just about enough change to cover Greece ($6 billion). To put it another way, the U.S. accounted for 33 percent of world military expenditures in 1999, a modest increase since Cold War days (28 percent in 1986). Sorry, no breakdown on percentage of the military budget used to suppress dissidents or otherwise deal with internal security.

Cecil's source (WMEAT) "is World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, published by the U.S. Department of State," which covers 1989-1999 and was published in 2003. According to the CIA World Fact Book entry for the US, est. 2004 military spending outlays were over $370 billion.

Posted by Mark at 09:29 PM | TrackBack

58:08/147

Got cold and uncomfortable running slowly with Jerome and Alejandro. It's freezing out there.

Posted by Mark at 03:31 PM | TrackBack

Peak oil podcast

Another interesting community radio podcast is the Dec. 1 recording of Professor Ken Deffeyes speaking about his prediction for world peak oil production. Deffeyes, a geologist, examines production trends contending, "The methods which M. King Hubbert used to predict the peak of United States oil production can now be applied to world production." (Source is the writeup at Radio4All.net, not perhaps Deffeyes exact words.) It seems Hubbert managed with his methods to predict the peak in US oil production years before it happened in the early 70s. Deffeyes is predicting the peak in world production happens on Thanksgiving Day, 2005 +- 3 weeks.

The most interesting part of Deffeyes's talk comes in the suggestions he offers for softening the impact of a peak in production. He's much more engineer than idealist, looking first to technologies like high-mileage diesel engines, coal gas, and fission-based nuclear energy sources rather than hydrogen fuel cells, solar, nuclear fusion, or drastic lifestyle changes that keep us from moving around. Furthermore, he suggests plausible ways for presently rich oil companies, who because production is peaking don't want to sink all their resources into new exploration and drilling, to get in early on these markets that will grow and should grow as alternatives to oil. His seem like ideas that fit current conditions and systems. Maybe some of them will help stave off serious recession and worse.

An interesting observation Professor Deffeyes makes in response to one of the audience questions is that combination fission/fusion reactors are probably possible today. His take on pure fusion sounded like the way we look at real-time voice translation software. It's been just around the corner for about 50 years. Perhaps an engineering compromise in that area would be a good one.

Posted by Mark at 07:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 21, 2005

2:00:07/163

Just kept going. Not sure how far. It was only starting truly to get harder near the end. That meant the run was probably starting to do some real good. I was, however, starting to get thirsty, and to develop blisters.

Posted by Mark at 03:15 PM | TrackBack

December 20, 2005

Free as in libre

Over on ZNet there's an interview with Richard Stallman, in which he explains the difference between free software and open source, and why he's for free (as in liberty) software even if in the beginning it seems tougher to use.

From a certain vantage point, he's a stranger encouraging a society of heroin addicts to dump the pushers and the dope. In the beginning it might be a little rough, but you'll get over it.

The interviewer admits ZNet runs on non-free software, has a hard time believing they'll be able to kick the habit. This is ZNet, "The Spirit of Resistance Lives."

Somewhere there's a fortune cookie that sums it all up. Some people look at the most amazing things human beings know how to do, and they see us making progress. Pushing the envelope. In fact that sort of progress is slow and fraught with setbacks. Real progress comes when we know how to do something so well we don't have to think about it. There's a lot of real progress we still have to make.

Posted by Mark at 09:46 PM | TrackBack

34:08/133

Slow 6 1/2 km, chatting with Phil. Nice day.

Posted by Mark at 02:18 PM | TrackBack

December 19, 2005

Video capture, part XXIV

vid-20051219.jpg When I told Fabio about my problem with transcode hanging, he suggested I use ffmpeg.

This wiki entry from Gentoo meant I didn't even have to read the man page.

Wow! ffmpeg takes considerably less time than the way I was doing it before. The resulting MPEG still seems okay. Here's what I did:

$ for file in *.dv
> do ffmpeg -i $file -target svcd `basename $file .dv`.mpg
> done
$ vcdimager -t svcd *.mpg
$ cdrecord -v -dao dev=/dev/hdc cuefile=videocd.cue

vid2-20051219.jpg I am getting some slight wrongness, however, with audio dropouts in addition to a little bit of video noise. I wonder if part of that is taking 8.2 GB of digital video down to 700 MB, or whether it's because the cassette was in the camera for 6 months and got damaged. We haven't been shooting as much video as we used to.

UPDATE: No, it's not the original DV. Must be ffmpeg taking short cuts. It's good to know that if I ever go back and edit all this, the raw content is more perfect than the editor ;-)

BTW, Fabio told me that if I really wanted to do much editing, I should give in and get a Mac.

UPDATE 2: The problem's not apparently in the SVCD, but just in our player downstairs. Looks fine in Totem Movie Player under Ubuntu 5.10.

Posted by Mark at 09:49 PM | TrackBack

Browser as resource hog

You use it all the time, and it burns through lots of resources. Your web browser.

As I write this entry, I have one browser window open. I'm also downloading a file. Alongside that, I'm converting some digital video files to MPEG.

Firefox is burning through about 1/3 as much CPU as ffmpeg! While I use it to enter some text in a form, and download a single MP3 file. In the last half hour or so, Firefox has burned through about 8 minutes of CPU time, 4x what Xorg uses.

Posted by Mark at 09:30 PM | TrackBack

Community radio podcasts

After dropping mom off, I listened to a podcast from New Zealand in a series called "Under the Radar." The interview was with Nicky Hager, an author who's written on a number of issues including PR campaigns and tactics employed.

As I listened, Nicky said if you end up in a situation where you expose underhanded political action by paid PR professionals, their first tactic will be to paint themselves and their clients as victims. Their second tactic will be to move to discredit your work by getting "impartial" third-party testimony aimed at weakening whatever you've said based on your evidence. Almost never will they examine the actual evidence itself to argue directly with the logic of your argument.

The first time I went to Radio4All.net was to get some of the Wizards of Money episodes, but it was mentioned by the folks who recorded Robert Fisk talking. Interesting idea. They have all manner of podcasts there. Some are better than others. Seems like they must have a sort of "more the merrier" approach to uploads. I guess you just ignore the noise.

Posted by Mark at 09:02 PM | TrackBack

Flying back home

Took Mom to the airport in Lyon this morning. We left after she was able to say goodbye to everyone. She flew out and should be most of the way back into the US by now. Hope it goes well.

The children were sad to see her go, but happy to be on vacation today. They went to the Christmas market in Chambery where they found a Mongolian display from the sound of it. Timothee was wondering what it would be like to live in a yurt. Emma figured it would be cold.

Diane had understood the idea that Mamie Teena was going home. She's been asking when we're going to see her other grandmother, Mamie Colette. She's convinced for some reason that we'll have lots of candy on the train trip.

Posted by Mark at 08:56 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

24:02/173

6.5 km hard fartlek in sunny, cold weather. Started off with Eric and Karine, but went a different route.

Posted by Mark at 03:26 PM | TrackBack

December 18, 2005

Video capture, part XXIII

Transcode, by the way, is hanging converting raw digital video instead of .avi files. Not for each file, but since the only solution I've found that works is kill -9 pid, I need to perhaps export these clips to .avi. Too bad I cannot fix it before Mom goes home.

Posted by Mark at 05:25 PM | TrackBack

Model bowling alley

Tim's been building a model bowling alley, though we don't think he's ever actually gone bowling.

tim-20051218.jpg

He made pins out of that plastic modelling dough you fire by heating it for half an our in a warm oven.

Posted by Mark at 04:11 PM | TrackBack

Video capture, part XXII

Many CLI video processing tools are worse than ldapsearch. Check out the list of options in the man page synopsis for transcode:

transcode(1)                                                      transcode(1)

NAME
transcode - LINUX video stream processing tool

SYNOPSIS
transcode [ -i name ] [ -H n ] [ -p file ]
[ -x vmod[,amod] ] [ -a a[,v] ] [ --dvd_access_delay N ]
[ -e r[,b[,c]] ] [ -E r[,b[,c]] ] [ -n 0xnn ] [ -N 0xnn ]
[ -b b[,v[,q[,m]]] ] [ --no_audio_adjust ]
[ --no_bitreservoir ] [ --lame_preset name[,fast] ]
[ -g wxh ] [ --import_asr C ] [ --export_asr C ]
[ --export_par N,D ] [ --keep_asr ] [ -f rate[,frc] ]
[ --export_fps f[,c] ] [ --export_frc F ] [ --hard_fps ]
[ -o file ] [ -m file ] [ -y vmod[,amod] ] [ -F codec ]
[ --avi_limit N ] [ --avi_comments F ] [ -d ]
[ -s g[,c[,f[,r]]] ] [ -u m[,n] ] [ -A ] [ -V ] [ --uyvy ]
[ --use_rgb ] [ -J f1[,f2[,...]] ] [ -P flag ] [ -D num ]
[ --av_fine_ms t ] [ -M mode ] [ -O ] [ -r n[,m] ]
[ -B n[,m[,M]] ] [ -X n[,m[,M]] ] [ -Z wxh[,fast] ]
[ --zoom_filter str ] [ -C mode ] [ --antialias_para w,b ]
[ -I mode ] [ -K ] [ -G val ] [ -z ] [ -l ] [ -k ]
[ -j t[,l[,b[,r]]] ] [ -Y t[,l[,b[,r]]] ]
[ --pre_clip t[,l[,b[,r]]] ] [ --post_clip t[,l[,b[,r]]] ]
[ -w b[,k[,c]] ] [ --video_max_bitrate ]
[ -R n[,f1[,f2]] ] [ -Q n[,m] ] [ --divx_quant min,max ]
[ --divx_rc p,rp,rr ] [ --divx_vbv_prof N ]
[ --divx_vbv br,sz,oc ] [ -c f1-f2[,f3-f4] ] [ -t n,base ]
[ --dir_mode base ] [ --frame_interval N ] [ -U base ]
[ -T t[,c[-d][,a]] ] [ -W n,m[,file] ]
[ --cluster_percentage use ] [ --cluster_chunks a-b ]
[ -S unit[,s1-s2] ] [ -L n ] [ --import_v4l n[,id] ]
[ --pulldown ] [ --encode_fields ] [ --nav_seek file ]
[ --psu_mode ] [ --psu_chunks a-b ] [ --no_split ]
[ --ts_pid 0xnn ] [ --a52_drc_off ] [ --a52_demux ]
[ --a52_dolby_off ] [ --print_status N[,r] ]
[ --progress_off ] [ --color N ] [ --write_pid file ]
[ --nice N ] [ --accel type ] [ --socket file ]
[ --dv_yuy2_mode ] [ --config_dir dir ] [ --ext vid,aud ]
[ --export_prof S ] [ -q level ] [ -h ] [ -v ]

Makes you want to do something else, doesn't it? Like lie down and forget the whole thing.

Posted by Mark at 03:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Video capture, part XXI

capture-20051218.jpg Mom finished the last of source cassette number 11 today. I'm now transferring the digital video to disk.

It seems Kino now has three point editing. Maybe it had it before. There won't be time to do more than process the raw content to MPEG and burn it onto SVCD for Mom. A few more years of progress in cheap storage and I'll be able to transfer the raw content onto something that's random access for video editing whenever I have time.

emma-20051218.jpg Trouble is, video editing, at least for me, is not something I can do while regularly interrupted. Not enough of a science. Instead it's like trying to imagine a sort of story based on the footage you have, then sculpting the story together, but without enough technique to do a part then set it aside. If set aside, it just gets forgotten. A shame that the first time in your life you have videos to edit -- when you have small children -- is the time of your life when you're almost constantly debilitated by interruptions.

Posted by Mark at 03:12 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Tim wanted me to tell you

Tim wanted me to tell you something he found out about Christmas parties at work, and the corresponding uptick in copier repair calls to replace the scanner plate. Did he read this at The Register?

We understand that Canon has recently increased its glass plate thickness from 4 to 5mm, and accordingly expects a reduction in arse-induced failure. No, that is not an invitation for drunken pressure testing. Behave yourselves.

I don't think we have this sort of Christmas party at most workplaces in France.

Posted by Mark at 10:25 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Vitamin D as a potential ergogenic aid

BBC News online is running an article about findings that suggest higher levels of vitamin D correlate with healthier lungs. It's not clear yet whether taking in more vitamin D by eating foods high in vitamin D or taking supplements would help.

It's also not clear whether high levels of vitamin D would help you run faster. Has anybody even been looking into it?

Well, I noticed something at the end of the article about vitamin D. Not only is it produced by the body exposed to sunlight, but:

It is also contained in a few foods including oily fish, fish oils, butter and eggs.

So I'll volunteer for the study where you sit around eating smoked salmon and cookies, then run on the treadmill.

Posted by Mark at 10:12 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 17, 2005

40:26/153

8 km (5 mi) over to Chapareillan and back. Probably slower than I should run, but felt tired. I cannot go to the run in Crolles this afternoon, as Nath's having some friends over, and I'm supposed to be here.

Posted by Mark at 01:12 PM | TrackBack

How much for Christmas

The Gmail RSS feed led to an article on Ask Yahoo! about how much people in the US spend on average on holiday gifts.

Can't wait? Answer: $835 on average. "As Myvesta.org points out, many spend 'out of proportion' to their income."

Posted by Mark at 10:04 AM | TrackBack

Intellectual terrorism

Riding back from taking the kids to school, I turned on the radio. France Inter was playing one of those political talk shows where they have one middle aged guy from right of center, one from left. The two have a moderated series of arguments with each other about political faits divers, curious happenings that pass for news because they're easy to discuss in vehement fashion.

The topic of French legislation and teaching history came up. In case you don't know, the French parliament occasionnally finds itself writing laws about what history must be. The exact fait divers I've forgotten, something like the French parliament voting that history teachers must insist upon the positive aspects of French colonization. That may seem strangely totalitarian out of context, like the law about no ostensible religious garments in public institutions.

What caught my ear was one of the guys accusing unspecified historians of terrorisme intellectuel. I wondered how one might define intellectual terrorism. The definition of intellectual is different at least in connotation from intellectuel, but perhaps, "of or relating to the intellect," is safely true for both (source: WordNet), where intellect is, "knowledge and intellectual ability," or, "the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination," (source: WordNet).

Wikipedia has a whole list of definitions for terrorism. Sidestepping the question of what a word means when there's so much discussion and disagreement about its very definition, let's choose one that's close, about terrorist offenses, from the European Union since the guy using it is a centrist in a pro-EU political climate:

Terrorist offences can be defined as offences intentionally committed by an individual or a group against one or more countries, their institutions or people, with the aim of intimidating them and seriously altering or destroying the political, economic, or social structures of a country.

According to Wikipedia, the EU didn't manage to define the word terrorism itself. So let me try to patch this one together for intellectual terrorism:

Expressions of rational thought aimed against one or more countries, institutions, or people, with intent to intimidate or seriously alter political, economic, or social structures of a country.

That must not be right. By that definition, laws are intellectual terrorism. I can see why the EU had difficulty coming to agreement.

Posted by Mark at 09:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 16, 2005

1:30:05/150

3/1 run for 19.6 km around Pontcharra, including three stops to drink and one relatively long wait for a train. (Took today off work.) The cold, humid wind didn't bring snow until I'd almost finished. But it felt cold the whole time.

My legs were wooden and tired. Before setting out, I was thinking of doing another lap to make it 24.5 km. Hal Higdon wrote, "Most coaches feel that once you reach 16 miles, you're in long-run territory." So even a 15-miler wouldn't be enough. Probably should be doing two 26+ km runs per week, but am not sure I'm up to it right now. I've been running and cycling too hard this week, and was too underdressed even with hat and gloves to appreciate any of it today.

Posted by Mark at 01:51 PM | TrackBack

Wave of dementia

According to a BBC News article, the wave of dementia is coming as the population ages. The editor picked a photo of old Chinese folks to illustrate the growing trend, because China is expected to be hardest hit.

According to Wikipedia, dementia is:

Progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be expected from normal aging. Particularly affected areas may be memory, attention, language and problem solving.

Like, Dude, I know some people who caught this wave early, Dude.

Posted by Mark at 08:32 AM | TrackBack

The Daily Drucker

daily-drucker.jpg Dad has given me several books by Peter Drucker, described in the jacket of the The Daily Drucker as "the top management thinker alive today." (He was alive when the book was published.)

Peter Drucker certainly wrote and thought a lot about management, from the 1930s until the end of his life this year at age 95. He saw some trends apparently long before others, like the post WWII transition of the economy from being propelled primarily by physical industrial activity to being pushed ahead as well and perhaps primarily by what Drucker calls knowledge work.

Those who see themselves as managers would do well to read Drucker's work, but I doubt they should buy this particular book first. Each day's entry comes without its original context. Drucker can be tough to follow out of context, because his arguments build on observations and things he worked out in the past. These pieces may be forceful, but they're not parables. (In fact, it was the bookmark ribbon that made this book really hard to start. Even my NRSV Bible has no bookmark ribbon.)

Furthermore, the content is marred by the ACTION POINT summary suggestions on each page. Granted, the executive no doubt should do some of the activities suggested, but quite a few of them overinterpret what you just read, weakening the very Yancy-like effect Drucker is supposed to have on you. If you leave your thinking up to someone else to the extent proposed, you're a very dangerous manager indeed. Shut down your IM and your email, turn off your phone and your television, and give yourself time to think.

All that aside, The Daily Drucker provokes thinking. You cannot help but think when reading Drucker, which is why I missed the context. When he advances, as in the November 18 entry, "Like every other institution that coordinates human efforts to a social end, the corporation must be organized on hierarchical lines," enquiring minds want to know how he came to that conclusion. When he talks about a "free and equal society," do I just gobble that down, despite the evidence that my interactions under capitalism -- mainly working, investing, buying, selling -- are governed by feudal rules? The answers aren't in here.

As a survey of Drucker's thinking, I presume this book is not too bad, however, meaning it's very good. There is a lot to work with here, a lot of challenges posed.

Posted by Mark at 08:02 AM | TrackBack

Television incapacitates

Mom said the first day full she was here, the kids were ready to go to school 7 or 8 minutes ahead of time. Tim reasoned, "I guess it's because we didn't watch television this morning."

When Emma got up today at 7:08 am, she turned on the tube. Tim got up and fell on the couch almost without noticing I was there. It wasn't an evil program, just Sesame Street in translation. It was hard getting them to the table to eat their toast and drink their juice and milk, mainly because it's tough to pry their attention away from the television set.

When I took Diane a bottle of warm milk, and Nathalie her wake up cup of hot coffee, I left Tim and Emma in front of their toast. Five minutes later, Emma had managed to butter one square inch of toast. Tim had managed nothing. His toast was untouched. They had been almost completely incapacitated by television.

Watch out. It could be happening to you. You won't notice it either.

Posted by Mark at 07:54 AM | TrackBack

Reading light

moon-20051216.jpg The little headlight I clip onto my handlebars has a tendency to die pitifully, always at the beginning of the ride back to the train at night. I have not yet learned to anticipate how long the charge will last.

But last night, as this morning early, the moon was so bright and the sky so clear it almost didn't matter. This morning in particular one could read a book in the moonlight. Last night it was very slightly cloudy at about 7 pm when I rode home, though. I wondered what would happen if some utility vehicle had dropped a load of wood or bricks and forgot to pick them up before sundown. Or if a limb had fallen off a tree along the trail. Or if the cold had caused one of the persistent puddles to ice over right in the middle of a trail.

Posted by Mark at 07:48 AM | TrackBack

December 15, 2005

Gmail timing out

Not sure why, but I'm having regular trouble getting through to Gmail from home the last couple of weeks. Firefox waits and waits, then times out. Ping's okay:

$ ping gmail.google.com
PING gmail.l.google.com (72.14.205.107) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 72.14.205.107: icmp_seq=1 ttl=239 time=167 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.107: icmp_seq=2 ttl=239 time=167 ms

--- gmail.l.google.com ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 167.005/167.055/167.105/0.050 ms
$

Maybe I should Google for the answer? (Update: "gmail not responding" first hit is for a mail Subject: slapd not responding to sasl_bind. Hmm.)

Posted by Mark at 10:28 PM | TrackBack

Short deadline

After uncovering a misunderstanding in the team that left us without much time to put things right, I volunteered to hack through a whole new document in a few hours. It ended up taking me a couple of days to get everything done and in place, but was refreshing to have a short, stretch deadline for a change, rather than longer ones.

In a short race you don't have to pace yourself as much. You also can leave email until after the race. I'm not sure that was the best part, thought.

The most fun I had was learning about, playing with, and then explaining a new part of the product I was only vaguely familiar with as late as last Tuesday. It's actually really cool. Too bad we cannot go public with it, yet.

Posted by Mark at 10:12 PM | TrackBack

Christmas at work

Yesterday the CE at Sun had the annual Christmas party for kids. We'd ordered their presents in June. Teko was Santa Claus; kind of funny for the kids to have a young, althletically built, black Santa.

Diane got a tent with plastic balls to kick around inside. Emma got a set of things to fix her hair. Tim got a microscope. Emma was terribly jealous. I told her not to worry, that Tim would soon forget about it and she would get a chance to use the microscope. But it's tough to wait when you're 6.

They also had a movie, complete with popcorn, for the big kids. For the little ones they had a special spectacle. Mom says it was too long. The kids were all up moving around and losing interest after the first half hour.

Posted by Mark at 10:06 PM | TrackBack

38:22/144

7 km recovery run at an easy pace. First half conversationally with other guys. The sun was out today, but not enough to warm things up much. We could see snow on the mountains.

Posted by Mark at 01:52 PM | TrackBack

December 14, 2005

1:20:43/173

In a hurry. Was somewhat overwhelmed at work today.

This was a fairly steady pace from a couple of minutes after I started, running the approx. 18 km route. Starting from a heart rate of about 68 bpm, I spent only 2:25 in the < 85% max. heart rate zone. Will need to go a longer route to reach 90 minutes though, even if I do slow down.

Posted by Mark at 08:23 PM | TrackBack

December 13, 2005

Music for running, part VI

american-beauty.gif For a lot of the uphill part of today's run there was a strong lactate burn in the top of my stomach. When I got to the peak of the shortcut most of the way uphill, I was also gasping. They've been feeding me cheese at home, first raclette, then pizza.

You figure a lot of Jerry Garcia's suffering was in the downhill parts of whatever he did to himself. Whatever it was there's a certain relativism in the face of discomfort that comes through the music. Most of the songs are inspired as well.

Posted by Mark at 10:10 PM | TrackBack

39:09/169

Hard uphill to Rochasson (8 km?). Back down I did something odd to my left shoulder, but it's okay now as far as I can tell.

Posted by Mark at 06:10 PM | TrackBack

December 12, 2005

Music for running, part V

wish-you-were-here.gif Icy cold air, gray skies, this album. There's something about the bell-like Stratocaster sound that lends itself well to that atmosphere.

The Wall, in particular Comfortably Numb, reminds me not of seeing the concert in Berlin, but instead of raking leaves in the dead of Terre Haute winter at Rose-Hulman.

This one's less despairing, and less exhausting than The Wall, less cynical, and less polished than Animals. A little too smooth, still, but easy to listen to as you jog along.

Posted by Mark at 10:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Quick slideshow, part II

Quick slideshow, but not too quick. I decided just to guess at the number of frames to hold each photo. Five, about 5 photos/sec, was too quick. Half that fast is okay for us. We have lots of duplicates. Laziness gave me this:

#!/bin/bash
for item in `ls ${1}/dsc[0-9]*.jpg`
do
convert $item /tmp/`basename ${item} .jpg`.ppm
done

rm /tmp/list.photos
touch /tmp/list.photos
for j in `ls /tmp/*.ppm`
do
for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
do
echo $j >> /tmp/list.photos
done
done

cat /tmp/list.photos | xargs -n1 cat | ppmtoy4m | mpeg2enc -o $2.m1v

I wonder if it's worth rewriting for configurability. Takes longer to run the script than to write it. The first MPEG compilation is diane.m1v (16 MB).

Posted by Mark at 09:42 PM | TrackBack

Snatched

Nathalie called me this afternoon. Her purse had been snatched while she was shopping.

Whoever did it got about 10 euros in cash, but, because she was carrying my car papers, which I carry next to my tickets restaurant, the thief also got about 27 x 8 euros in tickets. He might not be able to buy drugs with them, but at least he'll be in good shape if he gets the munchies.

The worst part of this is that given the amount of stuff Nathalie had in her purse, it's going to be a huge chore to replace IDs, credit cards, discount cards, passport, address book, agenda, etc.

She was out when this happened of course, so I called school to tell them she might be late picking up the kids. The teacher I mentioned it to announced what I'd said to her, approximately verbatim, to both Tim's and Emma's classes. So when Nathalie did make it back in time to pick up the kids, everyone in Barraux asked her about it, was she all right, and so forth.

Posted by Mark at 08:56 PM | TrackBack

Google transit

Google Transit looks like a cool idea. Unfortunately it's like Google Maps. Doesn't work in France.

Posted by Mark at 08:37 PM | TrackBack

27:34/167

About 7 km, last ran it in 28:28, curiously with a higher heart rate. If this continues, by summer 2006 I'll be running at light speed with a pulse of 40.

Posted by Mark at 01:38 PM | TrackBack

Snow

Metcheck.com has predicted more for this week. But it should only be like Indianapolis and Ann Arbor up in the mountains. Matt and Dad had huge quantities of powder to sweep away.

Here Kevin LeMay told me he went skiiing this weekend. Once you get above the clouds apparently it's beautiful blue with lots of fresh snow.

Posted by Mark at 11:43 AM | TrackBack

Over to bash at work

Switched my default shell to bash last week. For quite a while I've been using tcsh at work, bash at home. Wonder why I was doing that. Must've been something about what was installed by default.

Posted by Mark at 10:51 AM | TrackBack

New stop in Lancey

The train was 10 minutes late this morning. I descended in Lancey up the road from Didier's house, where they're fixed up the station to open it to the public.

The ride's about as far as the ride from Gières, but unfortunately on a more travelled road. Felt like I was breathing salt for the first 3 km. Then I picked the wrong trail along the Isère. Should either have turned left before the bridge, or stayed on the foot path. The path for cars and trucks was like Minnesota, Land o' Lakes.

So cold my fingers hurt, then hurt more when I got to work and warmed them up. Had me gritting my teeth. Maybe somebody makes cycling mittens.

Posted by Mark at 10:36 AM | TrackBack

December 11, 2005

Quick slideshow?

For each of the children, we have a bunch of JPEG photos all the same size, taken with the camcorder.

I found some doc on how to convert JPEG to MPEG, and wrote a short conversion script. (All the photos start with "dsc")

#!/bin/bash
for item in `ls ${1}/dsc*.jpg`
do
  convert $item /tmp/`basename ${item} .jpg`.ppm
done

ls /tmp/*.ppm | xargs -n1 cat | ppmtoy4m | mpeg2enc -o mpegfile.m1v

Trouble is, this is one image per frame of the MPEG. At that rate it's just a mess. Is there a trick to slowing it down? Just cat each image a few times?

Posted by Mark at 05:36 PM | TrackBack

Christmas pageant

audience-20051211.jpg stage-20051211.jpg

snowman-20051211.jpg mayor-20051211.jpg

I now know how Vettier got on the inside track as mayor: His brother is none other than Santa Claus himself.

Posted by Mark at 04:55 PM | TrackBack

Must haves, part II

Metcheck.com predicts a wet week in Grenoble. But the commute should be all right. See the mud guards:

bike-20051211.jpg

More worrying is the chain, which is already rusted. Hope it lasts the winter. I only clean it once a week. Probably should do that every night the weather is wet.

The SNCF is opening the station in Lancey today. Same distance to work, but 8-9 minutes less train ride. It's not clear however that I'll want to take the train from Lancey in the evenings. The 18h33 from Gières runs straight through to Pontcharra, whereas anything that stops in Lancey also stops everywhere along the way except for the stations that are normally closed to the public.

Posted by Mark at 12:29 PM | TrackBack

Fearful symmetries

Some time ago Mom sent a photocopy with pictures of Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, and Vivien Leigh.

Famous photographs of these three had been transformed to show how famous faces are not necessarily symmetric.

Yet as you can see from the gimp'd photos on this page, only part of the asymmetries are due to the faces themselves. A complete explanation of the asymmetric faces accounts for the slight angle from which the photographer shot the view.

I've put together a (large, 1 MB) page showing pictures of the 6 of us here to explain what I mean.

Posted by Mark at 10:53 AM | TrackBack

Old four eyes

tim-underwater-20051211.jpg

(By special request from Tim)

Posted by Mark at 09:59 AM | TrackBack

December 10, 2005

Symmetric Emmas

emma-20051210.jpg (Click to enlarge)

emma-left-20051210.jpg

emma-right-20051210.jpg

Posted by Mark at 02:53 PM | TrackBack

Symmetric Tims

From an idea Mom got out of a book...

tim-20051210.jpg (Click to enlarge)

tim-left-20051210.jpg

tim-right-20051210.jpg

Posted by Mark at 02:48 PM | TrackBack

1:40:13/149

Easy pace, roughly 21 km. Cold, but not too uncomfortably so. I didn't drink until I got back but was all right. Mom stayed with Diane.

Posted by Mark at 02:41 PM | TrackBack

Broken trunk

A picture of the broken trunk door.

trunk-20051210.jpg

You cannot see this well but it's resting on a propane bottle. The guy doing the repairs found a dark metallic green replacement. Just in time for Christmas.

Posted by Mark at 02:38 PM | TrackBack

NTP for biological clocks?

Nodded off at about 10 pm last night. Woke up before 4 am this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. My mind and throat were bothering me. I need NTP for my biological clock.

Last night when I arrived, thankfully dry, at the station in Gières I experienced a moment of passing stupidity. In contrast to most moments (hours?, weeks?) of transiently low IQ, this one was particularly strange. I stood fumbling with my backpack, having great difficulty putting my gloves in there and taking my helmet off. Yet some part of me was also there calmly watching from the outside, noticing helplessly my diminishing mental faculties. That part of me got the other part of me to open Will Self's book and try to read as an experiment. The experiment confirmed my inability to read.

I'd been taking no drugs or medication. Just freezing my backside in the icy water for the last couple of days. The episode ended in the train and I was able to read again.

Posted by Mark at 07:16 AM | TrackBack

The Quanity Theory of Insanity

quanity-theory-of-insanity.jpg Casting about for lighter reading as I trundle through The Daily Drucker, a collection of excerpts from writings of the late management guru Peter F. Drucker, I went back to Borges (of course), then to briefly to Lewis Caroll, and came around again to Will Self's short story, The Quanity Theory of Insanity.

This fictional autobiographical account of how Harold Ford painstakingly lumbered towards the Quantity Theory, and how he then recoiled from its shameless exploitation by what he clearly sees as lesser and more compromising intellects. Besides the clinical brillance with which Self demolishes the protagonist in his very own words, the story fits quite well with each of the five others in the book, meanwhile poking great fun at researchers everywhere. Next time you see this in the public library, sit down for an hour and enjoy yourself.

Posted by Mark at 07:04 AM | TrackBack

A man's gotta do...

...what a man's gotta do. Some of it may not be palatable. I got up from the dinner table last night to empty a mouse trap. The mouse had gone for the bit of reblochon. Its head had been partly crushed by the thick wire of the spring, just above the neck. Its dark eyes were wide open. They seemed to look into mine as I took the trap outside in the dark to toss the limp body into the bushes.

But may there are things a man's gotta do that on reflection he doesn't really gotta. Take for instance this BBC News story of a guy who shot a 73 year-old nun dead. It was in self defense, according to the guy who did the shooting. Dorothy Stang said, "The weapon I have is this," and pulled a Bible on him.

This was not the first explanation advanced by the defense, however. According to the story, the killers first said they shot her several times close up while she was reading from the Bible. Furthermore:

Many landowners in the area have openly argued that Sister Dorothy's murder was in legitimate defence of property.

So maybe there was a bit more going on behind the scenes.

Posted by Mark at 06:47 AM | TrackBack

Must haves

My Christmas list is short:

Depending on the weather, I may not be able to wait for the big day to open the presents.

The rear mud guard's almost a bare necessity when the road is wet. A strategically placed indentation in the rear of my bicycle saddle causes the stream of frigid, gritty water to result in a chill probably more effective than the most drastic of cold showers. Good thing we already had as many children as planned.

Posted by Mark at 06:40 AM | TrackBack

December 09, 2005

46:25/150

About 10 km with Nigel and Eric. I ran harder at one point in the middle, but very comfortably most of the time.

Posted by Mark at 01:37 PM | TrackBack

Every job as contracting

Forbes.com has an article about workplace covenants, whereby boss and bossed write down what they expect of each other as a way to get clear in advance about what is expect.

What would "constant improvement" look like on the boss side? Who gets to decide when it's time to renegotiate? Why the heck aren't we already doing this? (I thought we were.)

Posted by Mark at 10:20 AM | TrackBack

December 08, 2005

DSL eligibility

Tested our telephone lines at DegroupTest.com. Their tests show the same results as what I've seen in the past, which is that France Telecom can give us nothing better than 512Kb. 58.76 dB attenuation on both lines, each 5202 meters from the hookup.

The sys admins at work are still suggesting Free.fr instead of France Telecom, mainly because Free's pushed the DSL envelope lots harder than France Telecom. Pierre says Free's starting to introduce 100Mb lines in metropolitan areas. The pricing seems to be identical. Maybe I'll go ahead.

Posted by Mark at 08:18 PM | TrackBack

35:22/140

A bit of fresh air for 6 km with Joanne up to the N 90 around through Montbonnot and back down again.

Posted by Mark at 04:18 PM | TrackBack

Adverse weather

The commute was reminiscent of the marathon in Lyon. Snow mixed with rain, strong winds, more mud puddles than semi-dry patches. Was already chilled just leaving the train station. Need to go beyond windbreaking fabric to GoreTex. And get the Comité d'entreprise to buy us a clothes dryer.

Posted by Mark at 08:55 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 07, 2005

SolBook with Emacs & PSGML

At work we have a great simplified DocBook subset DTD called SolBook. Internally we use tools on the network to perform checks and automate many tasks.

Sometimes I'm not on the network at work. Other times I have jobs that seem easier when done in a general purpose text editor. So I use Emacs & PSGML. I've started writing notes on the setup for SolBook (in SolBook).

If you can help with the chapters on customization or setting things up on Windows, let me know.

Posted by Mark at 10:14 PM | TrackBack

Peanut butter cookies

Here's a recipe I'm trying. Not sure where Nathalie got this one.

1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

Mix butter, sugars, and egg. Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt separately. Mix dry and wet ingredients together. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Heat oven to 375 F (190 C). Roll teaspoon sized balls to flatten with a fork, two strokes at right angles. It seems to work better if you flatten the cookies in the palm of your hand rather than on the cookie sheet. Cook 10 to 12 minutes until dry but not hard.

Posted by Mark at 09:03 PM | TrackBack

Just visiting

Mom arrived a while ago, safe and sound, but without luggage. When she and Nathalie opened the trunk to get some stuff out, one of the trunk hinges broke. As they struggled with the trunk door, the other hinge broke, so in the end the whole trunk door broke off the Xantia and is now sitting in the garage. I don't have any pictures yet.

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1:30:01/160

Hope that was about as far as Sunday's run.

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December 06, 2005

When you've been in France too long

Nathalie spent all evening online, shopping for beads. That's why I'm on here after my bedtime.

I know I've been in France too long now. They're running Le Père Noöl est une ordure for the 25th time on television. I caught myself laughing out loud. Pretty soon they'll find me sitting there with Michel happily guffawing away at Louis de Funès.

Posted by Mark at 11:20 PM | TrackBack

A Widow for One Year

widow-for-one-year.jpg A Widow for One Year by John Irving is another one Ludo lent me. This book was sitting on my night table for a very long time, probably because the cover and title somehow made me uncomfortable. Once I started reading, I finished the 668 pp. book in less than a week.

Must give up reading novels by good writers. Borges's short story on Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius finishes with the author revising "an uncertain Quevedian translation (which I do not intend to publish)" of a minor work by Sir Thomas Browne. I went back to man pages covering replica and replication agreement configuration.

Irving, as much as Kingsolver a couple weeks ago, shows me even his minor characters are more alive than I am. Then as if to rub it in, he's writing about writers writing about writers writing, demonstrating the difference between telling a story and recounting your own life. (In this sense his book, with it's infuriatingly well-placed parenthetical summaries of people's motives, things you should've figured out for yourself already, is even technical documentation, telling the reader how to write.) If only the same sick impulse that lets me run many miles a week could force a man to write!

Anyway, the book left me turning the pages, glad the train was delayed this morning so I had more time to read. Sorry, Ludo, for taking so long with it.

Posted by Mark at 11:01 PM | TrackBack

And speaking of animals

Now I know why I'm not very observant. Overwrought with tension from reading too many novels lately, I made the mistake of people watching this morning while waiting for the late train. There were the usual folks I recognize. One very neat, proper looking man with small round glasses was cursing the SNCF because the train was late, although the station attendant had explained the lateness was due to une intervention de la police in Montmélian. (That had me wondering if I'd correctly signed my weekly ticket.) The man's companion was standing near him. It was unclear whether she'd decided she should look worried because the train was late, or because her friend (husband?) was obviously going to suffer the consequences of his rage, perhaps getting high blood pressure or perspiring in his scrupulously clean shirt.

A couple of women in their late forties or early fifties looked more composed, even amused. They could've been thinking about Christmas shopping. It could even have been my ridiculous looking super hero riding costume covered with mud droplets from the descent to Pontcharra.

Or it could've been what happened when another, younger female cyclist showed up on her bike. First one guy who looked a few years older than me looked her up and down from behind. But that was rather subtle, compared to the adolescent boy who stood maybe two yards a way from her, checking her out, mesmerized.

I'd swore off lecherous staring for the new year if I didn't already have a resolution in mind. Instead I got out my book, shooting a few glances askance to see if there was a rock we gentlemen could crawl under temporarily.

Halfway to work from the station in Gières, I saw a puppy looking at a hen to chase. I swear the dog had the same stare as the boy.

Posted by Mark at 10:40 PM | TrackBack

Mouse in the house

We have an univited guest. I chased it around the bedroom yesterday, but halfheartedly. Couldn't figure out how to catch the tiny animal to put it outside.

Nathalie and Emma were mortified. For a moment I thought Nath was going to crawl up on my shoulders. I wonder if she'll buy a mousetrap.

There's certainly enough crumbs for a mouse to last the winter if not. In fact, there's probably enough food in Diane's booster chair for a mouse to last the winter.

Posted by Mark at 10:36 PM | TrackBack

Jammin' in Jamaica

jammin-in-jamaica.jpg Diane's favorite movie of the moment. This one took over from Disney's Mulan and Robin Hood.

In this 2002 short DVD film, Jammin' in Jamaica™, Mattel™ has Barbie™ in a quandry: how does she get her parents to fly her to Jamaica where her boyfriend's band is playing in something called the Beat the Beat™ contest, so they can win a recording contract with some groovy record guy (who I suspect is the return of the son of one of those executives from Joe's Garage).

Anyway Diane is so into the intrigue, wherein Barbie gets to Jamaica to hang at the beach, party (no sex, no drugs, just rock & roll), and do some cool shopping with her friends who are all shaped like her and dress more or less like her although they ostensibly belong to various strains of the human race, as do their boyfriends who look more or less alike. Some of them even have accents, but of course no one is overweight and every adolescent's skin is immaculate.

Could you guess it has a happy ending? Diane watches this one about twice a day lately.

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36:34/169

If this really was 8 km, it represents an outrageously high level of effort for the speed. Not sure what happened. It was a very uneven run.

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December 05, 2005

28:28/172

7 km with some relatively hard running once I got going. Still don't feel completely well.

Posted by Mark at 02:20 PM | TrackBack

Winter commute

Rain's better than snow and ice. When I got to work, though, they asked me if I'd come cross country, like I'd swept the muddy water away with my face. Hope it doesn't freeze this evening.

Mick and Jeanne have agreed to let me sleep over before the Paris half-marathon in March. Now all I need is a recent certificat medical. If I go in to see the doctor right now, my cough might be taken as a reason not to run. Still cannot quite completely catch my breath.

Posted by Mark at 09:01 AM | TrackBack

December 04, 2005

Christmas decorations

christmas1-20041204.jpg While I was out running around Pontcharra, Nathalie was putting up the Christmas tree and other Christmas decorations this morning with the help of her three little elves. Apparently the short Norman Christmas tree we bought this year did not lose its needles already, as did some of the others. Some people opened their trees to find them brown and needleless.

christmas2-20041204.jpg The Christmas tree does look more like a bush to me than a tree, however. It's as wide as it is tall, and a little lopsided. I guess if it were a bush it would be thicker. We didn't want to get a really tall one because they take up so much space. Nathalie was strongly against my idea of buying a small, pre-decorated tree in a box, though. If I were a kid I'd probably want a real tree, too.

Janetta told me Friday that in New Zealand where she grew up, they play tennis on Christmas afternoon. They also used to eat the same food as people were eating in England. Things like Christmas pudding. Imagine having Christmas pudding at your barbecue in July.

Posted by Mark at 04:22 PM | TrackBack

1:30:06/160

A strange 19.6 km (12.2 mi) run this morning. For some reason I couldn't get comfortable until I'd gone about 16 km (10 mi). Then everything clicked and felt fairly good. Ran too fast for about 3 km, adding a couple of sprints, then wound down. I'd've gone further but figured Nathalie might need help getting lunch ready, and wanted to get to the bakery before they ran out of baguette.

Yesterday I bought new cold weather running gear, including a thin insulated top with long arms that have thumb holes at the end. when you put your gloves on, no wrist is exposed at all. The top breathes well, and the bottoms reach down far enough not to ride up over the socks.

If any of you are planning your own line of running sportswear, I still have two tips: 1) Don't put labels inside the clothes. If you need to mention it's machine washable at 30 C, just print that somewhere around the waistband or collar. None of us will care whether someone else can see the information, but we'll appreciate not having scratchy labels. The labels that seem innocuous when you try on the article may be irritating 10 miles later. 2) Guys need insulation around the front and sides of the knees and from the front to the back of the crotch. The rest of the bottoms can be regular spandex, but these parts shouldn't.

Posted by Mark at 04:09 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Rough night, part II

Diane was coughing again. We had her in our bed for a while. Nathalie and I were sitting with her as she slept so she wouldn't choke while we waited for cough syrup to take effect. Nathalie also got us up a 3:30 am to give Diane another dose of cough syrup, even though the humidifier was working in Diane's room.

Anyway, when Emma came up at 6:58 am making scratching feet sounds on the carpet, she woke me from a strange dream. Nathalie had become manager of one of the writing groups, and she reported to my manager's manager. So she learned I was going to be laid off, officially for economic reasons. My position was being cut, and my manager was going to have to do my work.

In fact I found out soon thereafter when a woman from HR who I'd never seen before took me down a long corridor to the small room where the exit interview was to take place that Sun had to let me go on request from American Embassy in Paris. They were taking me to one of those CIA camps in Eastern Europe "for observation," because I'd voted wrong in the last US presidential election.

Nathalie looked embarrassed to see me go. The kids were enthusiastic, however. We'd told them I was off on a business trip. They'd come to wave goodbye. As I climbed abord the freight train full of other men, I noticed I was wearing one of those orange pyjama outfits with leg irons.

Posted by Mark at 03:07 PM | TrackBack

December 03, 2005

Over the edge

It seems Dad told me about this before, but I was amused reading this blog entry about not being able to buy Sudafed, because you can use it to make methamphetamines. Somebody replied that you can no longer buy Red Devil Lye because it also contains a key ingredient in making methamphetamines. Next is baking soda because that's used to make crack cocaine.

Apparently methamphetamines are the latest big drug problem. It's now on the sensationalist TV news in France. (So it must be a couple of years out of date in the US.) Over lunch at work my colleagues were discussing some TV program they'd seen. It sounded like it was designed to scare parents about ice, which is a smokable methamphetamine, much more addictive than heroine, cocaine, etc., would turn you from a normal healthy person into a monster almost instantly and so forth.

This morning Diane turned on the TV. We saw a pile of nail scissors that had been confiscated at some US airport. I guess the reasoning was that terrorists might get into the cockpit and threaten to manicure the pilot to death. You cannot be too careful.

There's a danger in going over the edge like this. Because somebody of limited experience and judgement might accidentally sneak a nail scissors on a plane, or take some illegal drug once, or smoke, or drive after drinking alcohol. And they might then conclude that the horror stories are lies. It's not nearly that bad. In fact, statistically speaking, it can be bad, and you can find cases in a large enough sample where it was that bad. Yet the end result is that you have someone comparing their actual findings with what was presented by the authorities... and concluding that the authorities are full of bunk, or worse.

Banning OTC sinus medication because some people either with too much greed or too little good judgement or both make methamphetamines out of one of the ingredients is like never letting your child go outside because he might get kidnapped. The side effects of the treatment are worse than the disease.

Posted by Mark at 08:36 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Rough night

A note of caution for those of you considering having (more) kids. Even though Diane's three, Emma's six, and Tim's eight, we still had a rough night last night.

It started with Tim having an early nightmare, one of those where he's only slightly awake, terrified, and forgets it completely later. (He told me this morning that he'd slept really well, better than ever.) We were awake perhaps only half an hour around midnight, but it wasn't at a convenient point in the sleep cycle.

Next, 2:12 am, Diane's coughing got to the point where it sounded like she was going to retch. My initial thought was that she'd finally choked on the tiny pieces of plastic bitten off the end of her ragged pacifier. Then Nathalie asked me if I could go get the cough syrup, and she would bring up the humidifier from Tim's room. By quarter to three we were no doubt sleeping again.

Until Emma's air raid like cry at 6:23 am. She started crying downstairs and came up to our bedroom so she could whine about the problem. It seems Diane, who'd gone downstairs at probably 6:15 to wake her sister, had already stolen Emma's piece of chocolate for Dec. 3 from the advent calendar, stolen it from Emma's sleepy hand and put it in her mouth before Emma could do anything about it.

They don't go to school this morning. Nathalie's going first to work, then has some shopping to do. Then she's going to her lace class this afternoon. I'm sure it'll be lots of fun.

Posted by Mark at 08:13 AM | TrackBack

Pictures from Mom's

Mom and Dana have moved in, and they sent some pictures. Nathalie especially likes their fireplace.

fireplace-20051203.jpg

I like the picture of the footbridge between the trees.

bridge-20051203.jpg

Click the pictures to see them full size.

Posted by Mark at 07:55 AM | TrackBack

Red wine won't help

BBC News is running an article about new findings that suggest:

While moderate to heavy drinking is probably coronary-protective, any benefit will be overwhelmed by the known harms.... Do not assume there is a window in which the health benefits of alcohol are greater than the harms - there is probably no free lunch.

So maybe the idea that a glass of red wine with a meal is good for you is not true. (One glass a day is probably not particularly bad for you, either.) The article suggests it's more important not to smoke, but instead to get exercise, and to eat a balanced diet.

Posted by Mark at 07:43 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 02, 2005

Public beta, part II

Gmail's unavailable, and has been for the past hour. Cannot get to Google.com either. Not sure what the deal is, nor am I going to waste my time trying to figure it out.

The other glitch right now is with the printer under Ubuntu. From 5.04 it prints images from Firefox, no problem. From 5.10, it doesn't. The stuff in syslog looks like this:

Dec 2 21:10:16 localhost kernel: [4295502.794000] drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: usblp0: nonzero read/write bulk status received: -110 Dec 2 21:10:16 localhost kernel: [4295502.797000] drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: usblp0: error -110 reading printer status

Something Google.fr took me to at LinuxQuestions.org suggests I should try /etc/init.d/hotplug restart.

Posted by Mark at 09:32 PM | TrackBack

1:24:20/169

It felt like the cold was starting to go away, so I ran about 18 km. But it was harder at this pace than it should've been. One very muddy patch, and the rest of the way after about 6 km breathing harder than I should've been. Knees got too cold as well.

Posted by Mark at 06:18 PM | TrackBack

December 01, 2005

More free software from Sun

It looks like our executives have announced in public that, "Our entire server-side software portfolio will be free of charge and open source. Not pieces, all of it."

You can download to your heart's content from Sun's website. Apparently you only have to pay if you want fasttracked fixes and support.

It was already possible to get our Directory Server software free, but it appears the license was for evaluation only or something like that. The news is that you can now use all this software as long and as widely as you want without paying. Pretty good idea. All we need now is to make it dead simple to install and configure so developers and sys admins at small sites can easily hack away at it.

Posted by Mark at 10:22 AM | TrackBack

Defeat

Took the car again today. It feels like a defeat, giving in to a technology I like less and less. Funny how three of the big technologies that led to huge build outs are in fact irritants: railroads, telephones, cars.

At any rate it's still tough to get my breath. My head's stuffy and achy. Great day to come to work.

Posted by Mark at 08:33 AM | TrackBack