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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
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 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
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?
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.