Aron 2 Blue

Review: Reamde: A Novel by Neal Stephenson

2012-01-24T19:16:00.000-05:00

Engaging thriller. Unexpected twists for fun.

I'm thinking he wanted to comment on terrorism, and also on gold-farming, and ended up bashing them into each other for this novel. That's ok, and made for a gripping read. It's not really scifi, it's more spy novel in the end.

Some of the convergence was forced - there were some hard-to-believe chance encounters to drive everyone together at the end.

amazon link

Review: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

2012-01-24T16:14:00.000-05:00

Compelling, unexpected. Not a pop-sci book. Personal experiences from the author, adjustments and discussion of how he changed his life.

amazon link

Zero History, by William Gibson

2012-01-24T16:11:00.000-05:00

Many of the gadgets are real:
Festo air penguin, and manta ray.
The smartphone was inspired by a DIY Linux phone, says twitter.

Dishwasher UI fail

2011-10-12T13:08:00.000-04:00

How can a dishwasher have a UI? Mine does. It's got a flat buttons on the front, so it's easy to lean on it and push one accidentally. So my wife likes to turn on "control lock", so that doesn't happen. Fine so far.

To turn off "control lock", you hold it for 3 seconds. The fail? There is no indication when you've held it long enough.

*press* One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand *release*. Press Start. blinking control lock no-no light again! GRRRRRrrrrrrr!

Review: Black Hole, Blankets

2011-10-11T11:04:00.005-04:00

Black Hole by Charles Burns
Blankets by Craig Thompson

I borrowed them and read them (a while back in April). Both worth it.

a bike ride

2011-08-08T15:00:00.000-04:00

In the wilds of carrboro:

View 2011-08-07 19:04 North in a larger map
Up and down and all around.

Review: The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, by Thomas L. Friedman

2011-03-10T12:29:00.000-05:00

I read it, it took a while. I found myself annoyed with keeping track of all the analogies. He'd introduce a concept, then say, "This is something I call the Golden Straightjacket" and I'd think What a strange name, why do I need a shorthand for this? And then he'd refer to it several times. There were lots and lots of these, DOScapital 1.0, Electronic Herd, bleck. Here's an amazon review that was annoyed, too.

I did find it informative, but I think I'm going to read 'Guns germs and steel' before any more of his later books.

PBSwap link. Reminded me that he mentions Enron's management with approval, and found their use of derivatives inevitable.

A scattered review. I finished the book ~1 month ago, so I'm forgetting pieces.

Review: Myth of the Rational Voter, by Bryan Caplan

2011-03-10T12:10:00.000-05:00

subtitle: "Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies"
Engaging, somewhat technical, an excellent swipe at the failure of established economic practice to explain what happens during out elections. I think I finally know what public choice economics refers to. Biases of non-economists are central, to quote from PBSwap:

they underestimate the wisdom of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse.

Distrusting foreigners translates easily into protectionism and tariffs, which hurt. Conserving labor is the tough one, because he means that we should protect an individual in a particular job, but instead allow 'churn', so that people move to the jobs that will be the most productive. So European unions/protection gets a bad grade, there. I learned a lot, which is what I was looking for.

PBSwap link.

Large files in C++

2011-03-04T16:26:00.000-05:00

More specifically, wxWidgets and MSVC++ 2010. I found an msdn query that says 2010 is the first version that supports >2Gb file sizes with std::iostream. So that's fine with me. We found a few necessary changes:

stat() changes to _stat64()
istream::tellg() returns an istream::streampos, not an int.

But what on earth happened here?

// save the beginning position of this line for when we have to back up
istream::streampos begin_line_pos = infile_stream.tellg();
string std_keyword;
infile_stream >> std_keyword;

// bunch of other keyword handling.....
if (keyword == "shape") {
   infile_stream.seekg(begin_line_pos);
   // Danger! over 2Gb, this turns into negative seek, fails:
   //infile_stream.seekg(begin_line_pos, ios::beg);
   return true;
}

How does the commented line with the seekg() fail? It should treat begin_line_pos as an offset, which should be 64 bit. It's REALLY LAME if it sees the unsigned streampos and converts it to 32 bits for some reason....
Very strange.

How to swim freestyle

2011-03-04T14:55:00.000-05:00

It's pretty obvious how different my stroke is from these pros:

My wife is working on this. I'm just watching, amazed.

Oh, and here's Michael Phelps. He does it too.

Digital Microscopy is worth trying

2011-02-16T11:10:00.000-05:00

I've run into reviews like this before, and I will try it out when they are old enough. That might be quite soon.
GeekMom » One Non-Techie’s Adventures in Digital Microscopy
I wonder if they have enough power to resolve mushroom spores for identification?

Terrapin “Moo-Hoo” Chocolate Milk Stout

2011-02-03T12:42:00.001-05:00

This is a great beer. It's rich and smooth, but has a bit of dark chocolate bite. Yum.

Do I like it a bit more for the ridiculous turtle in a cow costume? Probably.

Mobius storytelling

2011-01-25T15:53:00.002-05:00

From game theorist. Life on a transparency.

Review: Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen

2011-01-25T14:19:00.002-05:00

Interesting book, surprisingly easy to digest. It comes back repeatedly to the cognitive strengths of autistics and autistic-spectrum people. Ordering information is a desired and powerful ability online, where most of us are nowadays.
In paperback as The Age of the Infovore.
PBSwap link: Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World

Investing Graphic NYTimes

2011-01-13T12:08:00.000-05:00

In Investing, It’s When You Start and When You Finish - Graphic - NYTimes.com:
Interesting presentation of S&P 500 results for long periods, using a nifty block chart.
via FlowingData

List of common misconceptions - XKCD universe

2011-01-05T10:24:00.000-05:00

List of common misconceptions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
XKCD is right.

10 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year – 2010

2010-12-17T12:28:00.001-05:00

10 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year – 2010: This looks fascinating, worth some exploration.

Full Body Scanners

2010-12-03T10:52:00.000-05:00

Schneier on Security: Full Body Scanners: What's Next?:

"The truth is that exactly two things have made air travel safer since 9/11: reinforcing cockpit doors and convincing passengers they need to fight back. The TSA should continue to screen checked luggage. They should start screening airport workers. And then they should return airport security to pre-9/11 levels and let the rest of their budget be used for better purposes. Investigation and intelligence is how we're going to prevent terrorism, on airplanes and elsewhere. It's how we caught the liquid bombers. It's how we found the Yemeni printer-cartridge bombs. And it's our best chance at stopping the next serious plot."

Yes, normal people agree with this too!

Scott Adams' Nerdgasm

2010-12-01T15:33:00.000-05:00

FoxNews.com - Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran's Nuclear Weapons Ambitions: I like the summation provided by this article too. via dilbert.

Review: Brasyl by Ian McDonald

2010-11-10T15:06:00.002-05:00

I read it, generally I liked it. The mystery behind how the three main characters and time-periods relate (and the therefore the wrap up) was not too surprising from a general knowledge of the many-worlds hypothesis of quantum mechanics.

Brasyl on Amazon.

Bike ride maps

2010-11-07T15:06:00.001-05:00

So here's the weekend bike ride:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4145074
10 miles in under an hour. But some people can run that fast?
The map site shows what can be done with google maps api....

An experiment: embedding google maps

2010-10-27T12:18:00.000-04:00

Here's the Battle Branch Trail green space:

View Battle Branch in a larger map

Make: Online : OpenStreetMap: The Maker's Map

2010-10-25T11:30:00.001-04:00

Make: Online : OpenStreetMap: The Maker's Map:

Just found another connection to OpenStreetMap, Gmaps Pedometer, which has the 'OSM' overlay. My office mate maps his bike rides on it.

OSM is pretty amazing already - it shows the houses in my neighborhood with accurate sizes and positions.

And here's a cycle-centric view, OpenCycleMap. This is fun.

Google toolbar and the Gmail tiny box

2010-10-19T09:16:00.001-04:00

Once in a while my Google toolbar in Firefox will refuse to show me my Gmail. The Gmail icon will show whether I have mail or not, but clicking on the button does nothing (it normally opens Gmail), and clicking the menu triangle shows a tiny box with nothing in it (it normally shows either the subject of the new mail I've received, or a 'refresh' option). The problem persists if you restart Firefox (I'm using 3.6.x, but it's happened for quite some time).

The solution is to clear cookies: Tools menu, Clear Recent History, change the time-range to Everything, and uncheck everything except Cookies. Restart Firefox, login to Google, and your Gmail button is back to normal.

Update: Could be just logging out of the toolbar and logging back in fixes it, too?

wxWidgets wxMemoryFS bug with filenames

2010-10-07T16:47:00.001-04:00

This one drove me crazy this afternoon, using wxWidgets 2.8.8. Not the most recent, but I haven't found any notes that says it's been fixed.
I added a file to a MemoryFS

wxString name = "C:\data\my_file.txt"; wxMemoryFSHandler::AddFile(name, out_s.GetString()); //(where second arg is the file contents as a string)

but then I couldn't retrieve it:

wxFileSystem fs; wxFSFile *fs_file = fs.OpenFile("memory:"+name); if (!fs_file) return; // fs_file always NULL, so I'd get an early return

Turns out, when trying to look up the file, filesys.cpp:: MakeCorrectPath is called on the string that's passed in, so it converted back-slashes to forward-slashes, and the names weren't equivalent. I did this:

wxString name = "C:\data\my_file.txt"; name.Replace("\\", "/"); wxMemoryFSHandler::AddFile(name, out_s.GetString());

and now I'm able to retrieve it.
8Oct 10 Update: I submitted a defect.

Inno Setup and recursive installers

2010-09-21T14:00:00.000-04:00

We've got a recursive installer in our Inno Setup script. What I mean is that our main setup program installs another setup program (for a viewer), so that the user can copy/install that viewer program at a later date.

Here's how to do that in an Inno Setup script:

[Files] Source: {src}\viewer_cd\*; DestDir: {app}\viewer_cd\; Flags: external recursesubdirs replacesameversion

all on one line, of course. I discovered today that Flags: replacesameversion is critical, because it causes the 'setup.exe' file inside that folder to be replaced during debugging. Before I put that flag in, I tested my main installer, then ran the viewer setup.exe, and it ran an old version, with bugs I thought I'd fixed! How annoying. Now setup.exe will get replaced, even if it has the same embedded 'version' info.

A switch, taking my own advice

2010-09-14T16:17:00.000-04:00

I've taken my own pointer and run with it. Let's go see what
http://www.aronhelser.com/
looks like :)

Mashable: Run Your Business Online with $10 and a Google Account

2010-09-08T14:25:00.000-04:00

HOW TO: Run Your Business Online with $10 and a Google Account:
Seems like a cool way establish an online identity more concretely. I didn't know $10 was all a domain costs for a blogger blog. (blog blog blog ....)
Matt Cutts posts some useful stuff.

Review: The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

2010-09-07T14:28:00.001-04:00

I almost labeled it fantasy. If you start this book, please put aside the time so you can finish it rapidly! I took a week break, and felt lost coming back because of the threads of the plot I hadn't held on to.

It is a fascinating book, worth the time, and it doesn't quite fit where you expect it. The mystical aspects are stronger here than in his first book (The Shadow of the Wind), and that's a negative in my opinion. My wife and I were both somewhat puzzled and dissatisfied with the epilogue/resolution. I enjoyed the characters, the intrigue, and the twisting plot. Overall, recommended.

The Angel's Game at PBSwap.

Building libpano13-2.9.17_rc1 for Hugin

2010-09-07T14:12:00.000-04:00

Hugin is great panorama software, but they need people to build it for Windows. I've been occasionally working on it, and I've succeeded in doing complete 32 and 64 bit builds in MSVC 2010. I've almost documented how on the MSVC 2010 wiki page, but it's not quite complete. Thought I'd make note, and invite others to attempt it as well!

Today I compiled the libpano RC, and I'll try the hugin RC soon.

Inno Setup MSVC vcredist without bothering your users

2010-09-02T16:22:00.000-04:00

If your C++ program is compiled with MS Visual Studio 2005 Express, and you link with the DLL versions of the C run-time libraries, you probably already know that you have to run vcredist_x86.exe to install those dependencies on a new computer before your program will run.

Here's how to do that in an Inno Setup script.
First, download vcredist_x86.exe from MSDN, Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)
Notice that's for SP1, the instructions are different for non-SP1, and for the vcredist_x86.exe that comes with Visual Studio Standard or Professional. See the credit link below.

Include this in your script:


[Files]
Source: {src}\bin\vcredist_x86.exe; DestDir: {app}\bin\; 

[Run]
Filename: {app}\bin\vcredist_x86.exe; Parameters: "/q:a /c:""VCREDI~3.EXE /q:a /c:""""msiexec /i vcredist.msi /qn"""" """; WorkingDir: {app}\bin; StatusMsg: Installing CRT...

Alternative for x64 ( I haven't tested this):

Filename: {app}\bin\vcredist_x64.exe; Parameters: "/q:a  /c:""VCREDI~2.EXE /q:a /c:""""msiexec /i vcredist.msi /qn"""" """;  WorkingDir: {app}\bin; StatusMsg: Installing CRT...

Note all those quotes. Also you can see that I include vcredist in a 'bin' subdirectory, and I install it along with the other files my app needs. That last param can be /qb! to show progress, or /qn for no interface at all.

I tracked this down from a helpful MSDN blog post. Go check it for the variants needed for other flavors of vcredist.....

Inno Setup custom data directory location

2010-09-02T11:40:00.002-04:00

In my last post, I forgot to point you to Inno Setup; go get the Inno Setup QuickStart Pack to get going.
I showed how to copy a directory full of data, like tutorials or sample data, that might change depending on the customer. That means the files are not known when the installer is compiled.

Here's what it looked like:

Source: {src}\data\*; DestDir: C:\MyCompany\data;
   Flags: external recursesubdirs skipifsourcedoesntexist onlyifdoesntexist uninsneveruninstall; 
   Permissions: users-modify

This time, I 'm going to show how to let the user choose where this directory is located, and whether to install the contents of the directory at all.

First, let's show an obvious choice:

Source: {src}\data\*; DestDir: {userdocs}\MyCompany\data; Flags: [as above....]

That new constant will put the data in a subdirectory of My Documents, for the user that installs the program. This might be fine for you, if each user of your program is going to install it themselves, and generate their own data. This is exactly what Microsoft had in mind with the My Documents folder.

However, it doesn't work for us. Often, an IT person will install the program, and several users on the computer with different logins will use it and need to access the same data. Our data is also big, so we don't want multiple copies made.

Here's what we actually use:

Source: {src}\data\*; DestDir: {code:GetDataDir}; Check: InstallSampleData; Flags: [as above...]

We use two 'code' pieces to make this work. First we as the user where to put the data, and the function GetDataDir retrieves that value. Second, we ask the user whether to install the data we provide, and InstallSampleData retrieves that answer. Here's what those two routines look like, in the [Code] section of our script:

function GetDataDir(Param: String): String;
begin
  { Return the selected DataDir }
  //MsgBox('GetDataDir.', mbError, MB_OK);
  Result := DataDirPage.Values[0];
end;

function InstallSampleData(): Boolean;
begin
  { Return the value of the 'install' radiobutton }
  //MsgBox('InstallSampleData.', mbError, MB_OK);
  Result := SampleDataPage.Values[0];
end;

Pretty simple - they are just retrieving the answers and returning them. The commented MsgBox calls can let you know when these routines are being called when you run your installer, for the curious.

But where are we getting these values? Custom wizard pages. We need some answers that don't really fit the normal flow of the installer, but can be inserted pretty easily. I followed the CodeDlg.iss example provided with Inno Setup pretty closely, so it's worth looking at that, too. I'm actually writing this blog post because there isn't an explanation to go along with some of the Inno Setup examples.

[Code]
// global vars
var
  DataDirPage: TInputDirWizardPage;
  SampleDataPage: TInputOptionWizardPage;
  DataDirVal: String;

// custom wizard page setup, for data dir.
procedure InitializeWizard;
begin
  { Taken from CodeDlg.iss example script }
  { Create custom pages to show during install }

  DataDirPage := CreateInputDirPage(wpSelectDir,
    '{#ShortAppName} Data Directory', '',
    'Please select a location for {#AppName} data. (We recommend the default.)',
    False, '');
  DataDirPage.Add('');

  { Set default values, using settings that were stored last time if possible }
  if RegQueryStringValue(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, 'SOFTWARE\MyCompanyProg',
     'DataDir', DataDirVal) then begin
    DataDirPage.Values[0] := DataDirVal;
  end else
    DataDirPage.Values[0] := 'C:\

MyCompany\data\';
// you might replace the previous with this, which is a per-user way
// to retrieve the previous value:
// DataDirPage.Values[0] := GetPreviousData('DataDir', 'C:\MyCompany\data\

');


  SampleDataPage := CreateInputOptionPage(DataDirPage.ID,
    'Install Sample Data', 'The sample scene is used in our tutorials and training.',
    'Should the sample scene be installed?   ( Recommended for new users, ~ XX GB )',
    True, False);
  SampleDataPage.Add('Install');
  SampleDataPage.Add('Do not install');

  SampleDataPage.Values[0] := True;
end;

// This is needed only if you use

GetPreviousData above.

procedure RegisterPreviousData(PreviousDataKey: Integer);
begin
  SetPreviousData(PreviousDataKey, 'DataDir', DataDirPage.Values[0]);
end;

function DataDirExists(): Boolean;
begin
  { Find out if data dir already exists }
  Result := DirExists(GetDataDir(''));
end;

Whew! As you can see, it's starting to get long. Basically, I'm created two pre-formatted wizard pages, that let the use choose a directory, and choose between two (or more) options with a radio button. When they are display, their vals will get changed by the user. Then during the installation phase, those values are retrieved and used to create and copy the data directory. We are also using Inno Setup PreProcessor values for the application name in the dialog, so check that out in ISPPExample1.iss.

But wait, there's one more thing:

[Dirs]

; If this directory already exists, it sets permissions on all files inside.
; this can take a LONG time (~5 min) so only install if it doesn't already exist.
Name: {code:GetDataDir}; Check: not DataDirExists; Flags: uninsneveruninstall; Permissions: users-modify

The directory won't get created if we don't put anything in it, so we need to include an entry in the Dirs section. And as the comment says, it's worth it to not touch it if it already exists, because setting permissions on a lot of files can take a LONG time, and the installer appears to hang while it's doing that.

That's it for a custom, shared data directory and the Inno Setup script to make it happen. Please let me know if you found this useful, or if it need fixes. Thanks!

Inno Setup user data directory

2010-09-01T10:51:00.003-04:00

One of the requirements we have for an installer is to create a user data directory. We'd like the installer to create C:\MyCompany\data\, and copy any data we decide to give this customer on their install DVD into that new folder. VS 2005 Install projects couldn't do it without a custom action. Here's how in Inno Setup:

Source: {src}\data\*; DestDir: C:\MyCompany\data;
   Flags: external recursesubdirs skipifsourcedoesntexist onlyifdoesntexist uninsneveruninstall; 
   Permissions: users-modify

I've put that on multiple lines so it's easier to read, but it's all one line in the .iss file. Let's take a look at what each of those pieces mean.

First, that '*' in the Source: field is magic. It means it will go and find whatever is there in the data\ directory next to your setup.exe. It must be combined with the Flags: external, so that Inno Setup knows not to look for it when your script is compiled.
DestDir will be created by the installer, and files copied in. I've hard-coded the directory name in this example, but what we actually do I will discuss in my next Inno Setup post - we let the user choose.
Flags: external means the files should be present when the installer runs, not when it is compiled.
recursesubdirs means get all the sub-directories and their contents, too.
skipifsourcedoesntexist means don't show a message if there are no files in the source data/ directory to be found.
onlyifdoesntexist means don't replace files if they are already on the user's system. This is useful for updating data - you don't want to over-write files the user may have worked on and modified.
uninsneveruninstall means don't remove these files when your app is un-installed. During an upgrade, you might uninstall the previous version, and you don't want sample/tutorial data files to disappear!
Permissions: users-modify is also very cool - since we are not installing into My Documents (because our data is big and we want everyone to share the data), we have to make sure user-level accounts (i.e. non-administrator) can edit and save the data. Just tack that on, and every file/directory copied will be modifiable by all the users on this computer, even if it's installed by an admin.

Note that I'm working with ISTool and Inno Setup version 5.3, so double-check if your version is different.

Next time: Allowing the user to customize where this data goes, and whether to install it or not.
Edit: It's up.

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

2010-08-31T14:15:00.000-04:00

Engrossing, great airplane read. I really like the few different types of mysteries involved, and how the characters recognized the classic 'locked room' mystery type, while poking at the boundaries.

One of several listings at PBSwap.

Review: The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

2010-08-31T14:00:00.001-04:00

Math! War. Rarefied intellectuals, often gay men, confronting the first world-war. And trying to solve one of the long-standing mysteries of mathematics: the Riemann hypothesis. I enjoyed the varied characters, many unfamiliar, and the alien feel of the setting, even though it's not that far away or long ago. It did take me a long time to finish, just being interrupted by other things, and shorter books. I'm glad I read it.

At PBSwap.

Review: Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier.

2010-08-31T13:50:00.006-04:00

I've finished Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier. I enjoyed it, mostly, and now I'm writing about it 2 months after finishing. I was surprised at the number of examples he used that I didn't remember, or hadn't heard about to begin with. I read his blog, so most messages are reinforced there.

I'm mostly posting to remember when I read it. 6/25/10. :)

Why VB script can destroy an installer

2010-08-12T13:53:00.000-04:00

We've had it with VB script. We've been using Visual Studio 2005 Standard installation projects for a few years, and we needed some custom setup that was outside the standard abilities of the install projects. So I wrote some '.vbs' files to perform these actions. Things like copying config files that were different for every customer, and copying a data directory that might have different stuff in it. We have had so many failures of these scripts, that I'm switching installers completely - to InnoSetup.

Virus checkers would block the scripts from executing. The script would fail to set permissions properly. If there was some dust on the DVD, it would fail to copy the data, and roll back the whole install. And the only error message it could report is 'A script needed by this installer failed....' with no useful information.

I'm planning to follow up with information about what I've discovered about InnoSetup. So far, it's all good.

Annoyance moderation

2010-07-23T12:30:00.002-04:00

I don't understand why I need to do this, but I'm enabling captchas on my comments. The majority of comments I get are in Chinese, and have about 20 periods at the end with links to .info websites. Reporting the posters as spammers hasn't stopped the comments, so hopefully this will.

Update: Fail! two spam comments have already appeared on this post. If Blogger doesn't fix this problem, I will move to WordPress.

Update2, Sept 7, 2010: Blogger has enabled automatic spam comment detection, and a comment spam box. I've not seen spam comments in the past week, and so far no spam comments in my inbox. I'm becoming optimistic. Foolhardy, I know.

xkcd makes me smile

2010-06-16T14:44:00.001-04:00

I took a course like this.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

2010-05-21T19:00:00.000-04:00

I think my wife hit it. It's interesting to a teenager, but not so much to me. I read the first 'book' of the three. I liked the secret submarine with stealth technology (that didn't work) tracking the crab excavator robots looking for treasure in Atlantis, and f**king an apple statue with a woman inside as an initiation rite, but all the non-linear hallucinations got tiring. I appreciated the self-mockery of the short section that quotes a reviewer panning the book for not doing non-linear style as well as a more famous author. Another swap from paperbackswap, and it's destined to return, hopefully sent to a teenager.

Review: The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolano

2010-05-20T21:32:00.003-04:00

I couldn't finish it. I made it to pg 166 of 648, then skipped ahead a few times to see what might happen. Someone dies, surprise surprise. I couldn't get interested in the drop-out poet who likes sex and occasionally does drugs, and tries to save a prostitute. Eh. The diary section that switches to a multi-character non-linear interview style is mildly interesting, but I couldn't stay focused or follow it long enough. Free trade on paperbackswap, and it's probably going back there.

Feeds I might read, but don't have time for...

2010-04-30T13:17:00.002-04:00

I'm purging my feed reader:
Economics catergory

blog.pmarca.com

BuzzMachine

Cheap Talk

Freakonomics-nyt I stopped when they killed full-feed.

Free exch. Economist

Nudges

The Becker-Posner Blog

The Undercover Economist

WSJ.com: Economics

There are several others I do follow, but these I'm purging....

Photography - The Ruins of Detroit

2010-04-27T12:30:00.001-04:00

Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre Photography - The Ruins of Detroit
I know I've seen these before. Stunning photos. 'Decaying monuments', in Detroit. It's hard to imagine them lasting like the Coliseum of Rome, but the parallel is clear.
Michigan Central Station I've seen a whole set of this building alone....
William Livingstone House
United Artists Theater
Bank Vault
Wow. Yikes.

Why Cycle 9 - Cycle9.com

2010-04-20T14:56:00.001-04:00

Why Cycle 9 - Cycle9.com
I'm impressed with the trade-in program. I'm thinking about the balance-bike option for my 2yr old...
I really want an electric bike.

Beyond Fear in progress

2010-04-08T14:42:00.002-04:00

I'm reading Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier. I'm most struck by examples of security failures. 'Hole in the wall' gangs that make a hole in the side of a house/building to avoid the security system. The airplane hijacker who demanded $200K and 4 parachutes when he landed, then took off again and jumped out the back staircase. Apparently inspired a bunch of copycats, which then prompted modification of the 727 rear staircase so it couldn't be opened during flight! He also says insects are often great examples of attack/response evolving, in weird ways. Fun so far.

It has to be a spiral

2010-04-05T14:48:00.001-04:00

From Make: This is not a spiral
Optical illusions are fun.

The Technium: The Game-ified Life

2010-03-03T10:24:00.003-05:00

The Technium: The Game-ified Life
Turning life activities into something that earns you points. My example: Blue-cross is trying to do this as a health-insurance provider to get me to perform more healthy actions.

A bit about spam

2010-02-22T11:05:00.003-05:00

Since no one reads my blog, I'm always excited to see some comments. Right now, 2 out of 3 are spam. Sigh. But at least I figured out how to delete a comment: sign in to Blogger, then view your blog. When viewing the comment, there's a little trash-can icon, which will delete the comment.

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

2010-02-11T20:43:00.003-05:00

I stayed up late to finish this book. I was surprised by that, because I didn't think I would be engaged with the book during the first 1/3... I would recommend it.

Ista is a 'dowager Royina' who has been touched by a god. There are several interesting variations on fantasy themes that are explored and expanded skillfully. Five gods, mother father son daughter and Bastard, with the mischievous Bastard getting the attention here. Magic flows from demons, which start as elementals and gradually absorb qualities and skills from their hosts, often animals at first, jumping to a new host when the old one dies. They can be controlled by a person for a long time, creating sorcerers, until they loose control.... The gods get involved in human affairs by giving abilities and directives to people. Ista has had a bad experience in the past with this, and now resists the Bastard trying to draw her in again. She starts on a pilgrimage and ends up in a border fortress, trying to unravel her host, his comatose brother, and his young seemingly naive wife.

This book won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel.

Avatar plot wrecks

2010-02-05T13:13:00.000-05:00

As good as the visual effects were in Avatar, the plot was a wreck. I was going to fill this out right after I saw it, but I give up, since it's been done in so many other places. It seems strange how the well-trodden path taken by the plot doesn't seem to hurt this movie. It doesn't help it a whole lot, either. I was most bothered by the frontal assault of the cavalry on the ground against the mecha. That was just dumb, something even a grunt marine should know was futile.

Sherlock Holmes

2010-01-26T13:01:00.003-05:00

Went to see the movie Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. I enjoyed it throughout. The initial presentation of Holmes as a bit off his rocker was pulled off well. Watson's fascination with the cases and Holmes balanced with his frustration with his erratic behavior was front and center.

It's funny, though, the mystery was not so much what was going to happen, but how the evil 'magician' Lord Blackwood actually did it. Reason and science triumph again, and Moriarti pulls some strings and waits for the sequel.

We saw it at the Lumina, and the soundtrack was jarring - the calliope seemed to be too much for the sound system. Oh well.

Info at IMDB.

Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris

2010-01-20T16:58:00.003-05:00

I've read them, they're fun. Good mix of suspense, sex, violence, mystery.

Amazon collection of 1-7

Number 8

Number 9 I haven't read, not in paperback until April 2010.

True Blood, season one and two, are fun to compare to the books. They aren't first-person like the novels, so they range much wider following the other characters, especially Tara and Jason. Some elements are obviously aimed at people who've read the books, to surprise them.

Spoiler: the biggest is the continued existence of Lafayette, but the actor/writers in the show are having a great time with him.

The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier, review

2010-01-20T16:51:00.003-05:00

I hope that many people in a position to do something have read and considered this book. Most of the recommendations are backed up by studies of the current state of the bottom billion countries. I was out of my comfort zone with this book, and I'm glad - it's made me aware of issues which I didn't know anything about. I am so far removed from doing anything about it, though, that it may just make me more cynical.

Amazon link.

Avatar movie in 3D

2009-12-21T10:40:00.003-05:00

That was amazing. I think the gizmodo review got it right. There's not much point talking about the plot, or for that matter the science. But the visual reproduction of an alien environment that really looked and felt real, was accomplished. And I can include the whole panoply of living things that swirl around in that jungle for the first time, including the humanoid aliens. The forms and iridescence of the creatures were chosen to grab attention and impress, but they were plausibly real.

I can't think of one time that I was pulled out of the visual and visceral experience by something that looked fake.

Avatar on imdb.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

2009-12-14T15:52:00.003-05:00

Engrossing, I was surprised. I have not read his earlier American Gods, but now I intend to. I liked the exploration of some mythic arcs, with the trickster as the centerpiece.
Anansi Boys at PBSwap

Giant puffballs

2009-10-29T16:23:00.001-04:00

We ran into some giant puffball mushrooms on Bolin Creek trail a few weeks ago. I haven't looked them up, but I assume there aren't too many kinds of white puffballs that grow to be soccer-ball sized! There were two within 5 feet of each other, just off the trail under some brush and trees; unfortunately we haven't been back to check on them to see how they matured.

Successful Shitake mushroom logs

2009-09-15T10:34:00.003-04:00

First fruiting of Shitake mushrooms from a workshop I did in April, with 12-20 plugs per log. The smaller log has the two clusters and one more mushroom in back, but the big log only has one mushroom so far. The smaller log has been soaked twice, though.

A friendly treefrog

2009-09-15T10:32:00.001-04:00

Sitting on our window after a rainstorm.

Arduino, MotorShield and GearMotor

2009-08-21T21:21:00.003-04:00

I just solved a problem with some prompting from ladyada, so I thought I'd post:
http://forums.ladyada.net/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=12012
Isn't it great when site admins participate in the site?

I soldered up my adafruit Motor Shield Kit v1.0, for use with my Arduino Decimila. Plugged it in, nothing. But wait! Remember that the motor shield needs external power. So I soldered on the 'pwr' jumper header that I forgot before, found a 9V wall-wort, and plugged it in. Now the power LED on the motor shield lights up. Great! Twisted a few wires to my Solarbotics Gear Motor GM2, and tried the example DC motor program - forward 1 sec, reverse 1 sec, stop 1 sec. It does something, but it doesn't seem to really 'turn-on', it just jumps or pulses in the correct direction, and then sits. I hook the GM2 to some batteries, and it turns nice and strong, about 0.5 rev/sec. So something is wrong.

I found a forum post that described the problem beautifully, but with no solution, so I posted. Then I thought about the latest Make magazine, 19, describing an arduino robot with gear-motors - these gear-motors often need a capacitor across the leads, so they don't feed noise back into the motor driver and kill it! I used 0.1 microfarad. I also had to add a delay (0.1 sec) between going forward and going in reverse, so the motor would start reliably in reverse. It makes some sense...

Now, on to building a 2 motor/wheel robot, and making it do something!

Cool mushroom siting

2009-07-29T15:48:00.002-04:00

At least until they got mowed! We saw several big clumps of a leafy clustered mushroom, a polypore, a foot or so in diameter, like Hen of the Woods. However, I think it's too hot and too early for hen-of-the-woods, so this must be a look alike. They are scattered through the lawn in a vacant lot, and the day after we saw them, the lawn got mowed! I think they are eating the roots of two huge oak trees that fell down and had their stumps removed. I think it's been four years or so since those trees fell.

Mushrooms!

2009-07-17T12:52:00.003-04:00

We've been on a mushroom kick recently. We've ordered at least twice from Fungi Perfecti, 8 mushroom kits at 600 plug spawn. I attended a workshop on April 4 at the Abundance Foundation in Pittsboro, to get me started. I came home with three logs with plugs from Shitake and Oyster mushrooms.

It turned out the instructor, Bob Armantrout, had attended a workshop from the man behind Fungi Perfecti, Paul Stamets. We've now got two of his books, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World and Growing Gourmet & Medicinal Mushrooms. I've mostly looked at the pictures, and read small sections, but Alexa has read most of them.

I intend to post much more about mushrooms, and show results.

Cameras, cameras

2009-06-24T12:06:00.001-04:00

Can you get SLR performance in a smaller camera? The 'micro four-thirds' camera has the same sensor as some models of the Olympus DSLR, but sacrifices the view finder and mirror to put it in a smaller body. Initial impressions are good:
Olympus E-P1 Hands-on Preview
It has a focal-length multiplier of 2x, compared to 1.6x for a Cannon Dig Rebel, so it has a smaller sensor.

A co-worker looked at the compact super-zoom category and decided on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS1 based on the strong review. I can see the attraction. Especially for photographing wildlife, as he hopes to do.

Rock Stacking | GeekDad

2009-06-23T17:49:00.001-04:00

I can't quite believe the pictures, which makes me really want to try it.
Rock Stacking | GeekDad

Firefox will not remember my cookies between sessions fix

2009-06-16T14:20:00.005-04:00

I had a weird problem with Firefox 3.0 - every time I restarted it would loose the log-ins to websites, and the configuration of my tiddly-wiki. I figured out it wasn't saving cookies. I read some Mozilla web pages and found that cookies are stored in my Mozilla profile, in cookies.sqlite. Explorer said the 160 Kb file hadn't been modified since January! Being the skeptic I am, I closed Firefox and deleted cookies.sqlite. Problem fixed - Firefox re-created a 2 Kb file, and my cookies are now saved between sessions.

Who are these Dilbert book buyers, anyway?

2009-05-01T11:04:00.004-04:00

Weird post from Scott Adams today.

But that's only what lead me here, to Scott's new book,
and the really REALLY weird things a few people buy with the book:

96% buy the item featured on this page: Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert 4.6 out of 5 stars (32) $49.30
	2% buy Bliss-Philips Bikini Perfect Deluxe HP6378 Spa-At-Home Grooming System 3.8 out of 5 stars (55) $49.99
	1% buy Panasonic ES8078S Vortex HyrdraClean Wet/Dry Shaving System 4.2 out of 5 stars (111) $85.19
	1% buy Sterling Silver 6mm Round Amethyst Stud Earring and Pendant Set, 18"

Really? 2% buy a Bikini wax kit? Really?

Hard drive crash and moving Vista

2009-03-25T10:54:00.005-04:00

Well, I tried. I built a Vista x64 computer, with a new Intel i920, and a nVidia Quadro 5500 (which is 7xxx generation in game cards). It's very nice, but the Western Digital Black Caviar 1 Tb hard drive started to have bad sectors 2 months after first boot.

I tried to follow these directions about moving Vista, but I was stymied. Don't get me wrong - it is very cool that you can drop to a command prompt using the Vista install DVD, and run all kinds of tools, diagnostics, and tests. The directions use 'diskpart' and 'robocopy' to move data and a Windows install from an old hard drive to a new one.

I installed a Raid 1 array to replace the failing hard drive, and successfully copied the data, but I couldn't get Vista to 'repair' after copying to that Raid array. I put all the lurid details in a comment. Sometimes these examples of someone else succeeding or failing help me out a lot, so I try to contribute to the cloud.

Review: The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright

2009-03-25T10:50:00.002-04:00

Compelling, disturbing, surprising. It synthesizes a huge amount of information from other publications and documents, and hundreds of interviews by the author to give a clear portrait of Bin Laden and the organization he helped create. I was shocked by the clear presentation of the failure of information sharing between the CIA and FBI, and how a bit more cooperation could have lead the FBI to catch some of the 9/11 terrorists before the event.

PBSwap page.

Emacs 22.3 on Windows

2008-11-17T14:37:00.006-05:00

I've been using Emacs 21.3 happily for years. Since 2003 apparently, because I looked at the release dates today when I discovered a new version 22 had been released this year for the first time in a long time. Here's what I found.

Happily, the gnuclientw function has been integrated, as emacsclientw, and all that's needed in .emacs is (start server)
They recommend setting an environment var for some reason: set ALTERNATE_EDITOR to runemacs.exe
Now I can associate files with emacsclientw.exe to open them in my current emacs session. However, add the '-n' argument so it doesn't maintain a link to explorer, and ask you to hit a keystroke to release the editing buffer. A puzzling default behavior.

I also had to get rid of 'lazy-lock' and 'resize-minibuffer-mode' from my .emacs, but that was it. I turned off the toolbar, too, of course. Easy, painless upgrade.

I was surprised when it was slow to shut down the first time, but it has been much faster each time since. After a long time open, it is still noticably slow to shut down.

Compact flash disk image with dd and cygwin

2008-11-06T13:42:00.006-05:00

I found a way to make an exact duplicate of a compact flash card using cygwin. I suspect this method only works with identical flash cards - i.e. both the same capacity, and possibly both from the same manufacturer.
Anyhow, based on Reimaging CompactFlash cards tutorial, I looked in Computer Management, Disk Manager, and discovered my compact flash card was 'disk 2'
Then, using 'a' for disk 0, and 'c' for disk 2, at the cygwin command prompt:

dd if=/dev/sdc of=b2.img

It reports this, for a 32Mb flash card:

62592+0 records in
62592+0 records out
32047104 bytes (32 MB) copied, 10.725 s, 3.0 MB/s

Then, 'eject' the flash card in explorer, and insert the new one (to be erased and copied over). In cygwin again, note 'if' and 'of' swap:

dd of=/dev/sdc if=b2.img
62592+0 records in
62592+0 records out
32047104 bytes (32 MB) copied, 43.448 s, 738 kB/s

And it works! It's even bootable.
I'm still puzzled by a cygwin list suggestion, which has weird syntax for mounting the drive first. I tried it, and I got 'permission denied' when trying to write the image to the card, too. I think you want to treat it as a device, not a drive.

Update: I am able to copy the disk image onto a larger CF card, and all the data is preserved, but the CF is not bootable. An exact duplicate read from a 32Mb card and copied to a 32Mb card is bootable.

To fix that, I downloaded the latest syslinux, looked in the win32 subdirectory, and then ran this command (in cygwin), since my CF is the F: drive:

syslinux.exe -m -a f:

I also discovered that simply copying all the files, and then run the syslinux command above to make the CF bootable, works just fine too.

One more thing. The older version of syslinux allows 'append=' in syslinux.cfg, but the newer version doesn't like the '=' sign. Once I changed all occurences to 'append', it booted correctly. The older syslinux likes that format, too.

Bash script, filenames with spaces

2008-11-05T14:31:00.006-05:00

Sometimes these things can be really annoying. Anyhow, good hint here:
Handling filenames with spaces in a bash for or while loop.
Helps loop over filenames which include spaces. Like most normal people do, nowadays.
I also got caught trying to extract substrings. We had the date embedded in the name of some backup files. The substring operator looks like this:

${file:19:8}

Get a substring, starting as position 19, 8 chars long.
I wanted from the end, so you make the position negative. But you have to use parens, otherwise it looks like the default-val operator

${file:(-19):8} and not ${file:-19:8}

Then I found that the year started with a zero, so it was getting treated as octal, and 08 is not a valid octal number. So I ended up with this to extract the 2 digit year into a integer var:

# 10# in front says 'use base 10', because the 08 was being interpreted as octal.
let file_year="10#${file:(-19):2}"
# get days by asking 'date' to convert the date string for us.
let file_days="10#$(date --date=${file:(-19):8} +%j)"

Just for your edification, here's how the end of that backup filename was generated:

suffix=$(date +%y-%m-%d_%H%M%S)

# add unique suffix (mbk = mirror backup)
suffix="_"$suffix".mbk"

All perfectly clear?

Election day, go libertarians.

2008-11-04T15:17:00.002-05:00

I voted. I hope Mike Munger, the libertarian candidate for governor in NC, gets his 2%, so he can automatically be on the ballot next time. I think that's the condition....

CVS, cvsnt, and Norton Antivirus

2008-10-30T13:27:00.003-04:00

Here's a friendly way to start your day:

$ cvs update
....
cvs [update aborted]: cannot rename file CVS/Entries.Backup to CVS/Entries: Permission denied

This error occurs at random part way through the update, on a different directory each time. There are no files named Entries.Backup in the directory I'm trying to update.
Or how about this one?

cvs update: cannot remove xml directory: Directory not empty

Guess what fixed the problem? Disabling Norton AntiVirus 2009 on my CVS server. No, not the client (my development PC), where I'm running the 'cvs update' command and don't even have anti-virus installed. The Windows XP box that's running CVS NT server.

I was clued in when I was able to replicate the problem using cygwin cvs or cvsnt cvs, and inside WinCVS too. So it's not the fact that I just re-installed Windows on the client. It seems that this clean, speedy box is now too fast for the server to keep up with, but only if Norton is doing SOMETHING STUPID on my server to cause problems.

What a waste of hours... I hate Norton.

OpenEmbedded Angstrom for Advantech PCM-9375 Part 2

2008-10-28T14:00:00.000-04:00

Last time, I made a successful setup for the Angstrom distribution of OpenEmbedded. I replicated it on a second PC, and checked my initial steps.

And it failed to complete! Darn. It took a long time to compile, like several hours, then failed here:

NOTE: package linux-geodelx-2.6.11: started
NOTE: package linux-geodelx-2.6.11-r0: task do_compile: started
ERROR: function do_compile failed
ERROR: see log in /home/helser/deltasphere/oe/angstrom-stable//work/geodelx-angstrom-linux/linux-geodelx-2.6.11-r0/temp/log.do_compile.25513
NOTE: Task failed: /home/helser/deltasphere/oe/angstrom-stable//work/geodelx-angstrom-linux/linux-geodelx-2.6.11-r0/temp/log.do_compile.25513
NOTE: package linux-geodelx-2.6.11-r0: task do_compile: failed
ERROR: TaskFailed event exception, aborting
NOTE: package linux-geodelx-2.6.11: failed
ERROR: Build of /home/helser/deltasphere/oe/org.openembedded.stable/packages/linux/linux-geodelx_2.6.11.bb do_compile failed
ERROR: Task 157 (/home/helser/deltasphere/oe/org.openembedded.stable/packages/linux/linux-geodelx_2.6.11.bb, do_compile) failed
NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 306 tasks of which 0 didn't need to be rerun and 1 failed.
ERROR: '/home/helser/deltasphere/oe/org.openembedded.stable/packages/linux/linux-geodelx_2.6.11.bb' failed

I tried again with MACHINE = i586-generic
and it completed. It did print several QA errors at the end, like this:

ERROR: QA Issue: libgstpbutils-0.10.la failed sanity test (workdir) in path /home/helser/deltasphere/oe/angstrom-stable//staging/i586-angstrom-linux/lib

A bit ahead of myself for geodelx, but on with i586:
Now we can move beyond the last successful step:

bitbake base-image

which admittedly did a whole lot, and see what happens next.
The Anstrom build page says

bitbake console-image

is next, and X11 after that. I'm going to skip the X11 image, since I'm not planning on using a screen.
That completed too, with some of the same QA non-fatal errors. Here's the last bit:

NOTE: package console-image-1.0: completed
NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 1279 tasks of which 1255 didn't need to be rerun and 0 failed.

So what did I end up with?
Well, I have no idea. I updated again, and i586-generic stopped working! So I am stuck right now. I'll put out this post and see if anyone can give me some pointers. I've been updating once in a while, and trying a rebuild, and I get some different behaviors, but no successful build.

More coffee, India Elk Hill Estate

2008-10-28T13:58:00.003-04:00

We got an 'air pot' of coffee from Driade for a party this week, and everyone loved the India Elk Hill Estate batch that we got. We've been using a batch of Sumatra beans at home, and my wife and I both liked it initially, but later press-pots have been rejected by her. I think they're ok, but a bit smokey and bitter. IDK what changed.

OpenEmbedded Angstrom for Advantech PCM-9375

2008-10-17T12:38:00.007-04:00

I'm attempting to install a modern embedded linux OS on a 3.5" single-board computer (SBC), made by Advantech, the PCM-9375. It uses an AMD Geode processor, and has lots of connectors, but the main one we need is the PC/104 connector, because we have a PC/104 board for a laser rangefinder we use.

After some investigation, I found that Cliff Blake at BEC systems has successfully used OpenEmbedded and the Anstrom distribution on this SBC. I'm going to attempt the same thing myself, then go beg for help. :)

First, I upgraded my box to Ubuntu Hardy Heron, 8.04

Next, follow the Anstrom build page: Get bitbake and OpenEmbedded
I look at the GettingStarted wiki page, and it points to OE and your Distro, which says make sure Dash is not /bin/sh. It was on my system, so I did:

"sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash" and select No when it asks you to install dash as /bin/sh.

as instructed.

Next install a bunch of stuff. I checked these off in System .. Administration .. Synaptic Package Manager, although I found the command easier on a second machine.

sudo apt-get install ccache sed wget cvs subversion git-core monotone \
coreutils unzip texi2html texinfo libsdl1.2-dev docbook-utils \
gawk python-pysqlite2 diffstat help2man

And these too:

sudo apt-get install python-psyco bitbake

I added bitbake since it was in the list and Getting Started said I could. We'll see.

OK, done with OEandYourDistro, back to Getting Started, which looks like it's mirroring the Angstrom page, so back to Angstrom.
Skip install bitbake, since it was installed as a package.

Instructions say to operate in /OE, but I get 'permission denied' doing mkdir /OE, so I'm going to operate in ~/deltasphere/OE/ instead.

get OE metadata:

cd /OE
git clone git://git.openembedded.net/openembedded.git org.openembedded.stable
cd org.openembedded.stable && git checkout origin/org.openembedded.stable

That first git command downloads a bunch of stuff. The second one is quick, but says this:

Note: moving to "origin/org.openembedded.stable" which isn't a local branch
If you want to create a new branch from this checkout, you may do so
(now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again. Example:
git checkout -b
HEAD is now at de8489b... angstrom 2007: bump to r19

Update OE metadata:

cd /OE/org.openembedded.stable
git pull --rebase

It does some downloading, then says:
You asked me to pull without telling me which branch you
want to merge with, and 'branch..merge' in
your configuration file does not tell me either. Please
name which branch you want to merge on the command line and
try again (e.g. 'git pull ').
See git-pull(1) for details on the refspec.

We'll have to wait and see what that means.

I download source_me.txt from Angstrom,

changed /OE to /home/myusername/deltasphere/OE everywhere

(Note first I tried ~/deltasphere/OE, but the soft link causes bitbake to have errors)

Copied their suggestions for build/conf/local.conf

(and make sure it's not named builds instead)

Changed MACHINE="geodelx"
since this is the processor in my SBC.
Finally try a build:

source source_me.txt
cd ../org.openembedded.stable
bitbake base-image

Oops:

ERROR: Openembedded's config sanity checker detected a potential misconfiguration.
Either fix the cause of this error or at your own risk disable the checker (see sanity.conf).
Following is the list of potential problems / advisories:

/proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr is not 0. This will cause problems with qemu so please fix the value (as root).

Luckily, the OE GettingStarted page says how to fix it.

echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr

But I get 'permission denied'. And Ubuntu doesn't like 'su' to run as root, and 'sudo' leaves out the > redirect. So do it like this:

echo 0 > foo.txt
sudo cp foo.txt /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr

Whew.
Now try

bitbake base-image

Nope - can't find any *.bb files! I wondered whether that note about 'make a simple dir, not one with symbolic links' would prove relevant - '~' is a symbolic link to /home/myusername, so I search-replace all occurrences of ~ in source_me.txt and local.conf, source source_me.txt again, and try again. Success!
Now it does a huge amount of stuff, like:

....
NOTE: package glibc-initial-2.5: started
NOTE: package glibc-initial-2.5-r10: task do_configure: started
NOTE: package glibc-initial-2.5-r10: task do_configure: completed
NOTE: package glibc-initial-2.5: completed
NOTE: Running task 116 of 607 (ID: 585, /home/helser/deltasphere/OE/org.openembedded.stable/packages/gcc/gcc-cross-initial_4.1.2.bb, do_fetch)
NOTE: package gcc-cross-initial-4.1.2: started
NOTE: package gcc-cross-initial-4.1.2-r13: task do_fetch: started
NOTE: fetch ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gcc/gcc-4.1.2/gcc-4.1.2.tar.bz2
...

It's fetching and managing all the packages necessary for a the base-image of a linux distro for my SBC. Pretty cool. Wonder if I'm going to run out of disk space, with only 3.5 Gb left?
We'll see tomorrow, in Part 2........... (oh, the suspense)

Sentences to ponder

2008-10-07T16:59:00.003-04:00

BLDGBLOG is occasionally amazing:

"Barack Obama campaigned today in the early 1960s by visiting a small pancake house near Springdale..."

Here's another:

"President Bush stopped off today with a group of people who read Harry Potter novels – the eleventh-largest demographic group in the United States – to discuss the ongoing financial crisis..."

Allegro coffee, Ethiopia Sidamo Titira, review

2008-08-13T14:07:00.005-04:00

Organic Ethiopia Sidamo Titira coffee by Allegro, purchased at Whole Foods.

I was surprised that I really did not like this light-roast coffee. We purchased it ground, and tried it both drip with a paper filter and in a french press. It has a strong green flavor which was unpleasant. Possibly the first bag of coffee I've been unwilling to finish unless I mix it with something else first!

Bad Penny Brown Ale

2008-08-07T14:28:00.003-04:00

From Big Boss Brewing Company, in Raleigh, NC. Local for me.

This beer is one my wife and I agree on. It's dark enough for me, and not too bitter for her. I go for porters and stouts as a rule, and avoid the hoppy lighter beers. This is just a bit lighter than a porter, but it is slightly sweet, which I think appeals to her. So a good second six to keep next to whatever seasonal dark I pick up.

Stuff I've been reading

2008-07-09T22:27:00.003-04:00

Making Comics by Scott McCloud
I know I can't put in the time, but this is one of the things I've wondered about doing. I like deconstructing comics, and coming out seeing what has been done a bit clearer.

The Thief
The Queen of Attolia
(up next) The King of Attolia
by Megan Whalen Turner
My wife's sister gave these to us. Young-adult targeted, still a pretty good fantasy yarn.

WorldChanging (A User's guide for the 21st century) by lots of people.
Started. This is where I want to go. If I don't do it, do I really think someone else will step up instead, for exactly the thing I might have done? Still, I'm annoyed by fallacies that are presented as basic facts. It'll be work to separate the gems here.

The Lying Stones of Marrakech, by Stephen Jay Gould.
Started, keeps getting pushed down the stack. Natural history essays, I enjoy, but they aren't holding my attention like Wonderful Life did.

Asus Eee PC 900

2008-06-09T22:22:00.002-04:00

Fun! I got my hands on an Eee PC for a few days. The 900 has a 8.9 inch screen, and most significantly it´s 1024 pixels wide. That´s enough that most web pages render normally without side scrolling. I find all the web sites I´ve visited to be usable, perhaps with google reader getting a bit cramped.

I was actually most curious about the keyboard, which is why I´m writing this post. I´m finding that most letters are easy to hit without making typos, but the extra keys are the challenge - I´m retyping my quotes and dashes and things several times, and erasing the stray Enter keys that show up when I try to kit the shift key or ´ key. But after just a few paragraphs I´m getting the hang of it, so I don´t really thing it would be a problem to get used to.

I find touchpads a bit annoying, and this one is no exception. Mostly, I find that when I´m trying to drag or just move the cursor a long distance, it seems to think I´ve tapped - random clicks in the middle of my intended action tend to mess me up. Since I have that problem with most touch pads, I don´t blame the Eee.

The 900 is slick. 16 Gb of SSD for stuff, a nice Linux based system, presented through a simple interface that I think my mom could get used to. Not so sure about the small keyboard for her, though. Anyhow, I´m convinced. I just have to come up with some reason why I need it, or for my friend to let me keep it. Fat chance, I know, but I´m working on it.

Patriot Games by Tom Clancy

2008-04-13T15:06:00.007-04:00

Is Clancy as rich as J.K. Rowling, of the Harry Potter Empire? We know he didn't make as much as an author, because Rowling was the first author to break $1B. But maybe with his video game company, he's close to that? I would guess he's a $100 millionaire, which puts him within an order of magnitude.

Patriot Games is gripping, fast paced, and written before editors were afraid to tell him to cut stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's dated, because it deals with the IRA as terrorists, and with the lack of terrorist attacks on US soil.

I watched the movie right after finishing the book. Contrasts with the movie were numerous. Especially the end. I thought the book flowed better at the end. It was more complicated, because there were a lot of terrorists, instead of just four in the movie, and they actually captured Jack and the prince for a bit in the book, until they were rescued by Jack's bud, Robby. The neat wrap up in the movie where all the bad guys die (surprise, surprise) was annoying after reading the book, where the terrorists are captured on their get-away freighter, and there's a good moment where the gun sergeant says that before they feel too lucky to be alive, to consider that they committed a capital crime in a state that has the gas chamber.

Plus the essential moment where Jack has the opportunity to murder the terrorist Miller, and pulls a trigger on a gun that's not cocked. So he's not a cold-blooded killer, but he almost is. Missing from the movie, essential for the book and the continuing adventures of Jack Ryan.

Both a still lots of fun, action, suspense, and all that. I'm glad Clancy is out there.

Patriot Games at PBSwap

Politics Lost by Joe Klein

2008-03-24T13:33:00.004-04:00

Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized By People Who Think You're Stupid at PBSwap
Author: Joe Klein
Fun, mostly a tour of the last several presidential campaigns, and what the author/reporter knows about the influence of pollsters and consultants on the candidates campaigns, for better or worse.

I'm cringing right after the Iowa caucus to hear every single damn Democrat say that they are the candidate for 'change', after Obama won. Stupid to try to rip Obama's consistent message, when it hasn't been their message. Of course, Hillary is trying to say I'm for change, but I have experience too! And I've changed things, too! I don't think people are buying it, much.

I wrote that on Jan 8, and I agree now. Seems like Douglas Rushkoff agrees with me. Or rather I agree with him.

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

2008-03-24T12:59:00.003-04:00

Moon Called (Mercy Thompson, Bk 1) at PBSwap
Author: Patricia Briggs

It's a page turner. Modern day setting, with magical creatures of all sorts trying to hide and thrive in modern settings. In this book, murder and dominance, a bit of lust, and mysterious crime solving in werewolf packs.

Strangely, even though I've not followed the comic books, only the movies, I found strong similarities to the X-men. The 'fae' have been exposed to the public and media, but the stronger/more dangerous magical beings like werewolves and vampires are still secret. Criminal forensics has made the existence of werewolves an 'open secret', in that the FBI as an organization seems to know of their existence.

Sounds a _lot_ like the mutants being exposed to media attention in X-men, and the backlash and reaction. I think it lets the author explore some interesting moral dilemmas, but there's not much of that in this first book.

I was bothered by the overwhelming presence of violence and dominance in the book, which was consistent with it being mostly about werewolves. Werewolves not catching on to women's lib because they are long-lived is the justification offered. Eh. Some animal species have very distinct sex differentiation - humans just aren't one of them. What about werewolves? I'm not sure from this book.

I like Mercy, the narrator. She's not as powerful as a werewolf, so she uses quickness and intelligence to get her through the tough spots. I'm going to read the next book, I think. A qualified thumbs up until I get to the next one.

Odds of Dying - NSC

2008-03-21T13:33:00.002-04:00

From the National Safety Council: Odds of Dying. One of those things you never know when you'll need.
Update: new link.

Weird dates

2008-03-17T14:37:00.002-04:00

Someday I might get the hang of this. I put out two new posts, Kavalier and Clay and Coffin for Dimitrios, but their dates stuck at when I started the post, not when I finished it. So my recent posts were inserted a while back. Weird.

Marginal Revolution book forum, The Logic of Life, Chapter 8

2008-02-28T22:58:00.004-05:00

I had a strong moment of self-recognition with this chapter. In talking about rational approaches to voting, Harford described the person who is going to vote, but knows that they have hardly any chance of affecting the outcome (casting the winning vote). So they vote like that - like they can't affect the outcome. I do that. I think about voting, especially in local elections. I try to pay attention, and learn something about the candidates. But I can't motivate myself to spend time, search, and make in-depth comparisons. I rely on bumping in to information, and other people's analysis, if I'm lucky. If I'm not, I end up voting based on party. And in a non-swing state, that means my vote doesn't matter much. Interesting vicious circle, eh?

Marginal Revolution book forum, The Logic of Life, Chapter 2

2008-01-28T12:57:00.000-05:00

The second chapter is discussed. Fabio Rojas has a great discussion. From this, I'm realizing that I don't have an objection to people being mostly rational, most of the time. I object to equilibrium. Game theory was developed in the framework of equilibrium, and outside of ideal situations like a poker game, I don't see where it applies.

It's like fluid dynamics. We can write down an exact equation for how fluids flow. (Lorentz or somebody, I should know this). But when we try to solve them, they are horrendously complicated, and exhibit chaotic behavior. So instead, for practical results, we using finite simulations, where we don't get the exact answer, but limit ourselves to some time and spatial resolution. That is often good enough, and gets better with every cycle of Moore's law.

But how do we tell when it's "good enough"? With fluid dynamics, we can see some of the results in films - digital water has gotten better, from The Abyss to Titanic to the whirlpool in Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (or 3?). What about economics?

More thoughts: lots of simulation code locked up inside the Wall Street trading firms - they hire physicists and coders all the time.

Companies evolve and learn: we can simulate that, what does it tell us?

Here's the question(s) I really want answered: Are the notions of a mostly rational actor and equilibrium linked? Is equilibrium really that useful? Might it be mostly misleading? What can the mostly rational actor explain by itself?

I suppose equilibrium is just a useful fiction.

Every time I try to draw a conclusion, I feel that I don't know anything.

Launch external editor for file:// urls in Firefox

2008-01-23T13:32:00.000-05:00

We maintain many docs in html format on a local shared drive. I wanted to launch my html editor of choice from within Firefox. I found the extension Launchy that does what I want.

Unfortunately, it didn't find Komposer, the bug-fix release of Nvu, automatically. I had to generate a launchy.xml file as explained on the main page.

I also learned that the 'command' entry should not contain double quotes! Otherwise Launchy ignores the entry.

Marginal Revolution book forum, The Logic of Life

2008-01-20T14:15:00.000-05:00

I'm going to at least follow along with the book forum over at Marginal Revolution. I've read just the intro and first chapter so far. I was sighing a bit at the emphasis on the rational actor, but heartened as Tim Hartford took pains to dismantle the 'Economic Man', who can perfectly respond to all new information with perfect solutions to partial differential equations. There is much more acknowledgment of partial information, human shortcuts, and even irrational behavior. So far totally missing is the interesting new work involving computer simulations, as in The Origin of Wealth, or as Adam says in Mandelbrot's book.

The Logic of Life, by Tim Harford

Update: First installment on Wed. The author, Tim Harford, is commenting on the main posts and replying to comments.

Baghdad Burning, by Riverbend

2008-01-18T22:35:00.000-05:00

Subtitle: Girl Blog from Iraq
ISBN: 155861489-3

It's wrenching to read. I've sometime tried to imagine what it would be like to live through a war, and I've shied away from it. I feel strong empathy for her and her family, and I feel ashamed at the actions that my country has taken in Iraq. The book publishes the first year of her blog, and covers capturing Sadam, the first suppression in Falloojeh, and the Abu Ghraib torture abuse photo scandal. Her view of the early Iraq government is telling - sarcastic, the 'Puppets', and dismissive of these exiles and outsiders who don't have much invested in Iraq, except an opportunity to grab power.

Try to imagine living in a city, which reaches 100+ degrees every day in the summer, with electricity on for 2 hours, off for 4. Water available only some of the time, and pressure so low that it only comes out the lower outside faucet. Riverbend is unusually articulate for a computer programmer. I think she's still going at riverbendblog, but the last post in 2007 has her leaving Iraq with her family. Who's left?

Recommended, but not for too much longer. The situation it portrayed in 2003-2004 is drifting from the current reality.

Books

2008-01-08T15:47:00.000-05:00

I haven't decided how to use this tool yet, so I've not posted in a bit. I'm working on reviews of:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Politics Lost
Coffin for Dimitrios
Visionary in Residence: Stories, by Bruce Sterling
possibly the Team Rodent, Disney rant pamphlet
Baghdad Burning, by riverbend, I'm currently reading...

Does anyone care to discuss?

Adam reviewed The Origin of Wealth, and I should respond again.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

2008-01-08T15:30:00.002-05:00

by Michael Chabon.
I loved it. Highly recommended.

Mild spoilers ahead!

The distorted history of comic books is explored, through the very personal saga of two creators. Kavalier is jewish, and is unable to save his family from the Nazis after he escapes. Clay is homosexual, but doesn't realize it until later in life. He then suppresses it when he experiences persecution and abuse.

Some of it is familiar, but I was drawn in (ha!) by the unlikely combination of subjects that meshed in the narrative. A new chapter that tells the story of a comic book character - but wait, is it a character? engaging.

I haven't tried to track down whether the congressional hearing condemning comics was real, but it felt like it was taken from a real event, and the exposure of Clay as a homosexual on the second day was added. The remark that, paraphrasing, he should have said that adding a side-kick to a hero immediately increases sales by 19% or whatever was memorable for me.

The heart wrenching preposterousness of war reminded me of Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. The combination with aspects of fantasy reminded me of Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.

Info at PBSwap

Demand, Supply by Rhythm, Rhyme, Results

2007-12-07T13:25:00.000-05:00

I thought this was hilarious. It's actually a good song, educational rap. But what do I know?
Demand, Supply by Rhythm, Rhyme, Results

From Freakonomics

Installing Ubuntu 7.10

2007-10-21T21:13:00.000-04:00

It almost went flawlessly. The default boot from the live CD gave me hashed squiggles all over the screen, so I rebooted and chose 'safe graphics'. Fine. Then I installed, and tried to resize the partition on my largest drive. I got an error saying the resize didn't work. So I booted to Windows and defragmented my drive. More free space at the end of the drive, and presto, this time the partition resize worked. So I take out the live CD, and boot, and I get:

GRUB Loading stage 1.5.
GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 17

And it stops. What? and my PC won't boot! Yikes!

Of course I'm actually a geek, so there are two other PCs and a wireless network in the house. Forums suggest checking whether all drives are accessible in the bios. They are, but the 300 Gb drive is showing up as 137 Gb in the bios. Hmm, very suspicious, because my new Ubuntu partition is in the last 70 Gb of that 300 Gb drive. Sigh. I look carefully at the bios, and discover I have an Intel motherboard. Search for bios updates, and lo and behold, one of the new features of the newest bios is 'recognize big drives'.

But how do I install the bios? I don't have a floppy, and the directions don't match what I download - there's no 'run.bat'. Well, someone is promoting the Super Grub Disk to solve boot problems. I try to put it on a USB stick, but the computer won't boot off that, even though USB boot is enabled in my bios. So I finally get a CD .iso, burn it, and boot from that. One of the options is Boot Windows. It works, yeah! Now I can go to the Intel site and get a different version of the bios update, which will install from inside Windows.

Reboot, take out the CD, and I've got a menu for choosing to boot Ubuntu or Windows. Victory!

Creative Destruction vs Team Rodent

2007-10-20T22:33:00.000-04:00

I've rarely read two books that can comment directly on each other the way Creative Destruction by Tyler Cowen and Team Rodent by Carl Hiaasen do. Cowen argues in a relatively scholarly work that trade generally increases cultural benefits, instead of decreasing them. Hiaasen says that Disney is a blight, a destroyer, and a homogenizer of the worst sort - they are nice. I find it fascinating that Team Rodent directly illustrates many of Cowen's points. Disney moving into Orlando completely shook up the local culture, just as Americans moving into a foreign country often do. Disney World brings a huge amount of money to Orlando, mostly in the form of tourists - the equivalent of the population of California visits Disney World every year - which is targeted by tourist traps ringing the park. The people of Florida now have a much bigger economy, much more choice; and some of them, like Hiaasen, clearly resent the cultural change. The question is whether the change was worth it. If your cultural choices originate either in a stretch of farms and swamp pre-Disney, or in the cluttered sprawl around Disney World, then there is obviously more, varied choices in the sprawl. It's hard to put a value on them, though.

Team Rodent's opening example is the transformation of Times Square from a haven for sex shops to a safe family friendly shopping destination, centered on the Disney store and theater. Except for that nasty sex shop that is still hanging on a block from the Disney store. I think Cowen has it largely right - Disney is there, but so is the sex shop, and a consumer has a wider choice because of it.

Hiaasen is a reporter that lives near Key West, and despises the sprawl, congestion and traffic from Disney World and the resulting tourists to his town. I think that most business people would disagree. I sense, however, a missing piece in Cowen's positive assessment of trade. Stress. What does the stress of choice do to the individual?

I'm discovering why I value books like these - analysis is hard!

Coffin for Dimitrios, by Eric Ambler

2007-10-15T13:51:00.001-04:00

I believe this book was originally copyright 1934, and I got it on this recommendation from Marginal Revolution:
"I reread Eric Ambler's Coffin for Dimitrios; few people know this novel but it is one of the best spy/detective stories, period."

Overall, a fun read. Pretty quick, some nice spy-suspense elements. It made me think what it would be like for an ordinary person, the novelist narrator, to stumble into the world of spies and killers.

I found it mildly grating that the narrator had only a mild sense of danger, and didn't seem to take seriously protecting his own life.

Info at PBSwap

Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge

2007-10-15T13:37:00.000-04:00

wow. WOW. What a phenomenal book. This story is so far out, yet believably set just 20 years in the future. Not once was I brought up short thinking "nah, that couldn't happen." I was completely sucked in, and I'm left with an ache trying to decide whether I want it to happen, or whether I should work to stop it from happening!
Info at PBSwap.

WorldWebPages telemarketing scam

2007-09-24T16:16:00.000-04:00

worldwebpages.net scammed me. I hate that they scammed me, because I think I'm pretty good at resisting telemarketing techniques. Here's what happened. Beware.

Around August 27th, 2007, they called our small business with the pretense that they were updating a directory at the request of our phone company, Verizon. Then they asked if I had the authority to make billing decisions. I said yes, because I thought I would save my boss some time. I was assured that I had to go through a recorded voice-mail session to be out of their database so they wouldn't call anymore. The recorded script said that I was signing up for a service, some kind of web site or web listing, which was free for the first month, but there-after cost $9.95 to set up and $34.95/month, charged to our phone bill! The first time through I said "no, I don't authorize this", and then hung up when the marketer tried to convince me I should complete it. He called back, and assured me that I was not signing up for anything, that they would fax us information about the service that we would have to confirm, and that the fax would be sent immediately. I wrote down two phone numbers, one that was supposed to allow me to immediately cancel this service. I told him I would complete the voice-mail recording only with the understanding the I didn't want to sign up for the service, and that I wasn't signing up for the service. Against my better judgment, I completed the voice-mail session the second time, and said "yes, I authorize". I got a confirmation number.

I immediately regretted it, and my blood pressure rose each time I thought about the calls. I waited a day or two, no fax. So I called the cancellation number. It was disconnected, invalid. I called the customer service number. It immediately dumped me to a "all agents are busy, please leave your name, company and phone number so we can get back to you", without identifying the company. I chose not to leave a message. At this point, I had no idea who the company was who had called. I searched for the phone number, 888-244-6692, without success. So I let it alone.

Today September 24, 2007, we received our "welcome letter", telling me that I had signed up for a web-site with worldwebpages.net, and that our trial period would run from Sept 3 to Oct 3. So in 9 days, they would charge us $45, for a service the telemarketer said I had not signed up for. I had to hand the letter to my boss so he could write a letter that said stop all services immediately, and don't charge us anything. Very embarrassing.

I believe that my boss is filing a complaint with our Attorney General. For now, I figure a post like this might do more good. If you have had experience with these people, I would appreciate hearing from you.

FWIW, they did put up a completely generic web site that says we deliver products and services, and that we are #1 in our industry. So they delivered a service. It's not one that I would value at $34.95/month. If they retract the site without charging us money, then the company is doing what its recorded voice-mail system said it would. However, the tactics and dishonesty of the telemarketer that brow-beat me on the phone are inexcusable. On that basis, I encourage you to avoid worldwebpages.net, and perhaps file a complaint if you are similarly treated.

Sigh.

Update: My boss got a call to confirm that we were discontinuing our service. Yep. We await our next phone bill with trepidation.

Discover Your Inner Economist review

2007-09-13T10:42:00.000-04:00

I'm a fan of Freakonomics, and I found Tyler Cowen's blog, Marginal Revolution, through them. Tyler's latest book, 'Discover your Inner Economist', is significantly different than Freakonomics. It takes some of the quirks of economics as a given, like the inadequacy of the 'perfectly rational consumer' model of a person. It has short sections that are easy to read, but each caused me to examine myself or the behavior of others around me in a new light. I changed where I went with a friend to lunch yesterday based on this book, and I had a brand-new dish in a Korean Barbecue restaurant that was delicious, even though I was in a strip mall next to a tire outlet. A small thing, but positive and worthwhile. I found this book filled with other examples like this. Highly recommended.