Dr. Moira Gunn is our guest at Wanderers this morning. She's chatting away about Philosophy Talk (she's a fan), the possible two channel solution to the need for more tech talk on the public air waves.
But mostly she's talking about her new biotech book (martini glass on the cover).
Speaking of that martini glass, why do hardened journalists carry hard liquor around (a stereotype perpetuated by many movies)? You can disinfect a cut with it, brush teeth with it, bribe with or give it as a gift, plus have fun with it. Even journalists who don't drink have been known to lug some liquor. And why scotch and not vodka? Easier to see if it's been diluted, plus how much you have left.
Now she's talking patents and big pharma in the context of a world economy, analogies to the music industry, trends in the price points, Brook Shields' tatoos. Obviously I'm in the presence of a true teacher, not "just" a journalist.
Earlier, we went around the circle introducing ourselves, giving thumbnails. Terry did his "I'm a contrarian" speech, some threw in deep questions (Don: "what hope do we have?"), while I pulled off a fifteen second version of my stump speech, this time with the added spin of having just returned from Vilnius, with lots of Wanderers happy to see me, me them. Hi Nancy!
The other aspect of my morning is I'm needed on stage for Day Two of this Saturday Academy class on Pythonic Math, a strategic Silicon Forest pilot.
I'll treasure this brief partial overlap with Moira as the sweet encounter it was for me.
OK, back to Razzmatazz, my trusty Subaru, waiting outside.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Sunday in Vilnius
I enjoyed a quiet Sunday in Vilnius with young Geoffrey French, author of gSculpt and gSim, plus a professional graphics designer using 3ds Max in the UK.We ascended Castle Hill, a thousand-year-old site, then had lunch in Old Town, comparing notes on such topics as soccer hooliganism, South Park, Ali G, and Ricky Gervais in Extras and The Office (also meta-classes in Python).
We also visited an amber museum. Fossilized tree sap, oft times with "inclusions" (insects especially), dating back 40 or 50 million years (or more) is an important extract in the local ecosystem.
Baltic amber is typically mined off shore, or from a patch of "blue earth" in Russia. Tons of the stuff are recovered every year.
I bought some tiny dolls-in-within-dolls for Tara.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Python in the Control Room
I started my second day at EuroPython learning about how ConocoPhillips is using Python to improve integrated operations of North Sea oil platforms in onshore control rooms.
Coin3D wrapped in Pivy on top of a database, serving out through Qt, gives operators real time views of the drilling platforms and surrounding vessels. We zoomed in on the Ekofisk field, checking out weather conditions, logistic features (e.g. vessel trip planning, viewing cargo manifests).
The demonstrated application implements collision and speeding detection, sea bed visualization. Applying a dynamic language such as Python was a big experiment and considered a success. Our speaker was Roly Seehaus of Kongsberg.
Fabio Pliger from the University of Verona also cast his talk as a success story regarding Python's ability to perform in real time, generating critical feedback, this time within the pharmaceutical industry.
His shop is still Windows-based, but Python plays well with others.
I next learned about the somewhat experimental PyConsole.py running atop Python's win32console module. This gives users a Windows compatible command line, atop which another Python interpreter might be loaded.
By use of callbacks, one might use multiple consoles to leverage the operating system's multi-processing capabilities (e.g. instead of Python-level threading).
The speaker, Michael Graz, also demonstrated using AJAX to invoke a server-based Python command line from within a client's web browser.
The Pygame guy unfortunately had no sense of time. Though obviously a genius, we barely got to the core substance of his discussion (tmap, RenderUpdatesThreaded).
Jonathan Fine of The Open University in the UK demonstrated the public MathTran server (mathtran.org) designed to put mathematics on web pages. The service takes math formulas written in Tex and sends back an image for web page embedding. Python glues it all together. Let's give it a try. Sending \sum_{k=1}^\infty \frac{1}{k}, receiving back the following png:
.
OK, cool.
On the agenda: two way translations between TeX and MathML.
Johnny Stovall, a wild man Texan expat from Indonesia belted out his Data Driven Parsing for the Real World. The guy's been on a 36 year mission to develop a utility he's been told is impossible (he's been nicknamed "the impossible man").
But what is a data driven parser and what is it for? It doesn't depend on an exhaustive rule-based description of a knowledge domain or human language.
Mostly he talked about how computers complement humans by accomplishing tasks that humans cannot (but I think we knew that).
I believe until what he's looking for -- some kind of very generic pattern recognizer -- is better defined, the kind of non-computable problems he imagines tackling will be handled on the human side of the fence, though with the aid of computers. I don't think we're quite ready to do Python sprints to solve the perennial problem of creating an Artificial Intelligence.
Coin3D wrapped in Pivy on top of a database, serving out through Qt, gives operators real time views of the drilling platforms and surrounding vessels. We zoomed in on the Ekofisk field, checking out weather conditions, logistic features (e.g. vessel trip planning, viewing cargo manifests).
The demonstrated application implements collision and speeding detection, sea bed visualization. Applying a dynamic language such as Python was a big experiment and considered a success. Our speaker was Roly Seehaus of Kongsberg.
Fabio Pliger from the University of Verona also cast his talk as a success story regarding Python's ability to perform in real time, generating critical feedback, this time within the pharmaceutical industry.
His shop is still Windows-based, but Python plays well with others.
I next learned about the somewhat experimental PyConsole.py running atop Python's win32console module. This gives users a Windows compatible command line, atop which another Python interpreter might be loaded.
By use of callbacks, one might use multiple consoles to leverage the operating system's multi-processing capabilities (e.g. instead of Python-level threading).
The speaker, Michael Graz, also demonstrated using AJAX to invoke a server-based Python command line from within a client's web browser.
The Pygame guy unfortunately had no sense of time. Though obviously a genius, we barely got to the core substance of his discussion (tmap, RenderUpdatesThreaded).
Jonathan Fine of The Open University in the UK demonstrated the public MathTran server (mathtran.org) designed to put mathematics on web pages. The service takes math formulas written in Tex and sends back an image for web page embedding. Python glues it all together. Let's give it a try. Sending \sum_{k=1}^\infty \frac{1}{k}, receiving back the following png:
.OK, cool.
On the agenda: two way translations between TeX and MathML.
Johnny Stovall, a wild man Texan expat from Indonesia belted out his Data Driven Parsing for the Real World. The guy's been on a 36 year mission to develop a utility he's been told is impossible (he's been nicknamed "the impossible man").
But what is a data driven parser and what is it for? It doesn't depend on an exhaustive rule-based description of a knowledge domain or human language.
Mostly he talked about how computers complement humans by accomplishing tasks that humans cannot (but I think we knew that).
I believe until what he's looking for -- some kind of very generic pattern recognizer -- is better defined, the kind of non-computable problems he imagines tackling will be handled on the human side of the fence, though with the aid of computers. I don't think we're quite ready to do Python sprints to solve the perennial problem of creating an Artificial Intelligence.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Connecting the Dots
The talk went OK I thought, in Zeta (all the rooms have Greek letter names).
The gist:
Students like to be clued in regarding technology, especially when it represents the promise of better living standards. Calculators shouldn't artificially delimit what we mean by "technology in the classroom."
Understanding of computers, how they're programmed, gives a deeper appreciation for "how things work" in many walks of life e.g. data bases are prevalent.
Mathematics and computer programming need to be better integrated from an early age. The object oriented paradigm (OOP) brings some unifying heuristics to basic mathematics, as we're able to cast polynomials, vectors, polyhedra, rational numbers and so on as "math objects."
Working backward from a vision of the future in which many more people are much more computer literate, we need to ask ourselves: how did we get here (a more enlightened world) from there (the dark ages past)?
P4E succeeded not because everyone had to learn Python or had to choose computer science or programming for their profession. Rather, we converged problem solving skills with coding skills, code being another kind of mathematical notation (the machine executable kind).
Our integrated approach also involved connecting the lexical to the graphical, keeping the so-called left and right hemispheres of the brain integrated.
For eye candy I had my hypertoon projecting as people took their seats. During the talk I rotated the Beryl desktop cube a few times, switching to various websites.
For example, I demonstrated looking up 1, 12, 42, 92... in Sloane's On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. We might use such sequences to motivate writing a few Python generators.
I didn't actually have time to run any of my source code, nor even explore it in much detail.
I only got two questions, one about whether I get any income from my teaching (yeah, some) and one about H.S.M. Coxeter and his possible influence on my curriculum writing (he's one of my heroes, helped give focus to polyhedral numbers).
There were some microphone problems and page up/down weren't working in OpenOffice so I kept resorting to the mouse wheel, which was awkward.
P4E: slides, paper, 4dsolutions, edu-sig, CP4E, OEIS, Kusasa, PyMath, Mathematics for a Digital Age, math-teach HP4E: Hexa-wuh?, EuroPython 2005, Hexapent Turtle Shell
The gist:
Students like to be clued in regarding technology, especially when it represents the promise of better living standards. Calculators shouldn't artificially delimit what we mean by "technology in the classroom."
Understanding of computers, how they're programmed, gives a deeper appreciation for "how things work" in many walks of life e.g. data bases are prevalent.
Mathematics and computer programming need to be better integrated from an early age. The object oriented paradigm (OOP) brings some unifying heuristics to basic mathematics, as we're able to cast polynomials, vectors, polyhedra, rational numbers and so on as "math objects."
Working backward from a vision of the future in which many more people are much more computer literate, we need to ask ourselves: how did we get here (a more enlightened world) from there (the dark ages past)?
P4E succeeded not because everyone had to learn Python or had to choose computer science or programming for their profession. Rather, we converged problem solving skills with coding skills, code being another kind of mathematical notation (the machine executable kind).
Our integrated approach also involved connecting the lexical to the graphical, keeping the so-called left and right hemispheres of the brain integrated.
For eye candy I had my hypertoon projecting as people took their seats. During the talk I rotated the Beryl desktop cube a few times, switching to various websites.
For example, I demonstrated looking up 1, 12, 42, 92... in Sloane's On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. We might use such sequences to motivate writing a few Python generators.
I didn't actually have time to run any of my source code, nor even explore it in much detail.
I only got two questions, one about whether I get any income from my teaching (yeah, some) and one about H.S.M. Coxeter and his possible influence on my curriculum writing (he's one of my heroes, helped give focus to polyhedral numbers).
There were some microphone problems and page up/down weren't working in OpenOffice so I kept resorting to the mouse wheel, which was awkward.
P4E: slides, paper, 4dsolutions, edu-sig, CP4E, OEIS, Kusasa, PyMath, Mathematics for a Digital Age, math-teach HP4E: Hexa-wuh?, EuroPython 2005, Hexapent Turtle Shell
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Ratatouille (movie review)
The food critic, mirroring a film critic, delivers the moral of this film: anyone might be a cook (film director, great actor... food critic). What that means is: not everyone is born to do just anything, but anyone you meet might be a genius in ways that surprise you.
How this movie teaches its lesson is by setting up a lot of interspecies bigotry (not hard, as it's real, at least on the human side), with the crossover being quality food, in which members of both species are true believers, but this one rat in particular: he has the right stuff.
Although a kids' cartoon, I found ways to piggyback my adult reveries, about kings and queens and their inner circles 'n stuff. The word "democracy" is still echoing from Michael Moore's latest (a certain UKer was most eloquent about it), and the Quaker idea of "that of God in each and every" -- easily mappable, as a maxim, to "the genius light within" or St. Augustine's "inner teacher."
The rats inhabit a kind of Hades, a netherworld. Remy overcomes his misanthropy enough to actually become one of "them" (joined in his loneliness by his idol, one recently departed) if, that is, you think looking out a man's hat, puppeting his limbs, might just be a metaphor about the mind-body relationship ("naw, Disney? Philosophical?" chuckle). Think "rat = homunculus" in this case an ego dealing with class and personality complexes (shades of Flushed Away).
This was a family outing, with Tara to my immediate right, then Julie and Carol. Later we split up a bit, me heading to Men's Warehouse (redeem a coupon, shirts for Vilnius), Tara to American Eagle, Carol and Julie wandering an old haunt. We rendezvoused at the ice cream stand just outside Macy's, Carol's treat, and drove home.
My thanks to Tara for filling my iPod with a lot of good music. Tonight's listening: Blue October: Into the Ocean, Hate Me (Tara and I agree there's a lot of talent here).
How this movie teaches its lesson is by setting up a lot of interspecies bigotry (not hard, as it's real, at least on the human side), with the crossover being quality food, in which members of both species are true believers, but this one rat in particular: he has the right stuff.
Although a kids' cartoon, I found ways to piggyback my adult reveries, about kings and queens and their inner circles 'n stuff. The word "democracy" is still echoing from Michael Moore's latest (a certain UKer was most eloquent about it), and the Quaker idea of "that of God in each and every" -- easily mappable, as a maxim, to "the genius light within" or St. Augustine's "inner teacher."
The rats inhabit a kind of Hades, a netherworld. Remy overcomes his misanthropy enough to actually become one of "them" (joined in his loneliness by his idol, one recently departed) if, that is, you think looking out a man's hat, puppeting his limbs, might just be a metaphor about the mind-body relationship ("naw, Disney? Philosophical?" chuckle). Think "rat = homunculus" in this case an ego dealing with class and personality complexes (shades of Flushed Away).
This was a family outing, with Tara to my immediate right, then Julie and Carol. Later we split up a bit, me heading to Men's Warehouse (redeem a coupon, shirts for Vilnius), Tara to American Eagle, Carol and Julie wandering an old haunt. We rendezvoused at the ice cream stand just outside Macy's, Carol's treat, and drove home.
My thanks to Tara for filling my iPod with a lot of good music. Tonight's listening: Blue October: Into the Ocean, Hate Me (Tara and I agree there's a lot of talent here).
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
Personal Workspace
A control room may be as humble and spare as one laptop and one child (the controller), which is close to where I am, except I'm a grownup. My one laptop (the other one's in the closet) is now the wildly popular Dell Inspiron E1505, a duo-core jobber, running Ubuntu, in my case with Beryl 0.4.2 (a release candidate).
CubeSpace, which hosted the wildly successful Portland BarCamp a few weeks ago, is premised on this model: find your cube and fit in. Doesn't have to be the same cube every time. Join a counter- part cube farm in Tokyo. Flit about, a wandering cube farmer. Except I've always envisioned my PWS as a tetrahedron in GST, but that's just my Fuller Schooler aesthetics shining through the covers.
So O'Reilly's Safari Unleashed or whatever they're calling it, proved its weight in gold just now. After fighting the problem for hours, as to how to get my 1280 x 800 desktop to share out to my 1024 x 768 Optoma or some like-minded projector, preferably on both screens simultaneously.
Answer (as I found by browsing Safari): use the Ctrl-Alt-Fn-minus to lower the resolution, which'll make that 1280 x 800 surface (one side of a cube of two caps and four desktops) into a virtual desktop not quite fitting in its little brother window. I can live with this outcome.
What's amazing about this nVidia card is it'll then play a DVD movie through both displays simultaneously, though I don't ask for "full screen" as that'd mean "partly off screen" in my space. My Toshiba, the one in the closet, hasn't mastered that trick yet.
CubeSpace, which hosted the wildly successful Portland BarCamp a few weeks ago, is premised on this model: find your cube and fit in. Doesn't have to be the same cube every time. Join a counter- part cube farm in Tokyo. Flit about, a wandering cube farmer. Except I've always envisioned my PWS as a tetrahedron in GST, but that's just my Fuller Schooler aesthetics shining through the covers.
So O'Reilly's Safari Unleashed or whatever they're calling it, proved its weight in gold just now. After fighting the problem for hours, as to how to get my 1280 x 800 desktop to share out to my 1024 x 768 Optoma or some like-minded projector, preferably on both screens simultaneously.
Answer (as I found by browsing Safari): use the Ctrl-Alt-Fn-minus to lower the resolution, which'll make that 1280 x 800 surface (one side of a cube of two caps and four desktops) into a virtual desktop not quite fitting in its little brother window. I can live with this outcome.
What's amazing about this nVidia card is it'll then play a DVD movie through both displays simultaneously, though I don't ask for "full screen" as that'd mean "partly off screen" in my space. My Toshiba, the one in the closet, hasn't mastered that trick yet.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Deja Vu (movie review)
I'm just focusing on one particular scene here, wherein Doug Carlin, played by Denzel Washington, throws a kind of tantrum in a control room, breaking a monitor.
Why does he do this?
He's being let in, as an insider, to the core counterterrorism center, the better to do his job. The monitors show events four days in the past, which the experts claim is based on satellite feed and some post processing.
Carlin does some empirical testing of his own and confirms his suspicion that he's being lied to, which is when he throws his fit. How can he really do his job most effectively if he doesn't have a realistic grasp on what his degrees of freedom really might be? Is he actually able to retroject himself into the past? He really needs to know this, and he tries to hammer that point home.
I found this scene effective in that I wasn't buying the satellite feed model either, as I kept telling Tara. Besides, we both knew from the previews that time travel was somehow involved. My impatience found cathartic expression in Carlin's throwing a fit. He's just trying to do his job, so why all the BS?
Carlin and the other controllers have witnessed a horror and will do pretty much anything to prevent it from happening again -- or might they really undo the past itself, even at the cost of erasing the present? Yes, apparently.
Within the domain of timeloop science fiction (12 Monkeys being another of that genre), this one resolves nicely, like a clever slip knot.
Why does he do this?
He's being let in, as an insider, to the core counterterrorism center, the better to do his job. The monitors show events four days in the past, which the experts claim is based on satellite feed and some post processing.
Carlin does some empirical testing of his own and confirms his suspicion that he's being lied to, which is when he throws his fit. How can he really do his job most effectively if he doesn't have a realistic grasp on what his degrees of freedom really might be? Is he actually able to retroject himself into the past? He really needs to know this, and he tries to hammer that point home.
I found this scene effective in that I wasn't buying the satellite feed model either, as I kept telling Tara. Besides, we both knew from the previews that time travel was somehow involved. My impatience found cathartic expression in Carlin's throwing a fit. He's just trying to do his job, so why all the BS?
Carlin and the other controllers have witnessed a horror and will do pretty much anything to prevent it from happening again -- or might they really undo the past itself, even at the cost of erasing the present? Yes, apparently.
Within the domain of timeloop science fiction (12 Monkeys being another of that genre), this one resolves nicely, like a clever slip knot.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Summer Retreat
Wanderers gathered at Joe's place in Oregon wine country, to learn about his long term experiments in horticulture and forestry, and to compare notes on practically any subject under the sun.
Given the Willamette Valley's almost Mediterranean ecosystem, with drenching cold winters and hot dry summers, a relatively small set of plants and animals are good to go here.
Although redwoods and great sequoias grow in largely separate bioregions of northern California (along the coast and in the Sierra Nevada respectively), Joe hopes his experiment of interleaving the two species will work well on this property. Once these trees are big enough, they tend to create their own self-sustaining micro-climate.
At one point I felt we were becoming too cult like, with the sun beaming down between rains, listening to ourselves chatter in the well lit, finished barn (more of a workshop). When people prefer the sound of their own philosophies to unedited Mother Nature, that's a warning sign.
I left the group and hiked up to the old oak, taking in the view, coming down from the mountain with a message for my peers: "you're all crazy" (I got a few nods of assent). But the group was transitioning to the outdoors at that point. Joe cleared a main trail with his Kuboda tractor and before long we were all guzzling Nature's Own kool aid, taking in the forest.
And besides, we are an interesting group, chat wise.
Listening to Gus and Bob blab about who they know in common in the Mars Society, what experiments they've been up to, what telescopes made, articles read and/or published, is all very entertaining and enlightening to boot. Too bad I'll miss Gus's upcoming talk on time lapse photography, which I expect will be excellent.
Terry was busy spinning thermodynamics, channeling Greek philosophers. Gloria led a discussion of family design patterns in relation to ethnicity. Phil, the book store owner, suggested I read up on those tough guy Teutonic Knights given I'm heading to Lithuania soon.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Another Control Panel Fragment
ProQuest search panel(with special thanks to Trevor Blake)
Here's an ad citing Bucky's infamous "nature is not using pi" meme, which in 1980 sounded fresh enough to serve as a recruiting tool. This company is looking to hire some new crew members.
NYT ad: Apr 27, 1980 pg. F33So that's Shirley Sharky on the left (below). I got to meet her in Ed's Georgetown apartment during that big shindig in 2004 he cohosted with his daughter Ashton, with foci of her own.
I got to share lasagna with Thomas Zung and Shoji Sadao as well. Dick Fischbeck was in the little kitchenette where Ed kept the gin.
Anyway, I tend to get a little giddy when I'm around so many beautiful people all packed into a single meetup like that.
NYT article: School of Tutors Uses World as Campus,by Sharon Johnshon, Sep 7, 1980
(Janet Bergman with glasses)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Today's Confabs
I joined a tetrahedron of phi guys today: DF has been studying the spiral; GS knows sacred geometry; DK (who phoned my cell while I was having Thai food with DF); myself.
Chatting with DF is always a pleasure. He knows lots of tricks I don't, just as CalTech has fared better at providing email to its alums, Princeton's TigerNet having caved under ambient conditions within Spamalot, our trashy cyberslum.
I'm boosting coffee consumption, beans from Burundi, cutting back on other calories (I have plenty in storage).
DF and I spent a pleasant quarter hour exploring the OED around "jerk," a real name for the third derivative at Boeing, where people value smoothness as a passenger experience.
r = pow(math.e, theta * (2/math.pi)*(math.log(phi)))DF: the successively shrinking quarter-circles-in-squares in a phi spiral aren't exactly quarter circles. That f(x,y) = 0 would put too much jerk in the joins.
OED: another meaning is to "jerk out" something sage between draws on one's pipe, not quite the same as "blurting" nor "pontificating" either.
This association with witty, whip-like quips, is in stark contrast with another meaning of "jerk" as in "slow to catch on," "a dim bulb," a spectrum mirroring people's differing experiences of the same performance on occasion.
Judging was a major focus of our lunch as well.
DF's visualizations around the science fair model, of judges ranking projects with an eye toward awarding prizes, have been evolving for some time now, a fascinating process to observe and to learn from I reckon.
GS found me at the supermarket, looking for butter pecan ice cream for mom, mint chocolate chip for Tara. We then co-spiraled down the beer aisle.
I returned DK's call from earlier. He's recovering fast from an injury, has almost finished the new garage.
Chatting with DF is always a pleasure. He knows lots of tricks I don't, just as CalTech has fared better at providing email to its alums, Princeton's TigerNet having caved under ambient conditions within Spamalot, our trashy cyberslum.
I'm boosting coffee consumption, beans from Burundi, cutting back on other calories (I have plenty in storage).
DF and I spent a pleasant quarter hour exploring the OED around "jerk," a real name for the third derivative at Boeing, where people value smoothness as a passenger experience.
r = pow(math.e, theta * (2/math.pi)*(math.log(phi)))OED: another meaning is to "jerk out" something sage between draws on one's pipe, not quite the same as "blurting" nor "pontificating" either.
This association with witty, whip-like quips, is in stark contrast with another meaning of "jerk" as in "slow to catch on," "a dim bulb," a spectrum mirroring people's differing experiences of the same performance on occasion.
Judging was a major focus of our lunch as well.
DF's visualizations around the science fair model, of judges ranking projects with an eye toward awarding prizes, have been evolving for some time now, a fascinating process to observe and to learn from I reckon.
GS found me at the supermarket, looking for butter pecan ice cream for mom, mint chocolate chip for Tara. We then co-spiraled down the beer aisle.
I returned DK's call from earlier. He's recovering fast from an injury, has almost finished the new garage.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Always a Marine
I just listened to John Rushing's latest interview with Terry Gross, regarding his new book and career as a correspondent for the English language version of Al Jazeera.
Given the etymology of this blog, and my tracking of Rushing's career, I feel obligated to comment; the relevance quotient is so high.
And my comments are very positive. Count me a Rushing fan, even though I don't get Al Jazeera on my DirecTV.
Given the etymology of this blog, and my tracking of Rushing's career, I feel obligated to comment; the relevance quotient is so high.
And my comments are very positive. Count me a Rushing fan, even though I don't get Al Jazeera on my DirecTV.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Computer Anatomy
My last upgrade to Camtasia Studio cost me easy access to sound features within the application, owing to my exotic integrated RealTek circuits, stardard on these HP Pavilion a1630ns, but that still doesn't mean there's a huge intersection of app users willing to press for a solution (by running diagnostics, sending screen shots and so on).
In the meantime, as new C stuff is hammered out, tech support advises that I slip into something more Soundblaster-compatible. Here's the polite letter, which I'm not complaining about, simply sharing:
OK, so I could dissect the Santa Cruz card out from KTU2 in the basement -- the unit swapped in to replace Jennifer, once I repurchased the latter from Derek for display in the Pauling House as a generic, well performing Ubuntu box (from where I'll sometimes post to my blogs, such as during Wanderers meetings, like when not lugging my wireless Toshiba Satellite) -- and transplant it into KTU3.
On the other hand, those Camtasia movies were more "proof of concept" and're still out there doing work, so I'm not all that knickers-in-a-twist (as Brian might put it) over the vacation I'm getting from making more mathcasts and/or pilots for ~M!. Let's give would be sponsors ample time to evaluate the merchandize. I don't believe in being too pushy.
In the meantime, as new C stuff is hammered out, tech support advises that I slip into something more Soundblaster-compatible. Here's the polite letter, which I'm not complaining about, simply sharing:
Hi Kirby,We found that this is a specific issue with Realtek intergrated sound card. We are currently working on ways to accommodate the rare integrated type of sound cards that seem to have issues with Camtasia.In the meantime I would recommend purchasing a Sound Blaster sound card as we have always had good success with those working with Camtasia.Please let me know if you have any questions.Kind Regards,Mike
TechSmith Support
On the other hand, those Camtasia movies were more "proof of concept" and're still out there doing work, so I'm not all that knickers-in-a-twist (as Brian might put it) over the vacation I'm getting from making more mathcasts and/or pilots for ~M!. Let's give would be sponsors ample time to evaluate the merchandize. I don't believe in being too pushy.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Oceans 13 (movie review)
Some friends invited me to this on the basis of free tickets they'd received, handed out by Regal in compensation for some glitch, Jimmy said minor, in some HD showing of Pirates... on a big screen in the multiplex across from Lloyd Center, the one with the parking lot from which Robin Egg was stolen, our Subaru wagon pre Razz, along with her bicycle rack. Miraculously for this Friday night, Jimmy found a space right at the entrance.
In the mood for mindless fun, I gave this movie big benefits of the doubt. None of that could actually work in real life, starting with floor plans, which is why they had too many to show. Everything would be totally broken, starting with the lame explanations for how a tunneling machine could be run by one man. The audience gets taken. The casino wins again.
But the point isn't the claptrap, the bells and whistles, but the clear friendships and utter competence of the guys in the foreground, a rat pack for our age. This is a shared vehicle well shared, by a sensitive bunch of Oprah lovers, what can we say. Not quite as high level as Shark Tale perhaps, but still a crime family drama, and those tend to be good once we're above certain cut offs.
Greco was the furthest off the mark. So what he (a thinking computer) detects short term deviations from average outcomes on the tables, and so what some big winner acts not innocently surprised, but like he expected it. So whatcha gonna do, big guy? Deviations happen.
In the mood for mindless fun, I gave this movie big benefits of the doubt. None of that could actually work in real life, starting with floor plans, which is why they had too many to show. Everything would be totally broken, starting with the lame explanations for how a tunneling machine could be run by one man. The audience gets taken. The casino wins again.
But the point isn't the claptrap, the bells and whistles, but the clear friendships and utter competence of the guys in the foreground, a rat pack for our age. This is a shared vehicle well shared, by a sensitive bunch of Oprah lovers, what can we say. Not quite as high level as Shark Tale perhaps, but still a crime family drama, and those tend to be good once we're above certain cut offs.
Greco was the furthest off the mark. So what he (a thinking computer) detects short term deviations from average outcomes on the tables, and so what some big winner acts not innocently surprised, but like he expected it. So whatcha gonna do, big guy? Deviations happen.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Control Panel Fragment
My default screen is a personalized one of Google's. I play around with it, swapping gizmos in and out.I get a Buddhist thought for the day thing via RSS, which I don't always check, but I popped it just now:
War can only be understood and put an end to if you and all those who are concerned very deeply with the survival of man, feel that you are utterly responsible for killing others. What will make you change? - J. KrishnamurtiThat reminds me of some stuff I wrote awhile back, but I'm not finding it right now plus I'm noticing lots of badly formatted pages at my grunch.net web site. I need to go into janitor mode again and clean things up some more.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Patter About Poets
So I'm to understand from today's park meeting with Mitch that Emerson had no problem with all the sex in Whitman's poetry, but maybe from a coaching angle encouraged him to throttle back.
Plus T.S. Eliot was of course quite a bit later on the time line and in a very different social situation, must have disdained Whitman's work for being unschooled. "Poetry is not mere metered exuberance" -- but nor is Walt's.
The proof of transcendentalism is in its pudding. We eat our own dog food as some geeks like to say.
These remarks are with reference to this excerpt from my Connecting the Dots:
So I probably need to study the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg to better understand cultural currents linking the 1840s and the 1960s. Could be some fun airplane reading.
Plus T.S. Eliot was of course quite a bit later on the time line and in a very different social situation, must have disdained Whitman's work for being unschooled. "Poetry is not mere metered exuberance" -- but nor is Walt's.
The proof of transcendentalism is in its pudding. We eat our own dog food as some geeks like to say.
These remarks are with reference to this excerpt from my Connecting the Dots:
Emerson liked Walt Whitman a lot but thought there was too much sex in his poetry. Whitman refused to back off -- much to the disgust of T.S. Elliot -- probably with his future HBO-minded American audience in mind (i.e. he was prescient).[i]
Fuller of Harvard comes later in the game, dubbed “World Game” by him, with “Guinea Pig B” a star player. Fuller, an inventor, invented his own namespace fairly completely, after taking time off post 1927 to thoroughly divest himself of any unwanted “reflex conditioning,” and laying the groundwork for some life-long self-disciplines, somewhat described in his penultimate non-posthumously published magnum opus Critical Path.[ii]
[i] Per my conversation with Johnny Stallings, actor, at Common Ground on Hawthorne[ii] my biography of the guy is available here: http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/bio.html
So I probably need to study the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg to better understand cultural currents linking the 1840s and the 1960s. Could be some fun airplane reading.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Pioneer Century
:: tinkerbell ::We chose the shortest loop (45 miles). Whereas the workout was a real pipe cleaner for me, it was even more of a milestone for Chris, who started noticing troubling health symptoms during this same event last year. This year she conquered the course.
Part of the reason physically active people live longer on average is they notice changes earlier, when pushing themselves to perform. Many illnesses are far more subject to treatment if caught early.
Only a few cyclists marred the event by disrespecting signage and taking to the middle of a busy highway. Local motorists, always courteous, put a bright face on these antics, accepting that some tourists may be prone to goofy behavior.
Yesterday I put some finishing touches on my sixteen page Connecting the Dots: American Transcendentalism Meets Pythonic Math and sent it off to the Europython folks, with strong encouragement from my community. I might tweak it again slightly before putting a copy at my website.
:: playground at the half way point :: 
:: in memoriam: filepe gonzalez ::
Friday, May 25, 2007
Design Science
Last night marked the completion of my Python for Wanderers course, during which I shared a new storyboard for using Python in the field to teach analytical thinking.
We don't always call it math (~M!) as it's more a mix of subjects: philosophy, computer science, graphical arts... music.
We're hoping to leverage the capabilities of the new technologies, including these inexpensive laptops now coming on the scene.
Flextegrity.com has been investing in X3D recently, another way to make graphical material interactive and "fly through- able" (Octaga actually has a little paper airplane icon signifying "fly through").
I've embedded a screen sample. Plus there's been a lot of structural analysis going on behind the scenes. Sam was by 4D Studios not long ago, with the latest hardcopy version.
Yes, I agree, it looks a bit like the obelisk from 2001.
:: sam lanahan withflextegrity prototype ::
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Laptops, Intelligent use of
Intelligent use of laptops (setting): the lecture hall is large and the teacher far away, the chalkboards too. Given there's a camera or two, recording for posterity, it's easy to patch in to the camera feed and see what they're seeing (the producers in the control room), like sports on TV, everything close up and clear.
That's using a laptop, everyone with sufficient bandwidth to capture the feed, with headphones if desired.
Of course the temptation to multi-task presents itself. What did she say again?
Teachers like to day-dream that "undivided attention" is behind all those dreamy eyes out there. Laptops simply make it more public: no, other thoughts are happening too, get over it.
At least let 'em control their own thought process, how 'bout it?
So if you're a lecturer, you might see a lot of student eyes pointed not at you, but at a screen below eye level.
But they're watching you, through eyes on the ceiling or wherever they put the cameras.
Unsettling? Maybe. But at least it's easier on the eyes, plus your lecture is getting saved for future polishing/editing (spin doctoring), such that your "greatest hits" become a salable compilation someday.
So maybe you'll be free to retire from showbiz then, and try out other pastimes, thanks to all those royalties or whatever?
That's using a laptop, everyone with sufficient bandwidth to capture the feed, with headphones if desired.
Of course the temptation to multi-task presents itself. What did she say again?
Teachers like to day-dream that "undivided attention" is behind all those dreamy eyes out there. Laptops simply make it more public: no, other thoughts are happening too, get over it.
At least let 'em control their own thought process, how 'bout it?
So if you're a lecturer, you might see a lot of student eyes pointed not at you, but at a screen below eye level.
But they're watching you, through eyes on the ceiling or wherever they put the cameras.
Unsettling? Maybe. But at least it's easier on the eyes, plus your lecture is getting saved for future polishing/editing (spin doctoring), such that your "greatest hits" become a salable compilation someday.
So maybe you'll be free to retire from showbiz then, and try out other pastimes, thanks to all those royalties or whatever?
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Middle School Program
Friends as in Religious Society of, with many lowercase among them, have gathered to plan future meetings, which sounds boring I know, but that's what we do: meet. For some, that's in anticipation of some future action. For us, that future action will minimally include meetings.
I served as chauffeur this time, escorting my middle schooler, lugging a laptop. I'm not trying to steer stuff at this level, got me blogs to keep current. So I'm back in a corner office while the meeting, after some pizza, gets under way.
Earlier today I wore my tie to some business meetings regarding this or that data, database programmer that I am. Not that I always wear a tie of course, but I've been shopping recently, and felt like road testing some of the combos, having tried out the completely new suit on my birthday recently.
I served as chauffeur this time, escorting my middle schooler, lugging a laptop. I'm not trying to steer stuff at this level, got me blogs to keep current. So I'm back in a corner office while the meeting, after some pizza, gets under way.
Earlier today I wore my tie to some business meetings regarding this or that data, database programmer that I am. Not that I always wear a tie of course, but I've been shopping recently, and felt like road testing some of the combos, having tried out the completely new suit on my birthday recently.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
OLPC on CBS
Lots of geeks were cued to watch this segment on OLPC on 60 Minutes this evening.
I was first to publish a review to edu-sig, Python Nation's "Python in education" list (hosted at python.org).
Excerpt: "Negroponte himself comes across as a class act, handsome, well spoken, an idealist we can love. So the XO uses AMD chips, so what?"
In other news, Jason has agreed to take on Python Meetups in Portland, via the Meetup.com infrastructure. Per Kevin's input @ BarCamp, we've created an official (python.org) mailing list for Portland as well. Thanks to Brad Allen of Dallas for hitting the restart button.
In my inbox: finish downloading Ubuntu Studio (37%), prepare and mail an NTSC DVD of my Dawn's bio & slides to Pat MacAodha; blog screen shots of Google Sketchup (free) doing domes 'n stuff; read more of George Tenet's "encoded spy novel" (I've enjoyed it so far, especially playing "musical chairs" in Georgia).
Sam called; we talked about poets. Dad'd be 77 today.
:: from the 3D warehouse ::
I was first to publish a review to edu-sig, Python Nation's "Python in education" list (hosted at python.org).
Excerpt: "Negroponte himself comes across as a class act, handsome, well spoken, an idealist we can love. So the XO uses AMD chips, so what?"
In other news, Jason has agreed to take on Python Meetups in Portland, via the Meetup.com infrastructure. Per Kevin's input @ BarCamp, we've created an official (python.org) mailing list for Portland as well. Thanks to Brad Allen of Dallas for hitting the restart button.
In my inbox: finish downloading Ubuntu Studio (37%), prepare and mail an NTSC DVD of my Dawn's bio & slides to Pat MacAodha; blog screen shots of Google Sketchup (free) doing domes 'n stuff; read more of George Tenet's "encoded spy novel" (I've enjoyed it so far, especially playing "musical chairs" in Georgia).Sam called; we talked about poets. Dad'd be 77 today.
:: from the 3D warehouse ::
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Incompleteness
:: rebecca @ island cafe ::Rebecca did some hard time in 1879 Hall (Princeton's philo building), at the grad level (I was undergrad), escaping the limited options a trully orthodox Jewish curriculum could have provided a woman of her day. We gossiped and/or compared notes on a few of the big names for which Princeton is famous e.g. Kripke 'n Kaufmann.
Rebecca and I are both Sasha/Borat/AliG fans, so using my faux AliG voice I asked "if Gödel was on Myspace, who would his Myspace friends be?" Rebecca responded without hesitation: "Einstein and Leibniz." Me: "but Leibniz was dead." Rebecca: "They're all dead." At which point I broke character to speculate how three hundred years from now, Myspace might include as many dead as living (the info'd still be of historical interest no?).
Post lecture: Gödel would've nixed Wittgenstein as a Myspace friend at the time, especially as LW was being hailed as the god of logical positivism (a gross miscasting) whereas Gödel was into proving his brand of Platonism still held water. Rebecca: definitely one of Gödel's best Myspace friends.
:: rebecca chatting with nirel ::
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Wanderers 2007.5.15
Scene One:
Mom got a computerized call in the wee hours of this morning informing her of a change of itinerary on United Airlines: her flight had been canceled, with the new one scheduled in at 8:30 PM instead of 3 PM.
Arriving early at the airport, given the pre-scheduled shuttle, she rebooked via Seattle but that flight was pulled for safety reasons, after passengers had already boarded, meaning she's now wait listed on the flight in at 8:30, with a backup confirmed in at 10 PM.
We call that "being jerked around" in the airline biz, but fortunately the customer in this case, age 78, is a veteran flyer and knows how to roll with the punches.
On my end, it's an ever-changing pickup time, meaning how much of Wanderers I'll make is still a mystery.
Scene Two:
Nirel did a great job laying out her dream of a cafe/lounge in this particular Seattle property that speaks to her. I've written about her project before in this blog. We all know I'm a big Nirel fan, in addition to being a Katie Couric fan. Count me a Condi fan too, talk of policies aside.
Scene Three:
Mom really felt for the airline clerks, especially this one who got 130 unhappy campers from the deboarded plane to Seattle, some missing international connections, all lined up and mad. Her own scenario worked out pretty well, with a comfortable seat on an Airbus that arrived some 20 minutes early, closer to 8 PM.
Tara and I retrieved her, and her bags, from PDX. She was amazed and pleased that her bags had made it as well, given her earlier wait listed status.
Mom got a computerized call in the wee hours of this morning informing her of a change of itinerary on United Airlines: her flight had been canceled, with the new one scheduled in at 8:30 PM instead of 3 PM.
Arriving early at the airport, given the pre-scheduled shuttle, she rebooked via Seattle but that flight was pulled for safety reasons, after passengers had already boarded, meaning she's now wait listed on the flight in at 8:30, with a backup confirmed in at 10 PM.
We call that "being jerked around" in the airline biz, but fortunately the customer in this case, age 78, is a veteran flyer and knows how to roll with the punches.
On my end, it's an ever-changing pickup time, meaning how much of Wanderers I'll make is still a mystery.
Scene Two:
Nirel did a great job laying out her dream of a cafe/lounge in this particular Seattle property that speaks to her. I've written about her project before in this blog. We all know I'm a big Nirel fan, in addition to being a Katie Couric fan. Count me a Condi fan too, talk of policies aside.
Scene Three:
Mom really felt for the airline clerks, especially this one who got 130 unhappy campers from the deboarded plane to Seattle, some missing international connections, all lined up and mad. Her own scenario worked out pretty well, with a comfortable seat on an Airbus that arrived some 20 minutes early, closer to 8 PM.
Tara and I retrieved her, and her bags, from PDX. She was amazed and pleased that her bags had made it as well, given her earlier wait listed status.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Prepping for Class
output from first draft of povtoyz,after rendering in POV-Ray
Python for Wanderers, part three of four, is tonight, and I wanted to be up to date with part three for Saturday Academy, which I'm teaching @ PSU. To that end, I wanted something like VizToyz but geared to work with a ray tracer, POV-Ray, instead of VPython out the back end.
In writing povtoyz.py this afternoon, I finally noticed my polyhedra.py was eight faces shy of the full complement for my Icosahedron subclass, duh. I hadn't noticed because I was so focussed on the wireframe view, but once I got experimenting in POV-Ray, the defect became obvious, as faces, defined by POV-Ray's polygon primitive, were missing from I, Icosa (a menu option parallel to the one in viztoyz.py).
Another feature of the upcoming Wanderers class will be to review my work with Dr. Bob Fuller and team, getting that Studies in Human Motion CDR ready for the summer '04 meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers.
I used Python + POV-Ray for my part in that project, starting from Excel spreadsheets giving the successive (x,y,z) spatial locations (rows) of several sensors (columns) affixed to a ballet student going through her moves in Lincoln, Nebraska. Each row became a frame in a POV-Ray film, with my Python code doing the conversion (included as open source on the CDR).
studies in human motion CD
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
At the Lab
Nick and I are waterholing @ Lucky Lab, connecting through PersonalTelco (he's on a MacBook, me the Toshiba, nowadays with a gig of RAM). Nick's just back from four months in Europe and Canada, including Ireland and Toronto, with lots of stories.
I was late to another power lunch with Arthur, the retired Ecotrust and AFSC VIP, because I was countering the carpenter ants in my garage. Arthur gave me his blessing on that, eco-unfriendly though I'm being. We ate at Portland Fish House, just a tad towards Mt. Tabor from Pauling's on Hawthorne.
Power lunch with Terry Bristol yesterday and Mio Sushi, just prior to a power walk with Trevor and Sarah-the-Dog to Laurelhurst then Ben & Jerry's. Trevor updated me on the twisted history of Oswald Mosley, with the partnership ending up buying the Obey Giant artist's hardcover magnum opus at Missing Link for $60.
Python meetup tonight, organized by some geek from Dallas. Looking forward.
I'm drinking Crazy Ludwig for beer, their signature Hawthorne Best Bitter being off line. The guy behind the bar said it was named for van Beethoven; I thought maybe that Neuschwanstien guy.
I was late to another power lunch with Arthur, the retired Ecotrust and AFSC VIP, because I was countering the carpenter ants in my garage. Arthur gave me his blessing on that, eco-unfriendly though I'm being. We ate at Portland Fish House, just a tad towards Mt. Tabor from Pauling's on Hawthorne.
Power lunch with Terry Bristol yesterday and Mio Sushi, just prior to a power walk with Trevor and Sarah-the-Dog to Laurelhurst then Ben & Jerry's. Trevor updated me on the twisted history of Oswald Mosley, with the partnership ending up buying the Obey Giant artist's hardcover magnum opus at Missing Link for $60.
Python meetup tonight, organized by some geek from Dallas. Looking forward.
I'm drinking Crazy Ludwig for beer, their signature Hawthorne Best Bitter being off line. The guy behind the bar said it was named for van Beethoven; I thought maybe that Neuschwanstien guy.
Sky Camp
I used this occasion to share my dream, of a helicopter lowered prototype in the wide open field, just there for the duration of the event, for Junior Friends to monkey in and around, then gone.How we get there in just a year (with earlier prototypes showing up elsewhere in the meantime) is not by me joining the tiny planetary clique of billionaires, but by me exercising my skills as a director, collecting raw footage for the editors, using my connections, my chief forms of embeddedness, e.g. with the Quakers here. I only had a tent this time, and that might be it for me next time as well. No smorgasbord, no yacht parked in the lake.
The difference between my kind of movie-making and Hollywood's is the props are corporate sponsored as future real world, in some cases mainstreamed candidates. It's product placement of a kind, similar to what the military does for its theater-ready killingry. Livingry is cutting edge, ready for soap operas, and the backgrounds now compete more with the talent for audience attention, something for actors' guilds to get over (this is a genre, akin to the documentary, not a hostile takeover and/or ban on our favorite fictionalizing techniques).
We use fewer mock ups, more of an improv script, because this is "real time" (like ordinary life), not always with opportunities for "take two" type redoings. Not every director is trained to work in this way. Nor do I forbid myself the luxury of slow frame rendering, when such R&R type movie-making gigs get offered.
But this is a surge to Darfur and such places, a FEMA type scenario, with real lives at stake on the ground. So these languid pauses in Quaker boot camps nestled in the Pacific Northwest has this "save the children" urgency about it. The corporations sponsoring us don't take it all too lightly either. We're free to insert our Glad bag commercials, our SuperBowl XX..VI. But that doesn't mean we're not serious-minded about our responsibilities, such as these may be, to our fellow beings aboard Spaceship Earth, nonhumans included.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
FEMA Villages
I met Arthur for a power lunch on Belmont. He's my former boss at CUE, during the Reverend Rodney Page era at EMO, and later a higher up at Ecotrust, a former xBase client.
He filled me in on some Quaker influences, as chronicled in Nixon Agonisties in Whittier, in South Carolina during the AFSC's participation in desegregation, and among the Klamath here in Oregon. Other gossip.
All that, plus the ongoing OLPC vs. CP4E thread, has me thinking of those FEMA Villages again, the ones not made of trailers by The Flintstones, more like a futuristic Dignity Village or Camp I Am.
They'd have a faster-moving queue of disaster survivors, with more slowly rotating staff managing the intake to placement cycle. Staff might be tasked to the different villages TSA style i.e. on a just in time basis.
These villages are not designed around any permanently located dwellings, but serve as removable temporary waystations twixt a disaster and a next chapter.
And no, a given FEMA Village needn't contain any geodesic domes, as if "by law" or anything like that. It's more a matter of who's coordinatin', exercising her or his artistic judgment.
Part of the Katrina Math curriculum (similar to Rainforest Math, but gnuer) is to ensure our HP4E thread continues, i.e. students at least have the option of designing and building geodesic domes i.e. we don't want this relatively new knowledge to get buried for hundreds of years, in some precious "dark age" of Flintstone contrivance.
He filled me in on some Quaker influences, as chronicled in Nixon Agonisties in Whittier, in South Carolina during the AFSC's participation in desegregation, and among the Klamath here in Oregon. Other gossip.
All that, plus the ongoing OLPC vs. CP4E thread, has me thinking of those FEMA Villages again, the ones not made of trailers by The Flintstones, more like a futuristic Dignity Village or Camp I Am.
They'd have a faster-moving queue of disaster survivors, with more slowly rotating staff managing the intake to placement cycle. Staff might be tasked to the different villages TSA style i.e. on a just in time basis.
These villages are not designed around any permanently located dwellings, but serve as removable temporary waystations twixt a disaster and a next chapter.
And no, a given FEMA Village needn't contain any geodesic domes, as if "by law" or anything like that. It's more a matter of who's coordinatin', exercising her or his artistic judgment.
Part of the Katrina Math curriculum (similar to Rainforest Math, but gnuer) is to ensure our HP4E thread continues, i.e. students at least have the option of designing and building geodesic domes i.e. we don't want this relatively new knowledge to get buried for hundreds of years, in some precious "dark age" of Flintstone contrivance.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Dish Chatter
So here's a question for you DirecTV jocks, somewhat rhetorical as I don't generally accept comments in my journal (too many iPod ads): should I initiate a trouble ticket regarding the circumstances recounted below?
So Tara clicks on 311 for America's Funniest Home Videos or whatever and gets 'searching for satellite' but no programming, though some other channels work just fine. Go to the other DirecTV box in another room, go to 311 and voila, no problem at all. And now Tara's got it too, like it just comes on. OK, go back to the other box, and now leave 311: and it's killed on Tara's in the living room, we're back to 'searching for satellite'.
Yet the behavior is unpredictable and seemingly not-weather related. Sometimes the main box seems blissfully unslaved from that other one, gets everything with no assistance and/or interference.
Whaddya say? I say it's under warranty, and I'm a new adopter locked in for a year, and I should explore my technical environment, so yes, let's initiate a trouble ticket. Also, my caller id went away, after a few days of service. I'm thinking confusion at Qwest, so I'll get a partner to check in to it during business hours.
Followup (9:15 AM, May 1):
The Qwest tech detected a cross pattern and cut me a fresh F1 to the crossbox near Hawthorne, for which I'm glad, but a deeper problem is caller id and DSL don't play well together. The workaround was to simply connect the handset on my desk to a different jack.
The DirecTV tech traced our problem to a bad connector left over from CATV days.
I was pleased by the professionalism and prompt responsiveness of both service providers.
:: qwest tech ::
So Tara clicks on 311 for America's Funniest Home Videos or whatever and gets 'searching for satellite' but no programming, though some other channels work just fine. Go to the other DirecTV box in another room, go to 311 and voila, no problem at all. And now Tara's got it too, like it just comes on. OK, go back to the other box, and now leave 311: and it's killed on Tara's in the living room, we're back to 'searching for satellite'.
Yet the behavior is unpredictable and seemingly not-weather related. Sometimes the main box seems blissfully unslaved from that other one, gets everything with no assistance and/or interference.
Whaddya say? I say it's under warranty, and I'm a new adopter locked in for a year, and I should explore my technical environment, so yes, let's initiate a trouble ticket. Also, my caller id went away, after a few days of service. I'm thinking confusion at Qwest, so I'll get a partner to check in to it during business hours.
Followup (9:15 AM, May 1):
The Qwest tech detected a cross pattern and cut me a fresh F1 to the crossbox near Hawthorne, for which I'm glad, but a deeper problem is caller id and DSL don't play well together. The workaround was to simply connect the handset on my desk to a different jack.
The DirecTV tech traced our problem to a bad connector left over from CATV days.
I was pleased by the professionalism and prompt responsiveness of both service providers.
:: qwest tech ::
Friday, April 27, 2007
Errata
I've been something of a Dennis the Menace character of late, knocking out core services in two important (at least to me) buildings: at my house and at Linus Pauling's house.
At my house, I wanted a caller-id enabled telephone on my desk, but replugged it into the second line, daisy chained with the Qwest modem. But there's no DSL on line two, so my LAN went dead. Qwest was on the scene within 48 hours, and did some other troubleshooting as well. My linebacker insurance paid off.
At the Pauling House, when hooking Jennifer to tcp/ip, I also messed with the phone jack, and apparently replugged something back in incorrectly, just like at my house. Barton notified Glenn, who was able to troubleshoot the problem when reminded of the shenanigans at my place, at the center of which I was the common element.
Rest assured I felt suitably sheepish about both errors and thank my lucky stars that Universe had the competence to compensate for them.
But I haven't even gotten to my worst error, which was to ineptly secure Naga's aquarium tank, such that she escaped her abode.
The odds of finding a small, hiding snake in a big house were against me. Yet I found her. But not before experiencing this little rollercoaster: loss of Internet and Naga the same morning.
I've done a lot of postmortems on these errors, have tried to learn a great deal from them. In general I'm on a campaign to reduce entropy in my life, with Dawn, my late wife, a standard bearer and inspiration in this regard. I'm less the poor slob I was when she met me.
I did my first Python for Wanderers class tonight, which I thought went splendidly. The number of total combined computer-related man-hours in that room was impressive, although women still own and control computer science as a discipline, the way I look at it -- again with the Wiccan spin or something close.
At my house, I wanted a caller-id enabled telephone on my desk, but replugged it into the second line, daisy chained with the Qwest modem. But there's no DSL on line two, so my LAN went dead. Qwest was on the scene within 48 hours, and did some other troubleshooting as well. My linebacker insurance paid off.
At the Pauling House, when hooking Jennifer to tcp/ip, I also messed with the phone jack, and apparently replugged something back in incorrectly, just like at my house. Barton notified Glenn, who was able to troubleshoot the problem when reminded of the shenanigans at my place, at the center of which I was the common element.
Rest assured I felt suitably sheepish about both errors and thank my lucky stars that Universe had the competence to compensate for them.
But I haven't even gotten to my worst error, which was to ineptly secure Naga's aquarium tank, such that she escaped her abode.
The odds of finding a small, hiding snake in a big house were against me. Yet I found her. But not before experiencing this little rollercoaster: loss of Internet and Naga the same morning.
I've done a lot of postmortems on these errors, have tried to learn a great deal from them. In general I'm on a campaign to reduce entropy in my life, with Dawn, my late wife, a standard bearer and inspiration in this regard. I'm less the poor slob I was when she met me.
I did my first Python for Wanderers class tonight, which I thought went splendidly. The number of total combined computer-related man-hours in that room was impressive, although women still own and control computer science as a discipline, the way I look at it -- again with the Wiccan spin or something close.
Monday, April 23, 2007
More Meetings
I was somewhat busier than usual today, what with the banking, the lunch at Portland Fish House, snapping a photo of Jennifer, diving into gnu math exercises and so forth, followed by a quick walk with Trevor over to Belmont and back, followed by a trip to the pet store to discuss Naga's care and feeding.
Trevor and I talked submarines, including the Japanese ones and the ones my uncle Bill Lightfoot writes about in his excellent Beneath the Surface.
Over lunch, Glenn and I discussed literature by R.D. McGown, which in turn references Bunce on music theory i.e. lots of Wanderer action, a lot of it in the arts of memory tradition.
Returned to mom's cell's voicemail box my congrats on producing a successful Chalmers Johnson event, pre all this R&R in Washington, District of Columbia.
News on TV, local six but on satellite, spaghetti & tomato sauce (I rinse 'em too), some coffee, some staying up late to do laundry and blog.
Trevor and I talked submarines, including the Japanese ones and the ones my uncle Bill Lightfoot writes about in his excellent Beneath the Surface.
Over lunch, Glenn and I discussed literature by R.D. McGown, which in turn references Bunce on music theory i.e. lots of Wanderer action, a lot of it in the arts of memory tradition.
Returned to mom's cell's voicemail box my congrats on producing a successful Chalmers Johnson event, pre all this R&R in Washington, District of Columbia.
News on TV, local six but on satellite, spaghetti & tomato sauce (I rinse 'em too), some coffee, some staying up late to do laundry and blog.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Business Transaction
Jennifer @ Pauling HouseAlthough the hardware was maybe priced a tad high -- the software is free -- Jennifer has sentimental value (to Derek too), plus I need a known quantity Linux box for my Python for Wanderers class, which begins next Thursday, in synch with my Pythonic Math class for Saturday Academy on the weekends.
Glenn was at work when I phoned and helped me set it up in the Pauling House. In just minutes we had an IP number and Google on screen, with speakers plugged in and ready to rumble.
Although I'll be projecting from a WinXP laptop a lot of the time, it'll be nice to demonstrate pretty much the same stuff running on this alternative open source platform. Wanderers wishing to familiarize themselves with a contemporary Linux distro will now have that opportunity as well.
recursive mural on Hawthorne
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Wanderers 2007.4.17
Last night it was my privilege to present about Python Nation to Wanderer mathematicians and engineers, practicing and retired, some with years of programming experience e.g. both Bill (electronics) and Barry (banking) have an active knowledge of assembly language programming.
Given I usually teach this stuff to middle and high schoolers, I found last evening's venue a valuable opportunity to gear things a little differently. Jon made us coffee. Wine and beer were also available.
Part of my preparation process was to remove pretty much all traces of Python from the Toshiba laptop to start with, and install the 2.5.1 release candidate at the start of the talk. I wanted that "nothing up the sleeves" sense of bare Python.
Then I wrote, saved and imported all my code in real time, while projecting with the Optoma -- except when showing off such canned Standard Library modules as math and cmath.
I've saved the gist of my presentation as wanderers.py at my 4D Solutions/CP4E website.
Followup:
Class 0 (April 26)
Class 1 (May 3)
Class 2 (May 10)
Class 3 (May 24)
Given I usually teach this stuff to middle and high schoolers, I found last evening's venue a valuable opportunity to gear things a little differently. Jon made us coffee. Wine and beer were also available.
Part of my preparation process was to remove pretty much all traces of Python from the Toshiba laptop to start with, and install the 2.5.1 release candidate at the start of the talk. I wanted that "nothing up the sleeves" sense of bare Python.
Then I wrote, saved and imported all my code in real time, while projecting with the Optoma -- except when showing off such canned Standard Library modules as math and cmath.
I've saved the gist of my presentation as wanderers.py at my 4D Solutions/CP4E website.
Followup:
Class 0 (April 26)
Class 1 (May 3)
Class 2 (May 10)
Class 3 (May 24)
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Rebooting Mathematics
Originally posted to Math Forum @ Drexel, hyperlinks added.
Back in the 1980s/90s I was suggesting a "makeover", then as now a popular genre on TV (plastic surgery channel, or just playing dress up). But the downside of such a meme is its "purely cosmetic" spin, inapplicable as that connotation may well be in specialcase.
So the new campaign uses words like "reboot" more often, while keeping "makeover" as a runner up.
Central to the reboot is this new focus on energy. We have Sol (our sun) like 92 million miles distant, as a primary source, and the relative vacuum of space (out past the orbiting junk heap) as our energy source. In between is what Dorion Sagan and others call the "solar gradient", which humanity rides kind of like a beach bum rides a surf board, piggy-backing on this vast tsunami of energy income courtesy of what Pharoh Akhenaten recognized as our biggest physical energy sponsor in these parts, to the tune of many terawatts per capita over an average lifetime.
What we then do is break this energy down into cycles, mainly the shorter swing weather cycles within the longer swing climate cycles, and our ability to tap in to those with "water wheel" technology, meaning these turbine like things (or literal turbines), feeding into the various distribution grids to the offices and homes and such, where the voltage is stepped down to like 220/110 at 50/60 cycles (visit geni.org for more info).
The mathematics comes in early, as we attach precise and engineeringly significant numbers to this picture, using spreadsheets, computer simulations or whatever you school curriculum experts have signed up for (as a parent, you may be downloading or purchasing at Fry's -- make sure you push for that homeschooler tax deduction as these supplies needn't be paid for twice). Solar gradient kwhs convert to grid kwhs which in turn convert to calories and kilocalories, joules and kilojoules. This is where we get to the food labels and the whole Super Size Me discussion around malnutrition (over as well as under -- an important component of any serious-minded public spirited self health curriculum, and just as appropriate under the heading of math).
Of course by now the purists are starting to object about all the french fries and milk shakes we're discussing, taking seriously as solar gradient income (hydrocarbons cycle). This sounds more like science class. But your counter, as one of the "gnu math" trained, is to remind parents that "geometry" is really "earth measure" and said earth is an actual planet, ours, Earth or Spaceship Earth as your text may call it.
We're not using K-12 as a platform to promote some psychological "disconnect" from the "real world" ala some of the negative press about Ivory Tower PhD level math (much of it undeserved). That's not a goal. Pursue that brand of necromancy in college or in private scholarship if you like, but don't take it as a sign of weakness that we're anchored in the astronomical and geological data bases, when it comes to getting our most primitive concepts across. We're not about turning our back on Animal Planet. The object oriented paradigm (OOP), intrinsic to our self-executing math notations, is especially vested in animals and animation, per the various geek-architected pipelines already well described in this Math Forum archive.
That being said, don't therefore misassume we don't have proofs. Our grounding in real world open source energy planning type curricula does not mean we're unable to justify and/or prove the logical consistency of our approach, by a lot of the same means used by the competition i.e. by those otherworldly philosopher types, steeped in their continuum metaphysics ala the calculus. Discrete math engineering, at the higher levels, is well typified by such texts as Concrete Mathematics (sometimes used at Stanford) and Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. We're not apologetic for our more digital spin, think it flies, carries water, plus leads to interesting careers for our grads. Your mileage may vary.
Related Reading:
Brainstorming About an Early 21st Century Technology Curriculum (Shuttleworth Summit)
Back in the 1980s/90s I was suggesting a "makeover", then as now a popular genre on TV (plastic surgery channel, or just playing dress up). But the downside of such a meme is its "purely cosmetic" spin, inapplicable as that connotation may well be in specialcase.
So the new campaign uses words like "reboot" more often, while keeping "makeover" as a runner up.
Central to the reboot is this new focus on energy. We have Sol (our sun) like 92 million miles distant, as a primary source, and the relative vacuum of space (out past the orbiting junk heap) as our energy source. In between is what Dorion Sagan and others call the "solar gradient", which humanity rides kind of like a beach bum rides a surf board, piggy-backing on this vast tsunami of energy income courtesy of what Pharoh Akhenaten recognized as our biggest physical energy sponsor in these parts, to the tune of many terawatts per capita over an average lifetime.
What we then do is break this energy down into cycles, mainly the shorter swing weather cycles within the longer swing climate cycles, and our ability to tap in to those with "water wheel" technology, meaning these turbine like things (or literal turbines), feeding into the various distribution grids to the offices and homes and such, where the voltage is stepped down to like 220/110 at 50/60 cycles (visit geni.org for more info).
The mathematics comes in early, as we attach precise and engineeringly significant numbers to this picture, using spreadsheets, computer simulations or whatever you school curriculum experts have signed up for (as a parent, you may be downloading or purchasing at Fry's -- make sure you push for that homeschooler tax deduction as these supplies needn't be paid for twice). Solar gradient kwhs convert to grid kwhs which in turn convert to calories and kilocalories, joules and kilojoules. This is where we get to the food labels and the whole Super Size Me discussion around malnutrition (over as well as under -- an important component of any serious-minded public spirited self health curriculum, and just as appropriate under the heading of math).
Of course by now the purists are starting to object about all the french fries and milk shakes we're discussing, taking seriously as solar gradient income (hydrocarbons cycle). This sounds more like science class. But your counter, as one of the "gnu math" trained, is to remind parents that "geometry" is really "earth measure" and said earth is an actual planet, ours, Earth or Spaceship Earth as your text may call it.
We're not using K-12 as a platform to promote some psychological "disconnect" from the "real world" ala some of the negative press about Ivory Tower PhD level math (much of it undeserved). That's not a goal. Pursue that brand of necromancy in college or in private scholarship if you like, but don't take it as a sign of weakness that we're anchored in the astronomical and geological data bases, when it comes to getting our most primitive concepts across. We're not about turning our back on Animal Planet. The object oriented paradigm (OOP), intrinsic to our self-executing math notations, is especially vested in animals and animation, per the various geek-architected pipelines already well described in this Math Forum archive.
That being said, don't therefore misassume we don't have proofs. Our grounding in real world open source energy planning type curricula does not mean we're unable to justify and/or prove the logical consistency of our approach, by a lot of the same means used by the competition i.e. by those otherworldly philosopher types, steeped in their continuum metaphysics ala the calculus. Discrete math engineering, at the higher levels, is well typified by such texts as Concrete Mathematics (sometimes used at Stanford) and Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. We're not apologetic for our more digital spin, think it flies, carries water, plus leads to interesting careers for our grads. Your mileage may vary.
Related Reading:
Brainstorming About an Early 21st Century Technology Curriculum (Shuttleworth Summit)
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Night at the Museum (movie review)
Tara and I took this in at The Bagdad (right, no h). We both liked it, maybe for only partially overlapping reasons (e.g. the happy ending).
Like I was pretending to be a movie director, watching the camera angles. "Hmmm, competent" I heard myself thinking: just your basic storytelling, with some of our greatest comedy actors.
Dick Van Dyke turns out to have evil motives, but he's still chim chiminy under it all. And by the way, I do like the way Sally Field does her gig with Boniva.
Count me an admirer of this slightly (ever less a percentage difference, logarithmically speaking) older generation. Gervais: hilarious... Ben, you're great.
And Robin, again the president!
Like I was pretending to be a movie director, watching the camera angles. "Hmmm, competent" I heard myself thinking: just your basic storytelling, with some of our greatest comedy actors.
Dick Van Dyke turns out to have evil motives, but he's still chim chiminy under it all. And by the way, I do like the way Sally Field does her gig with Boniva.
Count me an admirer of this slightly (ever less a percentage difference, logarithmically speaking) older generation. Gervais: hilarious... Ben, you're great.
And Robin, again the president!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Run for the Arts
Can you spot Tara and Rose?Note girl on stilts
(click for larger view)
Winterhaven students ran or walked laps for the arts this afternoon, an annual fundraising event throughout Portland Public Schools, over a period of several days.
Meanwhile, parents on the school e-list discussed what to do in the event of rain. "Run anyway" is a strongly expressed ethos around here, since that's what ends up happening so often.
I managed three pictures before losing battery power, then left Tara a can of A&W rootbeer under her dentist-brand water bottle (ironic).
Angi at OnPoint was most kind and efficient when I stopped by to converge the IRAs plus get another read on those interest payments on our mortgage (the IRS wants to know). 2006 was mostly about going in the hole on our 2nd mortgage (aka "equity line") to keep ahead of the cancer, the plan being to eventually pay down this debt with Dawn's life insurance policy (National Life, Montpelier, Vermont).
Later I wrote back to a young woman who lost both parents to cancer when she was still new in this country from Yugoslavia. Now, six years later, she works for AmeriCorps and has friends like family. I salute her "courage to be" as Paul Tillich would put it.
Wanderer Patrick Barton swung by 4D Studios for some wasabi peas, salmon jerky and beer. I showed him my propaganda mill (I was doing some stuff around mom). He's off to Prague next week.
Tonight: dinner at Jane 'n Dave's.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Extremely Remote Living (XRL)
:: desert moon ::Earlier, I shared some of the same XRL-related information with Trevor at Peet's on Hawthorne.
If Mercy Corps or other disaster relief outfit is going to deploy dwelling machines in extreme circumstances, it makes sense for personnel to train on the same or similar equipment in relatively safe local environments with similar terrain.
Ron specializes in teaching science and mathematics concepts using simple off the shelf supplies. His wife, Peg, does a lot of the art work. He has some background in Ghana, working for the Peace Corps.
I'd like him to present to Wanderers one of these days, about his experiences on the science conference circuit, working with NASA, his education philosophy and its translation into practice.
Trevor's presentation is already tentatively scheduled.
:: crooked river ::
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Spring Cleaning
I remarked favorably on the junk service guy's shoulder tatoo, calling it a Celtic knotted snake. He cited Neverending Story but also liked it for it's allusive similarity to the "mind of the Buddha" endless knot motif; he'd noticed, walking through our house, a lot of cool Tantric stuff.
Anyway, the two of 'em hauled off $239's worth of stuff by volume, including a wrecked electric lawn mower, destroyed portable A/C unit, and a much-abused double-sized heated waterbed from our basement.
I'd scored this latter when the Braithwaite's, hoping to relocate to Canada, offered it to our family. If I'd had my act more together -- was more of a handyman -- it might've provided a cool place to cop some Z's or otherwise loll. My bad that it never happened.
At first Tara didn't like this placement (below) for this bumper sticker, but I pointed out it is stuck to the bumper, just in a weird place. David Nally suggested we could put a Keep Portland Insane sticker right on the windshield -- smart cookie that David. Hillary made us some dinner tonight.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Competing Curricula
A theme of my writings of late is we need competition in order to remain strong and healthy.
Python competes with other agile languages for mindshare, true, but its best hope of staying in the game will involve developing countering forms of operational intelligence within Python Nation amongst its many subcultures.
We have some of that diversity even now, as evidenced by Plone, a promising sign.
Likewise, in the USA's pre-college public schools I believe we suffer from too much inbred complacency within the dominant math teaching ethnicity (not a genetic thing i.e. propagated by textbooks and memes more than genes).
Mixing it up more, on TV and computer screens especially, will help dislodge some of these dangerously retarding bottlenecks and logjams.
:: mite & two smites by dbk ::
Python competes with other agile languages for mindshare, true, but its best hope of staying in the game will involve developing countering forms of operational intelligence within Python Nation amongst its many subcultures.
We have some of that diversity even now, as evidenced by Plone, a promising sign.
Likewise, in the USA's pre-college public schools I believe we suffer from too much inbred complacency within the dominant math teaching ethnicity (not a genetic thing i.e. propagated by textbooks and memes more than genes).
Mixing it up more, on TV and computer screens especially, will help dislodge some of these dangerously retarding bottlenecks and logjams.
:: mite & two smites by dbk ::
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Livingry
Drawing from the strength of Dawn's memorial service just completed, which drew us together from so many walks of life, I wish to transform our energy, our fire, into a sense of gratitude.
I am especially grateful to those who've come before us, blazing a way, including developing for themselves and for us these miraculous technologies of cars on freeways, jets in skyways, a growing toolbox of esoterica, some effective, against disease. Because of these things, we were enabled to experience a great healing in the wake of Dawn's life, an act of lovingkindness and a contribution to us all.
Humanity, bending technology to humane uses, has the potential to do well for itself, to alleviate suffering, to work, to enjoy.
I ask that I remain open to Mother Nature as a teacher for me, and as one who assigns me tasks. To serve God is not to turn one's back on the gift of creation, but to manifest a divine will in whose image we have our being.
I am especially grateful to those who've come before us, blazing a way, including developing for themselves and for us these miraculous technologies of cars on freeways, jets in skyways, a growing toolbox of esoterica, some effective, against disease. Because of these things, we were enabled to experience a great healing in the wake of Dawn's life, an act of lovingkindness and a contribution to us all.
Humanity, bending technology to humane uses, has the potential to do well for itself, to alleviate suffering, to work, to enjoy.
I ask that I remain open to Mother Nature as a teacher for me, and as one who assigns me tasks. To serve God is not to turn one's back on the gift of creation, but to manifest a divine will in whose image we have our being.
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