Home Appliance Story

Les & Elise tackled my dishwasher problem with gusto. The thing had become anemic, only the bottom rack usable, and the heating element was looking pretty fried.

The Yellow Pages guy had failed to find the real problem, had charged me $70 anyway, whereas Les quickly got to the heart of the matter: the chopper blade had come off the circular pump intake mesh, leaving it to clog with grime, which explained the low water pressure. The plastic mounting post was irreparable.

Elise, a mechanic in her own right (she fixes old Volvos etc.), managed to track down and secure this obscure assembly, along with a new heating element, just minutes before Saturday closing time at a nearby supply depot.

The heating element came with a replacement circuit board controller and a warning to only install both, suggesting to Les there'd been some shortcomings in the previous programming i.e. I probably wasn't the first to experience a heating element melt down.

My only role in all this was to dash to the hardware store for a Torx screwdriver kit, and to hold the flashlight.

During final reassembly, Les and I took a time out to express our patriotic fervor regarding our privileged position as civilians in a society with its act together enough to make such repair stories possible.

I attributed our success as a culture in part to our willingness to rant against ourselves, often in the context of hard core trainings, illustrating with a five second Full Metal Jacket impersonation crossed with some football coach.

Les agreed, then told the story of this top manager he knew, who lived across from a high school and finally got tired hearing coaches screaming at their male trainees about their being "women" in the sense of incompetent sissies. She went over there and really gave 'em a piece of her mind, again making a positive difference to our culture.

Later, while Ruth and Tara played upstairs, the three of us watched a show about the Galapagos on the National Geographic channel, which is where Les & Elise got married. The dishwasher is working great now.

Defending the USA

At least the Pope is doing his job, coming out swinging against nuclear weapons across the board.

Inferior brands of pseudo Christian take a more forked-tongue approach: put the screws on Iran while hypocritically reserving the right to stockpile, not just nukes, but WMDs of all kinds, to be used not just in self-defense, but in preemptive wars of choice that pander to mob hysteria fanned by self-interested corporate media invested in war profiteering.

These hollow-voiced pundits and newscasters are selling out their country by turning it into a ridiculous paper tiger, worthy only of mockery and disdain.

Fortunately, the USA still has a few patriotic defenders able to rise above being cynical, manipulative losers. One or two of them might even get to be president someday.

An Evening of Meetings

Our Python Meetup at PDX Cubespace was quite successful, owing in part to our sponsor, Kavi, who provided some first class salad and pizza. We took some of the excess za over to the PHP group, meeting elsewhere in the building, returning the favor from last time.

Our featured talks: ReportLab, simplifying development, Django, and myself on open source in medical research.

My main point was to distinguish an open source process, which inherits from the liberal arts ethic (tipping my hat to Robert Lefkowitz here), from its fruits, which might be shared tools or standards.

Engineers have a tendency to actually brand their stuff "open source" these days, whereas the medical community has other shoptalks.

To some extent, merging the expertise of our communities is an exercise in translation.

Jeff clued me about some recent announcements from Google about its intent to make on-line medical record keeping more of a reality, with Microsoft making similar plans. Thanks Jeff.

The beer part afterwards was fun though I didn't drink any, sticking to champagne with orange juice (not necessarily any less caloric I realize). I had some good basic conversations about SQL Alchemy, Postgres and so on.

It's not my style to try to sound all-knowing in when geeks talk turkey. On the contrary, I'm more like the guy who asks "what's a turkey?"

Immediately following, I buzzed over to Wanderers to catch the tail end of Greg's presentation, but it was over already. I enjoyed some informal banter with my cronies before turning in.

TechNation

Calling it "TechNation" (with or without a space) connects in esoterica to TechNate, a term of art in the Technocracy movement, about which most North Americans are clueless (hey, there's just no time to learn history -- though maybe this Hollywood writers' strike will open a window, by giving viewers more time to catch up on their nonfiction?).

Anyway, going back to the dot com boom and bust, I sometimes tell the story of how I was approached by some guy, early in the boom phase, suggesting I move to New York City and become the CEO for his startup. I looked pretty good on paper, plus had a web site pretty early, even some good press. I'd be like his trophy executive. Then, went the plan, once venture capital was secured and it was time to "go live," I'd be replaced with someone more savvy, no doubt one of my would-be recruiter's cronies, already waiting in the wings.

There might've been some real bucks in it for me, no question, but the prospect of leaving Portland was not appealing, plus when I got the guy's business plan in the mail, I could see through the jargon and buzzwords to another plain vanilla ISP, another Internet Service Provider. I just didn't like the hollowness of the hype, so said thanks but no thanks.

A disconnect I sense in the storytelling is most North Americans aren't up to date on this whole Open Source thing. Didn't Linux take a hit when the dot com bubble burst? Or if it didn't, don't we at least know that those scruffy hacker types, "dot commies" with pipe dreams of world domination, were forced to eat their own dog food, roll over and die?

How many on Main Street know the story of SCO, which tried to eat Linux's lunch, yet ended up delisted? How many know that IBM is a major contributor to the Linux kernel, or that Microsoft now sports a lot of Open Source DNA? If you still think it's scruffy hackers vs. Microsoft, think again. Of course those pathetic loser patent trolls in Texas still plan to put up a fight. I can't say I'm much interested in their sorry fate.

The story I tell goes more like this: lawyers still held enough cards to make the first dot com boom a Wall Street phenomenon, all about making money the old fashioned way, with lots of smoke and mirrors. Round two still involves mirroring, focusing, but engineers now hold enough cards to keep the smoke levels way down. Transparency in business processes is now part of what Open Source means. Investors should like this, though it'll mean a shakeout process as those over-depending on smoke get a taste of the competition. The result: a more robust economy, and not just in North America, not by a long shot.

Science Friday

I thought Harold Salzman of the Urban Institute did some significant backpedaling today, conceding most points his rhetorical opponents were making.

Salzman's view: the education situation may be dire, concerning, but it's not apocalyptic. Kids today know a lot more about computers than did kids thirty years ago. Compared to where we were, we're not all that different, on average -- never mind where the rest of the world is going, that's not what this study was about. "If my son or daughter is as informed and aware as I was, when I was his or her age, then things can't really be that bad" seems to be the attitude here. A semi-static picture should be no cause for alarm.

Yes, the cream of the crop is still pretty creamy, and given the intellectual squalor in which we live, there's really not that much demand for even more engineers, not counting those in the destruction business, of which there's a severe shortage right now (hence Stop-Loss). Destructive engineering is still a bonanza source of family wage jobs, thanks to myopic policymakers. Cruise missiles R Us.

Those disillusioned would-be design scientists might be more in demand in some other, more futuristic civilization, some parallel universe, one in which World Game was actually mentioned out loud (gasp!). Indeed, lack of hope in the future was cited as a major reason for students getting turned off, abandoning their hopes and dreams i.e. all that homework to what end, given global warming and the impending economic downturn? Fear over longing, once again (an old story).

So what's this Urban Institute anyway? Mostly middle of the road liberal types, of the kind who lost the War on Poverty, got us mixed up in Vietnam?

I liked Intel's Craig R. Barrett's thinking better: if we don't shape up, USAers will get creamed in the global jobs market. I think that's correct, but in the backs of their minds, some so-called liberals still just knee-jerk assume we'll have to write off the less privileged as unsalvageable. They then sugar coat their thinly disguised Malthusianism in various bureaucratic policymaking voices, like FEMA does when talking about those post-Katrina toxic trailers: all blather, and no action, because the mindset between the ears is quite broken.

Let's talk about "mental poverty" for a change, and acknowledge it might come dressed up in a suit and carry a briefcase, with fancy degrees and all the rest of it. Losers come in all stripes, don't they?

More Commenting on News

From the CBS News website:

"The image that's been portrayed is, we sat around the campfire and said, 'Oh, boy, now we go get to torture people.' Well, we don't torture people. Let me say that again to you. We don't torture people. Okay?" Tenet says.

"Come on, George," Pelley says.

"We don't torture people," Tenet maintains.

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammad?" Pelley asks.

"We don't torture people," Tenet says.

"Water boarding?" Pelley asks.

"We do not – I don't talk about techniques," Tenet replies.

"It's torture," Pelley says.

"And we don't torture people. Now, listen to me. Now, listen to me. I want you to listen to me," Tenet says.

My comments on Quaker-P (Sun Nov 4 10:41:21 PST 2007):

So was that all a lot of hooey? Why should we believe as he believes, right?

Another gestalt: if you use torture, you're simply not part of the CIA in Tenet's view. Something of a tautology perhaps? Doesn't he have the right to a view though, as an exDCI and all?

At some level we're each a walking microcosm. How you tell history is really a window into your own personal psyche no? This was Kierkegaard's point in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript I think.

This idea of an Objective Voice that narrates history from some omniscient God's eye view is a literary conceit. One may pretend to such a voice, but is it ever authentic?

These "objective stories" are a manifestation of people herding together, seeking comfort in a shared telling -- more Will to Power at work, to take Nietzsche's slant.

Commenting on News

Blackwater's plan to hide behind the State Department, further soiling this nation's reputation, is not helpful to the USA's standing among nations. Is Condi really their protective mommy then? The FBI is being quite namby-pamby.

As far as the Iranian energy program goes, as a long time Fuller Schooler I'm always studying the grid maps. How will the new juice help alleviate power shortages in faraway Turkey? Lots to consider.

OLPC in Brazil

I'm sitting in a favorite coffee shop listening to the windows rattle, given the heavy base speakers in a vehicle just outside, waiting for the light to change. At home: science experiment in progress: is it the fuse box, the washing machine, or some other component that's failing?

The machine is pretty rusted, but I'm not one to replace unnecessarily, given the leanness and meanness I've needed to cultivate, to survive on my budget (not complaining -- it's ample). I've reactivated the circuit and mom will phone if the house shorts again (this AC 20 amper tends to take whole the house when she blows).

Much of my day is about passing the torch, helping a next generation get up to speed in various ways. The excellent thing about teaching is students come to class already spinning, sometimes at high speed, and that tends to rub off.

Academic cultures get good at creating positive synergies under optimum conditions, though many degenerate for lack of a sustainable balance among faculty (yes, a tautology). The "spin" metaphor traces to Fuller for me -- a word he kept for disciplined use within his self-invented philosophical language.

Anyway, it's great having so many good teachers, of all ages, keeping me up to speed on so many fronts. Just today, I got around to this video of XOs in Brazil, lighting up the lives of these talented students. OLPC is still in its infancy as of this writing, but the age of the low-to-no cost laptop is upon us, that much is clear.

Alternatives to Violence (AVP)

Our Quaker meeting is in the midst of this workshop right now, with participants taking a break for ordinary Meeting for Worship with the rest of us (I'm sitting this one out).

Part of me wants to call AVP "Quakers' answer to est" but that's a very esoteric thing to say, in part because no one remembers est anymore, which wasn't violent, but was edgy and austere (the way Quakers sometimes get, or "stern" as we say), with a lot of zen heritage.

Mostly I just make a joke connection between two dots: AVP the workshop and AVP the movie (Alien Versus Predator, a campy monster flick, very violent, with pretty good special effects).

But I am making a deeper point with such humor: that I think screen violence has its place, including in the lives of pacifists. "Theatrical violence" might be another term for it, "war movies" another.

We've always had such, and if it's not beautifully synthesized, like the ancient Greeks managed (along with many other delicate, studious civilizations) then it tends to get recklessly and inappropriately acted out by immature players who forget the alternatives part.

And those Buddhist depictions of hell aren't for sissies either, let's be honest.

We really need good screenwriters, storytellers, to help us stay sane, plus all kinds of other stuff (I'm not putting everything on the backs of the Screen Actors Guild, poor darlings). Props, sets.

Sometimes one hears me saying cutting things about AVP, like maybe it's too namby-pamby, e.g. maybe "not prison-based enough" (whatever that means). I cop to being polemical (ineffectively if hypocritical) but it's really in this spirit of wanting to foster competition among trainings, to keep the upgrades coming.

I think monoculture breeds good-for-nothingness after awhile. Monopolies tend to not work.

When Jesus said he came with a sword, yet preached non- violence, I think this is what he meant: we're supposed to "battle for God" (goddesses, gods, no God, whatever), as that keeps our diverse schools of thought intelligently engaged, flexible, adaptable, not frozen in dogmatic, calcified shapes, like ice sculptures.

A kind of inward/outward combat or competitive world game among schools hardly needs to be encouraged, as I'm simply describing the long term status quo. Only the names of the players keep changing, and yes, well, the rules too over time, the names of the games (links to Wittgenstein).

What we need to encourage is the practice of keeping the combat metaphysically high level, inward, non-violent, psychological, in the realm of the big screen, theater & television, with lots of good writers helping to steer.

More success along those lines would spell dramatically higher living standards for most people, including for many of those terrorists now actively working to kill our hopes for a better future.

Coffee Shop Schooling

Given the plummeting price of laptops and ubiquity of wifi, some of our Portland students have started formulating a position against wastefulness: why burn precious fuel, adding to global warming, just to get to math class, when math class could just come to us (me 'n my friends) via the corner coffee shop, which is also a kind of library (lots of print media, for those so inclined)?

Of course many of these students have no voting rights (yes, age discrimination -- but no, I'm not saying "discrimination" is something to "not do," quite the contrary, just not too stupidly, OK? (and developing one's sense of judgment is a life time process, somewhat defines your maturation into some kind of animal (and no, we don't all "end up the same" -- aren't supposed to (we have different tastes)))).

But their parents do, and are asking the same question.

Yes, of course some need brick and mortar public schools for their day care function, others for their organized sports. But it's not "either/or" is it? Join a team, build a schedule, exercise discipline (your peers are competitive), make good and efficient use of what all you've got. That's all we're saying (plus we practice what we preach -- don't wanna be hypocrites).

Don't forget how many families live in extremely isolated conditions in Oregon, oft times by choice, and oft times with bandwidth to spare.

And yes, I'm thinking specifically of Warm Springs and places like that, eager to cut loose from the ambient monoculture, yet willing to preserve ties with the feds, with the State of Oregon, in games of quid pro quo around taxes, tourism, gambling, fishing, health care or whatever.

Relevant reading: "Reinventing the wheel of education" (thread @ Math Forum)

Tribal Sovereignty

Whereas neither "tribe" nor "sovereignty" are words of indigenous origin, it is historically the case that immigrants seized jurisdiction at gun point, then proceeded to make life difficult for North Americans wishing to continue lifestyles (including migration patterns) evolved over the past ten thousand years or more.

So-called "tribal sovereignty" has been rather difficult to re-establish. Immigrants and their privileged descendants still have the right to flaunt native laws, even on lands designated "tribal."

Oregon / Washington politicians have tended to align with Washington, DC and its Supreme Court on this issue, as imperialist "master race" types in training (snicker). The label "Indian lover" is like the kiss of death if you want to be president some day, or at least that used to be the common wisdom.

However, the tide may be turning, as more ties form between the Silicon Forest and tribes investing in tomorrow's high tech. Casinos are just the beginning.

Stay tuned.

More AutoBio

So while growing up as an expat helped me become worldly, I was left behind vis-a-vis King Crimson or whatever, didn't have the standard cultural savvy upon arriving at Princeton.

I showed up a week early, lived on spam from WaWa -- because I'd heard spam was a thing to experience.

My roommate from Long Island found that completely different, coming to Princeton to encounter a spam eating guy from Magallanes Village (ironically so named by the people who ate him).

To this day, I'm out of sequence on a lot of stuff.

I first encountered Katie when she started hitting CBS radar, then through Shark Tale. Seems everyone else already knew from Leno that her biceps were bigger than Evil Bert's.

I got into Sesame Street in high school, already wearing my future TV producer hat.

My first car, a Honda Civic, was a present from my grandmother at age 28. Up until then, I'd mostly used public transportation, plus hitch hiked a lot (more some other time perhaps).

Nor have I ever seen a Sopranos, nor any Desperate Housewives (that I can remember anyway (OK, some excerpts)). Kinda weird huh? Go figure.

Most of middle America I've not seen, though we had Nebraska plates overseas some of the time, military base access (inexpensive scuba). Western Pennsylvania is cool, Montana.

I was born in Chicago, May 17, 1958.

WILPF Meets Wanderers

Tonight was mom's turn at bat. I'm blogging in real time. Good turnout. Milt, Rick, Allen... Liz.

Mom is decrying luddite investment houses that still indulge in space-based pie in the sky weaponry projects, beltway fluff, a fad tracing to the neocon idiocrats behind all that New American Century crapola.

Now she's talking about the NSA's crazy-making radomes, buckyballs used as ruggedized weather proofing for Jodie Foster type dishes.

Kinetic kill weapons ("Rods from God") would be based in space, but maybe have no explosives. They just drop stuff on people. Microwave guns might not be space based at all, but if controlled by satellite, they qualify as such. Plutonium triggers...

Speaking of NSA, there's a guy here with that form of Buddhism that used to be known as NSA. Apparently Linus Pauling did a book with their leader.

Now she's showing Addicted to War, an hilarious underground comic book that weaponry teetotalers use, trying to wean those poor lost soul LAWCAP types from their nasty bad habits.

Now she's going over the Kwajelein - Vandenburg - Ft. Greely triangle. "Pretty tricky business" she says (re the decoys).

However, the Pentagon remains confidant, pending maybe Poland's acceptance, that this plan will pan out.

Liz wondered how mom keeps from burning out, always working with dolts in Congress. She's only 26, and has already about had it with those numbskulls. Mom shared about her many heroes, Dennis Kucinich and such, still sources of hope. Bill Moyers.

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), Carol Reilley Urner

Random Photos

me, dad, mom, sis (philippines 1970s)

a portland knowledge lab annex
(wheel by dawn's friends)

steel bridge from a jet boat's vantage

Journaling WQM Business

Exhibit: scanned receipt from Costco, working off Diane's meal plans, assisted by Jane, paid for by DWA check, thence reimbursed by WQM Treasurer Charlie.

This was not the sum total of what we ate in two meals however, plus we sold back extra food at the end, to event attenders. Kiwanis catered three additional meals as well.

Portland Radio

Quarterly Meeting (WQM Fall 2007)

I found this to be an unusually productive session.

MMM purchased a new computer projector, and shared it with Junior Friends, who were still high from their recent trip to Mexico, an eye opening growth experience for all concerned.

Jim Flory was approved to oversee the new web site.

Best of all was the discussion outside of Fanning, among some experienced nurses and attorneys, plus myself, regarding patient right of access to personal medical records i.e. to one's own about one's self.

I took the position of having automatic right of access, even if the medical language were quasi-indecipherable to a geek like me.

Even today, in some hospitals, employees just have to sign a form to gain unrestricted access to their own charts and files.

Others countered that patient exposure to unintelligible verbiage might encourage god playing (i.e. playing doctor), leading to bad decisions and a deteriorating medical condition, with the hospital made liable as a consequence.

The compromise seemed to be: feel free to access your own medical records, but don't think that entitles you to hold others accountable for what you do (or don't do) with that information (click here to accept and gain access).

On the winter camping front (I'd set up in a tent to practice my own spiritual discipline), I learned there's a reason they call it a mummy bag, and no, using it as a blanket is not guaranteed to produce a similar degree of cozy warmness. As it was, both nights were pretty cold, but with the second a lot warmer than the first.

Aimée said she has just the fire-starting system for winter campers, describing both the artifact and its manufacture (something about egg cartons and candle wax). She, Aimée of Multnomah, and Pan of Wolf Creek were then more formally introduced by me, Kirby of Bridge City, and a long time friend of both stellar women.

And speaking of stellar women, Bonnie Tinker and I spent quite a bit of time together, in spirited conversation and worship. Whereas we may not share strategies or see eye to eye on every issue, we have a lot of the same deeply held Quaker values.

The queries used to guide worship traced to FWCC's recent work to bring Quakers into sharper focus around the world. I was happy to see Doreen O'Dowd's name in the literature, our flying doctor friend in Lesotho and member of Ireland Yearly Meeting.

Tara, in Central Friends, enjoyed hiking again with Chris and Luci, plus doing the Adventure Course, an old favorite at this Mt. Hood area Kiwanis Camp.

Busy Friday

Right, not just Mondays get busy.

Today, after getting Tara to school, I rode shotgun with officer Bader on my hospital beat, an old playing field, but always new and different. I thought she was great, very X-Files, plus still high off her management workshop for 360compass, a 4dsolutions affiliate.

Then Diane swung by with mega-groceries, with a Freddies list for more. Turns out we frequent the same store but hardly ever run into each other (go figure). At Costco we physically collided, though with no ribs broken. All this food is for Willamette Quarterly Meeting, as my closer readers may already have guessed.

Then came the visit to the UPS Store up on Hawthorne, to send certified mail to the Governor of California's office. This is about my high school buddy, in the slammer since 1981 for murder one, and he's not the only criminal I've come to know over the years, deserving of another chance in this life.

OK, Luci's here now (both parents attorneys), and it's time that we finish packing and be gone, leaving house under guard (smile).

I'm tenting this time; no one needs to hear me snore in the forest (an old philosophers' joke).

Recalling Sputnik

I sort of expected more space program retrospectives, timed with this commemoration of Sputnik, a cultural icon and indelible what the bleep on the American psyche.

We're especially in need of some self reflection on recent intellectual history. What have we been teaching the kids ever since?

Right after Sputnik, school kids were told to dive head first into set theory, ala Bertie Russell and friends.

Parents suddenly had to endure future shock, given junior's unions and intersections of objects, subsets, empty set... which just wasn't fair!

It's the losers who have to change their ways, while we winners get our status quo "American way of life" preserved in every detail (unless we want to change, in which case everyone else should just move over pronto).

So comforting then, to have "won" the Cold War and not have to struggle with that infernal New Math any more!

Avast ye Venn Diagrams, begone ye SQL, it's a nostalgia trip to some chimerical neverland we're pursuing, with no time for anything Gnu, no time for anything "in the future" (like where's that again? -- never heard of it).

Thoughts about Bookkeeping

What'll be fun is when some of the smart cookie NGO charities get their books projected in real time.

Make a donation, watch the money go to work. Track every penny if you like.

A "no secrets here" open books policy often makes for good fund raising, plus gives donors bragging rights they might not otherwise have.

However, these same practices might work for a mom & pop coffee shop just as well. Buy a bagel, watch the debits and credits ripple through the system on a wall-mounted flatscreen.

Is the profit margin scandalous? No.

Do loyal customers like seeing a special fund build, so that staff might get some much deserved R&R? Yes.

Per my limited Free Geek experience, I'd say top quality free and open source generic bookkeeping software is still in short supply.

For the NGOs at least, it'd make sense for Foundations to band together and to give them a boost. Pioneer some new designs that take advantage of hindsight, why not?

"Want our millions? Then document your expenses using X" might be a stipulation.

Of course that might get out of hand, if each funder tried to micro-manage which open source bookkeeping application got selected, as a condition for funding.

A more realistic goal is to design and implement systems capable of generating the kinds of feedback requested by each funder. That might include a growing archive of videos, with donors getting special access rights.

Don't be afraid to tell it like it is, only to see some backers drop away, even as others freshly join and/or step up their involvement.

Not every relationship is meant to last as long as every other. A given funder might relish the one night stand as it were. "Get in and get out, make a difference" is the preferred M.O. (the "pinch hitter" design pattern).

One hallmark of a friendly system is it's good about dumping its data, doesn't interfere with migration to competing systems.

Unfriendly systems count on using the captured data as leverage: "Want out? It'll cost ya."

Dissing Quakes

I spent some of my day, between day job activities, mocking Quakers for being such dweebs around technology. Here we are in a futuristic Open Source Capital, with a new cable car and everything, and we don't even have a Mapparium yet (unless Google Earth counts).

So where's the Portland Geoscope gonna be? Or should we have more than one?

The details: our business Optoma is on loan for legitimate business purposes and I'm snarlingly protective, like Sarah on steroids, when so-called Friends come along begging, confiding they don't actually take care of their own young (by investing in said equipment), but instead rely on hand-outs and charity.

Query: how can a religion have claws if it outsources the care and feeding of its own young? Many will say Quakers shouldn't have claws, being all "Peaceable Kingdomy" and like that, to which I retort: don't lions have claws?

On another front, I'm unable to find a power supply for the Toshiba Satellite A60, my WinXP laptop. I've been taking Ubuntu to work a lot more. But if we've decided to go with Visual FoxPro again (my staple for some years now), then it'd behoove me to get that asset back in the game. I'll order a new power supply if I have to [update: I had to].

Enjoyed gabbing with Wanderers today, Bill and I side by side, with our Ubuntu Dells, except he's booting Win98 off a memory stick and home growing an assembly language piano, which worked flawlessly in the demo.

Liz popped up in a chat window, next-gen type that she is, with more cyber skills than even most boomers. Sometimes having Wanderers join in cyberspace is the best one might do, and really it's not half bad that way (though I prefer meeting for coffee at least sometimes).

Related blog post: Quaker Informatics (May 17, 2007)

BarCamp Alpha

:: Charlamagne Tower room,
Olympic Club Hotel and Theater,
Centralia, Washington ::

"Alpha" has a couple of established meanings in geekdom. "Alpha geek" borrows from "alpha dog" or "alpha chimp" i.e. is a zoological term referring to some species of king or queen of the hill, a bossy mammal (can snakes be alpha?).

But the "alpha" in BarCamp Alpha traces to the other meaning, of "first draft" or "prototype" with lots of built in permission to get it wrong, to make mistakes.

After alpha, comes beta, still expected to contain bugs, not yet a production release ready for prime time.

In this case, our mistake might be the venue, which is somewhat spartan, what with bathrooms down the hall and train sounds at night.

On the other hand, for young professionals it's reminiscent of college, plus some BarCamps are actual camps, more like at Burning Man (an art event) or in the field, like in a tent city for refugees, ala One Laptop per Child, so by those standards these digs are relatively posh.

Portland's CubeSpace is closer to ideal, as an actual meeting space, but Centralia is closer to half way if attracting campers from both the Portland and Seattle areas (hence the name).

There's wifi, there's alcohol.

Personally, I think it's a fine venue, but then I'm already a McMenamins fan.

The theme of this particular BarCamp is: open source in the health care sector, especially when it comes to facilitating outcomes research.

The idea may at first seem oxymoronic, given the inherent confidentiality of patient records, but one of our goals is developing open source pools of accurate case histories, scrubbed clean of real patient identities, yet useful for research purposes.

Besides actual data, research and teaching hospitals might also share, and collaboratively develop, clinical table schemas (registries) plus interfaces for populating them (front ends) plus share techniques for reliably gathering data at the point of care, and in ways that don't interfere with a hospital's primary care giving responsibilities.

The funds raised for these projects should pay for design and implementation skills, not so much for basic development tools, as the latter (Linux, MySQL, Python... Mozilla) have already been paid for and contributed to the global ecosystem as shared assets, under the various open source license agreements.

Relevant presentation: What is Open Source? (PDF)

Another Cube

Executive Toys

No cube or corner office is complete without an assortment of executive toys.

Some of these disassemble into a surprising number of parts, disconcerting for the job interviewee perhaps, if fiddling absently, but there's information to be gleaned from such events.

In the foreground, CubeIt! from Huntar disassociates into 24 magnetic Mites, though only a few insider cognoscenti have any idea what that means (so why not flaunt your knowledge, if you're a high powered exec?).

The five "flippy balls" are even more obscure. Spin them in thin air, and they flip to the other color, a kind of jitterbug action (more esoterica).

That sculpture in the background is no way a toy. That's Barrel Tower, a Kenneth Snelson original and gift from the artist.

I'm bullish about my cube.

More Curriculum Writing re MVC

(click pic for larger view)

The innovation here is putting an end user in the picture, both "for real" and as a figment in the model, i.e. as the "modelled end user" (or users as the case may well be).

Modeling its users is part of what a model should be doing, as a part of its job of persisting state. And no, I'm not just talking about delegate avatars per Second Life and Active Worlds. A user model might be quite primitive, as low level as "logged in" versus not.

By this way of thinking, a user-controlled change in view needn't involve the view subscribing to the controller directly, as the model itself is made aware of some end user's change in preference (through the controller), so that next time the viewer polls, or otherwise gets notified of state changes, the view is refreshed accordingly.

Adding the end user, in other words, turns this MVC picture into a classic feedback loop of cybernetics fame.

The end user steers and fine tunes the model in response to what the model is showing (or maybe how it smells? -- this user has a big nose and the viewer looks like a funnel).

Of course this diagram makes no judgment as to the suitability of the model for the task at hand, i.e. some closed loops like this become dead ends -- which is why it's important to get your head out of your model from time to time (which is your freedom, as a human being).

Catching Up

I'm running behind in my study of TurboGears on Safari, using the impending switch to Pylons for undergirding as an excuse to tred water.

CherryPy is certainly worth learning, along with the Kid templater. Per the Kusasa discipline, I'm not one to shy away from mastering these kinds of tools (some of the heavier metal sort, I do shy away from -- working on it, getting pro help).

Tracking those orbiting lunar probes (Japan's project), wondering what they'll discover.

Fine Grind has updated its lighting to sweet effect.

I sat next to "rodeo girl" Gayle today after Meeting, jawing with Ron about a topic Ron knows the most about: motorcycles. Gayle has this feminist angle, whereas I'm the proud rider of TinkerBell.

Dough Stories

The goal of teaching fiscal responsibility, by giving my daughter the use of a debit card, proved expensive when the card hit bottom, but without overdraft support. Doh!

The bank reversed some of those penalties, plus extended more credit, in the form of a new DWA credit card in my name. It pays to know your small business banker.

I'll redesign the overdraft picture, probably by offering it in-house, like she needs to keep a $200 minimum (a cushion, like an air reserve on a scuba tank (they still have those right?)).

It's not like Tara did anything wrong, just that I didn't feel like sharing keys to the control panel (I'm kinda proprietary in that way), and so she had no easy/quick access to a transaction history (yes, there's keeping a check book, and yes, there's banking on-line).

A friend and I bought new prayer flags today, for the back yard. The older ones, blown down recently, are enqueued for ritual burning.

A paycheck came in today, which is good as we were running beneath the surface.

September PPUG

We had a far out convergence of Pythoneers this evening @ CubeSpace, Portland. Our four lightning talks, two of them mine, were most illuminating: tux droid; my EuroPython experience; PyFlakes; PIL.

Ruby folks are holding a dojo in the same space, with their own screen and projector facing the other way. About 16 of us, 4 of them, lots of friendly banter.

Jeff is moderating, inventing process as he goes (resourceful guy).

The Intel guy's PIL work is about a robot detecting orange traffic cones. He projected some source code for smoothing and separating the R, G & B channels, with some simple arithmetic to detect orange.

Earlier today: just a light gym workout, mostly on the elliptical. I had 10 flatscreens within view, 9 illuminated, running 7 distinct programs.

Summarizing a Thread (Synergeo #35613)

I think the underlying problem here is people imagine a 4 CCP ball tetrahedron then zoom in on the K-points, where the balls touch, and make that a "dividing point" (which is why Frank keeps saying "solid").

That divider then takes us in our minds' eyes to imagining 2 frequency, which needn't mean any doubling in size if we're simply multiplying by subdividing.

On the other hand, it might also mean doubling in size.

The problem here is you can always subdivide and picture something else inside of what you've got. Brawley makes this process come to an end with his pionts [a neologism] in Tverse. We require no such dodge. Draw a complete Magic Kingdom inside any A module, complete with castle and flying tinkerbell. Continuing to subdivide ad infinitum is your sovereign right as a thinker.

But don't let your pride and/or fascination with continuing to subdivide keep you from appreciating the austere beauty of a simple design, one in which we've rationalized our ratios as best we can, and our best really is better than what some earlier ages managed. Why surprised? Humans have been on a learning curve and it shows. So?

Anyway, somewhere along the way, Zubek started using the 2F tetrahedron for reference, thinking 4 CCP balls must make one of those. Did Steve feed him this corrupting thought? I have no idea.

But as 2*P*F*F+2 makes clear, where F=1, and P=5, the number of balls in a cuboctahedron is 12 in the first layer (same with icosa).

That "12-around-1" is the true starting point (similar to the start of Tverse), and the volume is 20, with Frequency unity. So the 8 sub-tets of the VE are now each set at unity, with six half-octas of volume 2. 8 + 12 = 20.

Notice, now, that each of those 8 reg tet components of the volume 20 cubocta, in turn made from 12-around-1, is in turn defined by four (count 'em) CCP spheres.

This is the IVM then. All edges are CCP diameter in length, go from ball center to ball center. These edges define two shapes: tetrahedron and octahedron, of volume ratio 1:4 and population ratio 2:1.

The rhombic dodecahedra that encase each of the IVM/CCP balls, as voronoi cells, are what're volume 6, made of six Couplers each of volume 1.

A lot of this info is encoded in the form of QuickTime movies from the mid 1990s, by Richard Hawkins. His art is still on the web to this day, thanks to strong freedom of speech traditions.

Plus of course it's all in Synergetics, complete with color posters. Nothing new.

If you lived in Korea, your kid'd probably have learned all this from the back of a cereal box by now (or from the free DVD inside).

Kirby

Wanderers 2007.8.29

We met for unprogrammed sharing this morning.

Much of the chatter was astronomical in nature: the shepherd moons in Saturn's rings, the fact of our Moon's inching away from our Earth year by year -- but then aren't both getting heavier?

Jim Buxton, our solar eclipse resident fanatic, hadn't much use for the lunar eclipse we'd just experienced.

Don mentioned Katie Couric's plans to anchor from Baghdad next week.

David Tver talked about goats and their environmental impact.

New fitness goal: gym once a day, even if just a short visit, any day I'm in town, through the end of September.

[ posting via a free access point in the Lloyd Center, while Tara does some shopping for school clothes ]

Which Hollywood Star for President?

Hindu cultures have done much to mix celebs with politicos with minor dieties, and that may be catching on here, what with President Reagan & Cronies being such a smash hit at the box office with many voters.

Who would we consider drafting today, of the Hollywood variety?

I'd propose Whoopi Goldberg, though I'm quite aware of the hilarity and fast times we'd enjoy under the current Governor of California.

I just like her Calypso energy whereas so many of the guys are so slimy and retarded (no offense guys, been there done that).

It's all about balance. We could revert to a John Wayne down the road, when all the shrill testiness has died down a bit. Whaddya say voters?

Back to reality:

I like having camps champion constituencies, no question. You don't have to be a huge party to be impressive.

Take the Pirate Party in Scandanavia for example: very exclusive, but walks a good talk, has clout. Voters give it just enough credence to stay in the game, like adding hot sauce (them Veekings ain't cowards).

In the USA, we're mostly supposed to declare Red or Blue to even get chips on the table. Then at higher levels (e.g. intelligence community) it's like we're completely forbidden to play either Red or Blue cuz that's just "too political."

Go figure. A nation of turkeys if you ask me or Ben Franklin (smile).

for bbq

Liberal Islam

One of the cool aspects of American Islam is it hasn't inherited all the legacy battles of the Mesopotamian region.

Sure, there're tensions, even gangs, but high level teachers have their roots in the civil rights movement, post USA Civil War.

Even if not devout followers of MLK, they understood the nonviolence stratagem, and see it strongly enacted in the person of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, an Afghani.

So you'll find no shortage of patriotic Muslim Americans ready to defend against the likes of Bin Laden, no love lost.

It's not about being "pro" 911 (not about being a twisted psycho). But nor is it about being "pro" attacking Iraq (for what again?).

Liberal Islam also has no silly restrictions against using comics (e.g. cartoons, manga) when treating of serious subjects, including the religiously themed.


Related readings @ Math Forum: [1][2]

Re: Spherical Trig

[ in response to Lou Talman @ Math Forum, re "spherical geometry" becoming important, in tandem with geography and graph theory, typos fixed, hyperlinks, local color added ]

I don't think that spherical *geometry* (or any other non-Euclidean geometry) was ever particularly important as a high school topic. If you meant spherical *trigonometry*, that's a horse of another color.

Geometry, trigonometry whatever. The fine points of your "non-Euclidean" are of some interest though. I take it up in more detail in geometry-pre-college.

And your suggestion that it was displaced by Newtonian calculus is arguable, at the very least.

Joe Clinton showed me the spherical trig books that used to get air time pre the big push to gateway everyone through Calc (moooo!). Fast Food Nation indeed.

Spherical trig may just have died on the vine when it was no longer expected that high school graduates could become surveyors and/or navigators with no further formal education.

Yeah, a presumptuous class thing. As we're learning in South Africa, it makes perfect sense to get young boys on the water, sailing, before they get recruited into landlubber gangs, and a lot of distracting politics (Lara did an excellent story about this awhile back on CBS -- she's chief foreign correspondent and an RSA native).

Navigation arts make a big come back in my scenario. We don't *let* it "die on the vine" the way they did in the dark ages 1900s (but then they didn't have the GIS/GPS tech we now take for granted, poor slobs).

In education, such deaths are usually quite protracted, and that explains the "recent memory" part.

- --Lou Talman

I'm glad you too feel secure in your model. Nice isn't it?

Kirby

IEEE Picnic

:: the fantasy ::

Our tour guide with the Army Corps of Engineers professed ignorance of our IEEE guild, at least with respect to our geographic origins, and so queried us before his talk, a kind of namespace check, to see if he'd need to decode the likes of BPA (Bonneville Power Administration) and/or WPA (Work Projects Administration).

As it turned out, we were mostly local yokels with or without family members. I was there with Carol (my mom) and Tara (my teen). We also visited the Fish Hatchery and saw some really big sturgeon, enjoyed coffee from the gift shop (chocolates by Ghirardelli).

Mom hadn't been here since her trans-America trip with my dad as a newly-wed (car trouble in Montana, genius mechanic).

Someone (not me) asked where he, our tour guide, was from. "Indiana, Pennsylvania" as it turned out, which was cool. I have family there too, where we both knew Irelands.

:: the reality ::

Anyway, Powerhouse One is a WPA project dating back to the original design of Bonneville Dam and Lock.

Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigned in the area on the promise of starting this project, which had huge momentum behind it.

Myopic easterners expressed skepticism that our Pacific Rim economy, rather recently contacted by Lewis & Clark, would ever make use of the six planned-for generators, let alone the 21 we're now using (that's counting the smallish two fish ladder engines on the Washington side, plus the one in Powerhouse One for local use): "the Dam of Doubt" they called it.

Transformers bedeck the topside of Powerhouse One and put stronger pressure behind the high voltage distribution networks, while lowering amperage. This works pretty well to counter unwanted power loss over the long haul.

He anticipated questions about pricier superconducting solutions such as are found in some parts of the Russian system, but doubted we'd be needing such services down here any time soon, so far south, and the very last in the sequence of Columbia River megawatt dams, which start up in Canada.

The big local news is the ongoing remodel of the generators themselves, which still contain parts dating back to the 1940s and before. Engineers are gradually switching in some new parts, including new blade assemblies, designed to be more fish-friendly plus less oily/leaky to own/operate.

:: a newer blade assembly ::

PPUG

:: Jeff sharing about Python 3000 ::

I'm not sure if PPUG is what we're really calling ourselves (Portland Python User Group). We used to be PORPIG (Portland Python Interest Group). Have we morphed from pig to dog?

I got here late so didn't manage to propose anything for the agenda. I came prepared to give two lightning talks (5 minutes each): my Vilnius-OSCON talk, and the tux droid talk (with Crunchy kindly lent to me by Tara).

I did manage to catch the concluding minutes of Kirk McDonald's talk, about using his Pyd library to write Python extensions in the still-obscure D language.

Jeff talked about Python 3000, using Guido's OSCON slides, prompting some interesting discussion, in which I participated, defending Guido's decision to change the behavior of the division operator, plus mentioning his intent to standardize on Latin-1 in the Standard Library, except for strings like author name. Third party modules are welcome to go wild however, as long as keywords remain keywords.

Mark reviewed David Goodger's OSCON tutorial: How to Program Like a Pythonista while Jeff flipped through David's slides.

I volunteered my lightning talks for next time, plus enjoyed the more informal chat that came afterward -- an important aspect of any Python meetup.

We opted for the IEEE picnic this Saturday. With so few weekends left in the Summer of 2007, I want to maximize time with my family.

Esozone

:: Paul Laffoley delivering his keynote ::

I inadvertently woke Trevor to come to this, originally hyped by him as worth catching, and we were both glad we attended.

This artist, Paul Laffoley, was able to enthrall for four hours, working off some bottled water and a defibrillator. His visuals were simply stunning -- deeply alchemical, occult, weird. That's what his audience is into, and that's what he delivers. His speech, on the other hand, is first person "been there, done that" with improvised science fiction.

He's argued for eight hours with Bucky about the Mobius Strip, had that mind-blowing phone call with Kenneth Snelson, did Claude Bragdon's 4D house, a basis for Heinlein's crooked one, as if Bragdon had had the time, builds space elevator time machines in his head and paints them... Gurdjieff, Ouspensky.

A walking compendium of some of the 20th Century's best circus magic, with intimations of what's coming in the 21st. An earnest student of utopia. Shades of Hieronymus Bosch. Many allusions to Dante.

Complete with self-interruptions over others' voices, coke bottle shadows, stories of assistants he'd driven insane. Oh, and a Gaudi version of the World Trade Center, post-911. Wants to live in a Klein Bottle house, grown from some philosophical vegetable matter.

Got my 50 dollars' worth, that's for sure.

OK, time for Bridge Pedal.

:: trevor's comics @ backspace ::

Rippling DNS

I repointed my 4dsolutions.net to some new domain name servers, making them the veridical authorities regarding the hostname and IP number of the hosted archive.

In sum: I jumped free of jumpline.com, landing on some Dual Xeon at a datacenter in Houston, Texas. The move took under 24 hours.

My .py files @ Oregon Curriculum Network are once again popping source code, thanks to a documented AddHandler in the appropriate .htaccess file. I even got the geoquiz working again (uses MySQLdb in the context of Pythonic cgi scripts).

A Fuller Schooler: Trevor Blake

Darfur

As a local Darfurian, my goal might be to simply escape the region, visit later. This is how many people have historically improved their lives: by moving. North Americans are especially familiar with this strategy.

The global NGO community shouldn't buy the fiction that only "political prisoners" deserve something called "asylum" (relief from suffering). Rather, once you're born a human being on Planet Earth, freedom of movement is your birthright, a freedom perhaps curtailed as you grow older and break others' rules, but why does simply being born in Darfur merit a life sentence to that region?

This is your planet, as much as the next guy's.

I think Darfur represents an ideal set of challenges for OLPC and P4E people to walk their various talks.

Add wireless using satellite, hand out some laptops (not just to kids). They're designed to be self-teaching i.e. this is not a "literacy first, then computers" model, but a "literacy through computers" model, combined with peer teaching ala the South African design.

Portable movie theaters, for showing documentaries about the great outer world outside of Darfur (plus the occasional blockbuster) would also be a part of this program, though individual XO screens pretty much serve this same purpose (like that little screen on the seat back in front of you, on a fully equipped Airbus).

The Simpsons (movie review)

[Some kind of "spy kid" review, excerpted from elsewhere]

Common knowledge that Simpsons, like Google, is heavily infiltrated, in the former case through Korea, as direct infiltration of domestics is forbidden (Google through China).

Hence the cleared-for-public-view insider shots of an NSA listening center, where Lisa's worst paranoias are confirmed. Those calls to the boyfriend next door might be monitored. Emails too.

More subtle was the allusion to Marvel comix superhero Spiderman, mixed with capitalist pig iconography and long associated with selfishness (Homer) and product fetishes (as in Wired Magazine -- Bart himself a manikin sex toy in some catalogs Flanders never sees (though his boys maybe do)).

Some may see the evil hand of Moscow in all this (environ- mentalism leverages such as Greenpeace against NATO), but that paranoia's maybe too old school for most tastes ("old school" as in "during recess -- monkey bar talk").

On a more positive note American Dad continues to boost recruiting volume through at least the first few hoops, among women especially (per long term equalization goals -- gotta bring guys up to speed).

Myself: recently returned from Lithuania, toured "KGB museum" disguised as an overweight American tourist (very persuasive, even to me).