More Gardening

"we also teach gardening"

The philosophical underpinnings of the garden remain important. Better the seeds be harvested directly from the local scene than obtained through the cash economy.

The game is to develop using biological methods having root access in ways money does not, unless converted from bracelets back to cows (a few bulls) per the Critical Path codec.

The dirt pile was developed with assistance from a borrowed pickup truck. Various flavors of compost will be mixed for raised beds. This is a process any family with a lawn might engage in, if seeking urban edibles. Which reminds me, we met at Back Space again. I got it all working on the Starling, with Mark giving me some invaluable pointers on how to operate it more successfully. He's a pretty brilliant guy I think. And yes, there's a plan to go with GeoDjango. I'm recruiting talent from PSU and such places.

We elected not to view Constant Gardener at the Boltons' last night, though I am eager to learn of Maureen's adventures in Kenya. I'd seen the movie, even read the book, had all this pending business to attend to, including around Quarterly Meeting.

Speaking of which, Glenn and I just met Lisa at the corner of 37th at Bagdad to discuss options. She was on a bicycle, whereas my party was walking Weird Sarah to Laurelhurst Park (a designated off-leash area in the neighborhood).

The Private Party at Duke's Landing was recorded live (about 3.5 hours) and sliced up into 109 separately entitled tracks for archiving and blogging. At least half of them are dialog. Some of the song takes are headed straight to the Myspace site whereas some of the more private stuff will go exclusively to event participants, at least at first (the most recent plan, as of this writing).

We're happy to have a mobile sound studio solution so that rough cut recordings get some air time. I'd like to add video at some point and find some R-rated TV slot on community access, or just burn straight to DVD. The various video products will then draw from this raw footage. Coffee Shops Network is already a client.

Lindsey is not playing covers so there are no issues around who controls the music at this point. Most cities have a Wild West of this kind, frequented by talent scouts, intrepid tourists. I've not spent much time in Nashville, yet imagine something similar. Savannah must not be that different either, given Lindsey's duck to water transition to the PDX music scene.

Glenn suggested I nudge Trevor to get Lindsey a slot at the upcoming Esozone conference. That's smart thinking, whether it happens or not.

Architects of Control (movie review)

This comes from the equivalent of the horror shelf at the Laughing Horse co-op. Michael Tsarion does a stream of consciousness rant, eloquent yet annoyed at peoples' evident gullibility.

He pushes the conspiracy theorist envelope by bringing in a lot of interesting history and fringe characters, providing a kind of 101 introduction to Esozone type threads, ala Da Vinci Code and like that.

One gets the impression the mind controllers hold all the high cards ("resistance is futile..."), plus the production values are good, so this becomes one more mesmerizing piece of media in the hard to find category. The irony in controlling (checking the power of) other mind controllers is not lost on this audience. Spin doctors R us eh?

The scene where Clark Kent and Superman get into a knock down drag out fight in a junk yard... where was that from again? What are these movies we keep excerpting? I admit to being out of the loop on a lot of pop culture. "What's the difference between sorcery and magic?" is one of the questions, fair warning to the science-minded that we're talking to your irrational side in this film -- but about building up your rational powers as a counter, heightening your skepticism quotient. That's a positive community service in my book, so I'm hardly panning this film.

Michael reminds me of our own Alex Ansary, a kind of on-steroids version given all the help he's been getting from props and production. I recommend this film if only for the archival footage and the obscure historical allusions. This was only Program One in the series, after which I fell back into a passive state, the effect of the trigger words having worn off already.

Followup: when Maureen showed up next day, I offered to screen this to her United Methodists, maybe answer questions. But then it's not mine to show in public, could get in trouble with ASCAP or one of those. Also: the excerpts from other movies are clearly labeled i.e. I don't want to leave the misapprehension this isn't a scholarly work with the equivalent of video footnotes. Plenty of thinking went in to this rendition. I haven't seen Program Two yet (it's a four DVD set right?). Laughing Horse only has Program One.

Equinox Retreat

:: fall equinox 2009 ::

Shomar is here, a favorite Wanderer. Dr. Nick is sauntering through. Dr. Tag is at the beach maybe?

I attended a neighborhood meeting of the Palestinian rights group recently, focused on Palestine's right to exist. There's an initiative at local schools to have students notice whenever Palestine is bleeped over as a "forbidden state" (one of a long list of banned and/or esoteric institutions).

We also discussed the two and no state solutions, the former being a neoliberal preference, the latter having to do with demoting nations more generally, treating them as tourist attractions ala EPCOT i.e. less as a part of Tomorrowland (the Spaceship Earth projection cite BuckyBall).

Linus Pauling House is nearby, so some of this thinking spills over (97214 is close knit).

The PSF has the following Diversity Statement, still in beta, thanks to a bunch of alpha geeks hacking:

The Python community is a global community. The Python Software Foundation and the broader community of which it is a part welcome and encourage participation by all. Our community is based on mutual respect, tolerance and encouragement, and we strive to help each other live up to these ideals. We would like our community to be more diverse, so we extend an especially warm welcome to everyone who will broaden it.

I was out until 3 AM last night with the Lindsey Walker Show, enjoying the scene at Local Lounge on MLK. We used the company car. I'm still a little retarded regarding set up and tear down, especially w/r to the Bose Tower. Her skills surpass mine w/r to SQL probably, too, though with the Django product Urban Edibles, we're one step removed from raw SQL, thanks to the data model. If she comes by the Pauling House, I'll steer her towards Steve's eggplant dish, pretty tasty.

Beautiful Pizza

:: art by J. Shea ::

I went by Fine Grind today to show Joe the pictures I'd snapped of his artworks at Lizard Lounge. Tag and I checked it out a few days ago. This is mostly a retail outlet for clothing and accessories, but offers coffee and a couple workstations. Blending in some art gallery motifs works well in this ambiance.

My other work at FG was to set up a developer's workbench vis-a-vis VPython and document some of the steps on edu-sig. Those of you following my curriculum writing know that I put a lot of stress on the VPython add-on, which bridges Python to OpenGL in a manner friendly to ordinary mortals who just want a simple API for real time spatial renditions.

Over on Synergeo, I've been consolidating some of the gains we've made around the T, E and K modules and their respective rhombic triacontahedra of volumes 5, 5+ and 7.5 respectively. Of course these values are in tetravolumes, a feature of this Portland ethnomathematics I share through Coffee Shops Network, Esozone, Saturday Academy and other places. We're training a next generation of advertiser... designer.

The title of this post refers to the venue from which I'm posting. After a long day in service of my country, it's great to get some R&R listening to a favorite vocalist and friend who also happens to be a talented rock star. Life is good sometimes. The set is over now. Lindsey is having some well deserved beer and pizza with the newest fans -- all guys here tonight, with a mix of passers by checking us out through the window. She's talking solidarity with the soldiers, other policies (yes, I'm eavesdropping).

I've been working on this Starling / System76 since 8 PM, still have up to an hour of battery life. I'm so far pleased with this netbook, although it doesn't let me get away with being as ham handed as I'm used to.

DjangoCon (Day 3)

Our keynote speaker this morning is Ted Leung from Sun Microsystems. He's giving us the 10,000 foot view wherein DjangoLand is but one domain among many, albeit a robust one (he likes our Pony, currently at the front of the room, enwrapped by you know who).

We're looking at some of the Erlang competitors, though not in much detail, such as Nitrogen and Webmachine. Then of course there's Lift, written in Scala, a JVM language, with brilliant support for Comet. Not everyone is using Python for everything, so true. Some are using Jython.

Kirby's aside: So WTF is Comet? Checking... OK, basically AJAX on steroids, doesn't stand for anything, means the server might be aggressive about updating its clients, doesn't lazily wait for http requests. More of a udp datagrams model. Think of a multi-user game environment (business lingo: multi-user collaboration tool) wherein every player needs frequent updates, even if only passively. Think of Twisted, already a basis for such global game playing.

Chris McAvoy, on cold meds, is talking about Django on Jython. Most attenders have flooded the "scaling your django applications" in the room next door, now that the ballroom has divided in half (I say ballroom somewhat sloppily, as there's no ball in here, let alone a hexapent version).

He's suggesting JRuby and JPython define an Enterprise-y web framework that's more agile than the usual Oracle, "portal", Websphere kind of stuff. "We're all ops people now" in the sense that writing the app is now the easy part. It's the Apache / mod_wsgi crap that's killing us. So how is Django on Jython an answer?

Pip django-jython to build WAR files, get the zxJDBC package for chatting with Postgres, SQLlite (MySQL still in the works -- ironic given Sun's position here). Sequence: use virtualenv, install pip, pip install Django 1.1, install patch django-jython. http://bit.ly/django-jython-fix for Django 1.1, delete settings$py.class if you're using 1.0 for some silly reason. Forget about models.ImageField -- you won't have PIL. If PIL moves to ctypes... doj.backends.zxjdbc.postgresql will be your database_engine in settings.py (for example). jython manage.py war is going to roll up your stuff for throwing over the wall to admins (for deployment).

Andy McKay is giving a fascinating talk about his trip to Kenya in support of health care workers, originally using Rapidsms, similar to Twitter on cell phones. Kenya has great cell phone coverage. He's learned a lot about malnourishment. "Robbed of vital nutrients as children they grow up stunted and sickly, weaklings in a land that still runs on manual labor." (NYT).

Andy helped wire Django in as the switchboard for sms messages in the field, forwarding to the clinic. An Eee PC running Ubuntu is the server. One of the bugs was in spomskyd, a Ruby daemon. pygsm has since replaced spomskyd ("Ruby rubbish").

Malaria was added to malnutrition, as another set of sms messages. He also branched out to Malawi. from rapidsms.message import Message gives you the sms messages. urls.py makes routing sms commands easy -- so what these aren't urls. A non-standard use case, woo hoo. Class based views to the rescue when Malawi wanted a different command set -- just subclass. Here's some code.

Erich Ocean: HTML5 is a technical spec, but culturally its more a Flash killer. The beefy JavaScript engines are making a big difference. Dynamic languages win again (sorry Java). SproutCore is the HTML5 application framework adopted by and now developed at Apple. It's open source, like WebKit and LLVM. Erich thinks WebKit is the future for the browser, thinks Django is well positioned on the server side. Webkit will run on Windows. HTML5 is moving faster than many think. You'll be able to sneak WebKit in the back door into IE6 even. This talk relates to the anticipated future of low latency push apps that keep updating the browser without waiting for client-side requests i.e. like Comet (see above). HTML5 web sockets...

Dr. Russell Keith-Magee: No! Bad Pony! A "pony" is shorthand for "desirable feature" in some ways. "Daddy, I want a pony" might be a typical developer's feature request to the Django core developers. The core developers, being protective of the project's aesthetics, as well as being busy, often have to say "No!"

Lightning talks: lots of good stuff, James K. Tauber made use of Steve Holden's input to welcome us to the wider Python community, giving some sense of what Python Software Foundation is doing in the world. He gave a second lightning talk about how to pronounce "Django" -- very technical, plus 30 seconds over, meaning the Pony was thrown (raised an exception).

GeoDjango

This talk helps me integrate many themes from these blogs. Our speaker, Adam Fast, is from Lawrence, Kansas, the Django HQS.

He's showing some really cool geodjango apps that he's worked on, including one with all the bird strike data coming from the nation's airports.

He uses PostGIS with Postgres. MySQL is really quite deficient in this area. django.contrib.gis and a custom test runner are needed. Set some POSTGIS stuff in settings.py. You'll have these different field types in models. You need objects = models.GeoManager(). You can start getting points on maps right in the custom Admin.

GeoPy is a great dependency for talking to the different map service back ends, e.g. Google's and Yahoo's. It's really easy to do polygon stuff, like with zip codes. His example uses 97214. Distance lookups are also easy.

So shouldn't Urban Edibles be a GeoDjango application? Maybe it is at this point. I've been out of that loop.

This is the kind of free stuff we need in Portland Public Schools. Yes, we'll need lots of scaffolding to get set up. A lot of that is already available in the form of tutorial code on the web. These geographic coordinate systems aren't going away and the resources are plentiful.

Advice re some of the gotchas: geometries are big, maybe use .defer(). You don't want huge data sets going over the wire with every page request. Xapian and SOLR might help with search down the road but for now searching isn't as straightfoward as it might be.

This stuff is really cool. Is anyone at PSU a GeoDjango expert? I went up after the talk to ask some questions about ramping up from inside IDLE at first, then moving to a dev server for maps 'n stuff. Adam thought that'd be highly doable. PyGeo by itself, without Django at all, would be a good place to start, for like the stuff we were doing at Winterhaven in 2006.

Clever tweet: jtauber RT @dartdog: it is about to be 09-09-09-09 must be a continuation of @jtauber 's plot at #Djangocon ....

More from DjangoCon

I joined Lincoln Loop guys for lunch. This is a well known Django shop based in Colorado, although the developers are spread out, including this one guy from Portugal (we discussed Portland's planned aspect, strong zoning, with a tightly focused CBD).

Every subculture has its "buzz word city" which I work to tune in (anthropologist hat). Here it's Fabric and Pinax, also pip and virtualEnv (both Ian Bicking projects) -- gotta know about 'em. Also Satchmo and Lightning Fast Shop.

These latter two on-line shopping frameworks are the kinds of free tools Stu Quimby was experimenting with, when coding Design Science Toys to do more business over the web.

My side of the conversation drifted into medical uses of SQL and ~SQL (not-SQL). I reiterated my view that legal medical records (LMRs) would go document-oriented non-SQL, because you want to stay schemeless in such an amorphous environment.

No one wants a table structure expected to handle every medical eventuality and/or course of treatment.

However, for outcomes research purposes, when comparing apples with apples, oranges with oranges, you'll want to harvest clinical research records (CRRs) from raw data, scrub it clean by masking true identities, to build these valuable clinical datasets of a more traditional schema-based nature, suitable for sharing among doctors and statisticians. Heads nodded around the table.

James Tauber's talk on Pinax replays the "gateway drug" meme. He's also a math geek I see (@jtauber).

Pinax core-dev how: there's a task tracker, wiki, pastebin, 'new' vs. 'accepted' workflow, 'fix needs review' tag, 'resolved' vs. closed' status. This infrastructure dovetails with discussions on Diversity@python.org re the Postgres core-dev process, versus Python's (Selena contributing).

github is the repository for Pinax. #pinax-dev the IRC channel, #pinax the Twitter channel.

Andy McKay (@clearwind) is next up. "What the heck went wrong?" is his topic. Andy has been a strong player in the Plone community over the years, good seeing him again (we talked later in the lobby, mostly about conference organization issues). He's talking about debugging Django apps (how to).

First: use the dev server, set DEBUG = True. Use assert False and print statements as primitive debugging stubs. Remember to print the type as everything prints as a string. mod_wsgi will halt if you print. Fix: WSGIRestrictStdout Off.

Next level: logging. The logging module in the Standard Library is notoriously complex, e.g. (log.debug("blah blah")). Then comes pdb (import pdb; pdb.set_trace()). pdb is essential. The werkzeug debugger is also really cool.

Next: unit tests and Django debug toolbar. Continuous integration products are good for keeping costs down: TeamCity, Tinderbox...

Arecibo is a good example of a live error monitoring service.

RESTful Ponies by Mike Malone (@mjmalone), currently with Six Apart: Roy T. Fielding came up with REST in 1999, per his doctoral dissertation. It's an architecture, like Bauhaus, Baroque, or Functionalist. WWW, based on HTTP, conforms to REST. Representational State Transfer is also like a programming paradigm, like OO. RESTocity: uniform interface, statelessness.

A resource is something that can be named, like an object in Python. On the web, these are typically URIs. Terminology: a representation is a sequence of bytes on the wire, describing a resource. Hypermedia contain hyperlinks. Application state affects how a request is processed. This isn't the same as resource state.

RESTful web services should use HTTP 1.1 as defined in RFC 2616. This is your API. Give resources URIs. GET, POST, PUT and DELETE are your four essential methods. PATCH is in the wings (has momentum, not here yet). He's using curl for demos. Status codes define how to handle requests and responses.

Media types are part of the content-type in HTTP. Examples: JSON, RDF: FOAF; XML (e.g. Atom) etc.

You also need to specify cacheability using the Cache-Control HTTP header. Django has conditional GET middleware, but you still need to manage Etags and Last-Modified yourself (e.g. use Python hashlib, md5). These same techniques are used to establish preconditions. Statelessness means don't use sessions or cookies. All state information the server might need goes via the hypermedia. django-piston by Jesper Noeher is worth studying for RESTful Django.

Simon Willison: Renting old castles and forts is a fun way to host a sprint. WildLifeNearYou.com was co-developed over 10 days using "cowboy development" techniques. Consensus processes are important. Pair programming helps a new team achieve common coding standards. Shared blogs, Twitter-like programs also help coordinate projects. The fort team hacked Bugle, had no Internet connection, just an intranet.

Simon, who works for The Guardian is giving us his British-style spin on that topic (rapid application development). The scandal around MP expenses provided raw material. The result: a Django application for investigating these revelations. The plan was to break scanned A4 pages into individual images using convert and send them to a MySQL database. In the end, other tools were required given the non-standard nature of the PDF materials.

This process was educational but also proved "cowboy development" has some real downsides. The better way: use pair programming, unit tests, mocks, Team City, deployment scripts. He's mentioning redis (link below), with its atomic data structures.

Our day is concluding with the technical panel. I need to bus home to grab the PSF snake and head down to the Portland Python User Group meeting. @psf_snake has tweeted invites to the conferees, with a link to the Meetup site.

Django Conference (Day 1)

I'm in the great hall, registered with T-shirt. @psf_snake is still in her FedEx container, to join us later. At least she's able to tweet. They've done a good job providing power strips here. So many hotels aren't set up for one laptop per adult (OLPA).

Speaking of which, I'd hoped to be lugging my new 2.6 lbs Ubuntu Starling, a replacement for the Dell that died, but after first picking mode of delivery (paid extra for 3-day), I then got notification it takes up to seven business days to run orders through manufacturing (nothing "just in time"). So I don't have the sexiest of accessories. At least I've got my high heels (and Olympus Stylus). Need coffee...

This is a friendly mostly-guy world. I was offered a free pastry, met Travis in line for coffee. He's fresh from Kansas, the Django capital. The Django pony is here, more like a unicorn, all pink and adorable. Are our totems both shes then? More gender studies ahead. Most of us are from out of town, camped out here at DoubleTree. I introduce myself as the local guy, say "Welcome to Portland" quite a bit.

Fake JKM (a quick keynote): James Konrad Tauber (JKT) is "impersonating" JKM (Jacob Kaplan-Moss). Russell Keith-Magee... RKM JKM JKT... it's The DaJango Code, flash to book cover (JK... MT... so many riddles). MT = Malcom Tredinnick (Cornwall, UK). Simon Wilison is allegedly the original inspiration for JKR's Harry Potter, the K taken to comply with the code. TMR is Tom M. Riddle (Voldemort). Obviously a conspiracy and yeah that KKK down the middle is disturbing, probably just means "Kansas on steroids" (note to diversity@python.org: maybe check poet Gene Fowler's "e pronoun"? -- I'm having trouble googling anything on it (math-teach is down again)).

Avi (@avibryant) is now taking the podium.

Avi is from Smalltalk (.st) and Dabble DB worlds. Seaside web framework? Never heard of it. Trendly: another product he's plugging. The theme here is obsolete systems, a theme for me too (I was poking fun at MUMPS while in line with Travis (he'd never heard of it)).

Primo Levi story: we didn't need the onions anymore (as a metrological tool for testing varnish, a kind of thermometer). Lots of "onions" left over from CGI days.

Yes, we're aware of ~SQL e.g. Cassandra (Facebook), these key:value and map:reduce machines. Yes, web frameworks "of the future" will back end into these too. This jibes with my idea of the legal medical record as more like a Facebook scroll, medical instruments leaving signed results, applications harvesting what they know to look for.

If your entire dataset fits into 600 Meg, just put it in RAM (duh). Affordable RAM changes the dynamics. It's the "database wars" (finding the right tool for any given job). Persistence doesn't have to mean SQL, we've all learned that by now.

Concurrency is the other thing to keep thinking about (yay, dimming the lights, about time). The GIL is not a big deal. He's going with what I call the "snakes on a plane" model, i.e. many separate Pythons doing their thing, ala the plain vanilla buzzbot design (thinking of Patrick's architecture).

Gmail is prototypical of tomorrows applications in providing all the HTML and Javascript up front, then just sending JSON snippets back and forth. This isn't about being swoopy (glitzy) so much as making the browser the puppet theater, pulling strings with jQuery etc. The JavaScript VMs have gotten so much better, e.g. V8 in Chrome.

Incremental updates means more behind-the-scenes gnarly URLs, a kind of lower level conversation between a client back door and the server. Django URL routing might become less pretty? Google's GWT is probably the only framework taking this challenge head-on. However Avi sees going to smelly Java (from JavaScript) as something of a step backward, even if strategically justifiable.

I recall Alan Kay's being excited about JavaScript at our London summit, thinking it has a bright future (he'd done a turtle graphics demo to amuse himself while recovering from a back injury). His prognostications have borne out. Portland's Admirers of JavaScript would appreciate this talk. Avi has developed a Smalltalk development environment internal to the browser that translates to JavaScript under the hood. Could Python do something similar?

Ur Doin It Wrong by James Bennett: RTFM. "Help! I don't know Python" is the other big problem. How do I do X in Django is often really a Python question. Do the tutorial, get a couple books, read Python module of the week. You need to know about PYTHONPATH, super(), closures, decorators... know how to read error messages. Read bit.ly/reusable-django-apps/.

Django really is just Python, not some language on top of Python. Main beef: Django does not make you use the default components. Learn how to swap in the components you need. It's just Python. Wanna point Django at Twisted ala LeafyChat? Go for it.

If you're distributing Django applications, follow packaging guidelines. Advice: steer clear of setuptools for now, stick with distutils (need a README, /docs, license.txt etc.). Use Sphinx for docs.

James likes MIT, BSD licenses over GPL, which "might as well be proprietary" the way he looks at it. Have unit tests. Use django-lint, pep8.py and pylint. pypants is a fun implementation of some of this.

We have a Perl guy now, Frank Wiles. This is a good complement to our Smalltalker keynote -- proves the Python community is not just a buncha KKK-style language bigots.

Frank is addicted to Django and not ashamed to admit it. Django is his "gateway drug" (this is a pep talk). Frank is from Revsys, part of the Kansas-based Django cartel, has been with the project almost since its inception.

The difference between good code and bad is "WTFs per minute" upon code review. zc.buildout, django-admin.py -- nothing as clean and nice in Perl world. Testing setup much easier -- saves so much time, nicer hangover, the high is better... (check out the slides). "My hands don't hurt anymore..." (less shift key, than in Perl). You've gotta love your tools, is the basic message.

Up (movie review)

Up is about the puer-senex combo, to use Jungian parlance. The pair embarks on a classic quest, in a spirit of adventure shared by an off camera mother figure.

The villain is just trying to prove his authenticity (at the expense of harming an endangered species -- so unacceptable) and has surrounded himself with talking dogs in that effort (it's a cartoon, and Disney knows how to animate dogs).

I saw this as a double feature with Groundhog Day (later, back at my place) so that may color my thinking (deja vu is a theme).

The "little mail man" (pun) looks like Humpty Dumpty and brightens the picture right from the start, turning a potentially bitter old man story into an heroic epic instead. Uplifting.

Poster Art

:: poster art by claire ::

:: lw @ duke's ::

:: private party byob ::

:: public event @ Angelo's ::

from myspace

:: click thru to photostream ::

:: on upright piano ::

On Break

Per my power lunch with Trevor, we're probably going to need to decorate Bucky a @creationist, a kind of war paint, given limited debating positions in Lower48, with "anti-reductionism" maybe too highfalutin for post Scopes Trial killer bees.

Any top-down synergism is creationist in that sense. Certainly there's an entry on teleology in Synergetics Dictionary, as like "voltage pressure". Likewise, Teilhard de Chardin, though friendly to fossils, happy to embrace Darwin, was not above a more Masonic "intelligent designer" world view, with an Omega in place of a G.

:: the tower ::

I'm on break from chauffeur duties for the Lindsey Walker Show, a private party at Duke's Landing, though we're not encouraging alcohol (BYOB is a right since the end of Prohibition) on the off chance there's still a way to repair the relationship with the neighbors. Zoning permits a street of dreams in SE Portland, but youth culture is traditionally repressed in post-Victorian societies. Portland is scarcely out of its Wild West years, has a long way to go in some dimensions.

Anyway that private party with 80 people staged by Babies with Rabies might've helped tip it in favor of the killjoys. OLCC looks for people stepping on the sidewalk with anything boozaholic. That's the name of the game, when they want to crack down. Duke's had its alcohol monitor, sure, but that wasn't enough to satisfy the referees in this case.

I'm learning a lot about the Wild West these days, am looking forward to Lindsey's playing. I've invited a bunch of people. Glenn, another Wanderer, is on his way over. She's a top talent though her loud edgy sound is not for everyone. Here's her latest circular on Bizmo Diaries.

I had a fine time with Tag recently although The Annex turned into a hoot and holler fest (some sports team, full of gusto). We wound up at Ringler's instead, much quieter. Our main order of business: help Python.org tune in the Arabic speaking blogosphere and, more important, look for NGOs wanting to make a difference in helping small businesses get going, jump start new careers in the arts, in design, in banking, in food services, health and education.

I'm steering her towards the next PPUG meeting, even if I'm to be at the Django conference. We have a lot of Idealist.org people at most of those meetings, perhaps from other world domination shops I'm still clueless about (I'm far from omniscient, even regarding geekdom here in Portland). What would it look like, to code Palestine on Rails? I should put her in touch with DemocracyLab.org as well, to yak about Google App Engine solutions (Dr. Chuck a new Plaxo friend).

Wanderers 2009.8.27

by Mario Marín

I'd gotten some of the inside scoop from two of the returning crew at the potluck, however Jeff's projected pictures this morning added a whole new dimension. Sam's boat is quite commodious, although five pretty much packed it.

Jon Bunce joined us, in good form, and later Buzz. A lot of the talk was about music, early cartoons (including Disney's), and about Wikipedia.

One could invent a back story about this small co-op of good-hearted people, either selling out to, or having control seized by, some conglomerate that now censors the content out of rapaciousness and/or cowardice.

I offered an alternative back story: entrepreneurs suck down open source Wiki software but are competing with the likes of Britannica and can't afford to let the Wikipedia brand "go bad" because (for example) fringe ideologues capitalize on its "free and open source" nature to troll, spread FUD, trash talk and be obnoxious i.e. you've gotta set standards and enforce them to be taken seriously as an encyclopedia with backbone, and not just a hodgepodge of misleading misinformation.

We talked about the new "geezer teaser": talking heads of the Woodstock era, retrospecting. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

We also yakked about needing an appropriate buyer for Pauling Campus, an ally. I recycled some of my somewhat stale (or at least no longer novel) ideas, then came up with a fresh one, relating to aerospace. The Fuller School has all these plans for adapting technology in that sector for civilian shelter solutions, going back to Wichita house and before (the genesis of that 4D moniker, which I perpetuate with my 4D Solutions).

Whether or not this particular idea pans out isn't the real point I suppose. It's more just a sign of the times that we'd even consider reaching across ideological lines in this way.

Teddy Kennedy is being remembered on all networks today for his ferocity and commitment to worthy causes. His ability to bridge across chasms in our political landscape is what many think we're missing today and I see much reason for concern, although I think the White House is still pretty good at it.

Some Analysis

[from some email to an AFSC-friendly Quaker, hyperlinks added ]

Republicans are projected as big daddy richie rich figures to which rebellious teenager Democrats say "end the war" well knowing they will fail i.e. Republicans in power means keeping "the war" going.

But then when daddy Republican is in the back seat, Democrat teenagers stop thinking about the war and selfishly focus on domestic concerns like health care and recession, because they too need "the war" to keep going (for economic reasons).

In other words, neither the left nor the right applies any real brakes in this picture, because of that shared "we are a superpower" ideology (aka the Eisenhower-diagnosed "military-industrial complex", akin to mad cow).

This superpower complex (a "meme virus") is then acted out per "the sorrows of empire" as Chalmers Johnson puts it (mom organized a guest speaking event for him). The left and right appear to oppose one another, but really they're enablers of a common dysfunctional world model, a psychological disorder (WMBS?).

Again, welcome home to Portland,

Kirby

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heyskinny/

CC BY-NC 2.0

Designing Engineers

Wanderers 2009.8.18

Portland is having hot weather again. Tara gets to house sit in a place with some air conditioning, lucky devil, me invited, but I'm kicked back in the living room, home from Pauling House. Sarah the dog was earlier treating me like a salt lick in the desert, but is currently dreaming up a storm...

Great seeing Jon Bunce at Wanderers again, still recovering from some illness. Lynne Taylor swept through, changing our XY:XX ratio to like 10:1. Glenn, two Steves, Barry, Jeff, Don, Jon, me, Sam... most of them planning a boat trip starting Thursday.

I told a couple stories, had 'em rolling in the aisles (an idiom, don't really have aisles), drank some wine, left early, trying to get some work done.

I also shared the secret knowledge that Double Dog Dare for $2.88 is maybe better than so-called Two Buck Chuck ($2.99) from Trader Joe's. Sam commented he couldn't see himself buying wine at a Seven Eleven. He probably hasn't been to Gothenburg (Sweden), where that company has one the more upscale outlets. But then Gothenberg is kinda surreal in that way (Portlandia has a boyfriend there).

I did some writing about Python, posted about some new user groups I'd like to see, including in Baghdad (Iran has one already, as does Israel). The meeting at Fine Grind seemed productive. The idea is to prototype the international schools nearby, work the kinks out, then spread some of the lessons learned -- not a new model, although much of the technology is new.

I'm liking the School of Technology approach, need to reinstall Eclipse. The Jackalope is still down.

From the Album (summer 2009)

:: tara's vista (photo by elise) ::

:: jimmy lott ::

:: lindsey & tag ::

:: wilfp / pauling connection ::

Slogging On

The Pentagon
Google Earth

Hey, my rant below is talk of the town in some circles, got a report from Thirsters that my name was in the wind, easy to imagine Fred bellowing it, but I was not an eyewitness. I tend to steer clear of that group these days, for reasons I was explaining to Dr. Tag.

Up close and personal, I'm worried about Razz (8 year old Subaru Legacy AWD station wagon, stick shift), her "fender bender" pushing into "totaled" range according to the body shop doing the estimates, though I have a hard time accepting a car I bought used for over $13K from Dick Hannah would be worth only 4/3 of $5.7K already (i.e. $7.6K). Bluebook is $8-8.5K. I know if Farmer's cuts me a check for $7.6K (5.7 = 75% of 7.6) I'd not get a car nearly as cool. No frame damage [update:  there was some frame damage, from boulders underneath on driver side], just fenders and shit, bet like $85 at the factory for some of those pieces, but capitalism is nothing if not about markup (but then show me a system without markup -- lets talk turkey somewhere (not here)). Don't sharia-practicing camel dealers know the difference between retail and wholesale?

I'm liking that some US Army guy (Colonel Timothy R. Reese) came out in NYT calling for 100% withdrawal from Iraq by 2010. Takes guts, thanks dude. Neoliberals wanna push it back to 2011 so they can force a new verdict and maybe keep those "mega-bases" -- like maybe under John Kerry? Sure, they'll "feel guilty" about that post-911 spazz attack, but it's worth feeling guilty if the price is right. So I'm betting the so-called "wimpy left" (vs. the "hard left") will push to stay, by spinning our Army guy as "out of touch with the mainstream at the Pentagon" (neoliberals, like truckers, think they know all about what the Pentagon thinks, even if they don't know shit about phi).

I watched the spatter on MSNBC around health care on Olbermann again, followed by that smart chyk show, maybe catch her name next time (reminds me of Rowley) -- Rachel Maddow.

Hey, great that Dick Cheney is refocusing on "nuke tech as weaponry" in the hands of terrorists (by definition!) as a topic. That'll put some spine back into the debate maybe, though focusing on end of life care is a mature audiences topic (R rated). The shows I'm watching give it (mortality) a slightly comical spin, feels like a pain med of some kind. Thanks TV! Sometimes a prefrontal lobotomy is more healthful than a bottle in front of me -- especially if it's a Sony.

Tara is heading out of town again, though not to the high desert this time. We're fortunate to have so many ecosystems within easy driving range. Most kids in day care just get to sit in a boring classroom and read about the world in textbooks. Real schools take 'em to the field, out to various "mega-bases" to appreciate life not in the big city. Hang out with some overseas types, already self schooling with rancher families, learning to ride horses, far from a polluted homeland.

I get a kick outta these knee-jerk something-or-others (I lose track of which mirror image) decrying the Americorps brainwashing camps, saying the government shouldn't be mind- controlling our children (leave that to big pharma). A lot of these same families are all flag wavy around military bases, not seeing the connection.

That's why we need professionals sometimes: because the average civilian is getting by on two cylinders and we sometimes need all six (like in some military or paramilitary capacity ala LL or P-W (or even me, like in Santa Fe)). Without my Princeton brainwashing, I wouldn't be pure of heart enough to do "the Lord's work" as Mirsky put it, perpetuating my guru's lineage (talking about Ludwig Wittgenstein again, one of my heros, also a war vet).

On the brighter side, I'm looking forward to eyeballing some great Python today, new curriculum materials, not by me this time. Even I get tired of just talking to myself, or arguing with Frank Zubek about whether 24 Mites make a 1F or 2F cube. Working with other professionals is what keeps me going. Inspirational!

Pelosi's War (Editorial)

Clearly the liberal Democrats have every intention of escalating in Afghanistan, per campaign promises to feed the war machine in that area. Of course the Republicans would have done the same, as both parties are rooted in congressional districts with mouths to feed and weaning oneself off the military-industrial tit is something neither party is prepared to engage in, at least not yet and not now ("there's always tomorrow" -- the big lie in politics, as sometimes it's too late (journalists know these as deadlines)).

Liberal Protestants are uncomfortable being in power, have a hard time seeing themselves that way, as "to protest" is to feel like a "power out" who "sucks up" to power. The neocons were more comfortable stridently asserting "we're it" (i.e. the best and the brightest, and in power to boot) whereas clearly they weren't, were just another nightmarish species of incompetent goon, another ideological experiment gone sadly awry.

So what does one do with a "superpower" out of control, with neither side into peace, justice or anything close? There's always the funding angle. Incentives to build schools, pave roads, civilian infrastructure, including right here in North America, could tempt some patriotic districts to participate in Operation Rebuild the USA versus the current Democracy at Gun Point (a first person shooter). Military personnel include many competent engineers, skilled teachers. We could use those skills and services, know-how around logistics, in a less self-destructive capacity.

Liberals have the weakest discourse because they profess to be "for peace" but mostly indulge in hypocrisy. We have no one in the streets. The huge troop levels in Iraq are not coming down. These are the same Bush Era policies but now the Party of Protest has majorities everywhere, so it's back to a more Clinton-like period, where poverty is allowed to fester at home, while the treasury is opened to corporate marauders intent upon cultivating a vast army of enemies overseas. Never mind neither Iraqis nor the Taliban had much if anything to do with 911. Explaining one's actions is not the goal here, simply business as usual, under whatever convenient pretense or cover.

Urban Edibles

I'm here at Backspace with Michael, Mark, Laura, Rick and Lindsey, these latter three forming The Good Bye Party when operating as a band (I'm hoping to catch a rehearsal later).

Rick and Laura bicycle everywhere (I saw them zipping by on August 6), so weren't able to answer the two touristy questions we got between here and where we parked: one about the Max, one about the bus. Rick is from Chicago, has only been in Portland for about six months. He visited Seattle for the first time just recently.

I used the morning to polish my blog post on Education Planning, make some followup contacts. I'm also still quite active on the new Wittgenstein list, published a seven point Wittgenstein for Dummies (not!) [1][2].

In the car on the way over (I'm the designated driver today), Lindsey yakked about her food coop syndicate, brokering subscribers, providers and distributors. She's obviously given the matter some thought. I found myself thinking about Andy Cross and Barb Frank, their small urban farm. We used to be subscribers, but fell out of the habit. We occasionally buy fresh produce during social hour at the Quaker meetinghouse, from whomever brings it in.

On the PSF list, Guido is reminding us that Pycon, though not designed to rake it in necessarily, can't keep running at a loss either, unless subsidized to do so (not the current model). I've been pushing a "more bang for the buck" model for corporate sponsoring members, who might up the ante in exchange for real results. Here's a link to some of my verbiage to that list.

So Lindsey and I are just getting up to speed on Mark's data model (models.py). Getting to the Django admin interface in Cygwin on Windows required: using my already-installed Mercurial to clone the Urbanedibles source code, downloading and installing Django, using Cygwin's setup to grab Vim and Sqlite3, running Django's syncdb, then runserver.

Result: I've got the the admin interface in my FireFox web browser at http://127.0.0.1/admin/.

Lindsey got there at about the same time, doing these steps on Mac OSX. We're both becoming commiters on this project, though I have nothing to commit from this meeting (too busy blogging). Lindsey worked with Mark on some changes to the data model, is in the process of merging and committing those changes.

Here's an excerpt from the data model, under active development:

class EdibleType(models.Model):
common_name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
formal_name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
edibility = models.IntegerField()
# region / Climate zone.
Season_info = models.CharField(max_length=1*1024)
# media location for photo
ident_info = models.CharField(max_length=2*1024)
harvesting_info = models.CharField(max_length=2*1024)
prep_info = models.CharField(max_length=2*1024)
preserving_info = models.CharField(max_length=2*1024)
med_use = models.CharField(max_length=2*1024)
warnings = models.CharField(max_length=1*1024)
#
def __unicode__(self):
return self.common_name

My contribution to the meeting was to suggest thinking of a calendar interface for a given fruit tree, such that the user could enter "first three weeks in August" in perpetuity, so said tree does not appear other times of the year. Everything operates on a schedule no?

This is just a big scheduling application letting users yak about resources they're at liberty to share about. In addition to time coordinates, we need space coordinates. Michael has actually thought this through in some detail. Cyclists might report a tree or bush with fruit on it, with default seasonal data coming from lookup tables i.e. if it's not your tree, you may not want to commit the time data, but those fields probably shouldn't go blank.

Regarding space info, the way it works now is the street address goes against a server for lat/long. People relying on cell phones often get the lat/long off the tower, which could be off by miles, while paying for real GPS makes your battery burn faster. I didn't know that, don't have an iPhone.

Another dimension, besides time and space, is risk. If these are wild dandelions, perhaps they've been sprayed with toxins? Does a mean dog live nearby? Is tree climbing involved? Definitely we'll need pictures, if not videos, and Mark is currently working on these media aspects of the data model.

I'm glad to be having a real Django app to sink my teeth into, complete with Mercurial code sharing. I'd been trying to wean one of my main clients off a 30 year old obsolete / dying research system costing an arm and a leg in favor of running Django against Postgres, got myself thrown overboard instead given the twisted politics of that place. I'm signed up for DjangoConf in September.

The Providence Bridge Pedal was earlier today. I'm surprised Suzanne didn't go; I'd mulled over joining her and Larry -- then TinkerBell got swiped. Chris, on Keiko's team, had his new Powerbook stolen from Fine Grind, causing deeper pain than mine. Security cams have since been installed but that's not gonna solve the problem of rotted ethics. Advice: watch that laptop, or have a friend keep watch (post a guard); don't turn your back for long unless you're sure this is a fully trusted environment.

Tomorrow Razz goes to the body shop, c/o Farmer's Insurance. Even though my company took a dive in FY2009, I've kept up with those premiums, praise Allah. I'm even covered for a rental from Enterprise.

Walking with Walker

Lindsey and I met @ Pauling House for a stroll around Sunnyside, mostly between Hawthorne and Belmont. We checked out Movie Madness, but both of us were into to saving our pennies. I eyed the gum machine ($0.25), thought the better of it.

Her work at Bike Farm is gradually materializing the self-contained bicycle with trailer rig, for transporting the Yamaha in a colorful branded waterproof bag. This would take her to Good Bye Party gigs, rehearsals in progress. The bike itself actually comes from a garden.

I shared about Kerala, followed up with some links. Here's a niche market where civilians do pretty well for themselves (could do better of course) by applying their native smarts. We also talked about peak oil, some of the distopian prophesies floating around. I think Americans specialize in apocalyptic visions, a lot like the English in that way (the Christian influence?).

Whenever Portlanders sound too cocky, it pays to think of such "more with less" places. Neither of us was feeling that cocky though. This economy is a bummer. We're likely eligible for food stamps, though I haven't signed up for 'em (should cancel Netflix first).

On the good news front, Oregon's Newport is slated to become a federal research center into matters maritime, fits with cleaning out those old nets (underwater and deadly). We're also on track to become one of Nissan's electric car testing zones (front page story today).

Lindsey's strong baritone and edgy production values have people asking for more. She's being generous with her public appearances, as one must be at the outset of a new career (she'd been into servicing company aircraft, from a back office IT angle in Savannah), but I expect will see more studio time down the road. Jimmy Lott might have some pointers (another neighbor and friend).

I'm hoping to produce some kind of event at the Multnomah Meetinghouse on October 2nd, around issues that matter to young people. To me, that means amplified music and I'm hoping Lindsey's emerging connections in several venues, including in Portland's FOSS culture, will help me, a boomer-geezer (and by extension ISEPP) stay connected with the thirty-somethings and younger.

:: @ movie madness ::