Bed Time Stories

The scruffy hacker story, wherein Fancy Bear sparks indignation across the board, owing to connected Wikileaks revelations, meets expectations.

Bernie is close to Commie himself right?  So sure it makes sense these idealistic "open sourcerers" would be seeking revenge over how he was treated by Hilarious Hillary.

Lots of geriatrics have fallen for that phishing trick and easily empathize with poor AOL users and so on.  The white hat script kiddies are happy to explain how it all works, to their puzzled parents.

The other story is about the Internet of Things and how a bunch of wayward appliances all rose up in unison to attack Twitter, Netflix and Spotify.

This wasn't phishing, but something new.  Actually denial of service using bots and zombie computers is not new at all, but we're to understand the scale and focus of the attack was record-setting.

The scruffy hackers, connected to the Russians by as much slathered innuendo as possible (no wait, one of the long gone founders of the KGB had his name mistakenly not removed!) have the tamer old fart tech.

Fancy Bear is Russia, or at least a branch of the Russian government, taking the gloves off,” said one official in the Department of Defense. “It’s unlike anything else we’ve seen, and so we are struggling with writing a new playbook to respond.” The official would speak only on condition of anonymity, as his office had been barred from discussing with the press the US response to Fancy Bear’s attacks. “If Fancy Bear were a kid in the playground, it would be the kid stealing all the juice out of your lunch box and then drinking it in front of you, daring you to let him get away with it.  [ Buzzfeed ]

In contrast, the masterminds behind the toys, the attacking "things," seem to be getting away with their nefarious antics scot-free, with almost no questions asked.  "Few leads" says The Guardian.

The Russians seem to be manageable Bernie supporters, geeks in their basements with too much time on their hands.  Their motives seem understandable.

The dot com attackers, on the other hand, seem to still have their off switch and an army not easily stopped.  The corporate muggles are admitting their laziness.  Yes, their "things" may be gamed.  Don't forget to change your toaster's password.

"Nothing survives floods of this nature, existing or theoretical, centralized or decentralized,” Kaminsky said. “It all falls over. The hard questions here are about preventing this sort of exposure in the first place, and about improving our ability to respond and remediate when we do get it wrong.” Prevention and remediation are the only options in the kind of attack that paralyzed Dyn, Kaminsky said. [The Guardian]

This second, apparently not-Russian cabal, flipped their switch on and off a couple times, while engineers scrambled to "mitigate" the effects, however there's little evidence of real defenses or any actual mitigation.  The attacks simply ceased, ready to begin again another day.

Supposedly Homeland Security was looking into it.  How about the FBI?  In terms of how big a vulnerability was exposed, the scruffy Wikileaks phishing scandal doesn't hold a candle.

Duping individuals is little league compared to bringing down a core name server.

The upshot is someone with an off switch for the Internet is newly enthroned as Voldemort, while the Russians get to play second fiddle as scruffy hacker idealists, more Snowden types, in league with Anonymous no doubt.

The implication in the case of Fancy Bear is youthful rebellion on display, whereas the other attack is both more ominous and more unconscious, more sleep-inducing, more forgettable.  The corporate persons seem more eager to play dead, or at least roll over.  The Russians seem less scary, less a giant to obey.

We're not really planning a lot of "who did it" stories in the latter case are we?  It's more a tale of grin and bear it. You're at the mercy of Voldemort, and don't forget it — now forget it, until we remind you.

Of course there's been some attempt to connect these two stories, I'm aware of that.  Wikileaks is getting its revenge for some stale state trying too hard to be a hero.  That connection is not widely alleged however, only whispered into the rumor mill (or maybe bull horned if from Alex Jones).

Another bed time story is "911 was an inside job" but there I'd have to say why tell it that way?  A cabal of desperate outsiders, feeling powerless, thought this might be a way to seize control, and nothing panned out how it was supposed to.  Whatever the point of the plot, it got lost.  So much for "insiders" right?

Wanderers 2016.10.26

I brought my ballot along, and the Portland Mercury for some guidance on the more esoteric measures.  I was gonna vote in front of everyone, as a fun input to the conversation.  However I don't have the right blue or black ink pen.  By the end of today for sure.

We agree about Measure 97 (the paper editors and I), whereas Willamette Week came out against it.  Probably not enough information about where the money would go has come forward.

I understand suspicion about abuse.  I've urged these big companies that'd pay more in taxes, to get involved in public policy more explicitly, like Mentor Graphics does.  That doesn't necessarily mean creating more charter schools.  How does one create new public schools that are not charter schools, by the way?

When we started at Sunnyside Elementary, a bevy of parents had built a school within the school, and even had some hire-fire responsibilities vis-a-vis the teachers. This was a public school.  In Portland, anything is possible, might be a useful motto, even if the "laws of physics" still pertain.

For one thing, big companies (if I may address you as personhoods for a moment), tell us more about how we're to integrate math teaching with coding skills.  Just telling the high schools they need to hire an army of computer science teachers, leaving math immutable, is not gonna fly. Suggestions?

I'm not being sarcastic; I have my own very good ideas.  So if someone like me, a steep property tax payer, is able to offer strong answers, maybe a fancy pants CEO might do the same?  Not that I have anything against fancy pants.

Speaking of immutability, the MVC pattern (Model View Controller) has taken a turn, with React coders understanding the data flow as more unidirectional and circular.

The Components, represented in JavaScript, pass down info about state changes to their children on a need to know basis, whereas changes to state through the UI get tossed on the heap without trying to talk directly to other components.  They'll be updated soon enough.  Treat state as a giant global.

Conway's Law says all this micro-stuff (how we code) has maxi-consequences in the form of organizational structures.  We self-organize as we conceptualize, is another way of saying it.

Think of sitting in your cubicle and getting the usual memo traffic.  Suddenly, you have a great insight or idea.  Rather than passing it "up the chain" from manager to manager, just stick it in your Github account and let sifters and peer reviewers note the state changes.

React was tossed on the heap as open source by Facebook, in danger of dying from the complexity of its own code until this new paradigm got some legs.  React is typically used with JSX, a way of avoiding a templating language like Jinja2 and just sticking with mostly HTML inside of JavaScript functions.

Last night I breezed through a bio of William James on my shelves (so many borrowed books I've not read!), learning of his huge disappointment over living in an imperialist bubble.  He was distraught over the US-Philippines war.

Politicians today register faux shocked surprise that the RP might be registering independence and siding with China more. The Philippines is not wanting to be proxy-maneuvered by Uncle Sam into some faux fight over fish, duh.

Quakers were semi-disgusted from the beginning, with the pell-mell eagerness of the human creature to make war, not love.  "Lets fight them Injuns" was the morons' battle cry.  And so it was. Quakers resisted stooping to that low an EQ (same as IQ in the Garden) and lost much of their clout.

Making war is far easier than building an initially fragile set of trusted relationships, later codified, then institutionalized, to make torch-passing easier.  The costs get postponed to a time when paying those costs get disconnected from root causes, and people therefore stay confused enough to be bullied into wanting yet more war.

James also found USers too high strung, too on edge.  This was well before Frenetic TV (a subtype of Hectic, a cousin of Hysterical).  What would he say today?  That USers are crazy?  Where's the news there?  USers hyperventilate excessively, reports the New York Times (can you see the headline?) — pretty much on cue.

I remember celebrating the 1999-2000 odometer flip-over in Lesotho and watching each culture celebrate as the world turned, on the BBC.  People were upbeat about it all, enjoying themselves, until we came to the US time zones, where people were crazed about Y2K.  "Are the fighters still flying?" "Check"  "Are the war ships still sailing?" "Check". William James had a point I think.

Where to Invade Next (movie review)

Michael Moore films follow the same pattern, well known in journalism, wherein we get to know the journalist as one of the players, an actor in front of the camera.

"Omniscient narrator" documentaries, if political in content, tend to sound phony, though many oldsters will still hear a Wild Kingdom interpretation of animal behavior without hearing a mockumentary.

There's much to say about how the ear is tuned.

So here's this bumbling guy, playing the "dumb American," stumbling around Europe and North Africa, getting a positive echo from the difference the USA makes, or made.  All those reforms Americans fought for paid off, in other countries.

Better benefits in Italy, school food in France, no drug wars or death penalty in Portugal, better prisons in Norway, better schools in Finland, more women's rights in Iceland and Tunisia, more affordable higher education in Slovenia.  The list goes on.

Everyone gets more paid vacation than average USers.  Moore doesn't even mention working for tips.

Now these relatively happy and enlightened people are hoping what they see on TV about Michael Moore's home country is not their worst nightmare coming true.

Michael Moore appears to come from some hell people wish to avoid, at this point.

How might we explain this grave turnaround in reputation, and will the USA recover?

The explanation offered has to do with a "race to the top" being harder to win than a "race to the bottom".

The recipe then, was to criminalize all drug pushing outside legal advertising, as a way to keep people down and out and/or hard at work within "chain gang" prison colonies, thereby providing prison labor to Victoria's Secret and many others. 

Operate some kind of Gulag in other words. Perpetuate slavery. Practice eugenics (war against the weak).

Whether Michael's country will bounce back or not is one of the major soap opera concerns of our time, and if Wagner were alive he'd likely have given us some great Hollywood soundtracks about it.

I'll settle for Weird Al. Like John Oliver, he's wondering if this really could be hell that we've entered, have actually been in for quite awhile maybe.

Carol has been especially eager to see this latest major box office Michael Moore flick.  She watched it from the big chair, wrapped in a quilt, eating popcorn.

Emerging Cyberia

On kind invitation from Patrick, I walked over to his household, by way of New Seasons where I stoked up on prepared foods: chicken, brussels sprouts, macaroni and rice.  Patrick picked the beer.

I enjoyed watching the debate, the 3rd twixt the two ruling parties, with an affectionate corgi (brand of dog) jumping all over me.  Spencer joined us, while Katie flittered in and out.  That was the purpose of my visit, to take in this program.

Another "first world concern" adding actionable items to my "to do" list today is the HTC phone from Verizon, which as of two days ago is actually losing charge while plugged into a charger.  Turning it off while charging just barely holds the line.

Scouring the Internet leaves the door wide open as to whether it's a software or hardware glitch (I suspect the battery is shot, not the charging port).  In any case, it's soon to be a brick, and I'm still paying for it, so time to pay a visit to my local Verizon storefront.

I suppose the biggest takeaway, for me, was not "nasty woman" (Trump's remark) but the role of "Russians" in the national dialog.  In other times, Georgia (the Black Sea bordering region) and Crimea were maybe more front and center, or Ukraine, but now it's all cyber and Wikileaks flavored, even while Aleppo is deemed to have "fallen" to its own Assad government.

Whereas Gary Johnson (the Libertarian candidate) may not have known Aleppo was a city in Mesopotamia, I'm guessing very few political insiders could name all seventeen USG intelligence agencies that Hillary could cite as sharing her concerns about spies helping the Kremlin.

More Americans probably know that Archer worked for ISIS and that the Kremlin rebranded the KGB as something else, just like the CIA underwent a facelift to become just one of seventeen services — can you name them?

Trump is all about "dealing with ISIS" first, a goal he believes he shares with Vlad Putin, but then not the way they're doing it now, by staging a big battle for Mosul, a city to be "taken back" by Iraq. Donald ridiculed the Democrats for letting go of Mosul in the first place.

He takes a position somewhat consistent with Make America Great Again in casting Democrats on the losing side of history. ISIS won't be there given all the advanced notice to move elsewhere.

That's where the Russians come in, as outplaying the Obama administration.  In a way, that's a constructive role, as it's somewhat like poker or chess, and we see the Dems are incompetent so why not give a smart business man a chance?

I'm not saying I'm personally buying this rhetoric or narrative, only that I believe I'm fairly characterizing the Republican candidate's position.  He likes it when we're fair.

I live in Portland, Oregon which I'd say was most definitely a Bernie town (as in Bernie Sanders). The sense among Cascadians is DC is well past its prime in its ability to cough up credible theater.

The screen writing has gotten even worse than mediocre, and really has more to do with misguided ventures already in the rear view mirror.  Republican president Eisenhower was right to warn us of big business inertia and its need for war as a business expense — could be a "cold" one.

Speaking of cyber-war, I don't think the Russians' role vis-a-vis the US, here in October in 2016, is all that destructive. We're getting more immediate and relevant insight into how the game of politics is played, e.g. the shoving aside of Bernie.

Plus companies and committees (e.g. the DNC) are learning that keeping secrets is a real challenge when they're also hot properties, and this has been true since the village over the hill discovered the secrets of the catapult.

Spies might be sent over to catch up on the latest tech, or defectors encouraged to come over and spill the beans. How do these human behavior patterns work themselves out in tcp/ip world and beyond?

Sophistication around encryption is definitely a big part of it.

Businesses engaged in cyber-security for a living are being galvanized by the "Russian threat" and that could be good for the bottom line, in a purely capitalist sense.  As many security experts have been warning us, the tools of war are becoming ever more invisible.

The front line is not in Aleppo or Mosul so much, nor in outer space, but in cyber-space or "Cyberia" as some have called it, and as the debate proves.

Followup:  'twaz indeed the battery, new HTC One device on the way.

Cascadia will continue to work with DC on many important issues, especially environmental cleanup. https://t.co/EydPahbmHJ

— Kirby Urner (@thekirbster) October 13, 2016

The video at the end was entertainingly instructive, thanks. https://t.co/aFgiltZ4kY

— Kirby Urner (@thekirbster) October 20, 2016

Wittgenstein Again

[ from emails to Nathaniel Bobbitt ]

I haven't read Peter Hacker's book yet, but having studied Wittgenstein, I somewhat get where he's coming from.

In Wittgenstein's philo we're trained to see words gaining meaning through use, not through pointing to phenomena.  "Words do not point" might be the slogan. 

Ergo "understanding" "thinking" and "pain" connect to introspected "mental events" in only tenuous / tangential ways.

Not much temptation on my end to imagine "understanding" as a "brain process" in any direct one-to-one literal sense.

Saying "bacteria respond intelligently to stresses in the environment" is not metaphoric nor anthropomorphic usage, merely an extension of common everyday usage. 

Ergo an "intelligent response" requires no brains at all (bacteria don't have them).

The supposition that "desire" "empathy" "false belief" are "mental states" in the sense of signature brain configurations, is extremely alien to my way of thinking but doesn't mean it won't be useful in motivating pattern matching and ToM reasoning skills.

High School Math Notebooks

Python for high school math teachers series: Abducted! https://t.co/ZgJ8I1bLa7 #CodeCastle

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 12, 2016

Python for high school math teachers series: Spooky Castle https://t.co/rORZFqYMmB #CodeCastle

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 12, 2016

Python for high school math teachers series: Playing with Cyphers https://t.co/a9cUqWwI6E #CodeCastle

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 12, 2016

Python for high school math teachers series: Extended Precision with the Native Decimal Type https://t.co/b84tfk2w5d #CodeCastle

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 13, 2016

Fuller's Legacy

"Bucky stuff" on CBS Morning Show (2009)

This well-produced 2009 segment reminds us of the "Bucky stuff" focuses on the practical applications of Fuller's ideas, which is not a mistake in any way.

However, my "stridency" (one might call it) in my Tweets (can anything called a "tweet" be "strident"?) stems from the a priori coherence of the unit volume tetrahedron idea.

Even with no practical applications (which it has), there'd be (is) a mathematics here, an approach to spatial geometry, worth passing on.

The different models of 2nd and 3rd powering, how to map 2x2 and 2x2x2 to respective areas and volumes, are where to start.  My Youtube below sets the stage.  I continue with the story under the heading of so-called Martian Math — one of many ways to go.

At this point, I'd say some understanding of Synergetics (the name of Fuller's two-volume magnum opus) and its subsequent influence, as well as its influences (what fed into it), are required simply to understand recent intellectual history.  Is that kind of history important?  To many readers, it still is.

https://t.co/579yNOJKxu — regarding the "stridency" of some of my Synergetics tweets. #4D @BuckyFullerInst

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 9, 2016

More STEM Tweets

If you know nothing about UVT, don't even think about being US president, you'll be too ignorant of US history to merit the job. #4D

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 6, 2016

UVT = unit volume tetrahedron, a core innovation of Medal of Freedom winner R. Buckminster Fuller, the dome guy. @BuckyFullerInst #4D

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 6, 2016

UVT means you get a conceptual kit of spatial shapes with nice whole number volumes. Kepler's fave, rhombic dodeca, has volume 6. Wow, easy.

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 6, 2016

Even a relatively shallow understanding of US history requires studying the Cold War, the DEW line radomes, the hippie Whole Earth movement.

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 6, 2016

Hey kids, not your fault if Pearson censors UVT (unit volume tetrahedron) from your high school math textbooks. https://t.co/5UxDn3WjxR

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 6, 2016

Is it that the UK wants the US to ignore a homegrown genius? That might be it. Check your math textbooks. UVT? Even just in a sidebar?

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 6, 2016

STEM for All Seasons

Good article @ math-teach: https://t.co/8aGoDNUOrC Also: Who is Fourier? LEX Institute, about how language learning helps with math. #4D

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 4, 2016

One might think Barbara Oakley, author of the linked article [1], would've hit on the strategy of reading in STEM subjects in Russian, unifying and consolidated her skills in that manner.  I used Russian pamphlets on the Calculus, in translation, when a calculus teacher at St. Dominic Academy.  I was a pretty good calculus teacher.

Her critique echoes Scott Gray's of Making Math, co-founder of Useractive which later morphed into O'Reilly School (of Technology).  One needs to learn by doing, meaning practice makes perfect, whereas just watching videos (Youtubes) leads to a more vicarious understanding.

"Conceptual understanding" may prove paper thin, too fragile, when stressed by the "real world".  At the school, we emphasized "hands on" intensely, to the exclusion of any video from the curriculum proper, though as mentors we were free to cite useful Youtubes for background viewing.

I'm glad to see the infamous Forum 206 at the Math Forum has come back to life.  That listserv is really a vehicle for the NCTM (a US-based entity) so I'm refraining from jumping back in — unless and until I have some official role with said entity.

The UK has something similar, founded by Caleb Gattegno.

[1] How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math (Nautilus Quarterly / Culture Psychology, September 15, 2016)

Followup blog post re said Math Forum shared article: https://t.co/4iDDkAfVjc

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) October 4, 2016

Late Night Show

I thought Stephen Colbert took some risks last night, jumping up and down, getting the energy going, then letting that slinky soap opera star, Judith Light, yak about est (Amazon too) rather openly, with Stephen saying he wanted to join a cult.

They agreed CBS is a cult already, plus est now lets you go to the bathroom (they did then too but no need to get technical [1]).  Anyway it's not called est anymore.

They both talked about getting naked for the theater, not always the hardest thing.

The joke around here is "What's more believable:  60 Minutes about est, or Frontline on 911?" Har har.  TV is just right for "true believer" personalities, right?  Talk about cult-like.

Beekeeper Morgan Freeman, the first guest, is a producer director for the new Madam Secretary show, which draws inspiration from three recent figures of empire: Albright, Rice and Clinton.

However it's a science fictional show (not a documentary) and won't lead Americans astray into understanding too much about actual foreign policy.  For that you'd need Covert Affairs, or maybe Buffy.

[1] your agreement was to sit in the back row if you were one of those "bathroom at will" people, otherwise wait for the breaks like a normal person OK?  Don't go "excuse me excuse me" climbing over knees, while someone is sharing their heart out.

Tesla Coil Show!

"Much of the 'general public' is involved in at least stratagems, to sell soap, real estate, used cars, health insurance... you name it. Some of the stuff you need, some you don't, and some you really don't (but they manage to sell it anyway). I wouldn't undersell the general public as all that unsophisticated. They feign contempt, but then they do it for a living."

That was me on QuakerQuaker.

Quarterworld has been on my radar, but I've been slow in going there.  Once I'd settled in for a long stay, I discovered entombed Facebook messages going back to 2010, under "Filtered".  I included some apologies.  One guy said he was really into Quadray Coordinates.  I sent him a link to my most recent mention of same, earlier that very day.

The marquee said something like Tesla Show, 4 - 9, meaning at 4, and then another show, at 9 PM.  However given my propensity for misreading stuff, I was picturing some five hour display of a Tesla's powers.  "What could that even mean?" I joked in an email.  I'd read the marquee wrong.  Each show lasts about 15 minutes, with lightning bolts synchronized to music.

I'm at the code school this Monday night, per usual, opting not to glue myself to what most USers are watching:  the Hilladon talking to itself, like Sesame Street, but a lot scarier.

Cybersecurity

People are funny about security sometimes.

They claim to want "end to end encryption" to protect their privacy in coffee shops.  The technology is indeed ingenious.

But then they shout into their cell phones at the tops of their lungs on the bus, or have intimate conversations we all overhear, unless using ear buds.

Sometimes the "stage whispers" are almost deafening.  But then sometimes an audience isn't used to hearing them.

People clamor for privacy, then publish selfies in the shower.  How are we able to have it all ways?

Do we get to have the cake, eat it, sell it, and do other unmentionable things with it, all at the same time?  Wow, right?

Look for the HTTPS icon in your browser's address spot, if security is a real concern.

A lot of web content is like rock formations in the desert.  Do you really need encryption to look at that gila monster?  Don't freak out if TLS is not engaged.  You're not always in ATM mode, right?

pellegrino + turkish coffee @ marino's on division

Art Car

Glenn had called ahead and we knew the staff was likely engaged in workshops.  Tomorrow is the open house.  We decided to visit in any case, having blocked it out, taking the art car.

For those new to my blogs, the "art car" is an old Nissan sedan I let a pregnant couple spray paint in a parking lot for some dollars.  The guy was right I was just letting it rust and some auto products on the market could seal in resale value, then leaking away.

The art car, also known as "maxi taxi" came after Razz, the raspberry-colored Subaru wagon, who's final resting place before junkyard we drove by on the way out.  Razz was driveable to the end, just suffered a mishap in the high desert, a story recounted somewhere in here I'm sure.

Not like I'm rich or anything (I'm a teacher), more a case of the poor helping the poor, which published journals say goes on a lot in this world.  Community is more than just socializing.  Pet care, community gardening, creating new Biosphere type places:  humans engage in all that.  Even around here.  I'm fine with having an art car, though I may keep fine tuning the look.

Hedron is a maker space we found out about at Maker Faire (see previous post), an exhibitor in the 3D printer section (at OMSI, indoors).  I've been suggesting math teachers go against their own textbooks, somewhat the way some stronger history teachers do, using state mandated texts as examples or specimens, artifacts, not just regurgitating what's in them, not merely taking them at face value as it were.

So what if they never talk about the MITE ("minimum tetrahedron" cite Aristotle) in your geometry textbook? That doesn't mean you, a math teacher, can't go to Hedron and 3D print your own kits for classroom sharing.  Point out what's missing, as well as what's included.  The new generations are here to go beyond what earlier generations have accomplished, not parrot or ape them, duh.

Anyway, a had my Pergamon Press bag (like a tote bag) full of plastic MITEs (some a present from D. Koski years ago) and left them a few, along with the poster from the Synergetics Folio as included in the 2nd volume by Macmillan as well. That poster is the basis for a 3D printable kit the math teachers in project #CodeCastle will get to share about.

That color plate or poster is where the MITE is broken down into A & B modules — the kind of stuff I've taken to tweeting about.  I got this Pergamon Press swag bag at the First International Conference on Buckminsterfullerene in Santa Barbara, as a part of an ISEPP fellowship, BFI also supportive.

T and E have same shape however surface : volume ratios change with size. Synergetics was a work in progress, no version control, has errors

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) September 14, 2016

We went to Atlas later for pizza.  I grabbed a Mercury, the issue with the Newcomers Guide, somewhat tongue in cheek per Mercury's style.  They're reviewing the parks and saying Colonel Summers is a good one, but the editors take issue with the presumed reviewer's comment about "hipsters" plaguing the park, observing these are outright "hippies", a different species.

The joke is insiders writing for outsiders is another way of insiders showing off to other insiders.  I could go on and on about Colonel Summers park and my adventures there with Food Not Bombs.  Not far from the Barley Mill, the McMenamins' first, on Hawthorne & SE 17th.  Of course in reality the hipsters er hippies are integral to Portland's color and charm.

Maker Faire at OMSI

Glenn and I headed for Maker Faire, a mini version by some standards, with a known purpose, which I summarize as HP4E:  hexapents for everyone.

For those just joining us, the "hexapent" is a way of subdividing the surface of a sphere with mostly hexagons, a few pentagons, the soccer ball pattern being a first instance.  You might call that a truncated icosahedron, or even a buckminsterfullerene molecule, relative of nanotubes, graphene, other carbon allotropes.

In recent blog posts, and tweets, I've been cranking out some hexapent examples (see below) using Adrian Rossiter's Antiprism software, compiled for the Raspberry Pi and rendered on same using POV-ray from povray.org.  These are simply still pictures, more for the exterior of the shrink-wrapped box, were the games we're planning actually sold that way anymore (in plastic-wrapped boxes).

We found the gamer community, showcasing indoors (where we started), ahead of the curve, as predicted by Civilization, a classic hexagonaly-tiled god's eye view program.  Veterans of Civilization are quite well-versed in the hexapent lore.

We asked about the state of the game engine economy, specifically whether anything open source could serve as a basis for Glenn's many game theme ideas.  Given his years of scholarship, he's brimming with fantasy simulations, some of which connect to known science.

In Game World, it's fine to indulge in fantasies of lost sciences also.  Those who despise mixing genres, such as "illusionist" with "real magician" (an oxymoron for them), will welcome the same content provided genre rules are obeyed.  We don't have to insist that only true believers play, whatever it is, that sniggering skeptics back off.  On the contrary, anyone is welcome to judge these games how they will, plus roll their own.

Using hexagonal tiles is a standard already, no worries that I'm barging in and claiming ownership of ideas as old as the hills.  #CodeCastle philosophy isn't like that.  Speaking of which, this community center model I've been promoting under the hashtag #CodeCastle would resemble a Maker Fair in many ways, just as the Maker Fair resembles OMSI.  Indeed, in touring the Maker Fair, we found ourselves wandering through OMSI's own exhibit construction space — more of the same, really.  Great stuff.

Given I've been strutting Raspbian artifacts around town, I made a special point of visiting the Intel booth to learn for about the Edison and Minnow.  The latter is closer to the Pi in what it's for, a platform for operating systems and applications. The booth guy said the Minnow was "more powerful" that the Pi, which is likely true as the ARM chip is low power by design.

A side benefit of starting in the gamer room is we met up with Don and Tim, in charge of the Tesla coil exhibit and stage presentation.  Their largest coil is not easily accommodated by OMSI, though they managed last year.  A half million volts would be sufficient.  We went back for the light show later, by way of 3D Printer-ville, where Skip and his son were hard at work.  Skip already knows about the "hedron stuff", speaking of which, I need to visit Hedron, near Bull's Eye Glass.

I had another goal aside from the global data game hexapent motif hunt (the OSMI Gift Shop had that too, if you looked for it), which was to lookup the PDX Code Guild booth and find WorkingIT.com staff if I could.

The code school's booth was easy to find, and Sheri mentioned seeing Margaux hard at work doing interviews.  I watched Neil expertly assisting curious visitors with the Scratch-controlled robot, Sheri too.  I'm admiring of Scratch and would gladly sit behind someone else more expert and more into showing off.  I'm rather low on the Raspbian totem pole, one might say.

Glenn and I stopped at Beermongers on the way back, getting some interesting IPAs not on tap in our neighborhood.  I rarely get to this watering hole, Irish in flavor.  Speaking of which, great getting to walk up Mt. Tabor with Eddy Gunnell the other day.  He's a quick-learning Celt, and former co-worker at St. Dominic Academy in Jersey City, now settled in Portland.

War and Christmas

I recently learned the mantra that some unnamed nation is into "War and Christmas" as its two major products and themes.  To modern ears that sounds Dark Ages, like the Crusades.  However some schools promote the Crusaders, as well as the Conquistadors, as "the good guys" even to this day, and even the non-violent will speak of "the Lamb's War" as a metaphysical jihad.  Santa actually loves giving out guns, as we learn from many believable Google Images.

Muslims and Christians came together in the civil rights movement, back when Malcolm X and MLK were contemporaries. They didn't agree, but in striving for greater equality and more respect for human rights, they brought two traditions into close proximity, and put them on the same side.  A fusion of Islam with Christianity along some branches, such as Sufi, has already occurred.  The Parliament of World Religions events have offered previews.  Muhammad Ali followed his conscience in ways Christians around the world openly respected.

For my part, I'm not going to blame Americans for not being in the mood to shop until they drop, given all the news they're getting is to the effect they'll be dragged through wars for the rest of their lives, even as the planet continues to overheat.  Humans appear to be an incompetent species, for all their advantages.  Why blame people for wishing (even praying) the world were otherwise?  Maybe novels and escapist fiction movies will do well.  The November - December lineup of movies promises brief respite from World at War, at least for a couple hours.  Cartoons will be big.

Board games and computer games, a few of them serious enough to be "simulations" will likely sell well.  However I think it's unrealistic to expect civilians to stay completely mindless, even if that's their supposed economic role.  Minus much spark of hope or optimism, objectively measurable, I'm expecting showy Affluenza will be about as popular as Zika as a "look".  Ostentation in trying times has a way of appearing ridiculous, to the point of tasteless.  Extravagance and war as a combo, just seems garish.  War means frugality and thrift.

I'm not suggesting the malls will be ghost towns.  Lloyd Center, one of the first such shopping malls in the country, is working hard on the latest remodel, hoping to recruit more loyal shoppers. However macro-economics matters more than micro-economics sometimes.  The world has committed a lot of resources, both physical and metaphysical, for the exclusive use of those into military theatrics.  I expect sales of booze and mind-altering substances to remain high, as they do in the battle zones.  People seek to mitigate their pain by whatever means possible.

Some have suggested boycotting the shopping aspect of Christmas, withdrawing consumer support for the economy to the extent civilians get excluded from solving world problems more amicably.  This is hardly a new idea. "I'll do it because I want to and not because you tell me to" (take vows of poverty). Christmas used to come around with the slogan "peace on Earth", which we're hearing less and less of late.  Minus the meaningfulness of the occasion, shopping "just for the hell of it" starts to lose steam.  Civilians become refugees in their own economy. Some sign up for war duty, minus other options.

Will some of the new branches (Quaker?) result in new intentional communities?  We might be able to get some interesting Reality TV from some of these, and more reasons for hope.  I've already brought up the product placement opportunities a million times.  I wouldn't call myself anti-advertising.  On the contrary, I'm eager to support a more robust civilian economy.  These could be high tech camps (campuses) with ample bandwidth.  What companies would sponsor those?  REI?  North Face?  Boeing?  Many Jewish faithful are ready to experiment with more promising forms of settlement.

Having everything Iron Mountain is simply not conducive to celebrating Christmas.  War has a Grinch-like effect.  The "War and Christmas" business model doesn't look all that sustainable, but from what I read, many Economists think it's a given or the best we've got, or something along those lines.  I'm more into GST than Economics, so sometimes have trouble following their logic to its bitter conclusions.

Kubo and the Two Strings (movie review)

Laika is an Oregon brand, so this film was made in Oregon.  The look is quite different from the previewed animations, Glenn and I agreed.  We had The Bagdad almost to ourselves (two other people), as it's "back to school" and the summer matinee audience has dissipated.

Given the 100% Asian motif, one might consider this a "Japanese" story (which it is), however the stuff of Euro fairy tales fits in fine, from the Sword in the Stone to Pinocchio, both childhood favorites to ponder over, in my case, in several versions.  I liked to read and movies were harder to come by in those days.

The magical powers of Origami, the paper squares, allude to frames of film and the dreams we bring to life using our powers of animation, film magic.  The appreciative crowd is the audience, and it's great to see this movie with one's grandmother.  The extended family matrix, the ancestral tree, is strongly present throughout this "soap opera" involving a jealous grandfather and a disapproved marriage, Kubo the illegitimate offspring (the way grandad sees it).

The protagonist, Kubo, goes from outward storyteller to inward hero, helped by the archetypes to encounter the others he must face.  Even the ghost of grandfather helps him along, to confront his own jealousies.  The forced march to adulthood requires facing death in many forms.

That all sounds rather serious and double-plus un-fun perhaps, but then animations rendered to text, like fairly tales, will tend to sound grim.  The artistry and care taken make up for my dismal retelling, many details left out.  These stories serve a healing function by cushioning hard lessons in cartoons. Or call it cryptography -- whatever myth-making is.

When the villagers put lamps in the river, in celebration of the ancestors, I was reminded of our first ceremonies at Oaks Park, along the Willamette, setting afloat such paper lanterns, commemorating souls lost to war, to atom bombs, to all manner of outward violence.  My mom had been to Japan in the aftermath of WW2 and was eager for me and my sister to have a less crazy and dangerous world.  She's been at it ever since.

Death comes soon enough anyway, why not let nature take its own slower course?  Humans seem to always go for the gas peddle in some rush to get to some Mad Max end times.  Relax and enjoy the roses?  Why go for Planet of the Apes every time the trigger-happy go off half cocked.  Do they need their own island?  I pondered Lord of the Flies a lot too.

Glenn and I had walked around Laurelhurst earlier, discussing his Global Matrix in the context of forward-thinking PR. The world's gamer community, with the leisure to model civilization using Civilization, seems eager for a whole planet tiled with hexagons. 

Where should the twelve pentagons go?  Of course at the poles in some layers but that's the thing, we have any number of overlays (layers), and not all are about the same things.  ESRI's ArcGIS works the same way, as does Photoshop.

I suggested a game of Pentagon Go, with one of the twelve pentagons snug around the US one, with geocaching games around the consequent other eleven, some of which might be in the high seas (I haven't figured it out yet).

New Circuit Designs...

I'm recycling an old 1995 essay on QQ (Q2, QuakerQuaker) this Labor Day.

Other plans for today:

I'm giving a talk on a small Flask application at @PDXCodeGuild this evening. https://t.co/wJvZi52csj #Flask #Python https://t.co/PGuViNgoWQ

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) September 5, 2016

Sky Pi Channel

Given I'm tracking Raspbian affairs, my plate is starting to heap up with Pi lore.  Yay.

I'm not sure why people keep freaking out about powerful families having something to do with establishing nation-states.

That's the stuff of world history, more old world order than anything new, right up there with rigging elections.

Yes, Masons had a lot to do with founding the US of A too, we all know that right?   What's to freak out about?  Free country.

Although a Quaker, I'm probably more into JRR's worlds, and his friend's Narnia than the Book of Revelation per se.  I'm not an End Timer at least.

Anyway, I'm led to one of my faves by Weird Al at this juncture:

Code School Evening

minecraft-based demo of on-board GPU

The new bike has a nifty pump, which I used tonight, to get back over Tillikum.  Then I walked it home, slanting through to Palio in Ladd's, up Harrison passed St. David of Wales, and the LDS campus.  Home before 9:30 PM, with a bright red rear light the whole way, even when walking.

Ladd sisters, of the family for which this Addition is named, before my time, used to have a photography school way up the Gorge on a houseboat.  The Columbia Gorge had only recently opened to a new form of tourism involving scenic photography as a hobby.

At the code school tonight I fired up the Pi again, on the HDTV. I had my 4D stills.  Ray traced.  I say 4D as a kind of branding, not referring to Time.  Ben had a new Pi too, same make and model, and he and another guy helped me catch up on Minecraft a little, at least in create mode.  Peter Farrell is still ahead of me there.

These 4D shapes are ordinary convex polys, generated using the geodesic program in Antiprism, a suite of tools by Adrian Rossiter.

I've been working on getting his C++ to compile on the ARM chip in a small Raspberry Pi 3, Model B. The thing boots off its GPU which doubles as a sort of BIOS.  The Pi3D module, imported within Python, seems to be getting full value from said Graphics Processing Unit.  Farrell's Hacking Math Class, uses Pi3D quite a bit, also the turtle module.  Wifi is also built in.

I also compiled Povray, a program I used in Windows a lot, way back in the days of CompuServ.

Now that this tool chain is working, I can do something like this...

geodesic -c 1 -f 6 > output.off
off2pov render_me.pov output.off
povray -Irender_me.pov

That's roughly how it goes, minus some switches. I get a PNG file out the end, suitable for tweeting.  Some of the STEM teachers already have a stack of Pis and are looking for worthy projects.  I've been filing my reports.

I introduced myself quickly as "a lobbyist" as we went around the circle, mentioning my work with the teachers, especially high school math teachers.

I had Peter Farrell's book in my briefcase, strapped to the bicycle.  It sits next to my Pi Station in the CodeCastle as well (I've also used CodeCastle with reference to a certain neighborhood "ghost church", but that's still speculative fiction at this point).

Someone brand new to Portland, just moved here, expressed his intent to dive into Natural Language Processing more. We talked about Elisa, Racter (another "convo-bot"), the Tom Sawyer corpus, and setting up a measuring protocol of some kind.  The algorithm could measure negativity in some way, for example.

This wish for a protocol is characteristic of Nat's project as well, relating to motion and profiling autistic features. Nat and I have followed up a bit since our meeting, regarding the recently proved Kepler Conjecture, seeing as how the proof bridges mathematics and computer science, a theme in my lobbying for Measure 97.

(Art + Code + High) * School = 
Art School + Code School + High School

Here's a way for teachers to generate more synergy amongst themselves, from which their students might benefit.

I'm back in the world of bicycle tubes and tires, not a bad world to be in.  It got me there just fine, even with the slow leak.  Coming back, I needed the walk anyway.

Regarding Antiprism, I don't currently use antiview, the included highly capable viewer, because the flavor of OpenGL used on the Pi was not Antiprism's target OpenGL or development platform.  Antiview compiles, just isn't displaying content correctly. That's OK.  Having povray working gets me where I want to go.

antiprism + povray on a Pi 3

Got the flat tire mentioned in my code school blog fixed. https://t.co/dp2WwgXTpl Joe's Bike Shop, Chavez & Lincoln #pdx #4d #CodeCastle

— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) August 30, 2016

Geeking Out

Down in the basement, in the VML, I've got the Raspberry Pi cranking on installing a free GLUT. That's a library Adrian Rossiter depends on for his antiprism, or at least the antiviewer component thereof.  He thinks it might work.  I promised to update him on my progress.

So far the installation is going well, thanks to these clues for installing freeglut3-dev, after which ./config, with no other switches, reported "good to go" on antiviewer.

Carol (WILPF) is out with Barbara (WILFP), at Denny's, "the America I believe in" as Carol put it, going out the door.  She doesn't believe in this "other America" they're outing by snailmail.

She's getting around more slowly, I think still quite strong.  She needs another checkup tomorrow.

I met with Friend Leslie last night to sort out health care issues, and then Nat, an expert on autism.  I suggested he check this Youtube by EBN for all the characteristic movements it invokes, through the magic of video editing.

I held court at The Bagdad, these two appointments back to back.  Leslie connects to FCNL, the Quakers' lobby.

Although I've found ways to install gcc 6.1 or one of those, the gcc version on standard Jessie (the Raspian distro) should be OK, says Adrian.  I'll go downstairs and resume operations in a sec.

Carol and Barbara work with WILPF (Womens International League for Peace and Freedom), over a century old by now.  Mom went to their Centennial in The Hague.  They're mailing around the poster shown below.

Funny how what used to be treasonously cynical criticisms of the Pentagon have now become marketing memes.  "Animosity towards Russia is good for business".  Yeah right.  "Yes it's a jobs program."  "Yes it's 1984, did you have any better ideas?"

I see a lot more promise in the space program, where we continue in the tradition of Apollo-Soyuz.

I'm surprised the DoD still finds many scientists willing to sacrifice their reputations for what's empirically speaking a dumb campaign.

Around the Beltway you'll find anything for a price I suppose.  Maybe that's why more think tanks have moved west (e.g. Stanford)?

Leave the legalized / sanitized media to practice their pseudo-science and witch doctor rattling (no offense to real witch doctors).

Yesterday I paid a visit to the Veteran's Administration hospital and got the above pictures.  My friend served in Vietnam, but he's not disabled but for the dental problems.  He's therefore only eligible for tooth extractions at above market rates.

If Americans don't want as many refugees to seek refuge here, there's always being more up front about how we're poor. Uncle Sam is broke and it shows.  Why come here of all places?  I think many refugees know that, and are staying put or walking elsewhere.

This morning I worked with NPYM's cloud provider to get to the bottom of an email glitch that's been driving our Secretary wild.  We may have gotten to the bottom of it finally, a faulty Mx record on their end.  Time will tell.  I was on the phone for some time, bouncing around in tech support world.

World news:  attack on the American University in Kabul, where one of our Thirsters is on the faculty; big earthquake in Burma; another in Italy; teenage girl in a cross walk hit by driver with suspended license doing like 50 mph on Hawthorne Blvd.