( )(*)(\n)

and replace with:

\2\3

And this is clearly superior to doing << in vi :-)

oscon2005 perl geowanker gps geocoder mysql postgis linux osx apache photo d70 make google gmaps maps _mapping hacks_ author ajax community networking wifi nocat fablab dorkbot

I am amazed both at how many there are, and how many things are not on that list. It is mostly focused on the geek side of my life, no mention of the kids for example, but it isn't just professional tags. So what isn't on the list? There are things not on the list because I didn't think of them, or they didn't seem relevant, and many other things that just don't seem to apply to my current areas of focus.

How many things are there that don't apply to me? music, art, philosophy, ethics, economics, finance, physics, medicine, biology, etc etc.

And I think most of what isn't on the list is pretty darn interesting. But you get to pick things, or you just become the sort of people who picks certain things, and there you are.

Hot or Not now has personals. I was surfing it because there is a hot or not google map hack-it probably won't make it in, but it is a hack.

Hell, now Google is even interviewing _my_ friends, and offering them jobs! How low can things go!

link to business week article 'Revenge of the Nerds', which will probably be hidden behind a paywall soon enough, so here is the intro:

"Revenge of the Nerds -- Again Google and Yahoo! are hiring away hundreds of top engineers from high tech's most prestigious firms Some call it the "giant sucking sound" emanating from Silicon Valley. For others, it's a migraine in the making. But whatever they're calling the hiring binge at Google (GOOG ) and Yahoo! (YHOO ), just about everyone is a bit astonished at the fearsome force swallowing up some of tech's best and brightest."

"They have created a Willy Wonka effect," says James E. Pitkow, CEO of Moreover Technologies, whose former company, Outride Inc., was purchased by Google in 2001. "Engineers want to work on the coolest problems with the smartest people."

Perhaps the money quote for someone who, perhaps, isn't quite A-List cred..."While the Internet leaders snatch up top tech talent, that creates headaches elsewhere. Some startups, for instance, say the talent drain has made their own hiring more difficult."

"Vienna's prestigious Leopold Museum is usually a pretty buttoned-down place, but on Friday, some of the nudes in its marble galleries were for real."

,,, The money quote:

""We find a naked body every bit as beautiful as a clothed one," said Elisabeth Leopold, who founded the museum with her husband, Rudolf. "If they came only out of lust, we have to accept that. We stand for the truth."" The AP article

We have pictures from the first time we went (well, the first time that we went on the right day...), with Maddy and Spencer. Spencer and I went to the County Unfair there while Heather and Maddy were elsewhere. Spencer won cool mutant stuffed animals. That was probably 6/12 or so when Maddy was in a syncro meet.

That was a far better technique than my thought. I told molly over lunch that I had a thought to measure pressure. You take a bicycle pump with a pressure guage and put it into your mouth, then pump until you get that tingley feeling under your ears.

She interrupted me as soon as I said 'put it into your mouth.' My thought was that since you don't get that tingly feeling puffing a marshmallow gun that you generate less pressure than that...

My thought that we could do the experiment on cadavers was met with the practical objection that the cadavars wouldn't be able to tell us when the tingling started.

Tom Yoder agreed that it was a terrible idea, and he didn't even hear the cadaver enhancement. I just attempted to measure volumne by putting a plastic produce bag on the end of the marshmallow gun and simulating firing. I then twisted the neck of the bag, and stuffed it into the big measuring cup. I got fairly consistant results of about 2 quarts. Google is our friend in cases like this:

Convert 2 quarts to cubic feet. The answer is a mind bogglingly small 2 US quarts = 0.0668402781 cubic feet.

so an air compressor that puts out 5 cfm at 40 psi can fire around 75 shots per minute at 40 psi each. We don't need 40 psi, but I think that compressor output is not linear. If it can generate 5 cfm at 40 psi I do not think it can generate 100 cfm at 2 psi. I could be wrong. If I were wrong, then we'd get almost 1,500 shots per minute.

Since that is an absurdly high number I choose to ignore it, while quietly drooling at the possibility. Why, at 1,500 shots per minute the relativistic strains on the space time continuem could rip the universe back down to its' component strings.

I think whistles should be placed in the circuit...

And assorted other great uncles/cousins/and misc Miller family hangers on are buried.

Pictures of the Yoncalla Cemetary, and gravestones for most of those people.

And it turns out that Shannon Applegate owns the cemetary. I mean, someone has to, right? And she is basically, well, trapped in Yoncalla, trapped in her heritage. What else can you do when you have that level of mouldering history to keep track of? I get to descend into maudlin fits of family history at my leisure, she does it full time.

His Korean war was proxyed through his father, but it was real. Trying to make sense of the weight of memory. Go read the essay.

The irony is that while reading it I checked the mail, well, during a break from reading the article, and there was a package from my dad with a letter and a DVD of my Grandmother's funeral. That happened in Aug 2003, and I received the DVD on 6/26/2005, and of course it is just as relevant today as it was then.

So how does one manage it all? The basic answer is that you can't really...The other day I ran across an amusing article on wired: Keep Your Privates private. It talks about a product called Couple Box which claims to be a secure application for your personal home made 'intimate' files/pictures/video.

But clearly, in the decades to come, archives such as NARA will need to be staffed by a new kind of professional, an expert with the historian's eye of an Allen Weinstein but a computer scientist's understanding of storage technologies and a librarian's fluency with metadata. "We will have to create a new profession of 'data curator'--a combination of scientist (or other data specialist), statistician, and information expert," says MacKenzie Smith of the MIT Libraries.

How do you deal with all this data? Some needs to be private, some just needs to be preserved. There is an awesome slashdot post on the subject.

The slashdot comment:

this is actually a BIG question (Score:5, Insightful) by Ralph Spoilsport (673134) Alter Relationship on Sunday June 26, @12:13AM (#12912210) (Last Journal: Monday July 12, @10:38PM) And one that I have railed about for many years.

I have been in the same position the Author discussed, and I have come to ONLY negative conclusions. In a few words, and I hate to say this, but buddy:

WE'RE FUCKED.

Digital is a loser's proposition. backing up to analogue or even digital data on analogic substrates (such as DV tape) fail. Simply nad purely.

The *only* thing that comes close is some kind of RAID, and those, even with the plummeting price of storage, are still too expensive given the needs.

Also, a RAID assumes a continuity of several things that are not likely to be continuous:

With Video:

Framerate, number of lines, colour depth, aspect ratio, file format, compression format, Operating system compatibility, etc etc etc. All of these things are variables.

With Audio:

sample rate, compression format, bit depth, file format, etc.

Basically all of it points to very bad places.

I am fairly well convinced that our age will simply disappear. They will find our garbage, the few books not pressed on acidic paper, our paintings (fat lot of good the abstract stuff will mean to them) and drawings, that's about it. the rest will just be shiny little bits of crap in the landfill.

Since we will have used up all the dense energy forms, they will be appalled at the energy requirements just to get the few remaining museum piece devices to work. Archiving the 21st century will be impossible. To the 25th century, the 21st century will be seen as a dark age - not only for the holocaust of the die caused by the failure of the petroleum based economy, but from the simple fact that very little of the information formats we are totally geared into will survive, including this note on /.

His problem of saving personal video is just the tip ofthe iceberg. His problem is the problem of our very civilisation, writ small.

That's why I am abandoning video, and going back to painting. In 500 years, my painting CAN survive. the video simply won't.

RS

--

Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.

That is all.

I think Bush is dead wrong on just about everything, but when I can get out of the 'what I think' it is fascinating to look at this time in American history. I suspect that I shouldn't write too much on this, it just messes with my mental hygiene, but it has been a revelation to realize that there are a lot of people out there who flat reject things that I see as inevitable, and welcome.

And perhaps it is welcome that on a lot of issues it is not longer a question of spin and nuance. And, ah, how about that rise in Creationism? What the hell? 6/10/2005

Spencer sort of acted out putting a marshmellow in a tube and shooting it...she got it.

"Ah, you read Make magazine?"

She not only reads Make, but had got the second issue before me...

See the pictures

Bike Rodeo! Life Size Mousetrap! Do it!

We went, we had a great time, and you can read about it with the photos.

I think that theory and thinking and all are important. Joshua thinks that theory and all are important as they relate to actually getting things done. I suspect I'm going a bit far, but in his view an unimplemented good idea is irrelevent, except to the extent that it triggers implementation.

Something happened out by the dog house... 05/14/05 19:58:27;

It seemed overwhelming to me. I mean, every flea chewed louse infested mattress? What if that bed was rightfully taken to the dump or burned? Does that mean your new life's work is a failure?

I have no sense of humor. I am too earnest. A friend once said "Rich, did you hear about the man who tried to walk around the world? He drowned!"

"Oh, how sad" I replied. The earnest me not getting the whole aqueous earth concept. And the same with this whole every bed idea.

I now believe that it was almost surely a simple joke! But this comes up as I play with Google Maps typing in places I've lived and thinking 'hey, I could make a google maps listing of all the places I've lived."

"duh"

I sort of wanted to do the project I have in mind with the Texas Instruments MSP-430, since it is small and inexpensive, but I have a Basic Stamp II just sitting here, muttering 'give me juice, make me process." There is a link from that page to A midi out program for the Basic Stamp II So as near as I can tell, I'm good to go.

Well, except I don't actually have anything with a Midi In port that will make noise...perhaps something MIDI is in my future?

Clearly that is advice to live by. I wanted a new server to throw into our 1/4 rack down at Hurricane Electric. I mean, Schuyler has a machine in the rack, and he and I jointly have a machine in the rack, but all those beautiful "U's" were sitting empty, forlorn, waiting for a machine from me!

I got a pretty cool 1U case off of EbAy for $46.97. As near as I can tell it is a brand new case. And it included a power supply, and the PCI 90 degree adapter. Screaming deal.

Of course, for it to be a Testing Range Production there need to be some arbitary number of freaky weird things that have to be done.

First weird thing was that the back cutouts were just a little off from my mother board. But the Dremel tool made reasonably quick work of those. I did shatter three dremel cut off wheels in the process, but that is the price of progress.

Next the motherboard I had from my friend Nate had a full sized heat sink and fan. Hmmm. That is not going to fit in the 1U case. A little time with the metal cutting band saw and it seems that I've taken care of that problem.

Next is the question of drives. Since Schuyler had an emergency that required the use of my new 300 gb drive I installed Fedora Core 3 on an old 6 gb drive. I had a 250 gb SATA drive, and an Adaptec ASH-1205 SATA Connect Serial ATA Card. I figured it wouldn't hurt to try, so I installed the mess and after a quick fdisk and mkfs I amazingly was able to mount the drive.

Fedora Core 3 recognized the Adaptec ASH-1205 and automatically loaded the sata modules. I was happy. I don't know if that would work for the boot partition, but I'm happy right now.

A side benefit is that this system has an older BIOS, and didn't actually appear to recognize the full 300 gb of the other drive. I assume that since the sata modules live in user space that the BIOS loses the power to vex in this case.

The final (knock wood!) indignity was that the case was designed for a single hard drive. It doesn't even have cut outs on the front panel for a floppy or CD-just blank steel.

(if you look closely at that picture you can read this text being edited. If I were clever I would call this 'Computer in the process of being documented' and it would be conceptual art, and sort of clever. If only I were clever and could capitalize on these little syncronicities. Though, since I intentionally planned the photograph to include that text it isn't strictly 'syncronicity' but rather 'staged' which is a word that here means not random.)

Dilemna. I managed to solve the dilemna with a bit of nearly precision metal fabrication. You can tell a geek's operating system from the shape of the hard drive sled used in their server...

Screws and stuff: case and hard drive screws appear to be (mostly?) 6/32. This means size 6, and 32 threads per inch. This is interesting because it turns out that this means if you use a certain size drill bit you can reliably make holes that match your screws, and if you use a slightly smaller bit, and a 6/32 tap, you can make threads that these screws will happily grip.

And if you can tap threads you have far more options as to where you can install things, and even, dare I say, what is possible to treat as a computer case...(more to follow).

I just read something on the Geowankers list...'suppose illegal logging is a problem in your country...nuns being killed...other bad things' and so people are given space imagery and GPS units to deal with it all.

In Brazil they are doing massive cool things. Here is Software to georeference their satelite data

So I've taken the step of pointing the journalsonline.com mx record to an ip address that I own, but that isn't pointing to anything. First I changed my postfix main.cf file so that it no longer attempts to receive mail for journalsonline, but that just changed the problem slightly: instead of connecting, looking up the user, and rejecting it now simply rejects the connection with a relay denied error.

Actually, I do get some Relay access denied messages in my maillog, but mostly it seems that I get connects and disconnects.

next morning...my log file was still spewing into the log, but then a bit later it quited down...probably as dns propagated. how nice.

And then it says "Step 4: Remove all but one pin from your lock Attempting to pick a five pin tumbler is way too difficult for someone just starting out. So you'll want to make your job easier by removing all but one pin from your lock. "

But now it sounds like I'm bragging about what is basically beginners luck, coupled with good instruction and good tools. When we moved into our current house there was messing with locks that had to happen. I don't quite remember why I thought I knew how to do what I was attempting, but I ended up with the cylinder out of the lock and the pins all over the place.

Oh sh**! I said, not to myself. I had no idea how it all went back together, so I figured that I'd take another one apart, but I'd be really careful this time to see how it went together. (Don't ask about this tendency of mine to throw good things after bad...I regularly do it). Anyway, the second lock fell to the same chaos of springs and parts.

A while later Heather took all three locks to the hardware store where they charged us $30 or maybe even $45 to rekey the lot.

(yes, after the second failure I took apart the third lock on the same misguided quest).

So now it is possible to literally see when I last moved my feet. This comes with some caveats, like, my feet have to be under my desk. And sometimes the feet that are reported as having moved are, in fact, not my feet, but the feet of another.

Or even a completely non-foot related item, like a cat, or a small annoying dog who manifests her desire for love by chewing the crotches of panties and pissing and pooing on the floor.

Clearly more research and funding is needed in order to engage in appropriate research on remote foot identification. In the meantime, this is brought to you by an old garage door motion sensor, my making things Teleo Modules, and a tiny bit of code.

Hopefully people who care about what my feet are doing will develop a dependence on having this information mediated through a tool that I wrote. That way I can then go off on holiday or down to the pub without annoyance by simply running the "Best of Rich's Feet!"

Take that Panopticon!

1. Connect eth0 to a network segment with a dhcp server.
2. Go to the DHCP server, tail the lease log:
   sudo tail -f /rw/var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd.leases
3. Power up the metrix.
4. Watch the log...by and by a lease should be issued.
5. ssh root@thataddress, password=root

Totally unrelated, two comments from Spencer: "I want to be a builder, will you teach me" and "It is like me from my head to my toes, plus just my legs" (his way of indicating a height or distance, approximately one and a half spencers). 10/12/2004