Simple question, complicated answer

My oldest post

2010-12-10T22:05:00.000-08:00

I found this a while back. This might just be my very first posting to the Internet ever. I did it via SacBBS via FidoNet. The odd thing is I don't remember being interested in Deckmaster until after I moved to Oregon in 1995. Either it was random, or I completely forgot.

Path: nntp.gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!library.ucla.edu!csulb.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!netcomsv!sacbbx!wmeonlin!203-5150-7!Jt.Justman
From: Jt.Just...@203-5150-7.wmeonlin.sacbbx.com (Jt Justman)
Date: 20 Jul 94 16:13:00 -0800
Newsgroups: rec.games.deckmaster
Subject: Cool.
Message-ID: <30d_9407202349@wmeonlin.sacbbx.com>
X-Mail-Agent: GIGO+ sn 1 at wmeonlin vsn 0.99 pl1
Organization: Fidonet: The Connection BBS
Lines: 8

 Cool. I'm posting on a link. i should get used to it if i'm gonna have
this stuff on my BBS somday. Bye.

        JT JUSTMAN   Sysop Cyberland BBS (916)488-5162
--
: Fidonet:  Jt Justman 1:203/5150.7  .. speaking for only myself.
: Internet: Jt.Just...@203-5150-7.wmeonlin.sacbbx.com

The Sixth Layer

2010-09-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

They never even told me where they'd got the data from. They just delivered it to me, on a regular old compact disk with a laser printed label. "Any cipher on earth, I can break it," I'd told them. That boast seemed to unnerve them a bit.

My team and I tried all the usual tricks on it. We had the best minds, the most powerful computers, any resource I could ask for would be provided at fastest speed. We managed to identify a possible frame for the data, embedded behind two layers of encryption. Each chunk might refer to a letter, a word, a byte. Or it could have been a red herring.

The trouble was what to do with the data once we had it! Each one comprised hundreds of thousands of bytes of data, barely indistinguishable from random noise. When we finally found the third layer, it was one of the junior analysts.

He'd whipped up a program in Java, and rendered the data as a three-dimensional environment. When visualized such, he'd observed that the data formed a sort of landscape around him. So, on a whim, he made himself a virtual avatar, and started to explore. Then he started to apply meaning to the different shapes and blocks. He colored trees, streams of water, grass, even animals. It was uncanny. And most importantly, once we went through and applied his algorithm to the entire message, we realized that together all the blocks formed the continual surface of an odd cube-shaped world.

At first I was disheartened. I thought that we'd uncovered the message itself, that some amateur video game designer or experimental artist was playing a prank on us. But you should have seen the way the CIA guys freaked out when they saw it. They asked for a guided tour of the thing. They didn't have any idea how huge it was. Using the trees and creatures for scale, it had to be a hundred times the size of Earth!

At the insistence of my chain of command, we started to explore this virtual world. It was oddly compelling. All our analysts said it was unlike any video game they'd played before. And yet it was so simple! Simple geometry, simple elegance. It really started to draw them in. They would spend hours on the hills and inside the caves and crossing the oceans. That's when they came up with the fourth layer.

It turned out there was a mathematical relationship between the individual parts of the world. Eventually they arranged them in a hierarchy, a sort of natural economy. They resolved in a very natural way into a set of rules for interacting with the world. It was like a door had been opened. There was so much more to discover once they started re-arranging the world. Soon, the interactions resulted in more and more types of objects. Some objects were obvious - tools for digging, tools for cutting, tools for carrying. That's where we found the fifth layer.

While playing with one of the objects which they'd yet to assign a meaning to, a team of the fellows discovered that part of the object could be rendered as a hydrogen atom. Then we realized it actually described the isotope deuterium, and several other elements and isotopes were described in it. We showed it to one of the rated physicists, and he came back two days later, his eyes wide in wonder.

We'd discovered the plans for a cold fusion device. I considered it yet another layer of the absurdly complex hoax and forgot about it for months. I have since learned that they actually managed to build a working model, only a few months before the end.

By that time my project was being managed by a committee of very high-ranking people. Some of them were military, others from the executive branch. They all pressed even harder for me to keep discovering. That's where I made my mark on this whole mess, my own terrible bit of brilliance that did in the entire human race.

You see, it was my idea to publish the fourth layer as a video game. By use of a one-way hashing algorithm I concocted, we could allow anyone in the world to find the patterns in the data without being able to view the data itself. We started the whole thing as the most well-funded "independent" game ever created. And the gamers loved it, they came in droves, and within days they were finding patterns in the virtual worlds, few of which I ever saw before they were spirited away to the cloistered scientific experts.

I didn't notice the sixth layer until it was too late. None of us did. Hardly any of us knows it came from the game and all the others have been eliminated. I'm alone in this knowledge because in all that time I never once played it. I was right for the wrong reasons. I thought the whole thing was an attempt at humor, an idle distraction. But when my analysts started refusing food, when whole flocks of people started abandoning their work, their lives, there own children just to play the game... I finally started to suspect.

One of the last times I ever saw another person, it was the President of the United States. I told him he had to shut down the Internet. Did you know he had that power? He picked up the red phone on his desk, and held it to his ear, waiting for some waiting military officer to pick up. Then, suddenly, his face fell.

"He says he'll have to call me back," he said, his voice a mixture of shock and horror.

"Call you back? Why..."

"He says he just needs five more diamonds."

Soon after that, the President was spirited away to an undisclosed location. I was just left there, in the Oval Office, all by myself, with the emergency supplies and the supple, made-in-America sofas. People used to wander in from time to time, but I haven't seen anyone in a while. The power's still on, and there's a laptop computer there too. I wonder if it will run the Game?

Overheard at the dinner table

2010-03-30T17:23:00.001-07:00

"I don't know, Bud, maybe you like fish/rice drinks."

Best father in the solar system

2009-12-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

So you may know I'm a real science buff. The other night I went to see the great Dr. Freeman Dyson speak at the UO - although the room was full and I got stuck in the 'overflow room' watching via video. It was a great experience, but that's not what brings me here.

Theo likes to talk about science - sometimes just because it's a good way to distract me, I think, but sometimes just because it's fun. He also loves for me to read to him from my books. He'd love for me to read him the novels I read, but it's been a while since I read one which wasn't far too adult for him to hear at bedtime. But sometimes, when we run out of juvenile novels to read, I break out one of my non-fiction science books.

Tonight was one of those nights, and I picked up "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science" by James Trefil. I turned to the chapter on astronomy and started reading. The first entry of the chapter includes the sentence, "The sun, like a campfilre at the end of an evening, will someday stop burning and die."

"Dad!" Theo interrupted, "how will the sun die?"

"Well, when it runs out of things to burn, it will stop making light, and it will die."

"And it will be dark outside?"

"Well, it will be a really long time before the sun dies. And by then, all the people on Earth will be somewhere else."

"Will we get to take all our stuff, dad?"

I fumbled over the notion that we'd all be gone by then, but eventually settled on, "Well, maybe we can move the whole Earth!"

"How, Dad?"

"Maybe somebody will make a really big truck and just pull it away," suggested with a smile.

He got this sort of distant expression on his face for several long seconds. "Wow," he said, with a sense of awe in his voice that told me that he truly does have some kind of grasp about how big that truck would have to be.

"Do you want to build a truck that big when you grow up?" I asked, aiming to help alleviate any uncertainty he might have about the sun going dark.

"No," he said, sort of sullenly, "I won't."

"Well, I'm sure somebody will."

"Yeah!" he said, suddenly animated again. "You will, Dad!"

It's good to be Dad.

Meanwhile today when I got home, the moment I sat down to give the kids a hug, Lily pointed very urgently and conveyed the message that she'd like to be picked up. I lifted her towards the lightswitch, and she was so happy as she repeatedly demonstrated the new trick she'd learned today with Mom. She's so different from Theo, so pensive, so calculating to his impulsiveness. It's a nice change, and I'm glad I have the two of them to keep me on my toes.

A Ghostbuster Halloween

2009-10-31T22:24:00.000-07:00

You may know that Ghostbusters is one of my favorite movies of all time. So this summer I played Ghostbusters for Theo for the first time. He liked it quite a bit, and watched it several times. Then in July when we decided to start planning our Halloween costumes, I asked him what he wanted to be. When he boldly announced that he wanted to be a Ghostbuster, there was no stopping me.

Soon I had formulated a plan that was gloriously epic and amazingly awesome. It has also cost me a large amount of marital capital and many long nights slaving over my workbench.

Behold:

So Theo is a Ghostbuster, obviously. Lily is just a baby ghost, we wanted to make a slimer outfit for her but ran out of time. If you don't know what I am dressed as or why Jessica is dressed as Lady Liberty, please rent Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II immediately.

Theo is clad in his jumpsuit with authentic "No Ghosts" patch and custom embroidered name tag courtesy of Grandma W. The main prop of course is the pint-sized proton pack.

I spent about 80 hours making this thing, which features chase lights on the cyclotron, a light-up panel on the gun, blue LEDs (sadly not chasing) for the power cell, and a three-color cycling LED for the gun blaster on its own switch. Theo loves the switches.

Here it is after two days of fairly heavy use. I admit it's fairly ugly, but everyone we met recognized him right away, and plenty of kids and dads were in awe of the thing. I am crazy to spend so much time on a thing that a three year old will be using for games involving combat.

(Lily is cut out of this picture which a passerby kindly took)

The statue of liberty just took Jessica a lot of hours of searching for the perfectly colored sheet, and a few hours to make the crown and the torch, which I painted.

Lily's costume is just a simple draped fabric, as I didn't think she'd likely tolerate a proper hooded ghost costume.

Mine, however, is characteristically unpractical. I shaved my head for it, and actually had to fit in the passenger seat of our little car when we drove to our parties on Friday night. Unfortunately the crotch ripped and I was losing stuffing all over the place.

I just have to say, if anyone else calls me dough-boy and pushes my tummy this week I'll punch them in the mouth. Serious.

Observations of the moment

2009-10-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

When I drive to work, I listen to KLCC (local NPR station) and then come to work and listen to Jefferson Public Radio's News and Information stream all morning.

When I ride my bike to work (7 miles each way, go me!) I listen to Pandora Internet Radio.

Interesting how the different routines - the structured, orderly thought of driving, the athletic challenge of seven miles in twenty-eight minutes - leave different parts of my brain stimulated.

OS Bridge

2009-06-19T22:41:00.000-07:00

So my little trip to Open Source Bridge 2009 is just about over. It was a great event, my first real conference and quite stimulating.

I was running for the MAX train and my phone fell out of my bag. It fell apart as usual and I quickly found two pieces. The back cover was nowhere to be found, until I thought to look in the storm drain right next to the tracks. Once I satisfied myself that there was no train coming, I opened it up and pulled the thing out.

Now my hand and my Treo smell like fish.

On the train they did a ticket inspection with sherrifs waiting. I was amazed that half of the twenty people on the train got pulled off.

Oregon in Spring

2009-05-17T23:55:00.001-07:00

Mow, then mow again.

An open letter to medical marjiana supporters

2009-04-20T22:22:00.001-07:00

Dear medical marijuana supporters,

I'd like to identify a serious problem with the framing of the current discussion around marijuana legalization.

As many Americans, I have been close to someone who really did get a lot of benefit from smoking marijuana to relieve symptoms of sickness. I have heard about how difficult and strenuous it can be to prepare your own medicine in secret, for the fear of being perceived a criminal.

However there is a problem. If marijuana is medicine, then why do so many people consume it for pleasure? It has side effects, just like any medicine, however mild they are purported to be. Why shouldn't we alarmed by people consuming this medicine, just as we are alarmed by young people consuming MDMA, methamphetamine, or other medicine with recreational appeal? Should we allow any medicine to be sold at the corner store? Where do we draw the line?

There is simply too much cross-over between the arguments in favor of medicinal and recreational use. Please separate the two, and I think you will achieve universal legalization sooner.

Sincerely,

JT Justman

A different kind of identity theft service

2009-04-02T22:26:00.000-07:00

About 18 months ago I drove two hours from my home in Springfield to meet with a man in Beaverton, Russel Weight, who wanted to talk to me a bout a web service he was developing using a software component I am familiar with, Catalyst Web Framework. He had declined to describe it; he wanted me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I arrived at his house and we sat down at his kitchen table. We talked briefly about the way the project might be conducted, and whether we would be a good working fit. Russ let me look over the agreement; I signed it, and Russ took a deep breath and shared with me his vision, the first time he had pitched the idea to anyone outside his immediate circle.

Immediately I was floored by the scope of it. Russ wanted to get every bank and creditor in the country to check all of their new accounts with a central database - that he would build from the ground up - so that applicants whose information didn't match would be prevented from opening accounts in others' names.

At first, and I've never admitted this to Russ, I thought the whole thing was too crazy to work. I raised some concerns, and Russ addressed them. Soon I was encouraged. I began making suggestions. Soon we were bouncing ideas back and forth. Russ was well funded, was a skilled programmer in his own right; and just needed a little guidance how to build this system for the web. The project was right up my alley; I'm a big fan of radio consumer advocate Clark Howard and fascinated by the inability of the financial industry to engineer a solution to the identity theft problem. Together Russ and I spent weeks and months developing a specification, and refining his service model into something really amazing.

The brilliant twist in Russ's concept was that he would store all sensitive information in his database using irreversible cryptographic hash functions so that the information he stores could never be used to facilitate identity theft. This in addition leads to the creation of an application which is exceedingly secure at all levels. After I took my new position as a software engineer with End Point Corporation, I felt confident enough of this to ask my new bosses to endorse the site's security.

The bottom line is that I heartily believe in the Identity Profiles vision of eliminating social security number based credit card theft completely. If anyone can do it, it is Russ, with his bold vision, infallible integrity, and amazing ability to find common sense solutions to large problems. Common sense is one thing we've been lacking these days!

So, please take a look at the identity theft prevention services and consider participating in this noble effort!

2009-04-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite bloggers, Chad Orzel, has a book coming out in december, How to Teach Physics to your dog and has launched a web site to promote the book Talking to Your Dog About Physics. I love reading about science, and Chad is really good at explaining some really high-level stuff that I've never tackled before. Check it out!

Next: the back of the cerial box

2009-03-30T22:18:00.000-07:00

So I've been reading 'chapter books' - juvenile novels - to Theo at bedtime. The slower pace is a lot less engaging than picture books and don't draw him out as much. More often than not he's asleep within a couple of pages.

Today however was a late nap day. So after a late movie (Beethoven, which I've never actually seen before) and a trip outside to see the stars (he procured from somewhere a toilet paper roll and used it in lieu of a chance to see through my binoculars) we engaged in the nightly ritual. We had only one chapter remaining in 'The Mystery of the Dinosaur Bones' and I tried to draw it out. We were close when we reached the final line, but beyond that was an appendix: a list of dinosaurs, with their descriptions. Finally I reached the 'Tyranosaurus' at the alphabetical end of the list, and glanced up to see eyes half closed. So, hardly skipping a beat, I went on to read the inner back flap of the dustjacket, which was the location of the 'About the Author' section.

Now Theo will be dreaming of an odd dinosaur from Eugene, Oregon named Mary Adrian.

When can 'drastic' be an understatement?

2009-03-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

When public educators try to manage the behavior of children and young adults.

Amateur Astronomy

2009-03-27T22:26:00.000-07:00

So I have been trying to get my feet wet with amateur astronomy for a while now. I finally have a good book with some star charts, and a nice set of binoculars suitable for star-gazing. Tonight I thought I was going to go to my first Eugene Astronomical Society meeting but the meeting was actually last night. So on a lark I decided to grab my gear and head up to someplace really dark - I settled on a place I'd seen mentioned on the EAS mail list, Eagle's Rest. My motivation for leaving the house had as much to do with wanting to get away from distractions as with needing more dark - we have really very good skies here at the house depending how many neighbors have porch lights on on any given night.

Before I left I checked various sources of detailed weather forecasting, and I had this notion that I might have dark, clear skies for a little while right after sunset. So I drove the 40 minutes out and up the hill on Eagle's Rest Road. The fragmentary directions I had suggested there was a clear site a mile and a half up, and there it was, a little ways past the end of the pavement, a little turn-off surrounded by muddy 4x4 ruts and thousands of spent rounds of ammunition. Sad, really, that people can't be bothered to pick up after themselves.

It was still fairly light, so I settled down to review my books and practice with my binoculars. Soon though a large cloud bank started to slide in over my location. In another half hour there was a tiny open patch of sky with a single solitary star visible in it. The binoculars turned this into a pepper-specked field of deep blue. I jumped from one hole to the next for a while, just practicing focusing. I tracked a couple of airplanes, and a couple of satellites.

There were hundreds or thousands of frogs nearby calling wildly. However any time I made a distinct noise, they would all stop very suddenly. It was really strange. They would also stop when a dog who had to be a mile away would bark. Once I heard a coyote.

Finally it was dark, and the southern quarter of the sky opened up. I was able to locate right away what I was sure was the Pleiades, and near it Taurus. My mom taught me a few constellations when I was 8 or 9 and those two were ones I felt pretty confident about. But I couldn't line it up on the chart and I feared I might be wrong. The clouds were darting around. I saw some interesting stuff, but I got discouraged and started to drive back down the hill.

As soon as I got to the bottom of the hill I looked south and now the sky was much more clear. I stood there trying to get my bearings. Suddenly the clouds pulled back and I recognized unmistakable Orion! I corroborated the position of Taurus and Pleiades, and tried to find some other constellations. I think I found Pegasus and Gemini. But I went back to Orion and saw what must have been the nebula. Then I saw a shooting star, and traced another, brighter satellite all the way across the sky.

I love looking at the stars! I can't wait to really get my bearings, so I can be prepared for deeper explorations!

Samsung RMA

2009-02-27T07:05:00.000-08:00

Well I've never had to RMA a monitor before. But as I mentioned my 22" Samsung went out and I finally got the RMA posted this morning. It was quick and painless, and they have an option where they will advance the replacement to the nearest UPS store, and I can take the old one in and swap. Sweet! We'll see how fast it is.

Wisdom

2009-02-18T00:08:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I've ever even heard of Barry Schwartz before. All I have seen is this:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html

Which was downright awesome.

Baby Pants Music!

2009-02-15T00:30:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite 3 bands - I mean, averaged over time, seriously probably #1 - is The Presidents of the United States of America. I was about 13 when 'Lump' was in the top ten and I bought the self-titled cassette at Tower Records in Sacramento. Well let me tell you I wore out that cassette and hunted down everything I could find from the guys, which wasn't much at the time! I bought II when it came out and ate it up. It was the first CD I ever bought - I bought it at the little short-lived CD shop in Myrtle Creek in the front of the old movie theater. When their 'indefinite break' happened I was devastated.

Well anyway after a while PUSA re-formed and made some cool new albums. I've lived on the same coast as these Seattle locals - I've even seen Metallica and Clutch up there - and never seen the guys live. I just don't follow these things closely enough.

I do love singing PUSA songs and there are a couple that they sometimes have at karaoke bars. 'Lump' which is not really my favorite, 'Mach 5' which is a lot of fun and 'Kitty', which is slow and simple and has the word 'fuck' in it at the end. So one time I made the infamous local karaoke jockey Jared very angry by singing it in a theoretically all-ages establishment. Despite the fact that that very night he'd been humping an inflatable dolphin on stage as some college girls sang 'Baby Got Back'. Anyhow.

But this is the digital age, and at some point I discovered that the band has a website with a blog, and front-man Chris Ballew posts a lot! It's so fun reading about these guys. Chris started posting about he was so excited about making kids music. Well he's got his first CD out at Baby Pants Music and has a bunch of songs up for free. I LOVE the songs, they are so lighthearted and fun but stimulating and unpredictable in true Chris Ballew style.

You can tell Chris is doing this for the love of it: he's only charging $10, shipped, with an autograph! Squee! Needless to say I PayPal'ed right up and will be eagerly assailing the letter carrier till it arrives.

Now I just need to pay attention so I can see PUSA the next time they are playing the west coast!

Promises

2009-02-14T18:11:00.000-08:00

I am in Salem's historic waterfront carousel park. A lady on a PA tells me that there is cake somewhere. I am skeptical. For a while I had to hold a white square napkin with a heart shaped cookie on it.

Monitor woes

2009-02-14T13:45:00.000-08:00

My nice new 22" widescreen Samsung LCD monitor is not behaving properly. It seems to stop working whenever it hits a non-native video mode - including at boot up. If I boot the system from the other monitor (which is smaller and has a lower native resolution) and upscale to 1680x1050 it works until the first time the screen saver blanks the screen.

It's really a bummer. I am a serious screen real estate hog. Good thing it's less than a year old and surely under warranty...

Man-made margin of error

2009-02-13T22:22:00.000-08:00

For a few months I've been reading the blog 'Watts up with that?' Anthony Watts comments on many things, but mostly focuses on collecting evidence of bad scientific technique in the measurement of climate conditions. Anthony is a global warming skeptic - and so am I.

Today Anthony continued his ongoing series, 'How not to measure temperature'. This is part 75 of that series. Anthony and the people he works with have uncovered STAGGERING numbers of weather stations which should be considered invalid due to various effects.

Check out the links at the top for a selection of worst offenders. My favorite is the one next to the barbecue grill.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/20/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-75/

Anthony also runs an effort to physically survey all the weather history stations in the country: http://www.surfacestations.org/. One of the worst offenders listed there is right here in Oregon: a weather station 10 feet from an air conditioner in forest grove.

Just look at these sites and see if you start to see a different correlation than CO2 to this supposed temperature increase. Maybe someone should make a graph of 'global warming' versus the cost of window-mounted air conditioners.

Energy origins

2009-02-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

I had several good discussions in response to my little alien conversation a while back. Unfortunately they all happened either offline or in the (private) FreeAllegiance/Steel Fury forums. Post in the comments next time you slackers! I know you all have Google accounts.

Anyway so something several people mentioned was, 'how could an intelligent species develop a photovoltaic cell before figuring out how bump the right two rocks together?

I see the following possible answers:

* They are in an environment unsuited to combustion (underwater, highly humid, delicate chemistry)
* They saw an example in nature

The first is so strikingly simple: underwater beings would have to find other ways of creating energy. The bouyant and tidal forces would be amazingly useful if you lived your whole life underwater. Particularly if you had an easily accessible atmosphere above the surface of your sea. But solar isn't particularly useful unless you're willing to spend enough time underwater.

The second possibility fascinates me even more. What if there was a simple animal or plant evolved to take advantage of the photovoltaic principle? It may sound far fetched, but electronic potential is a fundamental force.

One such fanciful creature: imagine colony of spores, whose natural enemy were small, slow-moving insects. Suppose a mutation emerged which resulted in the development of photovoltaic potential. In the daytime, this small potential might be enough to discourage the pests. Natural selection continues, and soon there is enough voltage developed for a sentient creature to notice and study. Perhaps given the right environment and enough time this effect could even produce theoretically perfect efficiency.

Imagine also a sentient creature who burns neither plant material nor fossil fuels because the smokey output is displeasing to a sensitive respiratory system. Such a creature would not have taken to steam powered conveniences as we humans did. When we discovered the photovoltaic principle, its output paled so far in comparison to what we could get from coal-fired steam or even the early internal combustion engine that it was not pursued with the same vigor as dirtier technology.

If we were, for some reason, unable to burn coal, how revolutionary would have been the discovery of the solar cell? In our vigor, how soon would we have discovered Cadmium Telluride? Perhaps most strikingly, would we still measure the economy of such devices to such a high standard as the one we hold now, the standard of the abundant-petroleum economy?

Essentially all the sources of energy we have at our disposal come ultimately from the pre-primordial cloud from which our solar system formed. So many elements essential to our life have come from generation after generation of stars who have fused together heavier and heavier elements. But two of the most common things in our solar system - photons and hydrogen - are really great sources of energy. It just happens to be really inconvenient way down here in our gravity well. In the scope of time the idea of painfully separating hydrogen from carbon, the idea of moving mountains to uncover rare uranium will seem just as alien as the idea of killing whales to make oil for light.

Astrology Apology

2009-02-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

Good ol' Phil Plait once again demonstrates how silly astrology is. Ever since I read about it in his Bad Astronomy book I've been sorry about humoring the notion for all these years. I'm sorry, and I promise to no longer play along with all the damaging antiscientific mumbo-jumbo that is astrology.

Units of measure

2009-02-09T12:29:00.000-08:00

Most people think in terms of familiar units they become acquainted with in their youth.

I think a lot of people think of energy in terms of the measurement 'trips to the 7-Eleven per gallon of gas'.

Hurling planetoids

2009-01-14T11:36:00.000-08:00

Suppose you have a large rock, and a large source of gravity.

Suppose that rock is an asteroid, and that source of gravity is the Earth.

Suppose you gently push that asteroid to an Earth orbit, catch it with some kind of gigantic space-tower-like device, and use the force of the asteroid's descent to generate electrical energy.

Okay, several huge flaws with this plan. Moving the asteroid wouldn't be cheap, a space tower that big is grossly impractical, and if you missed you'd cause serious trouble on the ground. However the idea sticks with me and I think it will be a fun exercise in armchair physics. I am a physics newbie so bear with me as I fire my sawed-off physics shotgun from the hip.

Let's start with the rock. How about Cruithne? This rock might just be plausibly near to earth in a couple hundred years. It's sometimes called "Earth's second moon" as it is in a very similar orbit to the Earth, although it orbits the sun. Cruithne has a mass of 1.3e+14 kg and a size of about 5 kilometers.

Let's assume that the rock will start from a 36 kilometer geosynchronous orbit (which is ridiculous, really, with such mass).

Assuming the force of gravity at a constant 9.8m/s^2 (it's not!) then we have a potential energy of (1.3e+14)(9.8m/s^2)(36000m) = 4.5864e+19 joules. In 2005 the entire population of the earth consumed approximately 5e+20 joules. So even ignoring the difference in gravity at altitude (marginal although I've struggled with the equations), efficiency of the system, and so many other factors, you'd need ten of these every year.

As a side benefit, you could send down asteroids with materials you need. Unfortunately I doubt we humans could consume all these materials, so in a few years you'd have dozens of kilometer-sized boulders strewn around. You'd also have to find a way to unload the things or they wouldn't be strewn very far.

Perhaps the idea has more merit as a method for powering a space spire, and primarily for delivering materials which would be unloaded. But you'd need a ridiculously huge and strong tower. Completely at odds with current space elevator designs and introducing a whole new set of equations. Heck, you'd need so much material just to make something that tall you'd leave a pretty big hole. Suppose you can do the whole thing with four columns each 10 meters on a side - quite optimistic! That's 3.6 million cubic meters of material or at least 2.82999348e+13 grams - or the entire world steel output for 20 years.

Take it down a notch: what about just refining raw materials in orbit and then shunting them down the spire. Use them as one-time counterweights to lift other items into orbit. Take the residual energy - which could be considerable. Send lots of (relatively) smaller chunks down the elevator.

Really a crazy idea. But now it's out of my head.

An outside perspective

2009-01-13T04:55:00.000-08:00

"This one, such a large ship! What does it transport?"

In one long slow motion I propelled myself to the other end of the laboratory and glanced over at the screen of the computerized English lesson. "Oh, that is an oil tanker. It transports petroleum; the raw material which is refined into hydrocarbon-based fuels."

There was a pause as he looked up some of the terms I had used.

"You burn hydrocarbons? For what purpose?"

"To power internal combustion engines, which drive many of our personal transportation devices and other machinery."

"How impractical!" he squawked.

"Well, we're trying to stop," I said, apologetically.

"Why would you even begin to burn them? Your sun's energy penetrates your atmosphere; your large moon creates substantial tidal forces."

"It was only relatively recently that we learned to capture the potential energy of photons. And we still have not achieved full efficiency."

Another pause as the guest considered. "For my species, devices to capture energy from the sun were one of the first elementary discoveries. The... solar panel as you would call it... is one of our rudimentary devices. It's mastery is synonymous with the separation of our people from wild animals."

"In my people, the corresponding discovery was that of fire."

The visitor blinked an eye slowly. "How very interesting," he declared, "that explains so much."

End Point blog: Git push: know your refspecs

2008-08-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

End Point blog: Git push: know your refspecs

I think this blog post about an embarrassing technical faux pas was inspired by something I did ;)

All thingies are precious

2008-07-15T18:49:00.001-07:00

Tonight I was cleaning up after tonight's fish taco dinner, and I was trying to secure the corn tortillas for re-storage in the freezer.

"Sweetie, have you seen the twist-tie for these?"

Jessica turns. "Oh, I've just been using this metal thingie to clip it with."

I look at the thingie in question, and I did my all-too-well-practiced facepalm.

There is a moment of quiet. "Oh, was that thingie important?"

Once words returned to me, I replied, "All of my thingies are important!"

I described the thingie in question, the clip for my anti-static wrist strap:

I went on to explain the two hours I'd spent a couple of weeks back looking for said thingie all over the house. In fact I remembered very specifically its approximate location because, compulsive chewer that I am, I had been biting on it and using it as a whistle while working. Okay, that is probably more strange than using it to clip a bag of frozen tortillas.

Side note: detachable clip for frozen tortillas also makes a fine dog whistle.

Yay!

2008-06-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

We are officially the owners of our first home! (And a $169,000 loan ;)

Well seasoned

2008-05-28T18:47:00.000-07:00

I just watched finale to the first season of Battlestar Galactica. I suddenly understand why everyone was so upset when it seemed like it wasn't going to come back.

Pandora

2008-05-19T17:01:00.000-07:00

Well lots of more important stuff to blog about... my new job, Theo turning two, buying a house, etc... but all that makes me too busy.

I just had a fun moment and wanted to share it. I just listened to Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame) singing Knockin on Heaven's Door. A song I've always sort of liked; GNR 'Appetite for Destruction' lived in my walkman for some time back in the 90s. I had no idea until just now that it was written by Bob Dylan. But this is a nice version.

Anyway, thank you Pandora, and thank you Eli for introducing me to it!

Theo thinks of the computer as a tool with which to look at trucks

2008-02-11T13:41:00.000-08:00

For some time we have had a routine where he will come to the computer and make a sound - for a dog, cat, truck, etc. - and I will run a Google Image Search, for hours of enjoyment. Well prompted by my sister-in-law's comment about letting her daughter watch clips from kids' shows on YouTube, for today's session I decided to see what kind of truck videos we could find. I had no idea what we were getting in to.

The Internet is awesome.

And now I will let Theo finish this post.

05258-
*+

Gah!

2008-02-11T12:54:00.000-08:00

So someone has acquired my debit card number, and used it to buy and subscribe to some product through Sony Online Entertainment, the operators of several MMOGs. Needless to say the card has been canceled and fraud report entered. Significantly annoying. I'm curious whether this person is trying to play for his own enjoyment, or if there is some way for him to sell the account? I've been thinking back at whoever has handled my card lately, to see if anything suspicious pops up, but nothing comes to mind.

$500 well invested

2008-02-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

There was a story recently circulating the wires about a ten-year-old Oregon boy who built his own snow machine from $500 worth of supplies.

First of all, I love that someone bought him an air compressor for Christmas. Now THERE is a present that is both productive and fun! I wanted toys like that starting around that age. I think I was ten in fact when I got a miter saw, and used $20 of birthday money to buy a tool belt to make my backyard fort-building easier.

Second of all, I love what a great example of real education this is. This kid (and his parents) took what could almost be considered an idle interest - snowboarding - and turned it in to an amazing lesson in science and engineering that will inspire him for the rest of his life. I can tell you that my humble achievements around that age played a major part in my confidence with computers. For me, the equivalent experience was probably running my own BBS around age 11. Or perhaps being on the cover of the Metro section of the Sacramento Union with my trusty SLR, taking a picture of a news reporter with a camera identical to mine.

Third of all, I love that his parents had the wherewithal to make him work for the money. That's great.

Here's what occurred to me though: how much education can one buy for $500 in a government school? To guess at my bias is simple. However as I type this I have not yet done the research. So I will head over to OpenBooksProject, a non-profit organization which performs studies on Oregon school spending, among other things.

Per student spending: $8,072
School days: 180 (est)
Cost per day: $44.84

In Oregon, $500 buys you just over 11 days of school for a youngster. If you pick the right 11 days you'll get to bring home a nice valentine to mom. But this kid got a snow machine, got to be on the news, and got a nice boost for the rest of his life.

Which is the better spent $500?

Okay, so that's a bit factitious. Suffice it to say that I long to share in that moment in Theo's life, when he suddenly realizes that he really CAN do anything he puts his mind to. Actually, it may have happened already.

It was this summer, when Theo was perhaps 14 months old. I had acquired, in a typical moment of false confidence, not one but two broken lawn mowers. That's right, the old 'make one working one out of two broken ones' routine. Well after they'd sat for a couple of months, one day I decided to finally roll them out and see what I could do with them. As soon as Theo saw what I was doing, he came right over to investigate. He made for the pile of bolts that I had removed. Seeking to distract him, I reached in to the toolbox and grabbed the least dangerous tool I could find - a large spark plug socket. He was looking for someplace to put it, so I directed him to tighten the wheels.

I watched with interest as he put the socket to each of the bolts on the two wheels to his side in turn. He experimented for a few moments how the socket fit. He became fascinated at the smaller bolts I was removing. As I put down the ratchet, he picked it up and tried to put it to the next bolt in turn. With a bit of guidance from me, he successfully mimicked the back and forth motion needed to work the ratchet. Watching him 'help' me take that mower apart was like watching the lights turn on.

To this day Theo (now almost Two) loves to 'fix' things. I will hand him a tool - toy or real - and indicate a toy or household object that needs repair, and he will attempt to repair it. Perhaps it's this way with all boys - but I expect to take it as far as it is within my ability to do so.

With his level of enthusiasm, and my level of passion for helping him develop as a young man, I fully expect that if I were to show Theo young Forest Pearson's snow machine - or 'no ball' machine, to use Theo's language - we'd be building one in time for next winter.

Simpliphones Follow-up

2008-02-05T20:57:00.001-08:00

Just a quick note regarding SimpliPhones.

A week after I installed it I had to drive to the site on a Sunday to investigate complete system failure. The issue turned out to be a loose hard drive power cable, probably a delayed effect of transit.

I mentioned the system runs on Windows XP. Well, it is no more stable than your average Windows XP PC. Even optimistically this is not enough for a business phone system. The client decided to return it (through Costco) and went with a Toshiba PBX which has gone swimmingly, and for about the same cost, with more features and perfect stability.

SimpliPhones

2007-10-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, I do intend to actually use this thing. Why don't I start now with a bit of a technology review?

I have a client who was in need of a better phone system. He had outgrown his Iwatsu system - it did the job, but was completely proprietary and closed. The only way to make even simple changes like adding lines to existing hardware was to have a 'factory trained technician' use a super-secret management software to change the settings. I suspect that I could have done a lot had I connected it to a terminal emulator, but no documentation was available. To become 'factory trained' was exceedingly expensive. So, we decided to move on.

The client had some specific needs. He wanted to be able to support at least 6 lines and 8 extensions right away with the opportunity to expand beyond that. He wanted robust call management facilities like auto-attendant, and the ability to completely self-administer. We primarily considered two groups of products: turn-key PBX systems from well-known manufacturers, and open-source based solutions. My inclination of course was to go with an open-source software, but the client wanted to keep the solution simple, and I couldn't guarantee that, even if we enrolled a specialist to install and support the system. We found more of the same with the major brands as with Iwatsu - lack of self-management, and a lack of a middle-of-the-road product.

That's when the client discovered SimpliPhones on the Costco website. Their gimmick is a full-featured phone system that you can install yourself in about two hours with no special knowledge. They also offer only a few packages up front, keeping the choices simple. The price point is middle of the road, and with the Costco return policy behind it, he was inclined to give it a try. I tentatively signed off on the idea, not having a better solution to offer.

The Installation
I drove to the client site early on a Saturday for the installation. The client had ordered the eight-line, sixteen-extension system. It came complete with a PBX 'server', sixteen phones, and three complete wiring kits. The first step was to situate the 'server'. (I will stop putting the word 'server' in quotes now, more on that later.)

The server can be mounted with its base to the wall, or mounted to a standard 19-inch rack. A sturdy steel case allows it to be mounted at the front only, which made placing it amongst the other servers fairly simple for the two of us. The installation guide would have you mount the server, connect it to power and network, and then power it on and wait for a DHCP-assigned address to appear on the front panel LED. I don't run DHCP there, and they suggest to either temporarily enable DHCP or to use auto-address assignment. However, I had gathered that you could access the settings directly by connecting keyboard, video and mouse to the back of the system. I'd known that it was a Windows based system, but it was interesting to see Windows XP come up on the screen. An IE 7 window was open to the web-based configuration utility.

The Heart of the Beast
I skipped the middle-man and used Windows instrumentation to assign an IP address, then rebooted. This time I took a look at what was running on the system, and was almost appalled. It seems that most of the PBX functions are run by processes sitting inside several terminal (i.e. command prompt) windows, which sit open on the logged-in session. This means that if you were to accidentally close one of these windows, some function of the server would stop functioning. Unless these are only logging windows, but I did not get that impression. All in all it feels like a rather slipshod implementation. There were a lot of debugging statements on the screen, letting me get in to the minds of their programmers a bit - no offense, but I did not gain confidence from this.

The hardware is, if I recall correctly, a 2 ghz Celeron with 512 megs of RAM. Certainly more than enough for this type of application.

New-World or Old World?
Once we were connected I started following through the installation wizard. This is a web-based system that was designed by untrained monkeys. I have seen more polished user interfaces on Junkyard Wars. The first stages of the wizard do a reasonable job of talking you through identifying your phone system's hardware. In our case we have a 66-block punch down board, for which they provide convenient slide-on connectors. This part was easy, aside from some confusion over questionable choices made in the course of installing and expanding the previous system. All of the connector groups consist of an RJ45 connector which expands to four pair of connectors. As I said before, they give you three complete sets: block-66, block-110, and 'loose wire'. They come neatly labeled with the purpose of each pair. This part I was very happy with.

SNAFU
Now, the phones. This was another beef. I don't have the jargon for this, but the phones work on regular telephone signal and are controlled completely by touch tones. For example, on a lot of PBX systems when you press 'hold', a signal is sent over a separate control channel telling the system to hold the call. On this system, the 'hold' button is simply a macro for 'Flash, pause, pound' followed by two digits. What this means is that you have to wait fully three seconds for the system to finish holding the call. If you hang up before this point, YOUR CALL IS DROPPED! Customers don't like that. I'm sure it would be second nature before long but there is a serious learning curve. Same goes for any function on the phone. Likewise, after one function, you have to hang up the handset in order to initiate another action. So you can't hold one call, then immediately pick up another. At one point I shortened the 'flash' time on the phones, but if it isn't long enough, it doesn't trip the analog relay.

Another big difference we weren't expecting, is that nowhere on the phones does the system indicate which incoming (trunk) line is being used. It also uses a 'personal hold' and 'global park' system. Again it is simply habit: instead of 'call holding on line 2', you have to say 'call holding on park 1'. The auto-attendant and call management features will eventually make up for this once the client makes some other changes.

Bling
One of the nice features of the system is a rather full-featured control software that can run on the Windows systems next to each phone. This is a Visual Basic app (which doesn't function neatly with Vista, as of this writing) which is much more polished than the web interface. I'm certain the interface was designed by someone of different species from whoever built 'SimpliSetup'. It provides park, trunk, hold, and caller ID status. It also allows lots of functions like transfers. A nice little perk, but due to the shortcomings of the phones it is essential to full-featured operation.

Basically Visual
Back to the setup. At one point in the setup you are asked to identify each extension. If you go forward one item too far, you have to start over. This was annoying when I was working on the seventh item. There are a lot of poorly-explained options - perhaps explained better by the voice-over which I couldn't listen to, or the text box which wouldn't scroll down. Some contextual help would be good here. Many of the buttons don't do exactly what you'd expect. The 'advanced setup' is somewhat better, especially for editing extension and trunk options, but still falls short of what I would wish for.

Conclusion
Bottom line: if you're okay with running your phones on Windows, and are willing to make some accommodations for the system's little foibles, it's a reasonable option. For what it's worth, in the first week the system already needed to be rebooted once. I'll be setting up Nagios service checks to verify that essential processes stay running.

Personally, I won't be recommending it again until it has a little more polish on it. I do hope that time comes, as this is ostensibly a US-based company who I'd love to support.

Change of address

2007-09-06T00:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I've decided to take my ramblings to a better neighborhood. I took up MySpace rather on a whim. My blog there is read by only a few people, not that I care. The thing is that, even as I accept the role that MySpace fills, I find its blog system annoying and... annoying. I have a couple goals that aren't well met by it:

* I want to start using it as an outlet for the distribution of assorted unpolished technical meanderings
* I want to save my blogs for posterity, and I'm not sure how reliable MySpace will be in this regard

So, watch this space.