Feb 7, 2010
We live in a world of magic. We pretend to understand the world around us, but we don't have real understanding, merely rules and models. Just think about it; We move a particular refined material (metal wire) past another particular material (a magnet) and this provides the base magic energy (electricity) to run all the other the technology (magic) in our world. The science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wrote that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", but he was only partly right as the 'advanced' adjective is unnecessary.
We have models of the world, but models are just a way to compress empirical observations into a more manageable form. We have 'particles' 'forces' and 'fields', but these are are not real things. Look at a particle hard enough and it disappears into a probability cloud (quantum mechanics), which is just a category of hard-core magic. Fields don't actually exist but are a mathematical convenience; and forces ... well that is just magic in its rawest form. The famous physicist Richard Feymann once said ".. what makes planets go around the sun? At the time of Kepler some people answered this problem by saying that there were angels behind them beating their wings and pushing the planets around an orbit. As you will see, the answer is not very far from the truth. The only difference is that the angels sit in a different direction and their wings push inward." In other words ... magic ☺
Jan 31, 2010
Added transparency functionality to my gadgets and other small updates. Starting to look pretty cool (in my biased opinion).
Download the code, or a working, ... umm lets call it 'alpha' for now, version you can just run. http://code.google.com/p/javagadgets/
Jan 28, 2010
Twitter made a lot of fun of the terrible 'iPad' name of Apple's new device. Here are some that were amusing (warning ... these are in really bad taste)
Jan 26, 2010
I have put my gadget project on google code http://code.google.com/p/javagadgets/ as well as a lot of library code.
Jan 25, 2010
The Olympics are coming soon in Vancouver now and I'm a bit worried that Canada will embarrass itself with an overly amature opening ceremony, especially when compared to China's absolutely amazing production. Here in Canada we seem to have an insecurity over our 'identity' and therefore rely heavily on Native culture and identity instead, and I think will likely have an extreme over-emphasis on native culture in the Olympics as a result.
Partly, politicians hope patronizing natives temporarily mollifies them, as natives, even after 150 years since Canada was made a country, are still actively claiming the 200% of Canada they believe is rightfully theirs. The only reason Canada isn't in a constant struggle like Israel, is the still relatively low percentage population of Natives (about 3%, although tragically 22% of prison population). Similar to the situation of Lebanon as described by Nassim Taleb in 'Black Swan'. Once/If the population of Natives hits a sufficient number, Canada will no longer be so peaceful (just as happened to Lebanon when Muslim population reached a threshold).
Unfortunately for me, and I assume 'some' other people, Native culture is ... boring. Their art and dance is extremely simplistic and narrow in scope and well ... boring. Those people that celebrate it I think are merely being patronizing. Assuaging that Europian white guilt.
The likely result is a performance that is not unlike the Emperor showing off his new clothes, where on the outside everyone is smiling and cheering, but on the inside they are embarrassed and repulsed.
As a side note the use of the word 'native' irritates me. They arn't 'native' to North America, but Asians that came across the Bering Strait, nor were they the first to get here, that honor going to the Ainu, a maritime people who also populated Polynesia [reference]
Jan 25, 2010
My friend pointed out this status update to me that is unintentionally hilarious.
"Sitting in a Starbucks with a soy rooibos latte. Waiting for my new pants to be hemmed at Lululemon. Fixed gear ride after brunch with friends. Seawall run and yin yoga class later. Vancouver, we get along juuuuust fine."
Oh and there is tag line ('sent from my iPhone'), to complete the punchline.
Jan 17, 2010
The things that we as a society choose to focus on, versus those that we choose not to is interesting to me. Take for example the current focus on Haiti. Is the Earthquake there devastating? Of course; very. Do people really care beyond the 'image' of caring and being in the social movement of the moment? No. I know that is very cynical of me, but hear me out.
Despite the Twitter tweets, Facebook pages, concerned looks on newscasters faces, pleas from celebrities, etc ... people do not really care. How can I say such a horrible thing!? Well let me ask those of you that claim to care; did you care about the victims of the cyclone in Myanmar (2008 - 150,000 dead), the Sichuan Earthquake (2008 - 70,000), the earthquake in Kashmir (2005 - 86,000), the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004 - 230,000). "Of course!" I can hear some of you screaming. Excellent. I mean most people, if they were honest with themselves would admit they had already forgotten 1/2 of these recent events. But, let's assume it is still fresh in your memory. So, I ask you, how are these people doing now? You know, the people you cared passionately about, how are they doing? What's that, you have absolutely no idea?
Presumably, if you care about such tiny events as these then you must REALLY care about poor drinking water, malaria, measles and aids in the poor countries of the world right? I mean these things are all preventable and treatable, with surprisingly small investment of money yet still manage to kill millions every year. From the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/impact/index.htm) in children under five:
And this is just children under 5. Malaria, for example, kills around 2 million people every year. This is equal to 10 preventable, treatable Haiti earthquakes every year. Measles, a disease that could have easily been eradicated by now still kills the equivalent of 2 Haiti earthquakes victims every year. Or Aids, a disease that should have never grown to such proportions in the first place if proper quarantining had been done, rather than 'trading' the lives of millions so as not to offend a few special interest groups kills 321,000 little children every year.
I point this out to show, we don't really care. If we did, we would have built water purifying facilities for poor countries long ago, drained swamp-land mosquito breeding-grounds, vaccinated for and long ago eradicated measles, treated aids seriously and quarantined it like any reasonable society would do with a new, unpredictable, deadly and contagious disease.
But what, you still insist you do care? Still? Well then put your money, concern and efforts where it will do the most good. Ignore the celebrities, the tweets, the oh-so concerned (and oh-so fake) news-casters. Yes, everyone should feel for the Haitians. But you probably weren't particularly concerned about them before when they were 'only' starving to death (you did know they have been starving for the last decade right?), so why now?
One-way or the other be consistent. Care, don't care, just be consistent. Don't stand there in your designer clothes with your five dollar Chai Latte and your latest iPhone as you tweet about how bad you feel for the people in Haiti, when a year ago you couldn't find Haiti on a map with a magnifying glass and 2 fifth graders to help you. You're a poser. The world needs a lot fewer posers and more people of principle that actually DO care and do something about it, or admit they don't care and focus on whatever it is that IS important to them.
Jan 12, 2010
I think 64-bit Windows took quite a few people by surprise. I tried to run 64-bit a few years ago with 64-bit XP and it was a failure. I had to give up and go 32bit and live with the memory limitations. I tried again 2 yrs later and was 'mostly' successful. Successful enough that I stuck with it. Still, complaints to software vendors of software I owned were dismissed ("We don't support 64-bit"). Then suddenly, maybe a few months ago, EVERYTHING is 64-bit. It's purely about memory. People arn't content to hear 3GB is the limit. Suddenly those vendors that didn't see the need to support 64-bit were flooded with complaints. Whoops.
Still, some things are surprisingly broken and from companies that should know better. 64-bit Sun JVM for GUI work, for example, is quite broken. It's fine for server stuff, which is why nobody really noticed, but try to run GUI stuff in 64-bit with lots of allocated memory (the crash happens at lower memory usage to, but high memory usage seems to make it happen more consistently) and you will be meet with fairly frequent crashes of the JVM. This really surprised me and I assumed it was my fault, but after much investigation I feel confident it is not my fault but a bug (this bug specifically). Disappointing and all I can say is "Please fix it already". This isn't a minor annoyance, this is a crash that renders the 64-bit Sun JVM pretty much useless for GUI work. I tried JRocket 64-bit JVM instead (free for personal use) and so far so good. That's my solution for now.
Jan 10, 2010
Now with the Google phone out and Android gaining some popularity I have seen a few times one of the arguments for the iPhone being the '100,000' apps in the app store.
That sounds reasonable on the face of it, so, what apps are in the app store that an iphone user would just be beside himself without? In Bing search there is a visible search option. In the US version of this visible search one can browse iphone apps and their relative popularity. So what kind of apps do iphone users find indispensible?
Top 10 paid
Top 10 free
Hmmm ya, these DO seem useful! How did they ever manage without? If it wasn't obvious, that was sarcasm. Almost everything in the top is a game or a gimmick (iFart anyone?).
To me, the iPhone and the Google phone are status symbols and in a very small and secondary and mostly insignificant way, entertainment. Oh and if your really really desperate they can also be used as a phone. Their usefulness above and beyond communication (i.e. the thing non-smart phones do) is doubtful. They DO allow you to surf the web from anywhere and that is cool, but there are many easier and much cheaper ways to accomplish this and very few people are in a position to convincing argue that this is a necessity.
Jan 5, 2010
Theory of the 'left' as a personality disorder.
It is a common and innate for individuals to believe they are superior. From an evolutionary point of view this makes sense as those who approach life with this type of 'positive' thinking are more likely to assume they will succeed and are therefore more likely to take risks, some of which will succeed and promote their genes.
With maturity comes the realization that one is not superior in reality and that this is just a primitive 'feeling' unjustified by objective evidence.
Those people with a left-oriented political bias have not achieved this level of maturity and continue to secretly feel they are superior. This conflict between one's internal belief of superiority and the reality of one's lack of actual success manifests itself through several strategies that can be seen to be in common with leftist thinking
In a book I read some time ago (and unsuccessfully searched for many times since), it is put forward the idea that civilization cycles through five stages, where emphasis of what society values changes in each stage. I believe these stages were:
Now I probably got the stages slightly wrong (I read this book decades ago), and I don't know if I believe in these stages or not, but it makes an interesting mental model. Right now, if we are in a stage, it would have to be the age of intellectualism, and my point (to tie into left-ist thinking) is that the intellectualism stage is the stage where society is doing well has the luxury to ignore reality for a while and for 'bad' ideas to take hold (thus leading us back to the warrior stage).
Dec 31, 2009
I am looking into RSS and it seems like its a bit of a mess. Seems to be 3 main variants:
RSS 2.0 is not a new version of RSS 1.0, but a completely different track. None of the specifications provides a DTD or W3C schema (that just blows my mind). It is supposed to be 'really simple syndication' format and yet can't be specified with a DTD or schema? The #2 (RSS) use of XML doesn't even have a DTD or schema, therefore requiring one to interpret loose text descriptions and build a parser by trial and error. Amazing, and well ... pathetic.
Dec 15, 2009
I wrote a java web server that fits in a single file less than 500 lines long. Very easy to understand, very easy to extend, very easy to embed into your own project. You can use it however you like with no restrictions. Attribution would be nice, but not required.
View/download here.
Dec 13, 2009
This is kinda cool (Lowe's is selling solar panels to do-it-yourself enthusiasts). Just go to the store and buy large solar panels. Nice. However, currently 1 panel costs around $900US and will produce around 175 Watts (on optimal days I assume). Therefore I guess the house above has around $50,000 worth of solar panels.
I really have no idea, but say the panel lasted 10 yrs and you were able to get full use out of it for 5 hrs a day, then this would be 10 x 365 x 5 hr x 0.175 kw = 3194 kw∙hr of electricity produced, which would be $0.28 per kw∙hr. Not good. Its a start though and cool for some some niche projects, cabin by the lake, etc. Wonder if you could double (or triple the power, etc) by putting a reflector nearby to focus more light on it. Should work, only issue is that I assume the device works less efficiently the hotter it gets, which then of course brings up the idea of water cooling ... and so on. Best to stick with the grid for now.
Dec 12, 2009
From the excellent site wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
See high resolution version here .
Dec 8, 2009
Why the temperature record we are shown is pure garbage. Temperature adjustments seems to always go up in modern era and down for the past. Given the urban heating island effect, if anything it should be the reverse! The processed temperatures are bogus, pure and simple.
See more detail here -- wattsupwiththat.com
Dec 8, 2009
Playing around, threw together a 'siesmometer' application for Android using the accelerometers. Was interesting experiment, however the accelerometers are not nearly sensitive enough for it to be useful/effective. Not surprising as they are meant to handle large motions, device orientation, stuff like that and not minor vibrations (and in fact those might even be filtered out). Would be fun to try with much more sensitive accelerometers.
Dec 5, 2009
Climategate. The most obvious feature of this whole climategate mess is the constant with-holding of data, method detail, and computer code. Never mind that the emails and code comments both strongly suggest artificial and improper 'adjustments' to the raw data. If the case is solid then release the data, methods, and source code (this is publicly funded research, so there is no excuse). That is how real science is done. The fact that there is such resistance and outright refusal, with emails saying they would rather destroy the data first, rather than let the skeptics have their grubby little hands on it, suggest that there is much to hide. And in fact, they now claim to have 'lost' the data; what a coincidence. Why the refusal and then the mysterious discovery that 'whoops' its gone, we lost it. It reeks of improper science if not outright fraud.
Dec 5, 2009
webserve.ca Those searching for info about webserve.ca and find this. Do yourself a favor and do not do business with this company. A friend of mine had nothing but headaches and abysmal service and after canceling was billed for an entire year due to fine print clause that states you must give 3 months notice before canceling. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) gives them a rating of F. They are really just short of a con artist company. Its a good idea (and I'm going to do this now myself from now on) to check with the BBB first before going with a company.
Dec 1, 2009
Its interesting how news media no longer talk about Iraq. Its like they want to pretend Obama has succeeded in his withdrawal goal (also notice no more talk of Guantanamo either). There are still 124,000 troops in Iraq. This is about the same number as before the 'surge' so there has been no significant withdrawal. In addition to this there are 180,000 civilians assisting the military. This is the hidden military, the hidden presence. Total, around a 1/4 of a million Americans in Iraq still. Yet from the media that reported on this almost daily before, we now have near radio silence. Presumed message -- "mission accomplished"? Real data -- status quo.
Dec 1, 2009
I'm a big fan of Google, but this 'Wave' thing that is being hyped by everyone as the 'new email' seems like a flop. It just seems like web forums. I think it is probably too confusing for most people to ever replace regular email. We shall see.
Nov 25, 2009
I'm seeing quite a few headlines about how global warming is now happening much faster than expected. Then I see a headline about how scientists are puzzled because global warming seems like it is on hold. Or I look at the Sattelite temperature data and I see that temperatures are .25°C above average since 1979 and the last decade shows no trend either way. Or when I look at predictions from the IPCC and some of the models, the predicted temperatures are WAY higher then the actual temperatures. So in what sense is "global warming is happening much faster than expected". It seems nothing less than an outright lie.
Nov 20, 2009
I wrote a completely new version of my 'view' of the greenhouse effect. How it works and what the limits of it are. Check it out here.
In the process I found a pretty good tool for vector drawing called Inkscape. It is beta and it does crash once and while, but it reads and write SVG and overall was pretty cool and useful. It's free and open source also. Inkscape
Nov 18, 2009
Great quote:
"Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head." -- Warren Buffett
Nov 16, 2009
Obama's and Taliban choices for Afghanistan:| Taliban | Obama | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leave | Stay a little longer | Stay as long as it takes | ||
| Give Up | 0 / 0 | +2 / -2 | +2 / -2 | |
| Fight a little longer | -2 / +2 | -1 / -1 | +1 / -2 | |
| Fight as long as it takes | -2 / +2 | -2 / +1 | -2 / -2 | |
On the left of the ( / ) values is value to Obama. On the right is the value to the Taliban. Positive values are good and negative values are bad. The situation is symmetric. Whatever the best strategy is for Obama, is also the best strategy for the Taliban. In game theory it is said that the best strategy is the one with the maximum minimum value. For both sides this is 'Stay a little longer'. Since both will do this and then a little longer from now, decide again to 'stay a little longer' again, the end result is the worst case scenario for both (stay as long as it takes).
Nov 16, 2009
Created another widget (exchange rates):
Nov 15, 2009
Making a Java-based gadget framework. So far so good. My first gadget below (Stocks) sitting below a Windows 7 gadget.
Nov 12, 2009
Saw a quote today, something along the lines of "capitalism promises freedom, but doesn't deliver." Interesting, because I think they have it completely backwards. Capitalism doesn't promise freedom; capitalism is the result of freedom.
Nov 9, 2009
Learning about HTML canvas element in HTML 5.0. Shows great promise. This is the missing piece for HTML apps. This functionality is currently already available for pretty much all browsers except IE. Example canvas drawing below (you will only see if non-IE browser).
More info about HTML canvas here
Nov 2, 2009
Went to the "Top of Vancouver" restaurant Very enjoyable, I really enjoyed the views as we revolved around above Vancouver. Expensive, but I had a gift certificate from my birthday so I could splurge a bit.
October 31, 2009
I was curious about how the US trade deficit with China was going. I found some data here and plotted it below. Dollar values are in millions.
Couple of comments:
October 27, 2009
I believe in biological determinism for many things. Gender is one of them. It seems almost ridiculous and surreal, but there are groups and academics who argue that gender is a choice. These are not fringe groups either, but well established political entities in almost every university. In this ideal fantasy world of theirs, the only differences between men and women are superficial anatomical ones. Kind of like whether you have blue eyes or brown eyes. They argue that social norms and expectations are what are responsible for the difference that we actually see. In one famous case this theory was tested when an infant male with a damaged penis was given a sex-change operation and the parents told to raise their 'son' as a girl. After much confusion and conflict this boy rejected his artificial assigned sex and eventually got a sex change back to being a boy.
Larry Summers, while president of Harvard was asked during a conference to be 'provocative' and he did so by putting forth the 'outrageous' theory that maybe, just maybe, there really were some inherent differences between the sexes. He gave an anecdotal story about his own daughter, who was raised in as neutral a way as possible and whom, given a couple of trucks to play with named them 'daddy truck' and 'mommy truck'. Some people were so outraged they walked out. He apologized several times for his 'crime' of stating the obvious, but regardless he was later forced out of the presidency position as punishment.
Now many people, including myself recognize that there are varying levels of 'maleness' or 'femaleness'. Just as some rare people can have both male and female anatomy, some males can have a 'female' brain and females can have a 'male' brains with varying degrees in-between. However this is most definitely NOT what these radical 'gender' warriors want as the 'standard' model. To do so recognizes a 'distinction' between the two. The only acceptable model to them is that gender is completely arbitrary, which in other words ... there is no gender. Many of these people are in Women's studies and frequent the 'women' only Women's Centers available on most campuses. True to their hypocritical nature, I can only imagine their outrage if I just waltzed into their women only sanctuary [but isn't gender an arbitrary social construct? so to judge me on my outwards gender 'appearance' would be wrong, no?] Of course this contraction is the smallest of their problems. This is a theory that rests on wishful thinking and nothing else.
Ironically these same people are very same supporters in the idea that homosexuality is biological determined (which I also believe), without even the slightest hint of recognition at the obvious conflict. Gender is arbitrary, but sexual preference is not?? Gender, in essense, does not exist, however preference for a specific gender does? Radicals never let contradictions bother them though. Facts either.
October 24, 2009
I think most people misunderstand the concept behind "Black Swan" in Nassim Taleb's book of the same name. Most people think of it as a rare, game-changing event. This is not what the metaphor of a Black Swan is. A "Black Swan" is something you 'think' is rare (or even impossible), but in reality it is not rare at all, you just weren't in the right environment to see it (i.e. South Australia in the case of an actual black swan). This is a comment on the non-stationary randomness of the real world. The real world is complex, chaotic, fractal and using simple stationary statistics assumptions works only for a short time, if at all. Yet, most (all?) of our modern risk-analysis, valuation models, and much of our short term understanding of how society works is based on stationary statistics. Thus when an 'unexpected' event occurs we are taken by surprise because our stationary models ruled it out as extremely unlikely, or impossible, when in reality, it was much more likely than we thought (a black swan).
October 18, 2009
I don't understand the hype around Windows 7. I've been using the RC for a long time now and honestly, it IS Vista. I can't see a difference. Is it faster? No. Does it use less memory? No. The new features are so few and cosmetic that it could easily be mistaken for a service pack for Vista. Here is an idea for MS. Could you please allow me to do more than one file operation at a time (without having to open another explorer window). Boggles my mind that doing a file operation prevents me from doing anything else with that explorer window until it is done. Can you make it easy for me to get rid of files, even if they are being used by another program i.e. tell me the program at least so I can kill it? Can you fix windows networking so that it caches more and doesn't 'lock' up while I wait forever for it to refresh? Can you make a version of IE that doesn't crash. Seriously, crashing is so 1990s. Programs should never crash, they should catch the error and complain, silently restart a module in the background, but never crash. Oh well at least the OS is solid (doesn't seem to crash) and the rendering is beautiful, especially the fonts.
October 13, 2009
I was wrong about the second season of Chuck. I just watched most of the second half of the second season and while there were some rocky episodes at the start of the second season (perhaps not the main writers -- filler episodes) and I was disappointed, the second half of the second season is great. Awesome even. The second season is very unusual in that for some reason it is actually 2 seasons worth of episodes, not sure why that is. The 3rd season equivalent ... very good.
October 13, 2009
Watched first and most of second season of 'Chuck'. First season was great. Funny, we were warming up to the characters, getting to know them. Balance between main plot and secondary plots was good. Characters were interesting. Second season [sound of plane that has just been shot down screaming towards the ground here]. These guys need to pace themselves. All the effort goes into the first season because it has to succeed (or there is no second season). They get the second season and it is "YES! we got the second season ... now what." The characters in the second season, don't feel like the characters in the first at all. What happened!? Did they fire the original writers? So few good shows out there as it is.
I think writers, producers, whatever, seriously underestimate our thirst for the proven formulas. They assume we are starting to get bored. To us an episode is 40 minutes. To them an episode is weeks? They are tired of the formula, but we're not! Consider some examples:
Ok, now contrast this with say the original "Law and Order" or "Perry Mason", "CSI" (for the first few seasons only), "Star Trek" or many other very successful shows. What do you get? The same damn formula over and over ... Guess what writers, that's what we want!! Just because you're bored already doesn't mean we are. Slow down! We don't need characters to fall in and out of love 3 times in a single episode. We don't need character powers to grow quickly and to the point of absurdity (yes I'm talking to you 'Heroes'). We don't need every mathematically possible pairing of couples in endless (and incredibly short) romance side-stories. We don't need characters we have come to love suddenly become whiny, emotional flawed wrecks. We don't need pointless new side-characters introduced to spice things up. We need you to have a plan that extends beyond the first season and to resist the urge to get 'creative' with a formula that works.
October 8, 2009
When it comes to global warming, there is a lot of focus on the Arctic. What about Antarctica?
Ice seem to actually be above average. Even the Arctic is off its lows and is not that far from average either.
October 6, 2009
For now looking at the the extreme of both sides, or at least the strongest stereotype of a firmly left or right individual.
The extreme left believes in social equality. This is not the traditionally viewed equality of everyone having the law applied to them equally (they are not too concerned about that), but instead focuses on economic equality (everyone having the same wealth, the same resources). Their view of equality is fairly narrow as they are not against racism to achieve an equal distribution of wealth and power among races (i.e. affirmative action), and they believe in the idea of an intellectual elite that should have an unequal amount of power to make decisions. They often believe this elite should be treated differently under the law, given more leniency and leeway than an average person (assuming the elite are left-aligned). They place high value on the opinions of 'experts', academics, scientists, especially when represented as a group. They simultaneously pander to and hold contempt for those with less education and skill. The left movement promises the under-educated and under-skilled 'equal' wealth and resources without equal work, but also feels this group needs to be lead by an elite and can't be trusted to do what is best for themselves. This leads to a strange alliance between those that feel they are in the elite (and should have greater influence on societal decisions) and those who are under-educated and under-skilled, who want equal wealth and resources without having to perform work of equal value. This dynamic also produces a strong culture of celebrity worship. Celebrities, despite often being under-educated non-experts, are positioned as elite as a consequence of their popularity and therefore their ability to deliver a message to a wide audience. Thus, a high priority of those of the left is to gain popularity. For the left, popularity equals power. Popularity is also self-referential and self-reaffirming; the proof that one deserves to be popular and have greater influence is that they are popular (no matter what path one takes to become popular or what they do once they are popular). Thus the attraction to celebrities to the left and vice-versa as the left give celebrities more status.
The extreme right believes in social morality based on religious principles, usually coming from rules laid down in ancient religious texts. They believe people are responsible for their own lives, that one must be content with whatever environment 'God' has given them including physical, mental and surrounding social. All should be thankful for what they have and make the best with what they have. These beliefs translate into an attitude that hard-work and humility are virtuous. There is a somewhat uneasy alliance between capitalists and the far right. On the one hand, capitalism exemplifies the ideals of self-responsibility and hard-work, on the other hand extreme success in capitalism can represent greed, vanity and potentially immoral behavior (if capitalism is done at the expense of morality). Successful capitalists therefore are expected to be philanthropic to re-establish their humility and gratefulness to God.
Both the left and right believe in the use of force to meet their needs. Both accept censorship as desirable, but for different reasons. Both the left and the right believes in coercion, they just disagree on the end goals (forced social 'equality' vs forced morality). In the extreme from the left this results in abolishing property rights and redistributing wealth, and establishing rule by an elite. In the extreme of the right it involves regulating behavior, clothing, media and so on.
October 4, 2009
Nice sunset yesterday
September 30, 2009
Feminists say:
"NO MEANS NO*"
Unless you are Roman Polanski or other darling of the left based on unspecifed criteria that we will make up on a case-by-case basis as needed.
Roman Polanski had a nude photo shoot with a 13yr old girl, he then gave her drugs and had sex with her. Throughout she said, "no-don't". She said she didn't resist because she was afraid. This is rape in every sense of the word. Does the left have no principles, no morals at all? Check the facts for yourself before you believe those on the left that say "it wasn't really rape." Smoking Gun testimony.
September 26, 2009
Moon again, later in night, using HDR. Don't know if HDR really did much.
September 26, 2009
Thought it would be interesting to try to get a photo of the moon. I discovered that getting a good photo of the moon was quite a bit harder than I thought. I had to go to 'manual-everything' mode, try to get a stable setup (even a little wind makes things blurry) and do lots of experimental shots before coming up with something decent finally. I think I will try again during the rest of the month as it changes phase, assuming there are some clear nights.
September 25, 2009
Interesting random info from various sources
According to Lawrence Keeley's "War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage (1996)", Of the societies studied, around 15% of the deaths were due to warfare. In contrast to many people's romantic beliefs, primitive societies were very violent and frequently at war.
Number of people murdered (killing of unarmed combatants) under the big 3 most murderous Tyrants.
Stalin 20M Hitler 15M Mao 10M
You've heard of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake right. Estimated that around 3000 people died. But do you remember the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake (China)? No? Somewhere around 700,000 people died.
There is so much focus on race these days. What is the distribution or the races in the US anyways?
| White | 70.16 |
| Black | 21.41 |
| Hispanics | 4.7 |
| American Indian and Eskimo | 1.18 |
| Asian | 1.40 |
| Hawaiian and Pacific Islander | .04 |
| Other | .11 |
| Two or More Races | .99 |
September 24, 2009
Michael Moore makes a movie with the theme "capitalism is evil". Wow. That's like Al Gore making a movie telling people how they should strive to live in poverty ... ;-)
In an interview about the movie, following glowing praise there is the one difficult question thrown at him (you know, the obvious one). "Arn't you being a bit of a hypocrite?" i.e. you are a millionaire as a result of capitalism.
Michael Moore is ready for this one. Well you know, he's 'embarrassed' by his wealth and well he makes his movies to 'help' people.
OH!! that's what you are doing. See I thought that you were exploiting popular anger against bankers and bailouts to make more money and become famous. Silly me. They force you to take all that money!? How terrible! I mean its not like you can just give that money away to charity or something. I guess everyone has their cross to bear and yours is all that unwanted money. So sad ...
Ok, the movie isn't out yet, but seriously, we are making movies about the evils of capitalism now? Really? And it is the people on the right that are the crazy ones? Why not the 'evils of evolution' or the 'evils of gravity' or other things ingrained in nature.
Quick economics review - distribution of goods. Capitalism - you get what you put in, or what people decide out of the goodness of their hearts to give you. Communism/socialism - you get what a beuracrat somewhere thinks you need. Feudalism/slavery - you get enough to survive and keep producing (surprisingly, extreme socialism and slavery end up looking pretty similar). So far, these are really the only choices people have come up with. So if capitalism is evil what are we going to replace it with?
In the end, capitalism/socialism categorization is a false dichotomy. These labels are simply an arbitrary division of a continuum of economic 'freedom'. Does 100% of your labor belong to you (absolute capitalism), 80% to you, 50%, 25%, or 0% (complete slavery). Basically, how much of a slave are you?
No country has absolute capitalism and no country has absolute slavery either (although North Korea probably comes pretty close). In the US maybe 50-75% of your own labor is yours (25-50% slave) versus Cuba where it might be 20-30% (70-80% slave).
In practice, there is no 'alternative' to capitalism, only varying degrees of its implementation.
It is well known in theory and empirically that the more of your labor that doesn't belong to you the less work you are going to do (as well as innovation and risk taking) and the more society as a whole is harmed.
Source - http://unix.dfn.org/printer_EconomicFreedom_.shtml
Capitalism needs to be balanced with 'common-good' needs such as the law-and-order and shared resources like air-quality, water-quality, etc and it is ... No place in the world is even close to being 100% capitalist (and interestingly the most capitalist places in the world usually also have the best law-and-order, air-quality, water-quality etc). There is always a compromise and we choose where in the continuum we think is optimal for us. The idea of 'getting rid of capitalism' is ridiculous. To be replaced with what? A system that pretends not to be capitalist, while capitalism continues to run in the background (black-markets, etc ... like Zimbabwe?). To be replaced with 100% slavery? If not that, then what?
Beyond ridiculous. Might as well create a law saying Pi=4.
September 23, 2009
Some quotes from Mark Lloyd, FCC diversity csar (scary guy)
"It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.
"[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance."
This... there's nothing more difficult than this. Because we have really, truly good white people in important positions. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions. And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem. We're in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.
What we're really saying is that the Fairness Doctrine's not enough. And that having a sort of over-arching rule that says broadcasters ought to be "fair" or ought to provide issues important to communities and that they ought to do it in a fair and balanced way is simply enough. Unless you put some teeth into that and put some hard, structural rules in place that are going to result in fairness.
The conversation about how we communicate with each other despite being aware of the clear impressions that I know that I make in rooms that I walk into, when people hear my voice, is a challenge. How much do I express the... I think really pretty obvious complaints of black Americans in rooms full of whites.... There are few things I think more frightening in the American mind than dark skinned black men. Here I am.
Wow Obama, way to hire a total racist, socialist, anti-free speech, nut-job. Why is it that the democrats constantly focus on race, yet manage to convince people it is the republicans that are racists. The KKK were democratic-party supporters. The slaves were freed by a republican party against the will of democrats (Lincoln was a republican, the south was represented by democrats). Nazis were socialists (national socialist party). These facts are easily overlooked. The largest atrocities in recent history were created by socialists:
The left is truly the master of spin to make the world think the opposite.
September 17, 2009
Added a unit conversion calculator and a very small set of useful unicode characters (both are in menu at top)
September 16, 2009
What little focus on the rallies there has been focuses on a few and calls the many 'racist', 'hateful'. Because of course when the left protests there is no racism or hate (LOL). Check out this excellent article and photos of leftist protests as a reminder for those with REALLY short memories. http://www.ringospictures.com/index.php?page=20090816
September 15, 2009
The Rally that "didn't" happen. How can you have a rally this size (estimates go from 60,000 people up to 2 million) and have it ignored by the MSM. It seems likely from the photos alone (see link) that there is at least 200,000 people and likely much more than that. It boggles the mind. See photos. This guy's poster says it all.
September 14, 2009
Man I never realized before the necessity of understanding fonts! As a developer I mostly ignored them as irrelevant to me. But now, I see the error of my ways. I know there are a lot of font snobs out there, but I susupect most font snobs are a lot like wine snobs, or art snobs, or any type of 'snobbery' where the snobbery is completly unrelated to one's actual skill and experience. Anyways here is what I learned that might be of interest/value to others.
'Serif' is like little 'tails' on characters which supposedly makes it easier to read. Kind of links the characters together in a word I guess. However, this is supposedly true only for paper. Computer screens didn't have enough resolution to really show the little tails and such and so the characters were just noisier and no tails (sans-serif) is considered preferable for reading on a computer screen. I don't know if this is still true though since computer monitors have a lot more resolution than they used to and technology like ClearType boosts the virtual resolution even more. I think I would stick with sans-serif for now, for computer screen reading. Its just a little cleaner and I guess I am just used to looking at it all day as well. Serif just looks a little messy.
Many people seem to recommend using serif for headings and sans-serif for paragraphs, just to make the headings stand-out basically. Heading are bigger and so can show the tails better.
Font snobs will go on and on about obscure fonts. This is fine when the result will be printed and distributed on paper, but when it comes down to getting the job done on the web or in software, there are only a handful of fonts that can be relied upon to be on people's computers so the pickiness is a waste of time. Here are the fonts that seems to be on 'most' OSes under their various categories:
Serif Georgia, Times New Roman Sans-Serif Arial, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Verdana Monospace Courier New Symbols Symbol, Wingdings, Webdings
See, pretty small list! Here is an small sample of each.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
I like Georgia the best from these example, even though (oh no!) its serif. What do you know, that is what I had my CSS set up to use already. I'm keeping it. Tahoma would probably be my second choice. Verdana is ok too. Made taller to be more readable.
If you have Windows and you are targetting only at Windows, then you can use Microsoft fonts that are designed to work well with ClearType. Calibri (sans-serif), Candara (sans-serif), Consolas (monospaced), Cambria (serif), Constantia (serif), Corbel (sans-serif). Here are examples below, but you will only see these if you are using Windows Vista or newer (or maybe if you have installed Office 2007, etc, also)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Eh ... they are ok, but ClearType does a good job with the other fonts as well it seems.
Unicode is cool and underappreciated by English as a first language people (i.e. me). However, I recently discovered some of the many great font symbols available by using Unicode. I used to represent math formulas in a simple text format or with graphics, but with unicode symbols that mostly isn't required anymore. Here are some cool Unicode characters:
Math: ± ∂ ∆ ∏ √ ∞ ∫ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥
Currency: $ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ₣ ₤ ₧ €
Greek: α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ ς σ τ υ φ χ ω
Unfortunately fonts don't cover all the unicode defined values and what maps to what depends on the font family (the above is Georgia, which seems to have fairly limited unicode support). But still, major improvement and something to keep watching.
September 11, 2009
I am working on this application which will display a lot of text. Its important that the text looks good. I played around with Swing trying to get the text to do fancy ClearText style anti-aliasing. Java 6 has it I'm told, but I just can't get the fonts to look good at all. Finally out of frustration I tried SWT, which I had played around with before. SWT uses the OS font rendering system and man; what a difference. The fonts are beautiful! Windows 7 fonts rendering on my nice high resolution LCD is amazing and SWT is using the massive effort already put into this area by MS (and by Mac if using SWT on a Mac; I assume fonts on Linux still look like crap and one might be better off with Swing in that case). This difference is just too large to ignore. Unfortunately SWT font rendering is so superior that its like comparing reading text in a book to reading text on an old green screen CRT. The difference is too large to ignore and so I'm going to use SWT despite the extra burden that requires.
August 30, 2009
Writing proxy server. It is going a lot better then I expected. I think petty much everything is working now except no filtering and no SSL right now. But still, a few hours. Done in Java. If I get something decent I will put it in software area.
August 30, 2009
Switched to using Google Chrome as my default web browser. It the fastest by far. I like the plugins for firefox, but I don't know what happened with the last couple firefox release but its performance is terrible on Windows 7. Like really really terrible. Also some time ago the multi-tasking aspect of FF was broken. Like just because a page is taking a long time to load, don't stop me from doing other things ... Anyways, maybe it was specific to my setup or something but moving on, Google Chrome speed is impressive. No Ad filtering though, so going to write a small proxy server as a fun project to do that. If that turns out to be too hard I'll just use privoxy or something (privoxy.org).
August 27, 2009
More Czar bizarreness. Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd praises the incredible revolution in Venezuela and how this was tharted the first time by (evil) private media and made possible the second time when Chavez took over control of the private media. He wants to do that in the USA (take over private media). Wow ... Yes this is Glenn Beck, yes he is shrill and annoying, but he is one of the few paying attention at the moment.
August 26, 2009
Wikipedia has become a terrible joke with its extreme left bias. Thanks to Glenn Beck there has been at least 'some' focus on Obama's advisers (Czars) and who is actually writing these thousand page bills that are presented as needed to be passed immediately (i.e. without time for proper scrutiny). Some time ago here I mentioned how Carol Browner (Obama's new Climate Czar) was a commission member for Socialist International. This was on their website, but they removed it (gee I wonder why?). So of course to the lefties on Wikipedia, it doesn't exist. Lets see what else "doesn't exist". How about that Green Jobs Czar -- Van Jones was a leading member of a Marxist organization known by the acronym STORM, which means Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement? Hmmm, nope that information isn't in Wikipedia either, weird ...
Maybe now you are also wondering what the heck is a Czar and how many are there? Well basically they are appointed by the president to advise him and as for how many of these unelected, unvetted (by congress or senate) mystery men and women there are, well there are a lot. Here is the list:
Check out the wonderfulness of these Czars in gruesome detail here.
Got that? But the wonderfulness that is the current Administration doesn't end there! No! We also have entire special interest groups that are actually writing the bills. Take for example the Apollo Alliance Group that wrote the massive over 1000 page stimulus bill. You know, like the over 1000 page stimulus bill that just had to be passed in an emergency, no time to look it over. Who the hell is the Apollo Alliance!? They seem to be some sort of left-wing, environmentally focused "think-tank". Hey, maybe they are a bunch of really good guys (website here), but the point is they were not voted in by the American public, and those who were voted in couldn't even be bothered to read the bill before passing it.
Or how about the over 1000 page Carbon Dioxide Cap and Trade bill (you know the one that had 300 pages inserted at 3AM the morning of the vote in Congress, ya that one). Who wrote that? Who wrote the parts that got inserted at 3 in the morning? Who the hells knows, but I bet it was another (or the same) think tank.
Its going to take a while, but history will likely show this as the most irresponsible government administration ever. Its thrown the public to the wolves and then closed its eyes.
August 26, 2009
Ok, let me see if I understand this. Glenn Beck apparantly stated/strongly implied that he thinks Barrack Obama is a racist. This has (of course) infuriated a lot of people. I think Glenn is wrong. I don't see Obama saying or doing anything that indicates racism in the slightest. However, don't a lot of white people get called racist for well, basically saying anything anyone of a different race disagrees with? Didn't George Bush get called a racist (and/or implied to be a racist) by a lot of people after Katrina?
"George Bush doesn’t care about black people." -- Kanye West
"Is Sarah Palin a poster girl for racism?" -- Chris Matthews
So, for example, Chris Matthews can strongly imply he believes Sarah Palin is racist. Where was the outcry? The call for a boycott. Oh ya, she's a white republican, automatically 'racist'.
Or look at Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton both of whom seem to make every issue about race. Usually this takes the positive form of racism (being for black people) rather than the negative (being against white people), i.e. vote FOR this black person because they are black, rather than vote AGAINST that white person because they are white, but it's still racism. The end result is the same. Discrimination based on race -- the very definition of racism.
I don't see the media jumping on them for their behavior.
August 25, 2009
Matthew Perry totally making fun of people on Twitter (through his twitter account) http://twitter.com/langfordperry . Too funny. Do people know when they are being insulted?
# I just put on a green t shirt. I had been wearing a blue one earlier.
# Before I went on tonight I put on a grey t shirt, which I am still wearing now.
August 25, 2009
For some reason today the question popped into my head: "If you were inherently evil, but also extremely lazy; too lazy to ever manage to actually do any evil, would you go to heaven?". This lead me to think of one of my favorite religious topics, angels. I don't 'get' them. Seems like they don't 'fit'. I even went to wikipedia to do some 'fact' checking.
Anyone else see a problem with this? How can angels rebel if they don't have free will? Ok, imagine this, you are an angel, you KNOW god exists and he is omniscient, omnipotent and heck he loves you and heaven is the most awesome place ever. So what do you do, you rebel of course ... NOT. What are you mentally retarded?
So it's obvious that Lucifer did not rebel and is in fact doing God's work. Yes, the devil works for God. That was a bit of a revelation for me, but here think about it:
The devil is not working against God. The devil works for God. Wow hey? Either that or the bible is just one big fantastically convoluted and confusing fairy tale [shrug].
August 24, 2009
My purely experimental account for Twitter gets quite a few join requests (my updates are 'protected', but I don't have any updates either). Ok ya, most are just spam, but a couple seem to be like ... real people! Weird. Do they just go around clicking on random people and say follow? Maybe its 'because' they are protected "Oooo, what's in the box!?" LOL.
August 22, 2009
Writing some code to extract stuff from Twitter. No reason really, just some experiments.
Some observation of tweets:
No, I don't tweet, but they have an API and I am playing around with it for fun.
August 21, 2009
Uploaded my Simple Forum source code (entire Eclipse project actually). I'm using this for my comment system.August 20, 2009
Slight site reorganization and added article on voice recognition tips (especially for programmers).August 18, 2009
More HDR stuff. I wrote my own and I like the way in handles exposure balance. Still needs work with colors, but overall happy with progress. In the comparison below no other tuning was done.
Original images:
Picturenaut HDR version vs mine (Picturenaut on left mine on right):
August 17, 2009
Playing around with HDR some more. Difficult to get it to work right. Was a nice sunset today, got a couple pretty nice results, but not really due to HDR I don't think.
August 16, 2009
Played around with JavaFX. It seems mostly pointless. Just use Swing; its easier to follow and customize. Declarative programming has never worked that well yet, but hey why not give it another shot right? JavaFX layout and component sizing seems to be pixel based. Sure that makes life easy for some things, but you can use Swing with absolute pixel positioning and sizes to. Swing is powerful enough you don't have to throw away screen portability like that, but you 'could' if you wanted to. Binding and Triggers are interesting concepts, but listeners (which these attempt to replace) are a lot easier to understand. Anyways, was interesting, but didn't see what it added that was better than Swing. Might as well stick with Swing.
August 15, 2009
Was on holidays.
Saw the movie 'The Watchmen'. It was 'ok' for entertainment, in the way that when you are home sick and bored-to-death a soap opera can be 'ok' entertainment. Too long and very odd for a 'comic' book story. Very flawed I thought.
August 1, 2009
Was super hot here in Vancouver. Temperatures I've never seen before (38C outside, 45C inside)
I see people are FINALLY getting annoyed at apple. I gave up on them long ago after buying an ipod and finding out how difficult they made it transfer music back and forth off of it. After buying a couple of itunes' store songs, I learned how impossible their DRM was and I burned the files to CD so I might be able to access them in the future and decided never to buy DRM music again (from anyone, not just them).
My friend has an iPhone and I couldn't believe it when he told me that you can't upload or download files except for itunes stuff and only install applications Apple deemed worthy/non-competing. I had to ask to confirm a couple of times "really!? .... no, really!?", because that just seemed too bizarre. It seems you never really buy an iphone, just pay an exorbitant upfront lease fee because they control what you can and can't do with it even after you have 'bought' it. To me there is more than a little irony that their operating system is based on BSD (i.e. an open source project), yet they are one of the most 'closed' companies around. Most other companies (even MS) have embraced a much more open approach.
I have to say though they did manage quite a marketing feat with the iphone. Yes in the beginning it was the first, it was innovative and they deserve recognition for that, but now there are lot's of phones just as good without the same onerous level of control that apple exerts. Yet the marketing was so good and the 'status' they managed to associate with the iphone so effective that Apple can metaphorically spit on its customers and the customers thank them for it. I have an Android 'Google' phone and it can do more than the iphone (I can transfer file to and from it and install whatever software I want for one thing!), yet apple fanboys defend their iphones ridiculous restrictions arguing other phones are 'ugly', or the minor GUI subtleties of the iphone transcend description (shades of "The Emperor has no Clothes"). Often these are the same people that complained up and down about "evil" Microsoft. Microsoft could only dream of being as "evil" as apple is now.
July 22, 2009
Added Applet to check Scrabble words. Uses official 'Tournament Word List' (TWL). TWL Scrabble Word Checker
July 20, 2009
I don't like how every music player wants to 'own' your music. Each wanting to create a 'library' and reimplement simple browsing, etc. Much nicer just to use the regular file system. So how to create playlists? The .m3u format is dead simple, just a list of the files, so I created a Powershell script to generate a playlist.
function Create-Playlist() {
Get-ChildItem -Filter *.mp3 | foreach {$_.name} > playlist.m3u
}
Has to be run from within the directory where the files are.
July 19, 2009
An excellent article on why the current economic crisis occurred (from a finance perspective) and why it hasn't been resolved. A bit old, but nothing significant has changed since and it still applies.
Some quotes:
At the root of the banks’ problems are the large losses they have undoubtedly taken on their securities and loan portfolios. But they don’t want to recognize the full extent of their losses, because that would likely expose them as insolvent. So they talk down the problem, and ask for handouts that aren’t enough to make them healthy (again, they can’t reveal the size of the handouts that would be necessary for that), but are enough to keep them upright a little longer. This behavior is corrosive: unhealthy banks either don’t lend (hoarding money to shore up reserves) or they make desperate gambles on high-risk loans and investments that could pay off big, but probably won’t pay off at all. In either case, the economy suffers further, and as it does, bank assets themselves continue to deteriorate—creating a highly destructive vicious cycle.
The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression—because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances.
July 19, 2009
Seems a lot of people feel the recession is over. Maybe, I'm just not feeling it though. Seems like wishful thinking. Why did we have the recession in the first place. I think it was because of inappropriate risk pricing and the excessive debt that resulted. Has this been solved? I don't think so. The debt is still there. Its going to take a long time to get rid of it and in fact we seem to be going in the opposite direction with government bail-outs. Time will tell.
July 17, 2009
Everywhere 80s music. I guess this is because of copyright fees. Still, it's annoying.
Was listening to "Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs of All Time". Apparently 90% of the top 500 rock-n-roll songs were made in the sixties ... There was this one song with Bob Dylan. Wow, that guy can not sing, the lyrics were stupid and yet he is reportedly a great legend. I guess they really were stoned all the time back then.
On the other hand maybe I'm being too hard on the Rolling Stone people as it seems half the songs out today are just re-makes. Maybe all the best music was made in the sixties!
July 10, 2009
Q. What do Michael Jackson and Tibet have in common?
A. They are both symbols around which society can have a shared experience and 'bond'.
The thing about symbols is that they are far removed from the reality from which they came. People rally around a concept, a shared experience. They don't actually 'care' about MJ or Tibet, they just pretend to care, as do others, in a shared experience bonding. Similar to the exaggerated passions shown over sports. Does it really matter if one arbitrary group of people gets more points in an arbitrarily constructed game with arbitrary rules, then another arbitrary group of people that just happen to have a different name for their group? Of course it doesn't. You could swap the names and the result would be the same. People cheer for the name associated with their region, they don't actually 'care', its just a bonding experience.
No doubt most people reading with this will think this is not true. People actually care about Tibet, people actually care about MJ. So luckily for me, reality provides the perfect example to illustrate my point. Uighurs. Yep, that's right, Uighurs. What you havn't heard of them? You havn't seen the protests by University students or the banners, or the bumper stickers, or the celebrity pronouncements?! I'm shocked! You see the Uighurs are in almost exactly the same position as Tibetians. They used to be independent, they have their own religion and culture and they were taken over by China in 1949. So if people care so passionately about Tibetians, why don't they care (or have even heard of) the Uighurs? Because Tibetians are just the name of a 'sports' team to root for. The 'Tibetians' could be swapped for the 'Uighurs', it doesn't really matter as they are just symbols. People don't actually care. Its an arbitrary label/symbol for people to rally around in societal bonding experience.
Which takes me back to MJ. People gather in large crowds and wail and 'grieve', but this is not real grieving. They didn't actually know MJ. They are not actually devastated. He's just a symbol and this fake grieving is just a shared common experience. Societal bonding.
I experienced this phenomenon in military school. Three members of my flight died in a plane crash. There was a get together and group 'mourning'. People cried and hugged. There was a candle-light vigil and moments of silence and music of "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits played on a boom box.
To tell you the truth it was downright weird. One of the guys was my room-mate and yet I can safely say he might as well have been a stranger. Between getting up at 6:00 for inspection, going to classes, drills, excersizes and then falling into bed exhausted; I didn't know him. Yet here I was being hugged by people in tears I barely knew and some of whom I actually disliked and I thought disliked me (from the little I did know them). It was surreal. But in retrospect, it wasn't about them. These people, crying intensely in this one moment and who would go on the next day and most days after not giving it a second thought did not actually care. They didn't have any real grief. It was fake. It was a shared experience that feeds on itself in a positive feedback loop kind of way. A 'tribal' thing I think.
July 7, 2009
I used the lexer from Yidong Fang (http://code.google.com/p/json-simple/)wonderfully simple JSON library to make an even simpler JSON parser. Currently only does parsing, but very easy to extend, which I will do one day, to also output JSON. Available as 3 java files, no third party library dependencies here.
Allows me to do this:
JSONObject x = new JSONObject(str);
String x = (String) x.get("arr.1.user.name");
Instead of this:
JSONObject x = JSONParser.parse(new StringReader(str));
String x = (String) ((JSONObject)((JSONObject)((JSONArray) x.get("arr")).get(1)).get("user")).get("name");
July 7, 2009
I wrote a small library to access Amazon SDB. Very simple, no third-party library dependencies. Download here if you would like to try it out.
Example usage:
SDB sdb = new SDB("YOUR KEY HERE", "YOUR SECRET HERE");
sdb.createDomain("test");
System.out.println(Arr.toString(sdb.listDomains()));
TreeMap map = new TreeMap();
map.put("id", "item1");
map.put("a", "av");
map.put("b", "bv");
sdb.putAttributes("test", map);
System.out.println(sdb.getAttributes("test", "item1"));
System.out.println(Arr.toString(sdb.select("select * from test")));
map = new TreeMap();
map.put("id", "item1");
sdb.deleteAttributes("test", map);
System.out.println(sdb.getAttributes("test", "item1"));
sdb.deleteDomain("test");
System.out.println(Arr.toString(sdb.listDomains()));
July 5, 2009
The left is full of interesting contradictions. For instance they claim to embrace change, but yet if you look closely they believe change is unnatural and bad. In their model of the world:
Of course this is not completely true. The left believes culture is static only for non-western based populations. Western cultures should be infinitely flexible to accommodate other cultures, but those cultures have the right to be completely inflexible. This is the only real change the left embraces. That and of course a bigger government to prevent all the bad changes.
July 1, 2009
Automating many things with powershell. Want to publish local changes on my website, I type 'Publish-Website'. Want to listen to trance music, I type 'trance'. Load firefox with 4 news pages I visit often, type 'news'. Got some really nice integration with Java also that eliminates class-path hassle of invoking java programs from command line. Hopefully put up some of this stuff later.
I didn't realize that I could query Yahoo to ask for several stock prices at the same time. Changed my Powershell stock-getting code to take advantage of that
function Get-URLasString([string] $url) {
$wc = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
try {
$str = [string] $wc.DownloadString($url)
$str
}
catch {
throw "Error retrieving the page"
}
finally {
$wc.Dispose()
}
}
function Get-MyStocks() {
$OFS="`t"
$sym = '^DJI,^GSPC,XEG.TO,SPY,RWM'
$lines = (Get-URLasString("http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=$sym&f=sl1d1t1c1ohgv&e=.csv")).Split([int]13)
$str=""
foreach($x in $lines) {
$arr = ($x.Split(',') | foreach {$_.Replace("`"", "")} | Select-Object -Index (0,1,4))
if($arr.length -gt 1) {
$arr[0] = $arr[0].trim()
$change = Invoke-Expression $arr[2]
$base = $arr[1] - $change
$pc = "({0:f1}%)" -f (100 * $change / $base)
$arr += "$pc"
if($arr[0].length -lt 4) {
$arr[0]+="`t"
}
$str+="$($arr)`n"
}
}
$str
}
June 25, 2009
More PowerShell. I wrote some code to quickly download and show my stock information.
function Get-URLasString([string] $url) {
$wc = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
try {
$str = [string] $wc.DownloadString($url)
$str
}
catch {
throw "Error retrieving the page"
}
finally {
$wc.Dispose()
}
}
function Get-StockInfo([string] $stock) {
$str = Get-URLasString("http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=$stock&f=sl1d1t1c1ohgv&e=.csv")
($str.Split(',') | foreach {$_.Replace("`"", "")} | Select-Object -Index (0,1,4))
}
function Get-MyStocks() {
$OFS="`t"
$sym = ("^DJI", "^GSPC", "XEG.TO", "SPY", "RWM")
foreach($x in $sym) {
$arr = Get-StockInfo($x);
$change = Invoke-Expression $arr[2]
$base = $arr[1] - $change
$pc = "({0:f1}%)" -f (100 * $change / $base)
$arr += "$pc"
if($arr[0].length -lt 4) {
$arr[0]+="`t"
}
"$($arr)"
}
}
and here is a sample result (not sure why extra space here, looks fine in console):
^DJI 8472.40 +172.54 (2.1%) ^GSPC 920.26 +19.32 (2.1%) XEG.TO 16.53 +0.53 (3.3%) SPY 92.08 +1.962 (2.2%) RWM 56.842 -1.688 (-2.9%)
June 25, 2009
Playing around with PowerShell. Finally a decent console environment for Windows. I like it. My first script I wrote to get the weather. I hope to add more later. [Warning - I have only tested this in PowerShell 2.0 CTP 3, it might not run in a different version]
function Get-Weather() {
$wc = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
try {
$xml = [xml] ($wc.DownloadString("http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=vancouver,bc,canada"));
$xml.xml_api_reply.weather.forecast_information.city.data
"Currently: "+
$xml.xml_api_reply.weather.current_conditions.temp_c.data + " C, " +
$xml.xml_api_reply.weather.current_conditions.condition.data + ", " +
$xml.xml_api_reply.weather.current_conditions.humidity.data
"Forecast:"
foreach($x in $xml.xml_api_reply.weather.forecast_conditions)
{"$(
$x.day_of_week.data
" ",
[int] ((([int] $x.low.data)-32)*5/9),
"-",
[int] ((([int] $x.high.data)-32)*5/9),
$x.condition.data
)"}
}
catch {
"Error retrieving the page"
}
finally {
$wc.Dispose()
}
}
Output for today:
Vancouver, BC Currently: 18 C, Cloudy, Humidity: 59% Forecast: Thu 11 - 17 Scattered Showers Fri 10 - 20 Partly Cloudy Sat 13 - 21 Partly Cloudy Sun 11 - 19 Partly Cloudy
June 15, 2009
The left claims to promote tolerance, yet practices bigotry without even the slightest hint of recognition of this inconsistency. The left (and society in general at the moment) feels it is ok to discriminate against:
June 6, 2009
I like this opening paragraph
Suggesting that the great financial debacle of the past couple of years can be explained simply by "greed" is a little like suggesting that Michelangelo painted the roof of the Sistine Chapel just to "show off."
June 6, 2009
Installed DD-WRT on an old G Router I had. Interesting. Kinda cool being able to ssh to your consumer router. Someday I'll probably use it is a repeater, so that it pretty neat. Can't quite figure out how to benefit from its other features. Put it in the toolkit ...
June 4, 2009
California has a current budget deficit of 24 billion. It also has a short fall for it EI fund of 18 billion, so the true deficit is 42 billion. And of course that is just the state government. Fun fun fun.
June 1, 2009
Does foreign aid help? The evidence in support of aid doesn't look good. Africa has received $1-trillion in aid over the last half-century. When aid to Africa was at its peak, between 1970 and 2000, Africa�s poverty rate went from 11% to 66% over the same period The countries with the most aid have had the biggest drop in GDP.
May 29, 2009
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race" - Chief Justice Roberts. Seems pretty obvious, except to those on the left I guess. Racism 'for' one group is unavoidably racism against others. Racism is racism ... doesn't matter if you label it 'affirmative action', or 'payback', etc.
May 9, 2009
Away for couple of weeks. Won't be any updates here until I get back.
May 8, 2009
Where's the heat? It's hiding in the oceans right? Ummm ... no.
Try again?
May 8, 2009
US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says 226,000 new jobs were created from new businesses! LOL! So job loss was probably more like 750,000 taking out this obviously bogus adjustment.
May 8, 2009
Swine flu looks like normal flu now, but also looks like it may no longer be contained and may infect millions (like a normal flu). See flu
May 8, 2009
Job losses in the US of 540,000 labeled 'good news', signs of leveling off. Hmmm, that's not what I see (thanks to CalculatedRisk for graph).
May 6, 2009
Good article on the theft of Chysler from investors. Government theft
May 5, 2009
Government plans to steal GM and give it to itself and the unions. Don't believe me? See for yourself. This is where we are headed? Wow.
Tomorrow is stock market crash time, maybe. I really don't know why the stock market is where it is. Things are looking really bad (at least to me). Government just steals from investors so why would anyone want to be an investor? Its like Venezuela or something. The bank stress test results are coming out and everyone KNOWS they are bogus and so will automatically take whatever figures are given and double or triple it. Bank of America needs 35 billion so in reality that probably means 100. Things are bad. Really bad.
May 3, 2009
I created a Google gadget that shows a bunch of info I look to look at often (ice extent, fx, stocks, weather, flu progress, twitter activity, other)
May 2, 2009
Why are the democrats so set on eliminating the obviously good idea of secret ballots for union votes! Its insane! The ONLY justification is to allow coercion. How can that be a good thing? Was nothing learned from the experience of Chrysler, GM and Ford?
insanity!May 1, 2009
Obama is quickly turning out to be a disastrous choice for president.
May 1, 2009
Did you know:
Every year in the United States, on average 5% to 20% of the population gets the flu (that's 15 - 60 million people); more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complications, and; about 36,000 people die from flu-related causes.
source - http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/index.htm
May 1, 2009
Going to keep an up-to-date graph of flu infections and deaths for US and Canada here
April 30, 2009
Very early, but the Canadian flu experience does look more exponential then the US. Time will till if this is just due to discovery or actual growth.
April 30, 2009
The present value (PV) estimate of social security in the US for 2008 was 43 trillion (http://fms.treas.gov/fr/08frusg/08frusg.pdf). I don't know where Medicare fits in. It 'might' be included in those numbers, or it might not. I'll be optimistic and assume it is included. Current debt is 11 trillion and estimated new debt obligations is another 10 trillion (at least). All debts (government, household, business, etc) are estimated to be 53 trillion. All 'obligations' (debt plus social security is then) around 107 trillion and growing fast.
Current GDP is 14 trillion. So obligations are currently around 7.5 times earnings. So if you made $100,000 a year, this would like owing $750,000. Once you take out taxes (regular services still need funding to), living expenses, etc, you pretty much have to dedicate every spare penny for the rest of your working life paying off this debt. Do-able in theory, maybe, but it would mean being a virtual slave. In a 'free' country (where people can just leave, work below their capacity, or not work) this is unlikely.
What does this mean? I don't know. Still trying to figure that out.
US flu -- not exponential so far.
Chrysler bankrupt, GM is next. Remember all that bailout money given to them? Total waste.
It took the media 3 days to wake up about the swine flu and decide to try to stir up some panic. The time to worry was the very first day and now it looks like it is probably nothing serious -- http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/
When there actually IS something to worry about, it will be too late. We will wake up to hear reports of 100 dead, then the next day 1000, then 100000 and so on. Exponential growth with no hope of containing. Spreading like wild-fire.
Contrast our panic and concern over this non-situation with the constant situation of Malaria.
Each year 350 - 500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide, and over one million people die, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa.
http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/facts.htm
But hey, that's in Africa, so I guess no one cares, especially not the media.
A lot of people don't like Microsoft, and I used to be one of them. However I'm using Vista 64-bit and just bought Office 2007 Home Suite and I like it. Really, I havn't had much to complain about with the OS since Windows 2000. When I was younger I was idealistic about my operating systems and software. I spent untold hours configuring, changing things, experimenting, trying to make things perfect, find the perfect combination and basically wasting a lot of time. Today, I just want to use the computer, not try to make it perfect. I have no complaints with Windows Vista and Office and in fact I actually like using them (their OneNote program is very cool!). I did disable UAC in Vista though ... yes, that was just not tolerable and I know what I'm doing. I've used Linux, played with Mac; they are no better, just different. In fact, there are a lot of things that don't seem to work on the other OSes that work great in Vista. Java 6, my most important tool, is STILL not available for the Mac after 2 yrs since being available for everyone else. Nothing's perfect.
This is simply too good! Source: Reason.com Predictions from Earth Day 1970
“We have about five more years at the
outside to do something.”
Kenneth Watt, ecologist
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30
years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing
mankind.”
George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“We are in an environmental crisis which
threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable
place of human habitation.”
Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist
“Man must stop pollution and conserve his
resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from
intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day
“Population will inevitably and completely
outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death
rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will
be starving to death during the next ten years.”
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that
food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and
starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more
optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur
until the decade of the 1980s.”
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“It is already too late to avoid mass
starvation,”
Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on
the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in
India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan,
China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably
sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine
conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire
world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and
Australia, will be in famine.”
Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“Scientists have solid experimental and
theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a
decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air
pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of
sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
Life Magazine, January 1970
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup,
it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of
the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Air pollution…is certainly going to
take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“We are prospecting for the very last of
our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster
than we are finding new ones.”
Martin Litton, Sierra Club director
“By the year 2000, if present trends
continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there
won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and
say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very
sorry, there isn’t any.’”
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the
Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75
and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be
extinct.”
Sen. Gaylord Nelson
“The world has been chilling sharply for
about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about
four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven
degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take
to put us into an ice age.”
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Obama shows he is serious about cutting spending --- (try not to hurt yourself rolling on the floor laughing)
Fox news now seems to be the only news channel that provides any right wing perspective at all. The obvious reply to this observation would be "But Ian, the media is a commercial entity and it is just delivering what people want", which I would agree with, except look at these numbers:
From http://tvbythenumbers.com/
Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for April 16, 2009 P2+ Total Day FNC 1,443,000 viewers CNN 725,000 viewers MSNBC 441,000 viewers CNBC 234,000 viewers HLN 375,000 viewers P2+ Prime Time FNC 3,226,000 viewers CNN 1,161,000 viewers MSNBC 1,014,000 viewers CNBC 186,000 viewers HLN 773,000 viewers
So it would seem that MSM is sticking to solely pitching the left perspective despite their numbers, not because of it.
Bank of America turned a surprise profit? Please ... No one can possible believe that.
I'm libertarian and support gay marriage (support it in the sense that people should be able to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't result in violence against others). From my perspective, the legal aspect of marriage should be removed -- there is no point to it. Without the legal aspect, its just an arbitrary label. Someone wants to call their relationship with a pet as 'marriage' sure, whatever, I don't care. No one is hurt by this. However, the next time you hear the MSM slander the right as homophobic for their stance on gay marriage keep these interesting quotes in mind:
In an interview with the Chicago Daily Tribune, Obama said. "I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman."
Hillary Clinton was quoted in The New York Daily News as saying, "Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as marriage always has been, between a man and a woman."
This is the pretty much the same position as most of those on the right. So if those on the right are homophobic, then so are Obama and Hillary. Right?
Accounting rules changed in the US to allow banks to hide losses and what-do-you-know banks are now magically reporting profits. Its a miracle!
Irony -- Any UN conference. Just imagine Iranian president Ahmadinejad, who has previously said Israel should be "wiped off the map" and questioned whether the Nazi Holocaust happened, taking center stage and condemning the racism of the west at a UN conference on racism. Wow, classic. Why does the UN even exist? Definition farce -- see UN.
Just one-out-of-three US voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/environment/energy_update
Ok, here is a guy who was arrested for asking questions on the side-walk outside of an award ceremony for excellence in journalism ... LOL America, the land of irony. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,516919,00.html. When its a leftist protester its 'fighting for justice', when its a right-leaning protester its what ... just annoying? Inconvenient and just not worth worrying about their rights?
I just love the arrogant and angry body language of the CNN reporter. WOW. Could she be any more biased -- she just can't restrain herself. Interesting the difference in how this protest is treated compared to protests from the left. Paraphrasing -- "Why are you here? We have a democracy you know? ['you idiot' is pretty much implied at the end of that] You express your voice through democratic means" Sure, valid point that I make myself when there are violent protests from the left, except, even though the left/right protest ratio is like 100:1, you never hear this question put to the left do you ;-)
It was billed as a protest against taxes, but I think this is wrong. Its a protest against the bailouts, the stimulus, and in reliving the mistakes of Japan and going into debt at light speed. It is a protest against future taxes. Is that really so illogical?
The media's reaction to the "Tea Party" protests in the US is interesting. Ignore it, then finally acknowledge it but paint the protesters as unpatriotic greedy right-wing extremists ... you know, as contrasted against predictably violent protests at G20 and the like, which one can only presume are carried out by caring, logically minded moderates.
Wrote forum code for Google Appengine using GWT also and Google's
awesome Eclipse plug-in which makes the whole thing easy.
http://vzvforum.appspot.com/
Anyone can use this application to set up a custom forum for themselves.
Just create a channel by adding a ch parameter like so
http://vzvforum.appspot.com/?ch=your_channel
US stocks went down, Oil went down and the Canadian dollar went up! Woohoo ... signs of a new dominant strategy in play finally ... maybe. A lot to assume on one day ... we'll see.
It is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into.
Jonathon Swift I think.
I wonder if role playing (usually the domain of hard-core geeks) is starting to become fashionable? Was in "Erica" tv show, "Role Models" movie. There seem to be more excuses then ever now to dress up and pretend (SCA, LARP, cosplay, plus a lot of theme style parties). Maybe its not a trend and there have just been a coincidence of occurrences that I have noticed.
2008 precipitation from YVR plotted against the average precipitation per day since 1937. X-scale is from Jan 1 to December 31. The Y-scale goes from 0mm to 35mm.
Fashion watch. Skin tight jeans. More 80s fashions ...
2008 high and low temperatures from YVR plotted against the average high and low temperatures since 1937. X-scale is from Jan 1 to December 31 of each year. The Y-scale goes from -20C to 35C.
Plot of temperatures from 1937 from YVR. X-scale is from Jan 1 to December 31 of each year. Y-scale red is the high temperature for that day, Y-scale green is the low temperature for that day. The Y-scale goes from -20C to 35C.
I found this on icecap.us and I don't know the original source, but was too good to not post
Nice night scene HDR
All over the web this wonderful quote:
Only months before make-or-break UN climate talks in Copenhagen,
an extraordinary conclave of climate scientists gathered here Tuesday to
warn that global warming is accelerating more quickly than
forecast by a key UN report for policymakers.
Really?! ... no, seriously ... you really expect us to believe this? Are these people in some sort of bizarre fantasy land? This is nothing short of total fabrication!
Al Gore: 50 ways to be a hypocrite:
Ok not 50, but too many. Alarm bells should go off any time you see someone saying "Do as I say, not as I do."
So in summary Mr. Gore waltzes around preaching the gospel of environmentalism and austerity to save the planet while doing exactly the opposite.
Great Quote. British context, but still applies here in many ways:
Imagine telling somebody twenty years ago that by 2007,
it would be illegal to smoke in a pub or bus shelter or your own vehicle
or that there would be $80 fines for dropping cigarette butts, or that
the words "tequila slammer" would be illegal or the government would
mandate what angle a drinker's head in an advertisement may be tipped
at, or that it would be illegal to criticise religions or homosexuality,
or rewire your own house, or that having sex after a few drinks would be
classed as rape or that the State would be confiscating children for
being overweight. Imagine telling them the government would be
contemplating ration cards for fuel and even foods, that every citizen
would be required to carry an ID card filled with private information
which could be withdrawn at the state's whim. They'd have thought you a
paranoid loon.
quote
source
Playing Half-Life (1) again. Man I forgot how massive this game is. I can go through it so much faster now, yet it keeps going and going. Probably about 2/3rd through now.
Created a website for my Android applications (so far only 1 app). Simple Software
Got a camera yesterday. 18x zoom. Created a bunch more HDR pictures. Great fun. I think I am going to try to make an HDR program (finish of the experimental work I started). Quite an interesting area.
Things today really are very good (in the rich first world). Cars run reliably, planes almost never crash, computers are awesome in their power and functionality (I've even come around to liking Windows Vista), the internet is a miracle of awesomeness, pollution is low (just need to get rid of this trash and wood stove burning that is still bizarrely allowed in some communities), work is easy, time off plentiful and we live longer than ever. Still, no matter how much we have or how good things are, people are negative and complain like the world is going to end tomorrow (quite literally in some people's case). Don't worry, be happy ... live in the moment and enjoy living in the best time in history ... ever (so far that is of course).
Far Cry 2 is the best first person shooter ever (so far). I have played it 3 times now from start to end .. that never happens. There is something so satisfying about (successfully) using a (virtual) sniper-rifle long range on a moving target.
Released a for pay ($1.00) application on Android Market today. Its interesting how G1 users will pay $100 a month for phone and data service, but howl at the thought of paying $1 for an application to run on their very expensive phone. They have seen the stories and I think believe that mobile phone developers are raking in the dough. Well ya, a very small handful of them are, but the vast majority are getting peanuts. Power law distribution at work.
Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- focus on 'process'.
I found this article interesting. It definitely seems to suggest that Obama is not ready to be president. Don't get me wrong, I like Obama, seems like a nice enough guy, but it definitely feels like he is faking it, flying by the seat of his pants, making it up as it goes along, etc. I can't help but conclude that he is insecure and doesn't have enough leadership skills or leadership experience, otherwise why would he surround himself with so many overlapping experts. Too many prominent experts suggest insecurity and their overlapping areas of responsibility suggests lack of leadership skills (as any seasoned leader would know that this is a recipe for disaster). He's a good actor, but already I feel pretty confident in saying he's not a good leader. Let's hope he's a good (and really fast) learner.
Mankind has the ability to generalize, to theorize and to create a model of the world around him -- which is good, obviously we wouldn't be where we are today without this ability. However, it does seem to come with a downside. Models that have taken hold (even those that are new-age-ish, do not come from observations, and are essentially just made up stories) are very hard to displace, even when they are obviously contradicted by the real world. What happens is that people apply the model and when it doesn't work they don't question the model. Instead, they think the problem is that they are not doing whatever it is they are doing hard enough. They redouble their efforts doing what the model tells them they should do. When this fails again, they triple their efforts and so on. They do this until they can go no further. They have run out of resources, will, or whatever. They only deviate from the prescriptions of the model when they no longer have a choice. Even then, many will still choose to believe the model and simply choose to believe that the prescription of the model would have worked eventually if only it could've been applied in a large enough way or for long enough.
Take the current financial crisis as an example. The model is Keynesian economics. The creation of the Federal reserve is a direct result of Keynesian economic theory. This theory basically puts forth that the government should act as a negative feedback control on the economy. During the good times, the government should take money out of the economy and store it. During the bad times the government should spend this stored money and if it doesn't have stored money, borrow money, or even create money to spend. It seems like a reasonable theory on the face of it and I could post arguments here why it might be incorrect, but it doesn't matter because more importantly it has been applied several times and has failed. Take Japan for instance, the largest and best known failure of Keynesian economics. Japan diligently followed Keynesian economic presciption to rescuing themselves from recession. They applied it on a small scale a medium scale and finally on a very large scale. Did this failure cause people to question Keynesian economics? Nope. 'The problem with Japan' they replied was that 'Japan didn't apply the solutions early enough and hard enough' (it would be hard to argue that they didn't apply them long enough). So here we are today in basically the same position that Japan found itself in almost 20 years ago and doing the exact same thing that Japan did that failed (except this time we're doing it bigger and right away), and of course unlike Japan we have no savings to draw from.
To a naive person like myself, the basic problem is one of over-valuation of real estate (a psychological bubble) and too much debt, so what is the proposed solution -- propping up valuations and creating more debt (lots of it)-- i.e. the Keynesian model prescription. Call me crazy, but this doesn't seem very rational.
Or, on a smaller scale, take a look at what the Federal reserve actually did during the development of the crisis. As the crisis developed, it lowered interest rates, then created all sorts of facilities to pump money into the banking system, then it went to the very unusual step of asking for seven hundred billion to buy bad debts from banks, then (when that didn't seem to do anything) to actually buying bank stocks, and finally (so far) to strongly encouraging the government to create a massive deficit to stimulate the economy. At each stage along the way, what they did didn't seem to work. Did this cause them to question the model? No .... 'We simply haven't applied it hard enough yet .... that's why it hasn't worked so far' --- ahhhh sure, ok.
I'm reminded of a scene I saw in 'Ben Hur' or maybe it was 'Spartacus', where there is a priest or someone like that is trying to convince these people they should stop believing in their gods and believe in the one true god. One of their gods is the god of fire, so one of them challenges the priest that if his god is so great, then he should put his hand in the fire to prove it, in a kind of competition between the fire god and the one true god. The priest does and is predictably burned and apologizes to god for 'not having enough faith' ... i.e. he doesn't question his model, but feels that he just didn't apply it hard enough.
"If U seek Amy" ... clever. Did Britney Spears come with that herself? Probably not.
Attention, attention. Ladies and gentlemen may we have your attention please. We regret to inform you that 'the end of the world', 'Armageddon', 'doomsday', 'the apocalypse', 'rapture', 'catastrophic global warming' and/or the end of mankind in general has been postponed indefinitely. Now we know this information will be devastating to many of you, having built your lives around what we all felt was a near-term inevitability, however upon examination of real world data, which until this point we felt was completely unnecessary, it has come to our attention that our very-logical meticulously-created and thoroughly studied theories and models are in fact slightly incorrect. While we still remain absolutely 100% certain that the end of the world will occur at some point in time, it now appears highly unlikely that this time will be anytime soon. Believe me, we are as disappointed in this new information as you are. We can't help but feel that God, the Gods, Gaia, Aliens, 'a greater power' and/or all universal guiding forces in one form or another have let us down, however this is wrong and we cannot succumb to this kind of thinking. Clearly mankind is a vile evil contemptible virus of earth (and by 'mankind' we of course mean 'greater mankind' and not those of us who have recognized this situation, repented and have tried to make amends). Clearly mankind deserves to disappear forever. For whatever reason, that we cannot know or foresee; God, the Gods, Gaia, Aliens, 'a greater power' and/or universe forces have decided to delay this inevitability. Perhaps this is mercy, perhaps we are simply being given more time, or as we feel is the most likely explanation, perhaps it is simply being left up to us, those who know the truth, to find a way to bring mankind to its end on our own. We want to assure you that we are investigating all possibilities, creating new theories and models and we feel quite certain that we will soon yet again have new hope for the end. Ladies and gentlemen thank you for your attention
The truth about Antarctica
The cake is a lie ...
Even an idiot can have a creative thought (thank goodness).
Ending racism is not about switching colors; its about not paying attention to color at all.
With that in mind, the preacher at Obama's inauguration gave one of the most racist speeches I think I have ever heard.I think Obama himself must have been screaming "Please shut up!" over and over in his head.
In the wild, nothing dies of old age.
There are no banks left in the US that have money. Citigroup is in trouble (it has more than 1 trillion dollars of seriously depreciated assets off the official books through legal accounting mechanisms). Bank of America is next, already going back to the government to ask for more money. By pushing the strong to buy the weak (instead of just letting the weak fail) the US Federal Reserve is risking bringing down the entire financial system. In fact that sums up the entire 'rescue' strategy ... sacrifice the strong to protect the weak, rationalizing/hoping that in the end you can save everyone. Maybe ... or maybe you'll just end up overloading and sinking the remaining life boats.
It seems like Hamas rocket 'count' is dropping daily. Yet again the common 'wisdom' of the media and left seems to be incorrect. In the days immediately after Israel's offensive the media liked to point out that it hadn't stopped rocket attacks (i.e. the strategy was 'obviously' doomed to fail ... silly Israelies, if only they would listen to 'us' wise-elitist-westerners sitting comfortable in our ivory towers), but now rocket attacks have declined to a trickle ... obviously Hamas is running out of ammo, infrastructure, soldiers and will. Most likely this will be presented as Hamas offering peace, rather than the truth that Israel's offensive is actually working (just like the wall did against conventional 'wisdom').
Carol Browner (Obama's new Climate Czar) Commission member for
Socialist International. In Google cache still as of Jan 10, 2009 google
cache
Oh but she has completely disappeared from the Socialist International
website website.
Fascinating.
I like this quote from Spiked Magazine source
The idea that things are always getting worse, that Armageddon - in one form or another - is just around the corner, has been a common refrain since the very beginnings of Western culture. And, more often than not, the forces allegedly sending us to hell in a proverbial hand basket are shadowy conspiracies whose features are as murky as their nefarious power is supposedly all-encompassing.News announcer "Europe demanded that Russia resolve its dispute with Ukraine and resume shipping natural gas". Uhhhh, or what? They will stamp their feet and jump up and down :-) Russia is firmly in the driver's seat here. Europe is (as usual) powerless.
In a previous comment on Palestine/Israel I mention that this situation could easily happen elsewhere and then on the news today I heard about natives in Chile using force to take back land. We will see this in Canada one day also -- Israel/Palestine situation is hardly unique.
I do not understand the fascination of the West with Israel and the Palestinians. Man on TV -- "They are without food and medicine and they are dying!". Yes, and 'they' (the people without food and medicine and who are dying) live in Africa to a large degree and no one seems to give a damn about them ... so please let's do away with the humanitarian charade. People always pull this out when it's convenient, but yet the people and places the 'left' and media choose to care about seem to be quite selective (Tibetans, Palestinians) and being the cynic that I am I can't help but conclude that it is all politics and there is no real concern for these people, otherwise why not be concerned about the people who really are dying and who do not constantly receive the massive charity that the Palestinians already do. They are the paid pawns of Arab countries and the left as the constant thorn in the side of Israel. No Arab country wants them i.e. why doesn't Egypt let those in Gaza come and go as they please? In fact why not offer to make Gaza part of Egypt? Because Egypt doesn't want them, that's why. Without Israel the 'Palestinian' people could be dying of starvation or have been inundated and taken over by Syria/Jordan/Egypt (take your pick) and no Country would lift a finger to help them. They would be like Afghanistan before 9/11. Desolate, bleak, and of absolutely no interest to anyone (just like most of Africa is right now!).
The very label 'Palestinian'; Sigh ... there was never a country called Palestine that I have ever heard of, so not sure how one gets to be labeled a Palestinian in the first place. Again, more politics.
The truth about the situation is that it is unresolvable, or at least not resolvable in a way that the current world would consider just and/or humanitarian.
There is no solution to this situation. Tracking down the original owners and those who benefited and following the lines of investment that occurred thereafter and what monies should have gone to which people and so on is now impossible.
By the way, does this situation sound familiar!? Yes I'm talking to you -- USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Chile - natives vs. colonialists -- Russia, China, Zimbabwe, Cuba - original owners vs. communists and well probably every place in the world, which was at one point the territory of someone that had their land taken away by someone else. The conflict in Israel is just waiting to rear its head in a dozen other places in the world given the right circumstances, population demographics, interfering neighbors etc.
In the old days this would have been resolved simply and easily. Might makes right. We took your land because we are stronger. You lose, end of story.
In the current day this is still largely the case but many civilized countries at least pretend to try to honor property rights. At some point the world has to draw a line and say. Yes, life is not fair, but from this point forward we will do our best to respect property ownership, and all past injustices will be forgotten and not passed on as the burden of current descendents. Or ... we can and probably will just go back to the old way.
Is it just me or does it seem like Israel's fence actually worked. I haven't heard about a suicide bombing in Israel in a long time. The Palestinian terrorists seem to have to resort to rockets, which are not very effective and I would say preferable to suicide bombing attacks. It appears the critics were wrong and the fence worked beautifully. Ugh, the news is so dominated by the Middle East and Africa that even I am commenting on it ... ok enough of that.
Far Cry 2 -- excellent game in single player mode. Very fun. Multiplayer is terrible though.
Left 4 Dead -- very over rated. People want to love it because it is Valve, but the truth is it's a lame game. There is no substance. It's a waste of money.
Far Cry 2 -- 50 hrs of entertainment. Left 4 Dead -- 5 maybe ...
Burnaby mountain - looks like might be a white Christmas
Global warming is really kicking in today! Brrr.....
Maybe it's just me, but I'm really tired of hearing about this or that happening in the Middle East or somewhere in Africa. Seriously, I just don't care.
News, in general, is not news ... it's soap opera entertainment. There are 6.6 billion people in this world and about 1% (66 million) die every year ... out of necessity really (i.e. think what would happen if they didn't die). Anything that focuses on one individual or one family rather than reporting purely facts and figures is sensationalism, pure and simple. It's not news ... its 'drama'.
No matter what current scare of the moment the news media decide to focus on, the reality is that the act of simply getting in a car and driving is probably the most dangerous thing we do, and that we do on a regular basis.
If you drive on a regular basis it is almost a certainty that sometime over your lifetime you will be injured in a car accident! It is almost a certainty that you or someone in your extended family will be killed (assuming your extended family has 100 or more people in it).
I'm not saying that people shouldn't drive, I'm just saying that we focus on the ridiculously improbable, such as being a victim of a terrorist event, and completely ignore the everyday near certainty, such as eventually being involved in a car accident. Life is full of risks, and if you aren't afraid of driving, then there is no need to be afraid of anything else, which pales in comparison from a risk perspective.
Funny quote from a flame war (not me and not about me)
You're the level of stupid that like if a stupid guy and a
stupid girl got together and had a stupid kid... you'd be that stupid
kids pet rock.
Money is fascinating. I am pretty sure that it is an 'emergent' phenomenon in that almost every society develops it 'unconsciously' without understanding it. Money is debt, little IOUs being passed around, but understanding money is surprisingly difficult I think. Money is very efficient, which is why almost every society develops it. Some politically-far-left people think we should get rid of money, but it's clear they don't understand what money is at all. If you got rid of one form of money it would quickly be replaced by a different form.
Watched a computer generated animation movie (Resident Evil Degeneration) ... pretty terrible movie, but good animation. In one scene there was lens flare and I had to shake my head ... why would they emulate an undesirable artifact of a camera (our eyes don't have lens flare).
Fashion Trend Watch: Painted rubber boots. I never would have thought rubber boots could be fashionable.
Fashion Trend Watch: Really tight jeans and leggings. Even leg warmers sometimes!! It like the 80s!
Things that suck:
Created a PasteBin application using GWT and Google App Engine http://vzvmap.appspot.com/
Played around with Google Base, Google Data, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Google Application Engine. Wow. Google is pretty amazing, making all of this stuff available for free!! Wow. I'm very impressed with GWT and the AppEngine. Google Base I'm still trying to figure out how it might be useful for for me personally. Very cool. I (heart) Google :-D
Something to cheer everyone up! (ok not really)
It seems like we have reached the point in the stock market where we have a bubble in reverse.
There is a really strong correlation between US stocks and the US dollar. Stocks go down, dollar goes up ... weird.
Cool things I might buy one day:
University fashion watch: Black is in. Black jackets, black jeans, black nylons.
A very simple bencode decoding java class (decoding only). This code is absolutely free in all senses of the word, no attribution necessary. I tried to find code to decode bit torrent files and surprisingly there was very little, what I did find was GPL, often didn't work and/or seemed unnecessarily complicated.
Bdecode.javaLook at figure below to see how closely stock market indices are moving together
Stock market indices (Dow, S&P, Nasdaq) for Friday, November 14th, 2008
image from Google Finance
The same thing is happening for individual stocks. Apparently this is known as co-movement. The stock market is not supposed to act this way and seems to indicate an abandonment of fundamentals. Investors no longer trust the information they get and are now getting their information from the movement of other stocks resulting in synchronized chaos.
Investment thoughts:
All roads lead to socialism. :-(
[One of the necessary pieces of infrastructure is] "a centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly"-- The Communist Manifesto
Cowboy boots -- high heels for men.
To state the ignored obvious:
Most of the snippets here are mine. This one comes from Michael
Creighton but is very close to my own thinking that environmentalism is
a modern remapping of Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths:
There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and
unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution
as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our
actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy
sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called
sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the
environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free
wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Idea - imagine a vacuum chamber being used as a clothes dryer. I don't know for sure but I think it's likely it would be faster, more energy-efficient and easier on clothes.
I live near a university. Here are some of the trends (it seems to me):
Facism is not the opposite of communism. Nazi stands for National Socialist German Workers Party. Both are about putting the needs and rights of the state above those of the individual.