Oh Drama

20061005147.jpg,
originally uploaded by Unbathed.

I like the darks and the lights, I do.

I wonder how to get Flickr pictures into this blog.

Still later

After an hour recharge, the green light came on again. I set it loose for ten minutes and egad, the bin is full again.

Later

The Roomba ended its maiden voyage somewhere to the right of my bed, standing still with its power light solid red. I remember reading somewhere in the manual that this means "bin full," so I opened it up and discovered, yes, a full bin. Also, an ATM receipt stuck between the brush and the basket.

I returned it to its charging station, and then after a few minutes pressed its Clean button. It backed up, made a few passes around the bookcase, and then returned to its charging station for more energy. Well, okay.

The mess in the bin was so dense and grey that I asked my wife's mother whether she wanted to see, and to my delight, she assented. I have thusfar been describing the Roomba to her as a "carpet sweeper," lest here suspicion of gadgets close her mind.

A new vacuum

I got to the part of settling my room where the next step was vacuuming. I went to the closet and discovered that the vacuum was broken, and apparently has been broken for quite some time. The carpet sweeping attachment shows no signs of life. The hose was clogged. Apparently our cleaning person has been hard on the vacuum.

Although I have deep problems with clutter, I do like my clutter clean. For me there are three choices for carpet cleaning: Dyson, Roomba, and Hoky. I have personal experience only with the Hoky.

The Roomba seems to me to be a Hoky that is well matched to my attention span and perfectionism. The negative reviews I found from searching the net centered around its tendency to die before the year is up, not with its ability to clean. Rather, the reports are that it finds dirt in "clean" carpets. That's what I like. I can cope with its life expectancy issues.

Brookstone had the Roomba Scheduler in stock and offers a sixty day return policy. The device is now an hour into its preliminary charge, which will be either three hours or sixteen hours depending on unknown factors. The sixteen hour charge, according to the documentation, will prolong the battery life. Bravo.

But hark, the light is green. Perhaps it is ready to go.

BigHead's peanut sauce recipe

"I'm a big fan of homemade peanut sauces: Toss in 1 part water, 1.5ish parts peanut butter, .5 parts soy sauce, a dash of lemon juice, and some garlic, and you're all set. Mmmm delish and cheap as hell."

Cleaning the Nokia 770

Egad, while browsing the internet with one hand and eating with the other, a glob of cream cheese from a Starbucks pumpkin-spice muffin dropped onto my Nokia 770's screen.

I removed most of the mass with a napkin without touching the screen. How should I deal with the residual smear? Nokia's website warns (perhaps unnecessarily) against using harsh chemicals, but omits a positive recommendation; so, I asked via email. The response:

We understand your inquiry in regards to what Nokia considers harsh chemicals to clean the display of your Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.

When cleaning the display of your Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, you may use a damp cloth with a small amount of mild soap.

I can do that. Ivory is mild, right?

Test du Nokia N93

Ahh, Paris, summer, a sidewalk cafe, a videophone ...

Veerle shows how to make the Flickr badge validate

Why doesn't Flickr's wizard generate valid HTML? It is a mystery. Veerle shows how to fix it.

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Swiss Public Toilet

Inspired use of glass.

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Paper animation of Jason Webley's "Eleven Saints"

I hear Jason Webley first at an accordion festival. It was an enormous room, at least twenty five tables. As I remember, he ditched the microphone and performed his whole act "unplugged." Such energy. This is his paper animation for "Eleven Saints."

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Twenty lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman available under CC license

"The complete MIT course (video) available for download. These twenty video lectures by Abelson and Sussman are a complete presentation of the course, given for Hewlett-Packard employees."

I have joined the torrent for all twenty. The textbook is also available. I don't think this stuff dates.

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The Klein Four Group - Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)

Mathematical Love Song (Acapella) I'm a sucker for academic humor.

Semco and Goal Congruence

This is a review of a book about Semco, a company which may be organized along the principles of Goal Congruence. I want to know more.

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Egghunt

Evolution.

Raw

A few months ago, I was handed a sheet of photocopy paper containing a handwritten outcry.

Rising easter Sun of God crosses equator - brings plants back to life! Suns rays walk on water! Suns creation of rain turns water into wine! Son of God is a fraud! Sunday is the lords day"! Entire bible fraud is stolen pagan sun worship to unite nazi roman empire under 1 religion and steal pagan gold, land, and slaves!

The christ conspiracy

431 pages - to order

800 718 4514

I have not tried the 800 number.

Connecting Nokia 770 to Nokia 6600

After updating the operating system on a Nokia 770, it was no longer possible for the user to make a packet connection via GPRS through a Nokia 6600. The presenting symptom was "Unable to connect to internet, Try again?"

Here are the corrective actions applied and the results.

Rediscover the 6600 using Control Panel | Phone

No error messages, but no internet connection

Re-install the cellphone provider information using the wizard

No error messages, but no internet connection

Delete the 770 from the 6600's list of authorized devices, delete the 6600 from the 770's list of phones, and delete the cellphone provider information from the 770's list of connections, then re-install

No error messages, but no internet connection

Turn the 6600 off, then turn it back on

Success!

Powerful commands should have a verbose syntax for the novice and a terse syntax for the expert.

Case in point, Perforce's overlay mappings. Compare:

//DEVELOPERS/tlh/codestream_one/... //workspace/...
+//MAINLINE/... //workspace

vs

//MAINLINE/... //workspace
+//DEVELOPERS/tlh/codestream_one/... //workspace/...

The desired end result is "Prepare a workspace that would look as if I had merged all my changes into the mainline."

The two example syntaxes might be read as "use my files, then add the mainline" and "use the mainline, then substitute my files."

It turns out that Perforce's engineers like the second syntax. Using the first syntax gets you "use all the files from the mainline, and any brand new files from my development set, ignoring any changes I may have made to the mainline files." Which is a bummer.

Want to learn Chinese? China wants to teach you

I hope they include written Chinese. I found with the Rosetta Stone Japanese lessons, it was easier for me to learn to read Japanese than to hear it.

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The ternary operator in Python shows how to use selection from a tuple to substitute for the ternary operator.

A problem with this technique is that all the members of the tuple are evaluated prior to the truth condition test. So if you want to use an argument if it's present but a default if there's no argument, you cannot write

print "The argument is %s" : (sys.argv[1],"missing")[len(sys.argv)=1]

because the runtime will complain about the out of bounds on argv before it gets to the length test.

Instead you write

print "The argument is %s" : len(sys.argv)>1 and sys.argv[1] or "missing"

Which I suppose is not all that far from

print "The argument is %s" : len(sys.argv)>1 ? sys.argv[1] : "missing"

3.15569261 seconds in centuries

Memorize this.

tonight's sound and light

http://www.psychasthenia.com/

Late train

This morning the 6:16 local to North White Plains is operating five to ten minutes late.

Some blue-sided express train rolled by the station without stopping at 6:21. Hmmph.

Why I Like David Blaine

David Blaine's stunts have a zen quality to them, say I, that affirms survival against a contemporary dread.

In the aftermath of 9/11, he stood on a tower for 36 hours, and survived.

With the broadening awareness of global warming and its concomitant rise in sea levels, he seals himself in a water globe for seven days, and emerges with injuries.

Y'see? Y'see?

Saturday night I went to Tiny Theater, a production of the Incubator at Ontological Hysteric. Eight short performances limited to a 6' x 6' x 6' space. The quality was uneven, but three were memorable in a positive way:

Barely There, a monolog where the performer plays with character / breaking character in a charming Pirandellovian way.

Neo-Futurist Play Redux 3.0.4, a four character piece that I thought was witty but the overserious person next to me thought was a waste of time (she had seen Faust earlier in the day and may have had her quality threshhold temporarily heightened).

A Cool Wind is Blowing, a gymnastic performance by Leigh Evans consisting of graceful fluid and utterly controlled movements of the legs during a headstand sustained for five minutes. The performer's head and shoulders were concealed in a large valise; after a few seconds, I felt my brain reinterpret what I was seeing as a headless figure with very long arms. The audience was awestruck. I want to take yoga classes with her.

A: Some useless part of my mind keeps playing wouldn't-it-be-nice-if, along the lines of wouldn't it be nice if my wife was not acting like an adversary. I hope that moving apartments and a new job will provide an overwhelming amount of alternative brain fodder.

B: Sometimes it is useful to have 20 high payoff/low odds ideas floating around, as long as you have a contingency for the most likely outcome.

A: That's good advice.

Collapsable Kitchenware

I like saving space.

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Getting Things Done and mood

One of David Allen's methods is to organize tasks by occasion, rather than topic. "Things to do while waiting at an airport." "Things to do at my desk at home."

Perhaps moody people could use "Things to do while feeling worthless" and "Things to do while feeling invincible."

Microsoft Vista: Microsoft loses confidence in .NET

I noticed that my .NET application's panels with eighty-one refreshes with a wave rather than a blink. I'd like to find out what's taking so long, but I can't step down any lower than IL. I wonder if the people developing for Microsoft also grew uncomfortable being so far away from the metal.

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theatre of ideas

Religion as a natural phenomenon

Daniel C. Dennett in conversation with Robert Thurman.

February 13th, 8 pm.

No program. Two chairs black wood red fabric at 120 degree angles, a brown wood end table between them with two bottles of Poland Spring and a tray of pencils. The audience ranges from subteen to mid 70s.

Parasites that manipulate host behavior - does it happen in us?

Mick Jagger is two years younger than Dick Cheney and three years older than George W Bush.

ad sequence

Four ads in the White Plains train schedule: a dating service, a real estate agent, a marital counseler, and an attorney specializing in collaborative divorce.

Zack Parsons' take on the Palestinian elections is pretty good.

Waterfall 2006

A methodology conference is always good for the spirit.

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La Conquita

La Conquita (236 Lafayette Street at Spring) has "the best rice and beans in town," according to Peter Meehan, food critic for the New York Times in his review. He mentions portion size: "Nearly two pounds of nourishment for $6."

Celluloid Heroes and Hurdy Gurdy Man have a similar chord progression.

The version of Hurdy Gurdy Man by Angel Corpus Christi makes the similarity plain.