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This should explain everything.

At least, in theory.
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gorey flying creatures
 
papertygre
 		  

2009-04-22 23:06 | Omnibus update

So Debian completely failed to detect my video card and mouse, unlike Kubuntu which got it right the first time. I wound up copying the xorg.conf from my old install, which is kind of sad. I do give credit for sound working right off the bat. So Debian gets a D for setup on my home machine, and an A for the setup on my work machine (a Dell), so maybe a C+ average. I'd say Ubuntu still has a market.

I have been here more than a month and I still have not unpacked my clothes boxes. I have just been wearing the clothes I packed in my rollaboard for the flight (3 pairs of pants and about 4 shirts). Getting by with such a small wardrobe has started to become really liberating. At some point when I was young, I developed the idea that popular people wear lots of different stylish clothes, and ever since then, I subconsciously believed I must try not to wear the same pants or shirt twice in the same week. But it really simplifies life to have a small set of items to choose from when in a bleary state in the morning, and who ever notices what other people wear anyway? It occurs to me that I would rather have a small wardrobe of things I wear day to day and a large wardrobe of costumes, than the de facto current situation of a medium set of things I wear every day, a large set of things I never wear but I bought at one point because I thought they were stylish, and a small set of costumes because that's all I have space/time/budget for.

I've been looking at real estate for the last several weekends, and I've got a mortgage pre-approval. One house in particular, which I saw last weekend, is standing out for me. Planning to go see it again in the next couple of days and think hard about whether it might be The One. It's about a mile from my office, in a pleasant wooded neighborhood, has a huge yard, and there's a bonus room that looks like it would make a fantastic workshop space.

Flipside is now about a month away and I have completed only about one new panel, for a total of 2 out of 9. And this is just for the wall cover; I still have to do the roof also. So at this point I'm not sure how likely it will be to finish the whole cover in time for Flipside, unless something changes and I get a lot more free time. The new door is coming along, though. And I went to the Flipside warehouse this evening ("Church night") to try to finish my plywood animal (which will be contributed as decoration). It's an 8' long mountain lion. Probably one more day to finish it; still needs a couple more cuts and some paint.

 
dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2009-04-08 23:28 | (no subject)

I've been procrastinating posting for hours. Keep finding more things to surf instead of writing. Why so much resistance?

I set up a Debian box at work for PHP development, and I have been delighted with the desktop experience. Having this reaction surprises me, because I have been running a linux box for years, but I have been running it 98% headless, so I haven't reevaluated the desktop experience since things were quirky and painful in about 2003. I am particularly pleased that such goodness is available in oldskool Debian, none of that upstart Ubuntu stuff. In a wave of optimism, this evening I initiated an install of Debian on my home linux machine on which I'd originally installed Kubuntu, but I apparently picked the wrong mirror (utexas.edu should be across town and thus really fast, right!?) because it is giving time estimates of 13+ hours to finish downloading initial packages. And there is no way to cancel and go back to pick a different mirror; I would have to kill the whole installer and start over. Oh well, maybe it will be done by morning? Sigh, I hate it when my linux box is not available for remote ssh, and I won't be able to work on it again until tomorrow night.

I also managed to unpack some clothes today, but then I realized that my hangers had gone into the storage pod, so that project's not going to go any further till I find some hangers.

My cat seems to spend all day, every day in my room. I leave the door open when I go to work, but I always find him lying on my bed when I get home. Sure, he was skittish when he first got here, but now he lets other house occupants pet him so seems like he's past that. Doesn't he get bored?

My dad has been collaborating with me on yurt improvements. I have decided that trying to finish both the 12' and 8' yurts by Flipside is too ambitious, so I will focus on finishing the 12' yurt, which is the furthest along. It needs two major things: a cover, and a door. While the cover is mostly figured out and just requires a whole lot of sewing, my dad is furnishing tools and expertise for the door. We're planning to build a paneled door using plywood for the panels and 2x4s for the frame. I also hope to install a real door knob (well, lever) mechanism and hinges, and eventually paint the door like traditional yurt doors, with some fancy designs.

 
dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2009-03-30 14:13 | Press for my new company

5 minute video about the business & office culture: http://www.techzulu.com/hq0-all-web-leads.html (I have a several millisecond cameo at 5:04; I am wearing a green shirt and sitting on the right side of the screen)

AWL was also featured in Austin Business Journal last week. Article at http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2009/03/30/story3.html and full text is below:

( Read more... )

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gorey flying creatures
 
papertygre
 		  

2009-03-12 11:40 | Interstice

So I'm sitting in my partly-empty Santa Barbara apartment. Still intact are most of the living room, Damien's bedroom, and the kitchen; I left almost all of my kitchen stuff and my living room furniture for D, since I wasn't going to need it right away and he would have almost nothing to use if I took it. Thus, a convenient and unusual feature of this move is that I have a fully functional kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom to live in between the time my stuff has been taken away and the time I actually travel to my new place. What's strange is being here alone, since D is off skiing in Whistler all this week. I said goodbye to him when he left on Sunday.

The moving went smoothly. The ReloCubes were dropped off on Tuesday afternoon. I spent most of Sunday, and all of Monday and Tuesday packing, and had 90% of my stuff boxed and organized when the movers got here on Wednesday. They packed the remaining items and loaded the cubes: one will go to storage in Austin until I find my own house, and the other will arrive at my parents' house next week. Both cubes (8' tall x 7' x 6') were pretty full, but I didn't have to use the third extra cube, fortunately (would have been an extra $700 transit and $100/month storage). Took the movers just over three hours to take care of all of the packing and loading, which completely vindicated my decision to use professionals. The movers were two guys from Acton, down by LA (they said they were from "the Valley"), Jeff and Vance. They were level headed fellows with tattoos and piercings. They finished up, wrote up the paperwork and were gone by 12:30. Then when I called ABF to have the cubes picked up, they said they had someone in the area and could get them that afternoon. So the whole operation was done in about 24 hours. So far I am impressed with the ABF U-Pack experience: good quality metal containers, intelligent drivers, a real person answering the phone at the terminal.

Now there is a bunch of huge empty echoey space, and it is very quiet (except for the trains going by, of course). Planning to go out to dinner with some AdECN folks tonight, but other than that I am enjoying a couple of days of being between jobs and having no responsibilities. I honestly can't remember the last time I had some time all to myself, with no constraints except an end date. It feels like school vacations used to feel when I was a kid.

So my cat and I spent the morning lounging in bed tinkering on the computer (OK, the cat wasn't tinkering on the computer). I finally took the plunge and undid the enormous baroque hierarchy of email folders I had built up since 2002. This has been replaced with a year-by-year archive starting in 2007 plus reliance on tagging and search functions in Thunderbird. Part of what I'm feeling is relief at not to have to maintain the hierarchy anymore, but the other part of what I'm feeling is a myriad of twinging regrets as I stumble on various old messages from or to people that I am not really in touch with anymore, and some of the messages are really substantive, heartfelt, thoughtful. It is putting me in a mind of retrospection over the Microsoft chapter of my life and before. What have I been making a priority in my life? How good have I been at building and maintaining meaningful relationships? How do all these different, sometimes random things that I've been doing over multiple years fit together into a narrative -- and is the narrative coherent, is there a theme, is the story trending toward outcomes that are consistent with my goals? (And do I really have goals?)

One of the things that I used to get out of journaling was a sense of *making sense* of my life. Ever since I quit journaling seriously in around 2005, I feel like there's been a layer of big picture missing. In one sense it's all bullshit of course, because what you write about your life is mere decoration for what's actually going on in your life. It's like Louis CK said (speaking of Twitter), "we've all given ourselves data entry jobs." Ha, yes. But on the other hand, you don't always get a chance to stand back and process things unless you use an output channel as a conduit. And if you don't process things, you aren't developing, all you are doing is reacting.

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dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2009-02-12 09:04 | 1234567890 day

Tomorrow at 3:31 PM Pacific it will be 1234567890 in unix time!

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dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2009-02-04 17:03 | Glass sculpture by Rebecca Coote

Stumbled across this site by accident. Some nice stuff. Also, "kiln-formed glass" sounds highly sophisticated.

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dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2009-02-04 10:16 | Ponzi economy

In other economic ideas... Tim O'Reilly writes about The Biggest Ponzi Scheme of Them All:
The current financial debacle is really ... a crisis of overgrowth of financial assets relative to growth of real wealth [quoting Herman Daly]
Obviously, debt does not spontaneously generate wealth. If spending has been too optimistic and there is too much debt, the fix is not to spend more!

Having a roughly transhumanist outlook, I like to think that growth of wealth is ultimately unlimited, but I am also a realist and believe it is a bad idea to outpace your resources.

Whenever policy and business conventions make it really easy to ignore reality, watch out.

And be nice to the countries that lend you money:
Thirty years ago, the leverage of the investment banks was like 4-to-1, 5-to-1. Today, it's 30-to-1. This is not just a change of numbers. This is a change of fundamental thinking.

People, especially Americans, started believing that they can live on other people's money. And more and more so. First other people's money in your own country. And then the savings rate comes down, and you start living on other people's money from outside. At first it was the Japanese. Now the Chinese and the Middle Easterners.

We -- the Chinese, the Middle Easterners, the Japanese -- we can see this too. Okay, we'd love to support you guys -- if it's sustainable. But if it's not, why should we be doing this? After we are gone, you cannot just go to the moon to get more money. So, forget it. Let's change the way of living. [By which he meant: less debt, lower rewards for financial wizardry, more attention to the "real economy," etc.] [quoting Gao Xiqing]

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dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2009-02-03 10:40 | Contrarianism in a recession

Article about how pursuing growth in a recession can lead to an increase in market share, which is the intuitive result if you are advertising and innovating when everyone else is cutting back! Apparently Trader Joe's, MTV, and the iPod were all introduced during recessions.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23695082

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dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2009-01-24 19:05 | Oddly fascinating blog

http://www.aharrisonbarnes.com/

This post for example: Cheap Is Expensive: A Marine Disaster. Excerpt:
When we finally got the boat launched and started going through the harbor, everything seemed like it was going pretty well. The anchor was rested in the front of the boat and we had to travel very slowly because the front end of the boat was practically in the water. Within about five minutes I was feeling very good about everything but then saw a boat screaming towards me with lights flashing. Since I had never captained a boat before in my life I could not imagine what was going on. I thought I might be about ready to go to prison due to the mooring sitting on the front of the boat.

Hillario, my helper, looked terrified. “Inmigracion!!” he told me with a terrified look in his eyes. It was the Harbor Patrol and they pulled us over and made us go to the side of the harbor. They asked me if I had flares, a whistle, life jackets, and all sorts of stuff you apparently are required to have in order to take a boat into the ocean. Incredibly, they said nothing about the giant mooring sitting in the boat. I had none of these things and they wrote me several tickets and told me I needed to take my boat over to a local store and purchase this stuff before I could venture into the ocean legally. I explained to Hillario in Spanish that he was not being deported and he was incredibly relieved. Thankfully the Harbor Master had not pursued it when I explained to him that Hillario had no identification. After spending a couple of hundred dollars on life jackets and other required supplies, we headed over the to Harbor Patrol office to show them what we had purchased and they were kind enough to cancel all the tickets. This whole episode must have taken us over two hours; however, we were now prepared to venture out into the Pacific Ocean towards Malibu.

We were soon out in the sea and the boat was handling very well. Despite the massive mooring, she was amazingly agile and picking up speed. I looked at Hillario and we could feel the wind in our face and the entire event was very nice and enjoyable. A couple of minutes into the journey I saw another boat rushing towards us. This boat was larger and looked very official. As it got closer, I realized it was the Coast Guard.

“Hi, we’ve already been pulled over and we’re all set!” I told the man who boarded our boat. This guy was serious. He had a gun and I thought Hillario was about ready to get deported for sure.

“That was the Harbor Master who is from the County of Ventura,” he told me. “I’m with the United States Coast Guard and we have jurisdiction over the ocean.”

“Oh, I’m sorry …”

“What the hell are you doing with that giant mooring in your boat? It is so big we saw it from over a half mile away.”

I had no idea what to say. If I told him I was about to launch an illegal mooring off the coast of Malibu, I was sure he would not like this. Actually, the more I thought about where I was planning on putting my mooring, the more I realized that it was probably an international shipping lane. Cruise ships, freighters, and all sorts of stuff went by daily. I wondered what they would make of my little jet boat if I ever made it out there. I hoped they would not run it over.

I had to think quickly on my feet. I started thinking about the past few minutes.

“This is a jet boat,” I told the man from the Coast Guard. As I was speaking, I realized I could see myself and Hillario perfectly in his sunglasses since they reflected directly toward me like mirrors. “This boat is incredibly fast and these waves are incredibly big. With this giant anchor here, I prevent the boat from flipping over in the waves. I am trying to be safe. You should see how fast this thing is.”

“That’s so cool dude!” the guy from the Coast Guard said. “I totally understand. These jet boats are so kick ass! I so much want to get one but my wife would kill me!” I could not believe what I was witnessing. I thought the guy must be the biggest idiot I had ever encountered. Just like that he let us continue and gave me some sort of “hang loose” type surfer sign as we motored away.
Hard to guess if these stories are true, as they are almost equally convincing and farfetched. But they are entertaining and often sort of inspiring also.

 
dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2009-01-09 16:46 | Leadership in Software Development

Watched a Google tech talk by Mary Poppendieck with the above title. Interesting bits for me:

( Read more... )

 
dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2008-12-22 13:46 | Browser switcher app

This weekend I made a utility for Windows that sits in your notification tray and lets you select your default browser out of a menu. Screenshot:



Yeah, this is not very exciting, but it has been driving me crazy for a long time that there was no easy way to do this, since I need email links to click through to IE at work, and want them to go to Firefox at home (and during lunch break). I applied for a sourceforge project for it, but it still needs some finishing touches before I'll feel ready to publish it, like some memory cleanup niceties and a configuration editor and a Readme.

Edit: The sourceforge project was approved and now has a URL: http://browserswitcher.sourceforge.net/

Update again (12/23): Source and installer uploaded!

 
cyborg eye
 
papertygre
 		  

2008-12-16 22:11 | Android dev phone 1

I ordered the Android Dev Phone 1 (unlocked version of HTC G1) and it arrived yesterday. My AT&T SIM works in it though I can only get Edge. It is very slick and shiny and thoroughly net centric. Posting from LJ client available in Marketplace. I want to write a Pyramid solitaire game for it - looks like none is available yet!

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dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2008-12-10 18:55 | Adhesives for Velcro/Reflectix

I am trying two different adhesives to attach velcro (woven plastic) to the Reflectix panels (aluminum) for my 12' yurt's cover: Polyurethane hot glue and VHB double-stick tape. I have 9 panels, each about 4' x 6', which need velcro applied around the perimeter of one side - about 20' per panel. I will split these panels up between the two adhesives, both to see which one will perform better, and to add variety to the tedious assembly task :)

3M™ VHB™ Tape 5952: An industrial strength double-sided tape. $90 for one 36-yard roll (1" wide), which should be enough to complete five panels.

HiPURformer™ hot melt glue: Apparently the only product of its kind, this is a cordless glue gun and cartridge system. Polyurethane glue is a very durable adhesive (most common brand name is Gorilla Glue). The MP75 formulation supports multiple materials including metal (as opposed to being specifically for wood like the other formulations) and sets up in 75 seconds after application. Base kit is $100; each $11 cartridge produces about 71 linear feet of bead, which should do about 1 1/2 panels, so 3 tubes should be enough for 4 panels. Advantages of this system are that it is flexible and potentially useful on other woodworking projects, and also less expensive once the gun kit is purchased; disadvantages are that glue is messier to apply than tape, and this particular kind of glue has only a 6 month shelf life.

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poison
 
papertygre
 		  

2008-11-02 21:47 | Politics

I found a site with useful analyses on the California propositions: http://www.peterates.com/

Although I have misgivings, at an irrational level I hope Obama wins. Which is convenient, because I can't bear to vote for the Libertarian candidate this time around.

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dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2008-11-02 20:51 | Yurt and hiking in SB

This weekend I mainly started my yurt cover and went on a hike. Didn't do anything special for Halloween -- potential plans fizzled at the last minute, so I went home and hit the sewing machine, which turned out to be a satisfying substitute.

My finger is doing better. All the scabs are off, but it's a bit of a funny shape now, and the fingernail is still too short. Although the wound appears to be healed, I think the nerves are screwed up, because when something touches it (like if I try to type with it), there is a diffuse tingly feeling like pins and needles. I'll be seeing the doctor again a week from Monday, definitely will ask him about this.

---

For the yurt cover I am making 9 panels of 4' x 6' each: one side white canvas and the other side Reflectix. (The canvas should be more aesthetically pleasing for an interior wall than silver, and should protect the Reflectix from having its aluminum coating scratched off by the lattice bolts.) It will be held together with velcro.

One frustrating thing, after I cut the 18 yards of canvas into 9 pieces and put them through the wash to pre-shrink them, they shrank almost 10% in length! So even though I had factored in some buffer, they were still several inches short. So I ordered some cotton twill with a neat "snow camo" pattern from The Rain Shed, and I am sewing 8" of this onto each canvas panel to make up the missing length. Result: there will be a stripe of a few inches of camo around the bottom inside of the yurt.

I have never worked with such large and thick materials on a sewing machine before. So far so good, this weekend I prepared 7 of the 9 panels with the camo strip, and I created a sample of the velcro attachment with small pieces of canvas and Reflectix, so the theory seems sound.

---

Hike was San Ysidro trail in Montecito. I went by myself around 3:30 today. Sad to say it was the first hike I've tried since moving here a year ago. I managed 1.5 miles of the 2 mile goal before turning back because it was getting dark and I am out of shape. The air had a strong sweet smell, like cedar or pollen. I wondered if it was just mulchy ground, because the soil appeared to be black. Many interesting plants (including cactus!) and overhanging rock formations. Overall worthwhile, and I am pleased to learn there are numerous hikes available within a 20 minute drive, but I wish I had other people to go with.

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dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2008-10-13 23:19 | In SF Bay area this week Tue - Fri.

Visiting San Jose for work. Let me know if you want to get dinner or hang out.

 
dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2008-06-15 10:31 | OkCupid IQ Adventure Test

At [info]zyrain's recommendation, I took the OkCupid IQ Adventure Test. It was fun in a choose-your-own-adventure kind of way. It also measured a social dimension, which seems unusual for things that call themselves intelligence tests.

My scores: http://www.okcupid.com/iq-adventure-test?score=-1752168563

These results were a total surprise. Social was highest and verbal was lowest.

Details on which puzzles I chose:
1: fill in the blank (verbal)
2: hi-fives (social)
3: shapes in your face (spatial)
4: 3 letter sprint (verbal)
5: Color madness (spatial)
6: crocodile smiles (social)
7: make the 100s (math)
8: ultimate mega-fertile word grid (verbal)
9: with our complements (spatial)
10: root beer industry (social)

verbal: 3
social: 3
spatial: 3
math: 1


Since you can pick which topics you want to focus on out of Verbal, Social, Spatial, and Math, I favored them in roughly that order. The reason is that I was curious about the social puzzles, and I enjoy verbal puzzles (like scrabble and boggle). But these results may explain why I suck at scrabble and boggle. There also may be an explanation here about social awkwardness. If I have good perception of what other people are feeling, but don't know how to communicate, then I am a social dead end, and people might well end up with what my psychologist identified as an uncomfortable feeling of being watched and judged in a reserved and calculated way. This also may explain why I feel more comfortable communicating in writing, where I have a chance to revise and sculpt the message in a holistic way.

Spatial was second highest and their explanation of the spatial score was very interesting. Particularly the stuff about high spatial score being correlated with attractiveness, and the correlation of high life satisfaction rating with having found outlets for spatial creativity / correlation of low life satisfaction rating with not having found such outlets. I certainly do like to build and create things, so maybe I should listen to that urge more and surf the web less.

I avoided math because I know I have a bad head for arithmetic. I feel that I'm good at abstract reasoning, but I have ADD brain when it comes to adding or multiplying. I felt a little disappointed the description of math intelligence (visible in these results belonging to someone else) grouped in logic and analysis with arithmetic skills.

It would be cool if they could test kinesthetic as well.

Geek: I was impressed that they built this test without using Flash. I have a flash blocker and it did not engage except on the videos.

Random: I don't know why I never noticed before now that the term "meme" for online quizzes whose results people post in their journals, is a double entendre for "me, me!" - as they are certainly a narcissistic practice.

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dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2008-05-26 22:17 | Surfing

Damien and I went surfing this afternoon - first time. We bought wetsuits yesterday and rented surfboards today. We went with Andrew from work, who'd done it one or two dozen times before. We went to "Mondo's Beach," which is just south of Carp and is noted to have good beginner conditions. The waves were 2-4 feet high and not too frequent. Today Andrew stood up while riding a wave for the first time, he was very excited about it. I caught about three waves and rode them to the beach, but I couldn't stand up more than on my hands and knees. That was definitely fun. The part I didn't like so much was the paddling - my arms are not in any shape to do all that paddling! I was exhausted after just a couple of minutes and took long breaks just lying on my board. Also, the salty water was way more unpleasant than I remember from swimming in the ocean as a kid. It sticks in your mouth and makes you thirsty, stings in your eyes (or maybe that was the sunscreen), and it makes you nauseous if you swallow it. Damien seemed to have trouble just lying on his board without unbalancing and falling off, so he never caught any waves. We were on big foam beginner's boards, which are supposedly easier to deal with for newbies, but talking to another coworker tonight, it sounded like the suitability of the boards might have been an obstacle.

So, D isn't excited about surfing at this point and I'm only mildly positive, but it seems like there are some other water sports we could try, now that we have wetsuits. I'm pretty interested in windsurfing actually. Damien mentioned SCUBA diving.

After getting back to Carp and showering at Andrew's house, we went to the Brew Pub (what we call the Island Brewing Company storefront - it is a little independent brewery in the middle of town that work people like go to) and there was a big event going on: it was Paul's (the founder's) birthday. You could get free refills on beer just for asking, and there was a huge buffet, possibly potluck. There was a large band playing live music (the "Brewery Boys") and Paul was on drums. We had some chocolate cake, hamburgers/hotdogs, strawberries and brie, and beer while greeting other local folks and listening to the music.

 
dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2008-05-03 19:16 | Flickr video

It makes me happy that flickr allows video now.

Today I uploaded about five videos that have been hanging around on my camera memory card for a long time with nowhere to go. They are at the top of my photostream.

Here is my favorite one, of [info]alacrity.

 
dragon from sinfest
 
papertygre
 		  

2008-05-03 16:55 | SuperMemo

http://twitter.com/danieltalsky pointed me to this Wired article which resulted in my buying this software. The incremental reading feature is particularly attractive as a way to potentially cope with the "to-read" bookmarks that keep piling up but never get read. Consolidated offline archival seems like a nice side benefit.

So far I've loaded into the program all the articles on Agile software development at Mountain Goat Software and all the articles by Pema Chödrön at the Shambhala site.

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