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WEEK 46 2011

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First Post, 17 March 2002

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Two Years Ago,
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One Year Ago, This Week, 2010

Saturday 19 November 2011

Saturday - I took K to his orthodontist visit on Friday. I was going to sit in the outer office, but after 30 seconds of hearing people cough, sneeze and wheeze decided that the car was a better place to wait - flu season you know. It didn't take long. Afterwards we headed over to Denny's for a milkshake, and talked boats and sailing.

Computer annoyances:

After building the SAGE box I attempted to mount the old IDE drive, just to see what was on it. No luck. The computer couldn't even see it. It was an old 80GB Seagate Barracuda, with the date code 04292, which I take to mean it's February of 1992 (YY-WW-D) July 16, 1992 . Which means it was made on a Monday and nearly 10 years old. Really about 9 years old, when it failed last year sometime.

NoScript is interfering horribly with my copy of Firefox 8. It essentially is blocking all PDF, Flash and javascript objects, and making browsing a real pain. I'll probably have to remove it.

Rumor has it that a lot of Android phones have what is essentially a rootkit installed, CIQ. I've been slow to load any kind of app, but this thing is installed by default by the carrier/manufacturer. Supposedly CIQ is designed as a non-intrusive usage monitor, but clearly could be abused. We desperately need some privacy laws about this sort of thing in the United States. The EU, for once, is ahead of us in declaring it a civil liberties issue.

Puppy Linux will install (barely) in the 128MB of ram on the old Dell Inspiron 2500, but I can't get the built-in Ethernet to work. It's some sort of oddball connection to a PCI port, rather than a true PCMCIA device. Various posters suggest using the driver for the FE575CT with ndiswrapper, or the generic 3c59x driver, but neither works. In fact the device doesn't even appear. I have an old Netgear FA511 cardbus RJ-45 adapter that works fine with modprobe tulip, followed by dhcpcd to start it up, but it'd have been cooler to get the internal device working. Ah well, not worth all that much effort. I've held off installing Puppy on the hard drive, but maybe I should just go ahead and blow away the ancient WinMe install (which is unstable and locks up anyway). I don't actually have a use for this laptop, it's just that I found it while cleaning out a closet...

Friday 18 November 2011

Friday - Huh. Maybe the creator of XKCD reads my blog? Apropos of yesterday's comment about the utility of the internet and search engines, today's comic is:

http://xkcd.com/979

I actually ran into this when doing the Excel/VbScript programming...even Google would only give two or three responses, usually unaswered, on zombie message boards, the threads long since closed. Almost Google-Whacking you might say, but I generally had to use a lot of keywords, so not really.

I have a sister that lives in Reno. Although outside of the mandatory evacuation zone for the recent fire, she is close enough that she is gathering up various valuables and preparing for the worst.

My sisters cats, too sleepy to fight:

Roxy and Chip are rather territorial about who sleeps where on the red blanket on the couch. But here they are deliberately touching paws. Is it a low key version of “chicken.” First his paw was innocently stretched. Then Roxy slowly reached out until her paw touched hers. They watched each other, then went back to sleep.

Thursday 17 November 2011

Thursday - Book #133 would be The Unix Operating System (2nd Edition), by Christian Kaare. I actually bought this back in the mid 1990's when we switched from VAX/VMS to AIX on the RS/6000 and needed to learn Unix. It's a good book for beginners, easy enough for the autodidact and yet with enough content to get one's feet firmly planted in the often disorienting would of Unix. The utility of the book was magnified by the fact that the Internet did not exist as we know it today. The vast quantity of forums, posts, white papers and online articles, the insanely capable search engines with which one now can search for answers weren't there.

Anyway, building the Xubuntu box the other day and feeling a bit timorous about the system settings inspired me to read it again. It's still a good primer, though some stuff is dated. I would depreciate the chapter on sed for example, and maybe put a bit more emphasis on networking and regular expressions. And Xubuntu uses BASH, not the vanilla Bourne or csh shells, but I've done a lot of shell programming, it's not an issue. And technically,of course, it's about UNIX, not Linux.

Generally it's a clear and straightforward exposition, but towards the end of the book we get this little bit of observation/philosophy:

25.4 PROCESSES

   The UNIX system supports two powerful illusions: that the filesystem has "places" and that processes have "life". The strong visceral connection of directories with "places" makes it possible for people to master the filesystem. Similarly, the illusion that processes have "life" and thus can perform useful work makes it easy to think about and control processes. We say that the shell runs programs, and that the editor creates text files, that the ls program lists the contents of directories. All of these processes are described as if they were active, vital organisms. The gift of life that we bestow on processes is a convenient illusion. A computer scientist might describe a process as an execution of an abstract data structure. The energy in a computer is in the hardware, but the intelligence is in the program, so it is reasonable to transfer the life force to the software.

   The process is the fundamental organizing concept in the UNIX system. Even though the instructions are executed by the CPU and stored in memory, even though the disks and tapes are spinning furiously, we say that the process is executing, and we ignore the obvious - the computer hardware is actually doing the work.

   The UNIX kernel exists to support the needs of processes. From a process's point of view, the kernel's operations are a sort of overhead that must be endured; the view from within the kernel is that processes are just cataloged data structures that are manipulated according to a set of rules...

In that third paragraph the author himself is anthropomorphizing hardware and software - neither actually has a "point of view".

I think that people in the past people in general associated computing with specific chunks of hardware. But as the populace becomes more computer literate, and devices proliferate, then we can see the growing recognition of OS's as the thing to be aware of. When Windows/iOS/Android/Linux is (mostly) the same on your phone, your tablet, and your computer; and the "cloud" makes the content the same across them; then the current fixation on hardware will start to fade (see the quote on the "new device" Tuesday).

Book #132 was The Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat; A Guide to Essential Features , Handling and Gear, by John Vigor. Entertaining and education, as are most of Vigor's books.

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Wednesday - So, I think I have all the bits of Sage working now. The JAVA thing had me flummoxed, but then on a forum someone mentioned that as "non-free" software it wouldn't be installed by default, and that the "partners repository" itself had to be manually added to the Synaptic package manager application. I did that, searched for "sun-java" again with Synaptic and there it all was, by gum. Downloaded and installed w/o any problem. Now the 3D plot stuff works. I also set up an alias in the .bashrc file to run Sage from any of my directories, and put the sage-tex stuff in a particular spot.

So, now all I need to do is play with it...

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Tuesday - my brother sent me a link to the move of the battleship USS IOWA, from the mothball fleet in Benecia down to Richmond. It is to be refitted there, and then proceed (via tug I assume) down to the Port of Los Angeles as a historical museum/tourist attraction. San Francisco had a chance, but being a bunch of pinko commie's passed - their loss. Anyway B was sad that he wasn't there to see it in person from the Benecia and Richmond bridges, but maybe when it heads out under the Golden Gate there'll be another chance!

USS IOWA under Carquinez Strait Bridge

Seen over at Marginal Revolution, in a comment about Tyler Cowen and his new Kindle Fire. It was unattributed but sounds rather Onion-ish:

Millions of consumers proceeded to their nearest commercial centers this week in hopes of acquiring the latest, and therefore most desirable, personal device.

The new device is an improvement over the old device, making it more attractive for purchase by all Americans, said Thomas Wakefield, a spokesperson for the large conglomerate that manufactures the new device. The old device is no longer sufficient. Consumers should no longer have any use or longing for the old device.

Added Wakefield, The new device will retail for $395.

Able to remain operational for longer periods of time and occupy a demonstrably smaller three-dimensional space, the new device is so advanced when compared to the old device that it makes the old device appear much older than it actually is. However, the new device is reportedly not so radically different as to cause confusion or unwanted anxiety among those familiar with the feel of the old device.

Its higher price indicates to me that it is superior, and that not everyone will be able to afford it, which only makes me want to possess it more, said Tim Sturges, owner of the old device, which he obtained 18 months ago when it was still the new device. I feel a strong urge to purchase the new device. Owning the new device will please me and improve my daily life.

Monday 14 November 2011

Monday - It was my niece's birthday the other day, so I got her a couple of gift cards to the KIVA microfinance organization. It's a fun little thing where you loan (more like co-sign) loans to various third world people for improvements. It's kind of fun, reading the description of what various people want - wire for the goat pen, a rooster for their chickens, etc. A few dollars makes a big difference to these people.

If she wants she can "cash out" after the loan is paid back, and then go buy manga or whatever teenage girls do with loose change.

I saw this image here and had to laugh. It reminded me of the VbScript work I did last year. Well, whatever the customer wants (demands) I guess.

Stay thirsty my friend.

Sunday 13 November 2011

Sunday - Not a lot going on. I am mildly ambulatory, but no walks or drives anywhere. Which, of course, makes those things desirable...

Fooling around, installing Sage.

The source install of Sage itself it about 325MB, but requires a bunch of prerequisites that don't come with a default Xubuntu install. Those were easily installed via the Synaptic package manager and took perhaps an hour. ImageMagick gave me pause, because there was no ImageMagick executable, it's apparently called "display" or something. Bah.

The Sage source build was done with make, and took about 5 hours I think. Ah, the memories it brought back of compiling the STARS suite, watching the compiler and loader messages, flags and links roll by on the screen.

The sage -test that I ran before going to bed took probably as long, maybe longer. No problems, except for a system timeout on a particularly long example.

The basic system is up and running but apparently I need to manually install the JRE to get interactive 3D plots, and to fool around a bit with a version of latex modified for embedding with Sage. Symbolic link stuff.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Going down the big grade outside Bishop, Ca. 2004.

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