Day After The Vote

[politics]

I'm glad to have been proven wrong over my dire predictions about the Iraqi election. I hope the people in Iraq can find peace and stability soon.

A New Toy

[computers]

My ADSL modem has arrived. Predictably, installation is trivial on Windows, but that's not geeky enough, so I must get it working for my Linux network.

This little machine is pretty neat, actually: it came to me from my ISP preconfigured with my username and password, and it makes the PPPoE connection by itself as soon as you turn it on. As well, it has a DHCP server so you can plug it into a hub and all your machines can get IP addresses from it. Obviously, it must also do masquerading so all those machines can talk to the internet. Finally, it has a web server built into it, where you can configure the modem by editing HTML forms. Nifty.

Updated Jan. 29 9:00PM: Woohoooo!! It's working! ... I'm starving. Must eat now.

Media Events

[personal]

On the weekend, I ordered an upgrade from dialup to high speed internet access with my ISP. Many will respond to this with "you mean you didn't have high speed before?" or "it's about bloody time!" Well, I never really needed it. Although there was that one time I downloaded the entire Debian binary distribution over the modem, and burned my own install CDs. That was more of a fun little exercise in scripting. Really.

In any case, my web activity and my bandwidth has been increasing, with this blog, for instance, and especially since I started using Flickr.

But the other half of this change is going to be the cancellation of my cable TV service. I think it was a couple of months ago I realized just how much television was tending to suck up my time, and I wasn't even enjoying the programming very much. A small part of this was a direct result of The Learning Channel being completely overrun with home improvement reality shows (although I have to admit that Paige Davis is one heck of a charming woman).

Whoa! By gigantic coincidence, it looks like it's just been announced today that she's leaving the show! Well, there you go. I have yet one less reason to watch TV now. That's all right, I think her talents would be better applied elsewhere, anyway.

So aside from non-cable television, I'm planning on getting my video media over the internet from now on! We'll have to see how that goes.

And finally, the newspaper. These days, I'm getting my news from the radio and the web. To me, the newspaper is no longer worth the paper it's printed on, and I only subscribe to the weekend editions, too. So I'm likely going to cancel that as well.

We'll see if I suffer any withdrawal symptoms...

Three and a Half Decades

[personal]

Okay, so it's my birthday. I had more people acknowledge it than I expected. It was nice, but to be honest, it actually caught me unawares, a bit. Something about being halfway through your fourth decade. Certainly I'm finding this birthday harder than my thirtieth.

Small things have been reminding me that I'm getting old. A few weeks ago, I fell down. Hey! Stop laughing. I mean, how often do you totally lose your balance and actually fall right over, feet flying upwards like a cartoon encounter with a banana peel? Really, how often?

When you're younger, not only is it less painful when you fall, it happens more often. So a few weeks ago, I was jumping out of bed, and maybe my foot caught a patch of dust, but it slid right out from under me and my upper body came crashing down on my right shoulder. I had a small gash on my foot where it scraped under a bookcase, and a slightly bruised shoulder. But the odd part was as I was tumbling down: I was thinking, "hmm, this is an odd sensation," "gravity is turning sideways," "hey, I've felt this before," "right! I'm falling!"

Another thought was, "wow, I don't think I've ever had so much time to have so many thoughts about falling, while I was falling. It sure is a long way down."

And finally, "oh, this is gonna hurt."

The Horror

[politics]

The Economist once decried the unbelievable incompetence of the American handling of the Iraq war and its aftermath. This was quite remarkable, coming from a paper that had actually supported the war beforehand.

Well, as a rule, I try to avoid labelling anyone "stupid" or "incompetent." I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.

In this case, the awfulness of the idea that the White House is inhabited by incompetents is nothing compared to the sheer horror that they may not have been so stupid - because that would mean that they knew exactly what was likely to happen, and they calculatedly decided, for some monstrously twisted reason, that it was the best course of action.

Desperately seeking cvs grep

[computers]

You know, I would love it if someone could implement this...

Usage: cvs grep [-vlR] [grep-options] pattern
   [[-f rev1 | -F date1] [-t rev2 | -T date2]] [files...]
      -v      Verbose format; includes tag information for each file.
      -l      Local directory only, not recursive.
      -R      Process directories recursively.
      -f rev1 Search all revisions after the specified revision.
      -F d1   Search all revisions after the specified date.
      -t rev2 Search all revisions before the specified revision.
      -T d2   Search all revisions before the specified date.

...or if someone could point me to a different revision control system that supports it.

Oh, woe is me. Maybe I'll try and do it myself.

I Have a Theory

[philosophy]

Talk about creationism versus evolution on Slashdot and you're bound to get into a gigantic discussion (don't follow that link unless you're prepared to face potentially more than 2000 comments).

But the thing that bugs me about this whole debate (over the phrase "evolution is a theory, not a law" - or "a fact") is that it hinges on the word "theory." And to paraphrase a great American, I wish that scientific ideas could be judged not by the label that's assigned to it, but by the content of its expression.

Scientific American weighed in on this question with their first point in this article.

In this context, scientists use the word "theory" to describe a large, consistent framework of facts, hypotheses, and inferences to describe a class of phenomena in the world. It is not used to express any kind of uncertainty about the validity of the ideas. As a matter of course, all scientific theories must remain open to being disproven, and being replaced with newer, better, more accurate theories. It doesn't matter what you call it.

The so-called "law" of gravity was called "law" for reasons, not least of which was because it was simply in vogue at the time, in scientific circles, to use that word. It's important to note that Newton's "Law" of Gravity was completely superceded, disproven, replaced, eliminated, by Einstein's "Theory" of Relativity (although for terrestrial applications, Newton's law is usually close enough). But there is very little argument that the accuracy of Einstein's "theory" is superior to that of Newton's "law." We continue to use those words, basically, for historical reasons.

For myself, in a limited fashion, and in my own way, I do believe in a God. The nature of that belief is too complex even for myself to understand fully. But I also believe in science as a means to understanding our universe (I do not say "finding truth"). I do not see a conflict here, even between the theory of evolution and God the ultimate creator, mainly because I cannot pretend to understand the means by which God went about creating the universe. How can any human being pretend to know that? So how can one say that it was not evolution?

Is It March Already?

[diversions]

No, it's January! It has been unbelievably warm. My precious Rideau Canal is melting! It's MELTING! Nooo.....

Five Things That Are Doomed

[diversions]

"Doomed" is a great word. It's one of those words that you would like to call an onomatopoeia, except that doom doesn't make any sound. But if doom did make a sound, I'm pretty sure it would sound like the word, "doomed." It's also a very extreme word, so I don't use it often; it's only for those things I think about, and I say, "not a snowflake's chance in HELL!" So, my self-questioning nature prevents me from using the word often.

But, as a kind of an exercise, I guess, I'm going to use it five times today.

Now, before I launch into my list, I NEED TO SAY THIS: I do not mean to mock or trivialize anything in this list (well, maybe one thing). The first two things are not funny at all, although the second could probably be viewed with a certain gallows humour by some. I include the silly things with the serious because I believe that, even in the face of doom, we must not lose our sense of humour. So, having said that...

1. The End-of-January Iraqi Elections. There's too much ongoing violence. It will simply be too easy to destabilize the election such that it must be considered invalid. January 30th is too soon. Of course, in other ways, it's too late; the Americans have already overstayed their welcome (now that's putting it mildly). I don't hate America; I pity them. The Bush administration has led their country into a mind-boggling mess. I was against the war, but now that it's done, I cannot pretend to have any notion of a good way out. So I'm not saying that the end of January was a mistake. I'm just saying it's doomed.

2. The Maldives. They've been in the news lately, because they are an archipelago of islands that are among the countries hit by the recent Indian Ocean tsunami. Now, the tsunami was tragic, but that's not exactly why I say they're doomed. The CIA World Factbook says: "Elevation extremes... highest point: unnamed location on Wilingili island in the Addu Atoll, 2.4 m." Yes, metres! Above sea level. The December 26 tsunami washed over the entire country. Maybe there are some things they can do, in the short term, to slow down erosion, but I'm sure the islanders know that they are doomed to declare the country dissolved on some unhappy day in the future. Er, no pun intended.

3. It was extended to 2007, but does anybody think the U.S. Internet Tax Moratorium will go on much longer? The government will need the money. The only thing that could hold it back might be the infrastructure needed to collect it. But I don't really think so. They could start taxing internet businesses any day now. I say it's doomed to happen within the next decade.

4. Anakin Skywalker. See episodes IV, V, and VI. He gets seduced by the dark side, messes up his life, and probably Padme's too, not to mention the Jedi and the whole of the Old Republic. He comes back to his senses only long enough to toss the Emperor down a hole, apologize to Luke, and then kick the bucket. Is it enough to redeem himself? I don't know... Either way, he's doomed.

5. Contingent on the assumption that the Andromeda Galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center, the swirling gases located approximately here...

   

   ...are doomed.

There you have it.

Rideau Canal Photos

[photos]

Went skating on the Rideau Canal yesterday, and took a few interesting photographs.

Castles of Japan Update

[diversions]

Check out my Castles of Japan website; I recently updated the style (none of the content changed, just the presentation). It's looking far more professional than before... although that's not really saying much.

If you're on a modem, give it a minute to load, and check out the fade-in overlaid castle image on the bottom right. Baby! That was a lot of work, but the result is sooo good! Many thanks to Brad Poland, whose image I pilfered. I did the image editing with the Gimp.

The site has not had a major overhaul in its appearance in years. Why, that's practically decades in internet time! Interestingly, I believe I've used the same background image (the rice paper background) since the site's inception, almost a decade ago. Why that's practically a century in internet time!

Updated Jan. 8, 6:24PM: I noticed that I had all sorts of rendering issues on Firefox and IE. It should look a lot better now.

Instant Print Server

[computers]

The other day, I decided I would set up Trantor (that's a dual Pentium II-233, currently acting as a file server, holding just my music collection at the moment) to be a print server. I'd been using Gallifrey (a P-133 with Win95) up to then, but I wanted to consolidate more services on a single internal server. It was a hassle 'cuz I don't usually leave Gallifrey running, so I had to boot it up whenever I wanted to print.

I popped in the Debian CD, installed CUPS, and made a trivial fix to one configuration file. I actually upgraded the kernel too, at the suggestion of the CUPS configuration script, but I don't think that was absolutely necessary. Then, I made a small change to the Samba configuration file, and reinstalled the printer driver on Solaris (that is, ironically, my Windows XP machine).

The first thing I tested was simple text from Trantor, the local machine. I was happy to see that work, but I would have been quite disappointed if it hadn't; I would have expected better from Debian. Then, I tried printing a text file from Solaris, and that worked too. I was surprised. I tried printing an HTML file containing Times New Roman font. Even that worked. I was amazed. Finally, I printed the Windows XP print test page, which contains a graphical element, and that worked. I was thunderstruck.

I was expecting a long and ardurous process, culminating in success and a strong sense of accomplishment. But honestly, I was not too disappointed to be denied that pleasure. Kudos to Debian, CUPS, and Samba! I just pushed the button and it worked. You guys are amazing.

Now, I just want to print from Minbar (a dual Pentium III-500), my main linux workstation. I expect that will be a bit more work. But that's okay. I couldn't print from linux before anyway, so I'm still ahead.