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Orb Designs Grafitti March 04 thru March 10, 2002 Mon   Tues   Wed   Thu   Fri   Sat   Sun Last Week  <--  *  -->   Next Week --> Link to the Current Week <-- Email Brian Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message..

MONDAY    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
March 04, 2001 -    Updates at 0730

Good morning... Well, I had a very busy weekend, and not much time for this now. I bailed out at around noon yesterday, came home and did the weekend's worth of chores (or at least my share of them, Marcia was pretty busy too) in about 4 hours. I headed over to OSH and picked up tomatoes and peppers. Yeah, it's early, and a late frost could nail us. But it's worth a shot, especially if I get some fruit set before it gets cold again. Right and left you can see plants in the soil I prepared along the fence line a couple of weeks ago. Further along and out of site, Marcia's got some carrots started from seed, so we'll see how those come up - pictures soon.

About the Contact 2002 Conference - It was great. I learned a lot, met a bunch of interesting people, and took a few pictures. Read my report over on this page (that was last night's effort). With that, I'm out of time and effort for the moment. Oh, wait... Voting proceeds apace on the Skin-A-Cat competition. Entries were posted on Friday, and I've got fewer votes than entries, still. Anyone interested in expressing an opinion, I'll hold the polls open for a couple more days. Vote Here (and vote tomorrow, please, if you have the opportunity to exercise your franchise where you live).

Now I've got to fly... see you later.

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Mon    TUESDAY    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
March 05, 2002 -    Updates at 0645

As I write this sentence, it's just 0620, and already I've been through all my email, written a few responses, and answered a pair of questions. This is ... unnatural. So I'll complement it with a snap of Sally enjoying her new brush. It appears that she regards the whole experience as her just due for putting up with humans. She's certainly not complaining, eh?

In election news, I have just two annoyances. Okay, I really have more than that, but two serious ones. First, I remember having registered Republican at some point so that I could vote NO at the appropriate points in the primary races. I do believe that voting NO is the most important part of a citizen's franchise - I'm not here necessarily to vote for something, but I'm definitely here to vote against those things that I think are useless or bad. I have many more no and blank spots on my ballot than affirmations. Returning to my point, I'm somehow now on the rolls as a Democrat? Maybe I did that so I could give a hand to Elaine Alquist, who I worked with in the past, directly and with her husband's campaigns before he retired. Now I don't remember.

My second peeve is the way that Erin Brockovich is selling herself to assorted campaigns. I see her name on pamphlets, I get her recorded voice in my ear from computer dialing schemes, on the TV and Radio. Word to the wise, Erin. What you did for those people down there was good, but don't think that makes you special to the rest of us - you just did your job well, and you got paid very well for it. Let that be enough. Annoy me and I vote against what you're promoting, regardless of it's merits.

Heh. Culled from Slashdot, I find this article about Chinese lawmakers up in arms about spam prevention by blocking all .cn domains. There's this seemingly innocuous quote at the end of the article:

Peter Lovelock, director of Beijing-based consultancy MFC Insight, said the National People's Congress might be swayed to pass laws calling for more rigorous management of Internet-linked servers in China in order to avoid international embarrassment.

I see impending protests as SysAdmins are executed for running servers that are Open Relays. Billy Joe Mail System Admin, who works for MegaBigCo, is quoted as saying (and I jest), "We didn't want them killed... just take their arms at the elbows so they'll never do that again - that's all we ask!" But in a more serious vein, the real issue is not that there are servers that get set up there as open relays. That can happen to anyone - ask Matt Beland! But in general, pleas and complaints fall on deaf ears, either because of the language barrier, because they don't understand how to run their systems or because they just don't give a hoot. Either way, domain blocking is a fact until they clean up their act.

Marcia's gone to work, and I'd best hop into the shower myself and get rolling. Have a great day, and don't forget to check out my Resume and pass it on to those that might help in my search for something to do, March and after. Take care.

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Mon    Tues    WEDNESDAY    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
March 06, 2002 -    Updates at 0700

Good morning. Well, I voted, but a lot of people didn't. I haven't found the hard numbers yet, but they've been referred to as "paltry" in a couple of articles I read this morning. Bah!

That being the case, I'll leave our political woes behind for a bit, and give you this email/response combo from yesterday:

On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 12:08:24AM -0000, James Peatson wrote: > I have Mandrake 7.2 and trying to set up my network, I have followed > chapter 27 and all I get is the workgroup on XP windows and it will > not let me set-up a shared folder and the same on mandrake. What do you mean by "all I get"? How do you "get" this? What do you type and what do you see... > > > Configuring Samba with SWAT > > on my /etc/inetd.conf I have this line: > > swat stream tcp nowait.400 root/usr/sbin/swat swat' now I have tried this > and what you have on your site and all I get is > ALERT UNSUPPORTED URL SCHEME Where do you "get" this message? On the command line, in the browser? If the latter, which browser? > > The host name I am using is sophie@home That should be fine... that is, your user name is sophie, and the machine name is home, so that when you're logged into a terminal, that's your prompt, right? > > I have also tried Creating and editing /etc/samba.d/smb.conf the same as > your site, nothing After editing smb.conf, how do you start / restart samba? > > I have been trying to get this to work for a week now and starting to > think that maybe Linux is too hard to work with. I only put Linux on > two weeks ago and would like to learn more about it. My friend keeps > telling me that Linux is crap, I would like to prove him wrong, and > show him that windows is. And for some people, Linux is too hard. If that's the case for you, by all means, don't bother. I'm not being rude here, just pragmatic. If you want to learn something new, then you have to work for it. I work in and with Linux every day, and I know it's not crap - it's just a tool. It's a powerful tool, and I put a lot of effort into learning how to use it. If you want to learn Linux to prove something to your friend, stop now. It's not worth it. That's like stopping drinking for someone else - that doesn't work either. If you're interested in making Linux work, don't just count on our book (although I'm glad you've found it, and found *some* inspiration in it). There are lots of resources, on and off line. Additionally, be aware that MS has graciously changed the SMB/CFS protocol. I'd never be the one that says they did that on purpose to break Samba... Ooops. There are work arounds - check with google on "Samba Win XP" and variations for some interesting results. > > My Computer details: > 128 ram 166mhz > > Regards James Peat son > > Like your site I'm glad. Thanks. If you want more help, please feel free to write. Put as many details in as possible, like: I was working in a terminal window, I typed this, and that came out. Be precise in your descriptions, otherwise I can be of no help... regards, .brian

That was last night - there's nothing in my box this morning on the topic... Now I'd best get to work. Have a great day, please. Someone should.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    THURSDAY    Fri    Sat    Sun   
March 07, 2002 -    Updates at 0649

Howdy. Well, the voting's done, and it's a tie. With four votes counted (and I've abstained), Moshe Bar and Don Armstrong share top honors in the Cat Skinning arena. Here's a typical vote:

My vote is for Don Armstrong.

Sorry for not voting sooner but I went out and capture a dozen cats and decided that I indeed had to try out each of the skinning methods here at home. After cleaning up the mess I like Don's the best at least for now Of course you left out the method whereby you coat kitty's fur with sugar head to toe and then put outside next to a nice red Ant colony and let the Ants eat the skin off.

regards

Steve in Colorado

Me, I've never met a Red Ant colony I didn't like. I presume that's what Steve meant when he said "nice". So for posterity (and why is that word so close to posterior?) here are the jointly winning entries, reprised for your eddification, in order of receipt:

Hi Brian I have studied the problem for some hours now and I have come to the following proposal: The cat's skin/fur and its main body have different specific weights (Ws and Wb). The skin/fur is glued to the body proper through a membrane which needs force f to get off the body. Using Konig's Theorems I can therefore calculate at which speed in a centrifuge the main body of our little pussycast would seprate from the skin (equivalent to skinning a cat). Konig's Theorem explains the conservation of energy plus the conservaion of the angular momentum, imposing that the inertial moment for omega (angular velocity) has to remain constant. Therefore, we take the inertial moment of the body of the cat (Vb) + inertial moment of the skin (Vs) * initial angular velocity ( speed of the centrifuge) * final angular velocity where initial angular velocity is equivalent of the inertial moment of the skin at the end + the inertial moment of the skin at the moment of the actual seperation of the skin from the cat. Taking a sample pussycat (like my neighbor's) of about 4 Kg, with about 900gram for the skin/fur, attached to a centrifuge with radial length of 100 centimeters, you have to accelerate to about 23,000 rpms for the skin to seperate from the main body. Once reaching that point, you will typically find the body squashed against the side walls of the centrifuge, followed milliseconds later by the skin itself. Voila' we have accomplished our goal. We skinned the cat. The actual calculation for our test centrifuge is a bit more complex, but our math guy here at work says my math holds. Please accept my submission for inlcusion in your contest. Many thanks Moshe Bar, Ph.D. Tel Aviv, Israel

That was Moshe, crossing the line neck and neck with Don Armstrong:

Well, there are a couple of variations to this. Basically you make a small incision in the skin; then you insert a hose from your choice of an air-compressor or a high-pressure water supply. About half a second later your cat (or chicken, or dog, or hamster, or gerbil) is skinned. Takes longer for elephants. Also several seconds lag noticeable for cattle, horses or camels. All the best, Don Armstrong.

Now, if I were Jakob Nielsen, I'd have to go with Don's idea on points - Air compressors are a heck of a lot more common than 25K RPM large capacity centrifuges, thus there's a usability issue here. However, since no actual cats were harmed in the course of this thought experiment (were they???), I also really applaud the theoretical effort that's gone into Moshe's design. I've consulted my committee, and the voices are shouting equally loudly for both, so we'll leave this a tie, and encourage fresh entries (with new methods next year) from all our fine field of contestants. Maybe we'll even get a few more, entries and votes that is.

Last night's SVLUG meeting was cool, discussing a new programming paradigm called Springbox. You can check it out for yourself at http://www.dloo.org/. The fundamental premise is that each advance in programming takes the bits that can "break" the programming model, and put them together. For example, unstructured programming (as in Basic) has GOTO statements that you may or may not return from. When the code breaks, you have to trace potentially the whole codebase to find the problem. This implies that the logical separation between entry points and exit points for functions are the broken bits. So the next advance was Structured Programming, with functions and procedures.

The next break was the separation between data and methods - putting these together leads to Object Oriented Programming. So what's broken now? The syntactic and the semantic. That is, relationships between the bits. That's where Springbox comes in - it's programming with Symbols, which incorporate data, methods, and relationships. As a bonus, they're designing this language to be built in network accessible units that enable autodiscovery and incorporation. So if I use a symbol in my program that I don't have locally defined, Springbox goes out on the network and attempts to find a match, based on name and inheritance. Very cool stuff. Check it out.

The big news is about next month's speaker. It's going to be a talk by Larry Wall. That drew wild applause, then someone asked what Larry was going to talk about. "Whatever the hell he likes." was the answer, although it was allowed as that Perl 6 would probably be a strong thread through the evening. If you're going to be in the Bay Area around April 3, come visit with Larry Wall and SVLUG.

Now it's time for me to go to work. I'll probably only do a half day today, then come home and start bashing on the new IBM tutorial. Have yourselves a lovely day.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    FRIDAY    Sat    Sun   
March 08, 2002 -    Updates at 0745

Good morning. After a couple of days full with wind, rain and cold, the big fusing hydrogen ball has broken out of it's confinement, and it's hurting my eyes, thank you very much. I'll also note in passing that the Shatner meme is circulating again. Bill's site is linked to from Dan B's and Doc's sites. This has significance to me primarily because Star Trek was a primary courting prerequisite between Marcia and myself in the whirlwind early days of our relationship. The conversation went something like this:

m:   Do you like Star Trek?

b:   Yeah. I've been a fan for years.

m:   No, I mean, really! I've got a uniform in the closet.

b:   Mmmm. That's cool! I only met Bill [Shatner] once at a con - you know, he's way, way shorter than he looked on the show? Nice guy, though.

m:   That's OK, then...

And that was just one of the tests I had to pass to prepare to share my life with this wonderful woman. And yeah, I dig Trek, but it's not as important to my life as once it was.

As usual there's terrible things going on all over the world, some of much greater significance than others - religious conflicts in India cause hundreds of deaths, the continuing Intifada in Israel and environs, the battles against Taliban and Al Qaeda hold-out forces contine... man, I don't want to go down this road, not today. I'm sorry, but people do terrible shit to each other, and expect to have someone on their side as a result of their righteousness? I want to care, really I do, but it'll paralyze me. This stuff is important, and I have to get on with what's closest to home.

I'm job hunting, and the current gig ends at the end of March. It's been a marvelous run, but it's time to move on. So check out my resume, and pass the word.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    SATURDAY    Sun   
March 09, 2002 -    Updates at 0900

Good morning. I made a fair bit of progress on the tutorial yesterday, adding all the formatting to the bits I've already written, plus a couple of new panels. I'd reached the point where I needed to put some structure up in which to hang the data, so that I could fill in the holes. Now I'm slightly awake, it's time for coffee and a shower, then back to the grind.

I did run into one fun/sick thing this AM - Slashdot pointed me to a site called Pulp Phantom. It requires Flash, and its a blending of (you guessed, didn't you?) Pulp Fiction and Phantom Menace. Please, don't play this around the kids, it's pretty rude. But ... funny somehow.

I'll also put in another plug for Gentoo Linux - Daniel Robbins had a revised ebuild up in a matter of what seems like just minutes after the warning came out a couple of days ago about the OpenSSH vulnerability. Note to all: You have updated your SSH installation, haven't you? You should be at 3.1p1 (on Linux) in most cases, or if you use Debian, the fix was backported to 3.0.2p1-8. If you're not on one of those two versions, you need to be, now.

Anyway, I continue to be impressed with Gentoo. Keeping updated and fetching down new software is a snap, and dang if it doesn't make this computer really fly. Everything is SO fast when it's compiled and optimized for my hardware. Today it's Greg's turn to dive into the Gentoo Pool.

Now I'd best get going. See you later.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    SUNDAY   
March 10, 2002 -    Updates at 0900

Good morning. I've just a little time at the moment. We slept late after a busy day yesterday, and it almost time already for the costco run. Left and right you can see snaps of the new sewing table I made for Marcia's quilting obsession. It's a full four by eight feet and barely squidges into the room. But everything fits, and we have our dining table back in the kitchen.

Last night, Speakeasy had problems in their San Francisco POP - we were down for about two hours. Bleah! Sorry if you came a-looking for me at that point (although there wasn't anything new then, anyway). Overall they do pretty good. Now I've got to have a cup of coffee and get ready for errands. See you later.

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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.

All Content Copyright © 1999-2002 Brian P. Bilbrey.