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Orb Designs Grafitti -- December 16 thru December 22, 2002 Last Week * * * Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun * * * Next Week --> Link to the Current Week <-- This week's Context: Thoughts on climate change: Gagosian and Chapman. A PC Christmas Tale SciFi/Mystery ebook and Eloquent Email Cloning Data General disk drives Write and save in another editor, then blog post Discussion of context linking Commentary on context linking 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   
December 16, 2002 -    Updates at 0800 EST

Good morning. It was overall a good weekend. I cleaned, stripped and re-caulked the master bath yesterday, and zipped the vacuum around the whole house, too. We got lots done, from audio and DVD on the new laptop, to some upgrades (and downsides) on Goldfinger, running Gentoo. First things first, though. The latest round of updates from Gentoo gave me a new version of Bluefish. I've been using this HTML (and more) editor for several years now, and I continue to be pleased with it. Of course, this new version comes with it's own set of gotchas - from a new config file setup that needs tuning to match my working style and custom menus ... to a dependence upon some GTK parameters (like menu fonts, and more) that I can't configure yet, until I know where they are hiding. The good news about this new version is that the editor window font and highlighting support is vastly improved over the last release.

Other "improvements" via update that I am blessed with include a new set of NVidia drivers. These things are blazingly fast at 3D rendering. But there's a drawback. They've taken over the 2D rendering from the stock XFree driver, and they suck at it right now. I'm sure there will be improvements soon, but it's mildly annoying. The real downside is that the KDE 3.1rc5 release breaks NVidia's drivers (or vice versa) - any way you look at it, a desktop that reliably locks up hard in less than 10 minutes is not what you might refer to as a good thing. I'm sure this negative interaction will be righted soon, but in the meantime, I had fits trying to downgrade the drivers back to the prior version. I finally got it though, and KDE's running fine for me again.

On Saturday, I was asking about the article from WHOI President Bob Gagosian wondering and worrying about an possible new impending mini-ice age. There's an email arrived on Jerry's site from Dr. Phil Chapman on this very topic. Dr. Chapman thinks that Gagosian is offbase, and attacks his arguments with scientific, historical and political rebuttals. It's the latter that worry me a little bit...

The claim that the LIA was a phenomenon of global warming thus amounts to the NewSpeak proposition that an increase in the average global temperature constitutes a decrease. Perhaps this is not surprising, since the apparent objective of the global warming propaganda is to persuade us all to accept Big Brother as our savior.

This reminds me disturbingly of a political contest in the early stages of a descent into mudslinging. Not only does Chapman tar Gagosian with that brush without actually saying that's what he's doing, but he also implies that Gagosian has flip-flopped (or someone has, but Gagosian is the only named individual) on his science:

In my opinion, there is a good reason we are hearing so much about the North Atlantic Conveyor. In the early Eighties, climate alarmists warned us of the coming Ice Age, but it was hard for them to make a plausible case that socialism could prevent it happening, or that Big Brother could help us much when our homes and businesses were buried under a mile of ice. The very same people then switched to claims of global warming, which let them argue that the world was doomed unless individual liberty were curtailed and capitalist societies were subjected to draconian penalties. The problem they now face is that they cannot convince rational people that moderate warming is anything to worry about.

Okay. But let me judge on the science, not on either man's political bent. And right now the one with an apparent axe to grind is not Gagosian, but Chapman. The funny thing is, I agree with Chapman's conclusion:

Nobody understands what triggers the transition to an Ice Age ... Nevertheless, we should do whatever little we can to make sure that the trend is toward warming rather than cooling. Pending a much better understanding of the climate, we should thus encourage and not curb anthropogenic emissions of CO2.

And Svenson has a take on this, too:

From:?? Jan Swijsen
Subject:?? skiing
Date:?? 16 Dec 2002 11:47:35 +0100

<quote> Sound's like I might be skiing to work sometime soon. Any thoughts? </quote>

Well, it ain't a bad winter unless you can ski all the way back to California. If you can do that, then you can talk about climate change .

The effect on the US would be completely different from the effect on Europ. Especially continental America would not be affected that strongly whatever way things turn.

The US has an east and a west coast. Europ has a west coast and a north and souh coast. Our north and west coast are influenced by the same factors. The south coast (mediteranean) is almost completely insulated from ocean effects. (The ocean affects the Mediteranea but in a different way, mainly trough an influx of salt.)

The problem with Gagosian's arguments is that they focus strongly on the north Atlantic. As if the other oceans are just addendums. He also mentiones that the extra amounts of fresh (less salty) water added sinks slower. It still sinks though and after a time the water at the bottom will be fresh too. The result is that new currents take the place of old currents.

My first guess would be that the Gulf stream would not just stop flowing but that it's endpoint, now way up north would shift soutward. This would mainly influence the north of Europ with cooling the Northsea, cooling and maybe completely freezing up of the Baltic. And of course freezing up all the fresh water on the arctic. Which would of course take away the cause of the problem and kick-start the whole conveyer belt principle. So the whole stuff wouldn't last long

An alternative possibility is that the Gulfstream would submerge under a layer of fresh () water and still reach it's northern turning point. This would keep the fresh water relatively warm so the ice-melting continues. Of course being under a layer of cool (but not really frozen) water would mean it's no longer transfering as much heat to the athmosphere . That would cool Europ (and the US Esat-coast) down strongly without taking away the cause of the cooling. The result would probably much less severe but also longer term.

I bet other possible scenarios can be tought out. His point about insufficient data is valid. Without sufficient facts and measurements it's difficult to validate the scenarios.

Regards,
Svenson.

Just call me Donner, we'll have a party! http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/donner/ But seriously, I'm not really worried about it, because of the tornado principle. That is, it's something that I have no real control over, so it's like worrying about tornados - useless. Of course, the proper response to an exaggerated worry about tornados is to move out of tornado country. If we're really worried about the weather, then we need to move to where there isn't any, but Moonbase isn't taking any immigrants yet, and neither is the L5 complex. More to the point, humans adapt, as a race, and adapt well. Let's not assume that the planet is arranged for our benefit (fallacy number one), or that we are responsible for adapting ourselves for the planet's benefit (fallacy number two). Let's be prudent and learn as much as we can, so that our responses and activities maximize the long-term productivity of this dirtball for *our* benefit. If it changes faster than some individuals, countries, governments or economic systems can adapt, then oh, well. The world changes and we roll with it, or get rolled over. That's the way the universe really works, last I checked. I suppose I should be worried most about the possibility of a gamma ray burster here in our galaxy. After all, one of those in our neighborhood would cook this planet clean of life in virtually no time flat. Oh, can't control that one, either, can I? Okay! The thing I don't understand about Gagosian's proposal is that if the "Great Ocean Conveyor" stops, then what happens to the heat? Since it isn't moving north anymore, does the equatorial Atlantic get much much hotter? If so does that send bigger, badder hurricanes swirling northward up the eastern seaboard, running into those masses of colder air and dropping more snow that doesn't melt each year? You asked about the Pacific? Maybe it doesn't play a role in the scenario? I don't know (or at least, I don't know enough). Ah, well, it's a fun game to play in our heads. .brian

There was another topic that interested me greatly today. Unfortunately it appears to have hopped on the last train to Clarkesville. Of course, I don't know whether the train actually goes to Clarksville or not anymore - we were there on Saturday night, but it was dark, and I didn't hear any train whistles, so who knows? Enough filler. Whatever thought I had has gone away. If it returns, I'll use the nail gun to staple it to the floor, so that I can come back to it later.

Today is for errands of various kinds, from an oil change for the Santa Fe, to a drop and run at one of the local Mail Boxes, Etc. for the Holiday shipping. That'll actually come first, I think, before the line out the door and around the block forms. Later on, I have an appointment with a client down in the District, bringing a scanner to life.

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Mon    TUESDAY    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
December 17, 2002 -    Updates at 0718

Good morning. Dan Bowman writes to let me know there was HTML cruft ("hanging chad") tailed onto the Donner Party link above. That's fixed. Now here's a seasonal poem, modified by someone, and attributed to many sources - so many that I haven't found out who to credit. So I'll tip the hat to our fried Nathan Brookwood of Insight64, who sent it to us. And it's fun, I like it...

A Visit from St. Nicholas:

Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual
Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic
activity was not in evidence among the possesors of this potential,
including the species of domestic rodent known as Mus Musculus.

Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood
burning caloric appratus pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure
regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist
among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of Saint
Nicholas.

The prepubesent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective
accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual
hallucinations of variegated friut confections moving rhythmically
through their cerebrums.

My conjugal partner and I, attired in our noctunal head coverings were
about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon
the exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of
dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place
of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source therof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing
this fenestration. Noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without,
reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline
precipation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian
itself. Thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to
behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyence, drawn by eight
diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer.

Piloted by a miniscule aged chauffer so ebullient and nimble that it
became instantly apparent to me thathe was indeed our anticipated
caller.

With his ungulate motive power traveling at what may have been more
vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vorcified
loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and
addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen: "Now
Dasher, now Dancer", et al..

Guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through
which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each
of the 32 cloven pedal extremities. As I retracted my cranium from its
erstwhile location, and was performing a 180 degree pivot, our
distinguished visitant achieved -- with utmost celerity and via a
downward leap -- entry by the way of the smoke passage.

He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebon residue from
oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls
thereof. His resemblence to a street vendor I attributed largely to
the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a
commodious cloth receptacle. His orbs were scilliant with reflected
luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every
evidence of engaging amiability.

The capillaries of his molar regions and nasal protuberance were
engorged with blood which suffused in subcutaneous layers, the former
approxamating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the later that
of the Prunus Avium, or Sweet Cherry.

His amusing sub- and supra-labials resembled nothing so much as a
common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared
like small tabular and columnar crystals being.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose gray
fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of
a decorative seasonal circlet of holly.

His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly
mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of
impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container.

He was, in short, neither more or less than obese, jocund,
multigenarial gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me
visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refain from so being.

By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his
head to one side he indicated that trepidation on my part was
groundless.

Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the
afore-mentioned hosiery with various of the afore-mentioned articles
of merchandise extracted from his afore-mentioned previously dorsally
transported cloth recepticle.

Upon completion of his task, he executed an abrupt about face, placed
a singular manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactary
organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and
forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating, in reverse, the smoke
passage.

He propelled himself in short vector onto his conveyence, directed a
musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the
antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a
movement hithro observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of
a common weed.

But I overheard his parting exclamation, audibly immediatly prior to
his vahiculation beyond the limits of visibility:

"Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that
self-same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously
beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable preiod between sunset and
dawn!"

Yesterday, the errands got done, the packages shipped. I made a little (but only a little) headway in the Rekall article for LinuxMuse. And I had a successful visit to a client site late in the afternoon, down in the Northeast section of the district, to help him get a scanner installed and working. Today is a full day ahead, with meetings, computers to setup, backup schemes to contemplate, and who knows what all else! Have a great day!

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December 18, 2002 -    Updates at

Mmmm. Good morning. There's a couple of items in my email vault that deserve some attention. Greg sent me this first one a while back...

The Counterfeit Heinlein, by Laurence M. Janifer <http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/D%3D20021206/I%3D1587153440/nl?discount_code=TANSTAFL>

Gerald Knave is hired to investigate an unpublished manuscript allegedly written by classic science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein. Of course, it's a forgery. No one -- not even Knave -- believes it's the genuine article. But Knave's interest in ancient literature (particularly 20th century science fiction) forces him to pursue the mystery a little farther than he should... and suddenly he finds himself in danger of losing his life!

** Pick up The Counterfeit Heinlein this weekend for the special price of $4.00 (List Price $6.99) by entering the Discount Code TANSTAFL.

Now, I don't know anything about this author (other than that he's dead, and revered RAH), but the premise looks fun, and for a Palm-ized eBook, I guess the price is right. I think you do need to have a Palm for this stuff - I don't think I can read these on my Zaurus. To break you into the habit of reading eBooks, you could do far worse than to visit the Baen Free Library - a number of science fiction books by authors you know (or should know) are available for free in a variety of formats. The goal, of course, is to introduce you to authors you might never have read before so that you'll buy their books, and pass the good word of mouth that is the best advertising an author can't buy.

Yesterday, Bob Thompson took note of the lofty heights of eloquence and erudition that some of his correspondents have acheived. Bob isn't entirely alone...

From: anish bertsingh
Subject: Hi friend
Date: 06 Dec 2002 14:49:13 -0800

Dear friend,

    If u think that u can help me can u say me which programmers r usefull for the hucking,if so u can email me we can keep in touch with each other i don't know whether this will work out.until then waiting for ur reply.

     ANISH BERT SINGH

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?

Unfortunately, this is beyond my capabilities. Having never been a successful hucker, or known any other programmers who were, I am unable to provide assistance to this poor soul. So I guess it won't work out.

Alright. Time's up and past up. I've got a machine install going up in Dickerson today, that interfaces systems across multiple networks. The next two days are going to be spent in Rockville, so I'll be busy. That's a good thing. See y'all later!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    THURSDAY    Fri    Sat    Sun   
December 19, 2002 -    Updates at 0700

Good morning. I've got errands to run on my way to work this morning, so I'll be brief. Yesterday was fun, we installed a computer to transmit smoke stack emissions data from a county trash burning facility. What's cool (and this I didn't know before yesterday) is that the county landfills no trash. Everything either recycles or burns. The burning generates electricity, creating a tiny profit for the county. And of course there is a residue that must be buried. But it's miniscule in volume compared to the bulk of the trash delivered to the site. The computer installation went well, and all the testing thereafter was successful. A good day, capped off by laundry.

Now to work with me. See you later, perhaps.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    FRIDAY    Sat    Sun   
December 20, 2002 -    Updates at 0645

G'day. Bad, bad traffic last night, and a lot to do today means that my life is driving and working right now. No time for a post. Maybe tonight. Take it easy, folks!

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December 21, 2002 -    Updates at 0813

Good morning. Wow, a day off, what a blessing. Of course there are chores to do, and other knicks and knacks to take care of, but the rush is off. Yesterday was a good day. We spent most of the available time working with an old Data General system running AOS/VS II. There's the primary system, the warm spare, and a very cold spare (loose parts in a box). Our goal yesterday was to clone the boot drive on the warm spare system a couple of times, on refurbished disks. There were many false starts, several where the Disk Jockey maintenance program refused to accept keyboard input unless the system date fell into the correct range (sometime before 2000, as this isn't a Y2K compliant system, and never will be). Finally we got a disk with the PMI in place, formatted, setup as an LDU (Logical Disk Unit), then cloned the root drive over to it. Then we did all the necessary incantations, including installing the microcode from streaming tape, hook in the bootloader and other fun bits that don't actually come over when an LDU is copied. Then we tried to boot from it. Should have been flawless - after all, the formatting process claimed there were no bad sectors... ahem. Bad track, no boot, no cookie. Sigh. Start over with another of the group of drives purchased for the purpose. While this is an old system, it serves a good purpose, and it's an interesting experience working on it. I'm just glad that I don't have to re-order a card deck, set front panel switches, or change out vacuum tubes to make it work properly.

I've read recently of several people (Doc Searls not least among them) who have lost data by their browser or other piece of software crapping out on them before they complete and save their post in whatever blogging environment they're using, be it Blogger, GreyMatter, Moveable Type or whatever. Get a clue, dudes: While everyone understands the advantage of the online blogging environments is that you don't need a local editor/publisher combo like Frontpage, why not prewrite your post in any small local editor from WordPad to Gedit to, oh hell, is there a small editor that comes with the Mac? I have no idea. But write your post in some tool on the local system, saving at appropriate intervals, then paste it into the online tool when you're done. I know you don't do interval saving in the blogging environments because you don't want to put up partial posts. OK, work around the restriction, but stop whinging about losing data when the answer's so simple! Heck, when I lose data, it's because I get so absorbed in what I'm writing that I forget to save. And no, this tool doesn't do autosave!

Some other time in the near past, someone asked me why I don't put summary links at the top of my weekly pages anymore. They are useful, nearly as much so as links down to the current post and links to the week days. I know that those are useful, because when I go someplace that doesn't have those, like Dave Markowitz's Log O' Stuff. When I'm on that site, I miss having a redirector to take me to the current page, and I miss top links down into the content. Links that make content easy to use mean more people use it. When you come here, if you've bookmarked the current redirector page, then one click at the top of the page takes you to the current day. I do that for you by moving a #current tag as I write each day's post. The links to each day are static, a part of each page's structure that changes not at all week to week - I don't have to do anything to maintain them.

On the other hand, content-related links at the top of each page are hard to do. Okay, they're not hard, but they consume real time. I have to do useful link names down in the text, I have to summarize them concisely at the top, and build the links. Either I do this each day (usually when I'm already out of time), or I have to remember to summarize the whole week's writing as I close the page for the week, which means considerably more work, since I actually have to go back and read what I wrote, and figure out where to link it... Or I can not do it at all, as has been the case since, oh, um, about August of 2000. I think I recall abandoning the page highlights because either I wasn't summarizing well, or I wasn't at all.

If I am to do this again, it's a chore that'll need to be done with each day's post, or it won't get done properly (or at all). And my drive to do this is more selfish than anything else. As I come back to this page from some point in the future, either by searching here, or via a Google hit (which happens more often than I like to admit: Hey, you mean I already know about that?), it's nice to be able to link down into the content by context, rather than by date. This means, of course, a change to the header, to make room for this stuff. Sorry. But go back up and look at it. Tell me what you think by email, if you please.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    SUNDAY   
December 22, 2002 -    Updates at 0930

Well, good morning. I'm giving Quanta another try this morning, and so far I'm hating it. But then, once I get used to a tool, I tend to get used to it's behaviour, features and flaws. But it is a good thing to get out of the rut every once in a while, even if I decide to climb back into that same rut tomorrow.

There's been a fair bit of comment about the links at the top of the page, context links down into the week's writings. Truth in advertising: It'll add about two minutes a day if I keep up with it each day. It'll take significantly longer if I wait and do them at the end of the week, trying to back-figure what I was thinking was important at the time.

Thompson suggested that I spend the time writing more, and not worry about the links. Others thought that it wouldn't provide much benefit to them, as they read me every day. Wow, and thanks! As I noted yesterday, the real benefit comes in later, when you (or I) come back to the page, and try to locate something within. The chances are that I'm usually looking for something that I thought important enough to link into, so they might be of help to me. I think I'll keep it up for a while, and see how it goes.

Of course, there's one drawback - I had this tag in the table cell header: bgcolor="#eee". The advantage to that is that I can be sure that a color (LightGray) defined from the restricted 256 color palatte, should display properly on most computer screens. What I didn't know was that the old Netscape didn't know how to cope with a reduced color definition. So it appeared to be seeing that color definition as bgcolor="#eee000", when it really needs to be expanded to bgcolor="#e0e0e0". So I have explicitly done the latter, and there shouldn't be any more dark purple background. If it isn't light gray on your browser up at the top (where the context links are) let me know.

I should finish my coffee and get ready to do our Sunday morning shopping run. Have a lovely day!

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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.

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