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GRAFFITI -- October 29, 2007 thru November 04, 2007>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About 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. |
 
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October 29, 2007
2247 - Good evening. Gah! The day got away from me. But I formatted and posted Jerry's CMR Mailbag, and the Column is ready for tomorrow morning. Oh, and we've gotten frost on the ground, this morning, and likely tomorrow as well. Hurrah!
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October 30, 2007
1009 - Good evening. As I sit, whacked from baking for Hallowe'en thing at work tomorrow, some of the guys I work with are just getting on the ice to play league hockey for a couple of hours. And they look at me like I'm strange. Heh. In Linux-on-the-MacBook-Pro news, it's mostly working. I've more stuff to test, but I got X working, first mirrored, then into extended desktop mode (on the dual screen setup), thanks to a couple of links I found after a bit of searching. I'll put up details of that shortly, so that I don't lose track of them ... but not tonight. G'night.
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October 31, 2007
2128 - Good evening. A quiet evening, but Happy Hallowe'en anyway. It's quiet because we don't participate in the seasonal extortion racket for one very good reason - it drives the dogs insane. So I turn out the lights in front, and put the potted roses in front of the steps up to the front door. I'm not looking to deter the determined, but to simply get the point across. Tomorrow morning I'll walk the property to see if any "tricks" were perpetrated on us as a result.
I just caught a flaw in my transition to Leopard. I needed to configure Postfix to relay messages through Zidane, and talk the correct authentication credentials while doing so. So much of my email goes to people who share that server with me that I didn't catch on at first that some of it wasn't getting through. But I finally did, and remounted my Tiger backup to get that data (/etc/postfix/main.cf and the associated sasl configuration files).
In other news, I had a query in my box this evening regarding an old article I wrote for Linux Gazette on "Using a Non-Default GUI (in RHEL and kin)". In the process of trying to address the querent's dilemma, I first sought the light of Google to back up my initial assumptions. That seemed firm, but I decided to back-check my statements against an actual RHEL4 box, and found that it didn't precisely agree with my reality. Bummer. However, I did demonstrate how to look at the assorted shell scripts and configuration files that drive Window Manager sessions (KDE, Gnome, and Fluxbox to name a few) from a Display Manager (pretty much, XDM, GDM, or KDM). I copied that reply also to TAG, on the off-chance the editors decide it's worth sharing the "answer" on a wider stage.
Nothing else special, so I'll let you go, now. I have to figure out why Windows running under Parallels no longer completes shutting down or rebooting. Sigh.
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November 1, 2007
2150 - Good evening. Well, on the one hand, I broke X on the Ubuntu install, trying to get fancy. I can fix it, but I have thoughts about a reinstall that gives me a swap partition. The first pass didn't yield one, since I read the bit about cutting the red wire before turning the page. Isn't that usually how life goes? On the other hand, possibly a silver lining, or perhaps just more rain, is brought by the return of Mat Lemmings to the latest incarnation of his online version of the life of Reily. In some ways he's a bit like Mil, but by all accounts, Ali is not much like Margret at all (or Mat isn't saying, which is often a great lifespan extender, and possible confusing evidence of wisdom on his part. *blink*). Anyway, his new digs is called Plans for Yesterday, and he's got a bunch — well, one post up, anyway.
On to the next thing. Happy almost-Friday!
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November 2, 2007
2153 - Hi. Another week gone by. It appears, by the look of the catalogs and front-of-the-store displays, that the go-to gift this year is the digital picture frame. The price of a digital picture frame the size of my laptop's screen is $350 at Ritz Camera (to pick one example). It's 1024x768 at a 350-1 contrast ratio. I'd guess the image sucks a little bit, and washes out in light something fierce. OTOH, for less than double that amount, I've got a Mac Mini that's hooked to the TV, and it can show ALL of the pictures in my ... Hey, where did iPhoto go? Harumph! The iPhoto application is, errr, gone. Okay, see you tomorrow, I've got to get to the bottom of this.
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November 3, 2007
1545 - Good afternoon. And get to the bottom of it, I did. iPhoto is part of the iLife suite of programs, which showed up in it's '06 version with my original MacBook Pro purchase. I fired up my backup copy of Tiger, and pulled over iPhoto. That's all it took.
In other news, the yard is about done for the year. This morning and early afternoon, I took out all of the plants that will die in the first strong frost. What's left is decorative grasses that will do fine through the winter. I trim those back in the early spring. Next I hauled up the compressor from the basement and blew clear the assorted watering system lines, to preserve them against freeze damage. All of the outdoor hoses are emptied, coiled, and in the shed. I'll probably use the mower as a leaf vacuum once or twice more, but that's about it. Huzzah!
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November 4, 2007
1136 - Good morning.I've been busy...
A thing I learned recently: It's a good idea to tell your shell environment about what you imagine your X Window environment should be. It helps should you actually want to use X forwarding from a remote host to the OS X desktop, and it makes the silly warning about fake Xauth data go away, because the environment variables tell xauth how to create good data. So these variables are defined in my ${HOME}/.bash_profile:
export X11_FOLDER=/tmp/.X11-unix export DISPLAY=:0
So I've been reading The Trouble With Physics (finally), and I got through about the 200 meatiest pages yesterday after the yardwork. Jerry recommended Smolin's book about a year ago, and in the spring I finally got it. Now I've almost finished reading it (and I can see how the last section of the book is going to shape up, though I'll read it anyway). I will point out that I find Smolin's arguments about the problems with String Theory compelling (not least of which is that there's nothing remotely resembling an actual scientific, falsefiable theory related to Strings as yet).
The Anthropic Principle disturbs me greatly, too, as it does Smolin. Here's an introductory sentence from that article (worthy of Douglas Adams): "Anthropic reasoning involves assessing these constraints by analyzing the properties of universes with different fundamental parameters or laws of physics from the current one, and has frequently concluded that essential structures, from atomic nuclei to the whole universe, depend, for stability, on delicate balances between different fundamental forces; balances which occur only in a small minority of possible universes � so that ours seems to be fine-tuned for life."
I don't expect the universe to be designed with me in mind. This is my universe only in the sense that here is where I am. If the "landscape" of String Theories or the Eternal Inflation scenarios are correct, and there are a multitude of universes, this universe isn't special because of us (except to us), nor is our existence in it anything more than a chance event. As Fermi instructs us, "If there are extraterrestrials, where are they?" This applies also to the context of the suitability of this or any universe for Life. That is, there's no actual requirement that life develop from the set of physical laws that govern the universe as we understand them today. Saying that our existence makes it necessary for such laws to exist is tautological, in my opinion.
Here's a proposition for you. Suppose that there is indeed a TOE (a Theory of Everything, perhaps M-Theory or a cousin), and that when developed, it describes (as does String Theory) a variety of possible values and relationships between particles, strength of forces, and all that makes a universe. As this universe popped into existence (out of nothing? out of a white hole? An inflationary bubble from some super-universe? Who cares?), the whole was a plasma of quarks and one superforce, the progenitor of gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnatism. A period of exponential expansion happens. The universe continues to expand, and as the density of matter and energy decreases, symmetries break and one by one our "fundamental forces) appear as distinct and measurable things with set properties: constants. The quark soup congeals into particles, mass that can be drawn together by gravity, photons and their speed limit, on and on. This is understood, what is not understood is WHY the properties of those forces are what they are? I propose that their values are defined by the period of inflation in the early universe.
Consider the path of a water wave as it crashes onto a shallow beach. There is much you can do to determine the course of the wave as it expends its energy. Energy of the wave, shape of the beach - large movements can be predicted in advance. Given movements of the moon and knowledge of current weather, much can be known. But what this wave does at this time on this beach, the channels it etches and erases, the line it draws at its highest point, all seem to be relative chance, though it could be "known" by perfect enough knowledge of wave and beach. In the end, the wave is changed by the beach, and the beach by the wave. The next wave, moved by the same forces that brought its predecessor, will trace out a different geometry on the beach.
I think that the timing of the symmetry breaking is critical to the relative strengths of the forces. I think that, while there can be a theory that describes how such a thing happens, there's virtually no way of predicting the effects of the symmetry breaking except in that the forces may be constrained by their very existence. That is, gravity first, and so on. There's nothing that made this universe be for us, nor that guaranteed there would be an us in this universe. Of course, I know next to nothing about physics, so take this for precisely what it's worth. I'm going out on a limb, and guessing that we're never going to get to an ultimate answer to Why, with physics. Also, that doesn't bother me much. We should keep looking, because the search is as important as the result, or the lack of a result.
Regarding the end of the book, as yet unread, wherein Smolin (I hear) brings up the need to provide for funding of non-consensus work, and change the course of the "sociology" of science ... I think I'm going to agree with him. I'll let you know, in due course.
Another week of relatively light casualties. I hope that this is indicative of improvements in the environment in Iraq. That's of little comfort to the families of our fallen troops. My condolences...
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