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GRAFFITI -- November 05, 2007 thru November 11, 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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November 5, 2007
0710 - Good morning. I am compelled to point out that I clearly don't have enough knowledge to make a useful proposition in the interactions of early universe cosmology and fundamental physics, so what I posited in yesterday's post was sheerest speculation. But it was fun to think about. And that counts for a lot in my book. In Smolin's book, the end bits are much about the defining characteristics of Science as an "Ethical Community", and quite a lot about the philosophy of Science, methods and means.
Some stuff that deserves pointing out: Bo Leuf continues to battle his cancer, and any support that can be afforded will be appreciated, I'm sure. On a more material note, my friends at Magnatune (and I use the term "friend" here loosely, I know none of the people involved, but I like their style) continue to add new artists and new works to their collection of excellent (and sanely licensed) music. I buy more music from Magnatune than from any other source. To be more clear, I've bought new music only from Magnatune and from the KFOG Live From The Archives series over the last few years.
UCLA STUDY
A study conducted by UCLA's Department of Psychiatry has revealed that the kind of face a woman finds attractive on a man can differ depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle.
For example: If she is ovulating, she is attracted to men with rugged and masculine features. However, if she is menstruating or menopausal, she tends to be more attracted to a man with duct tape over his mouth and a spear lodged in his forehead while he is on fire.
No further studies are expected.
Thanks, Dodge.
Fred, with his usual wit and truth, makes me unusually sad, this time. Do me and yourself a favor: Don't send your children to a school that does to their students what University of Delaware is doing. If your college-age progeny attend that institution (nay, asylum), or one like it, do everyone a favor and put your kid where he can learn something useful. Take your dollars away from institutions that violate our American ideals. Hit them where it hurts - tuition income. Now I'm going to take my sad self off to work. Ciao.
1923 - A penny for Guy, $100 for Ron. An email from Peter Glaskowsky just landed:
Some independent Ron Paul activists decided on their own that Guy Fawkes Day would be a good time to "bomb" the Ron Paul campaign with donations.
I thought it was a silly idea, but apparently I misjudged its potential...
$2.6 million since midnight, and still heading skywards.
http://ronpaulgraphs.com/nov_5_extended_total.html
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Normally these just flow into Jerry's column or mailbag, but I wanted to share it with you now. Ron Paul is our best chance of a decent Presidency (in my opinion) in a long damned time. He needs funds to get past MSM ignoring his candidacy. Make a difference!
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November 6, 2007
0640 - Good morning. Not much exciting to report. I see that yesterday's Ron Paul Moneybomb for Guy Fawkes day went spectacularly, netting just a tad over 4 million dollars in 24 hours. Yow! I hadn't gotten around to pitching my penny into the kitty yet, but now I have. Having run the bills, I also knew how much I could send to help Bo and his family out in their time of need, and I did that, too.
Back on the Ron Paul front, of all the "Issues" talking points on his site, the only one I have a problem with is his stance on abortion. Having once been a fetus myself, I can certainly understand the desire to be born. I can't promise it'll be all wine and roses, though. Anyway, while it's clear that Dr. Paul holds his views firmly, and that his major mandate is to remove Federal obstacles to States Rights in this case, I can't disagree with him on Constitutional grounds. I personally believe that a woman's right to choose overrides the supposed right of the proto-taxeater. But as it's not a Federal issue constitutionally, it's a State right. That's how it should be. Either that, or get a Constitutional Amendment pushed through giving the Feds the power (Hint: Bad Idea).
Our local Libertarians, having just gotten the Party recertified in Maryland, are encouraging everyone to re-register as Republicans, in order to vote for Ron Paul. Time was, I registered Republican or Democrat only to vote against someone in the Primaries. My major goal in Elections was to pay a lot of attention at the local level, and try to make a difference there, and vote against as many other things as I could. Ron Paul is the first Presidential candidate I've felt good about in a long time. Naw, I don't intend to turn this into a poliblog. So, no worries there.
On the done/not-done ledger sheet, I did get GIMP installed last night. I'd been meaning to do that, since iPhoto is basically a cataloging application with a few simple image tweak tools. It meets certain specific needs quite nicely. But for real image work, my preference these last few years is GIMP. On the not-done column... there was the column. Jerry's column wasn't ready before I was ready for bed - RC/1 is in my mailbox now, though. So while GIMP was compiling after all the other chores were done, I puttered a bit - using Grip to get KFOG Live From The Archives 14 ripped and into the directory on the server where iTunes can find it. While that was running, I rocked out on old Heart. Mmmmmm. Hey, I didn't know that the Mandelbrot Set was featured on Heart's album Jupiter's Darling! And after all that, GIMP couldn't finish building - a dependency wouldn't compile. Hmmm. Tracking into the MacPorts bug reporting tree, it looks like progress is being made, but I wasn't alert enough to go about patching stuff. Oh, well. A lopsided ledger, then.
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November 7, 2007
2127 - Good evening. I had a busy day working on Solaris boxen. I've also run into frustration with read rates from an iSCSI device by a box with RHEL4 loaded. It should be overall much faster, but at the moment, I'm getting write rates of ~24MB/s, and read rates of less than 8MB/s. I'd expect parity, or even read a little faster than write. That sucks, if anyone has an idea, drop me a line. I've got queries into the vendors; and so far the Google has let me down, too. Usually I'm much better at finding results there than I'm having with this issue.
On the home geek front, Brian Lane pointed me at Gimp.app. So yay, I have GIMP installed now. But, boo, it's as slow as molassas in January. In a northern state. Sigh, I wonder what the problem there is? It was reasonably responsive when built as a MacPorts app back under Tiger. Eventually it'll build from MacPorts again, then I'll see what I can see. Please note that the GIMP code itself isn't the issue - it's one of the dependencies that's kyboshing my setup. I'll go poke around on that now.
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November 8, 2007
0647 - Good morning. Shortly after I posted last night, I went hunting through the MacPorts Trak bug tracking system, and found this ORBit2 diff - I applied the changes and it fixed my issues with that build. I "uninstalled" the binary Gimp.app (by dragging it to the trash). Then I returned to the GIMP build and fired it off again. Another couple of forces to get dependencies to install, and ... it finished building and installing. That's the upside. The downside is that it's only incrementally faster than Gimp.app the binary. And it crashes reliably when I use the paint brush. Grrrr. Okay, time to get to work.
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November 9, 2007
XXXX - Good evening. It's possible that some snowflakes will mix with the drizzling rain overnight. Nothing will stick, it's too warm for that, but still ... I'd also note that I started to write this shortly after I got home from work. But after I assembled the first few words into the editor, I decided to check on some running processes at work. Thus the evening slips away.
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November 10, 2007
0844 - Good morning. And the evening slipped away. Best intentions and all that. What I'm not sure of this morning is if I have projects to work on or not. I've been procrastinating on keeping up my productivity software setup, since I have been giving lots of energy to the new job these last six months. We're not going to start the dining room remodel until December.
Speaking of work, I've got to go review some logfiles. Back atcha later.
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November 11, 2007
1211 - Good afternoon. Some stuff done. More chores to do. Going to work this evening to assist in some off-hours testing. Huzzah.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East theatre, our service members continue to fight and die on our behalf. Every day I think of our troops on foreign soil, every day I am honored by their service, every day I am proud of them all. My condolences to the families and units of the fallen.
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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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