dannyman.toldme.com

So it begins . . . in Sizhou, China:

“Angry monkeys turn on their cruel trainer and beat him senseless with his own stick after he handed out a vicious beating to one of the trio during a performance riding mini bicycles in a market in Sizhou, China”
Picture: EUROPICS[CEN] (Via: Telegraph.co.uk)

The times, they are a changin’. Huzzah!

Update: Additional photos and story at The Sun. Even more, smaller photos at Mirror.co.uk.

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I will be out of town, but one of my favorite baristas at my favorite cafe will have an art opening this Sunday, December 21. Since I may be featured as a model for one of her works, I thought I might even have some vain self-interest in promoting the event a bit.

The Greenhouse Cafe
— presents—
Caroline’s Curious Creatures!

Prints
Drawings
Paintings
for Sale

Opening Sunday, Dec 21 2008
329 West Portal Ave 7pm
Come enjoy a drink &
see some art by
Caroline Hambright &
Mika Horibuchi

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I was just enjoying “Ask the Pilot” when I caught what I thought was a grammatical error that had slipped through Salon’s editors:

“As with Avianca, the United crew was on the one hand acutely aware of its situation yet, on the other, inexplicably loath to deal with it.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “don’t you mean loathe?”

The fact of the matter is that Patrick Smith and the editors at Salon have a deliciously nuanced vocabulary. While similar, “loath” is an adjective expressing reluctance or unwillingness, while “loathe” is a verb expressing dislike or hostility.

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These are probably from a recent issue of The Sun.

“A human being who has not a single hour for his own every day is no human being.”

–Rabbi Moshe Leib

My party had been pushing ahead at a fast pace for a number of days, and one morning when we were ready to set out, our native bearers, who carried the food and equipment, were found sitting about without any preparations made for starting the day.

Upon being questioned, they said, quite simply, that they had been traveling so fast in these last days that they had gotten ahead of their souls and were going to stay quietly in camp for the day in order for their souls to catch up with them.

–Andre Gide

Winter makes me sluggish.

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I enjoy the New York Times “Freakonomics” Blog but recently I was reminded of one of the shortcomings of modern academics: they can deny common sense by talking too much. Take the following sentence recently published by Eric Oliver:

“Racially isolated whites in Arkansas or Alabama may have been more afraid of voting for Obama not because they are more racist than white voters in Minnesota or Montana, but because they perceive greater racial competition with nearby black populations.”

Seriously: WTF? This is like saying: “It is not that they are racist, it is just that they have a reason to be racist.”

“When Frank got into a car accident while under the influence of alcohol, it isn’t because he was a drunk driver, it is just that he has been going through a lot lately, and he enjoys drinking a lot of cheap beer.”

(more…)

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I halt my computer at night, and boot it in the morning. This reduces my carbon impact. Alas, Ubuntu for whatever brain-dead reason doesn’t trust its filesystem. As if we lived in the 1970s it insists on checking the filesystem consistency every thirtieth boot. I sip my morning coffee, check my workstation, and have to hit ESC . . .

So, I googled a bit, and found a helpful forum thread. I thought I’d offer my own tiny variation:

0-09:57 dannhowa@T60p ~$ sudo tune2fs -c 0 `mount | awk '$3 == "/" {print $1}'`
tune2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
Setting maximal mount count to -1

Update: wamukota made an excellent suggestion, that one can instead set an interval with the -i flag. For example, one could set their computer to check every three months:

0-19:06 djh@noneedto ~$ sudo tune2fs -i 3m `mount | awk '$3 == "/" {print $1}'`
tune2fs 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
Setting interval between checks to 7776000 seconds

Okay, that is a scary-looking command-line. Let me break it down. (more…)

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Wow. Someone, I think at work, just got me on this article called “The Calculus of Caffeine Consumption” — insightful!

So, the idea is that caffeine can either be used to keep you awake and functioning at a basic level, like say while you’re driving cross-country, or it can be used to enhance your cognitive peaks, in case you’re trying to really get the mind crunching on some problem so you can produce a paper or code or such. Further advice is that because caffeine tolerance builds up after a few weeks, caffeine becomes ineffective. The best strategy is to go off caffeine when you don’t need it, and use caffeine wisely when it is needed.

For my part, in the past year, I have gone through the occasional abstinence. More frequently though, I drink tea during the day, which has less caffeine, and then when I need to kick it up a notch, or to wash down some tasty chocolate, I drink coffee. Part of my weekend ritual is to have a “chocolate croissant” and a coffee, after which I have a really aggressive creative buzz going on, even though I have been drinking tea at work all week.

The other advice is that creativity peaks shortly after you have just woken up. Therefor one might try scheduling creative periods after a morning cup of coffee, then an early afternoon nap, followed by another cup of coffee.

I wonder if instead I should have a cup of tea in the early evening, so I can enjoy a moderate creative boost at home on my own time.

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Welcome to the recession. My employer has reduced the budget. We will maintain a constant headcount but need to reduce discretionary spending. We’ll keep serving bagels on Friday mornings, but no more fancy salmon dill red bell pepper pesto “lite” cream cheese.

All the same, while I can enjoy Philly Cream Cheese-“I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”? Haha! 1980s flashback spread!

Mainly, I am happy and lucky to be in a pretty decent position to ride out this downturn with my income intact. Though, I have a nice cushion in the bank just-in-case. If I do find myself unemployed I may move out of my place and hit the road for several months.

On a less jovial note, the remains of a bookstore I recently saw in the Inner Sunset:

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One week ago the people of this country began to party in the streets. I was actually driving down 16th St when I had to stop because the street had been spontaneously closed by joyful San Franciscans. Once I got on my way home I passed Market and Castro. Castro was blocked off for a formal street party, but the crowds seemed subdued. Upon arriving home I saw that Prop 8, repealing the right of people to marry a person of their own sex, was ahead.

Joy at electing a remarkable man to the White House. But a gut-punch to those of us who feel deeply about equal rights.

Just now I received a link to Keith Olbermann, and NBC commentator, who does an excellent job of expressing my dismay over Proposition 8:

The gist: marriage is about Love. At the time Barack Obama was born his parents’ marriage was illegal in 1/3 of the United States, and in the days of slavery, marriage between black people was illegal. There is no advantage to be had in opposing gay marriage, and in this culture where we feel uncomfortable about the impermanence of relationships, and the high rate of divorce, if two people can find love, we ought to allow them to enjoy it the same as anyone else.

While there are lawsuits out to restore same-sex marriage through the courts, my personal hope is that we can put it on the ballot again, and that next time it comes before the people of California, the people will have grown in their own hearts to accept that allowing lovers to marry is what we ought to do. We gained ten points since the last ballot proposition, and Prop 8 would likely have failed were it not for balls-out misinformation fear campaign by the Mormon Church and other cultural conservatives, who viewed popular support for same-sex marriage in California as the first step in a trend that would ultimately lead to acceptance of same-sex marriage throughout the United States.

We have work ahead to ensure the rights of a minority that has been tormented for too long.

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One of my favorite automation strategies is to use Makefiles. The reason is that unlike a shell script you get free error-checking: a Makefile will bomb out on you if one command in the sequence fails. You can also chain targets together, lay out sub-dependencies, and the rest. I’m just finishing up on a little project which has this as the top-level target:

# default
all: dhcp sync yay

# cron-able
dhcp: hosts restart-dhcpd

# Positive feedback rocks!
yay:
        @echo
        @echo "YAY!  Have a fortune cookie:"
        @echo
        @fortune -sa

The first target, “all” is what will be run when a user types “make” and you see that things get broken down further. The “sync” target depends on the user to either enter a password or forward an ssh credential. (more…)

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I have a deep-rooted aversion to Daylight Saving Time, that ritual where we screw with the clocks in the Spring and the Fall to get people out of bed earlier so that, originally, New York stock brokers could get an hour of trading in before the London exchange closed, and later so that people may have more time to spend money on leisure sports in the afternoon. Farmers and parents find it a bear, since animals and children don’t really appreciate having their schedules re-adjusted.

But really, it saves energy! Look! Science!

Nope.

According to a new study of energy consumption in Indiana, Daylight Saving Time actually results in increased energy consumption, especially in the Fall. Remember when the Bush Administration extended Daylight Saving Time a few years back as a magical way to conserve energy without actually doing anything? (I remember, because I had to patch servers to keep their clocks consistent with Congressional legislation.) The study finds that DST increases energy consumption the most in the fall!

Estimates of the overall increase are approximately 1 percent, but we find that the effect is not constant throughout the D.S.T. period. D.S.T. causes the greatest increase in electricity consumption in the fall, when estimates range between 2 and 4 percent.

These findings are consistent with simulation results that point to a tradeoff between reducing demand for lighting and increasing demand for heating and cooling. We estimate a cost of increased electricity bills to Indiana households of $9 million per year. We also estimate social costs of increased pollution emissions that range from $1.7 to $5.5 million per year. Finally, we argue that the effect is likely to be even stronger in other regions of the United States.

Thank you, New York Times Freakonomics Blog!!

Basically, the gist of it is if people get home earlier in the afternoon, they save money on lighting, but they fire up the AC or the heat. Back in WWII when people had more incandescent lighting than climate control, DST may actually have saved a bit of energy.

My main objection is that monkeying with the clocks is a very messy way to implement a notion to “wake up earlier in the summer and enjoy the morning” but I’m a crank.

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I voted! This is the first time I encountered a line at the polling place, which had twice as many booths as usual. I’d say turnout is high but there are also a fuckload of propositions on the San Francisco ballot, which was 4 over-sized cards, most of them double-sided.

I spoiled my first ballot, and had to ask for a fresh one.

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