Random Musings and Nicknacks

With the release of Windows 7, I’m going to break from the usual tone of this blog and try to explain why Windows Vista was actually a good thing.

Now don’t get me wrong – I still think the user interface was an unmitigated disaster and is complete indefensible. I still curse every time I try to find something in it. However, I’m an internals kind of guy and what is really important for the future is what happened under the hood.
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It was so great and also so nerve-breaking watching Tim step up for this team and play goal today. The team had a very discouraging first half (0-5) and the morale was getting low. At the intermission, the coach asked who wanted to play goal in the second half. Tim answered that call.

This is Tim’s second time as a goalie in a game. A few years ago, he played goal in a different team. In that game, the defense in front of him totally broke down; he ended up with a few goals in his net. After that, he declared that playing goal was not fun and he didn’t want to do it again.

Today, he stepped out of his comfort zone and took on a great responsibility for his team. He was excellent in front of the net – confident, focused, proactive and aggressive! He managed to stop many shots and restored the team’s confidence. He is the hero of the game.

Thumbs up to you, Tim!

I learned that the fruit flies in my house are alcoholic!!! They won’t touch sugar water or honey, but only red wine!

Chris made a few fly traps recently. The only one that worked was the one filled with red wine. Those flies walked into into the trap gulping the wine like there was no tomorrow. They were so drunk, could not support themselves, and eventually drowned in the wine…

Maybe those fruit flies need some FAA (Flies Alcoholic Anonymous) sessions to get rid of their addictions.

A very interesting issue showed up in two of my regular podcasts this week (Search Engine, and BBC Digital Planet).

A British oil company called Trafigura spilled a significant amount of waste off the Ivory Coast in Africa. A short time later there was a significant increase in certain types of illnesses and deaths (note that we have a correlation here, but not a causation).

Rather than try to fight a PR war to claim they didn’t cause it, the company decided to cut the whole story off at the source, and got an injunction that the British newspaper The Guardian was not only prevented from reporting on the details of the debate over this spill in question period in the House of Commons, but they were prevented from reporting on the fact that they were not allowed to report on the story (this is a first in British law, apparently Trafigura has some extremely good lawyers).

The editor of the paper proceeded to tweet that he was frustrated that he couldn’t report on a question in the House, when those questions were a matter of public record.

Of course enterprising followers looked into it, figured out what the question must have been and proceeded to spread the information, leading to yet another example of the Streisand Effect, and a local story has turned into international news[1].

But this has left two questions floating around in my mind:

1. How is it even possible to justify banning a paper from reporting on something that is, by law, a matter of public record

2. By sending out the tweet, did the editor break the injunction? There’s a fine line between “I can’t talk about “, and “I can’t talk about something that is being talked about ”

[1] including showing up on this blog, something that likely wouldn’t have happened otherwise

This year we have been plagued by fruit flies. All summer they have been in the house, more than I have ever seen before. I don’t know if it is something to do with the house or with the weather we have had this year.

They have become a significant problem due to the taste they have developed for my wine. When I open a bottle, I have to immediately cover it, otherwise I will find fruit flies doing the backstroke. If I leave a glass unattended for more then 3 minutes, I have to cover it with a napkin.
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Do they not realize that if the accredited composers who have come into vogue by reason of merit and labor are refused a just reward for their efforts a condition is almost sure to arise where all incentive to further creative work is lacking and compositions will no longer flow from their pens or where they will be compelled to refrain from publishing their compositions at all and control them in manuscript? What, then, of the playing and talking machines?

– From John Philip Sousa’s 1906 essay explaining
why the gramophone and player piano
will destroy art as we know it

Here’s a fascinating article showing how consistent content producers have been while resisting technological changes for the last 100 years.

Ever since they started publishing Hubble photos on the internet, NASA has found it was in their best interest to take advantage of internet technologies to keep the world informed of what they are doing – this in turn has led to an increased interest in NASA missions. One of the neater things they have done recently is create twitter feeds for all their recent probes so the probe can tell people what it thinks (yes, from the first person).

One of the lower profile missions recently was LCROSS, whose sole purpose was to crash into the moon (and send up a plume of debris for analysis). Here for you are it’s last words…

Where am I now? Travelin’ 2.49km/s (5577mph). 1,737km from the Moon. T-2min #lcross

Centaur Impact into Cabeus! #lcross Now it’s my turn!

I’m 300km from the moon! #lcross

Wow, 150km from the moon! #lcross

“And what’s this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round,

it needs a big wide sounding name like ‘Ow’, ‘Ownge’, ‘Round’, ‘Ground’!”

“That’s it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it’ll be friends with me?”

After that it seems it went quiet.

I have noticed a new class of typos on the Internet, and wonder how long before the words actually get substituted for each other. This has happened already in a different venue -some teen slang has come about from common typing errors in SMS messages because it was easier to change the meaning of the word than it was to correct the typo.
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With all of the training Ling and I have been doing this year [1] we decided it was time to get ourselves some heart rate monitors. Once you get past a certain point, an HRM is actually a very important tool – the emperical nature of it keeps you from falling into a rut and doing the same thing over and over again, and in the case of ours, it even knows how much you are supposed to “train” each week and keeps you honest.
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Now that the summer season is winding down, and the Grouse Grind closes before Ling and I can even get there, it is time to look for a new workout. We’ve decided to give a try at swimming. [1]

I have a secret, though. Although I “know how to swim” and have vague memories of swimming lessons, the last time I tried to do freestyle down the length of a pool probably coincides with when the songs in Rock Band were actually new. (more…)