Winter 2004 Stalker Guide

CLA 2000 -- Greek Mythology (4 cr.)
CSC 6620 -- Matrix Computation 1 (4 cr.)
GER 2010 -- Intermediate German (4 cr.)
PHY 2170/71 -- General Physics (4 cr.)

Note: You may be asking, "I thought you were a math major -- why don't you have any mathematics classes on your schedule?" The answer is, CSC 6620 is one of the few computer science classes that counts as a math elective towards a bachelors' degree, and on average it's only offered once every two years, so I decided to take it now while it's available. I can finish up my last three math classes next year. (The last three math classes I have to take are MAT 5070 -- Advanced Calculus, MAT 5600 -- Introduction to Analysis, and a math elective at a 5000-level or higher.)

Assorted Movable Type notes

First, I just modified my RSS 1.0 (RDF) and RSS 2.0 (XML) feeds so that they contain the full X/HTML content of the post. It bugged me that when I looked at geekable.com's entries in NetNewsWire, all the blockquoting and emphasized text was gone, and all I saw was a big blob of text. Now it looks a lot nicer. Note that I did not modify the Atom feed, but that's because when I made a similar modification, the feed refused to validate. I suppose I'll spend more energy on that problem when I have a feed reader that understands Atom. :)

Secondly, a product recommendation. I recently considered what would happen if, heaven forbid, my web host suffered a freak catastrophic hardware failure. Since the MySQL database that feeds this site would be gone, I'd lose all the entries I've posted. I found a solution to this problem in CocoaMySQL. It's an open-source Mac OS X client for MySQL, and it allows me to back up my entire MySQL database remotely in less than 30 seconds. It dumps all the contents into an SQL file on my machine, which provides peace of mind. (FYI: I use Transmit to back up the images and other data that's not managed by Movable Type.)

New Years' Resolution

My resolution for 2004 is to buy more long-sleeved shirts and start zhoozhing.

Ecto

The program I'm using right now to type this blog entry, Kung-Log, is being re-written and renamed to Ecto. I think Kung-Log/Ecto is a great program, although I can think of a few improvements to be made. I hope the developer has the same thoughts in mind! :) I suppose I'll find out when the Ecto public beta is released.

Scoble and Co. interpret the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses

Wow, there was some frenzied discussion happening this weekend on Robert Scoble's weblog, and I didn't even see it until this evening!

What started it all was this post in response to Rob Lawson, 19, who misrepresented the ACLU and misinterpreted the Constitution. Rob first mistakenly states,

Many secularists and secular organizations like the ACLU want a total ban on any type of public Christmas displays or expression.

To my understanding, our constitution guarantees Americans the right to free speech and expression, so banning candy canes and changing the word "Christmas" into "Winter Holiday" is a violation of our rights.

Anyway, there was plenty of commenting, and trash-talking, and praying for Scoble's soul, and reply-blogging, and Scoble made several other posts talking about the controversy his first post stirred up. I'd like to take this opportunity to add some fuel to the fire, so here goes: ever notice how the debate techniques regarding religiousness vs. secularity seem to mirror the techniques used in the debate about media bias? In both cases, someone claims they're being oppressed (e.g. religious types, conservative media types), yet in reality, their side is the one overwhelming the debate! Then, when the other side (e.g. secular types, liberal media types) disagree, it only serves to reinforce the original argument! Sneaky!

I'll also take this opportunity to invite the readers who wish to comment to do so via email. As you may notice, I do not have commenting enabled in Movable Type. This is because I have to pay for this site (the domain registration and the bandwidth cost money); thus, while you are entirely free to express your opinion, I am not obligated to cover the costs of hosting that opinion on my site.

Calling all record collectors

For anybody out there who likes to surf eBay or garage sales, I am very interested in obtaining a copy of the album "It's My Cadillac (Got That Bass)" by MC Nas D. I'm looking to spend less than the $16.98 Amazon wants for it. The title track has significant sentimental value to me, for two reasons:

1. During my fifth-grade camp experience, my camp counselor used to play a cassette tape on his boombox which had nothing but taped songs from 96.3 FM. (This was a couple of years before 96.3 became "The Planet". Many years after 96.3 became "The Planet", 96.3 turned into the watered-down, lame-ass bland pop station it is today. But back in 1992, 96.3 was like the current 88.7 FM -- they played rap and rock, they swore on the air, and they were generally very very hip.) The Cadillac song was on that tape, and we played it over and over again -- it was unbelievably catchy.

2. I have a blurry memory of hearing the Cadillac song at some future date at Skate World, the local roller skate rink. I'm guessing the memory is blurry because my first (and last) attempt at roller-skating ended in me falling heels-over-head and landing on my skull. I still have the bump. Anyways, I seem to remember the Cadillac song cheering me up as I wondered whether or not I had a concussion.

P.S. Thanks to Kristine for discovering the name of the song and the identity of the artist, all from me mentioning "1992" and "Cadillac... bass,bass". I suppose I could have Googled it myself, but she deserves the credit nonetheless. :)

This page looks awful in Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows XP

Two days ago I looked at geekable.com on a PC for the first time, and I must say bleh! It looks nothing like I'm used to seeing it. Here are some comparison images in PNG format. First, geekable.com as intended, on Apple's Safari browser on Mac OS X.

And the eyesore, once Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP manhandles it:

First notice the extra-large space IE sticks between the title "geekable.com" and the subtitle "Jeff's journal..." The Safari renderer puts these lines of text much closer together, giving a more compact design and adding more vertical symmetry. Also notice the borders between different sections, such as the dots surrounding the date headers and the main page header. These are defined via CSS as "dotted" borders. Internet Explorer interprets "dotted" very liberally, using dashes in most areas, and sometimes even little crosses! I mean, what the fuck, Microsoft?

What's a blog reader with functioning vision and taste in design supposed to do? If you're a Mac OS X Panther user, you're lucky, because you have both Safari (which renders beautifully), and a copy of Internet Explorer 5.2.3 that does a slightly less crappy job than IE 6 on XP. (IE on the Mac uses real dots, but unfortunately messes up their spacing.) If you're a Windows user, you should immediately switch to Mozilla Firebird. It will render geekable.com as I intended it to look, plus it has the capability to block unwanted pop-ups at other web sites! Fight the power!

The Bible is Truth?

Sunday seems like the perfect day to discuss the problem(s) with believing that every word in the Bible is true:

...Notably, the Bible contains all sorts of inconsistencies. Folks who've tried to add up the lifespans to date the age of the earth come up with different answers, and there's other piddling things like this. But beyond the obscure stuff, right up-front-and-center there in Genesis you get two rather different accounts of the origin of humanity. The Gospels, too, are telling different stories of the life of Christ. The business about what to do with your brother's wife in case your brother dies flips around at some point.

Moreover, the Bible is a translation -- or rather, several different translations -- of texts coming to us in different languages, so it's not particularly clear what is supposed to be literally true in the Bibles folks read...

The truly sad thing is, the people who truly believe the Bible and truly believe that Jesus has saved them will never perform this kind of critical analysis. (And often, as Matthew points out in the linked article, most of them never really read the Bible.)

Spam subject line of the day

This has to be in the top ten funniest spam titles:

blast your girls coochie loose

Regarding the possibility of connecting an HP 49G+ to a Mac

I did a little research, and realized that there's already a program that (theoretically) will talk to my new calculator -- the ancient, venerable ZTerm. The HP 49G+ (and indeed, the other HP graphing calculators) can send and receive files via XModem or Kermit. Unfortunately, when I plug the calculator in using its built-in USB port, it is not recognized as a serial device by either Mac OS X or Windows XP. Hewlett-Packard wrote a device driver and a separate XModem client to achieve connectivity under Windows, and that's probably what I'll have to do under OS X.

I also saw this little blurb on the aforementioned IOKit homepage:

The I/O Kit also provides a parallel user space API using a plug-in mechanism, called device interfaces, which allows developers to perform driver-like functions from application code. This in many cases avoids the need to write kernel drivers.

My most useful Christmas gift

Happy holidays to all! I hope Santa treated you well this Christmas. Santa gave me exactly what I asked for: an HP 49G+ graphing calculator! It's my third HP calculator since 1996, when I upgraded from a Sharp EL-9200 (bleh!) to an HP 48GX. (I thought I was buying an HP 48G, but the person behind the counter at Service Merchandise inadvertently gave me the better version. Since they had already treated me and my parents poorly, I took it. I know, I'm a bastard, but I'm a bastard who got a $200 calculator for $100.)

One of the reasons that I stick with Hewlett-Packard's calculators is Reverse-Polish notation. I love it because it makes plugging in complicated calculations easier and more accurate. It's truly a geek-oriented way of thinking about math! In addition, HP calculators do calculus and linear algebra extremely well.

My only complaint about my new calculator is that there are no Mac drivers for it -- if I want to update the flash ROM or upload new programs to my calculator, I have to use my mother's PC. :( I'm hoping someone out there has my particular model of calculator and an intimate knowledge of IOKit, because a well-written OS X connectivity client would be worth some money to me.

But the chances of that are slim -- I guess I'll just sit down with some documentation sometime this year and try to hack together a solution for myself. After all, that's why Apple includes a development environment free with Mac OS X!

A Christmas picture

Here's a picture of me approximately nineteen years ago, back when I drove the ladies wild:

How cute! How innocent! How non-cynical! (And damn, wasn't my hair sexy back then?)

The Bush administration mixes its messages

President Bush on December 16, 2003:

Saddam Hussein was a threat and the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.

Cities have begun ramping up security systems after the Department of Homeland Security raised the U.S. terror threat level from elevated to high Sunday.

A disturbing Holiday image

Imagine, for a second, a lonely man drinking heavily in a bar on Christmas Eve. As last call arrives, he manages to deeply offend a fellow patron, and they take it outside. The fellow patron proceeds to beat the crap out of this man. Instead of this man being angry, or shocked, or depressed, this man is delighted, because this ass-kicking is the most intimate experience he's had in a great while. Being so lonely and isolated, he feels lucky to find someone who cares enough to spend the first minutes of Christmas with him -- unfortunately, not in a positive, heartwarming way. This man goes home bloodied, bruised, and full of hope.

Happy holidays everyone!

P.S. As I typed "Happy holidays everyone", I realized that this entry is very reminiscent of the entire Girls Are Pretty site. I apologize for inadvertently stealing that site's style.

Three Toe-Tapping Songs That Are Entirely Out of Place During This Holiday Season

1. When I Get You Alone by Thicke. Damn, that's a sexy album cover! The song's pretty raunchy too -- but in a delightfully fun way.

2. Short Skirt/Long Jacket by Cake. They forgot the thick-rimmed glasses and the come-hither look! Oh well, I guess I'll live.

3. Sweet Talkin' Guy by The Manhattan Transfer. Yeah, you know I'm just a sweet-talkin' cad, but you gotta have me just the same!

(If you have Apple's iTunes installed, then the links above will take you directly to the songs mentioned, for easy previewing and purchasing. Otherwise, the links will probably give you a weird error message.)

How Can I Use Feminism To My Advantage?

The Onion hits another one out of the ballpark, with this scathing send-up of shallow college feminists.

...All that changed when I started school at Macalester College and met Erica. Everyone in the dorm was afraid of Erica, because she attacked the racist and sexist welcome-week party. By the fourth day of classes, Erica was a dorm-wide celebrity. I heard girls talking about her in the bathroom, boys talking about her in the dining hall. Nobody even knew I existed.

What was the difference between Erica and me? You guessed it: feminism. Well, not for long, sister.

Once we became closer, Erica told me that she didn't care about the stupid luau anyway. She had bigger things to worry about, like defending women against the so-called Right's war against reproductive liberties. Her work at the Campus Coalition For Women sounded thrilling. I wanted to cash in on the centuries-long subjugation of my gender, too!

Many modern women are afraid to call themselves feminists. I often remind these weak, confused women of the words of Gloria Steinem: "In my heart, I think a woman has two choices: Either she's a feminist or a masochist." When I first read Steinem, she awoke ambitions I never knew I had. I wanted to be just like her—powerful, famous, and financially well off....

Microsoft Entourage

If you've seen the desktop picture I posted, you'll notice that I use Microsoft Entourage to manage my email. "But Jeff, you ardent Microsoft-basher, how could you stoop so low as to use Entourage when Apple gives you Mail for free with Mac OS X?"

Simply put, Apple's Mail program is a stinky piece of shit.

However, I am a small bit biased, as my first experience was on Mac OS X 10.0 -- with very poor results. As an initial trial, I let it pull down my inbox from Yahoo Mail (yes, I once used Yahoo Mail exclusively to manage all my mail accounts, back when free email was truly free) and it crashed after about 1000 messages. This was not a good sign.

Apple Mail continues to feel more like a crappy toy than a real email program, and as much as I hate to say it, Entourage gives me the options and stability I crave. Simple example: what options do I have for telling Mail or Entourage when to check my mail? Here's Mail's option(s):

Manually

Every minute
Every 5 minutes
Every 15 minutes
Every 30 minutes
Every hour

Here, I can tell it exactly which accounts to check, and at what intervals to check them. I can even have it check my mail at specific times! In addition, I can have as many mail-checking schedules as I want, checking any combination of my mail accounts on any combination of time intervals. (Of course, there's always the big "Send & Receive All" button in case I want to forget the schedule and check right now.)

In addition, Microsoft makes it so easy to back up your email and preferences, that it's a shame I don't do it more often. All you have to do is drag the "Microsoft User Data" folder from your Documents folder onto another drive; to restore a backup, just drag that folder back into your Documents folder and Entourage is back at the state you left it. So easy!

There's more I can say, but it will have to wait until I'm finished with my math project.

Greasy peso anagrams

Gross payee
Gropes easy
SOS, Grey ape!!
Yoga sprees
Eager sysop
Gayer posse
A geyser sop
"Go ye, Spears!"
Peg yo' arses!
Ass pee orgy

Explaining RSS

If you don't know already, RSS is a standard (well, kind of) format for publishing an abstracted version of a website, which is then viewable by an RSS newsreader such as NetNewsWire. You can quickly view all the latest headlines from a site, and also abstracted excerpts from the site's articles. As you might imagine, this vastly decreases the amount of time it takes to see what's new, because you can tell at a glance whether or not you need to visit a site. If you wish, you may subscribe to this site via RSS; the XML and RDF buttons on the side link to my feeds.

What's the difference between the different RSS feeds, you ask? Here's my really-quick differentiation:

RSS 1.0 (RDF): RDF is really complicated.

RSS 2.0 (XML): Dave Winer is an ass.

If you're just a casual reader (and RSS subscriber), you probably won't notice the difference. For future reference, there is an effort underway to modernize and rename the RSS standard because Dave Winer refuses to alter the current RSS 2.0 standard. This effort is known as Atom, and while Movable Type (and thus this blog) does not create Atom feeds yet, I'm sure it will soon.

Car Thoughts

I am told by devoted followers of Milton Friedman that the government should not be in the business of providing services to its citizens (e.g. education, public sanitation, etc.) because government entities are not motivated to compete. This lack of competition apparently makes every single government bureaucracy inherently inefficient, and the solution is to leave these functions to a marketplace of ideas, where parties are allowed to compete and thus the best provider will eventually succeed.

These followers grasp onto the "competition fixes everything" idea and apply it to everything -- "xyz wouldn't be so fucked up if you made it a free market" -- but I don't think they're taking it far enough. [sarcasm alert] One of the biggest, hardest dilemmas every single human faces is which religion to believe in. After all, you only find out if your beliefs were well-founded after you're dead!

I say that if competition is such a powerful tool for finding the best party in a marketplace of ideas, we need to apply it directly to religious institutions. First off, get rid of all those tax breaks for churches and their associated charities. It just makes them lazy, and provides no incentive for competition in the "feeding and clothing the needy" marketplace. After we've removed those harmful market restrictions, we'll be able to tell which religion is telling the truth by how much money they raise. People will be able to sample the marketplace of religious ideas, select which dogmas they like best, contrast the benefit of those dogmas with the cost of putting money in the basket every week, and make an informed decision. Churches will be able to compete by either presenting better sermons, promising salvation, or changing their suggested donation based on current market conditions. Eventually, there will be a clear winner, and obviously that religion is the correct one!

But what to do about all the new heathens? [end of sarcasm]

Those crazy Objectivists

If you haven't had your daily allowance of nuts today, I suggest reading the essays of Amber Pawlik. She is amusing on so many levels: she says one of her pet peeves is intellectual dishonesty, yet her philosophy/religion is founded on taking her own warped, biased view and declaring it "objective"; after thousands of years of world literature have failed to completely explain the concept of love, Pawlik boldly decides she's the only one who can rationalize it; and she most egregiously oversimplifies the field of mathematics by stating that it all comes down to "A=A".

Ignoring the fact that "A=A" doesn't even come close to guaranteeing an equivalence relation on a set (a much more mathematically interesting concept), she doesn't seem to appreciate the rigidly axiomatic nature of mathematics. Amber, if you're out there, I suggest that at a minimum you familiarize yourself with some Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory and the Peano axioms, or else you'll never be able to see that one plus one really does add up to two.

Note: In her essay "Objectivism as a Religion", Pawlik quotes Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. This is supposed to be advice for surviving in an irrational world:

"You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold on to yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is--say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

I had a good Thursday night

Bill needs a number-theory refresher

"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."

Thank God for As The Apple Turns!

Thank God for As The Apple Turns! They come up with the smart-assed Microsoft commentary so I don't have to. Here's what they have to say about Microsoft's next version of Windows, "Longhorn", being available for sale in Malaysia on the black market two years ahead of its anticipated release:

Microsoft cautions consumers that "it would be extremely risky to load the still unstable operating system onto a home computer." (We think they're talking about Longhorn, but frankly, from that description, it's hard to say for sure.) In other words, if people want to pay money for untested and bug-ridden software capable of wreaking utter havoc with their systems, Microsoft has a wide selection of legitimate titles that fit the bill perfectly! Sure, it costs a couple hundred bucks more, but 1) it's legal, and 2) you're far more likely to be compatible with the wide selection of viruses and worms available for your immediate amusement. After all, why risk the loss of your data due to a bug in a preproduction operating system when you can instead put it in the hands of a seasoned virus-writer who can make sure it gets corrupted right?