Side benefits of the universal information system

"I foresee a universal information system (UIS), which will give everyone access at any given moment to the contents of any book that has ever been published or any magazine or any fact. The UIS will have individual miniature-computer terminals, central control points for the flood of information, and communication channels incorporating thousands of artificial communications from satellites, cables, and laser lines. Even the partial realization of the UIS will profoundly affect every person, his leisure activities, and his intellectual and artistic development. ...But the true historic role of the UIS will be to break down the barriers to the exchange of information among countries and people." Andre Sakharov (Saturday Review/World, August 24, 1974

I don't think Andrei Sakharov got it entirely right, but man, did the internet come close to fulfilling his prediction!

I keep wondering what was in the ellipsis between "development. ...But the true historic role" - but that information is not on the Internet, yet. Books - at least the ones still covered by copyright, and those long out of print, but still covered by copyright - are only readily accessible via amazon, or not at all.

Babelfish was an early start at breaking down those barriers of language and culture, and google translate is taking that to a whole new level.

New forms of media have arisen, usenet, blogging, twitter, facebook... People can run simulations of the Hubble repair on their desktops, crowdsourcing has become popular where people routinely collaborate, in real time, all around the planet, from richest country to the poorest...

And yet, so many problems are still with us. Do I think they are intractable? No! If I didn't think that we could solve all the problems remaining for humanity, in part, via better technology, I'd be really depressed all the time, instead of just some of the time.

Most of my last week or three of blogging (A New Grand Tour of the Solar System,Sunday Space grabbag,Big Waves, Bad Knees) have been, indirectly, in response to what Chip commented on a blog post of mine last month.

By your own words, you either dismiss or outright refuse to read certain works because they are not 'happy'.

His point stung. I DO try to read multiple viewpoints but sometimes fall into a rut of reading stuff that re-inforces my pre-existing opinions. So I read his links - Kunstler, about the cluster-f*** nation, and Orlov, about the effects of Peak Oil and definancialization...

I was depressed for days.

Yet, my reaction, my self-trained reaction, of looking for an opposing viewpoint, and exploring the history of the ideas and predictions, finally kicked in... I went and researched Kunzler, and found he'd made specific predictions that turned out to be wrong, so far. It doesn't mean that he's wrong on everything, it just means he isn't God. I completely agree with Kunzler about the core problem - today's civilization relies on cheap energy, and it is running out. His solutions are interesting, and no doubt there are others that both agree with (both of us) and are trying to solve the problem.

So, Chipper - I have a suggestion - go read someone optimistic for some balance, and some optimism, once in a while. I still find Buckminster Fuller comforting...

I have spent the last days being relentlessly optimistic, and arguing with people that I think are making the wrong decisions, or doing the wrong thing over and over again, because of habit.

Yesterday I ran into a lady with a BS in Social work, who was taking a quick two week tour of Central America before returning to America to study for a Masters. Getting more education is a worthy goal, but her reasoning was flawed - there were no jobs for her existing background and school was all she knew how to do. She had no debt but was preparing to take on a lot of it to get her Masters... I strongly encouraged her to continue her wanderjahr, if she could, find something that she loved to do, that paid, and stay out of debt....

Last week I also went and reviewed the current state of the climate change debate, and found no reason to change my opinion that waiting for more data to come in was the right thing. I am especially looking forward to Anthony Watt's report on the effects of bad siting for temperature measurement on the global warming average.

And to balance out the bad news in Honduras...

I read about solar power satellites being funded, and about improving tuna aquaculture, about the accomplishments of legendary engineer Isambard Brunel, and the Age of discovery... and drooled over the upcoming model S all electric sedan, from Tesla Motors. After witnessing 10s of billions of dollars poured down the rathole bailout of America's failed carmakers, seeing Tesla - an American company, based in California, a company trying to build cars people actually want, after being forced to sell part of themselves to Daimler - finally get a loan sufficient to build the plant to create that car, in California - really cheered me up.

And - thanks to the universal information system, predicted, more or less accurately, by Sakharov, in 1974, I was content to believe, once again, that somehow, we'll muddle through.

Labels: history, internet, oceans, solar power satellites, tesla

  ¶ 10:24 AM 0 comments links to this post

  A New "Grand Tour" of the Solar System

What would it take to resurrect something like the long-canceled Hera mission, expanded and revised to support a "Grand Tour" of the nearby asteroids and comets? Hera was intended to visit 3 asteroids in the 3-5 years after launch, and then return to earth. The preliminary analysis for that mission (in 2004!) showed 60 possible interesting trajectories and candidates for exploration.

The detection of new Near Earth Asteroids (NEOs) continues at a rapid pace, a pace which will increase upon completion of the LSST in 2015. The number of NEOs known has at least doubled, perhaps tripled, since 2003. (cite needed, empirical evidence supplied below)

What I have in mind is a series of small spacecraft, say, 4-12 in number, that would each visit 3 asteroids or comets over a 4-6 year period of life. The tour is only "grand" in that we could explore nearly every known asteroid classification, and would probably be considerably cheaper in current dollars than Voyager 1 and 2 were, particularly if a new launcher like the Falcon 1 or 9 was used.

I haven't the foggiest idea how to generate the enthusiasm for this idea, or the funding, aside from writing about it, and... perhaps... since my stock in trade is as a software engineer, maybe I could work towards making broadly available the software for calculating possible courses (trajectories). Perhaps being able to plot a real course for Cruithne, or tens of thousands of other small bodies, like Sulu from Star Trek, would get more people interested and involved. I know the simulations that Bruce Damer did of the Mars Rover were wildly popular, particularly among youth.

All I really know (thus far) about re-solving this problem is from a chat with one of the scientists involved (items in bold are my open questions, italics is what he told me):

The trajectory code used for that analysis was JPL's Midas patched conic trajectory tool.(how does a US citizen get access to Midas? The conic section tool appears to be a commercial product from JPL. Is there an alternative? Is it even necessary?) The tool was automated to run 1000's of combinations of solutions. (How? What happened to the code?) These solutions were reduced using impulsive delta-V as a primary FOM. (OK, that's the easy part) The solutions that filtered to the top were then run through a low thrust trajectory code, segment by segment, to generate a end-to-end low thrust trajectory profile. (Solar-Electric propulsion makes a lot of sense, but old fashioned chemical propulsion might be more sustainable for in-situ refueling, being able to simulate a wider variety of spacecraft (included manned ones) would be useful)

Unfortunately it was rather labor intensive process and the work did not continue. Sigh.

It has taken me a long time to get interested in space again, ever since Trailblazer became ashes over the Pacific. What is making me think about it is that orbit@home is now up and running, and there is an amazingly powerful n-body code out there for CUDA , as well. Perhaps this would make it possible to solve a "New Grand Tour" problem for large numbers of asteroid and comet targets using differing types of spacecraft. For all I know, a 200 dollar card with CUDA and suitable software may well be more powerful than the compute clusters used during the development of Hera. (see left for a lovely example simulation of whole galaxies in collision - surely something like that ought to be able to help plot a few courses in our piddly little solar system?)

In terms of delta-v: there are presently 952 good reasons to go to the asteroids rather than the Moon. Some delta-v reasons are almost twice as good than the moon option.

It's also worth repeating the Deep Impact or Don Quijote missions 3756 times by the same criteria....

2 years ago (more accurately, June 25, 2007), in terms of delta-v, there were only 536 good reasons for the asteroids rendezvous and 1920 for flyby missions.

PS: I note that estimated delta-v via shoemakers method is not a particularly good criterion for justifying asteroid missions over Moon and Mars missions, but it may provide a good starting point for a conversation over the resources required to explore the solar system.

PPS: I really don't want to explain delta-v, please see wikipedia for delta-v, interplanetary superhighway, etc....

PPS: I am rather reluctant to use the "Grand Tour" meme (new name suggestions welcomed!), as the original Grand Tour was expensive, and ultimately it was scaled back to the two Voyager missions. Voyager's results were, and continue to be, spectacular. (I really don't like "Grand Tour" as a name - The Grand Tour meme is being reused for the Cassini mission)



I would really like to see the above chart updated, but given what we know know about the solar system, vs what we knew in 1996, it would be all orange and red inside of Jupiter's orbit, on the scale at which the objects are plotted.

Labels: asteroids, NEO, space, space09

  ¶ 4:42 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Biking that last bit

Chipper posts some pictures and writes about his biking to work:

Most days it adds about 45 minutes to 'bike' (I ride a trike) the last 10 miles vs what it takes to drive. However, when the traffic is particularly abysmal and noxious, I don't know that it takes me any more time at all. Guess why I don't know? I don't know because I am not stuck in it! I have no earthly idea what is going on out there on the roads. As these pics show, this is how I spend that + or - hour that makes up the last leg of my commute.

I had intended to get my ebike to SJDS last november. I had big plans on exploring the area and ultimately settling out of town somewhere, to live more harmoniously with nature and get out of touch with my inner geek, and back in shape. Regrettably, the airline I flew out on wouldn't let me take it, so it has sat in my parents garage since then, awaiting my return.

I miss my bike. I felt it would have been a lower-maintenance alternative to a horse and far better exercise, and I would have explored a lot more of my local area than I have been able to explore on foot. Perhaps this year I'll get it... or a horse.

Labels: biking

  ¶ 10:13 AM 0 comments links to this post

  From a tourist inside Honduras...

A friend writes:

We are all watching and waiting, the biggest thing we are upset about is that nic stopped sending us chocolate milk! haha. Kinda kidding...

It is pretty strange, we are cut off so much from everything here but yet in a way we are right in it. Last I heard the borders and all airlines were closed. Everyday we all try to share whatever that daily piece of info is that we get, more like gossip than news. It sounds as though Venezuela is threatening to cut off our oil supply, and that in general shit may hit the fan. There is a level of anxiety that we are dealing with, but the surreality of where we are can overshadow that so easily. I still spend my days diving, studying and lying in hammocks. Best as I can say, it would be best to get Zalaya out of power and for the US and the rest to back the fuck off because they are causing more problems than they are helping. It would be far more dangerous for me to try to leave and go through the mainland than it is for me to stay here. The military enforced curfew is a pain in the ass and very pointless here. I guess that my main point is that yes I am okay here, for the time being. We are starting to feel the ripples here and yes we are starting to get a bit nervous. I do believe that the best thing for me to do is stay here.

Labels: honduras

  ¶ 8:46 PM 0 comments links to this post

  More Honduras (and Nicaragua) updates

Alexis Argüello, the mayor of the capital of Nicaragua, Managua, is dead.

The front page of La Prensa, the chief opposition newspaper in Nicaragua, has been offline since at least 8AM this morning. However, you can do deep linking (eg, http://www.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2009/julio/01/noticias/portada/) to some pages, for some things. For example, clicking on http://www.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2009/julio/01/noticias/ultimahora/335994.shtml works, while http://www.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2009/julio/01/noticias/ultimahora/335991.shtml returns an error in even connecting to the website.

This, to me, is a sure sign of clumsy censorship or a DoS attack against La Prensa within Nicaragua that is taking place as I write.

The subject of that apparently blocked article and precís are:

Asesor no notó nada extraño en Argüello

Un asesor del alcalde de Managua, Alexis Argüello, aseguró esta mañana que estuvo anoche con él y que no percibió que éste tuviera algún problema emocional. Según los primeros informes extraoficiales, el tres veces campeón mundial de boxeo, se suicidó de un disparo en el pecho poco antes de la dos de la madrugada. "

which, translated, is:

Adviser did not notice anything strange about Argüello

An adviser to the mayor of Managua, Alexis Arguello, said this morning that last night was with him and that he had not felt any emotional problems. According to early unofficial reports, the three times world boxing champion, committed suicide by a shot in the chest shortly before the two in the morning.

The current article, also about Argüello, http://www.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2009/julio/01/noticias/ultimahora/336012.shtml, is also blocked.

News of Alexis Argüello's death has not made the other major newspaper El Nuevo Diario, as yet.

Update: 12:17 PM OK, Nuevo Diario just ran the story (google translation here)

More on this and the Honduran situation in a bit.... this is what I wrote about the crisis over the last few days.


Update 2:15 PM OK, whatever was blocking parts of La Prensa appears to have been lifted.

Labels: honduras, nicaragua

  ¶ 11:06 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Constitutional Crisis in Honduras

I really hate the word "coup". Usually it implies a military takeover, sometimes foreign backed, such as the one that took place in Guatamala in 1954, or the one that toppled Honduras's government in 1963.

What appears to have just happened in Honduras - the ouster of highly disliked (25% approval rating) president Manuel Zelaya - by order of the Supreme Court, Congress, AND the military - does not look very similar to that (at least from first appearances)

For starters, he was replaced by the legal line of succession, Roberto Micheletti, the head of congress, and also a member of Zelaya's own party.

But, the word "coup" rules the day, and the rhetoric, and the debate inside wikipedia is astounding.

The rhetoric is being spewed by a peculiar alliance of just about every other politician in the world - left, right, it doesn't matter. It seems to boil down to: just about everybody holding power can agree on one thing: Arresting (and deporting) a president who clearly is attempting to violate his country's constitution, is wrong.

The irony of that observation is what is compelling me to write today - I confess to being amused by watching each ideology put their individual spin on things:

Xinhua (China), The New York Times (USA), Infowars (USA), Rueters (?) Finding Dulcinea, (EU), and Latin America.... (sorry, I will update these links to make more sense when I have time) AP...

Not to mention the irony of USA President Obama coming to the aid of a world leader that called for the legalization of drugs in order to eliminate the narco-trafficing trade... while he hangs out with the Colombian President, whose country is the source of much of that trade.

The best and most detailed reporting as to the depth of the crisis seems to be taking place in the Wikipedia article on the 2009 Honduran Political Crisis, which starts off by quoting the Constitution of Honduras:

Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution, which forbids any former chief executive from being re-elected President, states that any citizen who proposes reforming this law, and any others who support such a person directly or indirectly, are to immediately "cease carrying out" any public office. The Constitution, however, establishes no process for impeaching or removing a president. Furthermore Article 42, Section 5 of the Constitution states that citizenship is lost for "inciting, promoting or supporting the continuation or the reelection of the President of the Republic." According to the same article, revoking citizenship for this reason requires a court sentence and then a government order ("acuerdo gubernativo").

The intended referendum was rejected by Congress, the attorney general, and the top electoral body, and ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, provoking a serious political crisis in the country.[13] The National Congress passed a law[14] forbidding holding referenda less than 180 days before the next general election; as the next elections are set for 29 November 2009, this invalidates the referendum bid. In addition, the Honduran Constitution expressly forbids amendments or reforms altering presidential terms or allowing re-election.[15]

Congress had begun discussing how to impeach Zelaya but lacked a clear constitutional process to do so.[12] Congress, including most of Zelaya's own party, had voted for an urgent investigation of whether Zelaya had violated the constitution and even whether he was "mentally incapable" to hold office.[16]

(I note that the wikipedia article - several hours after I wrote this - bears little resemblance to the article I first linked to. I wish I'd taken a full snapshot of it then. Among other things, it used to have a translation of the referendum in it.The debate inside wikipedia is also very informative.)

The government refused to print Zelaya's referendum, so he got the ballots done in Venezuela.

His chairman of the joint chiefs refused last week to distribute that referendum. (I guess, after decades of dictators for life, you get a little touchy on the subject of term limits...)

Zelaya fired him.

The Supreme court ruled that an illegal act. So did the Honduran congress. The supreme court ordered Zelaya's arrest... and... he was arrested!

You have an angry and divided country, what are you going to do with a president under arrest?

Lock him in a penthouse suite, like Bernie Madoff? Throw him in a common jail with a roomate named Bubba? Kill him? Have him get pardoned immediately by the likes of a Gerald Ford?

Arrest, deportation, and same day release in a neutral country, like Costa Rica, I don't
know if that was legal or not, by Honduras law. I've been trying to figure out the proper procedure for arresting a president for decades now... but they didn't have a procedure in place for impeachment, much less arrest.

Deportation (and the resultant freedom of movement, ability to organise, and mouth off to the press) seems like a pretty sane alternative to those options, however one with far less than ideal characteristics if you didn't believe that the truth was on your side.

Recent polls show support for Zelaya in Honduras has dropped to around 30 percent in recent months.

What country takes their constitution so seriously as to actually throw out a scoundrel? One accused of trying to import another constitution entirely?

Why, if more countries took their constitutions seriously, the populace might get ideas about their governments actually respecting them. No wonder the world condemnation!

From this outdated American analysis of the Honduras constitution:

"Honduran constitutions are generally held to have little bearing on Honduran political reality because they are considered aspirations or ideals rather than legal instruments of a working government. The constitution essentially provides for the separation of powers among the three branches of government, but in practice the executive branch generally dominates both the legislative and judicial branches of government".

Not this time, apparently, although an analyst says

the action taken against Mr. Zelaya harkens back to a dark period in the region's history, when military coups were common... today, coups are not seen as acceptable under any circumstance and that international pressure likely will prevail.

What I enjoy most, as usual, is the commentary on the news articles, from ordinary people... In this case, running overwhelmingly in favor of the action:

"I am a Honduran citizen who feels extremely proud of the measures take by National Congress, The Supreme Court of Justice and our military forces. Mr. Zelaya had been warned many times that his actions were breaking laws of the constitution. There has been no "coup" in Honduras. Military Forces were simply following orders from the Supreme Court of Justice because Mr. Zelaya refused to back down from his plans. The poll is an illegal act benefiting only Zelaya and no one else. Good riddance!"

"I'm a Honduran resident, we are ok, it's true the situation in my country is not the best, but most of the people support the position here, we DON'T WANT Manuel Zelaya as a president again, during his period he has only been manipulating people, blackmailing ppl, threatening to dismiss state employees if they not support him, and many things that just people that we live in Honduras know...please take a look at the real situation not the lies that he says to the world."

"We're relieved that Zelaya was removed from the presidency. We´ve lived weeks of anguish watching how the ex president of Honduras acting as he was above the law, wondering what would happen to our democracy and to our country. If the President of Honduras thinks that he is above the Constitution, then what happens to the rest of the leaders? Are they above the law as well? Democracy has won, and the intl. community has to listen to the will of the people of Honduras. Don’t victimize Zelaya!"

How this plays out is going to be very interesting.

Update 8AM, Jun 30:

I am not going to change the text of what I wrote last night, although I may go back and clean up a few phrases and find more cites today, in addition to commenting further on this page. I find history changing under my fingers, as what happened in wikipedia in the last 24 hours, somewhat disturbing. The process by which wikipedia goes about that is transparent, open, and fascinating... and like wikipedia, I believe that "when the facts change, so does my opinion", but, in part, my blog is my journal of what I thought, when. Editing what I already wrote does not fit the wikipedia model in that respect.

Although I make it clear in the article and links above that I'm not particularly fond of Zelaya, or the CIA, or coups, or the ideological press, or the treatment of Madoff, and quite a few other things, I would like to re-iterate my main points were, 1) The multiple ironies involved and 2) the role of spin, and (indirectly) meme shifts, which I wrote about extensively in the last American election.

1) Irony

A comment (by a Honduran college student) on the wikipedia talk page put it best:

There should had been a lawful process to kick Zelaya. Without it, we lost the favour of EVERYONE in the world that doesn't live in Honduras. That means we are open to the invasion of nondemocratic countries that have close ties with Zelaya (understand Venezuela). BUT! With the help of every other country. So, democratic people (USA, Mexico, France, etc) will be fighting a democratic war against people that wanted to maintain democracy, and will reinstitute a anti-democratic leader.

Final statement: The problem is that it is easy to recognize armed assaults on the Rule of Law. But, when this Rule of Law is attacked without arms? When it's attacked with corruption, with helding of budget, corruption at the ballots (I know first hand, just, if I said something, they would kill me), and continuism? Why doesn't anybody recognize that, although the FORM of the coup was completely wrong, the REASON of the coup was completely right? Why would they support a unlawful president?"

2) The role of the media, and "spin"

Two competing memes are in play. 1) "coup" - and 2) "the referendum was about allowing the president to be re-elected"

Most newspapers reports have converged on these two memes as shorthand.

The Honduran government disputes the first, as do some bloggers inside the country (even if no-one else outside the country does, 24 hours later), and the second was not the text of the referendum. From that always helpful wikipedia talk page...

“¿Está usted de acuerdo que en las elecciones generales de noviembre de 2009 se instale una cuarta urna para decidir sobre la convocatoria a una Asamblea Nacional Constituyente que apruebe una nueva constitución política?”

Translated: "Do you agree for a Fourth Urn to be installed on the November 2009 general elections in order to decide whether to call or not for a National Constitutional Convention to approve a new Political Constitution?" -- so the question is not: Do you want the current president to be re-elected?

It is interesting to compare DailyKos's (A progressive-liberal) views of
Honduras - and Iran. This article, although not representative of dailykos's views as a whole, was interesting, as were the comments.

More on this in a bit, I need a few more cites from more varying perspectives.

Update: Jun 30, 5:00 PM I haven't had power all day, a major storm hit this morning.....

Update: Midnight A lot has happened today, everything from the UN voting unaminously to endorse Zelaya's continued presidency to multiple protests on both sides, to me losing contact with the one friend I have in Honduras for the last 24 hours, entirely.

Probably the most elequent person inside Tegucigalpa, in her own way, was Figgylicious yelling back at the TV. I keep wondering when or if the MSM will try and follow up on the thousands of blog writers and commenters I've seen typing their hearts out.

Labels: citizen revolt, honduras, meme shift, msm

  ¶ 7:05 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Sunday Space Grabbag

I haven't been writing about space a lot recently. Progress in that field is slow, so I figure that only writing about it once every 3-6 months will suffice. After September it looks to be an exciting time in space again, with the Falcon 9 scheduled to fly, as is a primitive Ares. Rumor has it that SpaceShipTwo will be in drop testing by then too....

This July should be good, with the 5th Falcon scheduled to fly sometime then.

If you prefer to be updated more regularly I highly recommend subscribing to the arocket mailing list, and adding a rss feed or 10 from the blogroll of The chairforce engineer.

Presently there is a lot of political manoeuvring around finding an alternative to Bush's VSE that the latest crop of politicians can put their stamp on. Much seems up for grabs, ranging from outright cancellation of Ares-1, to extending shuttle life, to swapping engines to the SSME in the VSE, to refocusing on getting to Mars via Phobos or the asteroids and comets.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 continues to make steady progress. 6 of the engines have checked out, the first Dragon capsule has been built, and Elon musk has been talking up his story in front of the Augustine commission. (video here)

1) Mike Griffin's departure from NASA occurred 6 months back, and a replacement, Charles Bolden was named. Although the two next-gen R&D projects (Constellation and Ares) are a mess, the rest of NASA is functioning as well as it has in a long time - All Griffin's shuttle missions were great successes. The magnificent Hubble repair mission puts a final feather in the cap of Griffin's NASA, with a second shuttle, ready on the pad for a rescue mission, also an impressive feat. Numerous instrument missions were launched without a hitch, even including Dawn, which was flying with nearly obsolescent hardware. The COTS program, also, appears to be successful.

(For the record, I opposed both the Dawn and the Hubble missions)

Griffin, the technologist, was better than his bean-counting predecessor by a country kilometer. Let's hope his shuttle pilot successor can navigate Congress and future NASA R&D as well as Griffin got our existing space assets to LEO.

2) Buzz Aldrin has been a very busy ex-astronaut lately, publishing a new book, promoting a different vision for space exploration, and even recording a hip-hop song.

Aldrin concludes: "But for this dream to happen, NASA needs to dramatically change its ways. Its myopic Vision for Space Exploration will never get us to Mars. Progressive innovation and enlightened international cooperation will. President Obama and Congress need to set NASA right - and soon."

Aldrin's separate vision for space exploration dovetails more closely with mine (or rather, mine dovetails with his).

3) China - it would take more time today than I have to write about China... try this for updates. They are going to Mars this year, and plan to launch over fifteen satellites this year, too. Aldrin seems far more concerned with Russia than China, for some reason...

4) Europe's ESA launched Herschel, and the first images came back recently, the resolution (right) appears far superior to the American Spitzer telescope.

5) I have been patiently waiting to see if more Apohele asteroids would be confirmed. They are very difficult to detect using our existing methods. In addition to their potential hazard, they appear to be easy to reach from a delta-v perspective, and given their distance from the sun, exploration using solar powered devices appears cheap and effective, although heat is a problem - 163693 Atira, a 2km in diameter asteroid, apparently has a temperature of 323 Kelvin (50 Celsius, 122 degrees F)!

I'd like to see an instrument mission launched, call it: the Inner Solar System Explorer (ISSE), which would look for and at asteroids and dead comets in the region between Venus and Earth, looking back at space from well within Earth's orbit.

Perhaps it would be able to get close-up looks at a few of the hundreds of rocks passing through.

5) Asteroid 2008 TC3 broke up over Africa as expected, but it took a while to find successful pictures of the re-entry. I was hoping we would get more data, but the fragments were found, strung out in a line, by a bunch of volunteers....

Update: While researching more possible points for this blog entry I ran across the Columbia Crew Survival Report.
Given my emotional state at the time, I hadn't bothered to read it when it came out.

I just finished reading it.

The report was a model of clarity, a tour de force of analysis, showing clear advances in the state of the art in debris recovery, computer modeling, and tracking, since the Challenger accident.

Emotionally, I did fine, until I hit the last (400th) page of the report, which had the following logo, which I had never seen before that moment.



AD ASTRA PER ASPERA * SEMPER EXPLORO
To the Stars, through difficulties * Always Exploring

Then I had one last good cry of grief, and determination.

Labels: cots, space, spacex

  ¶ 8:38 AM 1 comments links to this post

  Big waves, bad knees

I have reached the point where my knees are creaking, and back popping, and arms hurting, everytime I go out. My youth is a distant memory... but yesterday was awesome....

After 4 hours of surfing, I got into an intense backside wave, and the board and fins slammed up against my back as the wave took me over the falls, leaving a sizeable set of bruises. First real injury I've had this year except for scrapes and scratches. It could have been much worse.

My knees, however, are shot. My right knee tends to start buckling within an hour, and I'm consistently missing standing up even on easy waves. But with waves this good, if I can't surf, I'll boogie board, and if I can't boogie board, I'll swim, and if I can't swim... hell, I'll drown, but drown happy.

Today, I am stretching and hoping to summon the energy to go out again. The water temperature is perfect, and so is the weather!

Labels: surfing

  ¶ 8:10 AM 2 comments links to this post

  Things I'd like to write

I have quite a backlog...

I'd like to critique Michael Moore's plan to re-invigorate America, particularly action item 3, where he proposes a bullet train that could cross the USA in only 17 hours. A Ford trimotor crossed America that fast in the late 1920s. Oh, the 1920s! Such a wonderful time that was - the gin flowed, the stock market was up, the world was at peace...

I want to talk to the Republican plan for building 100 nuclear power plants in Obama's green energy bill, as what I wrote last year about Liberty Ships still applies. Also, I note nanosolar has been strangely silent lately.

But, first, I want to work up a spreadsheet of projected energy use, both in the US, and worldwide, first, and overlay Japan's land area over America's to serve as an example, and research the history of the Philadelphia->Atlantic City train as well as Acela. That's going to take some time, and isn't a lot of fun.

I'd like to talk more to America's perverse safety culture, which I sort of did a month ago, where people are deathly afraid of swine flu and yet unafraid to drive. People ask me about safety where I live now, and I say that nothing compares to the dangers inherent in surfing, yet, I am not going to stop anytime soon - and I counter - at least there's no nuclear weapons pointed at me...

There's been some interesting developments in global warming lately, but I would really rather talk about the state of the oceans. Actually...

I'd rather be writing a book on happier subjects. Or surfing. Or writing a book about "Everything I know (now) about business, I learned from surfing", but the high quality photographic plates required would make it non-publishable and in web format, it would be boring... maybe if I wrote it in "Johnathan Livingston Seagull" fashion it would work... I need a waterproof recorder, all the best stuff I think up vanishes by the time I get to shore....

I also recently found the text to my talk, last year, in Australiaon Living autonomously in an ever more connected world which was one of the bigger things I've written recently and I'd like to bang that into shape for publication, as I went extemporaneous in the talk with a great digression that needs to go back in the text....

I'd also like to talk to "the last great CPU war - ATOM vs ARM" which is beginning now, with arm cortex A8 or A9 processors coming in on the bottom end below Atom and moving up...

But, anyway, if I get around to it, maybe I'll write some or all of the above in the coming weeks. Maybe that last one I could get paid for....

Labels: absurdity, disease, energy, environment

  ¶ 7:26 AM 9 comments links to this post

  looking for a new laptop, fruitlessly

My 1.6Ghz Athlon 64 laptop has finally become unusable. Half the display is permanently washed out, three keys no longer work, the power connector is fragile... and the true killer is that one of the pins on the PCMCIA interface is broken. The laptop has sat on a shelf for nearly a year, serving as a sometime fileserver and CD burner.

It was perfectly adequate for my needs, for years - the sole purpose "mahal" had was basically to be a 12 track 96khz audio field recorder. I have been doing recordings, instead, with a 2 track zoom h4 - which works well but makes it impossible to record individual instruments.

I went looking for a new laptop a few months back.

I am in awe of what I can get from Dell to custom build for about 640 dollars - a Linux 2.2Ghz dual core laptop, 6MB of cache, with 4GB ram, 15 inch screen, 7200 RPM hard disk, bluetooth, wifi card, my own choice of color...

But:

The problem with buying anything new is that I have a 400 dollar 24 track PCMCIA audio card (a RME-multiface), and nobody makes PCMCIA laptops anymore! The world has gone to express card - (and a lot don't even have that) - and the express card version of the multiface costs 500 dollars!!

There are express card to pcmcia card converters out there. They are only 60 bucks or so. The problem with these is that they make something that already protrudes out of a case a lot, protrude a lot more.

I mix, edit and overdub on a hefty quad-core box so I don't need much besides that PCMCIA slot and a fast 40GB hard disk that can keep up with that much audio when I'm at a gig.

My old laptop has a perfectly good 80GB 7200 RPM IDE hard disk I could reuse...

... and nobody is making new laptops that use IDE, anymore, either.

I have a 1GB stick of ram that I could retask, too... if ram standards hadn't moved on...

... as well as a known to work well with linux mini-pci wireless card...

Aside from a PCMCIA slot, working cpu, screen and keyboard, I don't need a working dvd or cd drive, or hard disk, graphics quality circa 1998 would be fine, don't need anything faster than a 64 bit capable processor at 1.6Ghz, and only need a battery that lasts for 15 minutes - enough to get through a power flicker, but not enough to sit under a tree and work...

You'd kind of hope that you could get something like that, cheap, on the used market.

You'd be wrong.

I know my requirements are unusual but I just spent a fruitless hour searching
on the web on various craigslists.

Almost universally, the laptops have slow hard disks...
Almost universally, the ads boast of "freshly installed Windows XP", which I don't give a damn about.
Almost universally, the laptops have minimal ram. Getting more ram of the appropriate type is a pain in the arse.
Almost universally, the ads don't list the availability of the PCMCIA slot (I can look it up if the model number is supplied)
I am the only one, it seems, that cares about 64 bit processing, (and it is a requirement I could drop, but the rest of my machines are all running 64 bit, and have been for over 5 years - I do like having lots of cache - vs lots of clockspeed - however)

And, almost universally, even 3-4 year old laptops are costing 240 dollars and up.

Heck, mac G3s are going for that. I confess to being tempted to get a G3 or G4 mac just because I like having unusual processors around, but haven't found one that had a PCMCIA slot, either!

Admittedly most of used laptops I've seen on craigslist are the nicer ones, like the lenovo T series, that I have always lusted for - (I HATE TOUCHPADS, and in my work environment (a busy music gig) touchpads are actually dangerous to your recording as the slightest brush with one might click on something damaging... I remember my old 486 butterfly keyboard laptop fondly)

I know my needs are unusual. I also know that just about everybody that bought a laptop in the last decade, suffers unnecessarily from inadequate ram, and few bother to upgrade, not understanding that hooking your CPU directly to the hard disk is a bad thing...

So maybe it is easier to just bite the bullet and get a shiny new laptop. But it irks me. Out there, somewhere, I'm sure, are tens of thousands of laptops that are too hard to repair and upgrade, that meet my needs... that someone is planning to put in a landfill.

I tried building a suitable box out of an atom mini-itx - either 64 or 32 bit, it was dismally slow and unusable... I am totally unimpressed with the atom...

What to do? I guess I'll keep searching google and craigslist... and maybe kvetching here will help.

Labels: computers, laptops

  ¶ 5:49 AM 3 comments links to this post

  Thermodynamics, cap and trade

Our energy choices are ruthlessly ruled, not by political judgments, but by the immutable laws of thermodynamics.

The long term goal with cap and trade is „80 by 50‟– an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. Let‟s do the easy math on what „80 by 50‟ means to you, using Utah as an example. Utah‟s carbon footprint today is about 66 MM tons of CO2 per year. Utah‟s population today is 2.6 MM. You divide those two numbers, and the average Utahan today has a carbon footprint of about 25 tons of CO2 per year. An 80% reduction in Utah‟s carbon footprint by 2050 implies a reduction from 66 MM tons today to about 13 MM tons per year by 2050. But Utah‟s population is growing at over 2% per year, so by 2050 there will be about 6 MM people living in this state. 13 MM tons divided by 6 MM people = 2.2 tons per person per year. Under „80 by 50‟ by the time you folks reach my age you‟ll have to live your lives with an annual carbon allowance of no more than 2.2 tons of CO2 per year.

Question: when was the last time Utah‟s carbon footprint was as low as 2.2 tons per person per year? Answer: probably not since Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley (1847).

Labels: global warming

  ¶ 6:18 AM 10 comments links to this post

  Truth about Nicaragua is hard to come by

I recently almost convinced an old friend to come visit me in Nicaragua. Then she read the report of the US state department and wrote me:

Holy sh*t. I think you left a few things out......

At one level, I'm happy. It seems likely that my adopted home will stay untrammeled by American tourists for quite some time more, yet. It will remain a common destination for Canadians, Swiss, Australians, Chinese, Germans, and Frenchmen, all of whom are more interesting and adventurous than Americans are these days... All the same... I would have liked to have seen her.

This report is from the same state department that built Nicaragua up to being a communist threat to the entire western hemisphere in the 80s. The same department that calls what happened in the 80s a "civil war" and ignores what happened in the 150 years prior to that or even the previous 2 decades.

The truth is a great deal more nuanced. It's why I came here. I wanted not to learn about the war, but how Nicaragua achieved peace, and how it was struggling towards a better (or worse) future, after the horrors of most of the 20th century. My answer - at least thus far - is that it is better in some ways, after two years spent here, and worse in others.

The state dept makes generalizations about the entire country that only apply to specific parts...

That link is a much more scary advisory than the one I read just two years ago, and strikes me as politically motivated in several parts. I would love to write one about the USA that used some of the same phrasing... NYC can be described using exactly the same terminology throughout and even worse statistics (NYC has Wall Street! Noooo criminals to be found there, nooo)

Let me make a few generalizations in return.

Managua is like Washington DC, only hotter, and poorer. More people are armed with machetes than handguns, however, and there aren't actually a whole lot of machetes in the capital, and most of those there are actually in use, trimming hedges, unlike the handguns. Yes there is a lot of petty theft everywhere. It's a poor country. I'm told violence is on the upswing. So is civilization. Being white and going out after dark in parts of Manauga is a bad idea, just like it is in Harlem, but it does have a thriving nightclub scene all the same. I don't think the state department guys ever get out of Managua. Or out to nightclubs.

I know over a half dozen people that have been robbed. In most cases it was avoidable or an inside job. When I lived in cities in the US I knew more people that had been robbed, in less time. When I lived deep in the woods, in Felton, Ca, for 5 years, I felt comfortable leaving the doors unlocked, so comfortable I would actually lose my keys for months at a time. Until I got robbed.

The economy is mostly on an upswing in Managua. There's a lot of outsourced work, particularly in voip and textiles. Lately, tourism where I live, San Juan Del Sur (SJDS) has been down, however.

Let's take apart some sentences of the above state department report:

"In 2008, a U.S. citizen was critically injured in a gang-motivated drive-by shooting that occurred in the San Judas area. Another U.S. citizen was kidnapped and left for dead in the Villa Fontana area of Managua."

* In the entire state of Nicaragua, about the size of New York, with about the population of New York City, *two* US citizens in one year had a gang related problem. And New York City had? Per day?

Several U.S. citizens traveling by bus from San Juan del Sur to Managua have reported being victimized by fellow women travelers who offered to assist them in locating and/or sharing a taxi upon arrival in Managua. In all cases, upon entering the taxi, the U.S. citizens have been held at knife-point, robbed of their valuables, and driven around to ATM machines to withdraw funds from their accounts.

Most taxi drivers are actually darn friendly and most shared trips are fun and end without incident. Everybody that plays fair is very annoyed at those that hurt the country. I've met a few taxi drivers that threatened violence - against those that robbed or abused their fares - if they could just catch them. People here are proud of their country and at the same time discouraged by all the bad things that do happen. A lot of people are extra nice, not just because of compensating for that, but because they are nice to start with.

Let me give you a story - a 5-6 months back pair of german tourists left their luggage behind on a bus, and assumed it had been stolen. They reported it to the police (I got involved because they stopped at my house all upset, and needing someone that spoke English. I helped them find the police station) - who called the bus company - who found the luggage still on the bus, although it was 100km away by then. They returned it to the bus stop in Rivas... and the Police picked up and returned the luggage to their hotel!

"The climate is hot and humid, with the “summer” dry season running mid-November through mid-May and the “winter” rainy season running from mid-May through mid-November."

* This is more true of the East coast than the West, in the West the biggest part of the rainy season stars in late august and continues through late november. Humidity here never gets as high as florida or nj, except right before a storm. Also they have winter and summer kind of mistranslated. Nica's on this side of the equator, so summer and winter have similar (tho milder and lacking snow) temperature variations as US summer and winter. The seasons here are described as either invierno o verano. (rainy or dry)

"Nicaragua lacks tourist infrastructure. Except in the cities and major thoroughfares, most roads are unpaved. Public transportation is unsafe and there are no sidewalks"

Mostly true. Ortega has fixed the roads between SJDS and Managua, however. I'll give him that. With increased mobility has come better food supplies, better transport, and increased crime along the highways. SJDS, where I live, is the closest thing to a tourist town there is in Nicaragua and is much nicer than Tamerindo, just across the border in Costa Rica. I like to imagine it is like Sea Isle City, NJ in the 1920s, only with internet, good waves and cars with slightly better suspensions.

The rest of the roads are unpaved. That's what a 4WD is for. People actually NEED SUVs here, a snorkle is a good idea, too. There are sidewalks in SJDS and in most cities except portions of Managua - but I strongly point out sidewalks are kind of unimportant when the primary mode of transport is foot or horse. It usually is pretty safe to walk right in the middle of a street here, and stop there to have a conversation. It gets to be a habit, even. That habit is a dangerous one to take to the states.

Public transportation is unsafe everywhere I've ever lived. Here however most of the mortal dangers lie in the Expresso buses which drive at insanely fast speeds and have a tendency to roll over.

"U.S. citizens are cautioned that strong currents and undertows off sections of Nicaragua's Pacific coast have resulted in a number of incidents of drowning. Powerful waves have also resulted in broken bones, and injuries caused by sting rays are not uncommon in popular resort bathing areas. Warning signs are not posted, and lifeguards and rescue equipment are not readily available. U.S. citizens contemplating beach activities in Nicaragua's Pacific waters should exercise appropriate caution."

Hazard a guess at how many people drowned in California last year? With all that gear available? How about New Jersey?

(Actually, two people drowned on the pacific coast (try to remember, this country is the size of New York State) here last month. I was lucky to not have been one of them. Them waves were Biiiggg. I had a lot of fun.)

"Hiking in volcanic or other remote areas can be dangerous and travelers should take appropriate precautions. Hikers should have appropriate dress, footwear, and sufficient consumables for any trek undertaken. Individuals who travel to remote tourist or other areas for hiking activities are encouraged to hire a local guide familiar with the terrain and area. In particular, there have been instances of hikers perishing or losing their way on the volcanoes at Ometepe Island. While they may look like easy climbs, the terrain is treacherous and heavily overgrown. "

* Well, duh. Darwin was here. Ometepe is a bitch of a climb. A guide is always a good idea. I love the placement of the "or" there. Thousands have probably lost their way. Died? No Sé.

"Earthquakes are common, but the last major earthquake, which destroyed the city of Managua, occurred in 1972. "

* How one can hold in your head "common", and "1972" and "Managua" all at the same time and parse out the fear is a good question. Gawd. One major earthquake in 47 years is "common"? Building your capital city right on top of a major fault line (and not moving it afterwards) is "common"?

"Although extensive de-mining operations have been conducted to clear rural areas of northern Nicaragua of landmines left from the civil war in the 1980s, visitors venturing off the main roads in these areas are cautioned that the possibility of encountering landmines still exists."

* Thanks for all the help... USA and USSR - The USSR at least has an excuse for not cleaning up all the mess - that country collapsed before Nicaragua found peace. The article is very true in that the northernmost, easternmost part of Nicaragua is a gawdawful mess of humidity, poverty, multiple hurricanes, and the remnants of a war never cleaned up. It's on the opposite end of the country from where I live. I wouldn't live there - not because of the landmines, but because of the hurricanes. I hate hurricanes. Where I live the hurricanes never cross. Nor are there earthquakes.

"The U.S. Embassy warns U.S. citizens to exercise extreme caution when driving at night from Managua’s International Airport and to avoid traveling the Tipitapa-Masaya Highway at night."

I completely agree with this comment. It's not the potential stoppages by random criminal elements that worry me - there are no lights on the highway and driving at night you are likely to run into an errant ox, major pothole, or a drunken bicyclist, all of which are more dangerous to you than the criminals.

"U.S. citizens should exercise particular caution when visiting the following beaches: Maderas, Marsella, Yankee, Coco, and Remanso. "

* this happens to be all the local beaches. 1) The criminals making Marsella and Madaras a problem were arrested several months ago. So far as I know there have been no incidents since. Remanso remains a problem... I haven't been to yankee recently, except by boat... In all but a very few cases it's just someone's camera getting taken. The problem at remanso does include guys with machetes...

Sure... notice to ALL TOURISTS - stay away from the beaches... especially Remanso! More waves for the locals, that way, methinks, for a while longer.

"Police coverage is extremely sparse outside major urban areas, particularly in Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast autonomous regions."

The east coast has great diving but that is about it. I've never been there and don't intend to go unless with a group....

"Municipal elections took place across Nicaragua on November 9, 2008. Violent demonstrations followed as opposition groups questioned the authenticity of the results. Activities observed during protests included but were not limited to tear gas, rubber bullets, setting off fireworks, rock-throwing, tire burning, road blocks, bus and vehicle burning, and physical violence between law enforcement and protestors and between political rivals. "

And this differed from the American election, how? Oh, yea, America limits demonstrators to "free speech zones"... but I was talking to a cab driver in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and he said people were shooting off AK-47s in parts of that city in celebration of Obama's victory...

I incidentally wrote about this here. The election was intense, people really got into both the sandinistas (FSLN) and ALN - emotions ran high, there were many fierce debates - and there was much evidence of fraud afterwards - and the outcome was unresolved but gradually faded to a dull sense of discontent among the lost. Perhaps next election, everyone thinks, and resume their discussions of the more important things in life - music, sports, sex, and food.

I stayed on after the election because, well, freedom of speech remains far more sacrosanct than, say, in China. People really do say what they think of Ortega, and say it loudly. The newspapers are remarkably biased in multiple directions and seem without censorship... or rigorous fact checking. It's entertaining, and I look forward to seeing how the next election turns out.

...

I am really rather scared to read the state dept's report on Mexico... or anywhere in Central America... hell, New York City...

Labels: nicaragua

  ¶ 9:58 PM 2 comments links to this post

  Focus

The real world serves to distract. I just was immensely distracted by Hamming's speech on achieving greatness.

Money quote:

"You've got to work on important problems. I deny that it is all luck, but I admit there is a fair element of luck. I subscribe to Pasteur's ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' I favor heavily what I did. Friday afternoons for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not important. I found in the early days I had believed `this' and yet had spent all week marching in `that' direction. It was kind of foolish. If I really believe the action is over there, why do I march in this direction? I either had to change my goal or change what I did. So I changed something I did and I marched in the direction I thought was important. It's that easy. "

All the stuff I've worked on over the years - wireless - the web - embedded linux - handheld computers - cell phones - music creation technology - have become solved problems. Voip? Solved problem - although not solved how I would wish.

When I quit the computer field there wasn't anything left interesting to think about.

I am still trying to get into another field entirely, but over the past year...

The past year I've spent thinking about new problems... mostly related to parallelism. Moore's law has hit a wall. Serialised coding is dead, although there is plenty left to be done, and writing parallel code, and/or working with clusters of machines, is a achingly hard problem. I've explored languages - new (erlang) and old(LISP), English and Spanish, and the history of computation itself, looking for some avenue, some lever, to leverage the new methodology. Almost nothing but dead ends already plumbed by others... Almost.

I've gotten more abstract thought done on a surfboard in the past year than in the previous decade... I just wish I had some means to write those thoughts down while still drifting on the ocean - (waterproof recorder?) - because by the time I rattle home in the back of a mud covered jeep often only the outline of a glimmering insight remains.

I think I've absorbed enough mathematics and vector architecture specifics to improve performance on one problem I care about deeply by 20-200% on an x86_64 and several hundred % on a true vector architecture such as CUDA. I hope to have some tangible results soon. The karmic royalties on that ought to justify my continued existence for decades.

I shelved work on another project last year, due to lack of a solid cryptographic solution, that I might be able to resume after some more of my parallel explorations prove out. It's hard work... but I have to say my office environment is currently rather ideal.

In other news... (I haven't not been writing here for a reason, and the above and the below are it, I barely even read email anymore and don't even have a phone - and am on a seemingly endless diet of rice and beans and pollo... but although I scrape by with an ever diminishing bank account the seemingly endless free time to think about and focus on the big problems seems worth it)

I have been working on a new CD! Here is the current mix of the best song off of it: Backyard.

I'm playing bass on the whole record. I never would have imagined doing that before. I was always a piano player.

Be back in a month or two. Maybe.

Labels: math, music

  ¶ 6:53 PM 1 comments links to this post

  Pithy comment

OK, ok, so I've been away for a while. Doing this was hard. So are several other things I'm doing. But I couldn't help but notice:



Oh, yea, Terry Childs is still in jail, and his incompetent management isn't.

While girl genius has something profound to say, some days the justice system down here has some appeal to me.

If you get into trouble (say, a car accident), the police tend to throw everybody involved in jail - at least overnight - and sort it out in the next morning (or in a couple of days, on a weekend)

This provides strong incentives to both parties to work their differences out before it becomes a government matter. It also balances the difference between the powerful and the powerless to some extent (regrettably bribery is common here), and ensures quicker justice, whatever it may be, for all.

As simply killing off the powerful idiots is not an option, locking them up might help to keep them from annoying others.

Labels: banking, economy

  ¶ 7:50 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Earthship Pitaya Festival Feb 9th

Tired of coping with the rain and snow up north?

The Earth Ship Pitaya Festival is on February 9th, in warm sunny Nicaragua, next to an Earthship just outside of San Juan Del Sur (SJDS).

Featuring Matty Powell, Sam & the Harlequins, DJ Johnny G, Son De Oriente, and a horde of bands to be named later.

Cya there!

Labels: music, nicaragua, sjds

  ¶ 1:27 PM 0 comments links to this post

  For Instance

This week's brain exercise:

Translate "Snapshot" to Spanish. A "Snapshot" takes a picture of the system as it currently stands.

The literal translation of that word to Spanish is "Foto", which rather strongly implies that you are taking a picture of... something...., rather than taking a picture of the system as it currently stands. It's more like bookmarking your work. Bookmark is a good word, but it is overloaded elsewhere in the program.

So the original translation of "Snapshot" was "Capturar instancuea de sesin", with a garbage character that made it unclear where the accent went. Snapshot is a nice, cool, word, man, it says a lot in only two syllables...

It gets weirder though, when you crack open the dictionary and wonder what instancea means. The word doesn't exist. "Instantáneo" does have "snapshot" as one of those meanings... so perhaps it's a direct translation. I don't know. It's short. Short is good.

You praise poedit for it's multi-lingual spell checker, and move onto the ...

wait .... what's this other word? instancia

Application form
Or Instancias de - At the request of

so even a mild idiom like, "For instance" can mistranslate to "para Application form"??

No wonder wars start.

and your eye falls across all the other "i" words on the page. instantar, intratable,

... inválido...

And then Angel tells you that you could have a feminine form for Instantáneo, Instastánea. Is a "static picture of what you are working on" male or female?

And you slam the book down ...

OK, it's feminine. I don't know why. She explains it via a tautology. OK, time to move on...

Desconectar.

Connectar. I have it so I can type these finicky little accent characters on my keyboard with the right-alt key, since it seems like nearly every word has them. Heck you hit this key more than space.... space should get split at least in half, maybe thirds (one for backspace)...

Desconectar

The word "mapping" doesn't exist in the mac dictionary. It does in the internet. Mapping. Deep word...

Desconectar

Bus... How the hell the 7th definition of this got mapped to "Bus" is beyond me. Computers. a circuit that connects the CPU with other devices in a computer.

Labels: ardour

  ¶ 6:10 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Klaatu barada nikto

Two years ago, after struggling for several years with my health, outsourcing, battling with insane laws, lawyers, and greedy corporations, and coping with the bile accumulated from eight years of hatred for my country's politics (this includes Clinton's last two years), I got fed up.

I finally threw in the towel on my profession, and lost hope for my country.

I found a place to live cheap, and decided to enjoy what time I/we had left with all the gusto I could muster. I was awfully tired and ill. It was a good time to go on strike rest.

I surfed one hell of a lot. Studied Spanish. Traveled. I tried to get married (twice), and ultimately settled on embracing bachelorhood to its fullest. I wrote a lot. I learned a lot of music. I helped create a live music scene that continues to expand... I saw that Ron Paul had correctly foreseen the coming calamity, and followed him for a while...

And I didn't write a single line of code. (well, I did tune a few bits with david rowe)

For a while, all that worked for me. Yet I kept remembering that "despair is a sin", and "for evil to triumph all that is required is for good men to do nothing". I played mind games with myself, rendering the latter comment as "For good to triumph all that is required is that evil men be rendered powerless" - which ties better back into my overall philosophy - but ultimately...

I found myself compelled to create software once again.

Slowly, on my own time, at my own pace, I have been doing work of the quality I desire, at the pace that I need to work at. I'm perhaps 1/20th as productive as I used to be, and half as competent, and probably too perfectionist to be employable at it. Yet - some of the results of my work just made the Linux kernel, and some more will end up in ardour soon, and others stand alone. It has been a worthwhile struggle. I do retain hope that I can find an engineering niche again due to the cost differential between me in California and me here, and a non-native english speaker in China... but I don't really care - it's a rewarding hobby - and I'd rather pursue Quality - as Rob Persig would define it - than profit, any day. I think I can keep the lights on and the bills paid pretty easily now.

Today, Barack Obama is president of the United States.

I am impressed. Obama, by his mere existence, can clear up some of the most terrible cracks in the American conciousness and ideals in a way no one else can.

I pray that he can also reduce the stucked-ness that America has been plagued with for the last decade.

I didn't vote for him, but, weirdly, I can date my returned urge to code back to the day he was elected. I wasn't planning on coding again, I was (still am) working towards making a modest living in another field entirely....

I think it will take a decade or more to reverse the changes the last three decades has wrought. Certainly the next two years are going to be pretty bad. I still feel that it is probable, however, that America's decline is unstoppable - the decline in quality jobs, living standards, ethics, education, and morality, will not halt, but accelerate, and the Far East take the center stage. Maybe they will do a better job with their day in the sun.


Hyperinflation may well set in next year - or at least, strain the currencies still slaved to the dollar.

I think housing prices will continue to plunge for another year too. (and this is a good thing, housing had become unaffordable for too many, including myself - houses are also too big, according to our current demographics, but that's a tale for yet another unpublished article)

There's no sign that Obama is capable of chopping away the deadwood, or setting fire to it. It does look possible he can plant a new forest or two. Governments can create markets. Look at the market for war-making, for example...

I still have issues with resuming my profession - Terry Childs is still in jail - and his incompetent management isn't.

Fear of the competent man still reigns, in scenes that remind me very much of the final parts of Atlas Shrugged.

I was reminded of that particular novel a lot in the last few years. I was spending most of my time being tasked with avoiding copyright and patent laws and seemingly spending endless days with lawyers, and not doing what I loved, engineering. More than once, I quit because what I was doing was ethically or legally challenging. In part, I came to Nicaragua because I hoped CAFTA wouldn't pass (it did, but remains mostly unimplemented), so I could be left alone to create once again.

Last year, I struggled with writing a piece about why I was not a libertarian, but believed they pulled in the right direction. Recently I found part of the answer in something Jerry Pournelle wrote:

Atlas Shrugged shows capitalists overwhelmed by government regulators who don't understand how things work and eventually, which trying to assure fair play, make it impossible for the market to work.

Alas, a slave market shows where unregulated capitalism will go if left to itself.

For two thousand years political philosophers have known that good government consists of a mix, and that maximum freedom can only be obtained through mechanisms to assure that freedom. 'That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed'

Apparently no one remembers any of this. Miss Rand didn't; her unregulated capitalists were still decent men and women.

I am glad to have escaped the slave market.

Some things cheer me up, a lot.

Take, for example, the resurgence of Philadelphia sports - the Phillies winning the world series - and the plucky Eagles first, crushing the Cowboys a few weeks back, and then almost making the Superbowl with comeback after comeback in every game since - the last quarter of the last game was seemingly designed to make a Rocky fan weep every two minutes.

Or, SpaceX building the Falcon 9 rocket from scratch before NASA could even demonstrate a prototype of their own - and getting a contract for it. It's on the pad now. I get choked up about how it represents the America I once believed in every time I look at it. And I remember that Elon Musk is actually from South Africa, yet still believes in the American dream.

Or, Microsoft and Novell engineers slaving - together! - over the Silverlight code over the last few days so that people running on a PowerPC or under x86/x86_64 Linux could watch the inaugural.

People working towards being united, rather than divided.

One of the most galling things about the Bush regime was that, after election on the thinnest of margins, he then proceeded to rule as if he had an absolute majority.

I'm comforted by the idea of a new president that reaches for a cigarette, rather than a bible, when he needs contemplation - a president that might reach for technology, rather than weaponry, to achieve his goals. A uniter, rather than a divider, that actually may be one.

It is a nice thing to hope for, and although I can't gush over him like many of my friends, or Andrew Sullivan, or Doc Searls... Barack Obama does give me hope for a better tomorrow - or at least, a slightly less worse one. I'm willing to give him his shot, for now.

I intend to hang up this blog - and the prolefeed - and blogging in general - completely for a few months while I work on some code and some spanish. Maybe when I come back things will truly have changed.

"If nothing else, we are committed to failing in a new way." - Elon Musk

I didn't actually manage to see Obama's inaugural speech, though I read it. It didn't say a whole heck of a lot, really, that hasn't been said before... but it said it well.

However, in seeing pictures of the Mall today, I couldn't help but be reminded of the following:



not this part of the movie, in particular, but the sense of imminent doom, removed by the words,
Klaatu Barada Nikto...

(didn't they remake that movie recently?)

Labels: america, Barack Obama, election 2008, nicaragua, Ron Paul

  ¶ 4:44 AM 3 comments links to this post

  Feliz Año Nuevo

to everyone... and all that.

While the rest of the world struggled, this was a very good year for me. Arguably the best I've had a very long time...

Last year at this time, I was flying to New Zealand. I spent a few weeks there (loved it) and then a few months traveling Australia (highlight - hacking with David Rowe and linux.conf.au), Malaysia and Hong Kong, then a brief stop to visit my friends in California, and then back to Nicaragua, where I surfed every other day and lost weight and gained friends and a deep tan...

In the coming year... I don't plan to go anywhere but to the beach. Well, maybe, come September, I'll go somewhere.

Workwise, I have some audio code here and there to finish, (an odd Christmas present was hearing my tranzport and alphatrack drivers went into the linux-staging tree), and some stuff I can't talk about...

...AND a steady gig two-three nights a week. I hope a (couple) record(s) come out of it.


I plan to work much more heavily on my Spanish... and turn off the prolefeed,

There were times in my life where I would have sneered at such a plan - so unambitious! - but to hell with that, I hope to sit out the troubles that the world will have next year - with style - and that's all I'm aiming for.

I hope that next year isn't going to be as bad for everyone else as I fear, and for now

Happy New Year

Labels: nicaragua

  ¶ 3:55 PM 2 comments links to this post

  2:30 AM wake up call

It's 2:30AM.

And there is a brass band on the corner.

And a parade.

The advance men set off fireworks on my doorstep. They must have saved up all year for the first one. The KA lifted me off the bed 6 inches and the BOOM plastered me against the wall. My ears are still ringing. As are numerous car alarms.

I am trying to relax and get into a Nicaraguan Christmas. I went to bed immediately after seeing the "Grinch who stole Christmas" with a pair of friends (who made cookies, and a Christmas tree out of a surfboard)

Oh, man, they are shooting rockets off every few blocks! I'm told the whole purpose of this exercise is to wake people up for church (it succeeds with vigor), but the paraders don't look like they've been to bed yet...

Right now, I rather emphasize with the Grinch. His sudden conversion to sainthood at the end was unbelievable. Music make someone's heart 3 times bigger? Hah. Maybe 2 times, max... briefly. I keep reflecting on all the (delightfully) bad things he did earlier in the movie... can't help but think he couldn't reform overnight...

Another string of explosions, more distant, blast out.

I envision the movie:

GRINCH II - The Day After
where the Grinch slogs up to his mountain abode with a brutal hangover from too much egg-nog, and remembers the real reason he hated the noise and confusion and jocularity of Christmas... he comes back down the hill, this time, armed with an AK-47, and only...

... Rambo, home on leave, can stop him.

... Rambo crouches behind a chimney, taking potshots at the Grinch's sleigh while it careens around a snowman... his machine gun bullets explode up the snowman's front, leaving a decapitated white mess behind...

... the Grinch fires back with his AK-47, stitching a line of bullets up someones' Christmas tree, exploding the balls and blasting away the cute gingerbread ornaments in the blink of an eye.

Rambo leaps from one house to another, slipping on a tin roof and dragging down a string of lights as the Grinch's wild firing through a window turns little Annie Who, all of two years old, into fertilizer. Her sister Blu Who, takes a shot through the chest, and she wakes up both screaming and spitting blood. She faints, holding her hands agonizingly between her breasts in supplication...

The town is quiet now... Is Rambo gone? Is the Grinch gone? Will Blu Who survive? Will a Who avenge her splintered sister?

Silence settles in. Even the dogs and chickens are mute. Off in the distance, Howler monkeys resume howling...

[... to be continued... maybe... after the fireworks stop. Maybe I'll go to church. I am, for sure, wide awake now, and have a few sins to confess, starting with this one ]

Labels: nicaragua, sjds

  ¶ 12:36 AM 2 comments links to this post

  Not dead, only resting

I'm not dead, only resting. I'd left the country for a few weeks and got out of the habit of writing in english - or reading... and I'm way behind on email... and frankly so many things are going wrong for me and the world that I would just rather just ignore the world for a while.

Take the auto industry bailout - or the 22% decline of the dollar against the yen - or the increasing likelihood of hyperinflation next year - or any of a dozen environmental disasters... please?

There are too many other things to do that provide balance to me, than pay attention to the news. I've been working on some good audio software... and I've been gigging 3 nights a week - which was always my dream for retirement - covering songs like "Proud Mary", and "Coming into Los Angeles", "She caught the Katy", and a dozen others that I grew up on...

I have a few stories on my voice recorder stacked up that I'll get up here sooner or later, one's a conversation with a cab driver in Fort Lauderdale that described the celebration of a downtrodden neighborhood there to Obama's election - it wasn't all that different from the Sandinista election - except it featured AK-47s instead of rocket launchers.

So my apologies for the lack of posts or responses to email. I'll get back on top of things sooner or later. Feliz Navidad, in advance....

Enjoy life while you can.

Labels: sjds

  ¶ 6:58 AM 2 comments links to this post