The Moving Process Continues...

As I mentioned yesterday, we are continuing to move into our new house. And as we move more and more stuff, we are discovering more and more about the house.

Remember how on Friday, I mentioned finding an old surveyor's tape? Well, we have now also found a set of old ice tongs. You know, the kind that was used when everyone had an icebox instead of a refrigerator.



There are all kinds of things that we are finding all around the house. A lot of it is total crap, but some of the things (like the ice tongs) are actually pretty interesting. I have also found some old-style nails:



It kind of makes me wonder what else we're going to find as we complete the myriad of projects that are under way in this house.

Memorial Day Weekend Weddings

I had a pretty busy weekend. In addition to partially moving into a new house, we attended a wedding.



Weddings are always more fun when the participants are wacky. Let's see...

• The groom bought himself a one-way ticket to The Land of Ridicule by wearing a kilt during his ceremony


• It was a Catholic ceremony, where the music was played by... bagpipes.


• The mother of the bride was dressed very elegantly, complete with a set of really nice heels... that lit up when she stepped.

Needless to say, we had a great time. Friends of the group may be interested in seeing the pictures I have posted to Flikr [flickr.com].

Metric-English Tape Measure?

As we're cleaning all of the areas of our new house [fluggart.com] and learning all about it, we have also discovered a few surprises here and there. They often include little items that the previous owner left in the house, for one reason or another.

One of those little surprises was an old measuring tape:



It's kind of cool looking, so we didn't throw it out. At some point, we actually needed to measure one of the bedrooms to make sure that something would fit into it, but I hadn't actually brought my toolbox with me, so I didn't have a measuring tape. But then we remembered that we had found one in the house. So, we retreived it and started measuring.

I immediately noticed that there was something wrong with it:



First of all, there are units that look like inches, except that every 10 of those, there is what looks like a foot marker. So, it reads 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-51. My first thought was that it just listed tens of inches. But then I noticed that each "inch" was divided into 10, instead of into 8 or 16, like a "normal" English measuring tape.

Apparently, this is a decimal inch [wikipedia.org] measuring tape. Each foot is divided into 10 decimal-inches, and each of those is divided into 10 decimal-somethingorothers. The Wikipedia entry includes the following paragraph:

"In the 19th century, Sweden devised a way into the metric world. First, in 1855–1863 the existing "working inch" was changed into a "decimal inch" which was 1/10th foot or approximately 0.03 metres. Proponents argued that a decimal system simplifies calculations, but having two different inch measures turned out to be so complicated that in 1878–1889 it was agreed to introduce the metric units. However, the decimal inch survived in some building construction trades, and decimal fractions (tenths, hundredths, thousandths) of the foot are still used in land surveying."

So, it's probably a surveyor's tape measure, which is exactly what it looks like. Unfortunately, that makes it basically useless as a tool, but it's still pretty cool.

Perpendicular Hard Drives

Lately, there seem to be a lot of articles [informationweek.com] about Perpendicular Hard Drives [wikipedia.org]. Wondering what Perpendicular Hard Drives are?



Well, you can watch this flash video [hitachigst.com], which features disco-dancing bits explaining the concept.

It seems that the magnetic poles of the storage elements are in a perpendicular orientation to the hard drive platter, which allows 10x the amount of data to be stored in the same area.

Public Libraries

I happen to read books pretty often, but perhaps not as much as I should (I am currently reading Ultimate Spy [amazon.com], which by the way, is fantastic). Part of the reason that I don't read as much as I used to is because the public libraries where I live now are not as easy to use as the ones where I used to live.

I used to live where I could use the Cleveland Heights/University Heights library [heightslibrary.org]. As you can tell from the books I have talked about reading (like Analytic Culture in the United States Intelligence Community [fluggart.com]), I tend to read some really obscure books. But those were always easy to find.

For instance, let's say that I was looking for The Wizard War [amazon.com]. If I went to the Cleveland Heights library website and searched for that title, here is what I would see:



Although the book isn't found in the Cleveland Heights library system, it can be found in nearby library systems (in this case, the Cleveland proper library system, as well as the city of East Cleveland). So, if I hit the "Place a Hold" button, they would order it for me, and then they would email me when it has arrived at my local library (so that I know when to pick it up). Isn't that how libraries should work?

Ok, compare that to the library system in the city I live in [lkwdpl.org] now... If I try to search for The Wizard War, here is what I would see:



It isn't found in the local branches, of course, but there is no option to search for the book at other local libraries. So, if it isn't carried by the city I am in, I'm basically out of luck. That makes it far more difficult to find interesting books to read. As a result, I read less often now.

I'm Officially a Homeowner

So, remember how I talked about buying a house a while ago?

Well, we finally took posession of it, so I'm now officially a homeowner. I finally feel like an adult now... sort of.

The previous owner was the nicest woman. Not only was she really pleasant to talk to, and not only did she take great care of the house, but we also found that she left a really nice gift for us:



The gift came with a very sweet card. The previous owner was obviously a class act, and we'll have to remember to do something similar if we ever sell the house.

I've been busy the last few days doing new house stuff, like remembering how to mow a lawn... Oh, and we also (on the spur of the moment) bought a new bedroom set:



And, of course, everything needs to be cleaned. So, I've been busy.

Academics vs. Industry

Recently, I caught up with a professor who seemed disappointed when he found out that (now that I have a PhD) I was about to head out into industry (as opposed to staying in academics).

The primary reason that I decided to get out of academics is because I still want to get my hands dirty and actually do the research. Whereas it seems to me that professors at research institutions spend most of their time writing grant proposals and managing students. Of course, there are many other reasons not to stay in academics, which I have written about before [fluggart.com].

Anyway, the professor I was talking to quickly saw my point, and commented that it is odd that most people pursue a PhD in the first place because they are interested in experimentation and lab work... but at the beginning of your academic career (when you get a PhD), you are forced to become a manager.

I totally agree. I mean, many people probably pursue PhDs because they are interested in teaching. Which makes a lot of sense. But how many people pursue a PhD because they are interested in becoming a manager? And, as a graduate student, there is almost no training in how to be a manager, I would imagine there are a lot of professors out there that aren't great at managing.

Count of Monte Cristo

A few months ago, I read The Count of Monte Cristo [amazon.com] for the first time. And if you haven't read it before, it's ludicrously long and tedious. Exactly my kind of book.

Seriously, though, my copy is around 1300 pages long. Although the good news is that the last 100 pages of that are the footnotes. Or, maybe that was the bad news. I forget.

I think that I am going to start rereading it, because the plot was so intricate that I am sure that I missed a lot of the details. But before I do, I am probably going to create a diagram, which explains the relationships between all of the major characters.



And I might include all of the various names each character has. Many of the characters have several names. For instance, take Gerard de Villefort. Many of the characters are referred to just by their first names. Or sometimes, they are referred to just by their last names. So, it's not always clear whether de Villefort refers to Gerard or some other person in his family. And then some people at times are just referred to by their titles (Baron, etc). So, you have to remember which titles go with which characters. Finally, some are referred to as Monsieur or Madame, or Mademoiselle. But then at other times, they are referred to as M. de Villefort. And you have to remember that an "M." is the abbreviation for Monsieur (which, I'm sorry, is not obvious).

Plus, a lot of the characters have similar names. I could never remember whether Albert was the son of Mercedes and Fernand, or whether that was Andrea. And it doesn't help that a bunch of characters have completely different names in the beginning of the book than in the end.

I'm actually really surprised that the entry about The Count of Monte Cristo on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] doesn't have a diagram, even though their character description list is fairly extensive. I also haven't been able to find one out on the web either (although this character list [sparknotes.com] was the best I have seen).

Taskbar Shuffle

On digg [digg.com], I saw a link to Taskbar Shuffle [freewebs.com]. It is a utility that allows you to drag and drop the applications on your Windows taskbar.

When I'm in Windows, I always have a ton of applications open. And I like to open Windows Explorer so that it is on the far left on the taskbar, followed by my email client, etc.



It sounds obsessive-compulsive, but it's really not. The reason I do this has to do with the way that I switch tasks. I always switch tasks by clicking on the appropriate icon on the taskbar. And by always opening them in the same order, I can find the right app immediately.

So, it annoys me when a program crashes, because I either have to close down a bunch of windows to get them all on the taskbar in the right order, or I have to deal with hunting around the taskbar for the right app when I want to switch.

I've always wanted to be able to be able to switch around the order of the applications on the taskbar, and now I can.

Moving an Aquarium

One of my hobbies is fishkeeping. It is so peaceful to watch fish swimming around a tank.



A few weeks ago, I talked about how we just bought a house [fluggart.com], and with the closing date soon approaching, I am getting filled with anxiety about having to move my aquarium. I have a 55 gallon aquarium, so it is probably going to be a non-trivial task, and I have never moved it before.

Luckily, there are plenty of websites around that have instructions. Most of the things that I will have to do are common sense (completely empty the tank of everything before attempting to move it, save as much water as possible to put back into the tank after the move).

However, there were a lot of details that I might not have thought of. For instance, you are supposed to stop feeding your fish a few days before so that their stomachs are empty during the moving process. While they are being moved, the fish will be in bags, and having empty stomachs will prevent the water in the bags from being fouled.

So, right there, I know that I am going to have to worry about getting enough large bags for all of the fish I have, and enough food-grade plastic containers to carry a ton of saved water.

Actually, I think that the most stressful part of the whole process (for me) will be catching the fish to put them in bags. I know that there are lots of techniques out there for using a net to chase the fish into a jar. That allows the fish to be caught without removing any of their protective slime coating (which would be removed if caught with a net). However, knowing the theory and actually doing it are completely different. Plus, a lot of my fish move very erratically. Sometimes if you try to scare them with a net, they won't move at all (they will just sit on the bottom). And then they will suddenly tear around, making lots of rapid direction changes.

I know that there is the very real possibility that a lot of the fish will die from stress as a result of the move, so I am very worried.

High Dynamic Range Imaging

The other week, Adam [livejournal.com] posted about the HDR pool on Flickr [flickr.com].

Not knowing what HDR photography was, I decided to look it up on Wikipedia. It seems like [wikipedia.org] a way to combine pictures taken with different camera settings in order to capture a wider range of intensity levels. There are a bunch of examples in the Wikipedia entry, such as:



Now, I think I want to give that a shot. So, I might have some really amateur-ish photography to post here soon.



Also, when I have a great shot to take (such as the one above atop the Gaisberg), I might take the same shot several different times with different settings, so that I could later try to improve it. I love the shot above, but you can barely see any of the details of the people standing there with me.

NSA Tracking Phone Records

Lately, there has been a huge furor over the NSA creating a massive database, including everyone's phone records [washingtonpost.com].

Actually, I'm surprised that this story took so long to break. For instance, over a month ago, we knew that phone companies like SBC were bending over and handing everything to the NSA [ledger-enquirer.com]. And we also had statements from a whistleblower [wirednews.com] who brought the issue to the public. So, we already knew that the NSA was collecting phone records. I'm not sure why there wasn't this large of a furor a month ago.

Anyway, the common thinking [chicagotribune.com] seems to be that the NSA is monitoring call logs and creating social network maps to find hidden links between people, in an effort to root out terrorists.

Does that make any sense to you? If I were the type of person that were going to be plotting terrorist type activities, I wouldn't use my phone to contact other terrorists. I would use pay phones, or untraceable, disposable prepaid cell phones. Or better yet, I wouldn't use the phone at all, and use encrypted internet connections instead.

So, what value does a massive phone record list have? Well, maybe we should go back and look at the whistleblower's statement:

"In January 2003, I, along with others, toured the AT&T central office on Folsom Street in San Francisco -- actually three floors of an SBC building. There I saw a new room being built adjacent to the 4ESS switch room where the public's phone calls are routed. I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room. The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."

"While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal..."

"Based on my understanding of the connections and equipment at issue, it appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the internet -- whether that be peoples' e-mail, web surfing or any other data."

It is in my opinion that the phone records are only the tip of the iceberg (which I don't think are very useful anyway). It is far more likely that they are monitoring all kinds of domestic communications without warrants. And doing it on the HUGE scale.

And note, we're no longer talking about international phone calls where only one person was located in the US (like in the previous furor over the NSA [washingtonpost.com]).

Gilmore Girls

Ok, this is potentially embarassing, but I'm going to talk about Gilmore Girls today. And I'm probably risking record-breaking amounts of ridicule...



But anyway, I finally got to see the season finale last night (which ran on Tuesday), and hadn't realized that it was going to be the final episode for writers Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino [cbs2.com].

That is really a shame, because they have had a huge influence on the show and are probably the major reason for the hilarious sarcasm that attracted me to the show in the first place. So, even though I've been a loyal fan for the last few years, I'm anticipating not watching it through the next season.

I'm always trying to reduce the amount of TV that I'm watching. And I don't even watch that much.

Hopefully, the Palladinos will have the kind of success that J.J. Abrams has had, with putting out hit show after hit show [imdb.com].

Wifi in Linux

Drivers for Wifi [wikipedia.org] adapters continues to be a major problem for Linux. Support for hardware in Linux is generally very good, including the newest stuff in x86-64, serial ATA controllers, video cards, etc. Unfortunately, despite the popularity of Wifi adapters, it is kind of difficult to get them working in Linux.

What I do on my own computers is compile an NDIS wrapper, which allows me to use the Windows driver (as I have described on my Linux page [fluggart.com]). But it's not easy to compile an NDIS wrapper, especially since the first step of the process is to recompile your kernel.

Recently a friend asked me what Linux distro he should try to install to learn Linux on his laptop, and I really had a hard time giving him an answer, because I knew that no matter what he chose, Wifi support would probably be poor.

Fortunately, we are finally seeing the first steps toward integrating Wifi drivers into the Linux kernel [techworld.com]. Getting them into the kernel is going to be key if anyone but Linux dorks are going to want to use it.

Renault F1 Engine

There is a pretty sweet video [google.com] up on Google Video right now.



I'm a huge fan of Formula 1 Racing [formula1.com] these days. I think that it's really exciting racing, and I love the higher technological aspects, compared with domestic racing associations (by the way, how incredible was this past weekend's European Grand Prix [bbc.co.uk]?).

Anyway, one of the major changes to Formula 1 this year was the switch from V10 engines to V8's. The video shows a test of one of the new V8 engines.

In the screenshot above, you can see the headers glowing red from the intense heat (bottom of picture). At the top of the picture, you can see the injectors spraying an absurd amount of fuel into the cylinders.

Plus, you can clearly hear the whine from the engine that made me fall in love with those cars.

General Hayden

Over the weekend, I saw that General Hayden was the top choice [nytimes.com] to be the new head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Here's a quote:

"[General Hayden] has a stellar résumé for a spy and has long been admired at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

"But General Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, would also face serious questions about the controversy over the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program, which he oversaw and has vigorously defended."

I'm not trying to brag or anything, but seeing that article was personally weird for me because I just had my picture taken in a photo op with him a few weeks ago.



He's right in the center of the picture (with the bald head), while I am in the row behind (and off to the right). I heard him speak, and he seems to be an incredibly capable and intelligent person. However, I really have no detailed knowledge of his career or how his resume compares to that of previous CIA heads.

I can say that whoever does get tipped to be the head of the CIA is going to have a huge challenge ahead of them. One of the books I have read recently was Analytic Culture in the United States Intelligence Community : An Ethnographic Study. The book discusses a lot of the ways that the culture of the intelligence community causes intelligence failures.

For instance, it is a widely held view that analysts who generate more reports are those who garner more social capital and those who are most likely to be promoted. That causes analysts to focus on the short-term.

The intelligence community also wants to speak with one voice, so that when they say something, it won't be discounted. Their failure to speak with one voice in the runup to the war in Iraq has been pointed out several times. Unfortunately, that also means that when there is evidence discounting the established stance of the intelligence community, it is often dismissed.

Those are just two of the several aspects of the intelligence community culture that have the potential to cause intelligence failures. I found those parts of that book to be fascinating, and if you are interested in reading about the intelligence community, you might find it to be a good read.

Red Light Cameras

Cleveland is one of the many cities that are deploying red light cameras. These are the cameras that catch cars running red lights and mail you a ticket afterward.

I just saw an article [autoblog.com] claiming that red light cameras increase the rate of accidents at intersections, while bringing in a lot of revenue.

So, now there are people on one hand arguing that red light cameras make the roads safer by changing the way people drive, and people on the other hand arguing that these devices are actually increasing the rate of accidents, thereby making the roads less safe.

First off, it's difficult to tell how accurate those studies are. Red light cameras are fairly new, so it's difficult to determine whether the accident rates will return to normal.

I am opposed to red light cameras, though. The problem is that they provide an incentive for the city to not provide an adequate yellow light duration. If the city were to shorten the duration of the yellow lights by 10%, their increase in revenue would probably be huge, even if the actual change were almost imperceptible.

Furthermore, if there are lights that already had insufficient yellow light durations, it would be against the city's interest to fix the timing of those lights.

I'm sure it would be no surprise to most people if studies were done that concluded that most parking meters did not keep the correct time. In other words, if you put in enough coins to park legally for 30 minutes, and the studies found that the parking meters expired after 29 minutes, that wouldn't be shocking. If you got a parking ticket at a faulty meter, would you be willing to stand there for a while with a stopwatch in order to generate the evidence you would need to fight that in court? And it's in the best interest of the city to have faulty parking meters, because that increases revenue.

I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing were happening with traffic lights.

There are two main differences between parking meters and traffic lights. One is that it is much easier to prove that a parking meter is faulty than to prove that the duration of a yellow light at an intersection is insufficient. The other difference is that if a parking meter is faulty, no one really gets hurt. Whereas if the duration of a yellow light at an intersection is too short, it can cause accidents. Furthermore, the city probably doesn't care if there is a slight increase in accidents, as long as their revenue sharply increases.

Wedding Toasts

Oh, when I talked yesterday about the wedding last weekend, I forgot to mention the most stressful part. Giving the toast at the reception was actually something that I have been worrying about for over a year now -- basically ever since I was asked to be the best man. And it's because that is the one time when hundreds of people were actually going to be looking at me, and listening to the crap coming out of my mouth.

The groom was a friend from college, and as you would expect, most funny stories that come out of college years are totally unsuitable for use in a wedding toast. And the humorous stories that are ok to tell in polite company mostly involve obscure computer terminology.



The toast went alright. I wouldn't say that it was that great, but I didn't screw it up or make a complete fool out of myself. Therefore, I consider that to be a victory.

I guess that the ironic part is that while I have been worried for a year about what I was going to say, I really should have been worried about not looking like an idiot in virtually every picture that was taken of me this weekend.

I don't know how movie stars do it (look great in almost every picture). If I were a movie star, there would just be this endless parade of horrible photographs to pull up and post in newspapers every time I was involved in a scandal.

Weddings

Remember how I talked about organizing a bachelor party for a friend a few weeks ago [fluggart.com]? Well, the wedding for that friend was this past weekend, and I hadn't gotten the chance to talk about it here yet.



Above is the obligatory picture of me at the reception, ruining yet another picture with my antics.

But anyway, the wedding was completely top shelf -- from the food, right down to the little cards on the table:



The entire thing was pretty amazing, and I'm glad that I was able to participate. I have posted a bunch of our pictures [flickr.com].

By the way, I love Flickr [flickr.com]. Not only does it allow anyone to download the full-res versions of any of the pictures, but it also displays the EXIF data [wikipedia.org] for each picture.

Photoshop Tips

On digg [digg.com], I saw a link to Top 10 Photoshop Tips and Techniques from BrainFuel.

Now, I use Photoshop all of the time. I would even go as far as to say that I use it on a daily basis. For instance, any time I am taking pictures in my personal life, I am always retouching them and/or resizing them in Photoshop before emailing them out to friends and family. And I am always preparing papers to submit to professional conference proceedings, or preparing for a presentation I have to make for whatever reason. And both of those things are usually involve lots of images that have to be created or modified. So, I consider myself to be pretty capable when it comes to using photoshop.

However, there are a lot of things that I apparently didn't know. For instance, one of the tips listed is:

3. Using the Eyedropper outside of Photoshop. Did you know that the eyedropper tool in Photoshop works outside of Photoshop? Yeah, it does.

I never knew that. Up until now, every time I have wanted to use the eyedropper outside of Photoshop, I have taken a screenshot, imported the screenshot, and then used the eyedropper. I could have saved myself a lot of time.

Scare Quotes

Anyone who personally knows me knows that I constantly use finger quotes to emphasize ironic things I am saying. (By the way, does the phrase "finger quotes" really necessitate an entire Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]?)

Even though my use of finger quotes or scare quotes [wikipedia.org] is frequent, I still get annoyed when they are used completely needlessly. For instance, have a look at the below image:



There is a gas station that is on my regular route home from work that I have started stopping at regularly. And the above picture is the label located on top of the thing that the pump normally rests on.

Why is "Attention" in quotes? It's clearly not sarcasm. Does anyone proofread these things?