China Practices Weather Control

This is a fascinating story of China practicing weather control.

Basically they're seeding clouds with silver iodide, but on a fairly large scale. Using anti-aircraft guns is an interesting approach.

Time and Time Again

Here are two excellent references on time scales and their history.

http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/timescales.html

http://stjarnhimlen.se/comp/time.html

Monolith

After something like 15 years, I have stopped receiving email on Monolith. A few minutes ago I changed the forwarding address in LDAP to forward email off-campus exclusively.

Monolith began as a NeXTslab computer on my desk top. It was my main workstation from the early 90s until maybe about 1997. The system was first set up in my office in Uppergate House, then made the move to Cox Hall. It also went with me for the brief stint in the University Apartments Tower penthouse. Sometime in 1997, when I moved from Cox Hall to the North Decatur Building, Monolith's soul moved to a SPARCstation 5 and Solaris 2.5.1. In later years it evolved into an Ultra 10, then a Sunblade 150. The OS probably made its way through Solaris 2.6, and maybe Solaris 9. I don't recall if it was ever Solaris 8.

For the past few years, Monolith left my main workstation and became a more humble Debian Linux box running on a Pentium II system with 96 MB of RAM and a 4-GB hard drive. It's been serving it's main duties as an email server (running Exim for the MTA and Cyrus IMAP), and a web serve running Apache. For the past six months, Monolith has been hiding in the machine room on the fourth floor of the Woodruff Library.

Today I'll shut down the web server and email services and then will remove the box sometime this week.

Keyboard Type in Ubuntu

Here's a question: Where is the keyboard type stored in Ubuntu Linux, or in Linux in general?

The answer is, in the file /etc/default/console-setup.

Upstart Replaces Init

Though I knew that the Ubuntu project had replaced init(1) with a new scheme, I've largely ignored it until now.

Here's a nice article on the rationale behind the change.

Here's the Upstart home page.

Quote of the Day

Okay, this is a good one. From Michael's signature…

First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure.

—Douglas Adams

Six Scientific Questions

From the Observer Gardian.

We asked three writers, three scientists and two broadcasters to answer six basic scientific questions, and their answers appear to confirm the arts/science divide.

This was a fun, and somewhat disturbing exercise.

Can you answer these questions? (Before you look at the answers and/or read the article).

1. Q: Why does salt dissolve in water?
2. Q: Roughly how old is the earth?
3. Q: What happens when you turn on a light?
4. Q: Is a clone the same as a twin?
5. Q: Why is the sky blue?
6. Q: What is the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

In my own case, I had the most trouble with number four (the clone question) and a bit of trouble with number one. The rest I had ready answers for.

Not a problem? That's A Problem!

What's this sudden use of “no problem” or “not a problem” instead of a simple “your're welcome”? I suddenly realized that people (mostly young) are using this expression more and more. It's not quite right. In fact it's worse than that.

You order coffee at the drive through. You get the order feedback and the total. You say “Thanks!” They say, “No problem.” Well, I didn't think it was a problem! I didn't think I was putting them out of their way to take my order.

I ask a receptionist at an office for help. She's very helpful and gives me the information I need. I say, “Thank you,” and she responds, “ Not a problem.” Is the subtle message here, Well it may look like you completely made me go out of my way to help you, but is really was no problem at all? I could buy that idea if I just randomly wandered off a hallway into someone's office and asked for help. But a receptionist? That's a stretch. And at the drive-through? “Oh, it's no problem that you completely interrupted my train of throught while I was sitting here in this window waiting to take your order. Don't worry about it.”

Am I the only one bugged by this? I haven't seen anyone else mention it.

I'm really curious about how this particular usage originated. I can't help but feel there's an important and disturbing message buried in there somewhere. Is it part of the communication protocol between a person and someone who's 25 or 30 years older—just another strange and mystifying part of the senior citizen's benefit package?

This really is a problem!

Now the response would make sense if I had said, “Thanks for going to all the trouble to help. I really appreciate it.” Is that the message that's sent now by a simple “Thanks”? Maybe no one says thank you any more, so when you do, it's so shocking to the other party that they are compelled to assure you that it was no problem for them, really.

A couple of days ago I ordered coffee, got the usual “No problem,” drove around to the window to be told that they didn't have what I ordered after all, and was asked if a substitute would be okay. I said, fine. They apologized for the trouble. I said, “Not a problem.”

The IT Crowd

It was a few months ago that Mike told me about The IT Crowd which was one of the funniest TV shows I've seen in a long while. There were about six episodes on-line.

However, it looks like it's being re-produced for NBC and I'm not sure I'm enthusiastic about that. I expect that I'll much prefer the British version.

BTW, most of the on-line versions seem to have been pulled. This is very disappointing.

What does CHKDSK do?

Bah! Okay I have a hard drive going bad so I'm running Windows XP CHKDSK on it. While I'm staring at the little green bar and the announcement of which phase it's on, I was wondereing what each phase did.

Here's a nice like to a MS explanation of CHKDSK phases, and what it does, and how to estimate how long it will take!

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314835

Here's a short version.

• Phase 1 - Checking files
• Phase 2 - Checking indices
• Phase 3 - Checking security descriptors
• Phase 4 - Checking sectors

Happy Summer Solstice!

I just missed it. The summer solstice is at 18:06 UT / 14:06 EDT Today 21 June 2007, just a few minutes ago.

New ELP Videos on YouTube

Here are some great, new ELP videos on YouTube.

Tarkus in 1997 at Montreax

This is very much like the concert I saw at the Hi-Fi Buys amphitheatre here around that time. And, yep, the old Moog is still there! 8-)

This was the piece the opened with. Note that, in the middle, Tarkus transitions to Pictures at an Exhibition. I thought that was pretty cool.

Rehearsing Karn Evil 9

And more KE9 rehearsal

Wow! Studio footage of rehearsal, presumably during recording of KE9 on BSS (which was released in 1972 I believe).

The Barbarian

A at best fair copy of The Barbarian. This looks like it was videotaped from a TV screen. Still, it's from the early 70s.

Emerson on the Letterman 1986

Playing Coming to America, which was one of the staples of The Nice (before ELP).

Street View on Google Maps!

Curt forwards a note announcing...

Google snuck a new feature into Google Maps this week, no official
announcement yet but I stumbled on it this morning.

Do a search in one of the following places:

Denver
Las Vegas
Miami
New York City
San Francisco / Oakland / Silicon Valley

...and then look at the buttons in the upper right of the map. There should
be a new button marked "Street View". Click and enjoy.

Sorry, no coverage in Atlanta yet.

This is quite fascinating. The note goes on to acknowledge that A9 (shown to me by Jim K at the time) had done something similar previously. Of course the Google interface is more cool…

Yahoo Mail Cancelled

Well, I've finally done it: I cancelled my Yahoo! Premium email and personalized email address (domain name). I'd actually transferred the domain name to a different service some time ago. I believe Yahoo was still charing $35 a year for the DNS name when most services charge between $5 and $10 (sometimes free). Gmail has far surpassed my premium email account, which also had an annual fee.

I deleted all of my folders, filters, and such and popped down all the email I wanted to keep. Now the account is a plain old Yahoo mail account with ads.

In the mean time, Google just keeps adding services to Gmail. The latest is 20-MB attachments.

Yahoo! certainly set the pace for a while, with the best web-based email service around. There are a lot of people that still prefer it and I'm not planning to cancel the free acount. Their services are more impressive now and the new, fancy email interface is impressive in some ways. However, I simply prefer the Gmail interface. It's incredibly powerful but simple to use.
Gmail is truly a new way of doing mail whereas Yahoo has basically copied Outlook Express, et al.

SmugMug

Since just posting about a blog entry from SmugMug, I looked at their About Us page and found the brief account of their story compelling!

Going with Sun

Don MacAskill, CEO of SmugMug, blogs about selecting Sun. I think most of his experience and description resonates with our experiences.

150k Layoffs for IBM

Robert Cringley in his column I Cringely writes that IBM may be laying off 150,000 US workers!

Python

Ack!! Okay, I'm learning more Python. I have to admit, it seems fast to write, and the code is more brief. Or maybe more clean. It's notably different looking from Perl.

I've been at it for less than three weeks and have already been able to write a Notification class and have almost finished a DBnc (named-column database) class. Very soon I should have a fully functioning HostDB class (which I just finished writing in Perl last week). With those in hand a production host monitoring script in Python should be ready, maybe today. Again, I just finished the Perl version of it last week.

I feel like I know most of the core of the language but there are some subtleties I'm still not clear on which will probably jump up and grab me at some point. I'm not sure I understand the difference in double- and single-quotes around strings. I'm not sure the meaning is the same as in Perl (or ksh).

I also have the logging and csv libraries pretty well in hand, now, along with mapping dictionaries (which are like Perl hashes). Handling command line args, file I/O, and regular expressions are working in my code.

I'm also trying to figure out how to write class modules, particularly in the area of comments in the code, author fields and such, and I need an expression to pull the CVS version number into the version field.

I've started using the three-double-quote comments/documentation in class and method definitions but I'm not sure how much decorating and such I can do---another thing I need to check into. I want to draw borders around the comments to set them off, using underlines and verticle bars, but I wonder if any tools want to reformat that text.

Learning how to use the setup.py code to install and how to make a distributable package are next on my list. I've already done a couple of installs (and found out you need to apt-get install phython2.4-dev or whatever version you are using, for setup to work correctly).

I've been able to learn almost everything from the Tutorial and the Library Reference. I did spend 20 to 30 minutes in a bookstore reading some of the O'Reilly book at one point (while waiting on the customer service desk to find a reserved book). I've gone searching on Google for the answers to a couple of questions but typically the trail led back to the above two documents.

An any event, I'm having fun with it.

Cool Stuff on Shared Google Reader

Don't forget to look at my Shared Google Reader. It's over there in the right hand column, near the top. A lot of articles and such I would previously have put here in the blog are there on the shared reader, since it's a single click. I add items from time to time here in order to include comments, but most of what I read that I think is interesting, and that I read via the Reader, is over there.

BumpTop

Check out this video of BumpTop, yet another physics-based desktop paradigm. Things are getting interesting, weird, and more weird. There is also more Beryl demon in this post.

I guess this is the actual bumptop site: http://www.bumptop.com/