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A Doctor Who story

2012-08-10T13:41:00.002-07:00

Hey BBC! Use this plot for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special and I'll love you forever!

The 11th Doctor and Clara land 300 years and 300 light years off target and end up in the Scottish Highlands in 1800. They run into an elderly Jamie McCrimmon, who, of course, doesn't remember anything about The Doctor. Clara convinces him that he has to do something about restoring Jamie's memory. He decides to take him to a space station where a well known team of biological researchers that specialize in the humanoid central nervous system do their work.

The 10th Doctor and Donna Noble, while trying to get to the planet Barcelona (or the Eye of Orion), land on Earth in the early 22nd century. They run into an elderly Zoe Heriot, who also doesn't remember anything about The Doctor. Donna convinces him that they have to do something about restoring Zoe's memory so they go to the same space station that 11 went to.

The TARDIS merges with the other TARDIS. Not knowing what to do, the control room reverts to the standard Type 40 pattern with no modifications. Once they get over the shock of meeting, The Doctors step out of the TARDIS to find the researchers and repair the memories of the early companions.

A mysterious woman (Tamsin Greig would be great) is present for both procedures. She is referred to as the head of the center. While Jamie and Zoe are recovering, she traps both Doctors and takes their sonic screwdrivers. She reveals herself as The Rani. She intends to use the imprint of the Time Lords that she found on the minds of Jamie and Zoe combined with the TARDIS that was used to set the time lock to release Gallifrey back into the universe.

Clara and Donna have to work together to release both Doctors, which does not go well because Donna is very bossy. While they do this, The Rani uses the TARDIS, which she calls primitive, to release Gallifrey. Rassilon beams over to the station to thank The Rani and to declare that the station will be destroyed in order to make sure that the Daleks don't use it to gain knowledge that they could use against the Time Lords. He calls upon The Master to plan the destruction.

The Doctors have to put Gallifrey back in the time lock. An original Type 40 TARDIS can't do this. They have to separate the TARDIS from itself and restore the modern control rooms. They somehow manage this (I'll leave this part to the writers or fill it in if I ever write a fan fic) without using the sonic screwdrivers.

The Castellan Guard realize that they are about to get locked away from the universe again. They rescue Rassilon from the station. He transmats out while they look for The Master. He has discovered another tissue compression eliminator. He separates the Guard unit sent after him and one by one uses it on them.

Before the time lock is secure, The Master forces The Rani to use her TARDIS to take him to Gallifrey to steal one of his own. They both escape with their own TARDIS but it is not clear that they got away.

After locking Gallifrey, The Doctors materialize back on the station, dangerously close to each other. 10 tells 11 to stop landing his TARDIS so close. They pick up Jamie and Zoe from the recovery ward. They have now fully recovered their memories.

They part ways. 10 takes Zoe home, then says he needs a vacation and promises Donna a world of crystal. 11 is visibly shaken by the thought of Jamie and Zoe getting their memories back but Donna losing hers permanently, as seen previously in Journey's End. He suppresses the emotion and takes Jamie home, then sets off for his original destination.

Alternate ending: 11 tells 10 that he looks like he could use a vacation and offers to take Zoe home. 10 promises Donna a vacation on the planet Midnight. 11, Clara, Jamie, and Zoe go off and have an adventure or two before taking them home.

How we got here and why it isn't going to get any better

2012-08-03T21:58:00.001-07:00

America has a problem. We elect jackasses. We elect people because we don't like the alternative or the guy he is replacing. Then, the people who complained about the previous guy don't complain when the new guy is just as bad or worse. He's their guy. He can't be bad.

Four years ago, things were looking good. We had a president who claimed more power than any president before him. He believed in the power of the Unitary Executive. That basically means that the president can do no wrong because he is the president. He invaded other countries. He killed people around the world. He wiretapped our communications. He had protesters caged in Free Speech Zones. That time looked like it was about to end. The leading candidate promised Change.

The Change that was promised was fairly vague. It was accompanied by Hope, which gets you a long way when you don't have much to say. Many of us took it to mean that there would be a change from the ways of the recent past. For those of us concerned with human rights and how our country interacts with the rest of the world, we thought Change might mean an end to the imperial policies of the previous administration. We thought it might bring about an end to some of the death and destruction. We had railed against the abuses of the previous administration. We said they were taking away our rights. They were. Rights that very few people ever use and fewer would notice they had lost were being taken away in the name of security. We thought the Change would fix all of that. We were wrong.

Change did come. Much of it was good. We gained better protections against inequality in the workplace. We set up a whole new regulatory system to make sure that more people had healthcare and it covered them better. The economy that was badly damaged under the previous administration began to recover, though it recovered very slowly because the opposition did everything they could to stop any real recovery effort. What passed was mostly so badly compromised that it was no better than the regulations from the time in which the recession started. There were some big wins and some little wins, but the Change was mostly good.

But the Change was not what many of us expected. The funny thing about change is that the word itself neither directly states nor implies any judgement about the variance it describes. It merely states that there is a point in time after which something is different than before. Changes are sometimes beneficial but they can also be neutral or disastrous. Not all of the Change turned out to be good.

The Change had a dark side. The Change was a beast fed by blood and rights stripped from unsuspecting people. As bad as the previous administration was, there was never a reason to think that hit lists were used. People died because they got into combat with the wrong people at the wrong place and time. After the Change, it wasn't that simple. There was now a hit list. Anyone on that hit list was hunted down and killed. Not hunted down and arrested and sent to a fair trial. They were hunted down by robots piloted by remote operators far from harm's way. They were killed with the push of a button because they were deemed a threat. They were summarily executed by a country that prides itself on its justice and respect for human rights. Some were even American citizens, a class of people usually protected by the government that was now killing them.

Back home, the Change was smashing rights as well. In addition to being able to be identified as a threat and summarily executed in a remote country far from any battlefield, there was a new law that allowed for American citizens to be arrested by the military and detained indefinitely. This could happen anywhere the United States military was operating, including at home. It relied on the removal of the right to habeus corpus, which was stripped by the previous administration. If you were suspected of doing something that the military didn't like, you could now be imprisoned for life without trial.

Of course, the circumstances to allow an indefinite suspension to occur are very unlikely. It is bad enough that it is possible, even though the likelihood of its use anywhere but on a battlefield is very low. It gets worse, though. Another part of the Change was the loss of the rights to free speech and free assembly. Protesting was banned. They'll say they didn't ban protesting. Technically, it is still possible. They just banned protesting in places where protesting might do some good. Basically, any event large enough to attract Secret Service attention is off limits. This is a huge expansion of the Free Speech Zones that the previous two administrations used. You can't protest at a parade anymore if an important person might see. You can't protest outside a political debate. You can't protest where a presidential candidate can see. You can't speak up when the speaker tells a lie. If you do, you can go to jail for up to a year. Speech and assembly, Constitutionally protected rights, were now reduced to privileges that you don't necessarily have to ask for, but not asking might mean finding out the hard way that you don't actually have them.

Now we're approaching another election. The candidate who became the president who offered and delivered the Change is again a candidate. The supporters who complained about the abuses of power and restrictions on rights of his predecessor continue to support him. This is why things will not get any better.

Due to the way we decide elections, it always comes down to two candidates who have any chance at all of winning the election. The system makes other choices almost mathematically impossible. The two parties that hold power now have entrenched themselves into the system so that they cannot be moved. It would take a radical restructuring of the electoral system to change that. The two major parties control the legislative process, so that isn't going to happen. It always comes down to two choices.

The two choices are not really choices at all. They differ radically on some issues but on others, they are as near to identical as makes no difference. On the human rights and foreign policy issues, they are different enough to make a distinction but similar enough that no major change would be likely should the country switch between them. One wishes to return to the types of abuses of the previous administration (not realizing that they never ended) while the other wishes to maintain the current abuses, which are largely amplifications of the previous administration's policy. I can see little practical difference between these two positions.

The people who supported the previous administration support the challenger now. The people who wanted the Change still want the candidate who promised and delivered the Change, the candidate who now says Forward, presumably to more of the same kinds of things that came with his Change. The people who were against the previous administration when it did terrible things overlook the same abuses just because he's their guy. This factional, two-party thinking is how we got here. Sticking to it is why things will never get any better.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can call for an overhaul of the electoral process. We can demand that they change the law to a more equitable system that allows for the people's views to be represented in government rather than the views and goals of few but the party officials and the donors who pay for the elections. Demanding won't change anything as long as they feel secure in their place running the system. We need to start voting out Congress. Stop reelecting people. Start electing new candidates. Try it within the existing major parties if possible. Organize massive efforts to elect minor party candidates to take their seats if necessary. Cause the status quo in House to be disrupted by massive turnover of membership. Do the same for the Senate. This should destabilize the parties and cause their grip to weaken. Once that happens, we can change the electoral process. Once we have a proportional system, possibly with some kind of weighted preference based ballot, we may just start to get input from more than just the two main parties. We may finally have an actual choice and a voice in the process. We won't have to vote for the lesser evil anymore. We can vote for whomever we actually prefer rather than the candidate who scares us the least.

It is too late for this election. Ballots are closed. State parties have held their nominating conventions. It is too late to collect enough signatures to get on any ballot that may still be open and there is little time left for campaigning. Even if it were not too late, it will take years, possibly decades, for this to work if it ever does. In the mean time, acting like the system is working better won't hurt it any. This year, vote for the candidate you prefer. Don't just look at the Democrat and the Republican. There are lots of other parties. They're not all on the ballot in every state. Most are not even on the ballot in enough states to win the presidency as long as the Electoral College exists. Because of that, don't expect your candidate to win. What you will be doing is contributing to the need for change to a better system. You will be demonstrating that people want more choices that the two guaranteed by the existing system. Doing that may just have a greater effect on the distant future than deciding between the two main candidates now. When it comes to things they can actually control, their difference is small (especially on a historical scale) compared to the wide range of candidates that will be available once the system effectively allows for more than two. This year, throw your vote away. You weren't going to make anything better with it anyway. In the long run, the country may be better for your sacrifice.

Disabling Google 2-step Authentication: Here be dragons.

2012-07-29T08:05:00.004-07:00

I just had my first truly bad experience using a Google product. I have used 2-step authentication since it first became available. In the year+ of using it, it hasn't gotten easier. If you try to login using something that doesn't understand 2-step, you have to generate an application specific password. This is a password that is generated for you and shown to you once. It works great for things that remember passwords, but is pretty much unusable for things that don't. Since things remembering passwords is a major security risk, application specific passwords is a very broken way to do it.

Since very few things that could authenticate against Google have been updated to support 2-step authentication since it came out, I had a long list of application specific passwords, many of which were for Google products, like Chrome Sync and Android system logins. I got tired of this and disabled my 2-step authentication. That's where the problem began.

Immediately, I could no longer sign into Chrome Sync. The one computer I had already signed in with an application specific password was still syncing. Google Drive was still syncing. Everything else was telling me to enter my password rather than the application specific password when I entered the actual password. It would reject anything that wasn't my password as expected. I ended up going to the support forums and asking about it.

It turns out that the process of turning off 2-step authentication is more complicated than it looks. After turning it off, you have to revoke all application specific passwords, then delete all Google Sync data if you have anything in that encrypted. Only after all that will it work. You would not guess that when you go to turn 2-step off. There is just a little link saying that you click it to turn off 2-step authentication. It provides no warning that you are about to break the entire authentication and sync system for your account.

I Don't Smoke

2011-06-21T14:58:00.000-07:00

This was a camera test of the Canon T2i.

Arizona's new flag

2010-06-05T07:56:00.001-07:00

Phoenix, AZ - On Monday, June 7, 2010, Governor Jan Brewer plans to sign into law a new bill that would change the state's flag. "We feel that the new flag better represents our heritage," said the governor. "It demonstrates our diversity and our hope for the future that we feel as Arizonans."

The new flag will become the official flag of the State of Arizona on July 4, the 98th anniversary of the addition of the 48th star to the US flag, representing Arizona. All state offices, signs, documents, and web sites must have the new flag in place by that day.

In addition to the new flag, the state motto will be changed from, "Ditat Deus" to, "Deus Est Niveus." Also, the nickname, "The Copper State" will be replaced by the nickname, "The Alabaster State."

A long time

2010-06-04T03:15:00.000-07:00

It has been far too long since I've posted here. I've been concentrating more on my photography page, http://www.grimmphotography.com and short posts on Facebook. I really should try to post here more.

Mistaken Thoughts and Personal Bias

2009-01-22T07:17:00.000-08:00

I had a discussion on Facebook over the last two days with a person who seemed to believe everything that George W. Bush wanted him to believe. I won't link to the conversation to preserve the anonymity of the person I was talking with, but it is the profile of a person who I will call TC. It started with TC asking a question about war crime punishment for Bush in a very nasty way. The discussion really started when this person, who I'll call Soldier, stated that Bush had taken no criminal action. TC replied with a long comment on honor and about how Bush had used fear and was a generally bad President.

Then came the turn for the stupid. Soldier started his next comment stating that WMDs were found. Bush himself admitted that this was not true several times. He claims it was one of his failures. Soldier's reasoning for this, which was explained much later, was that he was there and saw it himself.

One trait of humanity in general is that we often see what we want to see. Memory is faulty for this reason. If an ordinary person sees something that is beyond his own personal experience, he is likely to place some meaning on it based on what he wants. This is where religious experiences come from. This is also where these WMDs likely come from.

Soldier probably saw something that was beyond his ability to explain. I have no reason to doubt his statement that he was there. I also have no reason to doubt that he saw something he couldn't explain within the context of what he had experienced up to that point. I have plenty of reason to doubt that he saw any kind of weapon of mass destruction.

These WMDs were supposedly what was left behind by the Iraqis who were taking them to Syria. This was stated as if it were general knowledge that Iraq had WMDs and that Syria has them now. If this were true, it should be known by people outside of the military. Since finding those weapons was a stated goal for starting the war, it seems that publicly announcing that they were found would be good for justifying the war. Every other source in the world says that the weapons were not found. I've even heard it stated as one of his failures by Bush himself. He said it in his last press conference a week before leaving office.

If Soldier is correct, he must know something that his Commander in Chief does not know. Since that Commander in Chief was looking for this very information, it suggests there is a breakdown in communication somewhere in the military. If that is true, we are all in a lot of trouble. We can't trust the military for our safety.

I don't think that is true, though. Soldier wanted it to be true. Most likely what happened is he found some wreckage that he couldn't identify. He didn't have the knowledge about what he was looking at to know what it was. His personal bias led him to believe that he had found a WMD. He, or someone near him, probably reported it to their superiors. An expert was probably dispatched. The expert probably decided that it was nothing important and did not report having found WMDs because he saw none.

I must confess that I did not read everything that Solder posted to that conversation. The revelation that he found WMDs was at the top of a large block of text that was near the deepest part of the crazy pool. I couldn't take it. It seemed like the political version of Time Cube. I skimmed over it, but I could do no more than that. I would have ignored him entirely at that point if he hadn't mentioned having personally seen WMDs.

We can't expect every soldier to have enough knowledge to identify every piece of junk that they see on the battlefield. That is what we have experts for. What we should expect is better education on basic psychology in schools. We need to understand that what we want often colors what we see. It is easy to make mistakes because we so often see what we want to see. That is why the scientific method requires that many people review any research and repeat any experiments before a hypothesis graduates to the level of theory, the highest level of scientific knowledge. For this reason, we should never trust our own perception unless it is verified by others. Only by looking at multiple sources can we be at all sure that we saw what we think we saw.

Correction

2009-01-22T07:15:00.001-08:00

My post of December 5 last year was in error. The page I referred to was only a partial transcript. It was part of a much larger transcript of the mission. While the math stands for that part, it only covers the pre-planned religious portion of the mission. The Bible quote occurred later in the mission, wasting more taxpayer dollars.

GODS IN SPAAAAAAAACE!

2008-12-05T14:24:00.000-08:00

Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, posted a video about stamps that feature religion in his blog post Religion and Freethinkers on Postage Stamps

I did some research and posted the following in response to that video.

I don’t know what Madeline was talking about.
“Experiment P” is listed in the flight log of Apollo 8 as “Experiment P-1.” The text on the stamp was not in the log. It was just the first prayer led from space, which is bad in its own way. We spent millions of dollars for someone to go up and pray near the moon. It was not a scripture quote.

See http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/13day4_orbits123.htm

The relevant part is between 074:45:50 and 074:50:42.

The mission cost $310 million in 1968. The mission lasted 6 days and 3 hours. Experiment P-1 lasted just under 5 minutes. That prayer cost approximately $175,737. http://www.westegg.com/inflation says that is $1,036,686.00 when adjusted for inflation to 2007. I don’t know for sure, but I’d say that is probably the most expensive single prayer in history.

Poetic Justice

2008-11-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

In 2003, the head of state of the United States, George Bush illegally deposed the head of state of Iraq. His name was Hussein. Tonight, the United States elected as its next President a man named Hussein. That is truly poetic justice.

Finally Over

2008-11-04T20:25:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama is the President Elect of the United States. John McCain just conceded. People are still voting in Hawai'i. This has to be a record for the fastest concession ever in a Presidential election.

I thought it was impossible for a Dark Horse candidate to win the Presidency in modern times. At the beginning of the campaign two years ago, (a record time span for a Presidential race) most people had never heard of him. Now, starting January 20, 2009, Barack Obama is the President.

I voted for Bob Barr. Obama is probably who we need right now, but after 2000, I have to vote for the best man. In 2000, I thought Bush would be better than Gore, so I didn't vote for Browne, even though I thought he was the better man. I made up for that blunder by voting for Badnarik in 2004. I refused to repeat 2000 this time. Even though Barr was my choice, I am cautiously happy about Obama's victory.

Edit: McCain's concession speech seemed a bit racist. He seemed impressed with the progress of the negro. I use the word negro because the McCain speech reminds me of a speech William Howard Taft gave 100 years ago on the progress the former slaves had made since they were freed and what his party was doing for civil rights.

Republicans prayed for god's will to be done. The book of Romans says that national leaders are chosen by god. Only cognitive dissonance could even suggest to Christian Dominionists that they are right. If Jesus is real, he likes Obama. Suck it, Palin. No, really. Suck it, Palin. MILF, or rather MILP (Mom I'd like to punch).

By February, I'll be pissed off at Obama and ready for 2012. Tonight, I'm happy.

Voting Problems

2008-11-04T08:51:00.000-08:00

I got to the polling place at about about 11:30. There was no line. I walked right in and met an old lady who had no business running voter check-in. My first problem came when she didn't recognize that the spelled out middle name in the book could match the initial on my drivers license. After that, she noticed that my address didn't match the book. I moved this year, so that makes sense. The state does not require the address to match but she did not know that. An election judge was called over so she could ask him if I was allowed to vote. He said that I was. He walked away while she began filling out the necessary paper work for me to get a ballot.

At that point, the next problem occurred. I asked for a paper ballot. She was unaware that you can request this, even though it has been allowed for several years and poll worker training must be re-taken every Presidential election. She asked if I wanted a provisional ballot. I told her that I want the real ballot that the state says I can have. Again, she called the judge over. He pointed to the slip that tells why I am using a paper ballot. The first option is, "Voter requested a paper ballot."

I went to the person who passed out the ballots. She handed me the three pages and an envelope. You are supposed to put the ballot in the envelope and seal it. The problem here is that the ballot is about an inch too long to fit. It has to be folded to fit inside. It will be counted on an optical scan machine, so the fold worries me. All those ballots have to be unfolded to be counted, adding to the counting time.

Before I sat down to fill out my ballot, I noticed that the poll judge who said I could vote was talking on his cell phone while sitting at a voting booth. Maybe the rules are different for poll workers, but phone use is prohibited inside a polling place. Sure, they weren't busy, but it seems wrong to be using a voting booth as a phone booth.

Is it too much to ask for a smooth, properly functioning election? Can't we disqualify poll workers who can't remember the rules they learned last week on training day? We've been voting for over 200 years in Ohio. Some states have been doing it for almost 400 years. Why can't we get it right?

W: An Uncomfortable, Yet Great Film

2008-10-27T14:52:00.000-07:00

One word sums up how I felt while watching W: uncomfortable.

I went into this film expecting more of an absurdist comedy than a tragedy. The level of realism was far beyond what I expected. For the most part, the cast, makeup, and casting crew did such a good job with the characters that it was very easy to imagine that these were not actors on the screen but the actual people. Josh Brolin's characterization of W was certainly Oscar-worthy.

Even better than Brolin's part was Phedon Papamichael's photographic direction. The job of the Director of Photography is to bring the story to life through the creation of images to draw the attention of the viewer where the Director wants. Few films are as good of an example of this as W. Papamichael used the camera to force moral and emotional perspective in a way that I have rarely seen outside of the films of Stanley Kubrick. I've only seen the film once, viewing it as a complete work. I intend to watch it again to study the photography.

Overall, I thought the film was fair in its treatment of the actual people involved. The most ardent Bush supporters will not like it, but to still be that supportive of him in the final months of his second term, you either have to not be paying attention or be uncritical in all of your thought. While artistic license was taken throughout the film, the portrayal of all events and people, with the possible exception of Dick Cheney, were far more grounded in reality and recorded history than I expected.

The film made me uncomfortable on multiple levels, which is why it succeeds and deserves such a high rating*. The portrayal of Bush's relationship with his parents, especially his father, forces the viewer to feel sorry for him. The overt religiosity that pervades the public service portion of his life must anger anyone who believes strongly in the separation of church and state. There are many moments when, with any other characters, the film should have generated much laughter. Only one moment in the film actually caused more than one person in the theater to laugh. I guess 4000+ dead soldiers drains the humor out of even the most hilarious gaffes.

I would recommend this film to anyone who wants to see a realistic portrayal of historical events. I wish Stone had waited until Bush was out of office to make it, though. While it captures the major events that were involved in building the Bush legacy, it ends far too early.

* This post was copied from my posting on imdb.com. I rated this film 8 stars.

Book Review: The Secret History of the English Language

2008-09-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

The Secret History of the English Language by M. J. Harper is a short, entertaining book. That is about all it is. The author applies his understanding of epistemology to the subject of the English national creation myth. His idea is that everything we know is wrong. Not just about the people and language of Britain but of the whole of human existence. He begins by making what appear to be several good points; that what we know about the history of Britain often makes little sense if we think about it, that Latin may be descended from Italian rather than the other way around, and that English may be closer to the root language of western Europe than the Romance languages and the Germanic languages. After much snark at the expense of the academics, who he seems to think little of, he gets on to other subjects that could be used in examining pre-history, geology and Darwinian evolutionary theory. At this point in the book, he brings into question his own ideas by showing he is woefully misinformed about both of the other subjects in his book.

I only know enough about geology to know that he is not entirely accurate in his description about how the science works. If what he said were actually true, geology wouldn't be a science at all. He seems to think they don't use the scientific method; they just get an idea, teach it to the next generation, and go on believing it and spreading it with no justification, even after it is proven wrong. This is dogma, not science, and it is not how geology works.

Then comes biology. He seems to think that all of evolutionary theory is based on fossils. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Even Darwin recognized 150 years ago that fossils, while being nice to look at and helpful in confirming some theories, are not necessary at all to demonstrate that evolution happens. Since Darwin's time, the science has expanded to include the studies of genetics and protein changes throughout lineages (The name for this subject escapes me at the moment). Simply because no existing species are the ancestor species of modern species, which is not entirely true, he thinks the entire theory is false, or at least should be reexamined. While this is a slightly better argument than I've heard from any creationists, it is still based on willful ignorance. I say willful because the process of writing a non-fiction book is supposed to involve research to ensure your examples are correct.

While the linguistic hypotheses in this book are interesting, they are diminished by the lack of accuracy in the geology and biology sections. I can't even see a reason for those sections to be in the book except to say that anything anyone knows in those fields must be wrong because they are widely agreed upon subjects. All Applied Epistemology is about is ripping to shreds anything that people know because they know it. This is an admirable thing to do when there are actual problems with the theory, but it is out of place in the non-linguistic portions of the book. Because of the author's lack of understanding of biology and geology, I wonder if maybe he misunderstands linguistics and history as well. His ignorance in other fields calls into question his entire supposition. The book may have had more impact and been more believable if he had avoided the mention of the other subjects. It certainly would have been more cohesive.

I was entertained by this book. Until I reached the physical sciences portions, I felt informed by it. Now, I question everything I read. Could the author have done as little research on the subject of western languages as he did on the subject of biology? It is hard to imagine that he did, but by writing page after page of uninformed drivel, he certainly invites the reader to question the entire book. He is most certainly hoping that the reader is as uninformed on those subjects as he is. As the target audience of this book seems to be students of English and English history, the majority of readers are likely to be ill-informed on those subjects. As a result, this book is likely to introduce concepts that have little basis in reality alongside common misconceptions about other sciences, doing nothing for the advancement of any knowledge whatsoever.

History of the browser user-agent string

2008-09-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

Now I know why user-agent string detection is bad. I also now understand why every browser claims to be Mozilla and why Mozilla is a great name.

WebAIM: Blog - History of the browser user-agent string

PageWatch

2008-09-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

Come on people. This is the age of Web 2.0. Your web pages should notify me if they update. I should be able to open my RSS reader and see the updated page. I can't always do this. Some pages that update frequently don't have RSS. Some are not built with RSS in mind. This prompted me to write PageWatch.

PageWatch is written in Perl. Here are its requirements:

Mac OS X

Growl

Perl Module LWP::UserAgent

Perl Module Mac::Growl

Perl Module Digest::MD5

Perl Module Mac::AppleScript

Edit line 11 to say your short name instead of mine.

It will download the URL you specify. A hash is made of the file it downloaded. This hash is looked up in the site hash table, which is stored in a hash file. If it is not found or does not match, Growl notifies you the page has been updated and it is opened in the default browser. If it hasn't been updated, nothing happens.

I didn't write this with distribution in mind and I won't distribute it beyond this post, so the username is coded in. Use Lingon to create a User Agent to run it at the interval you prefer for the site you want to check. It requires one argument; the full URL that you wish to check.

Click here to view and download the PageWatch source code. Don't forget to make the file executable or prepend the command line with "perl -w"

QR Codes

2008-08-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

It isn't really encryption, but it is obfuscation enough that I just started changing all the passwords I had in plain text over to QR Codes. These seem really useful.

The Sieve of Eratosthenes

2008-07-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

The Sieve of Eratosthenes is an ancient algorithm to calculate prime numbers. It involves starting at 2 and removing all numbers that can be divided by it evenly. You then go to the next number remaining and do the same, repeating until you have reached the end of your finite list of numbers.

Here is my perl implementation. Be gentle. I'm just learning the language. Post constructive comments if you have any ideas about what I could have done better.

Note: Blogger isn't allowing me to format the code properly. It all works*, but it looks ugly. It is much nicer looking in Komodo Edit and vim.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#The Sieve of Eratosthenes
use strict;

if($#ARGV != 0){
print "Usage: sieve.pl n \nn must be an integer greater than 1\n";
exit;
}
my $max = $ARGV[$1];
if($max < 2){
print "Argument must be larger than 1\n";
exit;
}
my @list = (1..$max);
my @sublist = ();
my @primes = ();
my $current = 0;
my $i = 0;
my $list_length = 0;

$list_length = @list;
my $nonzero = 1;
while ($nonzero){
for($i = $nonzero; $i < $list_length; $i++){
if($list[$i] != 0){
$nonzero = $i;
last;
}
elsif($i == $list_length - 1 && $list[$i] == 0){
$nonzero = 0;
last;
}
}
$current = $list[$nonzero];
for($i = $nonzero; $i < $list_length; $i++){
if($list[$i] % $current == 0){
$list[$i] = 0;
}
}
push(@primes, $current) if $nonzero;
}
print "@primes\n";

*There is something wrong with line 9. It works, but it says, "Use of uninitialized value in array element at sieve.pl line 9." I don't yet know how to fix this, but it returns the proper results.

Darkroom

2008-07-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

I developed my own film for the first time a few days ago. Here is a gallery of the best shots from my first two rolls of film. The square ones were shot on my Mamiya C330 medium format TLR. The smaller rectangular shot was from my Canon EOS 630 35mm SLR.

Gallery

Since then, I managed to find the SLR I've been looking for over the past several years. I've never actively searched for it, I just planned to get one if I ever found one for a good price. The Canon EOS Elan IIe was on sale this week at Mpex. I got one for $30. It works great. The only pictures I've developed from it were on the end of the last roll I shot with the 630. That part of the roll was ruined because I didn't realize that my reel was a 24 exposure reel until I had my 36 exposure reel loaded on it and cut off of the cartridge. Those exposures range from severely underdeveloped to undeveloped. What I was able to see looked decent, but I can't tell for sure. I'll know more about that camera next time I develop film, which should be today or Sunday.

12,456

2008-07-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

Do I spend too much time on the web? Probably not.

This is Google Reader. From the large number, I assume it counts every article view to be a page visit. I've only been using Google Reader for a few months. I can't possibly have made over 12K separate visits.

New Project

2008-06-10T11:25:00.001-07:00

Hypermileing!

My goal is to increase my car's gas mileage as much as possible. IIRC, it is rated for 35MPG. I've managed to squeeze it out to about 40MPG in warm weather by being careful in my shifting, but gas is $4/gallon, so that isn't good enough.

I'd like to get it into the mid 60's. I think this is possible. I drive a 2001 Kia Rio. It was never meant to be a performance machine. It was meant to be an economy machine, but they could have done better. Here are the steps I plan to follow:

Drive with mileage in mind
Starting today, I am focusing on keeping my gas usage as low as possible. This has the added benefit of making me a more attentive driver. I will be keeping my distance when possible and braking as little as possible, conserving as much momentum a

Track statistics
I am going to get a ScanGaugeII. This will let me know what my car is doing. It has an odometer and can show my fuel efficiency. Using this, combined with tracking my mileage and fuel usage, I hope to learn to improve performance and mileage

Modify my car
This is the tough part. I intend to increase the aerodynamics of my car. This will likely involve adding farings on the wheels, adding smooth hubcaps, putting an air dam in the front, and a spoiler on the back. I will also likely add wheel spoilers and a wiper windscreen. The engine would probably benefit from a cold air intake. This part may be expensive.

I'll post the progress and results here.

My Latest Work

2008-06-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

Tilted Windmill

I call it Tilted Windmill, but it is more of an ex-windmill. The wind was so high that it tipped over and fell into the pond, destroying the blades.

This is an HDR images made from eight exposures.

First Post!

2008-06-07T17:42:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking of starting a blog for a while, but I couldn't think of a title. I came up with "Peg the Geek Meter" while listening to the Mac Geek Gab podcast today. That is a phrase they use when discussing topics that are far beyond the average user, such as Unix commands and kernel stuff. It seemed appropriate for a blog with wide ranging topics that go far beyond the average.