simra.net Doing stuff since 1973

This is a random post to indicate that I'm still alive and I've repaired perms on this blog, deleted spam comments and generally hope to get things ship-shape before I move the site to a new provider.

Howdy folks, hope you're all doing good. :-)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16655-chaos-filter-helps-robots-ma...

Ok, the article isn't about me but about Paul Newman's work at Oxford, but I got to be the independent expert vouching for how cool his stuff is. 3 seconds of fame used up. 12 to go.

http://buffalobeast.com/134/50mostloathsome2008-full.html

One of my favorite annual lists. Obama takes spot 50, which is kind of like an honorable mention- they knew they had to put him in but to put him anywhere other than 50 would imply they really mean it... DHS Agent: "OMG this newspaper thinks Obama's the 49th most loathesome person in the world. Set up the wiretaps."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090112.wvanoc0112/B...

With $458-million dollars. Every Vancouverite opposed to the freakshow can celebrate their bittersweet moment. Is it too late to just cancel the whole thing?

Great rewards lie in store...

http://www.mazapan.se/games/BurnTheRope.php

http://volts-iq.com

'Nuff said.

Today's special inbox message.

This is a system generated message informing you that the above-named person is a federal prisoner who seeks to add you to his/her contact list for exchanging electronic messages. There is no message from the prisoner.

You have only the following options in response to this message.

* You may APPROVE this prisoner for message exchanges by clicking here and then clicking the Send button; or

* You may REFUSE this specific prisoner's request for message exchanges by clicking here and then clicking the Send button; or

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Any additional response will not be delivered to the prisoner or the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

By approving this transaction, you consent to have Bureau of Prisons staff monitor the content of all electronic messages exchanged.

Once you have been approved by the Bureau of Prisons to correspond with the prisoner, the prisoner will be notified and must initiate messaging.

For additional information related to this program, please visit the http://www.bop.gov/inmate_programs/trulincs_faq.jsp FAQ page.

http://www.aegisub.net/2008/12/if-programming-languages-were-religions.h...

... which makes me a Mormon with a secret Voodoo fetish and dabblings in Judaism, Islam and Zen Buddhism.

I hardly posted this year, so who am I to talk about the best of 2008? Look at it this way: just because I was silent doesn't mean I wasn't lurking.

My blogroll has grown to 355 subscriptions. That's a bit much to manage, but there are a handful of blogs that I come back to over and over. Here's my rundown of faves and knee-jerk reads.

Economics was the theme of '08, for obvious reasons. It's all about The Mess That Greenspan Made.
http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com/
Ok, maybe he cheers too much for gold, but he's got the right idea.
For a more center-of-the-road approach, see The Economist. Not quite as good as the print edition, but still a decent reference:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/economist/full_print_edition
P.S. if you're looking for a stock to short to the bottom:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/agoracom-braintech
HAHAHAHA. Just kidding, Rick. ;-) ;-)

Amusements and diversions:
XKCD always strikes a chord with me. The more melancholy it gets, the better it is.
http://www.xkcd.com/atom.xml
Indexed offers its daily dose of wisdom:
http://indexed.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
... and Strange Maps appeals to the inner geography geek:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/feed/

Unicorns and Guily Pleasures:
The Xeni vs Violet smackdown was the buzz of the blogosphere this year. My money was on Xeni's version of the truth. VB probably won more eyeballs.
http://www.boingboing.net/atom.xml
http://www.tinynibbles.com/feed (prlly NSFW)

I don't give a flying frak about politics any more, but it warmed my heart to see the democrats and a real leader take the throne. For some reason Huff wins over KOS, just on sheer volume:
http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/huffingtonpost/raw_feed
... and yes, just because I've moved to Redmond doesn't mean I've forgotten I'm Canajun. 2 points for maximum offense:
http://canadiancynic.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I'm still paying rent in Vancouver. :-( Miss 604 makes it all better. Except for those annoying copyright notices.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/miss604rss

For whatever reason, Buddhist, Atheist, Cephelapodist and Roboticist sites were not high on my radar this year. Friends, acquaintances and pseudo-internet-friends were, though. Some feeds worth digesting, just because, in absolutely no order:
http://smart-machines.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://alweb.homeip.net/blog/?feed=rss2
http://haikufactory.com/feed/atom/
http://letrangers.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://blog.mikedaum.com/feed/atom/
http://pooyak.com/blog/atom.xml
http://www.dudek.org/dudek.org/blog/rdf91_xml
http://level8.wordpress.com/feed/
http://streebgreebling.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/17586196933164395276/state... (Eli Sagor)
http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/18067771064896365845/state... (Mike Daum)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Simranet (Yours Truly!)

Happy holidays, one and all, and all the best in the new year.

Prepare to be awed by the Periodic Table of Awesoments

http://www.eatliver.com/i.php?n=3723

http://2dboy.com/games.php

Enjoy!

Bear with me while I mess with pipes and test some more...

fyi, if you're subscribed to my RSS feed, check that it's http://feeds.feedburner.com/Simranet and not /blog/rss.xml. Otherwise you'll miss out on half the action. :-)

Good news #1: My cousin-in-law has offered me free hosting. Sweet! The server can be on the slow side, but beggars can't be choosers, no? I'll tweak drupal's throttle module to try to make things a little snappier.
Good news #2: I'm sitting at YVR after receiving my TN visa in record time. Many thanks to Microsoft's immigration lawyers for assembling all the documentation I needed to complete the process. Now I have an hour to kill while I wait to board.

I honestly don't know what to do with this (see below). Symantec has automatically opted me in to renew the license on a product I uninstalled months ago. Their email originates from symantec.com but redirects me to enter my username and password at mynortonaccount.com (hello? phishing, anyone?).

Let's take a poll, should I:

1. Report the email as a phishing scam?
2. Report the practice to whatever consumer watchdog I can find.
3. Wait for the charge to appear on my credit card and then register a fraudulent charge?
4. Suck it up and visit mynortonaccount.com to cancel? (...and implictly legitimize what can only be fairly described as a shady business practice.)



[Update: according to symantec, I agreed to this when I bought the product. Actually, I didn't buy it- it was part of some free promotion. I don't remember any kind of opt-out option when I bought it- remember to read the fine print!]

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http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/05/problem-with-facebook.html

FSJ hits the big fat elephant-in-the-livingroom-nail on the head.

Ever since we moved to Vancouver four years ago, one of the bright spots has been Aphrodite's Cafe at 4th and Dunbar. The bright, laid back restaurant serves delicious, local organic food and has the best pies in the city. What really made Aphrodite's special, though, was owner Allan Christian, whose constant quiet, unassuming presence helped you slow down and appreciate your meal. He always took the time to stop by our table and say hi, and Nisha frequently bumped into him as he delivered pies to the Salt Spring coffee shop on campus. We were deeply saddened to drop by the restaurant tonight and discover that Allan passed away on Tues. He was one of those people you don't realize you'll miss until they're gone, and I'm grateful to have met him. A memorial service is planned- details are at the cafe.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04272008/tv/the_best_shows_on_tv__ever_10810...

I fully object to the notion that 3 of the top 5 shows ever debuted less than 10 years ago, and 4 were running as recently as 2006. HELLO? WHERE IS MASH?

Somehow I've managed to defy the odds and take the upgrade path with each new release of Mandriva/Mandrake since 10.0, without the need for a full reinstall (and still dual-booting with the original XP home install too!) Easy Urpmi is the best thing since sliced bread. Alas, sooner or later the odds were bound to catch up to me and after today's attempt to move to Spring 2008 the machine still boots but I can only get to a prompt using the interactive loader and the kernel doesn't like my network interfaces. Topping it off, it's only half-finished all the package upgrades. With some effort I may be able to resurrect it, but given that this box is well-past its best before date I'll probably save it for a retirement project.

http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2008/04/nick-bostrom-why-i-hope-sear...
http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/the-trading-society/

The Great Filter, then, would have to be something more dramatic than run-of-the mill societal collapse: it would have to be a terminal global cataclysm, an existential catastrophe.

Two seemingly disconnected articles, but both carry an underlying theme- where are we headed? First, Sentient Developments discusses the Fermi paradox- the question of why we have not yet made contact with extra-terrestrial life. The usual explanation is that there is a 'great filter' at work that prevents alien life from reaching the sophistication required for interstellar travel/communications, the main question for us is whether we've survived the great filter or it remains in the future. I think the assumption that the filter must be cataclysmic is a bit mystifying- is it not possible for an alien society to reach the point where it can agree that it makes more sense to focus on resource management than galactic colonization? After all- if there are other Earth-like planets they must have similar resource constraints.

Which brings us to the second article, which concerns the decline of the 'finance class'- that segment which has come to dominate such an unusually large portion of the American economy, and the impending transition to... what? How will America weather the economic storms ahead and what will the resulting sociopolitical landscape look like? Here I'll argue that the explosion of the financial services industry is very closely tied to rise of leisure as the great North American pasttime. As we get lazier, the lure of 'easy money' becomes stronger. Now, I won't argue that everyone in the finance industry is lazy, far from it, but that the lure of wads of easy money is what attracts a disproportionate number of service providers (and clients). Case in point: the explosion of dumb-ass 20-something real-estate agents in Vancouver. If or when the big correction comes, it will be very interesting indeed to see what happens to this segment of society.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?_r=1&oref=s...
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/25/12334/8891
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/25/pbs-breaks-media-blackout-of-nyt-sto...

Last Sunday the NYT broke a story that, in a less cynical age, would have led to congressional investigations and much soul-searching. Maybe 11 pages is too long to be considered newsworthy, but in any case, the story of how the Pentagon spoon feeds supposedly 'objective' analysts has resulted in zero coverage elsewhere, with the two exceptions of a PBS story (see thinkprogress), and a congressman's angry blog posts. If I have to point my finger anywhere, I'll argue that Wag the Dog did more damage to war reporting than any other modern scandal- we've all come to expect spin in the form of 10 second sound-bites, without any real desire to hear the truth.

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856
[via /. ]

Amen to that. Maybe I'm showing my academically focused programming career, or maybe just my age, but I find unit testing to be a highly unproductive use of my time. I prefer to plow through to the working prototype, noting the failure modes with /* TODO: fix this */ in the code. Refactoring is an inevitable consequence of development- why would I waste days testing classes that will probably morph into something unrecognizable over the course of a few months? This engaging interview with Donald Knuth covers a lot more ground than just testing...