Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at September 30th, 2004

Haven’t been blogging much recently due to a combination of life and school.

Master’s Project
I’ve been working on my master’s project and have totally changed it. Initially I’d been interested in trying to do some sort of distributed search system that had links that humans found useful be rated higher than simply links that had been linked.

I’ve recently changed to something completely different. It’s a distributed content management system. I’ll be layering it over cvs while simultaneously trying to make it something a normal human being can figure out.

I’ll probably post the whole project description here in the near future.

Work Week of Pain
The other reason I haven’t blogged much is work. Last week I upgraded one of our servers. It did not go well. Microsoft had changed the licensing on Small Business Server such that the one thing we used it for no longer worked.

The process of reinstallation, restoration from backup, and reconfiguration of the server was hell. I enjoy working on computers, but I do not enjoy doing it when 11 food pantries are desperate to enter their data and are sending home volunteers every day because I’m not yet finished.

Ants
On the bright side, we haven’t seen many ants lately. Hopefully this means the traps are working. That or the rice that Kristen sprinkled on the counter.

The Debate
And to complete the laundry list of thoughts, I thought Kerry and Bush both did well in the first debate. My guess would be that Kerry will get more out of it than Bush if only because Kerry seemed totally different than the indecisive caricature painted of him.

It’s good to see some discussion of the issues as opposed to who did what 30 years ago.

Posted by Jim at September 26th, 2004

Last night we came home from my parents’ house rather late. We’d been at my grandmother’s 85th birthday party, a family gathering that only lasted till 9 for most of my extended family, but we stayed till 10.

We arrived home at 11 something, discovering to our disgust that a large number of ants appeared to be having a carnival on our kitchen counter.

After the initial frenzy of ant smashing, we managed a more careful analysis of the situation. The good news is that the ants are not carpenter ants. Kristen’s seen carpenter ants before and I’ve been interested in insects for much of my life so we’ve at least got the necessary background knowlege to determine that.

What’s not good news is where the ants were.

They chose to congregate in exactly the spot where our dishes sit when there’s no room for them in the dishwasher. In short, they’ve identified a food source.

While we’re not particularly horrible housekeepers, dishes do sometimes sit on the counter for a couple days. It’s easy to imagine ants discovering them. In fact, despite rinsing our dishes before placing them there, we’ve sometimes found one of our cats licking our plates at night.

After putting the kids to bed, Kristen read up on ant problems online. Then she drew chalk lines on the counter (we have plenty of chalk). Ants apparently have a hard time crossing chalk lines.

Then she mixed yeast and honey into a paste and put them on bits of paper in the areas she’d blocked off. Why? Yeast eats sugar and lets off gas. If it does this inside an ant, the ant dies.

We found several dead ants this morning. After church, we bought ant traps. Hopefully they’ll finish the job.

Posted by Jim at September 22nd, 2004

A while back, I wrote an entry about some guy who was simultaneously driving his car and playing the trumpet.

Kristen thinks she’s seen him again. While she was at a local park with Abby and Rebecca, a guy got out of his car. Kids followed. While the kids played on the playground equipment, he pulled out a trumpet and started playing.

Pretty bizarre. Does he play everywhere he goes? Or is he somehow a professional musician?

Who knows? I’ll have to ask him someday. Maybe I should keep my own trumpet in the car just in case.

Posted by Jim at September 18th, 2004

Like a lot of stories I like, Life on Forbez is basically a fish out of water story. Par and his mother move to Forbez (a planet containing many different aliens) from their own planet Nordia (an extremely bureaucratic, conformist society).

His mother is something of a free spirit and really doesn’t fit in on her homeworld. Par is a normal kid, if a bit more level headed and studious than his mother.

In migrating to Forbez, they become part of a world with many types of aliens, some of which hate them, some are more friendly. Particularly worth mentioning are the Omni, aliens that look like the standard “enlightened” alien (big eyes, bald head, hairless humanoid body). The Omni also believe themselves to be the race chosen to rule the universe. All other races are inferior. Omni technology is so far in advance of everyone else that no one argues philosophical points about equality and diversity with them.

Fortunately for Par, he and his mother get on the good side of their next door neighbors (an Omni family). The father has been affected by the cosmopolitan environment of Forbez and re-examined his own beliefs of Omni superiority.

I won’t describe the comic too much more, save to say that I like it. Its generally funny, tells an ongoing story and takes on issues a bit larger than you’d expect given the lightness of the comic’s tone.

Before I go, I should mention one thing that irritates me about the comic. Here it is: The author would like to make money (which I am not against) and has therefore located the comic on Graphic Smash/Modern Tales. The thing that just plain sucks about that is that you therefore can’t read the archives. The most recent update is free for viewing, but if you want to read the archives, you have to subscribe.

This is not a good thing for new viewers of this comic because it is an on-going story and the relationships between the various characters have become a bit complex. I can’t imagine that I’d ever know enough to enjoy the comic by just reading it day by day without benefit of the archives.

Fortunately Life on Forbez has moved around a bit in it’s history. As a result, all but a few of the most recent copies of the archives are available for the moment. Read them fast before the author realizes he’s in violation of his contract…

UPDATE: Life on Forbez has since moved off of Graphic Smash. You can now read the archives in their entirety.

Posted by Jim at September 17th, 2004

Since the existence of Napster (and even before), people have been discussing issues of copyright as it applies to music and other forms of art (films, books…).

Basically, people have discovered that it’s easy to pass these things around in digital form. As a result of it being easy, people have passed stuff around and taken advantage of what other people are willing to pass on.

The music companies get rather steamed about this, arguing that this takes money out the hands of the artists (and not coincidentally, the music companies). In the meantime, many music fans have decided that they’ve got a moral right to pass mp3 files around.

I find that my position on the issue turns out to be (as ever…) somewhere in the middle.

I suspect the music companies are more right about the practical issues of getting the music for free. That is to say that legally people have a right to make a backup copy, but not the right to duplicate it for anyone who wants one. They also seem likely to be right that the artists aren’t getting money that they deserve.

Not only are the artists not getting their money, but neither are the truck drivers, warehouse workers, small record store owners and others who work as part of the system of distribution. That’s a big chunk of what makes a CD that costs a buck turn into $16 at the local CD shop.

On that issue the record companies are correct, but I don’t see them as entirely correct. For example, the record companies themselves have made an effort to pay artists as little as possible, sometimes deliberately cheating them.

This tends to strain the credibility of the idea that the record companies are sticking up for the poor artists of the world.

At the same time, advocates for unrestricted sharing argue that if you provide a piece of art for free, you’ll actually get more people interested in the artist’s works. An example of this is the Baen Free Library. Baen books provides some, but not all of their authors books on the web for free download. In some cases this includes recently published books. Some authors claim that this increases sales.

I don’t know whether this is true or not. I can only go on my own behaviour. I was introduced to most of the science fiction authors I like by borrowing their work from the local public library. No risk of wasting money there, but because I liked reading their books, I bought my own copies.

Similarly, some friends of mine recorded the entire run of Babylon 5. I (though I saw a few episodes when B5 was running) was mostly introduced to the show through that series of bootleg videotapes. I’ve since bought the entire 5 season run on DVD.

I’m pretty sure that Warner Brothers gained more money off that than they lost.

Downloaded music seems likely to work the same way. If there’s no risk of losing money, you can try stuff that you’d never buy and if you don’t like it, you don’t feel cheated. More importantly though, you probably will like and buy something.

What that amounts to in the end is free marketing.

Bearing that in mind, I’ve often wondered why the record industry doesn’t see it that way. Do they have information I don’t? Are they just too tied to the current business model to accept the fact that reality has changed?

I don’t have any contacts in the music business and so I don’t have any useful opinions about their beliefs. I do hope, however, that they connect with reality sometime soon.

Posted by Jim at September 12th, 2004

I’ve never quite gotten the deep love of lawns that some men apparently feel. Basically, I have one and my great hope is that it looks okay rather than like a golf course. I use a pushmower and am mostly unbothered by the side effects of that decision.

Not everyone has such low standards.

I ran into a person with much higher standards in the process of attending a friend’s wedding yesterday. The reception turned out to be in a banquet hall in Alto, Michigan–not too far from Grand Rapids. We enjoyed driving out there, amused by the rural roads, the suburban sprawl (large houses on large lots), and the prominence of Bush-Cheney 2004 signs.

Just after passing a railcar that had been converted to an ice cream shop, we noticed the banquet hall. Unfortunately, we didn’t notice it quickly enough and drove past.

Fortunately, the next house down the road had not one, but two driveways. The first driveway was occupied by several cars and pickup trucks so I used the second. The second driveway ended in a large garage that had a sign saying “Hank’s Towing.” It began in concrete for the first foot, but continued as grass for the remaining twenty feet or so. This is fairly typical this far out in the country.

It seemed a good place to turn around.

As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that the grass on this driveway was quite green. In fact, the dirt ruts that I’d expected to run from the road to the garage simply did not exist. I also noticed that 5-10 people were watching me from the pool. They ranged from young to old. I had apparently intruded on some sort of family gathering.

I made a three point turn on the grass and drove away, feeling like an idiot.

It took bare moments to reach the banquet hall. After parking, Kristen and I began to pull Abby (3) and Rebecca (2) out of the car. They had both fallen asleep. Abby was in my arms, her head on my shoulder and still half-sleeping, when a pickup truck stopped behind our car.

A man leaned out of the window and shouted, “How would you like it if I turned around on your lawn?”

“It looked like a driveway,” I said.

Then he said a number of things I don’t remember, all of them delivered at the same volume, and ending with “Next time why don’t you drive slower, so you see where you’re going.”

Then he gunned his truck and left the parking lot.

Later, Kristen mentioned that the first thing she thought when he stopped was “I wonder if he’s got a gun?”

She also asked, “Do you think you could have defended yourself if he’d attacked you?”

I stopped just short of a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I am trained in that sort of thing, but there aren’t a lot of moves that work well when you’re holding a sleeping three year old girl.

The guy was definitely more muscular looking than I am. My best shot if he’d attacked would have been to strike something that would immediately take him out. If that didn’t work, I’d have had to avoid getting drawn into a wrestling match that I’d almost certainly lose.

Most of the moves I’d have tried would have had the potential to kill or maim if they’d worked. Best that I never had the opportunity.

Still, it seems a bit excessive to attack someone who drove over your lawn, so he probably wouldn’t have. Of course, to me it seems excessive to follow someone who drove over your lawn and chew them out when they stop…

All I can do now is digest the situation. It’s hard to explain it. What do you even call it? It wouldn’t be an example of road rage (via Nate), but “lawn rage” sounds kind of stupid. Oh well… Whatever the case, I now know that the existence of a garage doesn’t automatically mean a driveway exists as well.

Posted by Jim at September 12th, 2004

In an effort to make it easy for people to read comments (to the extent that they exist…), I’ve added a RSS feed for comments.

Many thanks to Micheal Hall who’s blog entry’s links enabled me to do it without having to think too hard. I try to avoid that.

Posted by Jim at September 11th, 2004

September 11, 2004. Today we will again hear people discuss what happened 3 years ago, remembering the towers (and the people in them), the airplanes, the police and the firefighters.

I didn’t know anyone who died in the towers. I don’t live anywhere near them. For me it was just another day at work until one of my co-workers asked, “Jim, do you know anything about a plane hitting the World Trade Center?”

I didn’t, so I opened up a browser and read about it. Then someone turned on the television in the break room. The second plane hit. The Pentagon was hit.

After the fall of the second tower, all the national news web sites were deluged with requests, making it impossible to find out much of anything. I ended up following the news via Slashdot and watching video streams from the BBC.

Afterwards, people constantly referred to September 11 as “the day that changed everything.” I may just be contrarian, but, I’ve never fully agreed with that. What I’ve always assumed that people meant by that is that they’d never fully felt that terrorism could happen in the United States until September 11.

I’d always assumed that terrorism could, and, (probably due to following the news too closely during the 80’s and 90’s) it had never ocurred to me that it hadn’t. So, I was shocked, but not surprised.

What change did occur after September 11 seems as much related to fear as to surprise. Fear is a funny thing. There’s fear that results from understanding a risk, but still being unsure you’re ready for it despite your best efforts. In that situation, however, you still feel you have some control over your destiny.

The sort of fear terrorism provokes is another thing. With terrorism you find yourself afraid that at any moment something bad might happen, something that you have no control over at all.

In psychology, there’s a group of theories known as “locus of control” theories. The one I know best is Aaron Antonovsky’s Sense of Coherence theory. At core, it assumes that people who feel a sense of control over their lives handle stress, sickness and life in general better than people who don’t.

Whatever the strengths or problems of the theory (and the school of theories it comes from), it does illustrate a point–people need a sense of control over their lives.

What I haven’t seen in Antonovsky’s theory (possibly because I’m no longer following the literature) is what people will do to get their sense of control back when it is temporarily shattered. I only know what I’ve seen.

My family flew to Florida to see my brother’s wedding just 3 months after September 11. My sister got stopped in each airport (Grand Rapids, Cincinnati and Tampa) to get her shoes checked. No one else in my family did. I could only wonder why. I hadn’t thought people working on doctorates in creative writing were particularly threatening.

Also, I remember making sure that my swiss army knife was going through with the luggage as opposed to being carried on my person. This was the period when they were taking away nail clippers if you happened to carry them on the plane.

Of course, airports weren’t the only place affected, Congress passed legislation in the wake of September 11. Some related directly to terrorism, some indirectly. The United States went to war twice based on the idea that going to war in Afganistan and then Iraq would make things safer here.

Whether or not things are safer is subject to debate. Personally I don’t think we’ll know for a while yet. I just hope that any laws and policies that were created under the influence of September 11 are revisited when people have the time and have lost a bit of the reactive fear associated with the memory.

We are closer to that now, I think. The first anniversary was still like a fresh wound. The second a bit less so. This year felt a little more normal.

This is a good thing. I don’t want the country to lose the realistic perspective that some people in the world definitely hate us, but I don’t want us to base our foriegn policy on unrealistic fear either. When we treat people as if they are potential terrorists and ally with dictatorial regimes because they may be useful in fighting terrorists, we undermine our own reputation and goals in the world.

Posted by Jim at September 9th, 2004

My wife bought a wine making kit last weekend, intending to pick the grapes in our backyard and use them to create wine. Amusingly, it turned out that unlike last year when we had so many grapes that we had to give them away, this year we had perhaps one bunch.

Thus, Kristen ended up going to the store to buy grapes to reach the minimum amount needed.

She needn’t have bothered. According to the book on wine making she bought, you can apparently make wine from anything that isn’t nailed down. This includes fruit (peaches, apple, raspberries, blueberries…), but also stuff you’d never expect such as carrots, turnips, potatoes and beets.

I’m mildly interested in trying some of the weirder ones. This interest is mixed with another thought that goes something like this, “If beet wine were any good, they’d sell it in stores, right?”

I’ve never seen beet wine in stores. Not even at one of our local liquor stores whose freezers on the same day contained not only a half eaten sandwich, but also a large piece of cheese that had turned grayish-green from mold.

Vegetable wines apparently don’t even meet their low standards.

For the moment, however, Kristen seems to be limiting herself to grapes. She’s stirring the stuff daily, checking to see if it’s fermenting, and generally waiting for the point at which she can move the wine out of the plastic bucket and into actual wine bottles. After that it will age in our cellar for six months.

At this point we will have to make a choice. Should we drink it all ourselves or should we inflict it on our friends and relatives?

I lean toward drinking it all ourselves. That way there will be no witnesses if we have to throw it all out.

My wife is a wonderful person and I’m sure that she can become quite good at making wine if she wants to, but I’ve done a bit of reading on winemaking recently. Here, as I understand them, are the stages hobbyists go through when making wine:

1. Actually making the wine. Everything seems possible in this stage.
2. Aging the wine. The hobbyist waits with growing anticipation.
3. Inviting your friends to drink the wine.
4. Actually drinking the wine. At this point it is discovered that the wine is not only bad, but it is actually the worst wine made by a sentient being in the history of the universe.
5. Your friends are all very polite.
6. The vomiting begins.
7. You don’t want to know about 7.

So, anyway… The wine will be ready in six months. I’ll tell you more when it happens.

Posted by Jim at September 6th, 2004

I’ve never really gotten into RSS feeds.

A number of people I know think they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread, but for whatever reason, I’ve never bothered to make use of them. It’s not that I haven’t tried, mind you.

I installed Amphetadesk about a year ago, but using it never really became a habit. So, I’ve provided RSS feeds on my blog because I know people use them (the RSS 1.0 feed is the most downloaded page of my blog), but still haven’t bothered to use them myself.

That may or may not all change today.

When I’m on Windows, I use Firefox for my main browser. Firefox has a lot of extensions. One of them is an RSS reader called sage.

I’ve put RSS feeds for all the blogs I read that have them (plus a few comics) into my RSS feed bookmarks folder. Now all I have to do is see if I use it after today…