Alkahest my heroes have always died at the end

December 10, 2007

What a week

Filed under: Personal — cec @ 11:51 pm

Okay, it’s only Monday, but it’s been about a week since wrote anything here.  In that time:

  • The non-profit I work with and on whose board I serve has gone bat-shit crazy.  They say that academic politics are so petty because the stakes are so small.  Trust me, academic politics haven’t got anything on non-profit politics
  • A friend at the university has announced her resignation to move on to a different job.  This is probably good for her – she’ll be happier, but it means that half the people I know took it hard.
  • I got a call last week from a lawyer representing my old employer, letting me know that I am a witness in a case against them.  Go me!  *grumble*
  • The thing at my new job did go through and I now do people management for six staff members.  Oh, and their performance evaluations were due in November, can we finish those soon?  They’ll be done and signed tomorrow, but what a pain.
  • Finally, I went to (sort of crashed) a holiday party for the school of arts and sciences at my former employer.  That was a lot fun, but odd.  Particularly when I ran into my old boss and then the woman who inherited part of my responsibilities when I left.  Theoretically, she was doing the job until they hired my replacement.  It’s been four months – I don’t think the position’s been posted yet.  Regardless, I talked to a lot of people and confirmed my original statement – the thing I miss most is the people.

Now if I can only get through this week: finish up the last part of a project and put the presentation together, I’ll be in good shape for taking some time off.

December 4, 2007

It lives

Filed under: Technical — cec @ 11:02 pm

Right before Thanksgiving my iPod went to that great electronics superstore in the sky.  More specifically, the cute little 1.8″ hard drive died.  Having looked around, I figured the best (or at least most interesting) fix was to replace the drive with a compact flash card.  The connector part finally came in today and we had a lovely (and to spare you the suspense, successful) operation.

We started with a 30 GB 5th generation iPod video showing the unhappy ipod symbol:

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The first step was to open it up.  They make special tools for this, but I didn’t have any, so I used my old stand-by, a pocket knife to open it:

dsc_2093_m.jpg   dsc_2094_m.jpg

I got the parts ready:

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and did the surgery.  The result was the same iPod, no hard drive but with a 16 GB cf card instead:

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At this point, I connected the power back up but did not completely reseal the iPod (in case I accidentally disconnected the audio out line.  Total time for the surgery, 15 minutes.  I turned the iPod on and saw:

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Okay, it knows that it’s got a new drive and wants me to connect it to iTunes.  Hrm, problem.  iTunes doesn’t seem to have a linux version.  Okay, let’s boot the computer upstairs into windows mode – an ancient win2k install.  Run an old version of iTunes.  No go.  I had removed QuickTime to make space for ArcGIS and now iTunes is unhappy.  I tried to explain that I don’t really want to listen to the iPod on windows.  It doesn’t care.

I download iTunes.  It claims to be a 47 MB download – it’s actually 57 MB.  Fine.  Run the installer.  Nope – this version requires XP or Vista.  Crap.  Go back to Apple, find the older Win2k version.  Claims to be a 47 MB download – seems to be 37MB.  I don’t think Apple engineers understand file size.

Install iTunes, reboot the computer, run iTunes It won’t fix the iPod because it can’t find the network.  Network is working, iTunes can’t find it.  Search the web, find the solution and re-run iTunes.  It downloads a new firmware and fixes the device.  Time screwing with iTunes: 40 minutes.  Result:

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Okay, now we’re in business.  I take a break for dinner and fire up GtkPod.  Too many mp3s to fit on the new system.  Fine, I get it down to the right size and start the sync.  Two and half hours later, we have music!

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not much space left, but that’s okay:

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First impressions?  It’s nice.  There’s no disk noise, no disk vibration and best of all, no disk spin-up delay.  You can jump between songs without waiting until the drive spins up and seeks.  Overall, it was definitely worth it.  Now when 32 GB flash drives are affordable I’ll have a good upgrade path 🙂

December 3, 2007

Calendar update update

Filed under: Photography — cec @ 10:51 pm

In response to the two comments on my last post about the calendar:

etselec: I’m not certain if you were kidding or not.  FWIW, I don’t usually think of the calendar as something people outside of my family would be interested in.  I think that’s a pretty usual INTP trait 🙂  If anyone is interested in the calendar, it’s available at Lulu at the baseline cost of $11.29 each.  I didn’t put a markup on it, because it’s a fun thing rather than a plan to take over the world make money.

Mom: we just ordered them.  It’ll be a few days to print and then another 3 or so to ship.  Expect them by Friday the 14th at the latest.

World:  wrt to my mom, you see the kind of nagging reminders I put up with here 😉

December 2, 2007

Calendar update

Filed under: Photography — cec @ 9:20 pm

As I mentioned earlier, I’m printing the Yellowstone calendar using Lulu instead of Kodak.  I got back my sample and all in all, I’m happy with it.  I like that the image is the full size of the page (no border).  The print quality is pretty good – it’s not as good as Kodak’s but that’s not a big surprise.  The paper is also a bit lighter weight than Kodak’s card stock.  But hey, it’s about 45% cheaper!  🙂

November 27, 2007

Making vegetarian food tastier; or

Filed under: Cooking — cec @ 11:05 pm

Cooking with the world’s most dangerous* additive; or

How I stopped worrying and learned to love MSG.

A few weeks ago, I heard Robert Krulwich on NPR talking about umami – the fifth taste. If you didn’t hear it, go to the link above. As always, Krulwich makes the story very engaging. He describes how the Greek philosopher Democritus hypothesized the existence of four tastes: sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Everything you eat is made up of a combination of those four tastes (plus the 10,000 various smells your nose can sense).

He goes on to discuss the previously hypothesized, but recently confirmed, discovery of a fifth taste – umami. The taste of l-glutamate. The 200 year old discovery was finally confirmed with the identification of two different types of glutamate receptors on the tongue. Glutamate is common in meat and other protein-heavy foods, like certain cheeses.  I suspect that the glutamate receptors evolved for the same reason as our ability to detect the other tastes: to help us decide what we should and shouldn’t eat.  Sugar indicates a carbohydrate rich food, salt – salt (duh), sour – probably vitamin C, bitter – maybe something poisonous to avoid, and umami to detect protein rich foods.

That got me to thinking.  With the exception of certain foods, e.g., cheeses, vegetarian cooking doesn’t have much umami in it.  It may have plenty of protein, but the dishes often aren’t satisfying.  Perhaps the lack of umami means that the actual protein in the food doesn’t register on the tongue and so, over time, you feel as if you were lacking for the protein itself.

Some of my favorite vegetarian dishes have lots of cheese, particularly parmesan (e.g., hamburger bocca burger pie and barley with mushrooms).  Of course, I can’t add parmesan or soy sauce to everything.  So as an experiment, I bought some ‘Accent’ which is just a container of MSG.  It’s not something I would add to all dishes, but I’ve been experimenting with adding it to dishes that are supposed to be savory: split pea soup that doesn’t have ham, store bought stuffing that should be made with beef broth, etc.

So far, the experiment seems to be a success.  Used in the right dishes, adding MSG to certain foods seems to make them taste better.

Of course, there are reasons why I shouldn’t use MSG; but fortunately health is not one of them.  Numerous scientific studies have completely exonerated MSG from the anecdotal health scare from the 60s.  There are no ill effects observed from the consumption of moderated amounts of MSG.  After all, this is essentially the same compound as is found in meat and other natural glutamate sources.

My main concern for not relying on it too much is that it’s a cheat.  It’s not a big cheat.  It’s a little bit like adding vinegar or salt to something to improve it’s flavor.  However, it is a cheat.  Rather than using an artificial source of umami, I would prefer to find ways of using more ingredients that are naturally higher in umami.  But in the meantime, I’m definitely going to keep the MSG around.  It’s in a little container in the pantry, right next to the salt.  🙂

November 26, 2007

Calendar pictures

Filed under: Personal,Photography — cec @ 12:27 pm

To forestall my mother’s nagging polite and subtle reminders, I took some time yesterday to select pictures for a 2008 Yellowstone calendar. I tried to limit myself to pictures taken on this year’s trip and was happy to see that I could 🙂

The ones I finally selected are shown below. They start with the cover image and then go from January through December:

Cover January February March April May June July August September October November December

To print them, I’m going with Lulu instead of Kodak. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is price 🙂 The other is that Lulu will do a full 8.5″x11″ edge to edge print whereas Kodak always puts a border. The images above are all scaled/cropped to a 8.5×11 aspect ratio, so hopefully, I’ll end up with a pretty nice result.

update: if anyone’s interested, the calendar is available from Lulu with no markup

November 25, 2007

Rebuilding an iPod

Filed under: Technical — cec @ 11:08 pm

Over the holiday (I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!) I spent some time figuring out what to do about my broken iPod hard drive. The simplest/cheapest thing is to replace the drive with another 30 GB 1.8″ drive. The problem is that this is boring. Okay, next thought – up the drive size. I can get a 40 GB drive that’s the same size and is a drop-in replacement. Only problem is that this isn’t very cost effective in terms of dollars per GB. Apparently the wide-spread use of 30 GB drives in iPods has lowered the price point here. What about a 60 GB? It looks like that’s doable too and at a good price point. Downside is that I need a new back to accommodate the thicker drive. Hrm, that’s no good either.

In looking around online, I ran across Tarkan Akdam’s website. He had the same issue with a dead ipod drive and resolved it with a very cool hack. He built a connector board that connects a compact flash card to the ZIF connector for an ipod. This let him connect a 4 GB CF card in place of the drive. As an electronics engineer he did this right – not a cheap connector with random wires (like I would do), but a custom connector board. He’s now selling these and I’ve ordered one, along with a 16 GB CF card. Hopefully by next weekend everything will be here and I can put it all back together.

Cons:

  • less space
  • slightly slower data transfer speed

Pros:

  • exceedingly cool
  • hardier – no moving parts to break the next time I drop it
  • no spin-up time when I change songs – i.e., better ipod response times
  • better battery life (Tarkan’s done some tests and the results are impressive)

I would have preferred not to have broken the ipod, but this will at least be interesting and cheaper than a replacement 🙂

November 21, 2007

Tango uniform

Filed under: Personal — cec @ 10:29 pm

Looks like my ipod died today.  As I was packing up to head home it slid off of my bag and onto the floor.  Not a bad fall – it’s had worse.  It seemed fine when I started it back up, played a couple of songs.  But apparently, those were in the memory cache.  Once it was done with those, it locked up and the hard drive started clicking 🙁

I guess my options are to either replace the hard drive or buy a new one.  I’ll probably replace the drive.  I don’t think I care enough about the magical features of the new ipods.  At least not enough to justify blowing three to four hundred dollars.

November 19, 2007

progress – such as it is

Filed under: Guitar — cec @ 11:49 am

Five years ago, I did a lot of Tai Chi.  My teacher at the time constantly related the encouraging (?) story of a tai chi student who went to his teacher and asked, “teacher, when will my knees stop hurting?”  The teacher told him that his knees would stop hurting, “when he stopped learning.”

If the guitar is anything like tai chi, then I’m definitely still learning 🙂

Observations after a week of practice:

  • The fingers on my fretting hand (pronounced, mah frettin’ hand) still hurt, but not as badly as they did after the first night.  I can practice for a good hour without too much damage
  • About.com has a very good set of beginner’s lessons
  • Chords learned to date: G, C, D, E minor, A minor and D minor.  If I remember correctly, all you need for rock music is 4 chords and a groupie – all I need is a groupie and I’m set!
  • Scales are boring, but helpful.  I’ve got the chromatic scale down and I’m working on the E phygian scale.
  • I need for someone to explain to me why there is no B# or E# – going straight from B to C and E to F keeps screwing me up
  • I like the mathematical progressions in music.  You get a sense of why Pythagoras was both a mathematician and a mystic.

November 13, 2007

I call BS

Filed under: Social — cec @ 9:58 am

I missed on Sunday, but under the theory of better late than never…

Donald Kerr is the principal deputy director of national intelligence, so presumably he speaks with some authority regarding the government’s view of privacy. In a recent Associated Press article he made several remarks which I find exceedingly scary, misleading or both. First up:

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.

So if I understand this, privacy, whose definition traditionally includes anonymity and the control over personal information, should now be defined to exclude both. Instead we should trust the government to safeguard the formerly private information. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we have a word for the protection of sensitive information – it’s called confidentiality. What Kerr is saying is that there is no such thing as privacy when it comes to government, all you really can hope for is confidentiality.

I’m not certain it’s possible to express how abhorrent to the constitution the attitude conveyed in that statement really is. Kerr is essentially saying that there is no longer a fourth amendment providing against unreasonable search and seizure.

But wait, there’s more! Now for a limited time, in addition to an anti-constitutional perspective on government, Kerr gives us a bunch of crap to justify it:

Kerr said at an October intelligence conference in San Antonio that he finds concerns that the government may be listening in odd when people are “perfectly willing for a green-card holder at an (Internet service provider) who may or may have not have been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their data.”

First, let’s get rid of the fear-mongering. Is Kerr suggesting that the U.S. government is giving green-cards to illegal immigrants? That seems exceedingly unlikely. Second, I’m fairly certain that a green-card holder is not going to be able to arrest me in the event that he or she a) monitors my internet traffic, and b) thinks something is a concern. Third, remember that privacy is about the control of personal information. It’s about having the ability to decide who gets to see what information. Having a government monitor all of the information from all ISPs completely strips away privacy. As to the ISP itself, I think that most of us are used to thinking of them as common carriers (like the telephone companies they are descended from). Their status as common carriers suggests that they are not monitoring all traffic. Moreover, there are laws that prevent them from turning over information to the government without having a court order. Of course, these are the same laws that the administration is pushing congress to overturn through retroactive immunity to the telecom companies.

Finally, we have this:

Millions of people in this country — particularly young people — already have surrendered anonymity to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and to Internet commerce. These sites reveal to the public, government and corporations what was once closely guarded information, like personal statistics and credit card numbers.

“Those two generations younger than we are have a very different idea of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs. And so, it’s not for us to inflict one size fits all,” said Kerr, 68. “Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won. Anyone that’s typed in their name on Google understands that.”

Again, another lovely distortion. Kerr is suggesting that the intentional, willing dissemination of information is comparable to the government hoovering all of your communications off of the internet. This is complete and utter crap. Are there things about me on the internet? Of course. There are the public records from Durham and Chatham counties and bunch of emails that I sent to public mailing lists. Oh, and the information that I’ve purposefully posted. With the exception of the public records, all of this is information that I made public. Comparing this to the government monitoring all of my personal communications that I have not chosen to make public is an intentional distortion of the basic concepts of privacy. But then I guess we knew that from the beginning of the article.

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