zwarg.blog

Polar Express

On the way up to Maine, we boarded a train with a wreath lashed to the front of the locomotive.

"Just like the Polar Express", my wife says.

Winter Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice. Now the days get longer. Unfortunately at a snail's pace, but longer nonetheless.

New Update

I have been off the radar. I'll use my first post back in a bit to let all my peeps (yes, both of you) know this one very important snippet:

We got our first Christmas tree today.

End of the Beginning

At the national Urban League conference in Chicago, it was said that the "Beer Summit" wasn't the end, it was the beginning. This coverage on NPR seems to say as much: npr.org.

A conversation about race is one that needs to happen between friends, at work, at home, on the playground, in the pub, at the gym, in the street. Openly and honestly. It's time.

The Credit Crisis, For You And Me

I hadn't understood what happened in the "Credit Crises", but now it seems to make sense -- at least in a logical sense, still not an ethical one.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo

Iced Over

This morning, ice had coated the windows in the house, so they looked like frosted shower doors. When I walked to work, the ice had crusted over the inch or so of snow on the ground, and covered all the trees. Each tree had a thin sheet if ice completely encasing it. Walking down the street, it looked like the trees were crystalline, or completely coated in a thin layer of epoxy. It was breathtaking, and a few moments along my walk, I had to stop and stare at the branches at eye level.

Aligner, A Tool

I wanted/needed a tool that I could use to align a large time series together in short order. I haven't worked with GTK before, and I already wrote an auto-correlator in python, so I took a stab at writing a simple application in PyGTK.

The whole python script is available here: aligner_py. You will need python and pygtk installed, obviously.

Dissection of a Printer

It started as an HP LaserJet IIIp that I found on the street corner. I thought to myself: I bet there's a lot of cool stuff in there. I hauled it on my shoulder to work, and set myself to task at the end of the day. This was the process of dissecting the unit:

-take down the front panel
-remove the toner catridge & discard
-removed all screws
-removed long black plastic cover
+ 1 single resistor underneath 2 screwed plates
-removed small black plastic cover
-removed prominent axle with gear, bearing, and paper pickup. Set aside
-flip back long metal covered plastic
-unscrewed 2 more screws
-take out heating elements by prying sides of front panel to the side. Set aside
+lots of gears
-unscrew all visible screws
-front axle comes out with 1 screw
-many gears are clamped in, and pop out of plastic easily
-uncoupled electronics
+2 sets of IR diode/anode sensors (black plastic around is a mask -- small slit for transmitter and reciever)
+2 plugs with big male pins -- debug connections?
-stripped all parts from front panel
-removed 2 screws on top cover, and it detaches
+connected with ribbon cable to LCD, unplug and set aside
-some electronics now visible
+contrast is a slider under the cover
+another 2 ir emitter/detector used to detect open panel
+removed emitter and slider board
+removed fan
-side panel fell off while removing fan
-other side panel snaps off easily
-removed cable harnesses
-removed screws on gearbox
+really nice big gears
-removed screws inside gearbox
+minor gear assembly packed nicely
-opposite side of gear assembly has nice long springs as part of front panel switch?
-removing screws to get to spring loosens panel that contains power connectors for the heating element, previously on the front panel
-disconnected contacts from plastic housing
-removed rear electronics panel
+rear electronics convert the serial and parallel signals into 1 (it seems), through 1 connector
-removed top electronics panel
-font cartridge board and i/o board comes up
+connected down to board below, and powered from the side
+contains quartz crystal!
-below is a slot for 2 possible components -- about the size of a hard drive
-removed second shield/box
+appears to be main control board -- massive quartz crystal?
+fiber connection from main control board!
+one massive chip has a big heat sink
-removed next shield
-removed power switch
-removed power supply
-removed bottom paper feeder connector
-removed big, beautiful 24V 4 phase stepper motor
-removed laser board and laser
-removed mirror assembly cover
-removed fiber channel
-removed lens assembly
-removed laser mirror assembly
-removed laser optics assembly
-removed power transformer board

All in all, it took about 2 hours. The coolest part was the fiber channel that ran from the main electronic control board into the laser optics assembly. There are some really great optics, and a great compliment of gears. A small haul, considering how much of it ended up in the trash, but it was fun.

ArtScope?!

One helluva collection of images, and a fun look at them, too. Like a lightbox and a lupe. Takes me back to college. Yikes.

SFMoma ArtScope

Obamanation!

Best said by Reed:

"hooooooooooooooooooooooonk. yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaah. wooooooooooo. repeat"

Vote

Go out and do it.

Phinally

The curse is gone. Take that Billy. The Phillies won the world series. But you know that already, don't you?

The scene aphter was craaaaazy. I watched the 3 inning closer at M&T's, and began celebrating there. We could whoop phrom the back patio, and hear people in the tower at 8th and Walnut whooping back. Cars honking incessantly in the streets, accompanied by cheering.

We headed to broad street, and joined the thousands oph people already there. It had been maybe 30 minutes since the win. The crowds were banging pots and high-phiving and chest bumping and hugging. As we worked our way through the crowd, we saw people climbing the lampposts and pulling down the Phillies banners. People were on top oph all the bus shelters, magazine stands, anything that could be stood upon was stood upon.

We made it up to Chestnut, where the crowd was impassible, so we cut over and around to Suburban Station. Coming out oph the station at City Hall, you could see the massive crowds everywhere, still partying. The blocks around City Hall were jammed with people, and the only traphic getting through was phrom Market to N Broad. We headed back home avoiding Broad Street. The streets were less packed, but the phans were all over, still just as happy to chest-bump you or slap your palm.

By the time I made it home, my hands tingled phrom so many slaps. It was an amazing party, and I'm surprised that there wasn't more mayhem. It was mostly a lot oph people in a euphoric state.

Somethin' else. Let's do this more ophten -- every 25 years is just too long.

Off The Radar

Been off the blog for a bit.

What's new? A great deal of work, which is rewarding. One of the things that I'm starting to get curious about are obscure programming languages. Like erlang, and now boo!

There are quite a few good diagrams and timelines of languages, and I find it fascinating, kind of like looking at an old map. Who knows what kinds of people and events surrounded the development of any of these wild languages... there's got to be some lore there somewhere.

Yeah, and some linkage:

What Would A Real Race Conversation Look Like?

A short apology: I am but a grasshopper on a journey.

Yesterday, my wife sent me a link to Obama's speech on race. I since found it on his campaign site, as well as others. It got me thinking.

This conversation is one that we need to have with each other, our families, and our friends. I think that it says something that someone in the establishment is saying this. I understand that he is not "The Man" yet (although I'm starting to think that wouldn't be a bad idea), but coming from a United States Senator, he is pretty well a part of the establishment.

So I haven't formed my thoughts completely on this, but I did have a pretty strong reaction to the media coverage given to the speech. I was at the gym this morning, and some commentator on CNN was talking with the editor of the Washington Post. The conversation the two was such a superficial glossing of the topic, that it made me angry. I don't remember the conversation exactly, so some of this is paraphrasing:

It started with, "He [Obama] as a patriot has to distance himself from the Reverend. You can't run for president and ally yourself with someone who says, 'God Damn America'". Yes, it's politics, I get it. There are so many things going on, and a statement like that is summarizing Earth as "Mostly Harmless". Being patriotic has nothing to do with someone saying God Damn America. I can think of lots of statements that can start that way, and be patriotic at the same time:
- God Damn America for slavery
- God Damn America for supporting Osama bin Laden in the 80s
- God Damn America for separate but equal.
- God Damn America for no public health care system
The commentators never said "racism", they only used the term "race relations". Call it what it is -- Obama was addressing the systematic racism, and telling us that it's time to have honest discussions about it. It's not an easy pill to swallow.
At the end, they showed some kind of informal poll results. The question was something like: "Did Omaba say the right thing?" Or something equally vague. The results:
- 32.7% No, he has more explaining to do.
- 67.3% Yes, he can put this behind him.
WTF? The whole point was that we have an honest discussion about racism. There is nothing that we can put behind us! He even quoted Faulkner about the "past not being dead and gone." To think that one speech on the issue is going to resolve anything is to simplify it beyond meaning.

Well, like I said, this is a conversation that is going to have to happen in our homes, in our schools, in our offices. With people you love and hate. With people you know and people you don't. Again, I am but a grasshopper on a journey to find my place in this struggle...

Visited by a Red Tailed Hawk

Today is a rainy day. Yesterday was a taxing, emotional day, and today is a good day to recover. Puttering around the house and with Processing, it's turning out to be alright.

A little bit of excitement in our house was the arrival (or guest appearance) of a Red Tailed Hawk. We named him Angel (because that's how we roll). My desk faces east, and I can see a couple neighbor's houses, and a smokestack or exhaust pipe from the diner on the corner. I looked out there after a bunch of coding, and saw this bird sitting on top of the pipe.

I thought, "That's one big pigeon," to myself. I stopped what I was doing, and looked again. He looks like the second one down here: All About Birds. I dug out my binoculars, and took a closer look. I saw his hooked beak, and knew he was anything but a pigeon. In my excitement, I called to my wife, and she took a turn looking at him, while I ran to get my book, "Birds of North America".

It took a lot of page flipping and looking back and forth between the binoculars and the book, until I made up my mind that he was what he was. A couple times, he turned to preen his feathers, and I could see his white belly and striped tail. He's a handsome fella.

The rain has been coming and going, and just a few minutes ago, he spread out his wings to dry them off in the afternoon sun. He looked kind of silly, with his wings stretched out, but pointed down at angles. Like he was in mid-flight.

(As I was writing that last paragraph, he spread his wings, and let the wind pick him off the pipe, and off he went.)

Godspeed, fella.

Phelectrodelphia

Another little dribble from Philly: two signs that I've seen around town. The first is posted outside a power sub-station near my house. The second is in the window of a new coffee shop on my walk to work.

Google Ups The Ante

As will become moot soon, Google has added 'Terrain' to Google Maps. This is cool. I also like the cartography of the shaded relief. I decided to do some spot checking, and it seems their data is more than a few years old. For example: Shoup glacier right outside of Port Valdez, has been receding for years.

Look at this flickr photo: Shoup Glacier from above

I checked out Earth and Maps, and they both show the glacier at its current position. What is interesting is that the terrain is decades old.

The Google Slickness

Okay, I'm the only one who finds this interesting. I only know because I've been there -- what else is missing?

Why Don't I Blog Anymore

I kind of lost the steam to keep blogging. I don't know why, I've just been trying to manage my own things, in this big real world. Also, I've been writing in a journal for the past year, and trying to keep it going. It's strange how keeping that going seems to sap any energy I have to write in this space. Or even participate.

Nobody wants to hear me pontificate, anyway.

Walking In Victoria

The Next Great Mistake

One word: Iran

Can we please backdafukup for one second here?

via nytimes.com