Writing helps me find my ideas. It's your choice to be subjected to it all.

Past Ideas:

StorySprawl
StorySprawl MP3
My Music
Detective Pogue
Online-Music History
Instablog



Other Weblogs:




My:

Business Site
Resumes
WishList



 
Archives
<< current













 
Curt Is:

Musician, Programmer, Polyglot, Rennaissance Man, Bon Vivante


(credits)



















Hunting The Muse
 
Tuesday, December 31, 2002   
Doing some interesting research regarding OS X's project builder.

I've got a client that has a bunch of php code in a cvs repository - a lot of which is stuff I've already committed. I've been using vim for a while and I'm getting bored of it. I know a lot of macros and can use all sorts of split-window commands, so I've always convinced myself that I'm fast at it. But who knows, maybe I can be faster.

So I started playing with Project Builder. First problem I ran into - it's hard to integrate cvs over ssh. SO, here's what I worked out.

First, make sure that your CVS_RSH environment variable is set to the path of ssh on your system.

Then, make sure CVSROOT is set to :ext:login@server:/cvspath . Unfortunately this needs to be set every time as ProjectBuilder isn't smart enough to look it up in the CVS directories in your hierarchy. I set it in a separate file.

Then activate ssh-agent. I do, in my .cshrc:
eval `ssh-agent -c` > /dev/null
And in my .logout:
eval `ssh-agent -k` > /dev/null
(otherwise the ssh-agent will not die and a new redundant one will happen each time you start a Terminal window.)

Well, there are a couple of better ways as well. Unfortunately I have to cut this blog entry short as blogger is messed up AGAIN. I have to move to a new blogging server soon - not sure what I will use because I don't like Radio's non-portability, and I'm not sure I like movable type's license and lack of xml.
(2:17 AM)
1 comment

~^~^~

Monday, December 30, 2002   
This is a test to see if the applescript blogging functionality is working. I'm just typing in any old OS X application (currently Terminal), I will select and copy, and then click, and it should show up.
(1:35 AM)

0 comments
~^~^~

Sunday, December 29, 2002   
Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife - I'm as concerned about our loss of rights as a lot of people, but articles such as this one don't help matters. Here's a guy that went in ready for a fight, abandoned being there for his wife in favor of escalating a disagreement, notes that the escalation is what made his wife become even more upset, and then tries to blame his wife's breech on the trauma. Serious lack of responsibility being taken here. I think the guards should definitely have been told that they should offer privacy for searches that may be embarrassing, and the woman could even have asked (she comes through this blameless in my mind), but this guy let his indignation - which in my mind is unexpressed, fermented, pre-existing anger - rule his behavior.
(2:39 PM)

0 comments
~^~^~

 
U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations (washingtonpost.com) "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job."
(2:05 PM)

0 comments
~^~^~

Wednesday, December 18, 2002   
Creative Commons Explanation - this is a cool animation describing how Creative Commons works. This is very cool. I'm considering releasing a couple of my songs under this license.
(6:43 PM)

0 comments
~^~^~

 
Other NFL funniness: The NFL's tiebreaking procedures have a provision to resolve a three-team tie... with a coin flip.
(4:47 PM)

0 comments
~^~^~

 
Here's a real-world example of strange voting behavior.

If the NFL playoffs started today, the Denver Broncos would have the final wildcard spot. If they ended today, they make the playoffs.

Despite that, the Broncos are not in control of their own destiny. They could win next week, and then NOT hold the final playoff spot.

I wonder if it's possible for them to be in a situation where they'd prefer to lose.
(4:30 PM)
0 comments

~^~^~

 
Salon.com Technology | Radio Free Software
(1:25 AM)

0 comments
~^~^~

Tuesday, December 17, 2002   
Offbeat gifts that do a world of good - this describes several charities that are in common with one of the charity ideas I had.
(5:10 PM)

0 comments
~^~^~

Monday, December 16, 2002   
The AFC seedings for the NFL Playoffs, in regards to the Patriots playing the Titans on MNF tonight.

Before MNFIf Pats winIf Titans win
  1. Miami
  2. Oakland
  3. Indianapolis
  4. Pittsburgh
  5. Tennessee
  6. New England
  1. Miami
  2. Oakland
  3. Indianapolis
  4. Pittsburgh
  5. New England
  6. Tennessee
  1. Oakland
  2. Tennessee
  3. Miami
  4. Pittsburgh
  5. Indianapolis
  6. Denver

That's so weird. And cool.
(7:16 PM)
0 comments

~^~^~

Thursday, December 12, 2002   
Absolutely fascinating article on NPR yesterday about the cross-burning case that is before the Supreme Court right now.

So, do you think cross-burning should be illegal? Think on that. Okay, now. Do you think flag-burning should be illegal?

That's what stopped me. Reflexively, I answer "Yes" and "No". That's the knee-jerk inconsistent liberal in me. Well, that WOULD be assuming that the two subjects are inherently similar enough that I need to be consistent between the two. But maybe I don't.

And that's the legal argument - that the two issues are substantively different in some way. And the justice comments that I heard yesterday are really hammering on that to see if the argument holds up. Really interesting.

One issue they have trouble with. The issue is challenging an existing statute banning cross-burning because of its "intent to intimidate". The "intent to intimidate" has to be proven for conviction. However, it's also held that burning a cross proves "intent to intimidate" in the first place. It's circular logic. That's what law is like, they remove the emotionality and check to see if there are things like circular logic.

Other comments:

"So you burn a cross on a hill outside the city, everyone in the city is intimidated?" - Justice Kennedy

"It's not just speech. It's action that conveys a message. Surely your state can make it a crime to brandish a weapon?" - Justice Scalia

"Suppose he burned a circle?" - Justice Stevens.

"So even if a cross is burned in a desert somewhere, it's enough to sustain a conviction?" - Justice Stevens.

"It sounds like you're defending the statute because the message it contains is particularly obnoxious." - Justice Stevens.

"One can always burn a cross in the sanctity of one's bedroom." - Justice Scalia.

(paraphrase:) "Why is burning a cross protected speech when brandishing a weapon and saying 'you're next' isn't?" - Justice Scalia. And here's a funny section from an article, describing the shocking occurence of actually hearing CLARENCE THOMAS say something:

Out of nowhere booms the great, surprising "Luke-I-am-your-father" voice of He Who Never Speaks. Justice Clarence Thomas suddenly asks a question and everyone's head pops up and starts looking madly around, like the Muppets on Veterinarian Hospital. "Aren't you understating the effects ... of 100 years of lynching?" he booms. "This was a reign of terror, and the cross was a sign of that. ... It is unlike any symbol in our society. It was intended to cause fear, terrorize."

Dreeben, who fears he has somehow been insensitive, tries to recover. "It was used to intimidate minorities ..." he begins. "More than minorities," booms back The Voice. "Certain groups." It's not clear what, precisely, has set Thomas off about Dreeben's presentation or why he's attacking the deputy SG rather than the guy defending the Klansman. But as quickly as he wound up, he winds down, and resumes his standard posture of staring fixedly at the ceiling.

To which I say, Yeah. Weird. Dreeben was the guy DEFENDING the statute that outlaws cross-burning.

More fascination:

Smolla argues that every KKK rally ends with a cross-burning; that it's inconceivable that this actually scares people. Ginsburg points out the "huge" difference between burning a flag, which symbolizes political protest, and burning a cross, which signifies "a threat to life and limb." Again Scalia wonders why brandishing a gun differs from burning a cross. When Smolla notes that guns kill, Scalia says, "An unloaded gun then. It's nothing but a symbol!" Smolla insists that guns are actual threats and adds, "What's the difference between brandishing a cross and a torch?"

"A hundred years of history," replies Stevens.


(12:55 PM)
0 comments

~^~^~

Tuesday, December 10, 2002   
Norsam Technologies - HD Rosetta Data Preservation - Cool thing of the day. Sometimes I get morbid and wonder what risk we have of losing all accumulated discovery and wisdom if "something catastrophic" happened. What would we be able to figure out by ourselves? What are the absolutely essential things we need to know to, given time, re-approximate the abilities we have now? Would those essential bits of knowledge fit on one of these platforms?
(3:04 PM)

0 comments
~^~^~

Monday, December 02, 2002   
Study links biking, male infertility - Maybe I should thank the criminal who stole my mountain bike.

On the other hand, yet another example of how statistics might not tell the whole story. Maybe the explanation is that already-infertile men are more likely to want to start mountain biking. You know, they have nothing better to do.
(1:34 PM)
0 comments

~^~^~

Sunday, December 01, 2002   
So, here's where I'm at on the group-voting/social-choice thing.

  1. My own interest behind this is researching what it would take to have the government represent the people's views as closely as possible
  2. To fix the counting of single-winner elections, a stable counting method is required, which is what got me looking at IRV versus Condorcet versus Borda versus Approval, etc.
  3. Even if a a stable counting method is found, a vote can still be flawed if all participating voters do not equally feel they have an available candidate that represents their views. This begs the question of how to increase the pool of candidates.
  4. Even if the candidate pool is "perfect" as described in #3, there is a point where picking a single-winner to represent all people among a geographical district just doesn't make sense, which leads to my curiosity of multiple-winner elections and representation, such as direct representation (where people can just choose their assigned representative regardless of geography and assign their vote/pledge to them).
  5. Even if direct representatives are elected, there is the matter of how that body of representatives will come to decisions among themselves (which might take us right back through steps 1 through 4)
  6. And finally, even if we did end up having a government-counting solution that represented the public's views EXACTLY, it begs the question of if that is what we really even want? To a point I agree with the philosophy that a representative is actually a compromise between what the public thinks it wants, and what the representative knows the public needs due to inside knowledge the public wouldn't have the patience to learn! In other words, if we all had the power to actually assign where in the government expenditures all our tax dollars would go, I just can't help but believe we'd be in an extraordinarily huge mess.
So I guess I have gotten stuck because I can't actually identify what my actual objective is here - it's elusive. To a point it seems that reflecting the public's preferences too exactly would actually be counterproductive.

In terms of single-winner voting, I'm still mulling over the interface. There are a lot of things to consider, like whether to force users to rank every candidate, whether to let them specify a cut-off point, above which is only the candidates they would really like to win, and whether to let them specify another cut-off point, below which are the candidates they really hate...
(12:55 AM)
0 comments

~^~^~

 
This page is powered by Blogger.