An upside-down iceberg...

An upside-down iceberg...  The iceberg shown at right recently flipped over, revealing the ice without debris or sublimation...

4,018 days (11 years!) into its 90-day mission...

4,018 days (11 years!) into its 90-day mission ... the Opportunity rover on Mars celebrates with a hilltop panorama.  What an amazing success that little robot (along with its now-dead sibling, Spirit) has been, so far lasting more than 44 times its design lifetime!

Learning sequence inversion...

Learning sequence inversion...  I just read an article about one fellow's experience in learning about how computers work with ones and zeroes.  This guy first learned how to program in some high-level language, and then took it upon himself to learn assembly and machine language.  For him, the experience was revelatory – he clearly hadn't really understood how computers worked before that (and actually, he probably still doesn't understand how the hardware works).

It struck me, as I read, that this is precisely inverted from my own learning experience.  The first thing I learned was how the computer hardware worked. Then I learned how the ones and zeroes stored in RAM controlled that hardware – machine language.  Then I learned how assembly language made it easier for people to read and create machine language programs (by using an assembler).  Much, much later I learned about higher level languages (BASIC, FORTRAN, CMS-2, PL/1, and COBOL, specifically).

I learned machine language with the aid of a “repertoire card” (or “rep card” for short) – a one-page summary of all the machine language instructions the computer was capable of.  The rep card that I owned was a single letter-sized piece of light cardboard, laminated, with printing on the front and back.  It listed all the machine-language instructions, with the binary encoding, execution time (in clock cycles), and affected registers and flags.  I'd love to have a copy of that thing, for old times sake, but I haven't been able to find one.  The Computer History Museum appears to have one.  This web page has a piece of a similar one, shown at right.  That single sheet of cardboard was the only programming documentation I had for several years as I started to program.

This “bottoms-up” approach to learning how to program makes great sense to me, most likely because that's how I learned it :)  For me, high level languages are still the fuzziest part of my knowledge, and I'm still learning more about them all the time.  This isn't entirely because of the bottoms-up approach, of course – that area is changing rapidly, and even the top-down learners have to devote considerable effort to that if they want to keep up.  But many (most, actually) programmers who learned top-down never learn assembly language, or machine language – a fact that I still have trouble wrapping my brain around...

Computers keep getting smaller...

Computers keep getting smaller...  The first truly general-purpose computer that I owned was one I built in about 1976, almost forty years ago.  It was a 4 MHz Z80 with a whopping 64kb of RAM and a dual 8" voice-coil floppy disk.  Woo hoo!  That thing weighed about 100 lbs (mainly because of the linear power supply's giant transformer), and was the size of an under-counter mini refrigerator.  It had a 64 x 16 character CRT and a clicky keyboard.  Over the years since then, my main working computer has gradually shrunk, until now I have a Mac Powerbook Pro, with an absurdly fast CPU, gobs of RAM, and a giant SSD – all in a package the size of a skinny notebook.  As I type this, I'm using an add-on clicky keyboard (das keyboard) and a wireless mouse. 

Where do computers go from here?  What do they look like when they get smaller?

Above right you see one group's vision: the computer shrinks to fit into the mouse.  Video is transmitted wirelessly to a monitor.  Everything else is in the mouse.  Now I'm not at all sure these folks have a winner of an idea, but it certainly is illustrative of the possibilities as compute hardware keeps shrinking.  I often marvel at the compute power I hold in my hand when using my iPhone; this really isn't much different than that.  It will be interesting to see the computer form ideas popping forth over the next few years...

Want to feel better in five minutes?

Want to feel better in five minutes?  Read this twitter thread.  I read this and I had a twinge I haven't felt for a while.  I think it was hope for the human race's future...

I was having such a nice day...

I was having such a nice day ... until I read this.  Damn you, Ilya Somin, damn you!  Now I have the urge to short-sell America.  But how?

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  Rex Murphy (always read Rex Murphy when you have the chance):

This part of the world has a sack full of pieties when it comes to free speech, but its own actions, and frequently its own words, put the lie to all of them. Bowing to ruthless protest has become a habit. Labelling speech some people simply do not wish to hear as “hate speech” succeeds in silencing it. In matters big and small, on issues from global warming to abortion, there is collusion — we call it political correctness — over what should not be said, what cannot be said.

You really should read the whole thing...

Made it to Virginia...

Made it to Virginia ... but only after a few adventures.  My original flight was from Salt Lake City, connecting in Houston, then to Richmond.  However, when I got to Houston I discovered that my second leg had been canceled – bad weather (icy rain) in Richmond.  The airline (United) rescheduled me on a new flight connecting through Chicago.  Dang!  Next thing you know, I'm on the way to Chi-town, arriving right at sunset (photo out the window at right).  I had a very short layover there (just 15 minutes), but fortunately the Richmond flight left from a gate almost adjacent to the one my Houston flight arrived at, so there was no problem making it.  I arrived in Richmond at about 9:30 pm, and was at my mom's house before 11 pm. 

A long day...

Light blogging alert...

Light blogging alert...  I'm traveling to Virginia this morning, to visit with my mom and siblings.  I'll be lugging my computer along, but I probably won't be blogging very much...

The return of the analog computer?

The return of the analog computer?  Sort of.  I worked on (as a maintenance tech) electro-mechanical analog fire control computers in the Navy.  Those computers did integration and differentiation with gears, and arbitrary functions with cams.  They were computers that could give you the wrong answer if you didn't keep them clean and lubricated.  They were also far more interesting to watch work than a modern digital computer :)

How to guarantee the continued inferiority of U.S. broadband access?

How to guarantee the continued inferiority of U.S. broadband access?  Simple.  Just get the federal government involved.  That will put us into North Korean territory.

There's a solution already proven to work: completely deregulate the industry, and eliminate all government-granted monopolies (especially the cable company monopolies).  This is the approach Estonia took, and the result of competition unleashed is crazy high broadband speeds, access everywhere, and prices lower than our current crap broadband...

Twisted string actuators...

Twisted string actuators...  I had this idea about 15 years ago, after using an old-fashioned twisted wire-and-stick to straighten up a fence gate.  I did some investigation of it, never realizing that anyone else had done so already.  I came to the same conclusion others did: that the problems outweighed the benefits:

We spent a fair bit of time evaluating twisted string actuators to build low-cost robots. Unfortunately, they have some major problems that are tough to overcome for our specific application(s). For one, their lifecycle is measured in the many thousands instead of millions -- despite our best efforts at material engineering. For another, they are highly nonlinear in response (twists vs displacement), which requires very precise calibration for precision movements. Plus, they're inherently linear motors; for rotary motion, you need two opposing motors or spring-return mechanisms. That said.... there are probably a lot of applications that could benefit from this type of actuator!

It's a pity, because these actuators are ridiculously easy to build.  The non-linear part was especially frustrating to me.

Analyzing these things was surprisingly easy – it turns out that it breaks down into a simple trigonometry problem, with the key variable being the diameter of the string or wire.  I had the most success with graphite-lubricated mono-filament fishing line, and silicone grease lubricated mono-filament line came close...

Just plain stupid...

Just plain stupid...  And probably coming to a federal government near you...

Banning encryption is a bit like banning safes because they might stop the police from looking at the contents.  Let's make everybody unsafe because your “leaders” can't spy on you!

Things like this help me understand how revolutions get started...

The world is in better shape than most people think it is...

The world is in better shape than most people think it is...  Well, most people in the U.S. or Europe, anyway.  I saw quite a bit of the third world in the '70s, and again in the '90s and early '00s.  The reduction of poverty in the third world just in those 20 or 30 years is astounding, and obvious if you've seen it (or if you're an inhabitant of the third world).  Most Americans, though, are largely unaware of this, and have a seriously mistaken notion that America is getting wealthier at the expense of most of the rest of the world.  The chart at right encapsulates the economic progress of the world very nicely (click to embiggen).  More information here...

Snow!

Snow!  Mo'i woke us up at 2:30 this morning.  The poor old guy had to go out to pee – his bladder is only good for about six hours at best.  When Debbie flipped on the light outside, she saw about 18" of snow on our porch, and 2" to 3" of snow everywhere else.  The porch is directly under a steep roof segment, so the fresh snow slid off right onto it (we're going to fix that :).

This snow is of a completely different character than the snow we had in December.  The temperature is 31.8°F – just barely freezing.  The snowflakes are falling at nearly the speed of a raindrop.  They're heavy, gloppy, and just barely removed from liquid water.  I shoveled that 18" off the porch and was surprised by how much a shovelful of snow weighed – the fluffy white snow of a few weeks ago could barely be felt; this feels more like a shovelful of wet dirt.

I took a look at the weather radar, and it looks like we'll be clear of the storm in an hour or so.  Looks like I'll be plowing at daybreak :)

The only surprise here...

The only surprise here ... is that anyone expected anything else...

Progress report...

Progress report...  Well, the BluMoo universal remote control was a complete bust for us.  It didn't support any of the AV gear we have – and everything we have is mainstream stuff, not some weird off-brand.  BluMoo has got a lot of work to go before it's actually ready for consumers.  The app that controls it looks like an early prototype, rather than a shipping product.  I'm going to call it promising, but far, far from finished.

I'm leaving in a couple days to spend a week with my mom and siblings, so I really wanted to have the AV system usable by normal humans.  Without a universal remote, one has to juggle four remotes and have a complete understanding of how everything is interconnected (and that's pretty complicated).  It challenges me, and I'm the geek who put it all together!

So I ran down to Best Buy in Salt Lake City yesterday, and picked up another universal remote: Logitech's Harmony Ultimate Home.  It's pricey, but quite polished.  The company has a web site with device compatibility, so you can check ahead of time whether your devices were supported (and all of ours were).

The installation could hardly have been simpler.  Less than 30 minutes after getting home from my run to Best Buy, I had all of our devices configured in the remote.  We had a much older version of Logitech's universal remote down in Jamul, and it's easy to see that they've come a long way since then.  In particular, I noticed that the remote's understanding of device state (especially power on/off) is much better than the older control was.  I've already got it set up to let us watch cable TV, listen to the radio, or watch a DVD/BluRay disk.  I've got a little tweaking to do on button assignments (for instance, when watching TV, I want to be able to adjust the picture), but generally it's up and running.

That trip took up much of my day yesterday, and fighting BluMoo and implementing the Harmony ate the rest...

Hard rime on Saturday...

Hard rime on Saturday...  We had thick fog here on Friday night and most of the day Saturday, with below-freezing temperatures.  The result was hard rime everywhere we looked – fantastical collections of crystallized water coating absolutely everything outside.  I wandered around our yard with my iPad taking photos; below are a few of the better ones...

I am not Charlie-Hebdo...

I am not Charlie-Hebdo...  Here's the first paragraph of an uncomfortable, but totally on-target piece by (of all people!) David Brooks in (of all places!) the New York Times:

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

Read the whole thing...

Skip your annual physical?

Skip your annual physical?   Yes, because science says it's worthless...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  This is from Laura Rosen Cohen, the conclusion of a longer piece (emphasis in the original):

The pen clearly is NOT stronger than the sword.

The pens of the world are limp and flaccid and pathetic.
Firepower is stronger than the pen.

Air forces, soldiers, tanks and guns are stronger than the pen.

Superior firepower, superior intelligence, having no fear, and nothing less than a complete commitment to the preservation of Western, Judeo-Christian civilization and democracy are the only things that will save us from ourselves at this point.

Look around you: all over the "free" world, people are not even brave enough to draw or publish a cartoon to save their civilization-they think that will save their sorry, dhimmi asses.

My recommendation is to stick with superior firepower and a commitment to freedom.

Laura, I don't know you – but it's clear that you are my kind of gal!

A beautiful love story...

A beautiful love story...  Keep your box of Kleenex handy...

Progress report...

Progress report...  Yesterday was audio-visual day here.  The various components of our new system started showing up on Wednesday, and by Friday afternoon the last of them were here.  I spent the entire day assembling and wiring an AV equipment stand, a TV stand, speakers, amplifier/receiver, TV, cable modem/DVR, and BluRay player.  We picked out a pretty basic system, with a 5.1 speaker arrangement (left/right/center front speakers, left/right surround speakers, and a sub-woofer), but with good gear.  The amplifier is a Yamaha, speakers Atlantic Technology, BluRay player Oppo, and TV from LG.

By yesterday afternoon I had the system wired to the point where I could try it out, and the results were very satisfying.  Music in stereo sounds better than any other system I've ever owned.  The imaging (i.e., hearing where instruments and voices are located) is particularly good.  The surround sound part has a bewildering set of options and tweaks that I've just barely begun to explore.  However, a test with a Lord of the Rings BluRay showed that it was all working fine.

It's been quite a few years since I last purchased any AV gear, and things have changed quite a bit since then.  Perhaps most surprising to me: every piece of the gear is now network connected.  At least one of them (the amp/receiver) has a web server built into it.  The amp/receiver also has the ability to update its firmware over the Internet – when I first lit it off, it came up with a message telling me there was an update and offered to download it!  I haven't connected the BluRay player or cable modem/DVR to the network yet; I'm not sure what they do with it.  The TV has the ability to play movies from the Internet, and Debbie is planning to make good use of that with our Amazon Prime membership, as it comes with free access to many of the movies and series she likes (especially some of the British TV series).

Today I have a friend coming over to help me lift the TV (which weighs 80 pounds) up onto its elevated stand.  It was a bit too heavy for Debbie to feel safe about hefting half of it.  After that I'm going to be spending the day connecting the rest of the gear to the network, bringing up and configuring a universal remote (BluMoo), and tweaking things until we're happy with the setup.  Once it's all working the way we want, and we've got the final positions of all the equipment, I'm going to be making all the wiring “disappear” into the walls and under the floor.  Right now we've got wiring running over the floor, which for some reason Debbie's not real fond of :)

Morning belly laugh...

Morning belly laugh...  Via my mom, whom I'm going to visit next week:

A man died and went to Heaven. As he stood in front of the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"

St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone who has ever been on earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie, the hands on your clock move.” “Oh, said the man. “Whose clock is that?"

"That's Mother Teresa's," replied St. Peter. "The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."

"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?" St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abraham told only two lies in his entire life."

"Where's Obama's clock?" asked the man. St Peter replied, "We're using it as a ceiling fan."

It's on the high speed setting, too...

Customer service kudos...

Customer service kudos ... to IQAir.  We recently purchased one of their filters to cut down on the odors in our indoor cattery.  The box was undamaged, but when I unpacked the unit I found two large plastic parts that had broken.  Both broken parts still functioned, so I set up the filter, turned it on, and it was obvious within minutes that it was working great.  Before we got the filter, I couldn't stay in the cattery (where seven cats live) for more than a few minutes – my eyes would start watering, I'd get the sniffles, and the smell would make me crazy.  Within an hour after turning the filter on, the air was just as fresh and odor-free in the cattery as it is outside.  It's just an amazing difference!

But ... two broken parts, on a brand-new unit.  I called their support line, and within 30 seconds was connected with John V., a customer service rep.  He asked me just a few questions, verified that I actually owned one of their machines (by having me read him the serial number), and then with no hesitation said he'd ship me the two parts.  Next thing I know, I got an email with a tracking number – they shipped the parts via FedEx.  I got the parts today, installed them, and now we have not only a beautifully performant filter, but we have one with no broken parts!

The whole support experience was just about as good as such a thing can be.  No hassles, no delays, no cost, and all very friendly and warm.  Great product, great service – always a winning combination!

From the dirt in Maine...

From the dirt in Maine ... comes the first new broad-spectrum antibiotic in 25 years.  This is fantastic news, for several reasons:

• It is effective against all the currently scary drug-resistant bacteria.
• It's mechanism is inherently difficult for bacteria to develop resistance against.
• There's no known obstacle to large scale production.

Even better: the team who discovered this drug did so by inventing a new way to screen previously-unscreened naturally occurring organisms for antibiotic production.  This breakthrough may well lead to other antibiotics with novel mechanisms – exactly what the world needs right now.

It's difficult to overstate what an important development this is!

More here, here, and here...

Corona Australis...

Corona Australis...  Via APOD, of course.  Full resolution version here...

Charlie-Hebdo...

Charlie-Hebdo...  Mark Steyn, in a Fox News interview, expresses my own position far more eloquently than I could.  Watch the (non-embeddable) video here.

Here's an example of what I expect to see much more of: assertions that at least in part, Charlie-Hebdo brought this upon themselves by offending Muslims.  In this case, it's a piece published by the Catholic League, who really ought to know better – because virtually everything they publish, believe, and stand for is offensive to the same group of Muslim radicals who attacked Charlie-Hebdo.  It's written as though they don't even realize that their fellow Christians are being killed in large numbers by Islamic State right now.  Their instinct for appeasement overrides their ability to observe, much as the English left, led by Neville Chamberlain, completely failed to observe Hitler's evil.  This sort of essentially suicidal behavior leaves me gaping in disbelief...

Lindernia monroi...

Lindernia monroi...  Via BPOD, of course...

Roads less traveled...

Roads less traveled...  A gorgeous collection of photos by Andy Lee...

Charlie-Hebdo...

Charlie-Hebdo...  The appalling news out of Paris this morning, about the terrorist attack that has killed 12 people at the offices of the satirical French newspaper, immediately made me think of the success the terrorists likely will have in their larger goal: silencing the critics of Islam.  True to my concern, progressives both here in America and in Europe are already busy blaming the victims – and most definitely not defending free speech.

    I'd rather die standing than live on my knees (via Mark Steyn)
    First-hand account from the terrorist attack on Charlie-Hebdo (Claire Berlinski)
    Charlie-Hebdo massacre: how the west will respond (James Delingpole)
    Do not submit! (Zombie)

Here are some links to the best things I've read so far.  In the last piece, “Zombie” calls out for publishing the “offensive” cartoons far and wide.  Zombie is right: we need to assert our free speech rights vigorously.  We cannot appease these monsters.  We must resist.  To that end, I'm republishing the original cartoons that provoked so much manufactured outrage amongst radical Muslims.  I first published these almost 9 years ago, in February 2006...

Croque madam...

Croque madam...  We had croque madam (with Emmental cheese) this morning for breakfast, at Crumb Brothers.  It will make your brains fall out.  Word.

On the way home it was just before sunrise.  Debbie took the photo at right through our truck's window as we were heading south toward Paradise.  The mountains are the Wellsvilles, looming over the town of Wellsville...

Miki's new boots...

Miki's new boots...  Warning: put down your morning beverage and swallow before watching this video.

In the cold snap we had last week, we noticed that our dogs – especially the field spaniels – were uncomfortable walking in the very cold snow.  They'd want to come back inside after just a few minutes, and they acted like their feet were painful.  After a little research, we discovered that several manufacturers make dog boots for exactly this problem.  We tried a set first for Race (our border collie), figuring that if they stayed on his narrow feet, then they'd work for all the dogs.  They worked great, and Race got used to them in just a few seconds.  So we ordered another set, big enough for the field spaniels and their wider, fuzzier feet.  I put them on Miki to try out for fit, and they fit great.

What we didn't expect was Miki's comical reaction to the new boots, as you can see in the video.  We were laughing for hours after his first adventure with his new boots.  We'll probably try them again today.  I suspect it's going to take him a few attempts to get comfortable with them.  Meanwhile, he'll give us a few belly laughs :)

We're paperless!

We're paperless!  This has been a dream – well, fantasy, really – of mine since the earliest days of hobbyist microcomputers in the early '70s.  It took forty years, but I finally am able to say that I have an entirely practicable way for us to have a paperless office here at home.

What exactly do I mean by “paperless”?  Mainly I mean that we can simply throw away (or shred) nearly every bit of paper that comes into our life: receipts, invoices and bills, and even official records.  The only exception, really, is paperwork that has original signatures or seals – quite uncommon, these days.  Everything else gets scanned, converted to text (through Optical Character Recognition, or OCR), and indexed.  Whenever I need to see a document, I simply search for it – just like googling the web.  If I need a physical copy, I simply print it.  An electronic copy (in PDF form) I can just export.

Several technologies had to reach a sufficient threshold to make this feasible:

• Storage (disk, rotating and solid state) had to be cheap enough to make storing the big files that result from scanning practicable.  Storage reached this point almost ten years ago.
• Scanners had to be capable of high resolution color scanning of both sides of any size of paper, quickly, easily, and reliably.  Paper handling, in particular, needed to improve dramatically over the scanners of the '90s.  Several manufacturers started making scanners that met all the requirements, at affordable prices, about five years ago.
• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) had to be good enough to successfully convert the vast majority of scanned text – no matter how bad the scan, or what crazy font was being used.  The receipts printed by cash registers have long been the canonical example of common, hard to OCR documents.  To improve as needed, OCR software had to get better, and home computers had to have sufficient power and memory for them to work.  OCR software reached this point a few years ago.
• Document management software had to get both more powerful and yet be simple enough for casual users to be able to handle it.  It also had to be inexpensive enough that a consumer might afford it.  I first started reading about such software about a year ago.

So we took the plunge, and got the components for a paperless office.  Yesterday I brought it all up – and the results are better than I expected.  This is simple enough that a non-geek could easily do it.

We bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 scanner (about $500), and DEVONthink's document management software ($169).  The software is running on my MacBook Pro, which has plenty of storage for this purpose.  The only other important component is a shredder, for getting rid of paper documents with confidential information on them.

The first photo below shows the scanner, all folded up when not in use.  In the second photo, you see the scanner unfolded (which automatically turns it on) and ready to scan a document.  To scan, you just push the brightly lit blue button.  The document scans (both sides!) in about one second.  It can feed dozens of pages at once, and any size paper up to about 9" wide.  The scan is in full color, with a variable resolution automatically selected by the scanner.  Once the document is scanned, one click sends it to the document management software after being converted to text (by OCR).  There, one click stores it in whatever folder you want it in.

That's it.  You're done.  Shred the document!

When you actually need a document, you can simply search for it.  The last image below shows the result of my searching for "romaine".  I typed that word into the search box in the upper right corner of the document manager, just like I might search the web.  The results show up as a list of documents, ranked by how close the match was.  In this case I had only a single matching document, so figuring out which one I wanted was easy :)  In other cases, I'll get a list of documents, and the file name contains the date.  I can click on any document in the list, and the match is instantly displayed on the screen, scrolled to the matching text.

I don't know how it could be any easier.  The entire process is way easier than filing, which is what it needs to be for it to be attractive to me.

The document manager has far more capabilities than I've explored, and someday – maybe – I might go take a look at them.  The one thing I can think of that I'd like is a way to eliminate a couple of those clicks I make now after scanning.  Ideally, I'd push that blue button on the scanner and everything else would be automatic.  But if it can't do that, it's not a big deal – those few clicks are far less work than physically moving the piece of paper to the “right” file folder...

I'm starting to feel like the future has finally arrived.  Now, where's my flying car?

Calendars and clocks...

Calendars and clocks ... they bring out the stupid.  Check out this thread on a body-building forum for an outstanding example.

I once had a job at an electronic stock and option trading company, which was run by a very smart fellow with decades of experience.  He and I once had a three hour debate about how time zones worked – he didn't believe it was true that at given moment there are either two or three dates, depending on where you are on the planet (the two dates occurs because of the international date line; the three dates possibility occurs for a more obscure reason – some very odd time zones in the Pacific Ocean islands).  It didn't matter that I could give him articles, books, and even scientific papers discussing the phenomenon.  Nothing I did could convince him, and because of that he wouldn't let me fix a bug in our software that affected traders operating from those aforementioned Pacific Ocean islands.

But at least he understood that there were seven days in a week, unlike one fellow on that thread!

It's a tropical heat wave in Paradise!

It's a tropical heat wave in Paradise!  I walked the dogs this morning at 3 am, and the temperature was 36°F.  I just needed boots and my jacket, not the full-on arctic defensive clothing I've been wearing outside.  The snow is melting rather quickly – our driveway is completely snow and ice free already, and the yard is full of spots where the (dead) grass is showing through.  We're due for a few more days of this before it gets cold again – I think we may be completely snow free by then...

Something is badly wrong here...

Something is badly wrong here ... in America, I mean.  If you've been paying attention, you already know that America has the highest (by far) incarceration rate of any first-world country.  The chart at right shows the total state and federal prison population since 1925.  Note the clear inflection point in the early '70s, just as the “War on Drugs” was launched.

Leave aside for a moment all the moral arguments about drug use.  Ask yourself these questions instead:

Is it worth it?  That is, do the benefits of the War on Drugs (assuming you can even identify any) outweigh even the direct costs (roughly $10B/year, and 1.5M people in prison)?  The benefit that most people presume – reduced drug use – is rather obviously not a benefit that is actually obtained.  America has one of the highest rates of drug use of any first-world country.

Would legalizing drug use be worse than the War on Drugs?  The experience of other countries suggests – strongly – that our society would be better off treating the direct consequences of drug use, rather than outlawing it.  This is actually identical to how we treat alcohol use today, and few would argue that our society was better off with Prohibition.

If you know me, then you know I'm not a supporter of drug use in general.  I am, however, a rabid supporter of liberty, and the criminalization of drug use (and the consequent War on Drugs) is one of the most flagrant abuses of liberty America has ever perpetrated upon its citizens...

The Andromeda galaxy...

The Andromeda galaxy ... as you've never seen it before, in this glorious Hubble composite.  Full resolution version here.  Via APOD, of course.

Astrophotography certainly has come a long way since I was a kid!

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  This time, from Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX and Tesla), from a Reddit AMA:

Q.  What daily habit do you believe has the largest positive impact on your life?
A.  Showering

I'm with Elon on this one :)

That's especially true in our new home, where I have been greatly enjoying our shower.  It's in our remodeled master bathroom – 27 square feet of tiled, doorless luxury, with three giant shower heads and a thermostatic temperature control.  That shower is my favorite feature of the entire house!

France dumps its wealth tax...

France dumps its wealth tax ... and Ed Morrissey has his usual cogent observations of the economics and the politics.  I don't have anything to add, other than my amusement at Hollande's belated recognition of the totally predictable (and widely predicted) consequences of the punitive wealth tax he once championed...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  From “Glosswitch”, the conclusion of the excellent article Why farting is a feminist issue:

Female bodies don’t just exist to be looked at; they leak, smell, make involuntary noises, and what’s more, if they do all that then it’s also likely that they think and feel. But a woman having thoughts and feelings won’t do. Best put her in the corner so no one can see.

I remember reading once that the majority (I think it was about 70%) of adult American women surveyed denied that they farted daily, while (literally) no adult American men did so.  It's easily provable (that pesky science, again) that men and women fart equally (adjusted for body weight), so this denial of the obvious is an interesting phenomenon.  Glosswitch holds it up as a sign of a deeper issue, and, unlike so many feminist causes, this one is objectively for real...

Mochi kills!

Mochi kills!  This is definitely in the WTF department.  Debbie and I have often enjoyed mochi ice cream – little scoops of ice cream encased in a glutinous rice flour dough.  It turns out that solid mochi cakes, made of just the sticky rice flour dough, are a traditional Japanese treat eaten mainly in January.  Every year, some people die from eating them – from choking, and they're difficult to dislodge.

We'll be more careful next time we have mochi ice cream...

Progress report...

Progress report...  So the home & barn network is now completely up and running.  Yesterday I was able to bring up the barn router, switch, and WiFi access point quite easily, as their configurations are nearly identical to the same units in the house.  Now all I have to do is to pull an Ethernet cable from the second floor office to the basement :)

The photo at right shows our house “data center” – remarkably small and quiet for what it does.  The top shelf is a row of backup disks, for local Time Machine backups.  We also have our two main computers being backed up by the online service BackBlaze, my favorite of all that I've tried (which is most of them!).  The middle shelf holds our Mac Mini Server and my MacBook Pro.  The bottom shelf has just the Arris TG862 cable modem (for Internet and telephony).  Under the bottom shelf is our Cisco SG300-20 switch (configured as a layer 2 switch with client and server VLANs) and our MikroTik RB2011UiAS-IN router.  Of all this gear, only the MacBook Pro has a fan ... and only rarely is it audible.  The backup disks do make a little bit of noise during a backup, but I have to strain to hear even that.  My clicky keyboard makes much more noise than any of these things :)

Not so many years ago, gear with the same capabilities as that pictured would have cost well over $10,000, been big, clunky, rack-mount stuff that sucked a few thousand watts of electricity, and you'd be well advised to wear hearing protectors if you approached within 25' or so of it.  Now that gear is cheap (well under $1,000), quiet, and uses little power.  One thing, though, really hasn't changed at all: it's still laborious and manual to set up.  For two of these units (the switch and the router), configuration began with arcane commands entered through a serial port – exactly like I did when I first began working with this sort of gear in the late '80s.

On a completely different topic...

When we bought the house in Paradise, there was a wine cooler under one of the kitchen cabinets – a conventional refrigerator with a wine rack, made by Avanti.  I knew nothing about these things, but it seemed to be nothing more than a refrigerator with odd shelving.  We pulled the cooler out when we had the kitchen floor redone, and I noticed that the electrical outlet was badly installed (a recurring theme in the home).  The cooler has been out ever since, waiting for me to repair that outlet.  Yesterday I did so, and pushed the cooler back in – only to hear some ominous sparking noises.  I quickly pulled it back out and discovered that the tolerances inside the cavity were so tight that the power cord had been bent when I pushed the cooler back in.  This explained why the outlet was so badly installed – the previous owner's solution to this problem was to mount the outlet at an angle to the wall, so that the power plug didn't protrude quite so much!  I replaced the power plug with a flat, low-profile plug and powered the cooler back up ... and then discovered that the logic board for the refrigerator had blown up.  Random lights flash, numbers show up incorrectly, etc.  A little research on the web led me straight to the problem (a static-sensitive part that commonly dies, custom made for Avanti) and the bad news: the logic board was no longer manufactured, and replacements were going for more than the price of a new cooler!  We also discovered that the Avanti coolers were consistently the lowest-rated brand.  So Debbie and I did a bunch of research on the topic, and located a much highly-rated unit that doesn't have a compressor (it uses silent thermoelectric technology), holds more bottles, and costs less than the closest Avanti model.  We'll have to adapt our under-counter cavity a bit, as these things apparently don't have any size standard – every single one we found was a different physical size!  Another project :)

Beautiful trees...

Beautiful trees ... in black & white photographs by Beth Moon.  More here...

Chili update...

Chili update...  Debbie's chili finally finished, was up to her usual chili standards, and we each had a gigantic bowl of it.  She made it in the ginormous pot I bought for just over a year ago – it's a 24 quart monster, big enough to cook for a couple of small armies simultaneously.  What was left over after our meal filled 10 containers, each 2 quarts.  Fortunately for us, the chili freezes well, and keeps more or less forever, so now we have ready-made meals for quite a while :)

Progress report...

Progress report...  The home network is now all installed in its proper location and all working as I planned.  Yay!  I did start on the barn network, as planned, but got sidetracked with another IT project: I brought our Mac Mini server up.  It was suffering from a year of neglect, as I'd left it in San Diego for the whole year I was up here in Utah getting the house remodeled.  It was two versions back on the operating system, had dozens of urgently needed updates, and was now located on a different network address.  It took me a couple hours to get all that stuff fixed up, but now our little server is back on the air. 

Today I'll finish getting the barn network configured.  It's “labbed” on my desktop right now.  When I've finished configuring it, I should be able to walk it over to the barn, plug it in, and be ready to go.  Well, actually, there's one other little detail that needs to get done: I have to route an Ethernet cable from the second floor office in our house to the basement where the underground cable from the barn terminates.  That will involve crawling around in the attic, working on a ladder in the basement, and exercising the swearing skills I learned in six years in the Navy :)

Mo'i update...

Mo'i update...  When we took Mo'i to see the vet on Friday, she couldn't find anything obviously wrong (other than the facial tumor we already knew about).  She took some blood and we ordered a “senior panel” to make sure his kidneys are working all right.  She also suggested that perhaps the problem was simply that Mo'i had gotten into the habit of drinking a lot of water.  We've always had unlimited water available for our animals, so if he's picked up this habit it's something new.  But ... the past couple of days, we've been restricting his water intake (especially at night), and ... we aren't seeing the problem any more.

It sure would be nice if that's the cause of his excess urination.  We should have the results of the senior panel on Wednesday...

The house smells heavenly right now...

The house smells heavenly right now...  My lovely bride is making her signature chili, and the smells of meat and spices and tomatoes is pervading the house.  It will be several hours before it's ready to eat, and I'll be drooling with anticipation that entire time.  I handle this by carrying a towel around to wipe up the drool as necessary.

One of the hazards of cooking in a kitchen we just moved into is that we're missing staples normally on hand.  This has cost me two trips to the store already this morning, to buy bell peppers, bay leaves, and brown sugar.  The early morning staff at Ridley's was quite amused by my early purchases – and by my return trip.  I think they're placing bets on whether I'll need a third trip :)

Kudos...

Kudos ... to Door And Window Hardware for some excellent customer service.  I purchased some beautiful solid brass entrance door hardware (made by FPL) for our new barn.  These are both Kentucky companies, and may be related to each other.  There are two “sizes” of door hardware commonly sold (with a different “backset” – 2-3/8" or 2-3/4").  Before I ordered the hardware I measured our doors – but I screwed up somehow, and mistakenly ordered the wrong size.

This past Monday I called the folks at Door And Window Hardware, told them this is what they get for selling hardware to an idiot, and asked them what I could do to exchange what I bought for the correct size.  It turns out that there are two mechanisms (the deadbolt and the latch assemblies) that are different between the two sizes; all the other parts are the same.  So Jeff, the fellow I was talking with, offered to simply send me the correct parts for free, if I'd cover the shipping.  Of course I said yes to that, and yesterday (Friday) the parts arrived, along with a bill for $5.80 of shipping (the cost of the USPS Priority Mail box).

I can't imagine how the process of fixing my mistake could have been any simpler or more pleasant!  The FPL door hardware is beautifully made – solid and rugged, and I suspect will long outlast me.  Combine that with top-notch customer service and you've got a product that's hard to beat.  We'll be buying some new hardware for our house next year, and we'll be getting it from these folks...

Progress report...

Progress report...  Yesterday was one of those (pleasant!) days when we felt as though we'd accomplished a lot.

On the network side, I finally was able to bring up all the gear for the new house network.  It's all working as desired, with nothing left to do other than some documentation and cleaning up the wiring (which I'm going to start on as soon as I finish writing this).  After that, I'll be setting up the barn's network – but as it's a near duplicate of the house, that should go very easily.

We “hung” a bunch of stuff on walls yesterday – not pictures, but rather things like a key holder (a casting of cats facing away from you, with their tails making key hooks), our kitchen bell, etc.  Most of these things needed mounting hardware that we didn't already have, so we picked that up at Lowe's in the morning.

On the same trip, we dropped a bunch of stuff off at Deseret Industries (roughly, an LDS version of Goodwill – but better run).  We also took a turn through their store, to see if we could find an old used overstuffed chair or sofa to put in our cattery.  We don't want to put anything nice down there, as the cats would quickly shred it :)  They had a fairly large selection of chairs, and a couple sofas, all at very low prices (generally between $20 and $30), but none of them tickled Debbie's fancy.  We later stopped in at a furniture consignment store (Savvy) which had much nicer stuff (too nice for the cattery!) but at prices that looked to me to be about half to two thirds of new furniture.  Signs made it clear they'd negotiate, though (“Make us an offer!”), so I suspect those are just the starting point of a haggling session.  Not my style.  I wouldn't do well in the Middle East, where such haggling is de rigueur...

Our builder (Jim J.) has been beavering away in the nice, warm interior of our barn.  The heating system has been performing flawlessly for a over a week now.  I'm struck by two things about it: the evenness of the heat (it's perfect everywhere, with no drafts at all), and the nearly absolute silence of it.  I can only hear the boiler if I'm standing within 10 feet or so of it, and once the door to the mechanical room is installed, I'll bet I can only hear it from inside that room.  Jim's got all the first floor sheathing completed, and the cleanup done.  He's also got the partition for my office on the second floor finished, and there just some sheathing to finish up.  In a day or two he'll be ready to have the insulation guys come back to finish up the very last of the insulation work.  At that point, he'll have a bit of sheathing to finish up (maybe 3% of the entire job), a couple of interior doors to install – and he'll be finished.  Well, finished at least until spring, when he'll get the final exterior work done (stone washed and sealed, and siding painted).  I'm pretty sure that within two weeks, the interior of the barn will be ready for us to start my part of the work: installing lighting, electrical outlets, painting, finishing the office, etc.  Woo hoo!

Progressive pummeling...

Progressive pummeling...  This pummeling is delivered by John Hinderaker.  The subject is gun control.  Hinderaker takes passage after passage from a piece in the New Yorker by Adam Gopnik, and eviscerates each passage.  His crushing of the under-informed and logic-challenged Gopnik is so thorough that you can't help but feel a little sorry for the poor chump.  Go read the whole delightful thing!

Progress report...

Progress report...  Well, yesterday turned out to be the very long day of the network.  I brought up the Cisco SG300 switch quickly enough, but ran into all sorts of troubles when configuring it.  I finally figured out that it wasn't actually an IOS switch – it just looks like it's an IOS switch.  Weird!  I went to bed last night without having it working; this morning I wiped it clean and started over, and in an hour I got past the issue.  It's working now!

Today I hope to finish up the networking for the house, and maybe get started on the barn's network.  It uses identical hardware, so that should go quickly...

We're going to visit the vet again today, mainly for a checkup on Mo'i.  He's urinating far more than normal, not a good sign.  We worry.

“Home Alone” sends the wrong message...

“Home Alone” sends the wrong message...  Awesome!

Brilliant...

Brilliant...

Political correctness...

Political correctness...  Sometimes I run across an instance of progressive (it's always progressives!) political correctness that just leaves me with my mouth gaping.  Here's another one: a major publisher (Harper Collins) prints an atlas with Israel simply left out.  It shows Jordan and Syria extending all the way to the Mediterranean.

I always thought the entire idea of an atlas was to graphically depict reality.  The current reality is, undeniably, that Israel exists.  That reality really doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon.

Somewhere George Orwell is laughing...

Progress report...

Progress report...  Yesterday was “the day of the network” around here.  I'm in the process of bringing up a network that is capable of handling both clients and servers in two buildings (our home and our barn), with a decent firewall, WiFi over the better part of an acre (between the two buildings), and the ability to connect over point-to-point links to several locations where I will want remote sensors (spring, well house, greenhouse, weather station, cameras, etc., etc.).

My network design includes two routers (identical MikroTik RB2011UIAS-IN units), three WiFi access points (provided by TrendNet TEW-812DRU units), two 20 port switches (using Cisco SG300-20 units), and a cable modem for our Comcast connection (which may not be a permanent arrangement (a Arris TG862G unit).  The point-to-point links will come up later; I'm planning to implement those with various pieces of Ubiquiti kit – highly recommended by a friend who runs a wireless ISP and won't use anything else.  The only one of these I was familiar with was the Cisco switch; everything else I needed to learn.

Yesterday I brought up the MikroTik routers and the TrendNet WiFi routers.  In both cases I used nothing but the web configuration GUIs, and in both cases it was quite straightforward.  The MikroTik's capabilities are particularly impressive – at 10x the price I'd still be impressed, but for sub-$200 it borders on incredible.  I struggled for a while because I'm so used to Cisco's IOS that I couldn't believe configuration of the MikroTik could be as simple and straightforward as it was.  Cisco has built a substantial business around training and certifying IOS experts.  MikroTik seems to take another approach: let's make it so easy that even a complete idiot could do this.  I like MikroTik's approach :)

Today I'm bringing up the Cisco switches.  I'm going to configure them to have two completely separated VLANs (no routing between them on the switch) so that I can control all the routing on the MikroTik routers (where it's far easier).  Hopefully that won't prove to be too difficult.  I've already got console connectivity, which is a prerequisite that has been challenging in the past.  This time it was easy :)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  The past few years, every New Year Day I have the same thought: this new year (2015 now) sounds like something I've read in a science fiction novel.  This year I had another thought: the year I was born sounds like something I've read in a history book.

Gulp...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  -4°F ... that's the temperature outside right now, according to my truck's thermometer.  We're getting introduced to northern Utah winter in dramatic fashion :)

I just ran down to a local store to pick up a couple of power strips.  I'm bringing up some new network gear and I ran out of outlets (despite having three power strips already!).  The store opens at 6 am, but there was only one employee there.  I found my power strips and went to check out, but couldn't find that one person.  The cash register was open, the doors were wide open ... and the one employee was in the storeroom in the back of the store.  I had to go drag him out so I could pay for my power strips :)  What a place we live in now, where the store employees are completely unconcerned about leaving the till (which contained a considerable amount of cash) open and the goods unguarded!

Of course, it was 6 am, and -4°F out.  It would have to be a really ambitious crook to go after that store right now!

Wall of field spaniels...

Wall of field spaniels...  Over the years we've collected quite a bit of art related to field spaniels.  Today we hung some of the larger paintings, prints, and drawings on our dining room wall.  Later, when we find them, we'll add some smaller pieces.  In addition to these, we also have a Mene sculpture of field spaniels chasing a goose and a large number of photos...

Just signed up...

Just signed up ... for milk delivery service.  Debbie and I both drink quite a bit of whole milk.  A local dairy (Rose Hill) has the service, and they have full butterfat, low temperature pasteurized, non-homogenized whole milk available (the closest thing to raw milk you can buy commercially).  We've been buying their milk in our local grocery store, and it's easily the best-tasting milk I've had since I moved to the western US in 1971.  They make weekly deliveries for $5 a month.

I love Utah!

Progress report...

Progress report...  Our builder (Jim J.) was here all day yesterday, and was joined for part of the day by his son Talon and wife Cathy.  He's finishing up the sheathing on the inside of the barn – in shirtsleeves, now that we have heat – and the other two are starting the cleanup.  It's a royal mess inside right now, with debris from the sheathing, plumbing, and electrical work.  They made a big dent in the remaining work on all counts.

Debbie and I somehow managed to get very little done all day long.  I frittered away a couple hours trying to get our Mac Mini server up, only to discover that the problem was the monitor.  I don't think I've ever had a flat-screen monitor go bad before!  This seems to have happened in the move, which would make this the very first casualty of the move to this point.  I ordered a replacement for a whole $110 from Amazon.  It's astonishing to me just how inexpensive certain computer components have gotten, monitors amongst them...

We had a very nice visit with Tim and Jeannie D., our neighbors to the north.  Just an hour or so of pleasant conversation and companionship, but it put smiles on our faces for the whole day.  On the way out of their house I slipped and fell right on my butt; they had some ice on their front stoop.  No harm done to me, but I rolled into their gutter downspout and squashed it nearly flat.  Dang.