Morning Walk...

I miss Orion in the sky; at this time of year it has already set in the west before I get up.  And it looks odd to me to see the Big Dipper (Ursa major) “upside down”, almost straight overhead.  But the clear skies I really enjoy.  The half-moon was very high in the southern sky this morning, and bright enough to wash out most of the stars.  There was plenty of light to walk by.

Race chased pine cones, as is his want.  He likes any sort of ball or toy that's kicked or thrown, but for some reason pine cones are his absolute favorite.  You can see his delight when he finds one, and his joy when he chases down one that I've kicked – he runs back to me with it held in his jaws, practically skipping and dancing with happiness, his head whipping back and forth.  Then down it goes on the pavement just in front of me, and he crouches, focused totally on that pine cone and the moment of my kick.

The three field spaniels wandered from smell to smell.  I want to be able to ask them “Who visited there?  How long ago?”  I'm assuming they know, that they can tell from what they're smelling.  Maybe I'm wrong, though; maybe those smells are to them like a nice glass of wine to me – I don't really understand it very well, but I sure enjoy it!

I got to thinking, during our walk this morning, about Debbie, who is away with her friend Marsha Y. in the Los Angeles area.  I miss her, of course.  But I'm very proud of the way she leapt in to support her friend.  She and Dick (Marsha's husband) are so far Marsha's only visitors.  This isn't because Marsha is without friends or family (she has plenty of both).  I don't know why others aren't there to be with Marsha.  But Debbie is there, when Marsha needs friends and family the most.  I'm proud that my wife is the kind of person who responds to a friend's need in the way that she has.

Marsha appears to be making good progress.  Last night she was able to eat on her own, for the first time since the stroke.  In my last call with Debbie, her tone was full of optimism and hope...

A Clear Path to $1B in Revenue...

Now that's the sort of thing I really, really enjoy hearing from my boss...

NGC 3521...

From APOD, of course.  As always, click to enlarge.

Tough Stuff...

Just by happenstance, I know someone working on this stuff.  They think it just might be the next “miracle material”, with the potential to be as revolutionary as the advent of plastics...

Obama's Tuscon Moment...

Long time readers of this blog will know that it's rare for me to agree with a position that President Obama takes.  It's rarer still for me to agree with – much less admire – something that he does.

Last night was an exception.  I thought his speech in Tuscon was an exemplary one, delivered with all the skill and theatre that he's famous for (but has so rarely actually delivered).  Obama surprised me by staying well above the left's rhetoric of the past few days, instead delivering an message of unity I always hope a politician would hit in such situations, but which so few actually do.  He also did a superb job of honoring the dead and injured, without using the occasion directly for his own ends.

Nice job, Mr. President.  Thank you.

More like that, please...

The Collar Bomb Heist...

Amazing true crime story.  I'd heard of this before, but not all these details.

Light Blogging Alert...

There is a nearly perfect storm brewing for me: at work we're in crunch mode to get a release out, Debbie is away (more on that in a moment), and we have a sick dog.  I'm working from home today, and won't be posting much.

Debbie is away to be with Marsha Y., a good friend who suffered a stroke on Monday.  Marsha's doing ok – she's awake, talking, and the only symptom seems to be some problem with movement on her right side.  She was at the gym when the stroke happened, so people were with her and helping immediately; she was at the hospital in very short order...

Tarantula...

...but perhaps not what you were expecting.  This is the Tarantula Nebula, via APOD (of course!).

The Little Book of Semaphores...

A freely downloadable book about concurrent programming.  I've only skimmed it so far, but it looks pretty good...

Ice Extrusions...

Both by happenstance and by design, ice can be extruded from large containers with small exits (as in the photo at right).  James Carter has learned how to do this on purpose.  See his web site for lots of interesting examples and an explanation...

Online Advanced JavaScript Course...

Here.

WTF: IPv6 in the Science journals?

Here's an example.

An entire generation of computer scientists has been born, educated, and gone to work since IPv6 was first invented.  There are very damned few deployments of it outside of the backbone.  The benefits are clear, but so are the implementation challenges.

The linked article refers to a government mandate for IPv6 upgrading.  I'd get excited about that except that I remember the first such mandate (around 1995), the second (around 2000), and the third (around 2005) – none of which had much impact so far as I can tell.  Outside of the squandering of vast amounts of taxpayer dollars, of course.

Sheesh.

You Know You're a Dog Owner When...

...you accept the fact that walking in your stocking feet through the kitchen means that you're at risk for getting wet socks.  Because the dogs, when they drink from their waterer, dribble gallons of water all over the kitchen floor, of course...

Something to Keep an Eye On...

The Obama administration is apparently moving forward with some kind of “Internet ID” program.  I've not been able to find any details about this, anywhere. 

If this turns out to be some sort of optional ID that would provide trusted identification when the user desired it, then I think that's at least possibly a net good thing.

On the other hand, if the use of this ID becomes mandatory for any purpose, then we've got a potential problem.

Let's all watch what develops here...

Akins' Laws of Spacecraft Design...

Here's a list of design principles that will ring true to any experienced engineer, in any field.  Here are a few that are just as applicable to software design as they are to spacecraft design:

Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time.

Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis.

There is never a single right solution. There are always multiple wrong ones, though.

Don't do nuthin' dumb.

Schedules only move in one direction.

A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

It Begins...

Most of us are still recovering from the shock of the attack on Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.  The more calculating political class is falling over over themselves to take advantage of the moment.  The winner for first strike: Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy is preparing gun control legislation, continuing our apparent national obsession with blaming the tools rather than the perpetrator.

Glenn Reynolds (aka “The Instapundit”) has a piece in today's Wall Street Journal on another manifestation of the left's “Don't let a good crisis go to waste!” tactics.  He's disgusted with the left's instant blaming of the Giffords shooting on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.  His conclusion:

Where is the decency in blood libel?

To paraphrase Justice Cardozo ("proof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do"), there is no such thing as responsibility in the air. Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on "rhetoric" and a "climate of hate" to obscure their own dishonesty in trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty remains.

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America's political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

Where is the decency in that?

One-Liner Smiles...

Via reader Dr. Simi L.:

1. My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God and I didn't.
2. I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
3. Some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them.
4. I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.
5. Don't take life too seriously; No one gets out alive.
6. You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me
7. Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.
8. Earth is the insane asylum for the universe.
9. I'm not a complete idiot -- Some parts are just missing.
10. Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.
11. NyQuil, the stuffy, sneezy, why-the-heck-is-the-room-spinning medicine.
12. God must love stupid people; He made so many.
13. The gene pool could use a little chlorine
14. Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.
15. Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?
16. Being 'over the hill' is much better than being under it!
17. Wrinkled Was Not One of the Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew up.
18. Procrastinate Now!
19. I Have a Degree in Liberal Arts; Do You Want Fries With That?
20. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
21. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
22. Stupidity is not a handicap. Park elsewhere!
23. They call it PMS because Mad Cow Disease was already taken.
24. He who dies with the most toys is nonetheless DEAD.
25. A picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up three thousand times the memory.
26. Ham and eggs: a day's work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.
27. The trouble with life is there's no background music.
28. The original point and click interface was a Smith & Wesson.
29. I smile because I don't know what the heck is going on.

Pyracantha...

On our frequent drives from home to Descanso, Cuyamaca, Pine Valley, or Laguna, our route takes us up Japatul road to where it meets Interstate 8.  Along that road there is a house on the west side with a beautiful collection of mature Pyracantha (Firethorn) plants.  Some individual plants are about 10 feet high and perhaps 12 feet in diameter.  Every year those plants treat us to a gorgeous display of orange-red berries, but this year (presumably because of the early rains) they were especially spectacular.  Enjoy (as always, click to enlarge)!

A Satisfying Repair...

A couple of months ago, I bought a Das Keyboard (at right) for use at home.  It has the mechanical switches whose “feel” I've long missed.  My typing isn't as fast or as accurate on the modern keyboards with (usually) rubber dome switches.  So I splurged a bit (these things are expensive!).  Within a couple of weeks, the constrast between my keyboard at work and my keyboard at home was unliveable, so I bought one for use at work as well.  I love my Das Keyboards!

But my keyboard at home developed a truly obnoxious problem.  The left-arrow and up-arrow keys (just to the right of the right shift key) started working intermittently.  For a while, they'd work only if the keyboard was tilted toward me (with the top edge higher than the low edge).  Then they stopped working altogether.

I contacted support at Das Keyboard, and very quickly they said they'd never seen this particular problem before, and offered to exchange the keyboard.  That's entirely appropriate support, for which they should be lauded – but it wasn't what I wanted.  Now that I've grown so attached to my Das Keyboards, I was loathe to have to use something else for the few weeks it would take to send my old keyboard back and get a new one in return.

So I decided to try to fix it myself.  I've designed switch-based keyboards, so I'm very familiar with how they work.  There's really not much to go wrong in such a keyboard – it's just switches, diodes, and printed circuit board – any of which I ought to be able to fix.  So to work I went.

The first step turned out to be the most challenging: getting the danged thing open!  I'm not sure I would ever have figured it out if it weren't for this lovely post (thank you, Geoff Breach!).  Thanks to his precise directions, I was able to open my Das Keyboard, and without breaking anything.

The next step was to study the situation.  I had a good clue (what every debugger wants most!): two keys simultaneously failed in the same exact way.  This means it was extremely unlikely to be a key switch problem, as the chance for two of them to malfunction identically was vanishingly small.  It had to be something in common between the two, and that could only be a diode or a printed circuit trace.  It took just a minute or so to figure it out.  In the photo at right (click to enlarge), you can see what I discovered.  The two orange ovals at right show one of the terminals on each of the up-arrow and left-arrow switches: they are connected.  A long skinny trace (highlighted by the arrows) connects them to one terminal on the enter key switch.  The enter key always worked fine.  The problem had to be an intermittent break in that skinny trace connecting them.

A little work with my DVM quickly confirmed this hypothesis.  While measuring the resistance between the enter key's terminal and the up-arrow key's terminal, I twisted and prodded the circuit board.  Sure enough, the resistance varied all over the place, from infinity to near zero ohms.  Somewhere on that trace there must be a hairline crack (so thin I couldn't spot it, even with a magnifier).  So I tried a brute-force repair: I soldered a piece of hook-up wire between the two terminals.  Voila! I reassembled it all without difficulty, and now my Das Keyboard is now as good as new.

I haven't the words to describe how satisfying it was to be able to troubleshoot and fix this.  Silly, I know, but true nonetheless.  Note that in the process of repairing it myself, I violated the terms of my warranty, so now my keyboard is truly mine.  I'm sure the Das Keyboard folks would sternly disapprove.  I'll tell them anyway, as they may be interested to know of a potential manufacturing quality issue...

Where Does Good Code Come From?

xkcd has a cartoon that will resonate with every experienced developer: