Stenotype machines...

Stenotype machines...  Some 30+ years ago, I worked for a company (Xscribe, now defunct) in San Diego that made specialized computer systems to automate the job of a court stenographer.  I learned a lot about stenography in the course of working there.

The basis for stenography is that it records phonemes (sounds) instead of words.  The stenographer learns to transcribe the sounds of language rather than the words, and turns those recorded sounds into actual words in a second phase of the process.  That second phase occurs back in the office, outside the courtroom – what you see in the courtroom is just the first phase, wherein the sounds of the courtroom proceedings are recorded.

The machine that the stenographer uses is called a stenotype machine.  You can think of it as a kind of specialized typewriter that records phonemes rather than letters and words.  It is optimized for speed and reliability, as the court reporter must be able to keep up with even the fastest speaker, and you certainly don't want the machine to break down in the middle of proceedings.

One thing I learned at Xscribe is that court reporters make extensive use of shorthand “codes” – strokes (recorded phonemes) that don't actually reflect any sound heard in the courtroom, but rather are special symbols that only the court reporter knows that represent some piece of information.  One of the most common uses for this is to make a short code that represents a long and complicated name.  Some codes might be used by a particular court reporter in every one of their cases; others are made up on the fly for a particular case.  These codes are always very personal to each particular court reporter.  Much of what Xscribe's software did was to automate the process of turning these special codes into words, something that saved a vast amount of time for a court reporter.  The loved Xscribe's products, and it was easy to see why.

These days, with the much more powerful computers that are available, the court reporting software just runs on ordinary PCs.  I haven't talked with a court reporter for many years, but I'd bet they have trouble even imagining doing their job without a computer now...

Putin acts, the West talks...

Putin acts, the West talks...  And the West isn't even talking very persuasively.

I don't know enough about the situation in Ukraine to even propose a solution.  However, it does seem clear that just standing around yakking while Putin grabs territory in Europe is a very bad idea.  Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of history will note the parallels to events in Europe just 90 years ago, when Adolf Hitler started occupying European countries on the slimmest of manufactured pretexts.  That didn't end well, and neither will allowing Putin free reign.

The current context is more complex than the situation with Hitler.  In today's globally-connected economy, there are more tools available with which to pressure Russia – but the inverse is also true.  Russia supplies about 25% of Europe's energy, and that's a pretty big stick with which to prod the Europeans.  Then there's that other little inconvenient fact: that Russia is sitting on (numerically) the world's largest collection of nuclear weapons.  This fact colors the consideration of every possible military response.

I don't have answers, but I can look at the current response and say with confidence: it seems very unlikely that this leads to a good outcome...

Imagine...

Imagine...  For just a moment, suppress your vomit reflex and imagine that you are a budget wonk in the Obama administration.  You're deciding which government programs to chop out of the FY 2015 budget that you're helping write.  Do you look for (a) expensive, wasteful government programs, or (b) cheap, effective government programs to chop?

Why, (b) of course!  Those idiots in That One's budget office are proposing cutting one of the most effective science programs the federal government funds.  It's also a cheap, low-risk program.

If you've been reading this blog for even a few months, you can guess what's coming: they want to terminate one of the least expensive and most productive unmanned space programs (the Mars Opportunity rover).  And of course, they want to expand one of the most expensive and least productive programs: the International Space Station.

There will come a day when I am proud of my country's government.  But today is not that day...

I dare you!

)

I dare you!  My mom sent this along with a note: “I dare you to watch this with your mouth closed!”  It's pretty amazing, all right...

Liberal Logic...

Liberal Logic...  Via my mom, who sent along quite a few examples along these lines.  Warning: the web site referenced in the photos is on malware blacklists – don't visit it with any computer you care about...

Smart jokes?

Smart jokes?  Friend and reader Simon M. passes along these “20 Jokes That Only Intellectuals Will Understand”.  That's more than a little pretentious, but there are some funny ones in the collection.  One oldie-but-goodie that's geek-friendly:

Why do engineers confuse Halloween and Christmas?
Because Oct 31 = Dec 25.

Translation: 31 base 8 (OCTal) equals 25 base 10 (DECimal).
Here's one I hadn't seen before:

Entropy isn't what it used to be.

Ha!

Perspective...

Perspective...  Acquiring a little perspective (aka “wisdom”) may be the main benefit of getting older.  I've been a working engineer long enough to see several engineering management fads come and go.  These are all about managing the process of engineering, rather than doing the actual engineering work itself.  The broadest need for such processes these days is for software engineering, which often has large teams of engineers working on the same product (or parts of it).

All of these processes have the same objective: to reduce the process of engineering to something predictable, measurable, and manageable.  So far as I can tell, all of them can be successful when used by a gifted manager, of which there are approximately 3 in the world at any given time.  The rest just impede the engineers' work, frustrate both the engineers and their managers, and provide fodder for Scott Adams (Mr. Dilbert).  Meanwhile, so far as I can tell, most successful engineering management is driven by one of three things: the teams are small and cohesive (so process is much less needed), there's a gifted leader of the team who holds the whole effort together single-handedly, or the team had a run of amazingly good luck.  I've never – not once – seen an engineering methodology actually work well myself.

The last company I worked for was in the throes of kind of, sort of, but not really adopting “agile” methodologies when I retired.  This post could have been written about them...

Story of the day...

Story of the day...  Via ScrappleFace:

Reports from the International Space Station (ISS) indicate that Russia has effectively annexed several modules of the orbiting laboratory, allegedly at the invitation of a Russian-speaking scientist aboard.

President Vladimir Putin said his forces moved in “peacefully and are committed to protecting the interests of pro-Russian persons on the ISS” — which currently comprises cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, who felt threatened by some laboratory rodents run amok. 

Scott Ott cracks me up :)

AGW skepticism is going mainstream...

AGW skepticism is going mainstream...  Here's an article in Forbes, reporting something as news that was actually reported by several AGW skeptics (Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, Jo Nova) well over a year ago.  To me, the most interesting thing here is that this quite skeptical view is being reported credulously as straight-up news...

At-will out-of-body experiences...

At-will out-of-body experiences...  Seems that out-of-body experiences are explainable after all, and without invoking magic, deities, or hallucinations.  This is another in a large set of examples where a single human (or occasionally, an animal) has provided the means to study and explain a phenomenon that was previously completely mysterious...

Progressive racism?

Progressive racism?  Some of these are a stretch, but there's enough that's plausible to make a thought-provoking read...

Older than dirt, part II...

Older than dirt, part II...  Via reader and friend Doug W., whose daughter sent this to him:

Newspapers: In days before everyone had computers at home and in their pockets, printing presses made paper versions of websites. People would then drive around and throw them on your lawn.

Awesome!

Gotcha! Well, really, got me!

Gotcha!  Well, really, got me!  A friend who shall remain unnamed told me today that he was looking for work outside his current employer.  I texted to him:

I hope you know that you can feel free to use me as a reference, professional or character.

He replied:

No... They're not gonna listen to some hermit who lives in the mountains.

I think I damaged something by laughing too hard :)

Older than dirt...

Older than dirt...  Via my mom, who really is older than dirt!

'Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'

'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him.  'All the food was slow.'

'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'

'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained.  'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it :

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card.

In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck.

Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer.

I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed (slow).

We had a television in our house.  It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I was 21 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers-- my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6AM every morning.

On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren

Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

MEMORIES from a friend :

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it.. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many of these do you remember?

• Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
• Ignition switches on the dashboard.
• Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.
• Real ice boxes.
• Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
• Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.

Last week, while I was up in Utah, I visited the home of one of our new neighbors.  This fellow happens to be an electrical engineer, and he looks like he's probably in his late 30s.  We talked shop a little bit, and he asked me what the first project I ever worked on was.  When I told him about the vacuum tube transmitter I once designed, he looked at me and said:

“What’s a vacuum tube?”

Dirt is starting to look young to me...

Always ask, never assume...

Always ask, never assume...  Via my lovely bride:

His request approved, the CNN News photographer quickly used a cell phone to call the local airport to charter a flight. He was told a twin-engine plane would be waiting for him at the airport. Arriving at the airfield, he spotted a plane warming up outside a hanger. He jumped in with his bag, slammed the door shut, and shouted, “Let's go!” 

The pilot taxied out, swung the plane into the wind and took off. Once in the air, the photographer instructed the pilot, “Fly over the valley and make low passes so I can take pictures of the fires on the hillsides.”

“Why?”  asked the pilot.

“Because I'm a photographer for CNN,” he responded, “and I need to get some close up shots.”

The pilot was strangely silent for a moment, finally he stammered “So, what you're telling me is ... you're not my flight instructor?”

Global warming skepticism for dummies..

Global warming skepticism for dummies...  Roy Spencer is a climatologist, with university degrees to suit and publications in peer-reviewed journals.  He used to work for NASA as a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies.  He's also skeptical about anthropogenic global warming.  Even better: he can write about it for a non-scientist audience.  Go read!

The family will be weeping...

The family will be weeping...  Me too...  Via reader and friend Simon M...

Seven year old singing a Billie Holiday number...

Seven year old singing a Billie Holiday number...  Even with some of her teeth missing.  Awesome!  Something tells me we'll be hearing more from Angelina Jordan...

A hole in Mars...

A hole in Mars...  Crater exposes a Martian cavern, which would be a very likely place for any life on Mars to be hiding out.  Via APOD, of course...

Back home, for now...

Back home, for now...  I've returned from my latest adventure in Utah, and am back in our home in Jamul.  During the past 10 days I was very busy meeting with lawyers, water rights engineers, various government officials, inspectors, appraisers, realtors, insurance companies, construction companies, plumbers, and a variety of future neighbors – all in pursuit of due diligence on purchasing our new home there.  Well, the due diligence is finished, and we're on the way to closing on April 4th.  I'm going to be “camping” in the house for a few weeks while we get some repairs and changes done.  Then we move!

One big challenge we have is how to move our animals (4 dogs, 9 cats) 850 miles.  Anyone have experience with this, and advice?