Personal Dork Assistant

Alright, the TiBook's Airport range

Alright, the TiBook's Airport range officially sucks. I couldn't even take it to the curb before the signal cut out, much less across the street to the park. The PB 1400 with the Orinoco Silver card had no problems. Maybe it's time to give the open source Orinoco driver a try.

Installed the Jaguar Developer Tools

Installed the Jaguar Developer Tools so I can get Plucker working on Powerbook. the Plucker package is sparsely documented, but it's not so bad if you're used to Linux installs, and it's a little easier on MacOS X now that Python is pre-installed in Jaguar. It makes for a nice replacement for AvantGo, even if it can't get into the New York Times site. I'd already created some scripts to scrape the SFGate front page to make it less crufty for AvantGo's custom channel parser, so Plucker can go right in and grab those pages without trouble. Although being able to read the Chornicle Sports Pages on the Palm isn't exciting right now, when the paper is on the front steps every morning. I can probably move the scraper scripts to my own system and make it completely self-sufficient, thanks to the Unix tools. Screw Perl, it's all about sed and awk, damn it. It would be nice to do this with a language library that understands HTML, though, instead of having to search for angle brackets all over the regexp. On the other hand, a real man should be able to do anything he damn well wants (within reason) given a Turing-complete grammar.

Being able to pop in a CD and double-click on the installer hardly makes me a stud. I mean, being able to download and install software barely qualifies one as a tech monkey, even if it's Free and Open Source and all that. The world will be a better place as soon as people realize the fact.

Yikes

Here's a scary thought:

Ladies and gentlemen: the 2002-2003 Philadelphia Eagles lingerie calendar.

"Oh dear lord", I thought, pausing for a moment before tearing open the package, "what if this is Andy Reid in his skivvies?"

Thankfully, it's only the cheerleaders

Yuck

I'm usually supportive of free trade and all that, but sometimes the plans of the corporate conglomerates must be stopped! Damn it, you can't call it "soy sauce" if you didn't use any soy beans in it. No, "hydrolyzed soy protein" doesn't count.

Ingredients

• HYDROLYZED SOY PROTEIN
• CORN SYRUP
• CARAMEL COLOR

Are you kiddin' me?

Played the new Battletech collectible

Played the new Battletech collectible miniatures game yesterday. Each of us had a mish-mash of units from one starter and one booster. They moved the time period so they don't have to deal with the old backstory, which is fine with me. They did preserve most of the old game mechanics at least in name, although with the complexity the old boardgame, this made for lots of extraneous icons, modifiers, and rules. I did pull off a kickass Death From Above attack, though, which is more than I can say for my time with the boardgame.

We played 300-point armies, which allowed each of us to field one Mech, one heavy tank, a light vehicle/GEV or two, and four or five infantry units. I was confused about action tokens and formations rules at the beginning, which I probably used to my advantage (i.e. I cheated). I didn't like the one-person-does-all-his-action turns. The board game mechanism of rolling for initiative, then alternating actions makes for a more balanced turn structure, IMHO. Mike got a little impatient and pushed his troops forward, taking unnecessary heat damage in the process. Sent a couple of chump dudes into the middle and the scout vehicles forward, but kept the tank and mech back. One infantry unit got squished by a barrage from Mike's infantry formation and mech, but that clustered them in range of my tank's long-range guns. The tank's multi-target capability softened them up, then my Centurion mech jumped in with the Death From Above, which did enough damage to his mech to turn it into salvage scrap. The scout vehicle got behind Mike's tank, which forced it to turn around, and gave my tank time to move up. Another big blast from the artillery disabled his tank, and that was pretty the game.

Strategic insight based on one short game:

• Long range artillery kicks ass, especially with the multi-targeting and indirect fire abilities, which allow the tanks to do serious damage to a formation.
• Send the fast vehicles forward and get them into the enemy's rear arcs. Hit and run to distract the enemy while you move the main force up, hopefully when your vehicles retreat the big guns will be there to cover them.
• Life as an infantryman sucks. Send them forward in formation to lure the enemy in, then try to lock down their vehicles in close combat while your heavy guns bomb away. Mike did a better job at this than I did.
• Mechs seem to work best as a highly mobile reserve force. They get chewed up too quickly if they're in the vanguard.

It looks like WizKids is the next WotC with the collectible miniatures concept. Miniatures gaming has been a stable niche in the hobby for a long time, thanks(?) to Games Workshop and friends. WotC introduced collectibility with Magic, but with cards, which are easier to produce, and even then they had to go to Carta Mundi in Belgium to get it done. Remember the good old days of the Great Magic Shortage? Miniatures would seem to be ideal for a similar treatment. After all, mini gamers are used to shelling out to keep up with the latest and greatest. However, the packs of dull grey lead figures scared off the gaming mainstream (oxymoron?) who were afraid of the work involved with painting.

So we have to figure out a way to make attractive, pre-decorated miniatures. Molded color plastic is out, since that's associated with cheap mass-market junk. There were always pre-painted figures for sale, but they were treated as artisanal art, and priced accordingly. The answer, of course, is cheap labor in China. Contract manufacturing allowed hand-painted pieces at mass-produced prices. $20 for a starter of about 10 figures. Work that backwards through the value chain, and the number gets awful small by the time you get down to the factory worker. Probably young single women from the countryside. They're good at detail work. The game mechanics are solid, the rotating bases is a great idea, but it's the globalized manufacturing that makes the idea happen. In light of that, WizKid's plea against discounting seem a little hypocritical.

Meow

So I have no life, and on a Friday night at 10:20 PM, I drove out to Berkeley to Computerware. Hey, it's release night for Macos 10.2 ( 10.2, 10:20, get it?), S0 various Apple dealers were holding release eventS. Hey, the Margin Must be great for them 150 why not celebrate. I did get a free Jaguar T-shirt for MY trouble ,but what I'M going to do with an X-large T-shirt is Unclear.

Installed it without a hitch , although tlne promised speed gains Were a little exaggerated. Have the tablet handy from dad's Chinese recognition softwcvre, So I get % play with Jaguar's handwriting recognition (a.k.a Newton's legacy). I'M writing this with it right now. which explains Why I'M spelling like a moron.

Useless software toys aside (unless there's going to be an Apple PDA?), life in Macos X is all about Chimera.

Catching Up on Stuff

Rented Waking Life. It was cool. Maybe a little too cool. I might pick up the DVD. The director's commentary could be fascinating. Or terribly tedious.

Sam's on the way to Houston. It was a good excuse to ship him the old iPod and pick up the phat new model. The remote and the belt clip are nice, but they add just enough bulk to make it less pocketable.

Moonbase Commander is coming! Moonbase Commander is coming. Hey, it's cheaper than Warcraft III.

Beísbol

The Giants have been scuffling (one of those baseball-only words), but the Mets sure are making them look good. Well, the Giants still don't look very good, but at least they seem adequate in comparison. The Mets K 13 times yesterday and still only manage to lose by a single run on an agonizingly bad play. Bonds broke late for home on the Shinjo's fly ball, but Vaughn dropped the cutoff and hesistated enough on relay throw to let Bonds score on the mistake. Tonight, the Mets are giving away runs with errors, wild pitches, and bloopers. That and a belt-high fastball to Kent. But the Giants still can't string a big inning together, and even though Nen got the save, he still gave up two hits, a run on a wild pitch, and let Piazza and Vaughn come up as the tying run. Doesn't inspire much confidence.

The A's? Two words: en fuego.

It's cool to be able

It's cool to be able to hop on the 7 bus outside the front door and get off right on Telegraph. Get off right in front of Unit 3, which is coming to life once again. The street was filled with students, many with family in tow (much Chinese spoken in this case). AC Transit buses use computer-printed transfers now, so you get 2.5 hours on your transfer and no m�s. That only gave me enough time to scour about a third of the clearance racks at Amoeba. Still gave me enough time to buy 6 get 2 free, although no real revelations among the bunch. Mostly one-hit wonders and washed up pop albums. One of these days I'll pick up the entire Hootie discography. Need to expose myself to more mediocre yet slightly cool bands so my subconscious can stay my hand as I flip through the pile. Did pick up a Paul van Dyck out of the non-clearance used section. Could've got it for less on Amazon. Oh well.

Sellout?

Caught the new Jaguar ad on the radio. It's the London Calling campaign, with the song and everything. How wrong is it for The Clash to be selling luxury cars? Although the low-end Jag is pretty much a fancy Taurus these days.

Turn of Phrase

In rememberance of the .com era:

"Rejuvenated by a stint in bankruptcy..."

LA Times

Not that you can read any of these articles, since the site require registration. At least the registration is free, if you don't mind selling your soul.

One of my regrets in life is missing out on Kip Thorne's General Relativity class. It was my junior year, and he was going on sabbatical next year to finish LIGO next year. Ph98 (now 125) and 106 were already kicking my ass in a major way, and I chickened out. Although considering how I did on GR in grad. school, it was probably for the best. Tensor algebra just doesn't agree with me, it seems.

After going around Europe and seeing all the gorgeous stained glass in the cathedrals, it's actually refreshing to hear that the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in LA is using thin alabaster panels in its windows. It's cool and modern, but should still allow for plenty of solemn lighting. Besides, thanks to the article, I now finally know what the heck alabaster is made of (hydrated calcium sulfate).

Ack

Mind-numbing, brain-sucking, waste of time.

Oldie but Goodie

Marathon levels (in .zip format)

Local Hotspot

Got my hands on the elusive Linksys WET11, which is a box that bridges 802.11b to 10-baseT Ethernet. The XBox folks have been all over this thing since it allows them to hook up the XBox to the network for broadband gaming without having to run Cat5 to the living room. The good old Linksys WAP11 (version 1.1), in Bridging or Access Point Client mode was the previous tool of choice, but it would only bridge to another WAP11, as I found out the expensive way. Wasn't going to throw more money after another WAP11, and the WET11 should be more usable anyway.

The BEFW11S4v2 is upstairs next to the Smurf G3 and the DSL modem by necessity. For now, I've set up the WET11 and the WAP11 in combination as a wireless repeater, with the WAP11 in the wiring closet downstairs to act as a secondary access point. The WET11 is upstairs and connected to the WAP11 through the in-house Cat5 run, and it talks to the BEFW11S4 as an AP client. This puts the WET11 closer to the wireless router, which should improve throughput. A more elegant network configuration would be to put the router and DSL modem in the wiring closet, where I can hook up the house's Cat5 runs to the router's built-in switch to light up the Ethernet jacks. Use one of the jacks with the WAP11 as an AP upstairs, and use the WET11 with the Smurf to access the network wirelessly. On the other hand, I don't really want the trouble of rewiring every gadget in the house. The configuration also forces me to keep both the WAP11 and the router running continuously, and considering the typical reliability of PacBell service, having the reset switch in a convenient place is probably a better idea.

Anyway, the point of the exercise was to increase the wireless coverage so that my Titanium Powerbook could get decent signal levels throughout the house. The computer's practially a freakin' Faraday cage, and the wire antenna inside isn't much good. The old PB1400c has better reception, thanks to the Orinoco Silver card. The side effect of the AP-overkill is that Arlington Park across the street now has free wireless access. I might even keep it up as a public service if I can be sure about security and avoid abuse. What might work is to put another router/firewall in the closet between the WET11 and the WAP11, so that the WAP11 is firewalled from the home network and double-firewalled from the Internet. I'm pretty sure NAT can handle this sort of thing, but not sure about the implementation in the cheap plastic boxes. I can always try to scare up another computer and use it as a Linux/BSD firewall which would have the flexibility, but I'm not that bored. Yet. Actually, I do have the flying saucer with me, so I can try double-NAT by replacing the WAP11 with the ABS. I don't think the ABS's range is as good as the WAP11, though.

X

My life is so boring that I'm installing computer operating systems for fun. With 10.2 coming out soon, plus various 10-only iApps, I decided to take the plunge and upgrade the Powerbook to MacOS X. Dumped the important stuff (Eudora Folder!) over to the PC before the install, of course. Got a cheap thrill out of hitting the Initialize button to wipe the hard disk before the installation.

Everything went well enough. Was worried about the speed, since my previous experience of X was on the old beige G3/266 (overclocked to 300MHz), and it was pretty pokey there. But on the G4 it's no problem, even if it's only 500MHz. Hopefully 10.2 will speed things up a bit more. Chimera works well enough as a browser (as long as there's not too much Flash), and good old Eudora is still chugging along. The new iTunes has a Rating feature, so now I'm obsessively going through the MP3s and clicking on the little stars. And it's nice to have Terminal and SSH built-in, although the fancy long file names don't lend themselves to CLI navigation. Thank goodness for tab-completion in tcsh.

Can you feel the dripping sarcasm?

Mix with your favorite Wall Street or Middle East diaster-du-jour and you've got a nice front page layout for the morning paper.

On his final day before a monthlong respite from Washington at his Texas ranch, the 56-year-old fitness fanatic has an early morning appointment for a battery of tests at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where more than a dozen doctors � military and civilian � declared him in "outstanding health" last year...

In the past year, Bush has shaved several seconds off his personal best for running three miles, now routinely covering the distance in less than 21 minutes, increased his weightlifting prowess and launched a White House program to encourage out-of-shape Americans to exercise more, eat healthier and stop smoking.

Dumbass

Hard to believe that it's

Hard to believe that it's football season already. The World Cup is over, so when I say "football," I mean football. Well, it's only the first premature pre-season game, but with Niners vs. Redskins, there's a little bit more intrigue than usual. Yes, the Redskins had more incentive to win, and the Niners' starters only played for about a minute and a half, but it's still not good to see Sage Rosenfels and Danny Wuerffel torch the secondary like Kurt. Not terribly impressed with the new Redskin look, either.

What's this world coming to? #291022

"It's not dinner unless it's Domino's."

What's this world coming to? #291021

Ultimate Fighting Championship on basic cable. Sunday at 6pm. I'll probably watch.

It's another misty morning. When

It's another misty morning. When the marine layer isn't just some clouds in the sky, but a shifting, breathing creature right on top of you. The only people out on a Saturday morning are the joggers. I hope nobody booked an early tee time at the country club, because you ain't never finding your ball if you hit off the first tee into the pea soup.

Costco has a digital picture

Costco has a digital picture service, where they can "develop" the digital pictures directly from the camera's memory card. And it's just about the same price as one-hour film development, which isn't too surprising since it looks like they both use the same machine. When I went to pick up the pictures, there was actually a sign posted apologizing for the unavailablility of one-hour film development, but they could still accept film reprints and digital media. That tends to confirm my suspicion that there is a chemical development front-end for the film, but the output stage is digital with a film scanner or direct digital input, all dumped to a photo-printer complete with thick, glossy paper.

4x6" seem to be a good size print for a two-megapixel image. I am now totally sold on digital photography. The image quality is more than good enough for casual shots and the convenience goes without saying. I set the white balance manually for most of the shots, which worked out well. The color saturation is very good, which you'd expect from a CCD. After all, linearity and dynamic range were why astronomers abandoned film for the CCD in scientific applications.

The problems with the pictures were mostly due to user error. Too many pictures came out blurry because I couldn't shoot with flash in the museums and churches and I couldn't hold the cameras steady enough. I really should've used the fill-in flash more aggressively, and I didn't figure out the night-time scenery flash feature until too late. A metering hold feature on the camera would've been useful and a way to save uncompressed data would be cool, but I can't complain about the camera, considering its size and convenience.

Hey, I actually got off

Hey, I actually got off my ass and got some exercise! I've been seriously vegetating since I've been home, partly out of laziness and partly because the neighborhood isn't really designed to encourage walking about. Got up early this morning, grabbed the iPod, and went out into the mist. Wanted to get down the hill, but after going 2/3 the way down Moeser, I remembered that I have to carry myself back up the hill, too. Reversed field at that point and (slowly) made my way up to the top and back home. Did do a lot of walking in Europe, but not up and down steep hills. Phew.