Stalker (movie review)

I'm risking writing about a movie I've not seen in decades, believe I saw only once, and which made quite an impression.

With the benefit of hindsight, I'd compare it with Blair Witch, but not because they're "the same" or anything.

I like empty industrial wastelands, a chief attraction in Jersey City (many a late night meander, train hunting and such (nothing too dangerous)). The stalker's work in the Zone helped capture that for me.

OK, now I should go order the sucker on Netflix, returning Princess Bride, which I checked out because Cousin Mary was really up on her Andre the Giant lore, which I also study, especially through the art work of creative genius Shepard Fairey.

At the Dealership

Once at the Ecomotion dealership, I gravitated to the electric ATVs, babbling about Project Earthala and how we'll need ten of 'em.

Of course I hadn't thought it all through. Recharging from what power source again?

Yes, I'm a little shocked at how immature Earthala still is, my high tech XRL showcase, somewhere in the Oregon high desert.

You'd think, with all the storyboarding and ToonTown nearby...

But then I remember: North America inherited the dregs of Europe to start with, kind of like New Zealand and Australia did. Dump all the basket cases on indigenous peoples, make 'em their problem (a pretty cruel policy).

The USA was right from the onset swarming with maladapted religious crazies and the like, not geniuses most of 'em, like those Nation Builders like Franklin (none left like that I don't think -- an extinct species).

So I cut 'em some slack (and pray the Russians aren't likewise this stupid).

Lampoon Harpoon

Margo Guryan/"16 Words"

Coffee Shop Blogger

Per Abraham Maslow, if truly wishing to be money-minded, we should quantify all the "intangibles" as income, such as sitting in a coffee shop in Portland, getting some work done via the free wifi.

That's worth an extra ten grand a year in the form of "cool working ambience."

In exchange for all that extra compensation, I should feel motivated to tackle some hard tasks, like test driving Python 3.0 alpha.

Except it's almost mindlessly easy to download and untar the tarball, run configure, make, make test, sudo make install, so that really doesn't count (tests still running).

Ah, here we go:

Python 3.0a1 (py3k, Sep 19 2007, 20:25:27)
[GCC 4.1.2 (Ubuntu 4.1.2-0ubuntu4)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

However, I do do harder tricks too, in exchange for this cushy Portland-based lifestyle.

Don't think I'm not appreciative.

Tinkering with Tink

Long time fans of this blog know TinkerBell is my bicycle (and Razz is my car).

The name TinkerBell is humorous in at least two dimensions:

1. I have a retro dino bell on my handlebar that tinkles;
   
   
2. Tinker Bell is a cute pixie elvynchyk (fairie, whatever) from Disney lore whereas the bicycle is more like a Clydesdale (Elise: Friesian), industrial strength and heavy
   

So for the last couple days I've been wondering why turning the wheel to the left makes everything seize up -- good way to pitch forward.

I wheel it all the way to my favorite shop on Belmont for expert advice.

Ah, says the man, who knows his business, the front wheel is already spun round 360 degrees, and a left turn is pushing to even more than 360. The brake cable doesn't like it.

Duh.

Problem fixed, no charge.

Suitably humbled, I ride her home.

More Ethnography

Cued by some posts to Synergeo, I found this September 7 post in the blogosphere attributing a theory to Bucky Fuller, I think correctly (cite Barry Farell, Playboy interview, 1972 and/or Synergetics Dictionary, Volume 2, pp. 229-30), the theory being that homosexuality is another way to separate sexuality from baby-making, in turn a response to adequate populations levels, and/or overcrowding.

That's no reason to view homosexuality as pathological (the way some cultures view it). "Adequate population" might also mean at the tribal or village level, i.e. "a full krew."

I posted some more thoughts along these lines (Synergeo #35751):

---

Re: R.B. Fuller On Homossexuality [sic]

> > the behavior of all other living things when their population gets
> > too high. To put it in non-scientific terms, God made gay people
> > in order to save the world from uncontrolled population growth.
>

Re: R.B. Fuller On Homossexuality [sic]

Not sure what's your spin. I disagree with the above "too many" reading, i.e. a civ with plenty of same-sex could just as well be "just right" in the eyes of beholders, including of heteros like me -- a judgment call, with theirs being a call to less fun. I never read Bucky's quotes as condemning or holier than thou in this respect (in other contexts, he breathes fire).

Anti same-sex coupling is more of that self-righteous puritanical crappola that says no one should actually act out the stuff I only dare to imagine. Very hypocritical, when you consider no one gets hurt if truly consenting real adults are at play (misanthropic to deny them creaturely comforts). Happy campers are generally more productive and healthier to boot.

On the other hand, many out there haven't a clue, are dangerous to self and others because unskilled or nefarious. So I'm not saying "anything goes" in my book or that it's wise to be unprotective of self and/or others.

On the contrary, I advocate the propagation of martial arts and personal defense skills, especially for women, who should be prepared to kill if necessary. In this 'Age of the Idiocrats' there's no telling what some morons might try.

Kirby

Mt. Tabor

:: from mt. tabor today ::

I've given myself Mt. Tabor as a "gym option" meaning cycling to the top counts towards my daily fitness regimen. Today the summit was bright and sunny. I napped some, text messaged, and, out of the corner of my eye, watched a beautiful woman pray.

Earlier today I stopped by Harrison Street Studios and flashed my "business card" meaning in this case my 4D Studios page on Myspace (see margin of Grain of Sand). I might be getting some rights to use sound clips by Gadgetto in some of these YouTube or higher rez rich data streams (e.g. my Portland Knowledge Lab pilots).

Over on edu-sig, Jeff Rush has been helping me focus on my uses of FOSS (free and open source development techniques). The MVC metaphor pertains. Sometimes the Model and Controller code might be open, like a registry for doing clinical followup, but the Views are not because the actual data is for internal use.

Moodle itself is open; the contents of moodles may not be.

Later: some gutless wonder banned me from Philosophical Coffeehouse today, an obscure Yahoo Group where I was trying to get some work done. Maybe he's now going through and deleting all my posts. Oh well, I'll write 'em off as first drafts of some stuff.

:: sarah with hexapent ::

More from the Podium

I was somewhat dismayed by the Ralph P. Boas essay.

His sounds like a very insular discipline that is used to monopoly powers, and is therefore corrupt.

Where is the competition for mind share one would expect in a healthy, vital, intelligent economy?

Why should mathematics teachers be exempted from the need to prove relevance, when it's the future survival skills of our children that we're talking about?

I think Haim's solution (to make the commons a mere basic-level sandbox for learning harmless FRP stuff, then taking a sink-or-swim attitude, with stronger families supplementing like crazy from within their religious traditions or whatever) is unnecessarily cruel to those without strong and supportive families (often because of violent upheavals and/or diasporas they had no hand in creating).

Given the Internet, it's pretty inexpensive for Uncle Sam, in collaboration with MIT and places like that, to put state of the art curriculum within the reach of all netizens. No mass publishing, few billboards. Tax paying voters take notice and reward the politicians who apparently have a hand in this Renaissance ("which one is Cicero?" -- confused student whisper).

I'm just glad those bad old days, when mathematicians felt their discipline unchallenged, are pretty much over. We're back to the original design, of the trivium-quadrivium, with philosophy back in the saddle ("'Yee haw' and all that rot, what?" -- UKer with pipe).

Back to work...

Kirby

Fun Company Party

:: in operations / hr ::

Making the Rounds

Bybee Lake, North Portland

Thank you Larry, for cuing me about this Portland Century event, this year a fundraiser for Hands On Portland (a former DWA bookkeeping client), with catering provided by Madison's Grill (yummy salmon).

We took off around 9 AM over the Hawthorne to the Springwater Corridor, which took us to Gresham by way of Sellwood. Then surface streets to Marine Drive in Troutdale, and a loop back around Bybee Lake, then back to downtown by way of the University of Portland and the Broadway Bridge.

The finishing line, like the starting line, was in the PSU park blocks.

About 50 miles all told.

Our party: Larry, Gordon, Suzanne and myself, later joined by Brian with the way cool bike with radio controlled gears.

Larry is a pilot in training, and organizational consultant. Gordon helps support people who prefer cash to credit cards for phone bills and such. Both Larry's and Gordon's kids tend to speak more than just English.

Suzanne has a lot of street cred in NGO world, including in Sri Lanka.

Larry and Suzanne were my ride mates for this year's Bridge Pedal as well, along with Larry's wife Chris. Great seeing Gordon again.

Summarizing Synergetics

2*P*F**2 + 2 (in Python) is a bridge twixt lexical and graphical, with the multiplicative coefficient symbolizing the duality of concave/convex, and the additive two symbolizing axial spinnability. P controls details of shape, is a product of primes. F is a relative time-sizing parameter, with its 2nd power denoting surface area, pixel density or whatever.

The M/P is part of an "above/below the line" motif, as is 4D/4D++. In each case, "above" is outside of time the way XYZ is, before we add a time variable. "Below" is the realm of Heraclitus, always changing (full of energy). U (Universe) is a synergy of both.

There's a tension between fourness and fiveness, with the former symbolizing both open-mindedness (cuboctahedron) and a closed system (tetrahedron), the latter a self-centered rationality in rebellion (icosahedron). Something like that i.e. we don't actively defend against Jungian type readings, the way some of the more literal-minded self-disciplines do.

There's an "energy has shape" theme in that the E from Einstein's famous energy equation is fed into the eternal shape mix-master, adding whatever Eulerian topological qualities to this Gibbsian stew (or brew). Translated: energy comes in patterns with their own timeless integrity.

OLPC Videos

I've been sampling the OLPC clips on YouTube and have learned quite a bit, about the Sugar interface, about the difficulty of doing text in Pygame (15:11).

But as I remarked on Synergeo earlier today (35203):

OLPC is a little bit complicated because curriculum vectors are through cyberspace, not hardware per se. The web on an XO looks much the same as the web on anything else. Same Mozilla browser. And so in a lot of ways, 4dsolutions.net doesn't care if it's an XO or a ~XO. We share ~M! either way.

The ~M! meme has to do with our efforts to escape from the "traditional math" vortex, as apparently there's a "no Fuller allowed" rule in there... so why stay?

Escape velocity seems attainable. Going back to the bad old days would be hard.

More for the Queue

Math Forum:

Re: Problem solving with technology - TRE Study
Posted: Aug 23, 2007 1:09 PM

A traditional dynamic is students seek the endorsement, blessing, of some teacher who has a track record with other teachers and/or admissions departments. "This teacher isn't lying" is the reputation a teacher would like, about his or her students. So there's a quality control aspect to it: a teacher becomes known by the caliber of his or her students.

A factory floor approach to education tends to render this process somewhat more anonymous, in that teachers think they have ways to fade into the woodwork and not have reputations as individuals, but only as schools, as faculties. They hide behind state certification or whatever.

I think with the Internet we're moving back to an age where teachers are individually tracked and judged. You either have an impressive portfolio, and lots of stellar students claiming you as their teacher, or you don't. Publication still matters, but that's interpreted more broadly, given cyber-space and multimedia.

Many of tomorrow's teachers will begin their careers on YouTube. We see that already.

In the case of the gnu math stuff I write about, we have relatively few teachers over 30, though I think that's changing as we recruit more people from NASA and like that.

Kirby

Math Forum:

Re: More Prototyping (gnu math thread)
Posted: Aug 23, 2007 12:56 PM

A lot of this gnu math stuff works backward from what we anticipate will remain important technologies just beneath the surface in many scientific and engineering applications, namely tcp/ip and sql.

At the college level, we expect decision points leading to pure math of the type Adrian endorses. Until then, K-12 has a "keeping doors open" design, which means we have technical careers more generally in view. This low level numeracy training is not about becoming a math professor any more than teachers of the English sequences expect only professors of that discipline to emerge from the ranks of its test takers.

However, it turns out a lot of traditional topics remain key even where tcp/ip and sql are motivating elements. Graph theory, a branch of topology, and spherical geometry (displaced by Newtonian calculus in recent memory), will remain important to many high schoolers, since our network of hosts is GIS/GPS mappable, with databases supplying the storage infrastructure, including DNS lookups.

Specialization comes later, in a liberal arts context, where the faculty are supposedly at the top of their respective games and therefore recruit more effectively, as chief advocates or avatars for their respective disciplines.

Our K-12 students, in the mean time, will have developed their critical thinking skills to a point of not being easily bamboozled ("virtual presidents" metaphor), so that departments that've slipped a bit will have a market-controlled way of measuring the discrepancy, which will presumably goad at least some faculty teams into returning to former glory, whatever that means in that context.

So anyway, we'll still have lots of geometry (with geography a combined topic, as the Egyptians intended), with lots of vector algebra, lots of calculus (though more compressed, by today's languid standards).

I expect O-notation to make a bigger splash, per Knuth's suggestion.

Old text books will still be usable/minable, especially as their copyrights expire and they appear on Google. The most up-to-date frameworks for contextualizing this older content will remain cyber-spatial, as now.

This is what I anticipate in any case. I may be off base in some of the details. Venn Diagrams definitely have a bright future. Data structures, OO... I'm pretty secure in my predictions around Python, as those are already coming true in many contexts.

Gnu math isn't owned and operated by me in a vacuum. I need to pay attention to my geek peers, and I do.

That's why I think I'm safe in saying MVC is here to stay, as a key heuristic, along with SQL and TCP/IP. Authors of strong K-12 alpha-numeracy writing (which includes lots of attention to Unicode) will typically demonstrate mastery over these concepts -- a refreshing change next to most of the wimpy stuff that passes for K-12 math stuff today.

Kirby

Synergeo (#35179):

Re: Cloud Nines
Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:55 am

There's a lot of engineering testing on hold while people squander their short little lives on dead end projects for which they won't be remembered, or, if remembered, not fondly.

Reflexes have been slow to catch up with the new realities. But hey, that's the human condition according to Synergetics: slow reflexes (see "lag" in the index)

I enjoy screening the movie Idiocracy for people. Took it to Lithuania, along with Revolution OS and The Jerk starring Steve Martin.

Kirby

Queued @ Math Forum

[ math-teach turned into a moderated list in the Summer of 2007, so the data structure known as a "queue" became more self evident ]

More Prototyping (gnu math thread)
Posted: Aug 20, 2007 3:05 PM

Per Summer of 2007 developments, we're consolidating around MVC as a useful abstraction. That's Model, View, Controller.

'Model = global climate model' in many a namespace, with a public increasingly wanting to know how the Renaissance in geospatial is going to impact their lives, for good or for ill. Views = ugly, unless you study design principles, such as well captured in Tufte or other masters. Controllers = any Logic amenable to machine execution, which is most of 'em by this time.

In the 8th grade, we associate Algebra and Modeling, using Sims type analogies to explain arrows and boxes, ala MIT's Forrester studies, other simula such as Dom Rosa oft criticizes -- but which we have need of in the adult world, so someone should learn the ropes, no?

Algebra has the advantage of remaining invisible to the naked eye, unlike Polyhedra, which sometimes get confused for the real thing, and so should be relegated to the category of Views perhaps. The "connecting around in all circumferential directions" characteristic pertains even invisibly however.

By 9th grade, we're ready for Vector Algebra, a small tweak to make our set members more graphical. We have closure under addition. It's also easy to adopt various forms of "multiplication", some of which disclose properties of the underlying manifold (field properties).

We're laying a groundwork, in other words. The controller language is whatever comes with the teacher. Some come shrink-wrapped in Perl, others in Ruby. Just because the machinery is discrete doesn't mean we can't model Calculus.

By 10th grade, we're doing Polyhedra, following a lot of the same Euclidean templates as before, with regards to proof by deduction, mathematical induction. We do more with Euclid's Algorithm for the GCD, including extended.

That's because we're aiming to cover RSA by the end of 12th grade, with branch points available in the 13th to cryptography, Internet security, other important careers.

None of this is all that new, minus the headline, which is agreement around MVC as an important design element. That gets us access to such topics as SQL and GIS/GPS in a hurry, meaning back to that geospatial and all those simulations of the global climate that so concern us.

Kids need to be able to track what the adults are focusing on. That's a moving target. One cannot afford to always recycle yesteryear's curriculum, that much is clear.

Kirby
Posts: 3,828
Registered: 12/6/04

Dutch Masters

I took in some Rembrandt and contemporaries yesterday evening, in the company of two doctors and a lawyer, roughly my age, and all fetching women, except Mary is my cousin (our grandmothers were sisters) and the other two are married.

We scooted from the Portland Art Museum gift shop to Old Wives Tales for some sisterly chatter afterwards. I got that Hungarian mushroom soup and the salad bar, ending with Tillamook peppermint ice cream and black coffee.

These Dutch Masters were at the top of their games, as were so many of those in their frames. The Dutch were enjoying some of the highest living standards ever known. Yet the Vanitas near the entrance delivered the punchline about death and taxes. This was a human skull, exquisitely depicted from six angles (placed in different partially overlapping locations (this ain't your grandmother's cubism)), an hourglass in one corner, a burning-in candle in another.

A Busy Day at the Office

Accessories: Ubuntu Dell on wireless,
toyz, Seattle's Best, OSCON bag

Wanderers 2007.8.15

We entitled this meeting At the Edge of Chaos, an allusion to a fun book by that name which suggests optimal computing conditions occur in this sweet spot just on the edge of a phase change. A Santa Fe Institute kind of thing.

I arrived over an hour into the action, with the tux droid in my charge. Bill made it flap and spin.

Crunchy also asked to become a Wanderer. We may not be ready to cross that bridge yet.

David Feinstein showed up at our meeting's conclusion, to further discuss computer-assisted decision-making, a dynamic process that in no way leaves everything to automation.

Yes, it might be abused as a crutch, but on the other hand his framework comes with a lot of time-saving built in intelligence, which could be a boon, especially if there's a lot riding on the outcome.

Part of his tool's effectiveness depends on judges understanding the logic behind it and buying in to the process as a result. Deliberate obfuscation is not part of the plan. However, David is still looking for more field testing opportunities, as any good designer would for his prototypes.

Future funding might give judges better hand held devices than text messaging cell phones, but one does what one can, with the resources available.

Cute T-Shirt

:: design by Benny Kohl ::

HP V (movie review)

Stormy Harry experiments with the idea he might be a nutter, one likely consequence of doing magic in public.

Moral of the story: with friends like these, it just might be worth it. Harry's in heaven.

Harry Potter for Everyone!

HP4E!

Show and Tell

I thought I did a pretty good all American classic living room slide show presentation last night, like a travelogue, and with the Ubuntu Dell laptop & Optoma, instead of a slide show projector.

I spun my Beryl cube of desktops, showing Rose Festival, July 4 picnic, Lithuania, Tara's ceremony, me at Reed, teaching at PSU, attending OSCON & Ubuntu conferences.

I also went through my Connecting the Dots presentation [warning: 3.2 meg] in about 5 minutes (an included "lightning talk" as we call 'em).

Yes, it's all about me (grin). Actually I wasn't the only buckaneer in the room. Robin, also a Jay Baldwin fan, helped me sustain a public conversation about hexapents. She's from my "boomer echo" generation.

Also part of this show and tell: mydroid.py controlling Crunchy, who performed without a hitch herself. Earlier I'd been worried about the butt spinner, but then learned in a coffee shop that said spinner is disabled whenever the recharger is plugged in, as a security precaution.

[ I'm concluding that digitalspace's new owners are less competent than the outgoing crew. Like, they're all proud they have level three engineers who can restore broken default behavior, which is for .py files to show their contents when clicked on, as the default icon connotes -- proud they can, but really don't have to. From India maybe? Maybe just seriously overworked. Maybe there's only one level three engineer for every 30,000 customers.

]

I ended the show with Nelson Mandela talking about the spirit of Ubuntu, a default inclusion on the Ubuntu Linux distro.

The Optoma had more projection duties this morning: slides from Darfur, presented by Paul Barker, regional head of CARE. I'll post some more thoughts in my Control Room on that.

Inner Sanctum (a storyboard)

I hatched this up with some other writers last night: a cartoon in which stereotyped casts of conspirators keep opening a secret door to reveal... a yet more inward conspiracy (yielding room after room as the camera keeps zooming in to the next shocking truth).

In the funnier versions, we'd keep closely encountering these ET-like sanctums, like under the Denver Airport. Then some wizened grey points to a hatch (like in Lost) through which "the real boss" comes into focus: like Meyer Lansky and cronies?

We could play with figure eights, other looping structures.

Poking fun at paranoia (always a dangerous exercise (grin)).

I'm trying on NASA Night Launch, a darker skin for my FireFox web browser -- another manifestation of shifting tastes as I recalibrate my intake (I'm making it crunchier), with expert coaching from a philosopher I know.

Later today: I saw Penn & Teller's Bullshit! episode on Conspiracy Theories at a friend's, the DVD on loan from Multnomah County Library.

Tux is Alive

Tara has lusted after a Sony Aibo, a discontinued collectors item, about which many owners are still passionate. I never felt I had the discretionary funds to responsibly break into that market, encouraged the robot fascination, promised more affordable yet still interesting models were in the pipeline.

This week at OSCON, for just $89, I was able to score this big box with a robot penguin (aka tux droid) inside. We already have it talking. The English female voice "Heather" welcomed Tara's friend Liana and her mom Deb to Portland (they're swinging through from Seattle for Body Worlds 3 @ OMSI) and Carol back from Bolivia.

Tux (Heather, Ryan... other namespace binding), is program- mable in Python, though we haven't quite gotten to that part yet, other than by using the little Pythonic UI. She's controlled from Linux (Ubuntu in our case), and her evolving software is a community effort. He (or she) was also in demo mode at EuroPython in Vilnius.

I was telling Tara about one of the geeks I'd met at OSCON: he'd hacked a Pong chip such that the televised paddles were controlled by squeezing some tall leather boots -- one of Nat's closing keynoters actually, a Tony Blair type, though more of a bulldog (a compliment by his standards).

Returning to the Source

I took a break from OSCON yesterday afternoon, much as I'm nursing a keen interest in SQLAlchemy and object-relational data base work. Meliptus helps me recharge my batteries.

Plus this time I was able to hang out with Mark, the restaurant owner in Guatemala I hear so much about, along with his brother and a friend.

:: Meliptus @ Island Cafe ::

:: mark from guatemala ::

Parallelism

Our speaker puts his hope in extending languages we use today, in addition to playing with new languages, in order to solve challenges involved in coding for multiple cores.

C++ can be extended with templates to program familiar tasks (not threads). Maybe this will help with higher languages written in C++?

Multicore programming will increasingly become a fact of life, as simply cranking up the clock on the one CPU isn't helping as much any more.

Laptops in the Ubuntu Zone

I'm still suffering some embarrassment for having lugged the Toshiba, a Windows machine, after breaking in an Ubuntu laptop by lugging it half way around the world, just for such an occasion as this: a session on supporting laptops in Ubuntu. Our speaker is Matthew Garrett.

CPUs, graphics cards, and SATA chipsets are the three main areas of divergence with desktop PCs. Laptops still have a somewhat broader range of graphic chip, but it's what's unique to laptops that makes them harder to support: hotkeys, webcams, sound codecs, suspend/resume quirks, flash readers, rotating screens, hard drive protection and a huge variety of wireless chipsets.

Manufacturers with smarts define new scan codes for hotkeys, whereas the more retarded ones (Toshiba included) insist on special magic in the ACPI, even special hardware. Webcams still need proprietary drivers. Every manufacturer has a different way of protecting the hard drives. Intel is good at releasing Linux drivers for its wireless solutions. Broadcom, Atheros, pretty much anyone else: a nightmare.

Ubuntu is making steady progress and already sets the standard for running a single Linux distro on many models of laptop. The Dell I left at home came in for some praise, in terms of having solved many of the integration issues.

Revisioning HP4E (Synergeo 34590)

So, as I've posted before about, alluding somewhat to Guido's CP4E, Computer Programming for Everybody, I came up with HP4E, which means Hexapents for Everybody, in turn alluding to the Bucky-related literature we're so familiar with here (geodesic spheres 'n stuff).

CP4E isn't a synonym for OLPC (One Laptop Per Child). Rather, Guido, Python's chief inventor (and avid scholar of other languages), managed to get some DARPA funding several years ago for IDLE, a cross-platform development platform friendly enough to share with children, in math class or wherever.

HP4E leverages Python's spreading popularity, as OLPC does, but in a different way. Lots of the 3rd party curriculum modules written in Python, take an OO approach to topics in Synergetics for example. My polyhedra.py for example, with or without a basis in Chakovian coordinates.

I've just finished an HP4E course called sa: 8144, a multi-hour intensive briefing on what's what in computer world, from data base systems to the difference between open and closed source business models. In the cracks, we pick up Python skills, with primitive Edges based on Vectors. The vector objects wrap VPython internals, meaning we have the guts to go OpenGL with this stuff. We also go with a ray tracer, and maybe with X3D if there's time.

This coming week, I'll have the opportunity to talk about all this live to an audience of OSCON geeks (just like I've already had the opportunity to share with Eurogeeks in Lithuania last week).

These geeks are usually quick to spread the word, given their adeptness within the blogosphere and so on. I may not mention Synergeo directly, but don't be surprised if a few geeks surf through, maybe stay for a conversation or two.

CP4E stopped getting DoD funding after IDLE was off the ground (it was later inherited by the wider community, where upgrades have continued -- Guido himself more inclined to use emacs, now that he's back on Linux (the earliest Python has roots on an Apple Lisa)).

Issues of how Python should or could impact everyday pedagogy are still a subject of many a 'round-the-water-cooler conversation, leading to speculation about upcoming hires and fires in faculty lounges as well. So many thorny issues are involved, where computer programming of any kind is concerned. Are we really ready for an army of programmers? The Unicode piece isn't really implemented yet (that's for Python 3000). So many urge a "go slow" approach.

That doesn't stop the experiments though. Some communities are simply willing to try something new, and rely mostly on local feedback loops, not outside experts, to feel their way forward, with Python, with the technology in general. The children themselves are a principal source of feedback. Our job is less to tell them what to do, than to learn from what they're doing.

Winding Up

:: teacher station ::

I'm finishing up with this class today, signing the certificates, getting the feedback filed. This was another go-round of Pythonic Math, each time with innovations, new proofs (or disproofs) of concept. I'm finding this round going pretty smoothly, with a lot of credit to my students, mostly eager to be there and learn.

:: gray board ::

Yesterday, appropriately timed with Moira's visit, I took a biotech approach to Python, explaining expression fragments, data and control structures, as proteins. Functions are primitive biota, taking args through a mouth, doing tricks in exchange (preferably not too many tricks per single function).

If we want more tricks, stack them along a spine with those special name __ribs__, begetting the skeletal class framework so characteristic of Python.

Finally, a module would be like a zoo or aquarium, a place for all of this stuff to share habitat, creating an ecosystem ( = namespace in this namespace).

:: projection mode ::

Class Notes on edu-sig: [1][2][3][4]
Comment on math-thinking-l

sa: 8144: Day One

Above is a busy board with several layers of sediment. I like this computer lab better than the last one because the whiteboard is up front, behind a pull down projector screen, and with all workstations facing it. In the previous lab, the whiteboard was more awkwardly placed.

On the left, my attempt to freehand Europe, with allusions to North Pole centric maps (Fuller's being one of them), ergo the route back to Seattle. Given this was less that twenty four hours since my return from Lithuania, I wanted to share about that trip (to EuroPython 2007), including by projecting some slides of beautiful Vilnius, with more on Flickr.

In the middle, responding to a student question: how to get pseudo-random integers in the Python shell, looking ahead to more multi-line programming tomorrow, with some minimal set of control structures.

On the right: using the the function __builtins__.dir to query some types and/or modules (integer, string, list, dictionary... plus __builtins__ itself) as to their respective "bags of tricks," netting lots special name __rib__s in reply.

For a more detailed write-up of this first class in the series, click here.

Adventure Story

After publishing some technoinvective to edu-sig, cc math-teach, followed by a healthy breakfast in my hotel, I set out to achieve today's objective: the TV tower, the local version of the Space Needle.

Did it have a revolving restaurant inside? I set out on foot, first stopping to buy stamps for, and mailing, Alexia's postcards.

Although Portland boasts some record number of city acres devoted to parks, Vilnius must be up there, given these large swatches of forest hugging both banks of the river Neris.

With my iPod blaring (Condi has one too), newly stocked with tunes from Tara's collection, I stealthily approached said tower, wandering up through some apartment blocks on the outskirts of the CBD.

Yes, there's a revolving restaurant inside, a 1970s design. Over a beer, I surveyed the scene: CBD, Old Town, airport, apartment blocks, power stations, the river winding through it all.

Unfortunately use of a camera is strictly forbidden, although the young woman who sold me the ticket had no idea why ("it's just the rule"). I used the opportunity to mentally plan my route back to the hotel, noticing a strange looking playground I'd have to visit along the way.

Pretending to be a Lithuanian kid pretending to be a partisan nationalist, I dove head first into the forest, a wilderness of unsigned sometimes eroding trails. Obviously the locals use this place to party, as there's lots of trash -- a good opportunity for community service projects, like our annual Oregon Beach cleanup.

Finding my way to the river bank was a challenge. I slipped and slid a few times, getting quite dirty. By the time I re-emerged into civilization, I was somewhat of a sight, in need of a shower. I had enjoyed my adventure though. I hope the city planners aren't too quick to zone away all these river side forests, though adding more bicycle trails (and trash receptacles) might be a nice touch.

Version Control

More from EuroPython day 2:

Open source projects depend on version control repositories, which allow projects to evolve in an organized manner, meaning in a tree shape, with a trunk and branches.

Right now I'm sitting in a talk about Bazaar with Launchpad. Bazaar is named for gun nut Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a classic essay within the free software movement.

Geeks I interviewed seem to rank Bazaar more highly than Subversion, Subversion more highly than CVS. Mercurial may be even better than Baazar.

Earlier I attended some open space discussions: of Pygame (games projected), of possibly organizing a business conference (eGenix).

I mostly just listened, while writing descriptions for, and uploading, five Pythonic mathcasts to Showmedo. The wireless hotspots here are quite fast, thanks to Aistė, so the video files uploaded quickly.

OK, time for some lightning talks in Alpha. Amazing stuff: LOLPython, web serving from a mobile phone (Nokia) running Apache & py_mod. Chandler. Zope3 (Zope instances are dead). z3c.ormJS. PyCon UK. Enso. EGEE grid.

Python 3000: Guido encourages developers to use the upcoming Python 2.6 and a new source code conversion tool to begin developing 3.0 versions of the code, starting with excellent unit tests.

A Few Photos

python argentina

geeks on break

grrlgeeks

some sun at last

EuroPython HQS

FOSS boss Aistė Kesminaitė met us at POV (Programmers of Vilnius), of which company she is Director. Aistė speaks perfect English, Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, also French and German.

She's been organizing EuroPython pretty much single- handedly on site, just returned with boxes full of newly printed programs. Now she and Jacob are off in search of a printer ink cartridge, on a Sunday.

Laura is hard at work on her laptop.

Really there's a lot of color printing still to be done, plus the USB cable to Laura's low end color printer appears to be broken.

Aistė and Jacob decide on the spot to purchase a brand new HP color laser printer. POV needs one anyway. I carry it in from the car.

Given the USB cable is broken, Aistė struggles to get the new HP 2840 working as a network printer. Finally, Ubuntu comes through, using a generic Postscript driver.

Later Aistė and I drive to the hotel, where we meet up with other geeks. Here, the game is to decide where to put some additional wireless access points, including these four industrial strength ones Aistė has borrowed.

Google, a sponsor, has sent promotional materials, including a banner display.

I did a screen test in one of the rooms. The equipment at Reval Hotel Lietuva is all top of the line.

Oh yeah, I finally figured out how to change my Blogger interface back to English.

:: python on linux ::

Saraff the Savior

While many of my compatriots aggressively pursued happiness over this summer weekend before July 4th, as is their freedom (we're signed up for jet boats tomorrow), I felt privileged to join the more inwardly turned company of Felipe Gonzalez this afternoon, a recently deceased rapper and activist, still this mischievous little kid around the edges. He died at 22, a passenger in a car crash.

I didn't know Felipe well, more his dad, Martin, an AFSC veteran and coworker.

I experienced pride in my heritage in that room, including Mayan -- whomever built those pyramids in the video. The American experience is one of surreal beauty.

Felipe was lucky to draw such a dad from the card deck of life. No wonder he was such a font of pure love in so many lives. He knew to be grateful, as we are grateful to him. Live on, brother.

Wanderers 2007.6.26

The session opened with a geekish challenge. How do we project out the back of a laptop running Ubuntu? Bob McGown was speaking on Celestial Navigation, had brought his slides on CD.

Bill's Dell Inspiron E1505 was on deck. I'd also brought mine, which had just appeared, courtesy of Dell and DHL, while Tara and I were watching The Jerk starring Steve Martin.

So what I didn't see is how it's clearly labeled on the keyboard what to do (Fn-F8). Instead I had Bill chauffeur me back to Harrison Street for the Toshiba (a Bill Gates box). By the time we got back, an Apple PowerBook had eaten the CD.

Bob brought along some example instruments, including an Arab kamal, used for steering camels (which isn't to say Arabs didn't also put to sea).

I'm posting from my own new E1505 by the way. The wireless is workin' great and I've got Beryl running, meaning a rotating cube between desktops and wriggling windows (fun eye candy).

Bob is talking about Ali Baba or at least that's the name on his slide. Let's see if I can snap a photo and upload it through my USB 2.0 XD camera card reader. Yep, no problem (a bit blurry, cuz I turned off the flash, didn't use compensation).

Here's one with a flash:

:: bob mcgown ::

Family Haps

We enjoyed a great solstice celebration with Jane & Dave, at an outside table at The Bagdad -- a little chilly, so Dave kindly shared his man-sized pilot's jacket with Tara.

Both he and Jane had seen Body Worlds 3 recently (but on separate tours), as had Tara and I earlier, so this was a big topic, along with what to order (cajun fries, big and little pizzas, salads, Hammerhead for me, wine for Jane, root beer for Dave).

Barton and I had succulent sushi the other day, after which I met up with Glenn, another Wanderer, by coincidence, and introduced him to Trevor over at Horse Brass Pub on Belmont, not far from Movie Madness.

Horse Brass seemed an appropriate venue, given Trevor's studies of Walford et al, plus I needed to retrieve Tinkerbell from the bike shop nearby.

A day or two before, Glenn also joined me for the first half of my meetup with dear David & Patricia, flitting about town on business (normally they're in New York) and soon to be heading for Crater Lake. Chris and Larry are out of town for Amanda's wedding.

Mom is enjoying her 60th high school reunion, the first she's been able to attend. She's Class of 1947, Garfield High in Seattle, the same high school Jimi Hendrix attended (something I learned from Paul Allen's museum).

Cave Paintings

by K. Urner, while burning some potatoes on the stove
(more context -- 1.48 M pdf)

Geeking Out

I'm feeling like quite the lucky lab, in terms of my geek quotient: it's not every year one gets to both EuroPython and OSCON, as a speaker at both venues, including with sponsorships. Sure, DWA still has plenty of expenses (I just nailed the hotel in Vilnius, looks like a good one), but that's all in our spirit of collaboration in this one big happy circus family of ours. Pass the chicken heads please (joke).

These purchases are career moves, investments, also risks.

Earlier today, I was on a trip down memory lane regarding my collaboration with Jerritt, under the auspices of Saturday Academy, and working with HPD. That got me thinking about doing tcp/ip stuff with Python, leading me to scour the web for relevant resources. Then I came up against not having a free C++ compiler, nor Visual Studio at all (I use Visual FoxPro, licensed and everything). That got me lusting for Linux again, Ubuntu in particular (which I'm already using).

So I went all the way this time, perhaps against my better judgment, and got one of these new Dell jobbers, an Inspiron E1505, somewhat customized, for like $768 after discounts and free shipping.

I did get XP to ping in Python though, and it's not like I'm unhappy with my Toshiba all of a sudden. More it's like having two pairs of shoes (but laptops in this case). I'll be able to dress more appropriately for the occasion, plus these costumes contain tools (like batgrrl has these utility baskets or whatever).

Think of Redmond as a style of hat, quite handsome but not always worn.

A new favorite web site: Forbidden-places.be.

Another Namespace

I tanked up on books by and about Emanuel Swedenborg at Multnomah County Library today. It's time to fill that hole in my awareness. He was a VBN in his day.

I also purchased this pint of Jack Daniels, in part to commiserate regarding the drought, and its impact on the factory. Sure, there's lots in the pipeline already, but we'd rather the well not go dry.

Coming of Age

Dawn believed in providing guidance and helpful reminders through ritual, and at a higher level used ritual to gain mindfulness on her path towards enlightenment. She was also especially fond of coming of age books for or about young teenagers making that transition to adulthood, or about preteens becoming teens.

Bringing these two together, and as a part of her legacy, our community is exploring ways to more consciously celebrate and acknowledge these transitions and those in the midst of them. We're planning an event sometime in mid-July, before NPYM's Annual Session (at Reed College this year). This event will include specific activities around Tara, Dawn's second daughter to cross over one of these thresholds.

Planning for said event was a theme of our meeting at my house last night, along with another, that of death. We talked about Dawn, greatly missed, and about a young boy, snatched away from this life by leukemia, and accompanied on this final stage by some in our midst, including Tara's friend Luci.

Speaking of Dawn's daughters, I've added a link to Alexia's new blog in the right margin of this one.

Some surprising good news: my proposal to give a talk at OSCON again this year was accepted. I'd long ago assumed not, but I was being too preemptive in my thinking. That plus the trip to Vilnius for Europython, still in the cards as of this writing, would make this a banner year, both for me and for CP4E.

Friend Gayle is back from Greece where she and Tom shared a wonderful vacation. She and Elizabeth were Dawn's dear friends and traveling companions on that trip to the holy wells in Ireland. Laurie, another of Dawn's dearest, is looking forward to getting some of Tara's assistance running her high quality early childhood development program this summer of 2007.

Mom, who was at this Coming of Age meeting last night, is now in Philadelphia for meetings.

Also tonight: Glenn Baker's grand opening, at the AFI/Silverdocs Film Festival, of Stand Up: Muslim American Comics Come of Age, his newest film. Look for it on PBS someday. Glenn and I were high school buddies in the Philippines, later house mates in Jersey City. We've stayed in touch over the years.

Operation Kayak

Bodies @ OMSI

Body Worlds 3 is edgier than Bodies, which latter I'd seen alone with Londoners, and with close family in Seattle.

Here at OMSI, where Tara and I joined LaJean and her young wards, missing Sam (at a funeral), the texts deal more directly with our attitudes towards death and with the history of anatomy as both an art and a science.

Today, anatomy as a process is done mostly behind closed doors in universities, perhaps on closed circuit television, with no public theater or broadcast channel venues.

But thanks to "plastination of the post-mortal form," the end results of anatomical dissections are once again open to public view, as is the case here, in our local Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, a favorite haunt of mine as a child, since even before it moved to its present location from the original site near the Oregon Zoo.

I hadn't been reading all the newspaper stories, so was surprised by the two camels, a huge adult plus the wee one.

One of the more confrontational exhibits is of a cadaver kneeling over a cross, with the text explicitly thanking the Christian religion for long ago authorizing and recognizing the legitimacy of the practice of anatomy, if carried out within certain guidelines.

That, plus the Renaissance willingness to check past authorities in light of bold, new, original empirical studies, are credited for giving us the practical sciences we rely on today to explain the body's mortality even while occasionally prolonging its ability to host life.

Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) is a sponsor of this exhibit, seeing it as a way to recruit future health sciences professionals, including more computer scientists and engineers.

The exhibit texts mentioned other "memento mori" I'd toured during my boyhood in Italy, such as the Capuchins' charnal house in Palermo, Sicily, and their highly ornate ossuaries in the "bone church" (as I called it) along Rome's Via Veneto, near Piazza Barberini, which Frommer's current on-line guide book unkindly calls "one of the most horrifying sights in all Christendom."

I'm posting this to BizMo Diaries in part because I think of the human body as a "business mobile." Yes, it's recreational too (like an RV), but we're here in mortal form to get some serious work done, is my feeling.

:: in today's paper ::

More on X3D

x3d example in X3D-Edit &
real-time rendered in Octaga player

In part inspired by Mark Martin's success, I've started diving into the X3D specification a little more, thinking to recast my Python modules geared for VRML output, probably using string.Template again (new as of 2.4).

Speaking of string.Template, my ISP doesn't seem as Python friendly as before, with my request to install Python 2.5 on my host languishing for about a week now. A certain cgi script I'd hoped to upload is therefore not operational yet.

I'd like to see a ranking of top ISPs by their Python friendliness. I'd consider moving my domain if my current ISP isn't at least above average. Of course only top ISPs allow cgi scripts in the first place, whereas many just pander to porn-trafficing tourists (a lucrative market, I don't deny it).

Reading matter on my desk right now: Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Linux Journal Issue 157, Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte, NetworkWorld, Volume 24 No. 21.

I've ordered the movie Nightmare Alley from Netflix, hoping to learn more about the etymology of the word "geek." But first I need to finish Season Two of Slings and Arrows, a Canadian soap which I'm much enjoying.

Peruvian Beauty

:: legally off leash @ laurelhurst ::

Yvonne, one of WILPF's galavanters, brought this Peruvian beauty home in a box under her airplane seat, having salvaged him from a junk heap. Les gave Sarah the alias "Mexican street dog" (plus I call her "fruit bat"), who happened to be with me that day, so Sarah got to play with Cholito. They'd likely have very smart cookie pups, but Sarah's been bred to not breed. Anyway, they made a cute couple, despite the age difference (a spread of about 16 dog years).

Here's a cool word problem, suggested by a Wanderer who really wanted to know. Dogs age more quickly than humans, another way of saying they have shorter life spans. The rule of thumb equivalence is one man year is seven dog years. Given that, if a dog is born later than a man, the dog's age will eventually catch up to the man's age, given both live long enough (extrapolate as necessary to find an intersection). Then you give two dates (man birthday, dog birthday) and ask "when will they be the same age to the day?" That day, the guy wanted to have a party with his dog, which I thought was a sweet gesture. We helped him figure it out. Sometime in September, but I forget what year.

The Phi Guy said we have Fibonacci to blame, for all those story problems they give us in math class. He was the source of those Madlib templetes about Farmer John and his fence with perimeter X or whatever the hell. But then he had sources. Liber Abacci wasn't just out of the blue.

Here's another template. At Pioneer Century the other day (a cycling event), I decided to reboot my handlebar trip computer. Upon reboot, it stopped at a number, I think 206 or something, and I was thinking "hey, what's that number doing there, let's get rid of it" upon which I started decreasing it to zero, stopping at 143 with the thought "hey wait a minute, I bet that's an important number." Later that day, I started noticing my number of trip miles was (a) way more than or (b) way less than the mileage on my peers' odometers. Also my speedometer's speed was (a) way more or (b) way less. Hint: the 200+ and 143 measure wheel diameter.

Of course you might nail down the numbers a bit more and have your students write little computer programs to do the conversions and/or find the dog-owner birthdays. Make 'em into web services why not?

Answer key: (a) way less (b) way less. Because I'd decreased my "virtual wheel diameter," I was credited with less distance, hence less speed, per N revolutions.

A Day with Friends

:: ron ::

:: dave ::

:: dez ::

HB2Y

:: happy birthday walt whitman ::

:: in studio ::