Rational superstition

A couple days ago, I was ready to upload spanking new code to its web server, to find that the FTP server wasn't accepting my password.  Just in case I was imagining things, I ran through every single password this hosting account has had during its history.  No joy.

I won't mention the name of the web hosting provider, but let's just say that they're middle of the road.  By which I mean not the kind of outfit that will ride out Global Thermonuclear Armageddon with five nines, but not bottom-feeders catering to spammers either.

So I logged into my account and went to the control panel interface to reset the FTP password.  Or tried to.  Instead of being automatically passed through from the main account page, I was again challenged for a password, and again every possible option failed.  Now I haven't changed the password, so the "Who's been eating my porridge" alarm bells went off.  Mercifully, I still had sufficient access to my account to be able to submit a support ticket.

This is where my experience as the resident SysAdmin comes in handy--not so much that I have all the tools I need to debug the problem, but that I can speak the dialect of those who do.  Which includes having a good idea of what they might need from me, and trying to supply it before they even ask.  The preliminary diagnosis was a blacklisted IP address.  Because I'm in Canada talking to a U.S. provider, I guess that wouldn't entirely surprise me.  (Nothing crosses the border easily these days, don'cha'know?)

But upon further review, my IP address was found to be above suspicion, and seeing no other flags, the support tech simply rebooted the firewall and the problem disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.  Rather like one reboots a PC/laptop to "fix" an intermittent, unexplainable problem.  Or we reboot the router when we know darned well that Rogers (our ISP) needs to replace the gerbil powering their DNS servers.  Or how I deal with a repeatedly crashing text app. on my Android phone by restarting it.  Or back up email before installing system updates.

Bottom line is, even if were able to run any gremlin to ground, we still might not be able to chivvy it out of its lair to finish it off.  At least not without a lot of collateral damage.  Simpler just to reboot, as though the process is some ritualised purification ceremony that exorcises the demons.

Sigh.  As much as I'd like to believe that we I/T folks are ruthlessly logical and relentless in pursuit of root causes, we don't often live up to the standard.  Granted, we're nowhere near as superstitious as some breeds--notably actors--but I can rationalise it as efficient laziness, yes?

Whimsical chagrin

A reminder from Dennis reading aloud to me while I was washing dishes after he made dinner tonight:

"From a drop of water," said the writer, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.  So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it.  Like all other arts, the Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it.  Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the enquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems."

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

Welcome to computer debugging, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.  Only in place of that drop of water substitute "It doesn't work!" and you'd be perfectly at home in the 21st century.

Vicious cycles, Part II

Back in 2009, when "Views from the Bridge" were but a wee lass, I poked fun at a weakness I share in common (solidarity?) with other crafters--namely, the infamous Designated Tote Bag Syndrome(TM).  As it turns out, I was being too narrow in my satire. Because, apparently, it's not just a crafter thing.

Alas, the Moncton area's options for dealers in off-the-shelf electronic components is pretty thin right now.  Also, the loonie-greenback exchange rate being what it is(n't), it's becoming more expensive to mail order certain kinds of stuff.  And, as always, the wanna-be mad inventor can also expect to pay through the nose on shipping.  That confluence of costs makes bulk-purchasing more attractive.  Even for a tight-wad such as your faithful blogger. 

So, pitting my frugal Upper Midwestern upbringing against itself (i.e. saving money by dint of spending money), I ended up with eight programmable micro-controllers (a.k.a. "Trinkets"), because at that quantity they were under 10 loonies a pop (ignoring tax and shipping, as our consumer-geared brains are wont to do).   Those micro-controllers, however, aren't much use to me without a mechanism to plug them into something--in my case, a breadboard. 

But the good folks at CE3 pointed me to BJW Electronics, who were happy to solder headers onto them.  (For the record, I'm not deep enough into this hobby to justify a soldering iron plus accessories.  That, and my Mom still has the toolbox I tried soldering for her in middle school Industrial Arts, and it's frankly embarrassing--like Nidavellir collectively sneezed on cheap sheet metal.  But that's just how Moms roll, so...#whaddyadoamirite?)

That all--again minus HST and whatever shipping costs are associated with me picking them up myself--added about five loons a pop.  But it's still better than the $30-40 CDN you'd pay for a full-blown Arduino, yes?

I already have two--okay, probably three--projects earmarked specifically for the Trinkets, and I assured myself that the other six or five will come in handy.  Sometime.

But then I thought of Halloween.   

And how I can certainly figure out how to make red, white, and yellow LEDs imitate candles in lieu of waiting for the Grande Digue winds to (inevitably) blow out the usual tea lights inside the Jack-o-lanterns.   

And there's no reason (apart, of course, from rain) why the LEDs couldn't be triggered by a passive infrared sensor.   

And as long as I have to pay postage for a PIR sensor anyway, I might as well get a handful.   

And at that point, it might make sense to have another PIR sensor trigger a servo-motor to loose a gravity-propelled "ghost" on a guy-wire strung between the pine trees and our front door.

Aaaaaaannnddd....

My Gentle Reader sees where this is heading, right?

The problem is, now I definitely don't have enough Trinkets to make this happen.  And the irony of it all is that we average two sets of trick-or-treaters per annum. 

But that's just the problem.  With some people, the means infers the motive...and then the motive infers the means...which then again infers the motive...and so on.

Culturally, I suppose, it's a good problem to have.  Except for when the credit card bill arrives.

Say Whaaaaaat?!?!?! (a rant)

Knowing that my latest nerdery is Marvel's "The Avengers" universe, Dennis humoured me by renting Iron Man 2 when he made a run for storm chips tonight.  I'm old enough to remember when movie ratings came in three flavours (G, PG, and R)...except that at that time I wasn't old enough to know that there was a fourth rating, if you know what I mean.

Yes, I realise that it's a good thing that PG-13/NC-17 movies itemise their unwholesomeness--e.g. violence, nudity--although I sometimes don't quite grok what's so "adult" about "adult situations" and "adult language."  After all, any profanity and sexuality worth bothering about require both timing and savoir-faire.  Neither are magically bestowed upon us on our 18th birthday.  Nor upon Hollywood, however sizeable the budget.

That being said...precisely since when does "Intense Sci-Fi"make a movie (or any other fiction, for that matter) unsuitable for a pre-teen audience?  And what in the smoky name of Grethor's Gates, constitutes "intense" science fiction anyway?  This nonsense, btw, lands within a few days of my receiving a two Heinlein novels as a gift.  Grrrrrrr....

NOW I'm brassed-off.

Bad enough that the anti-science goons are muzzling research here in Canada.  And putting Congress-critters who don't (and, far worse, refuse to) know the difference between photovoltaics and photosynthesis in positions of influence in Washington.

Sure, the petro-barons (among others) and professional God-bothers and any number of other snake-oil peddlers have plenty to fear from a scientifically-literate public.  (Even a public mathematically-literate enough for Statistics 101 and the concept of regression to the mean should scare The Powers That Be silly, for that matter.)

But...warning labels for science fiction?  Seriously?!?!

Though, in sobriety, I probably shouldn't be so surprised.  The American Library Association's list of regularly banned and challenged books (and the objections to the same) is a good demonstration of how intellectual wussification is clearly not being bred out of our species.  The usual suspects--sex, blasphemy (real or imagined), sex, vastly outdated gender/racial portrayals, sex, drug use, sex, profanity, sex, etc., and sex--are all represented.  (Bonus points for being burned by the Nazis for having a socialist message, btw.  #slowclap)  My Gentle Reader will of course note several of the sci-fi heavyweights on that list.

I suppose that if there's any proverbial silver lining, it's that slapping a warning--particularly one that says, "Run along, sport: You're too young for this"--pretty much guarantees the cachet of the forbidden.  Who knows?  Maybe the bright lights of Hollywood are doing us a backhanded favour by making "Intense Sci-Fi" badass.  Maybe the fact that Samuel Jackson's Nick Fury threads through much of the Avengers world isn't actually a coincidence.  (Bet'cha didn't think of that angle, huh?)

Frankly, I'm not counting on that.  But if Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson happens to be reading, maybe you, Doctor, should consider a PG-13 "Intense Science-Fact" rating for the upcoming season of Cosmos.  Just sayin'.  Co-opt Samuel Jackson if you have to. ;~)

Frivolous Friday, 2014.10.17: Feline Intelligence

The doors and windows were tightly shut, and the cracks of the window frames stuffed with cloth, to keep out the cold.  But Black Susan, the cat, came and went as she pleased, day and night, through the swinging door of the cat-hole in the bottom of the front door.  She always went very quickly so the door would not catch her tail when it fell shut behind her.

One night when Pa was greasing the traps he watched Black Susan come in, and he said: "There was once a man who had two cats, a big cat and a little cat."

Laura and Mary ran to lean on his knees and hear the rest.

"He had two cats," Pa repeated, "a big cat and a little cat.  So he made a big cat-hole in his door for the big cat.  And then he made a little cat-hole for the little cat."

There Pa stopped.

"But why couldn't the little cat--" Mary began.

"Because the big cat wouldn't let it," Laura interrupted.

"Laura, that is very rude.  You must never interrupt," said Pa.

"But I see," he said, "that either one of you has more sense than the man who cut the two cat-holes in his door."

- Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

As Boing Boing reminded me to today, the reputed inventor of the cat-door was none other than Sir Issac Newton.  But the surprising part was that he, as legend has it anyway, was guilty of the dual-egress: One hole for the cat and the other for her kittens.

I suppose there are a number of ways that it could be true.  Maybe Laura was on the right track.  After all, I could totally see one of our cats blocking the door to effectively shut out the other.  (I'm looking at you, Rollie!)  Or if the step on the original full-size door was too high for a kitten, one cut lower to the ground would make a workable--if ugly--hack.

Then, too, we all probably know someone who demonstrates the stereotypical inverse relationship between brilliance and common sense.  And let's face it, the man who invented a new branch of mathematics literally overnight (true story) also made the mistake of reinvesting his profits from the South Sea Bubble's boom back into its bust, and lost his shorts. 

Alas, the ahem, cromulence of the tale falls short:  Both Newton's claim to the invention and subsequent misuse thereof have both been roundly debunked.

Innovation is, of course, driven by many factors other than genius.  We owe the discovery of penicillin, for instance, to straight-up carelessness.  Or we could subscribe to George Bernard Shaw's "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."  Or, when we find a door cut into a door for the convenience of felines, it's easy to suspect that the mother of invention is occasionally whiskered.

Now, if Sir Tim Berners-Lee had a cat around when he was inventing the HTTP protocol and thus the World Wide Web (which currently exists as a platform for cat photos/videos), I think we would be justified in our suspicions.   

Frivolous Friday, 07.01.2011: Founding Hackers

I snagged Dennis' copy of John Adams and snarfed the bulk of it while under the weather last weekend. (Exhaustive depth and breadth of research aside, I guess I was expecting more impartiality and less hagiography. Although Abigail was pretty badass, ripping Jefferson a new one by mail--while he was in office, no less! I knew she had to be a force of Nature, but I never knew that...)

But in the discussion of the illuminati of the "American Experiment," one thing that took me aback--in terms of things that we take for granted--was the claim that if Benjamin Franklin had invented nothing beyond the lightening rod, he would have still been considered a giant in practical science. But, as the kite-flying escapades and some of his more fanciful uses for the new-fangled electricity make for better stories, it's easy to lose sight of the life-and-death aspect.

Sometimes Franklin merely improved on the work of others, such as an early battery called the "Leyden jar" or capturing more heat from a fire with what became known as the "Franklin stove." Other inventions, such as bifocal glasses and the odometer, were--to the best knowledge of history--were hacks created to meet an immediate need.

And in the best spirit of hacking, Franklin could--in a sense--be considered the father of open source. The "sense" in question being that he refused to patent any of his work. From the Wikipedia article on the Franklin stove:

...the deputy governor of Pennsylvania, George Thomas, made an offer to Franklin to patent his design, but Franklin never patented any of his designs and inventions. He believed “that as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously”. As a result, many others were able to use Franklin’s design and improve it.

Thomas Jefferson, no less a tinkerer (and a math nerd besides), also dabbled in cryptology during his various duties to the fledgling republic.

However, Jefferson believed in limited-term patents to balance the financial incentive for invention (and thus human progress) against perpetual monopolies that would hurt the public interest. He, like Franklin, did not patent his work on the moldboard plow (basically a hack for the hilly soil in his Piedmont stomping grounds of Virginia.) And, to the manufacturer of a device for producing duplicate copies of one's writing--then known as a "polygraph," although the word has a different meaning now--Jefferson supplied all manner of suggested improvements--and apparently beta-tested them as well--over the course of writing thousands of letters.

I know that we have a tendency to create the founders of this country in our own image, and me highlighting their geeky pedigree is no exception. Yet the trick to biographical history is to never assume you know the people you're researching. And, above all to remember that, when you go looking for history, sometimes history comes looking for you.

A perfect storm, Web 2.0 style

One of my SCA and Facebook cohorts pointed me to an interesting slice of karma dished out--a la mode--by crowdsourcing. Apart from my natural tendency to root for the underdog (not to mention instinctive solidarity with my medievalist "cousins,"), I found the brouhaha interesting for its "perfect storm" characteristic. And also for the mind-boggling refusal of some people to realize three fundamental truths about this phase of the internet's existence:

1. Virtual snottiness isn't any less snotty than real-world snottiness.
2. Your snottiness is out there in front of the intertubes 'n everybody.
3. Going viral isn't necessarily a good thing, even when you're the protagonist.

I'd add "Don't annoy passionate medievalists," except that this truth predates the internet--by which I mean that it's not about the swords and other assorted pointy objects; it's the inexhaustable capacity for research. Oh, yes, and a tendency to write witty, satirical songs about you. That kind of of cultural--even subcultural--immortality you don't need. Trust me on this.

Units of measurement for programmers

For some crazy reason, I was thinking of this (highly NSFW) comic today. I'm sure it had absolutely nothing at all to do with spending pretty much the entire afternoon mucking out the code equivalent of the Augean Stables. Complete coincidence, I'm sure.

Now, I figure if you're going to resort to "colorful" language, you might at least take advantage of the entire rainbow. So rather than opting for the old standby (Hint: It involves a hard liquor and two different dances), we should probably just make it more generic: Not-safe-for-work-isms. Also, the other failing of the comic's metric is that its unit of time measurement is the minute. No offense intended to the minute, but we programmers don't care much about you these days. Nay, the second (and its variants) definitely come in first. Millisecond-based timestamps, nanoseconds, megabit-per-second upload and download speeds, and even the hipster-nerdy bogomip.

Given the above considerations, our revised units of measurement would be a number of Not-safe-for-work-isms per second, or Nsfw/s for short. We can shorten that further by simply recalling that Algebra encourages us to simplify fractions. And, lo! We have an "s" common to the numerator and denominator in our Nsfw/s fraction. Thus, our unit will be known simply as the Nfw. Hopefully its maximum value (like sine and cosine) will be one. And, still more hopefully, not very often at that.

Future Perfect meets Present Indicative*

Confession time: City traffic scares me. It's bad enough that I didn't learn to drive until after the ten-feet-tall-and-bullet-proof stage of life, but I've also never lived in a city larger than the La Crosse of the 2000s or Eau Claire of the 1990s--whichever is bigger. So there was a certain amount of bravado involved in your faithful blogger plowing to and from the Twin Cities this weekend--and, in all liklihood, in Dennis riding shotgun besides. Fortunately, we had better directions (from the road construction perspective) for the return journey. Yet having to stay relentlessly on point through the metropolitan area was frustrating enough that I grumbled to Dennis, "They can't invent transporters soon enough for me."

He--being a truck-driver's kid--seemed to find that funny. But it started me thinking "What if?" That's where the long stretches of MN State Highway 52 and I-90 kicked in. Whoops. Looking back at the evolution of the "Star Trek" weltanshaung through the franchise's five incarnations, it seems dubious (at best) that the transporter could have possibly been invented before the replicator. Humor me by thinking about it for a second or twelve: A replicator merely converts (stored) energy to matter according to some template. A transporter, in contrast, scans matter, maps it to template, converts it to energy, transmits it (plus the scanned template), then reverses the entire process at the destination point.

The relative differences in complexity alone argue for the precedence of replicator over transporter, don't you think? Then, when questions of liability are introduced, the disparity in liklihood becomes so much steeper. The worst-case scenario of a replicator fail is a pile of goo. Possibly toxic, true, but building scanners and shields into the dispenser unit should minimize the fallout by however many nines are economically feasible. Transporters, on the other hand, don't get a second chance with precious cargo. Up to and including red-shirt extras who don't have last names. ;-)

But--lest my gentle reader consider this an exercise in angel-counting (quantum interpretation found here)--I will note that, at least in 2010, replicators seem to be leading transporters. Either one would be an epic (and not in the cant, trite sense of the adjective) game-changer. In each case, don't hold your breath...but don't blink either. Such are the times we inhabit. (Wheeeee!!!)

- - - - -

* English major flashback: I can't cite the exact source, but I would be remiss if I didn't give credit to the unknown (meaning, unremembered by me) journalist who summarized one of Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Addresses (1986, 1987 or 1988--I forget which) thusly: "For the President, future indicative is past perfect."