The New Road

Crab Maga

At macromedia some of the folks were into crab maga. That is an Israeli martial arts form where you tire yourself out in the first five minutes then fight tired. The idea is to learn how to operate exhausted. My advice to anyone interested in that... have kids. ;-)

PSP System Software v. 2

I just downloaded the version 2 system software to my PSP. The primary reason I did that was to get access to the integrated web browser, and I have to say, wow. The browser is freaking sweet. The only problem is that the screen isn't big enough to show most web pages. Only pages that are optimized around 600 pixels wide, or so it seems. Where most of today's nice sites are in the 800 pixel wide category. That being said, having a web browser and a WiFi gadget that I can have in my pocket is fantastic. I can easily get on any unsecured access point and browse while I'm just hanging out. It certainly has turned the PSP, which was a dust gathering doorstop because of lack of new great games back into a pocket necessity.

Lori's Tonsils

Lori had her tonsils taken out early this morning. She's in some pain but she is definitely on the mend. This wasn't outpatient so much as not much of a patient at all. We were in at 6:30AM and out at 10AM. That's amazing to me. She is now in bed cuddling with Oso with a tambourine near by that she uses to let me know if she needs me.

More news from Iraq

Turns out the new Iraqi constitution will exclude Israelis specifically:

"Any individual with another nationality (except for Israel) may obtain Iraqi nationality after a period of residency inside the borders of Iraq of not less than ten years for an Arab or twenty years for any other nationality, as long as he has good character and behavior, and has no criminal judgment against him from the Iraqi authorities during the time of his residency on the territory of the Iraqi republic," the draft says.

Nice.

Apparently Iraqis want us gone... bad.

And, pressure is building in Iraq for U.S. withdrawal. 103 members of the 275 member National Assembly (the Iraqi Parliament) have demanded the adoption of a resolution canceling the request made by the Government to extend the presence of multinational forces, and urging the Government to put “a timetable for the withdrawal of occupation troops” from Iraq.

Even Jessica Simpson has something to say about Iraq. Well, she wants to say it, but she can't. Apparently the networks are censoring her. Damn liberal media not wanting to get out negative stuff about Iraq... Wait a minute...

And last but not least, it turns out we aren't in a war at all. We are in a struggle now. Not a messy war at all. Sharing yet another similarity with Vietnam this reminds me of the Apocalypse Now line; "The shit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to stay above it."

I think at this point everyone wants to get out of Vietnam... er... Iraq, it's just a question of when. I want it, well, now. I think every day we stay we just shed more blood on both sides and there is no improvement. In fact, the situation just gets worse. The Republican position looks to be starting the exit early next year in time for the 2006 elections. That's nice. It's not about saving lives, or creating a stable situation, it's now just about the American elections.

Lattes are expensive

As I was buying my $3.55 large latte tonight I was thinking about how expensive lattes were. My latte was 16oz, I'm guessing. A gallon is 128oz, so it would take 8 large lattes to make a gallon. That's $28.40. If you figure that much in gas you would get almost 11 gallons of gas at 2.65 per gallon. With my hybrid I get 33 miles per gallon, so if I spent as much on gas as I do on a gallon of latte I would go 363 miles. That basically gets me to Los Angeles which is 373 miles. For the price of a gallon of latte I could drive to L.A. Frack lattes are expensive. For the price of a single latte I could drive the glorious Seventeen Mile Drive. For the price of two lattes I could wind my way through the Big Sur. That's crazy. I'm going to start drinking more drip coffee, this latte stuff is a rip off.

Sweet suck-out

Last night was our weekly poker night. I've been on a rush of bad luck lately so I wasn't really looking forward to it. Last week was the worst. Every time I had something high the cards were all low and vice versa. Our table plays kinda loose, so you really have to have the cards most of the time.

When Winsha and Rebecca got to the house Megan was still going down. But Mel was there so the four of us, minus Lori, started the game. Everybody came in for the usual $10. Rebecca took the first hand for around $1.50 from each of us. On the next hand I got an Ace-10. Nice card, so I raised it up a little. Everybody stayed in.

The flop came out Ace-2-10. Sweet! So I had two pair. It rolled around to Winsha to bet. She put in $2, and I was fine with that. Two pair usually wins at our table. Rebecca and Mel dropped folded. Another blank, I think a Jack, came out on fourth street. Winsha was in for another two. At this point I had a gut check because Winsha is a tight player, and I didn't have anywhere near the nut. The nut at this point was three Aces. Then three Jacks, three tens, three twos, two pair Aces and Jacks, and finally my hand Aces and tens. So I had only the sixth best hand. But I figured that I could buy back in. Even if this was just the second hand.

On fifth street my mind exploded as another Ace came out. Now I had a full house. Winsha came back with another $2 and I came back with all -in. She quickly responded by pushing her whole stack in. And then she flipped... two tens. Giving here an Ace-Ace-10-10-10 full house, which heart-brakingly lost to my Ace-Ace-Ace-10-10 full house. She had me before the flop, after the flop and after fourth street. Just not at the end.

A lovely suck-out victory that I should be ashamed with if I weren't so happy about it. There actually were two nuts before the nut full house, four aces and four tens. But hey, a win is a win.

At the end of the night I was tripled up from my buy-in and I know at least this little bad luck rush is over.

More War Propaganda

Intersting article on CNN about two supposed man on the street interviews that have almost exactly the same response.

Here is the first one:

"'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the ISF and all of Iraq. They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists,' said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified."

Who talks like that?

And the second:

"'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the children and all of Iraq,' said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified. 'They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists.'"

Come on. Why do we have to propagandize this war? Isn't this a true and pure fight, a la World War II? I keep hearing from the right that this is like Japan. It's nothing like Japan. There was no sustained insurgency in Japan. Nor was there on in Germany. Face it. It's Vietnam all over again.

It's nice to be back in space

It's nice to be back.

But we really need a new Shuttle fleet.

The Islan

On Sunday I saw The Island. Obviously the effects were amazing. But the acting wasn't very good. And the plot was full of more holes than a nice Swiss cheese. That being said, I appreciated the sci-fi portion of the flick.

The interesting thing to me was who made this movie. Michael Bay, the director of Armageddon and Pear Harbor, isn't the first guy I would think of to direct a movie about genocide. And believe me, this movie was about genocide. Many of the characters are at pains to tell us how the people being harvested for body parts aren't human but are 'product'. And at one point a bunch of 'product' is loaded into an incinerator.

I mean, I appreciate it. The more that we can do to get people thinking about genocide the better. Two recent news items have shocked me. The first was Fox News anchor who said, "people like us, non-arabs...". And then there was the horrible shooting in the London subway of some innocent kid who was just freaked about being chased by cops, was shot to death, with eight shots. There doesn't seem to be any outrage about that at all. Which sickens me. This country needs to spend some time thinking about parallels with the Holocaust in what's happening right now.

"Silence!" The Musical

Warning: The links in this entry are adult in nature and should not be viewed by those that are easily offended.

If you liked "Silence of the Lambs" you will love "Silence!" The Musical. If you want to check out the music go here.

(Thanks to NJ for finding this one.)

Taking a mental knife

After looking at the people attending Foo Camp I'm beginning to think that I'm taking a mental knife to what looks like a mental shotgun fight. Check this guy out:

I am researching how neural circuits use specific strategies to compute particular learned behaviors from sensory inputs, and ways to image and stimulate these circuits, in order to reveal the primitives sufficient to drive neural computation.

Ed Boyden Stanford Neuroengineering

Check out the big brain on Brett. I hardly understand the fucking words. Though I know Eric would. ;-) More of this type of, I don't know what the hell this is, here.

Then there are dudes that just do an ungodly lot of stuff.

Starting a non-profit educational organization
Antarctic penguin camera [ed: Huh?]
Electronics parts vending machine
$30 swarm-bot
3D tracking system for a toy (really cheap)
A variety of technology educational classes
Finishing my building
Raising our new daughter (just a few months old)

Wow! And I thought I was doing a lot.

Then there is just plain impressive.

These are some hard core folks. This is going to be a lot of fun. And it will also be very intimidating, or inspiring, or both. Whatever. This is going to be cool.

Armed forces age limit raised to 42

The raised the age limit to get into the Army to 42. That means I could serve if I wanted to. As I've said before, I would have served when it came to hunting Osama bin Ladin. But this administration can't be trusted to fight the war against Al Qaeda properly. The war in Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, it's costing us a fortune in human lives and money, and is not making us any safer. In fact, the war has created a terrorist training ground and turned Al Qaeda from a fringe group into something far larger.

When I was driving along Mission today a truck ahead of me had the big american flag sticker on the back, and a "support our troops" sign on the glass. I was expecting to see the 'W' sticker somewhere. But instead, just below the 'support our troops' sign was a hand written sign that said it was time to bring the troops home safe. I agree.

A little diversion for you

I guess the Rove stuff is cutting a little close to the bone. Bush is going to announce his nominee tonight. Even though it appeared a couple of weeks ago that he was going to wait until late in the cycle to avoid putting the nominee through an extended media vetting. The diversion seems to be working. No sign of Rove on CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS or NBC. So it seems to be working.

Actually, I lied. There is one mention on Fox. O'Reilly's Talking Points, where he follows the grand old GOP tradition of blaming Clinton:

"During the Clinton years, there was a guy in the White House named Sidney Blumenthal, whose primary job was to throw dirt on anyone who criticized his boss. Blumenthal was a notorious hatchet man."

When in doubt, blame Clinton. Buh, buh, Clinton did that too... Yeah, right.

What I always find amusing about O'Reilly is how, it's all about him, or his alter egos. In this case he always references the "Talking Points" in the "Talking Points", and references it in the third person:

"From the get go, "Talking Points" has said ..."

Is "Talking Points" a person? A guy in a big stuffed clipboard suit walking around with checkboxes written on his chest? "Hey! Talking Points! I wanna talk to you!"

Foo Camp

I just got my confirmation that I will be able to attend Foo Camp this year. Foo (Friends of O'Reilly) Camp is where a bunch of technologists, geeks, writers, and cool folks get together to jam and exchange ideas. It's really an honor to be invited since only a limited number of folks can go.

I think I'm going to show off the news analysis system that I've been working on for a week. It's digging up some interesting stuff about our media.

King Kong

The trailer is out for Peter Jackson's next film, King Kong.

The Rove Thing

I'm starting to get a little worried about the Rove stuff. I think the Republicans had a plan on this one. And the new revelations coming out day after day are suspicious to me. If Rove isn't absolutely guilty then the Democrats are going to look like they overstepped. And Rove and his cronies in the machine are great at muddying the waters. I mean, come on, one day we have people saying that he is a hero for whistleblowing, then the next day it comes out that he was told about Plame by reporters. One of those has to be a lie. They can't both be true. Then there is the memo thing. And before you know it the whole situation is impenetrable. But what is clear is how the Democrats came after Rove right out of the gate. And unfortunately, while Rove will escape from this, the Democrats will get slammed by it and it will be another Rather-gate to the Right.

Cute Megan Picture

Certive memories

Working at another startup reminds me of my time at Certive. Probably my favorite memory came from the time when the 70 or so employees basically revolted and said that, since the company hand't come up with a plan that they were going to create a system to find a plan. This probably sounds crazy, but up until this point nobody had actually come up with a product that this startup of 70 people with $42M in the bank could actually create and sell.

So a plan to create a plan was hatched. In fact, the plan entailed creating about 42 committees. One committee would create the plan and the other forty-one would vet it. It was insane on it's face, but that was the times.

Anyway, two memories spring from this for me. The first was that in one of the committees that I was in. The technical vetting committee or some such, the poeple in the group were essentially randomly assigned. So we had an office assistant in our group. As well as an HR person who specialized in beach volleyball. Anyway, at one point the office assistant person just burst into tears and ran out because she couldn't figure out what to do with herself. Which, is, really, quite understandable.

Another memory was that the marketing group, which so far had absolutly nothing to do, decided that it would be a good time for a staged setup. So they took one wall, painted it battleship gray and put up folders for the output of each committee. Where the folders were linked up with red ribbons. The folders were jet black, thus connoting a military theme. But the jet black folders made it so nobody could read the contents of the folder. Plus some of the folders were over 9 feet off the ground. Which meant that you had to use a ladder to get to them. End of that story is that nobody used the folders at all.

But the best part was that they put this together over a weekend. And part of the art installation was an old-fashioned army surplus cargo net. Which, as it turns out, is meant to be outside. Because if it's left inside it will out-gas a nasty petro-chemical gas. Which it did. And a bunch of employees had to go home sick and the the cargo net was out in the trash by 10AM on Monday.

Anyway, great stuff from the .COM days. At least at that company it was complete chaos.

Of course, long after I left it looks like they got their shit together and now seem to be doing alright with some kind of business intelligence product.

Rove Spin

Fox News is spinning hard for Rove. They are attempting to turn the story into a democrat and media gang up on Karl. When the real story is how Karl leaked the name of a CIA operative working in WMDs to the right-wing press as a get even move with her husband. It was illegal. It was an abuse of power. And it was a national security problem close to 9/11 because the work she was doing was important. So it's not just a paper shuffling violation. His actions put us all at risk because it meant that the agency couldn't do it's job, find weapons of mass destruction going to terrorists. So Karl put us all at risk by putting high priority for a political vendetta over his interest in the well being of the country.

The article underplays this line:

"The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration, his administration. I trust they will follow through on this pledge," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

Which I think is where most Democrats stand. Basically, if he leaked the name he should be out of the administration, period. It's a criminal offense and for once this administration should do the right thing when it comes to legal matters and clean this mess up. If it were Clinton in office then this would have ended three years ago just a few months after the leak. But as it is the White House has spent years obstructing justice and lying to the people.

"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is and if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of," Bush said in September 2003.

The article follows this line up with:

Bush did not use the word "fired" to describe the fate of the leaker, but some reporters and Democrats seem to expect that response.

As opposed to what? Killed? Or given a policy position, which is where Karl, an expert political operative, is now. Yeah, I think it's reasonable for anyone to assume that when somebody says "taken care of" when it comes to a leaker who created a national security hole with his arrogance, it means fired. At the very least.

Link Graphs

I've been playing with link graphs a lot recently. Link graphs are tables of links where each link is size according to it's relevance. Here is one I built yesterday that scans RSS feeds from the major news channels. You can click on a link on the right hand side of the window to see the articles associated with that keyword. It seems to a very easy way to see what the major stories of the day are and to drill down into them.

The next step I'm working on is to do a time-lapse movie with this technique. I'm storing the RSS feeds hourly and I'll be able to do a time-lapse display so that you can literally see the stories come in and fade away. As hurricane Dennis passes you will see the link size go from large to small with other stories come up relevance.

On a side note it's very interesting how condensed this graph is. I'm searching five different news sources and all I get are around 30 different words, and really just about five major words. It's a sign of our one word myopic media culture. When I put the system on the technology sites I got page full of different words.

If you have any ideas for me about how to change or improve this, or to apply it to different areas please let me know. Next week I'll have a first version of the time lapse. I have to gather the data first.

A little fun for the weekend

Sweet!

How to live in the trans-bay tunnel

Try as I might I couldn't help but think about the best way to survive a bomb explosion in the trans-bay BART tunnel. The tunnel is a three (?) mile stretch that runs below the bay that connects Oakland to San Francisco. I take that tunnel four times a week. Every time I think about what an earthquake would do to it. Today, I thought about what a bomb would do to it.

The Bay Area is a tempting target. The residents are, even more than the rest of the country, against this war. And Al Qaeda likes the war. In fact, it's clear that Osama bin Laden was hoping for a Bush victory. Why? Because the best way to get America out of the Middle East is to get us into the Middle East. We wouldn't ever go into Vietnam again. Similarly, after several more years of the Iraq war it's unlikely that we will ever want to fight in the Middle East again.

So hitting the Bay Area might just stir up the blue state passions towards the war. Or so you would think. Though it appears that in Britain it has not had the effect of rallying people towards the war.

Speaking of that sort of thing. Brit Hume, of Fox News, had an interesting take on yesterdays news. His "initial reaction" was to "buy futures". Frankly, the callousness response to the bombings has left me a little stunned. After 9/11 it was weeks before TV returned to normal. Yesterday's bombings registered little more than a blip on the evening news.

Anyway, I took the same seat as I always do. Which coincidently has the best chance of survival with any accident in the tube. I figure that it's best to either be in the extreme front or rear of the train in either case.

Oh the political beat this morning. Air America has Springer on in the morning, so I couldn't listen to that. And NPR had some, I don't know, silliness on it. So I flipped over to our hard-core rightie station just in time to hear the guy read a letter from a listener.

The letter stated that the terrorists animals (using his words) attacked a society they could never achieve, with technology they could never invent, and hurt innocent people they could never be.

It's a set of statements that are as eloquent as they are stupid. I won't take issue with the society or innocent people statement. That's just bigotry. But the technology statement is as arrogant as it is ignorant. Take the IED situation in Iraq. The technology there has improved rapidly and now the insurgents are taking less casualties and inflicting more damage with each attack. And it's only getting worse. Latest reports have insurgents using lasers targeted from large distances to trigger the devices, thus getting around our electronic dampening. This is sophisticated stuff.

But why is that important, and why did it anger me? It angered me because failing to understand your enemy and their motivations is arrogant and stupid. It's the kind of statement that is made by someone who doesn't understand how to fight effectively. What's even worse is that it's a statement that is said with pride. As if it's important that we don't understand the enemy. That understanding is somehow empathy.

The righties are in complete control but are so out of touch that they can't understand, or don't want to understand what is happening on the ground, and good people are dying for that ignorance and arrogance.

London bombing

This morning at least 40 people died during the morning commute in London because of four separate bomb attacks. Al Qaeda is taking responsibility.

After almost four years of delay since 9/11 can't we find and kill Osama bin Laden? Porter Goss says he knows exactly where he is. And given what we know that looks like the tribal areas on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But we won't go in because Pakistan has nuclear weapons and to take out Osama, who is a hero in that area, would critically destabilize an already shaky regime. So the net result is that Osama can act with impunity.

With true leadership in the White House we could in fact, take Osama out, then invade Pakistan if required to stabalize it. But for two reasons that doesn't work. First, because we don't have true leadership in the White House. And second, all of our forces are tied up fighting in the Iraq quagmire.

It is so frustrating. Wanting to actually fight against terrorism but instead seeing our resources drained on non-sensical crap. I remember being criticized because I was in favor of using a small force to go into Afghanistan and just attack Osama directly. Popular wisdom held that invading the country was the right way to go and that a small force, police action, style job was gutless, or some such shit. Now we see clearly the result, four years later Osama is still on the loose, the situation in the Middle East is much more dangerous and innocent people continue to die.

What I hear this morning on the right is absolute stupidity. It's all talk about how this shows that Al Qaeda is still a genuine threat and that pulling out of Iraq would be a mistake. What? Iraq isn't helping us win the fight with Al Qaeda. If anything it's making the situation worse. While four years on the war president knows where Osama is but won't go and get him.

Megan L.A. Pictures

Some pictures of Megan from L.A.:

And from last year two years ago:

My how times have changed.

Great wedding

Lori and I just got back from the wedding of Barbara and Matt, two of our friends from L.A. It was a fantastic wedding, very casual but moving.

Lori and Barbara went to the University of Miami together. Along with Jacqueline, Marcko (sp?) and some other folks that were there. Barbara moved to L.A. when we went to Australia. Then we came back to the Bay Area and the friendship rekindled. Though recently, with the kid and everything going on in our lives it's been tough to make the time. But with Aunt Marsha, Matt and Barbara in L.A. we should make the time to go more often. Megan is absolutely in love with Aunt Marsha and I'm sure we will love Barbara the next time she gets to see her. The wedding was an adults only affair so we dropped Megan off with Aunt Marsha, who fell in love with her.

My new favorite sound

Here is a recent sound from Megan.