Porcupine Days

No control group

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:27:50 GMT

By now, I don't know which of my personality changes come from meditation, which from being a near-hermit, and which just from growing old.

Political economy

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:43:25 GMT

Obama says stimulus plan to kick in later this year (Reuters)

No shit. I know Republicans are honor-bound to disagree with everything the Great Prince of the Dark says, but... seriously, you guys. Of course you can't expect this to have much effect in four months. You can't just open the window and yell "Hey you guys come and fix up this derelict schoolhouse". There are bidding rounds that must be held, contracts that must be signed, detailed plans that must be made. Don't even get me started on actually building something new, like a road or a dam. It will take YEARS - at which time the recession could be over, although I hope not. I hope this recession never ends, but instead turns into a permanent adaptation to reality. But enough about that.

The only thing that works right away is food stamps and such. All else takes more or less time.

The real problem with the huge stimulus pack, as I see it, is that you basically send the bill to your kids. Shouldn't the generation that had the party also clean up?

Daggerfall now legal to download

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:27:38 GMT

Bethsoft's Elder Scrolls downloads page.

Daggerfall runs well in DOSBox (which it hasn't always done) but I would not try running it in just the dos prompt in Windows.

Daggerfall was probably the largest RPG ever made, and there may never be a larger one ever. How is that possible? Well, the screen resolution is half VGA, and almost everything is stock rather than unique. The hundreds of towns and villages are put together - probably by a computer - from stock parts that can include whole shopping districts or single houses, slapped together in a random fashion. Likewise the humongous caves were made from stock parts that were chained together. Yet the variation is large enough that only the most dedicated players would remember all the stock parts in his head. The most dedicated player could have been me, but most likely it was one of my friends on alt.games.daggerfall. Perhaps the guy who thought he might go to Daggerfall when he died, instead of Heaven or Hell.

In any case, I have never seen a game in which you were so much in control of your own fate, and could choose to be a truly unique character. It was a big part of my life for many years and probably had some influence on my current thinking in various subtle ways.

Tentative wheee

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:54:11 GMT

I replaced the router with an inferior model I had used before, but which did not broadcast strongly enough. It may have had some other defect too, it has been a few years.

After setting up the elder router with the correct protocol, I am once again online with the cabled computers. May test the rest later, or replace the usual router. Perhaps not though: It was frightfully hot even before the heat wave. I suspect the heat did it in eventually. It was disconnected from the power grid during the thunderstorm, and the wan cable went through the ADSL modem before getting to it, so it is unlikely that a surge would fry it but leave the modem unharmed.

Anyway, joy joy joy.

But now it is bedtime.

More DSL confusion!

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:05:49 GMT

I came home, and did some more tests on my Internet access. It is really strange. I am writing this now while connected directly to the DSL modem, without going through the home router (which also serves as wireless access point for the computers not in the home office). Witht his configuration, I have a download speed of 4333 kbit/s and upload of 627 kbit/s according to a speed test. That should be enough for a whole network. And the router works: When the computers were attached to the router, I could instantly look up a shared file on another computer. I was able to log on to the router. I was even able to log on to the DSL modem, although it is so cryptic and poorly documented that I could not give any useful commands. So the router works, the DSL works, but they seem to hate each other's guts. It is not the cable: I am using the same cable in the PC that I had plugged into the router. (And this is the second time I do it, so it is not a matter of the cable being loose or somesuch.) I was even able to log on City of Heroes on one of the computers through the network, after a random number of tries. Once connected it ran full tilt until I logged off. But I have not been able to do that from the other computer, nor have I been able to load ANY web pages from any of them.

There was a thunderstorm tonight

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:05:56 GMT

The good: Finally some rain!
The bad: Internet access gone at home.
I heard the thunder far off just as I was going to sleep, and powered down the whole home network and tripped the power. I did not disconnect the phone cables though. The telephone still works, so I doubt there was a surge in the phone line strong enough to fry a powered-off DSL modem. It may be at my ISP's end, I will give them the workday before I call them.

You can panic now, or you can panic later

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:01:35 GMT

Constant use of 'mild' to describe swine flu misleading people about threat (The Canadian Press)

This article explains why the North American complacency about H1N1 (Mexican flu) is misguided at best. Yes, it really is true that the death rate H1N1 is similar to seasonal flu. And you've had that often enough and not panicked, so why worry now? Unfortunately, mortality is a pretty general concept. It does not reflect the difference that seasonal flu kills your grandma, while H1N1 kills your child. That is a small difference statistically, but a big one emotionally.

The deaths from seasonal flu are overwhelmingly people who were approaching the end of their life anyway, either because of old age, chronic illness or a badly compromised immune system. Something was going to off them one of these years. In contrast, it seems that a good portion of the elderly are resistent to H1N1 because of its earlier rounds in the previous century. The deaths are overwhelmingly among the young and healthy. In fact, since the deaths come not from the virus itself but from the intensity of the immune response, being young and healthy can actually get you killed.

The second point made is that the current mortality count is at a time when the virus is spreading slowly and in small, scattered outbreaks, and the hospitals are not full. When patients with acute respiratory collapse are turned away because the lung ward is full, the mortality will rise quite a bit. (Also, mortality from asthma and bronchitis will rise in the same period, but this will not be reflected on the flu statistics.)

A point the article fails to make, probably because it is more local to the USA, is the use of the word "flu" for pretty much any mild virus infection, from a severe head cold to contagious diarrhea. "It's just a flu" is not a good attitude even with the ordinary version. And since the medical community uses the word in a different meaning than the populace, it gets even harder to get the right message across.

All you needed to do was keep the virus back until a vaccine could be made. If that required a little panic, so be it. But it may be too late now.

All CDs ripped.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:38:34 GMT

Now to make a number of backups before the bags of CDs go in the trash can.

And then, find a rational way to copy them all to MP3 files. I'm leaning toward Sound Converter, a simple and powerful Linux program that can handle subfolders, although not unlimited batches.

Meh?

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:58:28 GMT

Near bedtime I fell asleep in my chair and woke up choking. I continued coughing and trying to clear my throat off and on for another three hours before I got to sleep. I overslept and woke up right before I would have to run to reach the bus. (It's an hour between them now in summer.) I managed to catch the bus and bought breakfast in the city, but I didn't have time to shave. I am not comparing myself to a porcupine for nothing. Luckily my work with people is through mail or at worst telephone most days of the month, so it should be OK for once. No calls so far, which is good since my throat is still a bit raw.

Gigabytes and terabytes

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:24:19 GMT

I bought a 16 GB USB memory stick, but my Music folder is now approaching 17 GB, and I still haven't ripped all the Japanese CDs.

My favorite computer shop sent me a mail today announcing a very reasonably priced 1.5TB USB disk. I remember like yesteryear when I bought a 0.5TB USB disk of the same brand. Actually, that WAS yesteryear.

Why in the world would a private household want 1.5TB of storage capacity? Unless they are downloading several episodes of anime each week or something...

More adventures in lawnmowing

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:27:37 GMT

Since last I mowed, the lawn has become carpeted with clover. No problem there - except they got allies. Running a manual lawnmower across a field covered with clover, bees and bumblebees is an exciting experience.

Dream

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:26:51 GMT

I dreamed that there was a new room on the north side of the house, and I went to look, and it was my mother's bedroom from the house where I grew up. It was exactly as I remembered it, with a picture of my mother from when she was young, which I used to look at when I was little.

I woke up and found that I could no longer recall that picture.

Streaming music

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:26:03 GMT

I have been trying to set up a music server under Opera Unite. It looked promising the first couple days, but since then the server on the Windows machine has only worked for an hour or less after restarting Opera. The old Linux machine is evidently not strong enough to pull it at all. The new Linux machine is only up while I am at the office, and has only a small subset of my music, but it actually runs quite fine. I am not sure if that is because it runs Linux or because it uses wireless broadband or because it is directly online without a router. It could even be the time of day.

Then there is the matter of converting all the WMA, M4A and OGG files to MP3. Oh, and what's worse, converting the MP3 files to MP3, because some of them don't play in the streamer but once I convert them to FLAC and then back to MP3, they work just fine. What's up with that? In any case, I think I am starting to get the hang on Sound Converter (another free Linux goodie).

I suppose there are other ways to share your music library with your friends, but I can't think of any that don't require them to download anything or register somewhere, but just point any common browser to an url and play around. Actually, the only other alternative I know of is Winamp remote, which I ALSO have, and which does handle a variety of formats, but if others than myself can use it to listen, I don't know how.

Anyway, men at work!

Sleep is not always healing, it seems

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:49:38 GMT

I woke up hurting in several places, probably from trashing around in my sleep. In one of my last dreams before waking up there actually was some event that explained the pain, but I forgot the details almost as soon as I woke up and realized that it was just an ad hoc invention to protect my sleep.

Of course, we do the same thing in our "waking" life as well, fabricate various reasons for our pains so we don't need to wake up even more and realize that we are hurting ourselves. Nice hands-on demonstration there.

From the voices in my head

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:26:27 GMT

If humans were plants, we would have been required to cover our flowers.

It is a good things plants are not sentient then, or their beauty would have been lost.

Dentistry

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:23:53 GMT

I finally got to the dentist and got the broken tooth glued back on. It's been quite a while going with a loose tooth. His dentistry equipment was broken but luckily he was in a small group of dentists and got to borrow the neighbor's room for the occasion.

This tooth broke while I considered buying a laptop for someone else. We seem to be homing in on it now. At first I thought the rule was "Every time you buy a computer, God kills a tooth." Then I found that I could buy desktops fine, and modified it to "Every time you buy a laptop, God kills a tooth." Now it is "Every time you decide to buy a laptop, God kills a tooth." I wonder if I end up breaking teeth just by looking at a laptop to covet it in my heart...

Even more tax money to be spent on sex

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:49:48 GMT

Obama to offer benefits to gay partners of federal employees (Los Angeles Times)

Before: Lots of people paid for having sex with federal employees.
After: Even more people paid for having sex with federal employees.
Another mightly blow for duonormativity!

The fog is coming to the Internet

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:06:16 GMT

So, we thought cloud computer would be the future. But instead we have local computers crunching away on the SETI project, protein folding, and streaming music from local harddisks. In other words, the cloud is where we are. In other words, it is not just a cloud, it is a fog. The fog is coming to the Internet, and it will never leave. September never ends.

Opera users: Unite!

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:40:28 GMT

Opera Unite is out. From here on, every web user with Opera browser and a more or less permanent connection can make his computer into a web server. For free. So easy that even (or especially) the mildly computer challenged can do it. Because everyone is interested in your 45000 baby pictures.

Check it out. The web will never be the same again.

Two bees or not two bees...

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:12:41 GMT

Woke up an hour and a half early thanks to a bee in the bedroom. There's another one in the living room, in case I should feel the urge to take a nap on the couch.

Commute meh

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:03:43 GMT

Each summer this happens to me, probably because I don't have kids so I don't think of summer vacation as being two months long.
Each summer, the commute bus changes its timetable. Not only are there fewer departures, but they happen at a different time. Today I came to the bus stop, congratulating myself on my perfect timing, only to find that the bus had gone ten minutes ago and it was 50 minutes to the next. My coworkers probably assume I have the Monday Sickness. I'll probably forget during the workday and try to take a nonexistent bus home as well, waiting 50 minutes in the city without pay.

"EA's biggest ever EA launch"

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:21:52 GMT

That's how Boomtown describes the sale of over 1.4 million Sims 3 in the first week. This comes despite - or perhaps because of - the game being more pirated than Spore.

I know this must hurt the head of those who truly hate Electronic Arts. But in all fairness, the game is a break from their image as a company that buys up smaller developers and churn out nearly identical sequels until people get fed up, then close the shop and buy another. The Sims 3 is the first in the series to be made by EA rather than Maxis, but it has a lot of improvements, including - incredibly enough - running better than the 2004 predecessor on most modern computers. This is achieved by using dual and multi-core processors as well as offering a wide range of graphic detail levels. Creativity and technical excellence in one and the same game, not something we had expected from EA.

The large legitimate sale is probably in no small part due to the game's popularity among women, who are generally less eager to commit crimes and risk going toe to toe with computer viruses. (There are certainly exceptions to this, but this type is fairly common in the player base.) The game is also available for the Mac from day 1.

Mexican flu, now pandemic

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:43:31 GMT

Yesterday, the WHO declared a level 6 (out of control) pandemic on the Mexian flu.

Until this month, the flu had been contained everywhere outside North America.

With a full-scale pandemic, the disease is almost certain to spread to the whole world - including developing countries with far worse health care conditions than Mexico - before a vaccine can be made for this unique strain. (Common flu shots don't work.)

I got better!

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:41:46 GMT

Well, I did. I have no idea what it was that made me suddenly ill though.

I want an epic lifespan! And even after that, I want the text "REZ PLZ!" on my tombstone.

Life is awesome, by and large. But I told you that already.

Sick

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:38:50 GMT

When I came to the city today, I suddenly fell ill. Short of breath, dry cough, queasy, shivering, my heart hammering as if I were running even when I was just standing. I am also feeling kind of fuzzy, not thinking and sensing clearly.

It certainly feels like something has suddenly and intensely triggered my immune system, but I have no idea what. The Mexican flu is still not come here, and the ordinary flu is usually not spreading in summer. I suppose it could be a bacterial infection.

To see doctor or not to see doctor, that's the question. It seems to me that invariable seeing a doctor just causes them to decide that I am healthier than normal healthy people. I guess I shall wait to see how my temperature goes. It is still in the normal range right now, a bit high for me for this time of the day (37.6 C, about one degree above normal morning temperature for me, but perfectly normal for many people).