A different kind of Rick(man) roll

Worth the wait. Larger version here, and more here.

The project featured an array of glacially paced performances of theater artists and actors all genres and nationalities. With artists featured both singly and in groups, the piece offered a unique and secret glimpse into some of the world’s greatest performing artists.

Via: The Long Now blog

Reframing the acceleration of addictiveness

Tantek Çelik knocks it out of the park with his The Acceleration of Addictiveness vs Willpower, Productivity, and Flow, putting a more positive spin on Paul Graham's Acceleration of Addictiveness:

Paul concludes his essay with We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to. He's right, we will and are.

The problem is, "saying no" is expensive. It costs you willpower to do so. Explicitly saying no doesn't scale. We need automatic or default ways to "say no". The best word we have for that is "filters".

... and:

This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.

The time you spend giving into your urges and supporting your addictions is time you could have spent being creative and productive.

Tantek is collecting practical, constructive information about how to improve the odds on his personal wiki. Great reading.

Smells like a pre-Internet library in here

Here is a list of things that I tend to hoard (where I define hoard as "keep more (or longer than) needed, or conserve or manage more than the effort involved warrants"):

* Alaska license plates (I had to get the obvious one out of the way first)
* books and magazines
* cardboard boxes
* coins
* computers and peripherals
* computer adapters, cords and computer-related tools
* dowls, rods, tubes
* ID cards
* movie stubs
* paper
* pens and pencils
* plane tickets
* twist ties
* water

... and here are the things that I think that my wife hoards:

* books and magazines
* candles
* checks
* coffee cups
* cookbooks
* glass jars
* greeting cards received
* leftovers
* toiletries

Obviously, we have many bookshelves.

APC Masterswitch errors: heap corrupted : non-matching sizes

Sometimes, an APC Masterswitch will start spewing errors like this on its console:

heap corrupted : non-matching sizes :-22904..13041

This sometimes happens when some revisions of the APC Masterswitch OS have too much uptime.

The issue can be temporarily resolved by rebooting the management card. Even though your terminal is filling up with these errors, you can still actually log in and reboot the card - you just have to do it semi-blind.

For some revisions of OS, the key sequence is:

[username]
[password]
3 (the 'System' menu)
5 (the 'Tools' menu)
1 (the 'Reboot' option)
YES (all in caps, to confirm that you want to reboot)

This will clear the error without power-cycling any devices. I suspect that an OS upgrade would address the issue permanently.

Better late than never

I just realized that I didn't mention something important here.

We had a baby!

Using vi key bindings in Perl's debugger on FreeBSD

Even after verifying that Term::ReadKey and Term::ReadLine were part of my perl distribution:

royce@heffalump$ perl -e 'use Term::ReadKey;'
royce@heffalump$ perl -e 'use Term::ReadLine;'
royce@heffalump$

... and making sure that vi key bindings were listed in my .inputrc:

royce@heffalump$ grep editing-mode ~/.inputrc
set editing-mode vi

... I still couldn't use 'em, as demonstrated by what happened when I tried to use movement keys:

  DB<1> testtesttest^[[A

In my research, I discovered that Ubuntu folks were installing a different ReadLine. I eventually found the devel/p5-ReadLine-Perl port, which has this pkg-descr:

Perl 5 ships with a module called Term::ReadLine which is an interface
to command line editing and recall.  The version that ships with Perl
is only a stub, and offers little functionality.

This module supplants the Term::ReadLine stubs with real command line
editing and recall facilities, written entirely in Perl.  Applications
that use Term::ReadLine do not need to be modified to gain the benefits
of this package; it will happen transparently upon installation.

After installing p5-ReadLine-Perl, I'm up and running.

FreeBSD apr1 upgrade error: Configure: 9904: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")")

I was having trouble with apr1 on a FreeBSD web server. apr1 is used by Apache. The configure script for apr1 was dying with this error:

Performing libtool configuration ... 
. / configure: line 9904: syntax error near unexpected token `lt_decl_varnames, ' 

... which boiled down to:

. / configure: line 9904: `lt_if_append_uniq (lt_decl_varnames, SHELL,,, '

Fortunately, this thread was eventually resolved by someone finding out that they had some libtoo115 files left over, even though it had been deinstalled. I manually removed the extraneous files with:

# pkg_delete libtool-1.5.24 
# rm -rf /usr/local/share/libtool15 
# rm -f /usr/local/bin/libtool15 /usr/local/bin/libtoolize15

I am now back up and running!

Thanks to Vladislav Staroselskiy for a very helpful post about the FreeBSD apr1 libtool15 problem.

A little post-1964-earthquake humor

A guest post from my father, for which I asked him to share a story about something that happened after things had mostly gotten back to normal after the 1964 Alaska Earthquake. Dad worked at what was then the 6981st, and is now the 381st Intelligence Squadron on Elmendorf (now Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson). For those who know the work, the terminology here will be familiar.

...

The Great Alaska Earthquake happened in late March of 1964. 9.2 on the Richter scale. As many folks know, it was devastating to many parts of southeast Alaska.

Sometime after that event, I was on D Flight “tearing traffic” as usual during a swing shift. One of the Flight’s 292X1s was a “goosey” sort of guy. He was diligently working away that evening as I approached his work station from behind, preparing to “tear traffic” from his position. As I came up behind him I reached up and tapped the fluorescent light fixture hanging directly above. This started the fixture swinging. Then, “tearing traffic” in front of him, I got his attention and looked up as if to suddenly notice the swinging light fixture. He saw I was looking up so he looked up too. He saw the fixture moving and before he had any second thoughts, leaped out of his chair and at double time made for the Operations door. He went past other folks diligently working, through the doors, down the stairs, past the Air Police person guarding access to the upstairs Operations area, through the first floor foyer and out the front doors of the building to the flag pole located in the center of the secure compound area.

Once he got there he couldn’t understand why others weren’t there too. He was sure he had quickly reacted to an earthquake aftershock.

When no one else was around except him and the flag pole it dawned on him that perhaps the swinging light fixture had not caused what he thought. He strolled back into the building, up to the Air Police person on guard duty, showed the guard his badge and continued on up to the second floor and back to his position in the Operations area. He did not stop or even slow down to answer anyone’s questions about his rapid departure a few minutes earlier.

By that time I figured that he had an idea who was responsible for his quick-reaction to the swinging light fixture.

I managed to avoid his attempts to find me through the rest of the swing shift.

Damn 202s! Not funny! Be a takin' 'er easy. Ur Dad sends

Remembering William Sleator

The Sleator family has created a blog for posting memories about William Sleator.

William Sleator, 1945 - 2011

Publisher's Weekly recently tweeted that William Sleator passed away in Thailand on Tuesday, August 2nd. He was 66.

I am a big fan. My default online handle, TychoTithonus, is the name of the main character in his book The Green Futures of Tycho.

I emailed with him a few times, and he signed one of my copies, but I regret that I never met him in person.

His work struck a chord with me in ways that are hard to explain. Some part of my childhood is now written in stone.

Other links about his passing:

• Abrams, his last publisher
• School Library Journal
• Publishers Weekly article
• The YALSA Hub

Update 2011-08-07: William Sleator's obituary in the New York Times.

Awkward Family Photos - the Board Game

Hmm ... will Michael's famous awkward family photo be included in the new Awkward Family Photos Board Game?

Hawaiian Spam can label contest winner

As some of you may know, I have a collection of SPAM cans. The collector/OCD instinct occasionally compels me to do some web searching for SPAM-related stuff.

This morning, I stumbled upon a brand new can design that renders my collection (temporarily) incomplete.

Hawai'ians are big fans of SPAM. Hormel has been grooving to that vibe, and they recently had a Hawai'i SPAM can label design contest for a special edition the the 25% Less Sodium version.

The winner was announced last week. Congratulations to Hawai'ian artist and designer Scott Kaneshiro of Mililani, Hawai'i! Scott's design was deemed "No Kai 'Oi" (best) by Hormel's judges, and will be used on a special Hawaiian can.

If there's a contest for an Alaskan design, I have a couple of ideas. :-)

UPDATE 2011-05-04 7:05AM AKDT: I found this video of the SPAM can design winner announcement posted by nonstophonolulu. It notes that the can will be available in Hawai'ian stores starting in July, and than Scott won $1000 and a year's supply of SPAM. I also found another entry from the Tasty Island blog.

Review of Search Engine Blacklist for Chrome - highly recommended

I was getting really tired of useless quasi-spam in Google search results. It was seriously impacting my productivity (and morale). The tenth time that the same junk domain fools you into selling your eyeballs to it, you really wish that it would die in a registrar fire.

A Short History of My Shorty

Google Labs has a great new tool called the Books Ngram Viewer. As you can see, the popularity of the phrase "my shorty" in print took off in the mid-1980s.

Side note: Stephanie doesn't believe me that this phrase, currently meaning "my girlfriend", has etymology derived from a phrase for "child" - a diminutive tradition with "my baby" as its most obvious other member. Still researching.

The best FreeNAS name ever: Meet Atoz.

I've been planning a homebrew NAS system. Most of the parts have arrived, and the system is taking shape. Until today, the system lacked a name, an identity -- a personality.

I'm a sci-fi geek. My home systems are always named after robots and computers -- mostly Heinlein, Asimov and Star Trek. I needed a robot name that captured the idea of redundant storage and archiving. Looking through a list of fictional robots, I found the perfect name, from a character in the original Star Trek episode All Our Yesterdays.

As described at the encyclopedic Star Trek site Memory Alpha:

Mr. Atoz was an inhabitant of the planet Sarpeidon whose sun was going supernova. He was the overseer of a library and the atavachron, a time portal device that he used to transport the inhabitants of the planet into the past in order to escape its destruction. He had replicas of himself to help him in the library. [emphasis mine].

Redundant library robots using history for disaster planning? My choice is clear.

So are my next actions. It is a moral imperative that I order a Mac.

So that I can say that Atoz is helping me to store Time Machine information.


Clever external permalink: xrl.us/mratoz

Top Ten application, part three

TOP FIFTEEN THINGS OVERHEARD AT THE SUMMIT ON GLOBAL WARMING

15. Plans for a field trip to the brothel in Nevada that draws 10% of its power from solar energy

14. "Can we speed this up? I left my truck running and it's double-parked."

13. "Whoo, put your hand there! Now that's warm!"

12. "Jerry Lewis is the funniest person of all time."

11. "Two large ice waters, please."

10. "Ozone, schmozone. Did you get the keg?"

9. The quiet, gentle lullabye of environmental activists' fists hammering on the inside of 55-gallon drums out back

8. "If the greenhouse effect is going to produce tomatoes like that attendee from Finland, shovel on the coal!"

7. "Got a light?"

6. Members of the hired band arguing about whether or not to play "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"

5. "Actually, burning sod is a viable alternative to solar energy."

4. "Now you're cooking with gas!"

3. That wacky Dr. Feldman going on and on about his "Pig Methane and Hamhocks" franchising idea

2. "They said that the ice cubes in these drinks came from genuine melted Alaskan glaciers!"

... and the number 1 thing overheard at the Summit on Global Warming:

1. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

(Third in a series: part one, part two)

Top Ten application, part two

Second in a series of retroblogging from 1997.

TOP ELEVEN WAYS TO TELL THAT YOUR SOCKS DON'T MATCH

11. Just "don't feel fresh"
10. Midget chicks at the local dive look the other way when you saunter in
9. "Use the Force, Luke!"
8. One hip wader left behind when buddies pull your drunken a** out of the mud flats
7. "Spiked Vietcong Sock of Death" usually requires stitches
6. Cars always veer to your *left* when night jogging on the median
5. I don't know, but that's the last time I show Michael Jackson where I stash my underclothes
4. Keep having to drop pom-poms to pull up one knee-high, but it won't come up any higher
3. When used as a filter, left sock mysteriously produces decaf
2. That blue-tick hound always goes for the leg with the Smurfs on it whenever you show up at Uncle Carl's trailer

and the number one way to tell your socks don't match ...

1. "But I *am* wearing the other sock!"

Top Ten application, part one

Back in 1998, I tried out to be a contributor to a humorous web site. To apply, you had to take a seemingly hard-to-be-funny-about topic and make a "Top Ten"-style list about it. I stumbled upon one of them today.

TOP FOURTEEN TOOTHBRUSH-HANDLE STYLES

14. Hari-Kari Combo
13. Hands-Free (with jaw strap; batteries not included)
12. Early Colonial Wood Grain
11. Ribbed (for her pleasure)
10. Hollow-point
9. Shaped-just-like-Ernest-Borgnine-naked
8. Bouffant
7. Self-cleaning (heats to 600 degrees)
6. Flared
5. Louisville Slugger
4. Mark IV (with "stun" option)
3. Dr. Guillotine's Razor-Edge Grip(tm) with realistic Finger-in-the-Sink Action
2. Pre-greased

and the number-one toothbrush-handle style ...

1. Thighmaster

I would have rocked.

Committing to FreeBSD

After significant effort, I am thrilled to announce that I am now a FreeBSD documentation committer!

I am proud to be part of a history of great design, POLA, and doing things The Right Way. I look forward to contributing in earnest.

Read the official announcement.

A Glorious Dawn - a musical tribute to Carl Sagan

At the age of 8, I was transfixed by Cosmos. Sagan's articulate sincerity was irresistible, and it shaped my view of just about everything.

I actually get a lump in my throat when I watch this video. It makes me want to go work for NASA, or at least contribute to some open-source project that NASA uses.

John Boswell has a keen eye for what Carl Sagan was passionate about: the wonder of the universe. If you are a fan of Sagan, I hope that you enjoy this as much as I do.

• Download track: "A Glorious Dawn"


• The nascent Sagan Appreciation Society.