Less than callous

How does one implement a <3 day? Romantic music, low lighting, elegant waitstaff bearing trays of sumptuous delectables, handouts of personal protective equipment (if you know what I mean, and I think you do)? We must salute this forward-looking policy as a morale booster that should be adopted perhaps more widely.

Stylized

my new (and first) tattoo,
originally uploaded by megpi.

Good job on counting up the electrons and the ordering of the Bohr atomic shells in this tattoo, but to me the image suggests a valence bond relation, rather than an ionic bond appropriate for a compound of such widely varying electronegativities. That last electron does not want to have anything much to do with the sodium and is firmly in the camp of the chlorine ion.

If I were the wearer, which I'm not, it would bother me.

Sounds good to me

Walking by the tubes.,
originally uploaded by Gabba Gabba Hey!.

A great many people give former Alaska senator Ted Stevens flak for comparing the structure of the Internet to a series of tubes a few years back, and I will not attempt to defend the gentleman's conception of the subject in full. Yet in the resulting furor, I would just like to point out that if I had to choose just one metaphor between "a big truck" and "a series of tubes," the tubes would win decisively. For what is more tubelike than the high-speed Intenet backbone network, the submarine cables, the dedicated satellite links, and the urban microwave trunks that do the heavy work of piping the traffic about, routing around congestion and breakages, rarely caught up in traffic jams, as photons rarely are wont to tarry? And if somewhere the end of a tube is exposed to our feeble senses, raw effluent pouring out in a stomach-churning mix, what can a modern net user do but express his or her wonder at the fluidlike medium that geeks in the know even refer to as a torrent? For something more like the opposite, look at the Netflix distribution scheme which relies on honest to goodness mail trucks to get the content to the consumer.

The world's dullest console game

I have an MP3 player by Nextar like the one in this picture, and I like it because it plays MP3s, it doesn't insist on crippling DRM, it is fairly durable, and didn't cost too much. One place that took some getting used to, however, is the operation of the controls. Here, for instance, is the sequence of button presses you need to do if you are listening to a track you are tired of, want to erase it, and start listening to the next track:

S-L-L-S-S-L-S-L-S-C-R-S-R-C

where S is the button on the side, L and R are the buttons to advance and go back, and C is the button in the center of the ring. (You don't need to touch the up or down buttons or the A-B button.) Typically I need to execute this maneuver one-handed, while driving, not looking at the screen, and I'm getting pretty good at it. Still, it seems like they could have done away with a prompt or four to simplify what should be a rather common operation.

My God, it's full of floor wax

Glide Path,
originally uploaded by The Devil in the Detail.

Acid colors are so '60s. Here in the real 21st century we know the value of a palette of earth tones.

Browser sociology

I was impressed by the amount of periodicity in these two graphs of browser reach, both worldwide:

Source: StatCounter Global Stats

and for Europe:

Source: StatCounter Global Stats

I downloaded the worldwide numbers and cooked them up in a spreadsheet to find that the weekday 68%/26% split between Internet Explorer and Firefox distinctly shifted to something like 66%/27% on weekends. The numbers appear to be a tiny bit more enhanced for the European browser users.

My hypothesis is that the jiggle of a couple percentage points can be attributed to people who are required to use IE on their work computers going home to use Firefox on the weekends.

How geeky is that?

10 things that could be crashing through your car window

Domed Reflection,
originally uploaded by JoelZimmer.

Recently the subject of novelty items affixed to car windows came up and I thought about other things I would like to see penetrating vehicles.

• A javelin
• A karate hand
• A meteorite
• An arrow
• The rear end of a rhinoceros
• The kind of bowler hat that Odd Job wore
• The Starship Enterprise
• Michael Phelps
• A Stratocaster

Selling what's rational

I had this chat with my friend "D" a few weeks back. (The carets represent exponentiation, naturally.)
(9:33:21 AM) Me: Hi. Did you know that 10^9999 is one tremilliatrecendotrigintillion? http://www.asthe.org/chongo/tech/math/number/tenpower.html
(9:35:17 AM) D: So who made up these names? It's not as if they came up in calculations frequently enough to need a name for them.
(9:35:38 AM) D: Avagadro's number is the biggest number that deserves a name.
(9:35:56 AM) Me: Well I've heard of the first few entries in the table.
(9:36:38 AM) Me: It's a cgi program, so it's all generated by algorithm. Look at 10^100
(9:38:16 AM) D: What does the column "prefix cardinal" mean?
(9:38:38 AM) Me: "determines letters before the illion" - hmm
(9:39:09 AM) D: Before the illion is a nice phrase.
(9:39:25 AM) Me: I guess when there's a 3, the name has tre or tri before the illion
(9:39:28 AM) D: Like Before the War, Before the Flood, Before the Fall.
(9:40:12 AM) Me: But 10^183 doesn't even have an illion, it ends in illiard
(9:40:30 AM) D: But 10^36 has 1 and 10 as the prefix cardinals. What does that mean?
(9:40:40 AM) Me: Oh, I'm looking at the European (or Eurpoean) system
(9:41:50 AM) Me: 1 => un, 10 => dec, thus undecillion
(9:42:43 AM) Me: I would have thought that 1 undecillion was smaller than one hundred decillion, but there you go.
The conversation then went on to other, unrelated topics, as is usually the case for us. But it set me to thinking: if they can have a star registry where you are invited to pay for a name for a star which nobody in the professional stargazing communities (whether astronomical or astrological) is ever going to use, why not have a number registry where you get to name your own positive integer with a name no mathematician would ever use. What a great idea, right?

Too late, someone already did it.

For example, imagine watching your favorite science fiction television show and hearing the starship's chief engineer shout, "Captain -- the heat from the supernova is too much for the shields! Twelve thousand degrees! Thirteen thousand! If it reaches Martin Allan Smythe, Jr. degrees, we’ll be destroyed!"

I had in mind a financial channel instead ("Unemployment is up last month to Carrie-Sue Delmonico, an increase of 14%"), but clearly my half-backed notion is far too close to this going concern and would have no chance against their first mover advantage.

But! Rational numbers (fractions, basically) are denumerable too, so one could with only a little extra effort come up with a registry for each of these as well, and they would have the advantage of having to do with something that virtually nobody understands anyway, even abroad. Exotic! And once you get past the so-called vulgar fractions ¼, ½, ¾ and a few of their relatives, you don't often encounter these in trade or commerce much any more, ever since the stock market went to decimals years ago, so some of the rules and restrictions that apply to the number registry would really not be missed. The lucky person forking over their cash for their own rational number would receive a booklet written by a professional mathematician, a wallet card, and a certificate suitable for framing.

I looked and did not see anyone else having come up with this scam concept and brought it to market. But my fallback position should such a case come to light would be to take advantage of the denumerability of algebraic numbers, so as to entice people to immortalize their loved ones forever by rechristening quantities like -3+3√43 and so forth.

Regular expressions of marriage

marriage?,
originally uploaded by Rootytootoot.

Opponents of gay marriage favor the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, forming the basis of a traditional family. Using the language of regular expressions, we can formalize the allowed configurations of families under different assumptions.

Let us represent a family grouping by a character string including various numbers of children, men, and women in that order (alphabetical).

Extended monogamy

^(child)*(man(man|woman)?|woman(woman)?)$

Traditional monogamy

^(child)*(man(woman)?|woman)$

Childfree

^(man(man|woman)?|woman(woman)?)$

Polygyny

^(child)*(man(woman)*)$

Polyandry

^(child)*((man)*woman)$

Polygamy

^(child)*((man)+(woman)*|(man)*(woman)+)$

Anti-spinster

^(child)*(man(woman)?)$

Anti-bachelor

^(child)*((man)?woman)$

Nuclear family

^(man|woman|(child)*manwoman)$

I wrote a little Ruby program to test a number of configurations against these regular expressions to give you an idea of what is allowed and what is not under those models.

Family grouping	Allowed?
Anti-spinster (hetero, no single women, single fathers okay)
man	true
woman	false
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	false
childman	true
childwoman	false
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Childfree (extended monogamy without children)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	true
womanwoman	true
manmanwoman	false
childman	false
childwoman	false
childmanwoman	false
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Open family (any configuration allowed)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	true
womanwoman	true
manmanwoman	true
childman	true
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	true
childchildmanman	true
childmanmanman	true
manmanwoman	true
child	true
Nuclear family (hetero, no single parents)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	false
childman	false
childwoman	false
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Anti-bachelor (hetero, no single men, single mothers okay)
man	false
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	false
childman	false
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Polygyny (1 man + n women)
man	true
woman	false
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	false
childman	true
childwoman	false
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Traditional monogamy (1+1 of opposite sexes, single parents okay)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	false
childman	true
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Polyandry (n men + 1 woman)
man	false
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	true
childman	false
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	true
child	false
Extended monogamy (1+1 of either sex, single parents okay)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	true
womanwoman	true
manmanwoman	false
childman	true
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	true
childchildmanman	true
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Polygamy (n men + n women)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	true
womanwoman	true
manmanwoman	true
childman	true
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	true
childchildmanman	true
childmanmanman	true
manmanwoman	true
child	false

A few minutes' inspection of the results reveals how the regular expression in this model encodes the assumptions as to who is allowed to mate and who is allowed to raise children in a powerful and concise manner. Specifically, each of the regexs is short enough to fit on the front of a T-shirt, with room to spare, so that no geekish onlooker would need to wonder what your family philosophy consisted of.

Someone's ringing the bell

Designer Li Jianye has designed a pair of doorbells for computer people (an Enter key) and for musical people (piano keys). I say, "why stop there?" How about a doorbell which sends you an SMS message when someone pushes it, so that if you are away from home, you would know about the event? It could have a little webcam to snap a picture of your visitor to send to you via MMS, and if you chose, there could be a little screen where you could message your visitor back.

I'm pretty sure that it could be implemented pretty easily with an Arduino Diecimila and a home computer.

Probably you would want an option to lock out the messaging functions if the doorbell gets pressed too often, to frustrate any annoying pranksters in your neighborhood.


Update: This was also posted on the Make: Blog. Also, I have an Arduino coming in the mail soon, so we'll see what doorbell-related tricks we might be able to have it do.

SQL nerd alert

Drop,
originally uploaded by mag3737.

It's Mr. DROP TABLE;

Design notes

We were talking at work today in the context of telephone tech support and I came up with the idea of a best practices document entitled The Seven Words You Can't Use in a User Interface. I was thinking of a scenario where the support person would have to tell the user "Now click on the button whose name begins with C. No, the other one."

Not those Seven Words.

Well, maybe.

Thinking of Windows 7

I am certain I'm not the only one to have come up with this meme, but I may be the first one to have hacked up a promotional poster for Microsoft's next OS.

Source images here and here.

Tattoo

When I saw this, I wondered "Does this wrist belong to a girl named Ester Bond?"

(via)

Though I think that if one wished to use a tattoo to cheat on Organic Chemistry exams one might be better off using a programmable one for versatility.

You may groan now

1. Yet another unclaimed tubey domain name: wootube.com


2. If there's a group of psychopathic environmental maniacs looking for a name out there, might we suggest Helter Swelter


3. I learned that you can request a free personalized phone or email message from Optimus Prime. This gave me the idea to launch a copycat site, where you would receive a phone or email message from the robot's subclinically depressed sibling, Pessimus Secundus.

Cosplay Prime,
originally uploaded by downbeat.

Tiny Ural

I did a search on "Ural" in Flickr and was rewarded beyond all my imagining. Sadly, the domain seems to have been already snapped up.

Ural Dnepr,
originally uploaded by Max le ferrailleur.

Rien ne va plus

The game of roulette has been on my mind lately, for no good reason, and I have been thinking of what it would be like to stretch the concept out mathematically by altering the number of pockets the ball could fall into for any given spin.

Roulette Wheel,
originally uploaded by refmo.

Instead of having just 38 pockets, how about increasing it somewhat by replacing the plain old integers with something more transcendental? Of course, you couldn't build a physical wheel with enough pockets to accommodate all the transcendentals (or even the ones over a finite interval of the number line), but notionally you could rig something up which would choose a random real number by spitting out an infinite number of nonrepeating digits after the decimal point, and if it matches the one you had selected in advance, you get to win all of the bets placed. The house would have an edge corresponding to the zero and double-zero slots by taking all bets when a rational number comes up.

For it to be a sensible game of chance, you would want to be tossing your bet in against a pot of transfinite cardinality - either or more bettors placing finite bets, or else a denumerable number of bettors making transfinite bets would do well to make the pastime worth one's while. To keep things moving along, it would be well to have the random number generator spitting out digits at a faster and faster rate so that the process converges in a finite time, and I presume those betting would use similar random digit devices to select their own numbers to bet on as well. Rather than having something with an infinite number of lottery balls to construct their pick, or choosing one of the known transcendentals, or something, that is.

In the happy event that the house pays off on a bet, that person would have the privilege of figuring out what to do with a transfinite amount of winnings in such a way that does not destroy the economic basis of civilization.


At any rate, this scheme seems better than the opposite extreme: a roulette wheel with only a single pocket on it. Ugh, boring. Especially if you are the casino.

Another stroll down the boulevard of broken hardware

I picked up my Treo last Saturday to find that instead of having its screen in the customary off state it was already turned on, and looking distinctly odd. The camera operation would not work, and a cursory examination indicated that none of the buttons were working quite right. When I had a chance to look at it more closely, I found that it was completely discharged, and plugging it into its charger did not bring things back to life. Ooh, bad news, for aside from being my mobile phone it was the only place I'd recorded a bunch of login passwords for machines I'd been setting up at work over the last several weeks.

We took a trip to the mall to pick up an inexpensive GSM phone from T-Mobile (unactivated), and popping the SIM chip out of the Treo and into the new one was all it took to do a phone account transplant. The new phone is about a quarter the weight of the Treo, and I made sure to purchase a secure case for it, for I blame most of the trouble with the PDA on worn-out Velcro on the flap on its belt case, which would come loose and cause the unit to tumble onto the tiles many more times than I wished.

Back at home where I had access to my small hand tools, it was time to see if anything at all could be pulled off the dead palmtop. I determined that part of the problem with the Treo had something to do with one surface-mount capacitor soldered directly above the power connection which came off - I was able to reattach it with the same conductive ink pen that I'd done my previous bit of Treo surgery with. Then after numerous trials, I found that if I tipped in the battery while holding the sides of the case just so, then plugged in the power connector, I could get it to boot up, then use my one free hand to get into my encrypted password application, then jot down as many of the critical items until my hand would slip and the thing would freeze or die again. Persistence finally paid off and I was able to get all of those off of the Treo before I could no longer pull off the trick of getting it to power up at all. Though I had not by that time retrieved my recent address book entries or memopad entries, it was still a sort of victory.

So while I've long been a champion of the high-end gadget which does everything for you, I'm going to take a different course now and hold off on an electronic organizer for now, relying on this new phone and a low-tech PigPogPDA to hold the many activities which need my attention. I think it will be fine as long as I don't lose either of these items.

Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in

I know I have been scarce lately, but I swear it is all for a good reason.

It's hard to see when it's all moving so fast,
originally uploaded by milkfish.

In the middle of April, I received an email out of the blue from a former colleague of mine from when I was working software tech support/quality assurance. It had been at least a year since we'd had contact, and he was checking to see whether he had my correct email address. I wrote back telling him that he'd found me, and that things were still pretty much going the same for me since the last time we'd met.

Turns out that the same was not true for my friend - he'd left the old company to work for a computer startup nearby, and was wondering whether I might want to get together sometime. One thing led to another and when stopped by to visit I found that there was a grand total of three engineers from the old company who, along with an experienced financial expert, had set up the new venture to produce something new in the field of computer datacenter virtualization. They were looking for people who they were comfortable working with and willing to entertain the idea of a little risk to join their startup.

It turns out that although I had been fully planning to keep the franchise running for the remaining two years of my contract, the idea of jumping on board a tech startup was just the kind of chance I was positioned to take right now. Everybody there already wears more than one hat: the roles I was considering in the company include setting up the in-house virtual datacenter, technical documentation, and product release management. There would be some travel, too, plus a few more bucks headed out our way than I have seen for the last three years.

Sure, there's a possibility that things are going to come crashing down in a way reminiscent of the last tech bust six years ago, but in my reckoning it is not far out of line as compared with the chance I would be taking by not changing jobs. Although I am just about certain that I could make a go of my current business, it seems to me that with all things considered, it's better to take heart in hand and to switch. How's that for an idea?

So, I've decided to close down my onsite furniture repair business and am closing out my ongoing commitments to customers. I have already started working part-time at the new place while everything gets sorted out, but hope to begin working full-time by the end of next month. I have been really channeling a large share of my excitement over there the last month or so and I kind of hope to be able to spread some of that around before too long.

Fun with negative numbers

This is a screenshot of part of my browser today after I'd clicked on a message in Yahoo Mail. I am eagerly waiting to see whether when I get a new email, that will bump the total up to "0 unread."


More useful would be to have the Spam folder total reported as an imaginary number.