July 2005 Archives

As we go through life we all associate ourselves with different communities, usually based on work or study. Since the wide adoption of the Internet as an acceptable place for communities to form, they have. What is funny is that the actual community-based websites, such as Yahoo groups, MSN Communities, and private mailing lists are very non-community like. They are mostly just groups of people. This is because they allow for people to just observe and not get involved. Ebay, Amazon.com and others that have some mechanism of forcing communalism seem to do best. Ebay and Amazon Marketplace operate based on trust relationships between members, and most of the time it works well. Both sites utilize a mechanism where the buyer pays the seller before the item is shipped. In the common view of the evils of society this would seem almost impossible to trust. I have never had a bad transaction on Amazon or Ebay, EVER! This is just simple trust and good faith, not a community. Where the community aspect comes in is where ratings are assigned and some type of history is kept, exposing how trust-worthy each member is. I made the realization of the sense of community earlier when I went back through my Amazon Merchant history and discovered all of the positive comments that had been left about me :-). I feel good knowing that people in the community trust me to do the responsible thing and keep up my standard of responsibility. Another area where Amazon keeps a very nice community is the feedback system for all of their products. Amazon remains objective and only does censoring where they need to, other than that, the reviews are authentic and complete.

Lately I have felt myself falling away from some of my online communities, specificly Microsoft Beta. My Beta Brothers haven't seen much of me since the release of Windows XP, my last major beta program. The open-source software world also has communities, such as the Mozilla Foundation and its volenteers. The community appears to be dysfunctional in itself, but somehow manages to create a decent web browswer, among other things. That is a situation where if they community didn't exist, neither would the products.

When I started this I had more to say, but I guess I dont, so if I do ill remove this line and replace it with "UPDATE:" followed by my further babblings.

Confirm - to authoritively acknowledge a query. (mine)
Confirm 1. to give approval to : RATIFY (Webster)
Confirm 2. to give new assurance of the validity of : remove doubt about by authoritative act or indisputable fact (Webster)

"Scientists confirmed the 10th planet" - what the fuck is wrong with these media people? Only IAU can "confirm" a planet, sort of like only Catholic officials can "confirm" a saint. As of this time, IAU has made no meeting regarding the celestial object of designation 2003 UB313's status as a planet. AFAIK, emergency meetings aren't called for crack-pot Astronomy instructors to get planethood for a minor planet/piece of space debris. Also, would love to slap the people who are using the name Xena without the notations of 1. it isn't a planet yet, and 2. IAU hasn't accepted the name.

So there, you media pigs take your flowery, over-glorified stories of major planet roster updates and shove them up your asses where your heads already reside.

1. Tenth Planet - Xena was discovered in 2003 as 2003UB313, but early this year it was given further consideration, possibly enough to give it status of "planet belonging to the solar system of the star known as sun". I've read a lot of articles from places near and far on the topic (thanks to Google News), and it would appear that the word planet, as it applies in our solar system, needs to be defined. The count for number of planets due to this discovery could be 8, 9, 10 or 14. Eight from the realization that maybe Pluto really doesn't deserve the title, nine from status remaining as it is, or Xena replacing Pluto. Ten would be the obvious, adding Xena to the collective. Either way, it doens't affect what objects join us as we orbit our home star. My personal opinion at the moment is that adding Xena isn't such a bad idea (as long as someone denies that name and gives it a decent one), because in the formal scientific definition of planet as it exists, it is any body that isn't a star, but is big enough to be sphere-like because of gravity. This definition would include Luna, as well as most of the satelites of Jupiter. These are called secondary planets. The title Xena is fighting for is something of a more mature nature, the standing of primary planet. From this existing information, I would define a primary planet as anything meeting those criteria that doesn't belong to another planet. Lets see how that works:

• Not a star - Check
• Round - Check
• Isn't another planet's bitch - check

Ok, so it passes those, if we add the qualification of it has secondaries of its own, then that would disqualify other planetoids in our system from having the primary designation. Now lets look at Pluto:

• Not a star - Check
• Round - Check
• Isn't another planet's bitch - Unconfirmed

Hmm... hows that for an oddity resulting from a redefinition of primary planet? Guess Charon will bite that one in the ass.

It should be noted that the finder of the object might just be out to get his name in a science text book somewhere. In 2003 Mr. Brown found "Sedna", an object far smaller than Pluto that he tried to submit for planethood as well. Because of this fact, a lot of news reports have been in error, stating Xena as 2003VB12. 2003VB12 is the designation of Sedna. Whats interesting is that all of these names have been used over the past 3 days, but they could all be changed at any time by the IAU. The vainity of Mr. Brown is quite funny to me, and his motives are exposed with the way he speaks of his discovery, "Get out your pens and start rewriting the textbooks today", sounds like someone is over-eager doesn't it? Somehow I can see the IAU sitting on these two objects, as well as Pluto until 2015 when New Horizons passes by the area.

for shits and giggles here is a summary:

• 2002 LM60 "Quaor" - very minor, smaller than pluto, way out there.


• 2000 WR106 "Varuna" - about half the size of pluto, far away but in a slighly eratic orbit.


• 2003 VB12 "Sedna" - estimated to be about 70% of Pluto's size and having an orbit wider than Pluto's. Brighter than Pluto.


• 2003 UB313 "Xena" - Larger than Pluto, sometimes has an orbit that comes inside of Pluto's orbit, which results in it having a shorter year.

UPDATE: It would appear that Brown registered 2003 UB313 only after discovering that another astronomer had registered 2003 VB12.

2. Discovery team not making in-orbit repairs! The materials are on-board to make in-orbit repairs to the shuttle and tests have been performed for the "patch kit". Now that has been completed, NASA is stating that there is no need to repair the crack in Discovery's heat shield. My opinion on this is that, they have the materials, the opportunity and the real crack, why not fix it? "If it aint broke, dont fix it" doesn't apply here. There is an obvious flaw in the heat shield that could possibly reduce the shuttle's ability to return to Earth safely. There is a possibility of the flaw being fatal, no matter how minor the engineers ,who let Columbia and its crew die, believe it to be. I hate when history repeats itself, it was said before Colubia's failed return attempt that the foam hitting the vehicle was no big deal. I just can't understand why a group of people who are selected based upon their intelligence and talents would be so ignorant and avoid doing something so simple that could save the lives of the crew, as well as the entire American space program (and maybe NASA itself). It takes about 7 hours to complete the repair procedure to the thermal tiles, which is precious time to the mission, but failing to do so could have effects as far reaching as killing manned shuttle flight from the United States. We are already down to 3 oribters, which are supposed to be grounded until the foam problem is fixed already, but if Discovery is lost, then I suspect that NASA will loose its backers and be grounded permenantly. It would appear that NASA is under a lot of pressure to look good for this mission, but by not doing everything in their power to ensure the safty of the mission, they are dooming it to fail. Even if the issue is determined to be insuccnificant after Discovery's return, wouldn't it look really good on their part to have attempted an in-orbit repair on the shuttle itself and have it to land safely?

Challenger:

• Problem: Rubber cracking, causing fuel leak and explosion due to bad timing of launch on the part of mission control


• Solution: Give astronauts a way to bail-out on the pad.


• Follow Up Question: So how does this help us not blow up?

Columbia:

• Problem: Foam hit shuttle on launch, causing a breach in the shuttle's skin, resulting in a flaming return to earth. a NASA "Contingency".


• Solution: Add some putty to the payload that isn't allowed to be used on a shuttle yet, because it hasn't been tested on fake tiles yet.


• Follow Up Question: Does the putty payload keep the foam from falling?

UPDATE: What happened to the bird that Discovery hit on the way up? If they are concerned about a piece of foam that is under a pound, couldn't a bird be equally as dangerous?

Tonight while playing with MovableType (my primary blog engine/publishing platform) I realized something kind of interesting, without much effort or technical screwing, MT manages to allow fairly intelligent editing of a document. Months ago when I was creating some features in GITI's background (creating them, sort of, but not linking them) I created a module called "GITI Doc", which for now will take plain text (including HTML) and strip out things like carriage returns, tabs, etc and replace them with the appropriate code. This allows for direct copying from a word proccessor application. While this is useful for document storage, it doesn't do much for document creation. I think it would be kind of cool to actually have GITI Doc to be able to do basic document editing things and eliminate the need for sending files back to my server when I am working on documents on systems that don't belong to me (such as the UNCC labs). One possible solution to the problem itself is for me to always have one of my systems with me, another would be to have GITI or something else web-based that is already on my server for that task.

One concern that I have is that this type of thing already exists, in the form of "publishing tools", such as MT, and Wiki sites. I don't want to have to end up recoding something that someone else has already written, it would be kinda nice to find something that is fairly simple and already written and just integrate it with GITI (without mixing code). Another concern of writing it myself is that I won't be able to create all of the functionality I want. I think it would be kind of cool to be able to have my documents have a table of contents (based on anchor names) created from the paragraphs. That is something that is more Wiki-like I believe. The third concern stems from one of my desired results of this utility. I would like to be able to publish my documents automatically to my website (once it is finished), but at the same time I look at all of my old papers and things and I realize that I really think badly of my own work, so once this thing would be completed, that part would still be 100% irrelavant.

I guess that brings me to something else... I really want to make a lot more stuff in GITI be availible publicly. One of the things I have been wanting to experiment with is having my schedule for each day availible via the web. Maybe not the detailed version, but a marking of availible/unavailible for most things, or like "In Class" when I am scheduled to have class time. All of the logic for most of these ideas already exist in GITI's private parts.

Why is it that I feel I must justify everything I do? I added a journal functionality to GITI, and I question myself as to the usefulness of it in the future. I find that I like going back and exploring my past sometimes, shouldn't that be justification enough? Other times I feel pressure from people outside myself that want justification for why I do things, such as why I have a blog, or why I do or dont want to certain things. Is it not enough for me to just have an opinion?

If Chris can use lyrics to convey his moods in his blog, I can too, my current mood: Rush - Time Stand Still.

I turn my back to the wind
To catch my breath,
Before I start off again
Driven on,
Without a moment to spend
To pass an evening
With a drink and a friend

I let my skin get too thin
I'd like to pause,
No matter what I pretend
Like some pilgrim --
Who learns to transcend --
Learns to live
As if each step was the end

Time stand still --
I'm not looking back
But I want to look around me now
See more of the people
And the places that surround me now

Freeze this moment
A little bit longer
Make each sensation
A little bit stronger
Experience slips away...

I turn my face to the sun
Close my eyes,
Let my defences down --
All those wounds
That I can't get unwound

I let my past go too fast
No time to pause --
If I could slow it all down
Like some captain,
Whose ship runs aground --
I can wait until the tide
Comes around

Make each impression
A little bit stronger
Freeze this motion
A little bit longer
The innocence slips away...

Summer's going fast --
Nights growing colder
Children growing up --
Old friends growing older
Experience slips away...

It would appear that with just 22 days remaining, the fall semester is quickly approaching and my summer is about to end. I haven't completed as many of my summer objectives as I would have liked to this year. I have several titles still on my summer reading list left that I would love to attempt, but with the summer leaving me quickly, I will likely just try to get a few priority items in, such as Hubert L Dreyfus' On the Internet and the first chapter of each of my text books. Other tasks that I haven't gotten to include the completion of the updates to GITI, completion of my personal website and a redesigning of my blog.

On the up side of things, I have most of my text books here already, and most of my supplies are ready. Those things already being done saves me a week of worry. One thing that remains to be resolved is the status of my digital pen for the semester. I have only three courses on campus, and I only anticipate really keeping notes for one of them. My philosophy course and my CS course probably won't need me to keep a great number of notes, so it is unlikely that the pen will help much. However, my math course, discreet structures, will likely require about 2 to 5 pages per day as most math courses usually do. I have not really touched the pen (or a pen) for the entire summer, so I know I will have to work on my digital-friendly penmanship before I return. One consideration that has been noted on this is the existance of my Pocket PC, theoretically I could type all of my notes in Pocket Word, however, again the math course thing. Why carry 2 extra devices (PPC and its keyboard) when I could just as easily take out my digital pen and paper for such things in the other courses where I don't take that many notes? I absolutely hate my handwriting most of the time, especially because im slow at taking notes if they are legible, plus the legibility goes down as I get tired in class (although, I dont expect this issue this semester, because I dont have accounting!). At the moment im still having issues with the Pocket PC keyboard because im not familiar with typing on it much.

I guess I am pretty much "ready" for the fall semester to begin, but I just am not ready for summer to end. What a conflict, eh?

My pet project GITI is back under the knife again, but I haven't really let anyone in on the details of whats been happening, so here we go:

1. GITI now has the capacity to facilitate 1-way invitations to schedule events. I hope to add an outside functionality for people who know me to be able to file an appoinement/schedule request to request a slot on my calendar. In concept this seems like it will be easy, and I suspect it will be, same form, new method for submitting.

2. Invite contacts to existing event. this is a new feature that was created after seeing how simple it was to complete. This feature works on the backend, but I am still working on the details for the front-end and user interface parts.

3. System-wide journaling. This needs a lot of work, especially where the journals may become a little long, but I know have the capability to add journal information to each and every item in GITI. This seems a little odd on the surface, but it really helps with remembering what happened when and being able to get thoughts together, especially on items that are academicly linked.

4. Modules that are inactive DO NOT appear on GITI Summary anymore. I finally got sick of seeing empty boxes saying "no ____ to complete", so now the unused little shits aren't appearing. Because of this change I am also considering something else, which I will mention below.

ok, now that ive blabbed about what ive done, now its time to go into my plans for GITI's future:

1. GITI Command - think like a small text box, at the base of the GITI v1 menu bar, or at the bottom corner of the footer include for v2. This functionality will take advantage of my over-anal addressing scheme that resembles an object-oriented programming structure. I intend to have the box read GITI addresses, and pass them through a SELECT/CASE structure. Im thinking about making it a double-pass possibility, so that I could use full GITI addresses (root.giti.schedule.add) if I want, or I can pass only the local address (schedule.add) and have it to ammend the interface address, so it comes out like this: "root.giti" + "$command", where $command == "schedule.add" and the whole command comes back as $command = "root.giti.schedule.add", which would equate to a valid case. Another thing I thought about for v2 is the ability to have it to know what module it is in, so I could be on a schedule page (lets say "schedule.view") and have it to accept the command "add", so then $command = "root.giti.$module.$command" or "root.giti.schedule.add".

2. New GITI v2 navigation concept. I am having an extreamly difficult time keeping things straight in the v2 menu now that I am driving it from the GITI database. One thing I have given thought to is using the above mentioned GITI Command functionality to propel navigation, since all of the tables already include info for the GITI addressing structure. This will be a very firm step towards GITI becoming modular.

3. Change GITI's menu ownership from 'system' to $user - this will ultimately result in a great flexibility in being able to ignore unused modules or turn others on at will. While this will require a slightly higher number of entries in the database, it will in the end make the thing more flexible. With the way I am conservatively writing GITI you would think I was working with a system with 2MB of RAM or so. Keep in mind, GITI still uses under 1MB of database storage, a very tiny database. The server and technology are capable of much more than I throw at them.

4. Modernize Schedule and Todo! - A lot of the new stuff for Schedule had already been written, I just haven't implemented it, because im waiting to retire the old forms and things, and create them as GITI module files instead of as independant functionality files.

5. Rewrite GITI EMail functionality (this is unlikely to happen) - the GITI email stuff currently will log me into SquirrelMail in an insecure method, not very impressive, and I can also send email from a fairly featureless text-box composition form. This module needs to either be killed or majorly overwritten.

I think I might post some new screenshots soon, now that things work better. At some point I should probably remember to un-neuter v2 (put its scripts that do stuff back in place) so I can test it fully.

"File containing your grades could not be found". Is there any phrase more scarry coming from an academic records system?

Father O'Leary, an elderly priest, invited Father Diaz, a young priest, over for dinner. During the meal, Father Diaz couldn't help noticing how attractive the houseboy was.

Reading the young priest's thoughts, Father O'Leary said: "I know what you must be thinking, but I assure you, my relationship with my houseboy is purely professional."

About a week later, the houseboy came to the elderly priest and said, "Father O'Leary, ever since Father Diaz came over for dinner, I've been unable to find the beautiful silver gravy ladle. You don't suppose he took it now, do you?"

Father O'Leary said: " Well, I doubt it, but I'll write a letter to him, just to be sure."

So he sat down and wrote: "Dear Father Diaz, I'm not saying that you did take a silver gravy ladle from my house, and I'm not saying you did not take a gravy ladle. But the fact remains that one has been missing ever since you were here for dinner."

Several days later the elderly priest received a letter from Father Diaz which read:
"Dear Father O'Leary, I'm not saying that you do sleep with your houseboy, and I'm not saying that you do not sleep with your houseboy. But the fact remains that if you were sleeping in your own bed, you would have found the gravy ladle by now."

I think for the first time I have just become really pissed at UNCC's information systems management department. I have had my @uncc.edu email account for over a year now and have been faithfully logging into 49er Express at least once per week. I had never been informed of any way to check that account other than to log in and use the damn web mail console, but now I have run across a document from the college of engineering that states that an IMAP option is availible. I configured it in my client and assumed it wouldn't function, but it propogated folders and listed all of my mail. Why would UNCC hide this very valueble tool? I can't believe that this has been hidden from me for over a year.

Where do I begin with this... I am discovering that I lack the ability to trust. I want to trust certain people in my life so much, but it seems out of my grasp. I have been telling myself that I trust Chris completely, but apparently that is only under certain circumstances. Any time he and I have an argument I worry that I have ruined the friendship completely and I usually become extreamly worried about the situation, even if it isn't my fault I find ways that it is my fault and I blame myself for the situation. What I have been told over and over is that Chris won't leave my life abruptly and that there will be chances for resolution, but somehow I don't trust that. The other there was a slightly hostile issue while he and I were at a store together, and he told me to leave him alone. To get his attention and possibly get him to talk to me I acted like I was leaving without him. He didn't even attempt to follow me. How did he know I wasn't serious? I guess he really trusts my judgement and how much I care about him. I could never just walk away from him, ever, under any circumstances! Tonight was an issue of him just wanting some space, but I find myself sitting here, freaking out because he doens't want to talk to me. My thoughts once again jumped to me asking myself what I did wrong and what I can do to correct it, but should I really be going to those thoughts? In my enlightened and logical thought proccess I know that everything will be ok and Chris will talk to me again later, but my irrational and highly volitle emotional thought proccess is going immediately to being hurt, upset and seeking some type of resolution.

At the momement my emotional state has changed to feeling abandoned because of issues that came up while I was writing a blog entry that was going to be posted in addition to this, I am having these feelings and I need someone to talk to, but at the moment my mother is asleep and Chris isn't willing to speak to me, so what am I supposed to do? I guess I really do need more friends who are close to me. I hate feeling like this, I need to talk to someone and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. I don't know why some people have to be so selfish Maybe I should just go to bed and try to not think about it? But why would I go to bed this early? This sucks, I think I really need to write in a private journal or something instead of writing this here for you brain-dead fuck-tards who don't give a shit to read.

I don't know that I have ever been as nervous in my time with ceramics as I was on Friday. It was finally time to do some glazing, something which sounds as simple as a trip to Krispy Kreme, but in reality for me was much more strenuous. I think I was more nervous for this firing than my initial firing of the kiln, I guess more was at stake this time. My biggest concern was that something would happen and glaze would end up oozing all over my kiln shelves and into the kiln, or something more drastic, glaze trapping air and something blowing up.

Nothing bad happened during the Cone 06 glaze firing which began at roughly 10PM on Friday, July 1, 2005. The kiln was set for a fast glaze firing, which ramps at about 500° per hour, causing the firing to complete at about 2AM. When the kiln first shut off I began hearing popping sounds from the kiln that were more vibrant than I remember the sound of exploding pottery being described as. I still don't know what the sound was, but at 3pm this afternoon when the kiln was cool enough to open I was suprised to see that nothing had cracked, dripped, exploded or otherwise caused a problem. My guess is that the sounds were caused by the expansion and contraction of the kiln because of the unusually fast ramp rate.

Anyway, enough babble about my fear of blowing up, I fired 1 terra cotta and 1 stoneware piece with a clear glaze, the other piece in the kiln was a small stoneware piece used for experimenting with color glazes. All pieces came out quite nice. I have taken some pics, but they really don't show how well the terra cotta piece came out. There are a lot of duplicate images, but they each show something slightly different. Before I put my slightly attentive audience to sleep, here are the pics: http://www.disturbingthoughts.net/gallery/index.php?folder=/Ceramics/20050702/

Enjoy.

Got this joke via email earlier, I thought it was hysterical.
---

When Uncle Charlie died of old age, Bill was bequeathed his uncle's prized Amazon
parrot. This parrot was fully grown -- with a bad attitude and a worse vocabulary.
Every other word was an expletive. Those that weren't expletives were, to say the
very least, extremely rude.

Bill tried hard to change the bird's attitude and was constantly saying polite
words, playing soft music -- anything he could think of to try and set a good
example...

Nothing worked. Exasperated, he yelled at the bird. But the bird just got louder.
Then he shook the parrot. But the bird just got more angry and more rude.

Finally, in a moment of desperation, Bill put the parrot in the freezer.

For a few moments he heard the bird squawking, kicking, and screaming...

Then, suddenly, all was quiet.

Bill was frightened that he might have hurt his dead uncle's prized parrot and
quickly opened the freezer door.

The parrot calmly stepped out onto Bill's extended arm and said: "I am truly sorry
that I might have offended you with my language and action and I humbly ask your
forgiveness. I will now, from this day forth, endeavor to correct my behavior so
that such an ill-perceived outburst never again occurs."

Bill was completely astonished at the bird's change in attitude and was about to ask
what had caused such a dramatic change when the parrot continued: "May I ask what
the chicken did?"