20140828

In more somber news...

My lack of time to post recently has also caused a lack of time to track news.  I haven't been following it closely, but the situation in Ferguson is just horrifying.

The police continued trying to provoke the protesters, with what would have been Geneva Convention violations if they'd been done against enemy troops (yes, tear gas in war is a Geneva Convention violation, largely due to unknown health risks, especially towards expectant mothers).

The National Guard got involved, but seems to've been deployed just to provide cover for the police provacateurs, rather than to protect the citizens.  I hope the governor pays for that, down the road.

It took several days, but the smears against Michael Brown came out in many different forms.  First, there was the claim that he started charging the officer from 35 ft away, but was dead 25 feet away.  Then there was the claim that he'd stolen cigars from a store just before that.  Then there was the claim that he used marijuana.  Then the claim that he'd broken the officer's orbital ridge, I think it was.

Let's first stipulate that none of those have any relevance, even if they had been true.  The officer approached him for jaywalking, got upset when Michael Brown gave him some lip (let's stop for a minute to contemplate what percentage of 17-year-olds have issues dealing with authority), then shot him.  None of that other stuff would have any relevance to the matter at hand, even if it were true.

And let's clarify a couple other matters of relevance, before returning to those earlier items.  First, the police are around to protect and serve the public.  They are not out there to be judges, juries, and executioners.  They should not be pulling their weapons unless lives are threatened.

Second, police officers should be getting trained to be thick-skinned.  They have to deal with people under a lot of stress, all day, every day.  They're going to be hearing people at their worst, all the time, and they need to be ready to deal with that.  They can't be dealing with that with their guns.  Too many people will end up dead, if they do.

To return to the earlier, for Officer Wilson to have gotten six shots off in the time it would take for Michael Brown to run ten feet, especially given that that would include the time to realize the threat and draw his gun.  It's an absurd claim.  Nobody can shoot that fast.  That's about two seconds.  I doubt a machine could fire a semi-automatic weapon that fast.

As far as the cigars, the surveillance footage had the portion of the tape where he paid edited out.  The lawyer for the shop also says there was no theft.  But even if their had been, would petty theft justify a death sentence?  If the officer had known about it when he made the stop?

Marijuana?  Don't make me laugh.  When's the last time you saw an aggressive stoner?

The broken bone?  Yeah, it was broken in 2008.  Lots of relevance to Michael Brown's case.

And the media played along with these claims without even questioning the claims.  This is yet another example of the media abjectly failing to be an effective check on government power and overreach.  This is the media being tools of the state.

The saddest part?  The local DA got a grand jury (not convened especially for the occasion) with nine white people and three blacks.  In a city that's 2/3 people of color.  Doesn't exactly seem right.  I hope they vote to indict, but it would shock me.

That's the saddest part of all.  Every indication so far, is that Officer Wilson will walk, without even a slap on the wrist.  And somehow, people have managed to raise $200k for his legal fees.  I have no comprehension of how so many people support his cold-blooded killing of a young black boy.  I just don't get it, at all.

So even if it does go to court, he's not going to be paying for it.

20140827

Keeping up

Haven't had a lot of time for writing lately; been biking early and going to bed early.  Only downside is that I haven't been doing the Quick4 workout, but definitely having fun with riding.

It's kind of funny, going on cycling boards, as most people talk about hundreds or thousands of miles; I wonder how they manage (unless they're young and single).  I've only managed 112 miles this month, but that feels like a lot to me.  And my longest ride in that time was just over twelve miles; mostly a lot of 6-10 mile rides.

I didn't much feel like getting up to ride this morning, but did it.  Glad I did; I averaged 16.5mph over my 8.5-mile loop, which is about .75mph better than my previous best (even over shorter rides).  I thought it was interesting that the top-end time wasn't much different than previous rides over that "course", but the bottom end didn't go nearly as low.

And I've been using my cadence to set pacing; probably power would be better (starting to wonder if a power meter is, indeed, worth the (very high) cost).  One thing I noticed this morning is that it makes a really big difference to maintain a cadence, rather than letting it drop and then getting back up.

One other small note; I've learned that doing exercise before breakfast (and not skipping breakfast) maximizes the weight-loss benefits.  And that's what I've been doing.

I'm not below where I've been before, from exercising (I once worked my way down about five pounds lighter than where I am now, but it took an immense amount of work, especially as I didn't do anything about attacking it from the input end), but I'm lighter than I've been in several years.  I'm hoping to lose close to another ten pounds.  We'll see how that goes.

Update: Forgot to mention.  My bike had a seatpost with a spring in it to soften bumps a little bit.  With it, I couldn't put both my reflector and my light on there, so I replaced that with a plain post.  Man, is it a pain to install a saddle on a post.  Especially my old saddle, which didn't have a lot of space between the bars and the seat.  I got it on, but it was a pain.

But I also replaced the saddle, just yesterday, with an "anatomic relief saddle".  I'm not sure I didn't want a saddle a centimeter or so wider, but definitely thumbs up on the anatomic relief part.  I'll decide in the next week or so about the width, I think.

20140814

Is this America?

I'm really not sure what's happening down in Ferguson right now.  Last night, my twitter feed exploded, which is really weird because it was all coming from people I follow for technology info, not politics.

I expected that the lead story in today's Washington Post would be about one of their reporters getting threatened, and nearly arrested, for the crime of being in a McDonald's last night.  Weirdly, a story that that reporter contributed to (wrote?  Dunno, there were two others in the by-line) did get on the front page, but below the fold, and without a picture.

The pictures (and video) I was seeing were pretty horrific.  It was de facto martial law, with militarized police firing on unarmed citizens.

It's probably inevitable that this sort of thing would happen, given how much military equipment is being given (well, free plus the cost of shipping, I believe) from the military to the police.  Once you've got a tank in your inventory, you need to justify its existence by using it.

Regardless of that, it's a terrible sight, and I hope most of the St Louis County police down there are fired with extreme prejudice.  A lot of people were recording what was happening, and it did not look good for the police.  It looked like the police were trying to escalate a peaceful demonstration into an armed conflict with live rounds (only "rubber bullets" were fired).

A lot of people standing around and chanting, many with their (empty) hands in the air, being fired on and gassed.  Many were apparently at the end of a cul-de-sac, with the police blocking the open end and demanding that people leave.  Somehow.

And the police are demanding that reporters leave, or at least stop reporting.  What the hell are we coming to?

The President said, a couple years ago, to the Egyptian leadership, that the US would be there to prevent this sort of thing from happening in other countries.  Well, what are we doing at home?

I know the President can't just move troops in, and I don't think he should.  But I'd really like to see him go down there and talk to the protesters.  Maybe force the police, 1-on-1, to explain what the hell they're doing.  That would get some shit done.

20140813

Back to biking

I can't say as I've biked nearly as much as I would like, but I have done a bit more biking over the last couple weeks.  Cyclemeter is very cool, and I like the additional (and more precise) data coming from the heart rate and speed/cadence meters.  I wish power meters weren't so freakin' expensive, though; I read an article this morning on why they're so expensive, and I believe all the reasons, but it's still as much as a decent bike.  I'd love to have the data, but it isn't worth nearly that much to me.

I still haven't done anything over four miles, though, and most bikers would barely consider that a warm-up (it's mostly been due to time constraints that I haven't done more).

I should get a much longer ride in tomorrow, and will probably start looking at bikes soon.  I'd like to get an actual road bike; I think that'll help quite a bit.  But it probably won't be for a month or two.  I've done a lot of research, and am ready to start test-riding.  I probably won't buy anything until the end of the season, however; I'll spend a pretty penny on it, but I'd like the additional value.

Plus, I think I want to get a display for the bike that will continuously show speed and cadence; I might go with the Wahoo RFLKT+.  I was trying to avoid something like that, but I don't like the phone display turning off.  And I don't think I'd like the battery effects of having that screen stay on.

We'll see, maybe I'll try the phone display, and see how much it chews the battery.  I'm pretty sure it's a lot, though.

I "Like" it

I just read Mat Honan's article about liking everything he saw on facebook for a couple of days (h/t Marco, and it confirms a lot of awful things I'd suspected. In particular, it's very easy to stop seeing human beings.

At the end of it, though, is the kicker:
By liking everything, I turned Facebook into a place where there was nothing I liked.


It sounds like Facebook has decided that its customers are its advertisers, not its users. Perhaps not a surprise, but not something of which I want any part. It might take an act of Congress to get me to create an account now. Yuck.

Engineering status

I just read an interesting article about engineers and status, and while some of it felt like, "duh", there was some eye-opening stuff.

The part that felt like "duh" had to do with (my take) attitude in interviews.
They [executives] won’t negotiate against themselves by being “passionate”, either. They want to be seen as supremely competent, but not sacrificial.


But there was some interesting stuff about MBAs in Silicon Valley, and how they've been pushing out technical people.

This part, the author certainly knows more than I do, although I've certainly gotten the impression that big companies (at least) are largely useless, in terms of innovation, because they only look at the loss side of the equation.

That is, they (yes, I'm slightly, though I think only slightly, exaggerating) focus entirely on eliminating costs, rather than looking at expanding revenue.

And that makes everything into a zero-sum game that can't actually be won.

The engineer's approach, on the other hand, is to look at possibilities for entirely new products that expand the market. That makes things into a positive-sum game where everyone can win.

The economy as a whole needs more of the latter, and currently has far too much of the former.

Anyway, part of the article talks about keeping the MBAs out of the loop, and every engineer should read that and think about it.

There's also a lot there about the status of software engineers, and that makes a lot of sense. I must admit that I hadn't given it a lot of thought.

Again, all engineers should read it, and think about it.

Fighting over books

I recently read Christopher Wright's take on Hachette v Amazon fight over ebook prices, and agree with just about everything he says (there are a few things I have no opinion on, because, for instance, I've never used, or even heard of, ClearSpace).

One thing that bothers me, though, is a qualification on his central thesis (emphasis his):
For those of you unwilling to go through 18 years of comic archives, here’s the short version: every company in the computer industry behaves like a sociopath. They will do good things for you for as long as there’s profit in it, but as soon as it reaches the point where they don’t have to, they immediately flip to abusing you, relentlessly, all the while telling you there’s nothing they can do about it, and it’s probably all your fault.


The qualifier is "in the computer industry". It's all companies (or at least all publicly-traded ones). Take a look, in particular, at the telecomm industry, for some other examples. Or the insurance industry, particularly before the ACA forced them to clean up a few of the more egregiously sociopathic behaviors they exhibited (not to get too sidelined, but while I don't think the ACA is great, it's an important step in the right direction). Or the banking industry, with how they tried to crash the entire global economy. It's a widespread problem, and the DoJ antitrust division should be doing more about it. And that definitely fills in my opinion on AT&T trying to buy DirectTV and Comcast buying Time-Warner Cable.

Anyway, to get back to the specifics, Amazon's monopoly-seeking practices are why I thought the DoJ was completely barking up the wrong tree in going after Apple under anti-trust law for its Most Favored Nation (MFN) contractual requirements.

And why I refuse to buy non-free Kindle books; they're not only proprietary formats, but also protected by DRM. Those are both monopolistic practices that I refuse to endorse. The DRM also means that you never actually own an e-book. Amazon can (and has, in at least two cases) revoked access to books that people had "bought".

Also, I have a small defense of Microsoft; their file formats were just straight memory dumps of what the program used. This made disk access very fast for reading and writing, but also made for a very f-ed up "file format". So the format changed whenever MS's internal data structures changed. So it wasn't always a matter of trying to throw off competitors. Maybe even never, although I'm disinclined to get MS the benefit of the doubt.

Robin Williams, 63, RIP

[NB: I wrote this yesterday morning, but didn't get a chance to post it until now.]

I just heard that Robin Williams passed away, and it's suspected to be a suicide. In a way, that's not a huge surprise; I don't know much about Robin personally, but depression is very common for comedians (ironic, huh?).  I know, too, that he had some drug problems, but I don't really know any details about them.  That certainly doesn't help with mental stability.

I'm pretty sad, because even if he hasn't done much lately (or maybe I just haven't heard about it), and he did have a few dogs, he was a fantastic comedian. Really, one of the very best at improv. I think I'm going to seek out some Mork and Mindy (which, I'm told, was largely filmed with Robin improvising), and maybe watch the genie's opening sequence from Aladdin (which was also Robin improvising, I've heard). I wish I could listen to the half-inning of commentary of a Mets game that I've heard Williams and his friend Billy Crystal did when asked, cold, by a producer who saw them in an adjacent box.

I don't know if I can stand to watch one of his most beautiful and touching ones, though, What Dreams May Come [It's well worth getting in HD, although it appears not to've been released on blu-ray yet.  If you still have HD-DVD, seek that out]. It just might touch too close to home, with his apparent suicide. It's one of the most visually stunning movies I've ever seen, beautifully melding painting and real life. But it was about a man who died, went to heaven, then watched his wife go to hell for suicide. And, like Orpheus, he chased after his Eurydice to save her. Not sure if I can take it. I'd recommend watching it, though.

Mrs Doubtfire was another fairly serious movie of his, though one that I never really liked.

I saw Dead Poet's Society when it came out. Williams played an iconoclastic firebrand of a poetry teacher in a New England boarding school, who tries to bring more emotion than analysis to his classes. When I saw it, I had just read the Post's review, and immediately realized that the reviewer had missed the point of the ending. He saw Williams' firing as a depressing loss, missing that the kids' "O Captain, My Captain" was his victory. Very good movie, though not one I've ever wanted to re-watch.

Good Will Hunting was another of his that I liked a lot. Mostly it was driven by Damon's "unrecognized genius", but Williams was a more-than-capable life teacher for Will.

Most of the rest of what I've seen from his was more outrageous comedy, perhaps with a serious side thrown in.

Toys, despite the protestations of Joe Posnanski, is one of my favorites. Like Totoro, it explores some of the wonder of childhood, but does have some seriousness to it. I must admit it's been a while, though; I didn't know who Donald O'Connor was, last time I saw it.

Aladdin also wasn't deep, but is a lot of fun to watch. I'm told that Williams refused anything more than SAG wages for that one, because he wanted to do it for his kids (after seeing its success, Disney supposedly gave him a Picasso or something similar).

I saw Hook once, around when it came out... I didn't think much of it, although I liked the idea of revisiting Peter Pan, years later. I'm tempted to watch it again, just to try to figure out why I didn't like it.

Good Morning Vietnam had Williams in Vietnam, during the war, as a forerunner of modern shock-jocks. I haven't seen it since it came out; I remember it being hilarious (and again, I wouldn't be surprised if much of it wasn't Williams improvising), but not much more than that. I do remember reading that the original Cronauer said that he'd have never gotten away with half of what Williams' character did in the movie, and I believe that.

He was in Happy Feet, where he was a hilariously over-the-top wannabe womanizer named Ramon and a funny pretend guru named Lovelace. They were both supporting parts, but both managed to completely steal scenes. There was a sequel, which I have yet to watch.

He also had some pretty good scenes in the Night at the Museum movies, where he played the supporting role of a statue of Teddy Roosevelt.

And he had a significant role (I can't remember whether it was lead or supporting) in the "board game alters reality" film of Jumanji. I didn't see that one until years after it came out, but it was pretty funny.

And now that I'm looking at his filmography, I see that there are a hell of a lot of things he's done that I haven't seen. I'd especially like to find some of the improv shows he did with Whoopi and and Crystal.

Resquiescat in pace, Robin, as you were unable to do in life.