wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.
I’m not sure this wingsuit flying is actually possible; must all be Photoshop or soundstage work :-). Amazing stuff (I viscerally flinched several times), if perhaps not the best way to avoid a Darwin Award. Thanks (I think) to Ellery for the pointer.
Tags: flying, simply amazing, Video, wingsuitOver the holidays we bought a APC home battery backup system for our “server” iMac. This came with their PowerChute software, which allows the backup to notify the computer when the power goes out, so the computer can shut down semi-gracefully when the battery gets low during an outage.
I was debating whether to install this software (which in theory supports Mac OS X), so I did some Googling first. There wasn’t anything very concrete, but there were some suggestions that Apple had included this kind of software in OS X at some point, and that Apple’s was much better than APC’s.
So I plugged in the provided cable that ran from the battery backup to a USB port, and Lo! and Behold! it immediately recognized the battery backup and nifty new options appeared in the Energy Saver panel of System Preferences! I set it to shutdown when the battery was down to 95% of capacity, and unplugged the battery backup from the wall, and it shut down beautifully. Without APC’s software.
Problem solved!
Thanks to all those that contributed to the many technologies great and small that allowed me to figure this out quickly and without having to call people, or post questions, or any of those annoying things.
Tags: apc, battery backup, computers, Computing, googling, mac os x, search, software, system preferences, web
A small bag of holiday wishes
Here’s hoping that everyone out there is having a happy winter break, however that plays out in your life.
We’re spending an excellent week and a half in Arkansas at my parents’, enjoying the company of the family and a gluttony of food and books. Best wishes to all!
Tags: Family, Flickr, food, Friends, happy holidays, holiday, holidays, my photography, winter
There’ve been various mutterings about the fact that Obama may have to give us his electronic communications tools like e-mail and his Blackberry due to both security and transparency concerns. However, as Summatus Mentis points out:
You know what this means right? It means that there are 14 year olds that are more connected than our president is currently.
Not to mention 8 and 10 year olds.
Yup, this whole no-e-mail thing seems pretty messed up. You’d think that the full resources of the United States ought to be able to do better than sending the poor fellow into the IT stone age as his reward for being elected to the highest office in the land. What I’d really rather see is some of that “Yes we can” attitude applied to this problem, both because I think it makes sense for the way that Obama works and because it has the potential to improve the security and sensibility of everyone’s IT usage.
At the moment, for example, most people’s use of e-mail is pretty haphazard and insecure. Almost no one is using digital signatures, so forging e-mail is all too easy, which then makes certain kinds of phishing scams far easier to perpetrate. Widespread use of a proper signature system would in fact make large quantities of e-mail spam trivial to identify, as messages that didn’t bear a certified signature could be discarded without further consideration. Similarly, there are quality (if greatly underused) tools that allow us to encrypt important e-mails in such a way that they can’t be (easily) read by anyone other than the intended recipient.
What better opportunity, then, to do better?
A politician (including a President) has many important roles, and one of those is to help inform and educate the public on matters of significance. And this isn’t a matter of elitism, it’s a simple matter of access to resources. There are lots of things that I recognize are probably “important”, but don’t have the time or resources to become expert on. One would presume that if the President labeled something as “important” whole staffs could pop into existence to study the issue, generate summary reports and recommendations, etc.
Here, then, we have a chance for Obama to say that he doesn’t want to lose his electronic tools, and bring the scientific and technological resources to bear to secure and archive those transactions as required by his office. The process itself should be transparent, as the best security is obtained through transparent use of high-quality algorithms and tools, which then means that many of the benefits of this analysis and research can be shared more widely. If, for example, the President started using digital signatures on his public messages, you can bet that all the hip kids (i.e., the people that will be running the world in 10 years) would be installing the software needed to check those signatures at warp factor 9. Then they’d start signing their messages, and the snowball would be off down the mountainside.
These sorts of technologies depend heavily on a perceived use — people aren’t going to adopt X until they perceive that enough other people are using X to make it worth their while. As a small fry, I can adopt all I want and rant ’til I’m blue, but I don’t have the necessary weight to pull much of anyone along with me. Obama, on the other hand, can have a profound influence through fairly simple actions.
This could also open up a wonderful public discussion of security in general, which impacts everything from Facebook to ATM PINs to electronic voting machines, things that are woven deep into the fabric of our social, economic, and political lives. Things that matter, but which we take for granted or ignore.
So now’s the time — likely the best time ever — to move us all forward instead of holding our newly elected President back.
Yes we can.
Tags: digital signatures, electronic communications tools, encryption, government, Obama, president, Research, security, softwareAbout a year ago my wonderful sister strongly recommended Touch the sound: A sound journey with Evelyn Glennie, and has gently badgered me about it ever since. I ordered it through inter-library loan up at the U and it arrived! I’m happy to report that it’s every bit as good as Misty suggested, and has been a real treat.
I first heard about Glennie several years ago from a student, and I think I filed her (without any data and without hearing any of her work) in the “Novelty Act” category in my head. This film does a wonderful job of shattering that preconception - she is a remarkable talent with truly amazing rhythmic sense and control. More importantly, she has a real deftness to her playing and a wonderful response in her improvisation. I can imagine a person with good coordination learning to bang out patterns, but she has a subtlety and range that would be the envy of most musicians, and her improvisations with other musicians (e.g, Fred Frith, Ondekoza) is a joy to watch and to listen to.
Frith is a particularly apt pairing, as they both share a combination of power and gentle subtlety that make their improvisations together incredibly rich. There’s a CD of their improvisations on that day which has happily flown onto my wish list :-).
My only complaint about the film is really entirely unfair. I (and I suspect most people) would dearly love to better understand what her experience of music is, as it’s presumably quite different from that of hearing folk. As she says in the film, however, hearing people can’t typically give any helpful account of their experience of hearing, so it’s not terribly fair to expect her to give an account either. I happily take her point, but that doesn’t do anything to quell the rush of questions:
All really fine stuff, and definitely recommended.
Tags: Evelyn Glennie, film, Fred Frith, improvisation, Misty, Music, Ondekoza, perception, percussion, soundI’m exhausted and am going to bed, but it’s been a truly amazing night. McCain was gracious in a (crushing) defeat, and Obama was humble, inclusive, and inspiring in his acceptance. It was in so many ways a night to be proud of the U.S. after so many years of cringe-inducing stupidity and greed.
For me the most powerful image of the night was Obama’s and Biden’s families on the stage together after Obama’s acceptance speech in Chicago. There we saw black and white children hugging and celebrating together on stage, interacting with a comfort that would have inspired beatings, or worse, in the living memory of many who voted. These children will walk the halls of the White House, not as tourists, but as residents. These children’s lives are one giant step closer to the dream espoused in the Civil Rights Movement, in the Suffragette Movement, in the Emancipation Proclamation, and in the Declaration of Independence. These children represent our future, as do all children.
Obama was elected on the promise that he can help us make a better world for all our children. Now we all have an obligation to work with the people we elected to make good on those promises.
Thanks to the great folks that came over to watch the returns with us, and for all the friends and family that we shared this with on-line and on the phone. It was an honor to have shared this historic night with you all.
Tags: elections, Politics, presidentToday has no doubt been one of the longest and most unpleasant day’s in John McCain’s professional life. He’s been smacked, and smacked soundly, and lost what is almost certainly his last chance to be President of the United States.
That doesn’t mean he can’t still at least one more great service for his country.
He can try to return the Republican Party to their senses. The party of Eisenhower and Lincoln has been hijacked by wingnuts who would paint me a commie wacko for believing bizarre ideas like women and blacks are people, education and science are key to the health and future of the country, genuine love and affection is a precious thing wherever we find it, the founding fathers meant it when they emphasized the separation of church and state, and the federal government has a vital role in investing in the future of the country. These aren’t radical leftist ideas - these are ideas that were the bread and butter of Eisenhower style Republicans, ideas that grow directly from the ideals laid out by the founding fathers. The Republican Party, however, has been carted off into crazy land by deeply fundamentalist, irrational, anti-competence nutjobs.
And it’s not just me that feels that way. Colin Powell is one of the most articulate and best known Republican defectors in this election, but he’s just the public face of a much bigger discontent with their party. Tonight the Republican party suffered a shattering defeat tonight on almost every front, and alarm bells must be ringing up and down conservative corridors all across the country.
I’m no Republican, I’m absolutely thrilled with the results tonight, and I’m a lot more likely to vote for a donkey than an elephant. I do, however, have a vested interest in a healthy, vigorous democracy, as do we all. And that isn’t best served by a single dominant party with only a crippled opposition party. Just as importantly, if the Republican party can be brought to its senses, it allows a much more realistic spectrum of political discussion which is vital as we face a broad array of shifting challenges.
So McCain can make yet another valuable contribution to our country. He can help fix one of the two major political parties in this country at a point where they desperately need the help. With the help of defectors like Powell he can bring together the sensible folks in his party, the people that can do basic math, balance budgets, value competence over cronyism, and focus on progress instead of division.
McCain’s concession speech was a gracious view of the man that inspired so much enthusiasm 8 years ago and across his career. I hope he can make something good out of the the bitter lessons of this election and the last eight years, and work to heal his party (although maybe not too quickly).
Both Obama and McCain have important work to do, and we all benefit if they succeed. Wish them well.
Tags: democracy, elections, government, McCain, Obama, Politics, presidentTeachers all have their answers for why they teach, and it’s certainly not the pay. We’re very adept at sharing all the expected responses (the importance of education, helping shape the future, etc., etc.), and I’m no exception.
But I’m here to tell you that the real reason we teach is for the cool drawings!
This gem was just penned by Tyler Hutchison for possible use as an illustration for a UMM piece on the paper Tyler and I wrote with Brian Ohs that won the best paper award at EuroGP 2008 in Naples earlier this year. I’m the distinguishedly disheveled fellow in the middle, Brian is steering the ship up front, and Tyler is the terrified fellow on the back (which is in stark contrast to his cool, composed presence at the conference!).
I’ve been fortunate enough to have students generate quite a few cool drawings of me over the years, ranging from notebook doodles to projects for art classes. I really need to pull all that stuff together sometime and post a little “show”. In the meantime we can all bask in the glory of the three of us riding the wondrous “Geneticorn” off into the sunset!
Thanks to Brian and Tyler for their fine work on this research project, and thanks to Tyler for the super cool drawing!
Tags: Art, Brian Ohs, Education, EuroGP, illustration, students, Tyler Hutchison, UMMCommon working people has got to take the seat
in Washington, in Washington.
And I’m gonna tell you workers
‘fore you cash in your checks
they say America first but they mean America next
in Washington, in Washington.
— Woody Guthrie, “Lindbergh”
Is it annoying if we keep wrestling with the same issues, or does it just mean they’re eternal?
Tags: history, Music, Politics, woody guthrie
photo credit: Unhindered by Talent
Chris Butler is doing a specialty show on KUMM this semester that opens with an hour-long interview segment. He’s asked me to be his guest this week (6-7pm tonight, Wednesday, 17 Sep), and as part of that I was asked to list (and bring) my “5 favorite songs”.
Five.
Just five.
Yeah, right.
My 5 star iTunes playlist here at the office has 388 songs on it and runs over 21 hours, and that’s just based on things I’ve bothered hauling up to the office and ripping at some point, and includes almost none of our old vinyl.
And I’m supposed to choose five.
Five.
I eventually gave up pretty much entirely on the idea of “favorite” songs ’cause there was just no way to whittle things down that way. I instead started to focus on songs that have been important to me (”life changing”?), which narrowed things down a fair bit. There are a lot of songs I adore that didn’t really change me, but there was still a surprising number left even after that - a number considerably larger than five.
So there was swearing, consultation, swearing, trolling through playlists and CD racks, swearing, notes scribbled on battered sheets of paper, and more swearing. And here’s where I ended up, in no particular order. All these are great songs and songs that I’ve enjoyed consistently for many years. Would I make the same list if I had to do this again next year? Probably not, but I don’t think I’d be unhappy with this list.
And here are a few alternates just ’cause I couldn’t entirely leave them off, again in no particular order:
Lord only knows what I just gapped in the rush and will slap myself for later, but such is life.
I actually tried uploading this playlist to iTunes, but not surprisingly iTunes only has a handful of these songs (4 or 5, I think), so the exercise is clearly futile and I canceled. So, unfortunately, you’re left with my words instead of the wonderful music that inspired them. Check out the show (89.7 FM or on-line at kumm.org) tonight and you can hear the first five, intermingled with far too much of me talking…
P.S. In reading through this I realized that I never actually mention my wonderful family anywhere in here. This is really weird because my parents, my sister, my wife, and my son all weave through this in all kinds of deep, important, and mysterious ways. But none of that made it onto the page. Hmph.
P.P.S. There’s no jazz or classical on this list in any traditional sense. I made a decision to largely set those huge and important (to me) areas aside for this exercise just because things were already so desperate and thinking about those areas only made it worse. But Miles, Mingus, and Monk (not to mention Ellington, Coltrane, and Louis) all belong here, along with gregorian chants, Bach, Beethoven, Kodaly, and Shostakovitch. Life’s a challenge, isn’t it?
Tags: chris butler, favorite songs, great songs, guest, interview, KUMM, list, Music, playlist, Writing
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