I am … unhindered by talent

Since I only had a ton of school related stuff that I needed to be working on over Thanksgiving, I ended up spending most of Friday taking photos of needle art, and much of the weekend fiddling with the results.

WeatherGirl is a key player in a group that has arranged to bring the EGA’s 18th National Exhibit to our happy little hamlet in January. This is a pretty big deal and will bring some pretty spectacular needle art to Morris, and we’re definitely on the small side of the distribution of towns hosting the exhibit; kudos to the PRCA and the Stevens County Museum for enriching our community with this event.

A whole host of coordinated events are also being organized, one of which is a juried exhibition of work by local needle artists. I was then “volunteered” to take photos of some of these local works in the Stevens County Museum. Some of which will then be used on cards which will be sold at the Museum and the PRCA Gallery to help defray the costs of bringing the exhibit to Morris. So WeatherGirl, my Mom (my folks are here for Thanksgiving), and I spent many hours at the Museum Friday making it happen. WeatherGirl and Mom were a huge help, both in helping identify pieces that would photograph well in those conditions, and in helping put together scenes and vignettes that combined pieces and items from the museum’s collections. The top piece, for example, is resting on top of a cool antique radio, and the pastel crosses are on an antique bible in Norwegian.

It was a lot more work than I think any of us expected (except, perhaps, WeatherGirl - but she’s omniscient), but I think we got some good shots. It’ll be interesting to see which shots the Powers That Be choose to turn into cards, and how well (or not) they sell. (This whole commerce thing is always a little annoying. I like doing what I do, but thinking about how other people might purchase or choose gives me a headache. It’s important here, though, so we press on.)

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Mr. Tozier was kind enough to get in touch with an example of a CAPTCHA image (see right) generated by the plug-in I’m trying out, and I must agree with his assessment that only a “scarce class of psychics, known for their ability to read around the corners and edges of computer windows” would be able to meet the challenge so posed. Sigh.

I poked around some, and it appears that the issue is (in part) a problem with the bottom of the CAPTCHA being clipped off. So I modified the plug-in code so that generates images that are twice as tall as they used to be, and that does seem to have significantly improved the clipping issue.

Unfortunately, there are obviously still combinations of backgrounds, text colors, and distortions that are pretty hard to read even without the clipping problem (see the example on the left). Most of the images generated are managable IMHO, but clearly not all. For the moment, my suggestion is to hit reload before you start typing your comment if you get an image you can’t make sense of.

I’m also looking into some other options for CAPTCHA plugins. The SecureImage plugin looks quite promising, but I can’t (at the moment) get the darn thing to run. The kind folks at our web hosting service are working with me to resolve the problem, though, so hopefully we’ll be able to try it out soon and see if it’s more managable.

Thanks to all for your patience and to Bill for the feedback!

Shortly after posting this, we got the other plugin to work on WeatherGirl’s blog. (Huge thanks to the support folks at ICDSoft for their super-prompt and patient assistance in debugging the problem!) This new plugin seems much easier to install and admin, and less troublesome for humans to read. I’m so impressed I’d be inclined to switch mine over immediately if it weren’t 2am (i.e., I don’t trust myself at the moment to do anything significant that involves technical detail).

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PeeZed got quoted in a Nature article on the new Google Base system, which is way cool for all of us that get to happily bask in his fame and glory. But I don’t think Nature wants to be interviewing me as a “bioinformatician”, either. I’m at best a dilettante in that area and would recommend people like James Foster and Wolfgang Banzhaf as much more on top of it than me.

I didn’t know about this new foray of Google’s, but it does have some interesting possibilities. Some 15 years ago my dissertation research was in the field of Automated Reasoning (computer theorem proving). One of the things that was being discussed way back then was the problem of being able to replicate results. Many papers took the form of “We used our nifty system to prove theorem X” (where presumably this was interesting because X hadn’t been proven automatically before, or this approach had some other nifty properties). The problem was that the programs that carried out these proofs were often very big (mine was a combination of two large systems by other researchers and a bunch of code of my own pasting them together), and machine generated proofs tend to be long and detailed (and less than riveting). Given the typical page limits, the code and the proofs themselves rarely if ever made it into the publications, which means that there’s no way to replicate the results since you can’t re-run the proofs, nor can you check the details of the proof being reported.

There’s a similar issue in my current area of research (Evolutionary Computation - EC). To (exactly) reproduce EC results you’d need the code (which is again big), and to understand the analysis you’d need the details of the populations and individuals over time (which is huge).

One possibility that has been discussed in both communities is actually making it a requirement for publication that authors make their code and the details of their runs available to the reviewers and the research community. A sticking point in both cases was intellectual property concerns, especially for researchers that worked in corporate environments.

An equally important problem, though, is how to make that data available to the community in a broadly available, archival way. Sure, I can hang my code and data off my web site, or the conference organizers can post on their web site, but we all know that these web sites often aren’t reliable in the long-term, and they may not be indexed in a useful way, especially if they’ve been compressed or processed in non-standard ways.

This Google Base idea could look like a really nice solution to those problems if you’re willing to believe that Google represents an archival storage mechanism. And that’s a huge “if”. Google’s a corporation with all the risks that go with that and the attendant obligations to their investors and stockholders. As much as I depend on Google (I must use their service about a zillion times a week), they’re not a public service or a community resource. Thus it would make me nervous to rely on them for this sort of service, even though I suspect that they’d do a really good job of it.

That said, I still think it’s crucial for researchers share their data if we’re going to call it science. Replicability and analysis are key, and for that we often need a lot more information than fits in an eight page conference paper.

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…

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Yesterday I ran across this great bit from LeRoi Jones‘ (later known as Amiri Baraka) book Blues people (here he’s talking about the 1950’s and early 1960’s in the U.S.):

…because the black middle class confused legitimate political and economic desires with their shame at not already having attained these goals, they thought this meant they had to abandon history and the accreted cultural significance of the black man’s three hundred years in America. For the poor, however, “culture” is simply how one lives, and is connected to history by habit. (p. 180-1)

Wow - great stuff. I really love that last line, and since poverty isn’t limited to people of color, one could presumably make a similar statement about, for example, the “hillbillies” in the Appalachians. Or poor urban kids and hip-hop culture in its many colors.

I suspect this is a key part of why people like John and Alan Lomax worked so hard to find and capture this sort of culture, and it’s certainly a key part of why I find the early commercial and field recordings so powerful. It’s important to realize that these aren’t entirely transparent reflections of the culture, since these are creative, intelligent, and often at least mildly ambitious people who obviously bring a lot to the table. Still, though, this typically is the music they grew up with, and the music of their community gatherings and ceremony. It’s the music of the porch more than the music of the parlor, and as such is a crucial document of a piece of our country’s life and history (and contribution to the music of the world).

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On the same day that I (finally) post about my biking accident, PeeZed has an unfortunate interaction with a ladder and leaves. While the casual observer might not make a connection…I smell a conspiracy!

Think about it - there are just too many connections to ignore. PeeZed and I are the only two publicly blogging faculty at UMM that we know of. And that’s just the beginning. Certainly anyone with the analytical skills of an ID supporter can see that this is

a conspiracy to silence us:

• Middle-aged
• White
• Male
• Married
• Heterosexual
• Scientist
• Faculty
• At UMM
• Who are bloggers,
• Support and study evolution,
• Have highly nerdly tendencies,
• And have kids
• Who are heavily into theater (theirs and ours)

Surely this can’t be a coincidence, can it? First we learn that global warming is “a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s” and now this. Maybe I should start an on-line petition where we can all express our concern in an effort to ensure that Our Fearless Leader adds this to the priority list for Our Nation’s Security.

Yeah, that’s the ticket…

(Ain’t it amazing what you can infer from two data points?)

Currently listening to: The tremendous “Death letter blues” by Son House. I (slightly) prefer the recording on Columbia’s Legends of the blues: Volume 1, but what was playing was the version from the 4 disc American roots music set that went with the PBS series.

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The CAPTCHAs seem to be working really well. I haven’t had a single piece of comment spam since I installed it, and several “real” people have been able to leave cool comments (so we’re not keeping the good people out). It’s a little weird to not have all the spam coming in; it’s a bit like having an annoying buzz disappear and finding that the silence seems a little off at first.

Thanks to Gudlyf for the nifty plugin! There are a few interface bits that I’d like to change if I had a few minutes, but I suspect they won’t bug me enough for me to ever get to them, and the basic system works really well. My mail spool is very grateful :-).

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As I mentioned a bit ago, I wiped out pretty enthusiastically on my bike on my way in to work about two weeks ago, just 20 to 30 yards from my office (in the traffic circle by the Science loading dock). Several x-rays later it was determined that there were no broken bones, but I had some spectacular road rash to scare kids with and a golf ball sized hematoma across the first and second knuckles of my left hand that made typing a nuisance for a few weeks.

As a result I never made it in to class that day, and I’m still pretty sore in places and at times; us middle-aged folks don’t heal quite as fast as our young-uns. The road rash is mostly gone except for some of the worst scrapes on my right elbow and right knee. There’s still some noticable swelling on my left hand that gets sore if I do too much hand work (typing, filing papers, etc.). The big nuisance, though, is my right shoulder, which is still quite stiff. The range of motion is improving, and I can now use almost all of the whiteboard instead of just the bottom half right after the accident, but it’s still pretty sore when I raise my arm too far. Sigh.

The real story, though, is the wonderful response of those around me. A student I didn’t know from Adam happened to be nearby and immediately rushed to my aid; I’ve since learned that her name was Allison and I’ve luckily had several chances to thank her for her help, but I want to say “Thanks Allison!” one more time. Gail Boe was also nearby and ran over to help, and was crucial in convincing my stupid-man-self that I had in fact wiped out pretty hard and needed to sit down and take it seriously; a huge “Thank you!” to Gail for playing a key role in saving me from myself (and I definitely needed saving - sigh). Once Allison ran inside to get help all manner of people came to my aid in different ways: Barry called 911, Joe (and later Julie) got ice from the chem labs, Margaret called Campus Security, Tom (from Campus Security) waited for the ambulance to arrive, and Ann came down from the Division Office to see what had happened and immediately arranged to cancel my classes. The medics checked me over and said I really needed to get my hand and shoulder x-rayed. I turned down their offer to drive me to the clinic (although to be honest, I have no idea why - did I think I was going to limp the 4 or 5 blocks?). Tom from Campus Security offered to drive me, which I gratefully accepted, and told me to call then when I was done at the clinic and they’d come get me and bring me back to campus, which was very cool. Thanks to all of them, and anyone else I missed in my haze of pain and confusion.

By the time I’d been x-rayed and examined I was very tired, the pain had really kicked in, and I was a bit woozy at times. I decided that I was just going to go home, eat several Advil, and rest, so I called WeatherGirl (for about the 4th time that morning - the voice of a loved one is worth a lot in these circumstances) had her bring me home. I called Campus Security from the house to thank them for their kind offer and let them know that I’d headed to bed instead.

The photos above were taken that day after I’d gotten home, and don’t really show the worst of it since that was mostly wrapped in bandages. The bruising on my left hand was particularly impressive during the first week, but I never got around to taking some more pictures and now it’s pretty pretty much gone. I hadn’t even noticed the knee damage until I got home, which gives you a sense of how much more scraped up (and stinging) my arm was. I was really glad that I always wear a helmet. While, in fact, I didn’t “need” it (amazingly, no part of my head hit the pavement), you wouldn’t have had to perturb the system much to have the right side of my head slamming into the pavement with full force.

Oh, and I badly ripped up a fairly new and quite nice Columbia rain shell :-( There’s a big rip in the right sleeve (corresponding to the road rash on that arm), and several smaller tears where things like snaps and zips pressed the fabric into the pavement. I had a small bruise on my chest that I totally didn’t understand until I noticed that the metal zip on a breast pocket was pretty roughed up; it’s in just the right position to have caused that little bruise. (I felt all CSI-like when I figured that out - what a nerd!)

Again, a huge thanks to Allison and Gail and everyone else who came to my aid. In a world where people can die in the presence of crowds that do nothing, it’s a real treasure to live in a community and work at a school where so many people will come to your rescue, even when in fact not all that much has happened.

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In an effort to ensure that people don’t actually think I have something meaningful to say here, I thought I’d share three pieces of complete silliness brought to my attention by Sub-Evil Boy. So, because I know that you don’t have any real work to do (I know that I don’t) you might want to check out these three little videos (all discovered by Sub-Evil via JibJab):

• “Big Box Mart” JibJab’s highly amusing look at America’s favorite retailer.
• “The end of the world” This one is dead funny (ho, ho, ho) and features a fair amount of “strong language”, leading to one of those “This is damn funny, but should our son actually being finding this stuff?” moments. Parenting is oh-so-interesting as we head into adolescence… :-) It’s interesting that the web site folks don’t actually know who made this, but liked it so much that they made a web site for it.
• “Looking for my leopard”
  
  Those crazy folks at rathergood.com make some pretty goofy low-tech videos to accompany pretty goofy songs by a band by the name of “7 Seconds of Love.” Sub-Evil and I are contemplating singing this particular ditty at the next CAC Open Mic Night on campus, as the students tend to love this kind of silly stuff. “Soupy George” is also quite a load of fun.

Now get back to work!

Currently listening to: “Dreams from the wounded mouth” by the Degenerate Art Ensemble’s new album The bastress. Fun stuff, this!

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This is old news, but it’s new to me (which just shows how out of it I am!). Back in January the Knight Foundation published a study of over 100,000 US high school students which found that these kids (who will be in my classes over the next several years) didn’t understand the basic U.S. constitutional guarantees of freedom and (perhaps worse) really didn’t care a whole lot. Over 1 in 3 felt “the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees”, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of us. As Knight Foundation President and CEO Hodding Carter III said

These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous. Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation’s future.

Subsequent analysis of the data also suggests that comfortable suburban kids were “less appreciative of the First Amendment” than their rural and urban counterparts. While depressing, this isn’t totally surprising. Sadly, it’s not obvious that Our Fearless Leader would find any of this to be cause for concern.

Today we (largely) enjoy the freedom of the Internet and I can ramble on about things that strike my fancy without, for example, worrying (overly) about the implications of criticizing the government. We’d best hope, though, that these kids come to better appreciate some of these freedoms before they run the show. This Knight Foundation is obviously thinking along similar lines, as they’ve set up FirstAmendmentFuture.org specifically to address these kinds of concerns.

As a simple step, I might suggest an idea my wonderful mother brought up last year (when we were still reeling from the disappointment of the ‘04 election): Read the Bill of Rights out loud as part of your Thanksgiving celebration. It’s a fine and wonderful thing to celebrate and give thanks for (a whole lot better than a striped piece of cloth), and reminding ourselves what those amendments actually say and mean in our lives can’t be a Bad Thing. Conveniently, they’re mostly quite short, so getting through them no problem. If memory serves, we got so into it last year that we went through the entire set of Constitutional amendments, not just the first 10. And this with WeatherGirl not even being a U.S. citizen or growing up with Thanksgiving as a holiday! :-)

(This all assumes you’re in the U.S. and do this whole Thanksgiving thing, of course. If you’re not or don’t, then I still recommend reading the Bill of Rights, though, as it’s a fine little document. I’m all for exporting [and importing!] ideas, I just prefer not to do it at gunpoint.)

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First, my apologies for the lengthy silence. Things have been very busy, and I wiped out pretty hard on my bike two weeks ago (all is well now…more later…maybe?) and that slowed a lot of things down at a time when I really couldn’t much afford it. Sigh.

The happy news is that in a fit of frustration (1 real comment buried in over 120 spam comments) I actually installed a CAPTCHA plugin as I threatened some time back. After what was probably not enough time looking at options, I went with Gudlyf’s AuthImage plugin. It wasn’t too hard to install, although I had to modify two theme files and one “backend” file, which could definitely be a problem when upgrading WordPress or switching themes.

People should let me know if this causes them any problems. I definitely want to annoy spammers, but not the kind folks that take the time to visit in earnest. (If you can’t post here, e-mail me at “phi AT unhinderedbytalent.com”.)

This is particularly cool because Nick Hopper (friend and nifty UMM alum) was a co-author (while at CMU) of the paper that first introduced the idea of CAPTCHAs. (See his page for a link to a copy.)

Currently listening to: The wonderful “You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go” by Madeleine Peyroux from Careless love.

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