stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

Blathering for Thursday, 03 July 2008

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:32:00 GMT

16:15: Mikal shared: Spam in the Cloud
23:30: Mikal shared: EBay Abandons Plans For PayPal Monopoly
23:32: Ahhh, the awesomeness of microblogging about microblogging. There is now a poll of whether to keep my microblog entries on a planet which aggregates my feed or not. Its interesting to note that most people don't seem to care about the issue.

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Another version of blather

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:50:00 GMT

And while I'm thinking of all things blather, I've been meaning to post this new version of the blather code for a week or two. This version is just a small refactor which allows for random other python scripts to import blather.py and put messages into the stream of messages to be posted online.

You can find the source here. A sample program to place messages into the blather stream is:

#!/usr/bin/python

import feedparser
import os
import shelve
import sys

plugins_dir = '%s/plugins' % os.getcwd()
print 'Appending %s to module path' % plugins_dir
sys.path.append(plugins_dir)
import blather

data = shelve.open('fetchshared.slf', writeback=True)
ds = blather.DataStore()

changed = False
for feed in data['feeds']:
  data.setdefault('guids', {})
  data['guids'].setdefault(feed, [])

  print
  print 'Fetching %s' % feed
  d = feedparser.parse(feed)

  for ent in d.entries:
    if ent.guid not in data['guids'][feed]:
      post = ('Mikal shared: <a href="%s">%s</a>'
              %(ent.link, ent.title))
      print post
      ds.AddMessage(post)
      data['guids'][feed].append(ent.guid)
      changed = True

if changed:
  ds.Save()
data.close()

Too easy.

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Site janitorial stuff

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:02:00 GMT

So, this whole kerfuffle about microblogging prompted me to hack the perl I use to generate this site to provide a blather-free version of my RSS feed. As a side effect I fixed a bug which was generating too many versions of the various RSS files I have on the site, thus removing 11,000 unneeded RSS files. That seemed like a lot to me (although not a lot of disk, just a lot of small annoying files).

There is of course the possibility that I removed too many, or broke something else in the process. Let me know if you notice anything.

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Blathering for Wednesday, 02 July 2008

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:45:00 GMT

01:15: Mikal shared: News & Politics: The Snitch - Boing Boing Speaks out on Blue
01:15: Mikal shared: When blogs collide... - Mixed Signals - Rupert Goodwins's Blog at ZDNet.co.uk Community
01:15: Mikal shared: BoingBoing and Violet Blue: Game Frakkin' Over | Web Scout | Los Angeles Times
01:15: Mikal shared: Violet Blue still in the dark about her 'behavior' | Web Scout | Los Angeles Times
01:15: Mikal shared: Regarding BoingBoing's factual dispute on Monday's Violet Blue post | Web Scout | Los Angeles Times
01:15: Mikal shared: Violet Blue scratches her head over BoingBoing purge | Web Scout | Los Angeles Times
01:15: Mikal shared: That Violet Blue thing - Boing Boing
02:45: Mikal shared: Blogging For Dollars: Did the Internet's free-speech guardians try to hush up a girl-on-girl love affair?
03:30: Mikal shared: Tuba Hero
16:00: Mikal shared: Perspective
16:00: Mikal shared: Mr. Asahi robot bartender makes its public debut
16:15: Mikal shared: Tardis sheds by the shedload
21:00: Mikal shared: NVIDIA says "significant quantities" of laptop GPUs are defective, stock tumbles
21:45: Mikal shared: Install Android On Your Nokia N810
22:45: Mikal shared: Roku serves up Netflix Player source code - Engadget

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Commenting more when I said I wasn't going to is my prerogative!

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:28:00 GMT

Ok, so I get to make up the rules. I had a spare few minutes, and it turns out its not too hard to generate flavours without certain tags in my extremely hacked version of Blosxom. There is therefore now a non-blather version of the RSS feed for this site. If you care that much about this issue, then you can always change the feed you subscribe to. For shared aggregators like planet's, I guess its up to the site admin as to if they want to use the filtered feed or not.

So there you go.

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Tim and Andrew don't like my blathering

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:28:00 GMT

Tim and Andrew don't like the microblogging I do. My initial response it to point out that this site is my personal blog and I can really do whatever I want with it. However, let's get past that point shall we?

All the blather posts are tagged as such, so they're easy to exclude if you have a RSS aggregator which doesn't suck. In fact even if you don't you can just hit next on your keyboard or scroll past them. Total time lost, a couple of seconds. Additionally, they're not very common -- there are 2,767 posts on this blog (not including this one), and 128 of them are blather posts. That's not really a fair comparison though, because I haven't used blather since the creation of this blog in July 2000. If we count only posts which have occurred since my first blather post (10 May 2007), there are 247 more traditional posts compared with the 128 blather posts. I think that's still a pretty good signal to noise ratio.

Additionally, I have always had some form of linking to articles I thought were interesting, mostly because I often go back to find them again later when I need to. An example is the example of how to do alpha blending with Python's PIL module that I linked to the other day. I was actively working with such problems at the time, and wanted to make a note of the site so that I could find it again. So, the reference aspect of this blog will remain because I find it useful.

Finally, I only tend to microblog non-links when I only have something very small to say, or when its technically hard for me to write a traditional blog post. For example my flights from hell to get to LCA 2007. Would you rather that I spin a comment which can be said in one sentence out into a paragraph just to make it seem like a bigger thought?

To summarise:

Its my blog and I can do what I want
They're all tagged if you want to read some things but exclude the microblogging posts
They're nowhere near the majority of posts (let alone words written)
They form a useful reference for me when I need to go back to something later
I only tend to use them when I only have a small thing to say or can't make a more complete post for technical reasons, such as travel

I don't intend to comment any further on this issue.

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Blathering for Tuesday, 01 July 2008

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:30:00 GMT

05:30: Mikal shared: Oh Yeah
05:30: Mikal shared: Californian drivers, put your phones down
15:00: Mikal shared: SSDs save battery power, right? Wrong.
15:45: Mikal shared: JPMorgan Chase Accidentally Breaks Into Your House And Steals Everything You Own [Taking It Seriously]
16:00: Mikal shared: The Pit of Life and Death
21:30: Mikal shared: Macgyver Gets Lazy

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Blathering for Monday, 30 June 2008

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:45:00 GMT

01:51: Waiting for the train to Newtown
04:36: And now I am waiting for the train back to Town Hall
04:36: Exciting, huh?
15:00: Mikal shared: LugRadio Decides To Call It Quits
16:00: Mikal shared: For whom the bell tolls
22:45: Mikal shared: ASPN : Python Cookbook : Watermark with PIL

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Blathering for Sunday, 29 June 2008

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:15:00 GMT

02:51: Arrived in Sydney, I'm working from the office here for the week
16:39: In the Sydney office. I got to Sydney just in time to catch a cold, which always seems to be the way.
16:39: I wonder who I can infect while I am here?
17:00: Mikal shared: To my neighbor who I saw pooping in his yard yesterday - w4m
17:15: May I just say that making a coffee in the Sydney office is insanely complicated... My kingdom for a drip coffee maker.

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Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:16:00 GMT

I'm getting really into reading second hand science fiction from the 1950s onwards. I read a few (but nowhere near all) of the Foundation series as a child, and I remember liking them a lot. Stolen from Wikipedia, here is a list of the books in The Foundation series in Asimov's suggested reading order:

C	Year	Title	Notes
	1950	I, Robot	Robot short stories. First collection, which were all included in The Complete Robot, though it also contains binding text (Mind and Iron), no longer in The Complete Robot. Stories: "Robbie" (also in Robot Visions) "Runaround" (also in Robot Visions) "Reason" (also in Robot Visions) "Catch that Rabbit" "Liar!" (also in Robot Visions) "Little Lost Robot" (also in Robot Visions) "Escape!" "Evidence" (also in Robot Visions) "The Evitable Conflict" (also in Robot Visions) Purchased from Bookbuyer's
1	1982	The Complete Robot	Robot short stories. Collection of Asimov stories written between 1940 and 1976. Stories: "A Boy's Best Friend" "Sally" (also in Robot Dreams) "Someday" "Point of View" "Think!" "True Love" (also in Robot Dreams) "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray" "Victory Unintentional" "Stranger In Paradise" "Light Verse" (also in Robot Dreams) "Segregationist" "Let's Get Together" "Mirror Image" "The Tercentenary Incident" "First Law" "Satisfaction Guaranteed" "Lenny" (also in Robot Visions) "Galley Slave" (also in Robot Visions) "Risk" "Feminine Intuition" (also in Robot Visions) "—That Thou Art Mindful of Him" "The Bicentennial Man" (also in Robot Visions) + those from I, Robot (without the binding story)
	1986	Robot Dreams	Robot short stories. Anthologised in a book with the same title. Stories: "Robot Dreams" "Little Lost Robot" (also in I, Robot) "Breeds There a Man...?" "Hostess" "Sally" (also in The Complete Robot) "Strikebreaker" "The Machine that Won the War" "Eyes Do More Than See" "The Martian Way" "Franchise" "Jokester" "The Last Question" "Does a Bee Care?" "Light Verse" (also in The Complete Robot) "The Feeling of Power" "Spell My Name with an S" "The Ugly Little Boy" "The Billiard Ball" "True Love" (also in The Complete Robot) "The Last Answer" "Lest We Remember"
	1990	Robot Visions	Robot short stories. Anthologised in a book with the same title. This collection contains Mirror Image, which is referenced in The Robots Of Dawn and occurs after The Naked Sun. Stories: "Robot Visions" "Too Bad!" "Robbie" (also in I, Robot) "Reason" (also in I, Robot) "Liar!" (also in I, Robot) "Runaround" (also in I, Robot) "Evidence" (also in I, Robot) "Little Lost Robot" (also in I, Robot) "The Evitable Conflict" (also in I, Robot) "Feminine Intuition" (also in The Complete Robot) "The Bicentennial Man" (also in The Complete Robot) "Someday" "Think!" "Segregationist" "Mirror Image" "Lenny" (also in The Complete Robot) "Galley Slave" (also in The Complete Robot) "Christmas Without Rodney" Purchased from Leigh's Favorite Books
	1992	The Positronic Man	Robot novel based on Asimov's short story The Bicentennial Man, co-written by Robert Silverberg
2	1954	The Caves of Steel	Robot novel. Purchased from Leigh's Favorite Books
3	1957	The Naked Sun	Robot novel.
4	1983	The Robots of Dawn	Robot novel. Purchased from Leigh's Favorite Books
5	1985	Robots and Empire	Robot novel. Purchased from Bookbuyer's
	1993	Isaac Asimov's Caliban	Caliban trilogy by Roger MacBride Allen. Purchased from abebooks.com
	1994	Isaac Asimov's Inferno	Caliban trilogy by Roger MacBride Allen. I have this one in large format, and still need it in paperback. Purchased from abebooks.com
	1996	Isaac Asimov's Utopia	Caliban trilogy by Roger MacBride Allen. I have this one in hardcover, and still need it in paperback. Purchased from abebooks.com
6	1951	The Stars, Like Dust	Galactic Empire series. Purchased from Bookbuyer's
7	1952	The Currents of Space	Galactic Empire series. Purchased from Bookbuyer's
8	1950	Pebble in the Sky	Galactic Empire series. Purchased from Gaslight Books
9	1988	Prelude to Foundation	Foundation novel. Purchased from Bookbuyer's
10	1993	Forward the Foundation	Foundation novel. Purchased from Rasputin's Books
11	1951	Foundation	Foundation trilogy.
12	1952	Foundation and Empire	Foundation trilogy. Purchased from Rasputin's Books
13	1953	Second Foundation	Foundation trilogy. Purchased from Bookbuyer's
	1997	Foundation's Fear	Second Foundation trilogy by Gregory Benford. Purchased from Bookbuyer's
	1998	Foundation and Chaos	Second Foundation trilogy by Greg Bear.
	1999	Foundation's Triumph	Second Foundation trilogy by David Brin. Purchased from Bookbuyer's
14	1982	Foundation's Edge	Final chronological Foundation books. Purchased from bookstore in a basement, Curtin
15	1986	Foundation and Earth	Final chronological Foundation books.

Next step, read them.

Update: this amazon list is also useful as it has a guide to the short story books and how they overlap, as well as a bunch more robot books written by other authors.

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The Stainless Steel Rat Series

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:15:00 GMT

I am increasingly becoming obsessed with science fiction from 1950s and 1960s. Again stolen from Wikipedia, here is a list of all the Stainless Steel Rat books:

Year	Title	Notes
1985	A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born	Purchased from Powell's Books
1987	The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted	In poor condition. Purchased from bookstore in a basement, Curtin
1994	The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues	Purchased from bookstore in a basement, Curtin
1961	The Stainless Steel Rat
1970	The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge	In poor condition. Purchased from bookstore in a basement, Curtin
1972	The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World
1978	The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You	Purchased from Bookbuyer's
1982	The Stainless Steel Rat for President	Purchased from Bookbuyer's
1996	The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell	Purchased from Bookbuyer's
1999	The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus
1993	The Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat

Additionally, there is:

Year	Title	Notes
1993	Stainless Steel Visions	Contains one Stainless Steel Rat shortstory. Purchased from bookstore in a basement, Curtin

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Raymond E Feist's Serpentwar Saga

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:06:00 GMT

(I went book shopping in Canberra yesterday).

C	Year	Title	Notes
	1994	Shadow of a Dark Queen	Stored in Australia (Box 1). Purchased from a garage sale
	1995	Rise of a Merchant Prince
	1997	Rage of a Demon King	Stored in Australia (Box 1). Purchased from a garage sale
	1998	Shards of a Broken Crown

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Raymond E Feist's Empire Trilogy

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:06:00 GMT

(I went book shopping in Canberra yesterday).

C	Year	Title	Notes
	1987	Daughter of the Empire	Stored in Australia (Box 1). Purchased from a garage sale
	1990	Servant of the Empire	Stored in Australia (Box 1). Purchased from a garage sale
	1997	Mistress of the Empire

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Katherine Kerr's Deverry Series

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:06:00 GMT

(I went book shopping in Canberra yesterday).

C	Year	Title	Notes
		Act one: Deverry
	1986	Daggerspell
	1987	Darkspell
	1989	The Bristling Wood - US title; issued in the UK as Dawnspell: The Bristling Wood	Stored in Australia (Box 1). Purchased from a garage sale
	1990	The Southern Sea - US title; issued in the UK as Dragonspell: The Southern Sea	Stored in Australia (Box 1). Purchased from a garage sale
		Act two: The Westlands
	1991	A Time of Exile
	1992	A Time of Omens
	1993	Days of Blood and Fire
	1994	Days of Air and Darkness
		Act two: The Dragon Mage
	1997	The Red Wyvern
	1998	The Black Raven
	2000	The Fire Dragon
		Act two: The Silver Wyrm
	2006	The Gold Falcon - US title; issued in the UK as the fourth book of The Dragon Mage
	2007	The Spirit Stone - US title; issued in the UK as the fifth book of The Dragon Mage
	2008	The Shadow Isle - US title; issued in the UK as the sixth book of The Dragon Mage
	2009 (not yet released)	The Silver Mage

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Blathering for Saturday, 28 June 2008

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

03:00: Mikal shared: (Apocryphal?) anecdote about Fahrenheit 451

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Blathering for Thursday, 26 June 2008

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:30:00 GMT

15:00: Mikal shared: ICANN Board Approves Wide Expansion of TLDs
15:00: Mikal shared: Crooks Nab Citibank ATM Codes, Steal Millions
15:30: Mikal shared: Wired on Google Android
15:30: Mikal shared: Doodle forerunners for Flickr, Twitter, etc
23:30: Mikal shared: HOW TO - Hide an airplane factory

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Isaac Asimov's Inferno

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:05:00 GMT

Inferno is the second Asimov universe book written by Roger MacBride Allen. Much like Asimov's Robots and Empire and Caliban, its what I will call an "issue book". In Robots and Empire the issue at hand was that having a long life results in risk adversity and therefore the stagnation of society as a whole. In Caliban the issue was the over protection of humans by robots, and the ultimately corrupting nature of living in a society built on slavery (even of machines), as well as stagnation caused by the risk adversity of the robots themselves. In this second Allen book, the issue is the exploitation of the "new law" robots who ultimately become the new slaves in return for a chance at freedom later. This exploitation is a criminal offence, so of course they end up with a society in which pretty much everyone has dirty hands of some form.

Overall this was a good read, and probably a better book than Inferno. I certainly found it easier to read and more enjoyable. I read the majority of the book on a single set of flights between the US and Australia because it was such a good read.

Its interesting that the Amazon reviews for this book are mostly negative, and I can see the point they're trying to make. There are certainly opportunities for Prospero's psychology and the overall political situation created by the massive disruption of the society to be explored more. Additionally, the murder mystery is resolved very rapidly at the end of the book after crawling progress during the majority of the book. Then again, that's just like Caves of Steel and Naked Sun, which both are resolved rapidly at the end of the book and gloss over issues which aren't core to the story. I guess you can chose to tell a story many different ways, and just because Allen didn't chose to tell it the way that the Amazon reviewers thought he should doesn't make his choice incorrect.

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Blathering for Wednesday, 25 June 2008

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

17:45: Mikal shared: Brothel on wheels
17:48: I have to stop trying to keep up with my incoming email... Its a losing game, and if I did read it all I would never get anything else done.
19:24: The AFP (the police force which patrols Canberra) seem to be cracking down on people riding bikes without helmets heaps. I have seem two people pulled over by patrol cars for a stern talking to in the last two days.
21:30: Mikal shared: Diary of a Failed Startup -- the 100-word version [Silicon Valley Users Guide]
21:30: Mikal shared: Angry Young Sisters Protest High Gas Prices After Losing Their Cable [Civil Disobedience]
22:15: Mikal shared: How Facebook serves pictures
23:00: Mikal shared: The Stalled Server Room - The Daily WTF
23:00: Mikal shared: Japanese telco institutes upload caps... of 30GB... daily
23:00: Mikal shared: Three-year old calls 911 for help

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Blathering for Tuesday, 24 June 2008

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:45:00 GMT

00:23: IPv6 traffic is free at the ANU at the moment... This is cool, and finally there is a use for the Hurrican Electric IPv6 tunnel I have at home!
00:30: Mikal shared: Lego Secret Vault Contains All Sets In History | Gizmodo Australia
00:31: Now the problem is, how do I get all the tools I know and love (like ssh) to work with ipv6?
18:30: Mikal shared: Luxury home is too radioactive to live in
23:45: Mikal shared: Govt unveils early intervention payments for autistic children

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Blathering for Monday, 23 June 2008

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:31:00 GMT

15:00: Mikal shared: Ten most densely populated technology startup regions [Startups]
15:15: Mikal shared: Video: Jeff Dean's Google I/O Presentation
18:43: In Canberra. I caught the bus into ANU this morning, and have so far achieved office, keys, cake and confusion. Next steps: work out how to get an external monitoring working on my laptop, and wonder about why there is a supermarket where the Civic library used to be.
19:00: Mikal shared: The Slowest Mail Servers in the World
19:48: Wow. Most of my PlanetLab nodes are offline. Apparently the planned upgrade has eaten lots of their machines, which is a bit sad. They do say they're looking into it though.
19:57: How odd. Someone on SourceForge asked to take over Panda (my PDF code from ages ago). However, they didn't bother to contact me directly, and just clicked on a button in the SF interface. I wonder what they intended to do with the code?
20:00: Mikal shared: 1.5 Million Australian Students Dump Outlook/Exchange For Gmail
23:31: I just went to a seminar on thesis production for my part time PhD. It was quite interesting, with some useful statistics. For example -- students at ANU on average take 4.3 full time years to complete their thesis. The national average is 4.5 years. It is of course hard to get scholarship funding for more than three years now though. Also, 80% of ANU postgraduate students finish, whereas the national average is only 65%.

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