The SFnal TV Gurus that are overrated

I have to say that there are a bunch of people that absolutely adore certain SF TV writer/producers that I really can't understand, frankly, why. These people get an adoring following for having done work that has been done before and better. They have also done work that has been lauded for its cohesiveness or originality, yet, in the end seems to end up rather odiferous in a less than pleasing way. Let's take a couple shots here.

JMS. I summon you! I and I sure that I will get his raving fans all over my back. The truth is that I was originally hooked on Babylon 5 during the Shadow War portion. I didn't own a TV for some time after I left home and when I became roommates with someone that individual had a TV. I was cleaning the apartment when I sat down to watch. I was hooked. The situation was interesting. Caught between two titans, ther rest of galaxy was trying to come to grips with these giants. Yet...yet...he ended the fscking war with a KIRK SPEECH!!! How lame. How stupid. How completely unoriginal! I switched off and was glad from the later sampling I had of the last season that I would pick up later. I tried to forgive him after watching the TV movie of the Minbari-Terran War: it was interesting and fun. I then tried to watch Crusade. It was...bad. Dull. Then I watched the pilot for Legend of the Rangers. Could we have had anything that wasn't a rehash? Consider: there was a menace so great and terrible from ages, ages past when giants walked the stars...wait. That sounds almost like a complete copy of the Shadow War opening lines. *sighs* It was nice to see that the english voice actress for Akane from Ranma is actually the babe that I thought she was though.

Now the second offender. Joss Whedon. Joss created Buffy from the corpse of the movie. It was an ok diversion. Now and then. If you took wit for 'pithy' one-liners. If you took great romance for extremely abusive relationships. If you took the ...oh I give up. I have to admit that I did, in fact, enjoy Angel. Someone else pointed out a better review of why. even so, the silliness involved was...extremely high. On the other hand, it had some truly great episodes. However, Angel died prematurely and that ended that. Joss went on to make Firefly. I want that hour of my life back. That truly sucked. Anyone who idolizes the Confederates as Joss seems to needs to be taken out and have a clue beaten into him (or her) with a few times with a muzzle loading rifle from the era. Go read Slave Trade and the tragedy therein before idolizing those that wished to protect their peculiar institution. To me, despite the "glory" that Americans have in the past mistakenly ascribed to them, what Joss was attempting to do there was not unlike what Ringo was doing with the wretched novel thar Randy reviewed.

Now contrast what they've done with what was done by Ron Moore with Battlestar Galactica. Ah. Much better.

More NERSC, LNXI, and Jacquard

Here's another press release about Jacquard that we bought from Linux Networx.

Wednesday Baby Pictures

Latest rendering of the Milky Way

Look here for more information.

NERSC accepts new machine

Officially out here.

This one sucked. That's all I'll say about the acceptance.

Jacquard has a lot of growth potential though.

Titan Clouds on the Move

Megatokyo Character Quiz

You scored as Dom. You're Dom! Dom 80% Largo 65% Miho 60% Seraphim 55% Kimiko 40% Piro 40% Yuki 35% Erika 20% Which Megatokyo Character Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

"Flu pandemic could trigger second Great Depression"

A major Canadian brokerage firm has added its voice to those warning of the potential global impact of an influenza pandemic, suggesting it could trigger a crisis similar to that of the Great Depression.

Real estate values would be slashed, bankruptcies would soar and the insurance industry would be decimated, a newly released investor guide on avian influenza warns clients of BMO Nesbitt Burns.

"It's quite analogous to the Great Depression in many ways, although obviously caused by very different reasons," co-author Sherry Cooper, chief economist of the firm and executive vice-president of the BMO Financial Group, said in an interview Tuesday.

"We won't have 30-per-cent unemployment because frankly, many people will die. And there will be excess demand for labour and yet, at the same time, it will absolutely crunch the economy worldwide."

A leading voice for pandemic preparedness said the report is evidence the financial and business sectors - which have been slow to twig to the implications of a flu pandemic - are finally realizing why public health and infectious disease experts have been sounding the alarm.

"I think that this particular report really signifies the first time that anyone from within the financial world, when looking at this issue, kind of had one of those 'Oh my God' moments," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

"The financial world is finally waking up to the fact that this could be the boulder in the gear of the global economy," he said, suggesting a pandemic could trigger an implosion of international trade unlike anything seen in modern history.

Read the rest from those goofy Canucks here.

Gotta love it.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Bird Flu Finally On the Loose?

Some people at work have been saying for some time that the Great Bird Flu Epidemic is a when, not an if. It looks like its breaking out rather badly in Russian Siberia. So bad that the Russians are having a hard time containing it.

Considering the probable state of health care in Russia these days that's a frightening thought that they got the first serious outbreak. Are we on the verge of 1918 all over again?

Sailing Bright Eternity Finished

I finished this book. Man! All I can say is what a stinker! I have no idea what Benford was thinking in writing this one. There were far too many tangentals in this book to be worthwhile. There were far more things that came out of nowhere that were not even hinted at in the previous books. Trigger Codes? Talk about Deus Ex Machina...in the literal sense.

There were some of the divergences that just didn't make sense. The Induction ship just bored me and I almost set the whole book down to walk away. Interesting idea? Possibly. Belongs here. Nope. It felt purely like filler. Badly written, dully plotted, and completely uninteresting filler. It was like he really felt that he wanted to finish the series in the previous book, but felt he couldn't so he had to make up a lotta crap to fill the page count. You could have written the account of teh recovery of Abraham instead by Quath et al of the Myraipodia, but noooooo...gah.

Shame on you, Benford. No cookie for you.

Avoid this book, people!

blech.

I started reading the construction book. Completely antiseptic. It's purely technical. It'll make for a great mental rinse after that last one. After this will come a Friedman's latest.

First Anniversary Pictures

Federalism Emerges As Deal-Breaker in Iraq

Angry over Shiite calls for regional governments, preachers in many Sunni mosques urged their followers Friday to register and vote in the October constitutional referendum — but against the charter if it includes measures to "divide the country" through federalism.

Link.

I guess I don't get it why this would be a deal breaker. What's tthe problem with federalism? It would allow for the Sunnis to run their section as they see fit. It would allow the Shiites to do the same. Ditto for the Kurds. I'd hope that Baghdad would be the federal disctrict like DC is here in the US.

The only problem that I can see with federalism is that it prevents an authoratarian regime from arising so easily. This is bad in what way? Guess for those that have those asperations, s'pose...

Next Mars probe away

Read here and here.

I'd really like to see four probes per launch window: an orbiter, a pair of rovers, and an airplane. Then again, if I were in charge, we'd see a lot more space probes as well as manned activities.

Venus would get a mission every couple years (alternating between an orbiter, balloon, and lander).

The asteroids and comets would get a lot. Those probes are relatively cheap and can be reused for multiple encounters.

The outer planets would get a lot too. Frex, each of the gas giants could use a dedicated weather sat. The JIMO mission was a good idea. Europa would prolly get as extensive of a program as Mars is. So would Titan. Saturn would get something to go exploring the rings even closer than Cassini will. Enceladeus is looking more and more interesting.

The Kuipier Belt and Oort Cloud ought to be looked into as well.

Then again, I'm not the head of NASA and I don't control the purse strings, eh?

Dust Devils on Mars

Pentagon Signs Off on NASA Launcher Plans

Pentagon says, 'Sure, go for it. Screw yourself and, please, abandon your rocket to make ours cheaper.

Read here.

Not hostile to the Pentagon. I'm just doubting the wisdom of the NASA decision. Shuttle derived? phaaaa...

Canadian New GG a Quebec Separatist?

I occasionally check out the Canadian headlines. I wish I had something similar for Mexico. However, there's an interesting doh that might be developing here...

Any Canuckistanis willing to explain to the mildly interesting Yanqi?

Census: Texas newest state to have non-white majority

Take a look here.

Not too surprising. The border states are the ones that are going to have that happen first. As that immigrant population spreads through the US and the immigration rate decreases from Mexico though it ought to be interesting to see what the end result is.

I ahve a bad feeling there is a bit of linear extrapolation going on here for the future projections. I'll check in about 2030 to compare.

Monday

I was in San Diego for a conference on the StorCloud Challenge that I am participating in for SC05. It was interesting for a few reasons.

The first was that there were a total of two (count them, 1, 2) women in the group.

Second, it seems that the few that are participating in all three challenges to be reach for the Trifecta Award are approaching it rather differently. They put together their storage app first and are only now selecting their science app. That's a little backwards afaict. The science ought to drive the rest, but, hey, that's life.

Three, getting up to try to fly (and missing) your flight at BFE in the morning truly sucks. No nniversary trips just prior to a conference. We had gotten home at midnight and I was supposed to get up at 4 am to fly out to SD at 6 am. frack. I missed that and the next flight that I could get through security through to wasn't until after 8.

Conference was good. Made some good contacts. We'll see where it all goes.

Reading Update

I finished the AI for games book. The last two chapters were the two that were actually mildly interesting. They dealt with neural networks and genetic algorithms. Neither was uber indepth. That's a pity. I rather found those far more interesting and useful than the pathing algorithms. Then again, those are far, far more complicated to implement and explain than the previous for the average coder (or wannabe) that's going to be picking up this book.

I have launched into Sailing Bright Eternity. I'm about 60 pages into it. It's not a bad read so far. Benford's info dumping alot to bridge between his Walmsley stories and his Family Bishop ones. Nothing really remarkable so far. Still doesn't feel future enough. Stross does that better. I'd like to see if Charlie can tackle a really long term book though like Baxter did with Evolution. I should be done with SBE by friday or saturday at the latest.

I'll be starting into Construction of Drilled Pier Foundations then.

This is a bad day

I stripped 3 screws, used the wrong screw, and broke a fibre channel fiber optic line.

Pre Baby Pict of my Beautiful Wife

I killed a bird...a report on my first anniversary

My first anniversary was an interesting experience. I took my wife up to Crater Lake. We stayed at a wonderful bed and breakfast at the northern edge of Klamath Lake (or here). She'd never seen anything like Crater Lake before and was gosh-wowed. She was amazed at all the volcano-corpses (or zombies as they might be) that were all around us. She grew up in Ukraine so there's little of this sort of thing there and volcanoes are something rare, beauitful, and frightening. I grew up in Los Alamos, NM so I have a slightly different view since we were perched on the edge of the second largest caldera in the world! We also did some canoing (the first time for my wife and daughter) as well.

Unfortunately, on the way back we were zipping along at waaay too fast following a minivan driver from Cali since I was due to fly down to San Diego on Monday at 6 am, when a bird flew down and misjudged the speed we were doing. It was trying to take advantage that the car pushes air up and over to catch a lot of bugs. It misjudged and hit the windshield. The speed were going and the splotch left behind was a little depressing and almost assuredly killed the poor bird. :S

I'd say killing a bird like that is bad luck. However, without realizing it, my wife and I were married on the anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Even though I'm not one to feel guilt over the bombing, that can't be a lucky day...

Genetics & the Origin of Life

Some scientists at the University of Bath claim that they think they have figured out the reason we have the junk, the encoding algorithm, etc, in our DNA. Interesting stuff. They think the whole sha-bang started in a hot soup situation.

Trifecta Update

The submissions for the Analytics and StorCloud Challenges are done. Analytics is our weakest link, if you will forgive me, because we had to cobble it all together - from start to completion - here and now rather than in time for SC05 like the other two. The abstracts for Analytics and StorCloud are done. The extended abstract and summary are also done for Analytics. We have an abstract, extended abstract, network diagram, and resource requirements due by the end of the month. After doing the Analytics, that ought to be a piece of cake.

We have all our vendors onboard. AVS is willing to give us a test license for their parallel AVS product. SGI is willing to lend us a half a rack of an Altix (20 +/- Itanium/2s) for the visualization in the booth at SC05. We're using an IBM SP here at NERSC. We're also using our embarassingly parallel cluster (PDSF) here at NERSC for the data reduction. DDN is providing us with 30 terabytes of disk on one of their dual controller storage boxes. Pogo Linux is providing the GPFS storage nodes. IBM's GPFS is how we're tying this all together and we have the test license to let us do just that.

We're going to be running CAM which is a part of CCSM 3.0 on the SP and writing to the GPFS file system. The data is then reduced on PDSF and visualized on the Altix in the booth tied to the 50 in plasma display there too.

I'm the one tying this all together. I have a backup, but that's if Avrora, my wife, or I get sick only. Otherwise everything system wise is on my shoulders. Fortunately, we're gonna have test shots first here at NERSC to make sure it all works ahead of time.

Cross your fingers!!!

AI for Game Developers

Immensely disappointed here. I have 100 pages left and well over half the book was dedicated to pathing. What a bummer. I was hoping for more stuff like what developed for Black and White and less how to get from Point A to Point B.

Big disappointment.

Should have known better.

What Dr I am...woo!

You are the Fourth Doctor: A walking Bohemian conundrum with a brooding personal magnetism and a first-rate intellect concealed somewhere beneath your charmingly goofy exterior. You are perhaps the most terribly clever of all the Doctors, though your occasional bouts of childishness get you in trouble. You never go looking for a fight, but when someone messes with you... good heavens, are they ever sorry they did.


Which Incarnation of the Doctor Are You? brought to you by Quizilla

IED Detection: I had the right idea

Smiths has been working on such a device, a handheld wand with a laser that could be pointed at a car or person from 500 yards away to detect explosives material. The challenge, Phipson said, is detecting material hidden inside something, like a car's trunk. Already, detection is possible for surface containments, he said.

"It's something that is obtainable," Phipson said, adding that this capability is already being achieved in lab environments.

Look here.

His detection method is to use a laser spectrometer to coupled to a computer to detect explosives. I bandied the idea around with a bunch of physicists when my brother was in Iraq between Spring 2003 and Summer 2004. Everyone thought it'd work and work well. It seems that the guy quoted in the article had the same idea. Now why it'd cost billions like he said, I have no fscking idea.

Damn. I should have put in for a grant back then. My concern wasn't making money, but protecting my brother who had been wounded in a nontrivial way by an IED (a 4 in/10 cm chunk of metal buried in the skull just below the helmet). He survived, but it focused my attention a bit.

From now on if I have an idea, I'm fscking doing something with ASAP. This is hardly the first time I've been really on the right track with something.

Trifecta Award Update: last and final (until SC05) movie

This storm is analogous to Hurricane David in Sept 1979. Models diverge from reality quickly, not because they're broken, but because of the chaotic features. Anyone familiar with alternate history understands that a small PoD, even with the same starting conditions, can or should produce something different. That this produced something very close to the same is a double plus good sign that the model is pretty accurate.

We're finishing the results summary today. Going to upload it prolly after lunch.

Enjoy the movie.

Faster carbon dioxide emissions will overwhelm capacity of land and ocean to absorb carbon

This came down the pipe via work's news letter. The researchers used us to do the computational model.

Interesting.

I wonder how well it'll hold up.

Belated Baby Picture

Reason being that we have been rebuilding a cluster at work (the servers for the facility wide file system) in prep for going production. secondly, the prep for the trifecta award has been nuts. Specifically what's killing us is the Analytics Challenge. we have devised and written two abstracts (one std and one extended) and a summary in a few days while our lead scientist is out on vacation. While he's not the project lead - I am! - he's necessary for a lot of this to make sense and work. Summary was due two days ago. We're getting everything in as fast as we can. There seems to be much forebearance fortunately...perhaps its because we're so close and our center director is who he is...idk. We'll see...

Baby pict away though!

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From someone in Iraq

There's a blog of a reporter? observer? someone at any rate that is in Mosul. Micheal Yon posted something interesting on his blog. I have no idea who this individual is, but he seems to have a rapport with the Colonel to get to ride around with him.

Is he a mouth piece? Embedded reporter? IDK. What he wrote was interesting though.

Chew on what he said before you swallow though. I'd hate to see someone choke on it because they swallowed it whole.

Great Vision Animals

I've been pondering some of the critters I'd like to put in this story. I have a feeling that I could really run with it. I have something of a curiousity of what I could do with a primate based ecology. However, there are a lot of different types of animal in this world.

What would you genengineer? Any suggestions?

CAFTA is law

here.

Next on the docket is the FTAA.

Then what?

Perma Dollarization of the Americas?

Battlestar Galactica 2004+

I ahve to say that I am rather impressed with this show. I liked the pilot. It was a bit too short for what I was hoping for. Another couple hours would have been perfect to flesh out the people more than the did. However, it was still enjoyable...if you don't mind the zeitgeist of a people being exterminated except for a mere handful.

Unfortunately, its not something that my wife enjoys at all. The number of dead bodies and other far more disturbing images (Baltar's dream on Kobol is the emphatic example for new parents! Holy sh*t!) So, I get to watch it alone. My friends are either not so into it - my NMican friends - or have kids so we can't get together for viewings.

If the quality stays high this show is gonna last. It's very serious and different from the ones just before it. They're rather...fluffy in comparison.

If true, I'm truly saddened

The cluelessness shown here in the former of the cracker's actions, if true, are depressing.

Lack-o-clue is a sick disease.

NASA's New CEV Launcher to Maximize Use of Space Shuttle Components

Look here.

Color me immensely disappointed.

So we're going to spend $540 million/launch...again. *sighs*

Well, at leas tthe barn storming is moving along, albiet slowly.

Book List for This Month

I already went and bought two SF books to read for this month from our local Barnes and Noble (it's on the way home from work). I am half way done with the AI book and disappointed. So far, it's almost purely pathing algorithms. Not exactly what I hoped for. I was hoping for some of the stuff that the developers put in Black & White, frex. Back to books, I bought The Wilding from B&N by CS Friedman. I am a huge fan of her books, even when they are mildy disturbing. I loved her characterizations of Zatar and Anzha waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back. I really liked Gerald Tarrant. Some of her scene descriptions from that series are just stunning.

Frex, from When True Night Falls:

There were songs on the hillside, glorious songs of sunlight, optimism, and energy, the endless music of faith. She could see them arrayed along the gentle slope, warriors whose armour gleemed Core-golden in the light of noon, soldiers whose banners were strung with bits of glass so that as they moved their standards sparkled, and as the wind beat upon the richly woven cloth there was the sound of bells, of sparkling water, a thousand glassy chimes rangout the song of God's One Faith across the Darklands. Young men, old men, women astride their horses, soldier-priests so young they were nearly children--all helmeted in silver and gold and pennanted in brilliant silks, lining up for battle. The very air about them rang with their faith, their sacrificice, their passion. The very daylight was a song of triumph.

She floated through their ranks like a fae-wraith, touching, seeing, hearing all. Shields that flashed like fire in the sunlight. Swords that sang of perserverence and hope. She touched one blade and could hear all the hymns that had gone into its making, the thousand and one voices that had lent it power. The years of chants, years of prayer, years of utter faith...she moved tow here another soldier stood and gazed at the crystal flask in his hand. The liquid within glowed with a heat she could feel on her face, and its music was a symphony of hope.

They were riding into death, she knew. All these brilliant soldiers, all these pricelss weapons, were about to ride into a darkness so terrible it would snuff out their songs forever. She could feel their place in history taking shape about them, not a beginning of hope but an ending, the extinguishing of a time of untrammeled dreams, in exchange for one of cyncism and despair. She wanted to cry out and warn them, but what good would her words do? They knew the odds. That the Evil they had decided to fight might well prove more powerful than all their prayers and spells and charms combined...and still they gathered. Thousands upon thousands of them. Knees clasped tightly about their anxious steeds, hands clasped restlessly about their sword grips and their springbolt butts and polished pistols. And the Fire. It glistened in a dozen crystal Orbs, in a thousand crystal vials. So very beautiful that it hurt herto look upon it, so rich in hope that she cried out to hear its song. Faith. Pure faith. She could drink it in all her life and never have enough.

You'll die! she cried out. Not wanting the music to end. You'll all die horribly. The Forest will eat you alive! What good is that to anyone? Go home while you still can!

And then it seemed that one of the soldier-priests turned to her. Eyes of liquid flame, brilliant as the Holy Fire, fixed upon the space she occupied. His shield, and sword were molten gold, and his banner-glass tinkled in the wind. He was too bright to look upon, and too beautiful to look away. His voice was like the wind.

Somethings, he whispered, are worth dying for.

I really hope The Wilding lives up to the book it is a sequel to (In Conquest Born). The reviews say otherwise, which is why I waited for the paperback.

I also bought to finish up the Galactic Center series, by Gregory Benford. It's an okay read. I'm just interested in how he finishes it all up. If I have time later in the month I'll pick up some Stross.

From Amazon I picked up a a bunch of books. Most of them are construction related.

Drilled Pier Foundations

Construction of Drilled Pier Foundations

Tips & Traps When Building Your Home

The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home

How to Plan, Subcontract and Build Your Dream House: Everything You Need to Know to Avoid the Pitfalls

Drilled Piers and Caissons II: Construction Under Slurry/Nondestructive Integrity Evaluation/Load Testing/Geotechnical Behavior Under Load

Measuring, Marking, and Layout: A Builder's Guide

Working with Concrete,

There is a lot of foundation related works and project planning guides there. The foundation is the most challenging of the items being designed. That's because of the particular plot of land. We'll see how this plays out. If it does work, and I get this done, I'll be mildly impressed with myself. ;)

At any rate, the one nonconstruction based book is King of the Crocodylians: The Paleobiology of Deinosuchus. The pterodactyl book won't be published until the end of the month, so I'll just read that next month. I have a feeling that I am going to be mildly ODed on construction stuff in August, so I'll lighten up next month and let that simmer in the background in September. Then try ODing again in October. Prolly not foundations though.

An Interesting, but Almost Certainly Bad Idea

I was watching TV this morning as I vainly attempted to do some crunches. Normally I do around 300+ crunches. Last night made it a lost cause. My wife asked for some help for something at 2:30 AM and here I was at 6:30 AM having failed to get up at 5:15 AM when I had planned so I can get back into exercising. My trials and tribulations of getting back into shape after my wife's pregnancy and my daughter's birth are a different entry for another time.

What I was watching though was the news. CNN was running a piece on the fact that medical insurance might not be able to cover the costs of dialysis due to the rising number of people that are overwight and becoming diabetic.

On the one hand, this enrages me. If people need medical procedures of some kind, they damned well better be able to get it. On the first pass, I'm a supporter of some sort of national health care...but I worry that the American tendency to over bureaucratize will kill it or make it much worse than the HMOs. We tend to take a good thing and sap the life out of it by adding layer upon layer of - *wiggles fingers* - oversight.

On the other hand, damnit, a lot of these people who are so fscking fat are doing it to themselves. They are taking no personal responsibility for taking care of the problem. I have friends and members of my family that are like that. These are people that I adore and love, but make no attempt to take care of themselves, then they rage that they're so fat. Damnit, if you're going to do that and make the rest of us suffer and pay for your stupidity, then you're going to have to make up more of the costs than normal. Perhaps if we had a Dr able to prescribe exercise and create some sort of a paper trail to prove that the person is not doing it, that the amount they have to pay is increased.

The problem with this, and the gripping hand here, is that I can see how fscked up this one could end up as well. It'd be sooooo damned easy to get this screwy as well as the HMO system already is. IDK. I just want people to just try to take care of themselves. It sickens me how damned fat and unhealthy people are here in the States these days.

Dino Embryo Pict

More hiccups for the EU?

"Protectionism" between EU member states is damaging the competitiveness of Europe's defence industry and is threatening to impact on its long-term survival, the vice-president of the European Commission, Gunter Verheugen, has warned.

"What was true in so many other sectors of the economy is also true of the European defence industry, whose long-term survival will not be served by systematic recourse to Article 296 of the EC Treaty which allows member states to derogate from treaty rules requiring open public procurement where they can demonstrate that their essential security interests are at stake."

During a keynote speech on 18 July, he also criticised the "unnecessary burdens" in the European defence equipment market which he said will lead to "inefficiencies in the defence-related industrial sector".

Inefficiencies in European procurement processes and market fragmentation come on top of the widening spending gap between the EU and US.

If you want to pay for the article, read here.

Dinosaurs embryos 'ridiculuous'

"These animals do not have any teeth, and since they are ready to hatch, that is strange," said Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto at Mississauga in Canada, who led the study.

"The only explanation for that is they must have been fed by the mother. That would be oldest evidence of parental care in the fossil record," Reisz added in a telephone interview.

"We are looking at the very beginning of dinosaur evolution."

"It does support the idea that parental care and possible altricial (helpless) young existed throughout the reign of the Dinosauria," paleontologist Jack Horner of the University of Montana agreed in an e-mail.

Read more here and here.

Minor Baby Baird Update

weight: 17 lbs 5 oz (7.9 kg) definite.

height: 25 1/2 in (65 cm) guessimated.

She is 5 months old at 8:06 am this morning.

Hominid Family Status

Take a look here.



A splitter 'faction' timeline of homind evolution.

Fascinating. It's current, I think, since last October. It's missing H floresiensis though. I have to wonder how many other niche cousins like H florenesiensis hid out in the corners of the world. Too bad that none actually made it to NorAm.

Finished _Ring_

I didn't realize when I picked up the book that it was an epilogue of sorts for the Xeelee Sequence. It wasn't clear that it was such until the author's comments at the end of the book. Not being that familiar with Baxter's work, I didn't realize that there was a world he'd been building in a lot. even so, the book did stand on its own.

The book is primarily about Lieserl - an artificially aged and uploaded woman - and the Great Northern, a haven ship that is supposed to go to the far future by means of relativistic time dilation to find out why the sun is being killed. Lieserl acts as something of an observer of humanity's rise, fall, and escape of fate. The characters from the Great Northern escape at the end of the baryonic universe to another one.

The whole plot of Lieserl was disturbing to me as a new father. I really didn't like it much, esp at first. I found the character interesting. What was done to her was monstrous. It was far, far worse than most things that I have encountered in SF for an individual.

I have to say that Baxter really doesn't like a happy ending based on the sampling that I have read so far. In Evolution he has mankind devolving,losing sentience, and shows the final, actual extinction. In Ring he has them get wiped out (except for the Great Northern) by the Xeelee and even then the survival of humanity in the new universe it flees to is in question.

I also get the feeling that Baxter doesn't like his species too much either. He has humanity, rather than muddle through its problems as is standard procedure for our species, always make things worse. Humanity is what destroys itself in Evolution (helped by the volcanic activity, of course, but supposedly a nasty war helped it along) and in Ring he labels humanity as fundamentally insane. This is something of a reaction, I assume, to the human exceptionalism that runs through SF, but, erm, damn, dude...

I have to admit that I like both the human exceptionalisma nd the bitter sweet endings that some SFnal authors have done, but...IDK. Baxter might get another outing. He might not. I ahve to say I am rather underwhelmed by anything other than his audacity. I hope he's not one of the bright stars of the UK SFnal Revolution I keep hearing about.

Baby Baird Picture Wednesday

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Minas Tursiops: Columns

Right now the plan for Minas Tursiops has a requirement for 4 full columns and two half (split vertically) columns. These are part of a balcony (20' x 15') over the garage. According to one of the manufacturers of the stone columns, for a standard Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian column its about $3k (10ft tall, hollow for concrete and rebar, and made of a selection of marbles). Part of the problem is that I am not seeking a standard design if I can help it.

Imagine a round top and bottom of the capital of a column. There is something akin to a rounded edge plate at the top of the capital and a 'collar' at the bottom where the main body of the column meets the capital: the top is about a foot wider than the bottom and the bottom is about two inches wider than the column itself. There are six fern leaves evenly space around the capital. They start at the bottom collar and arch outwards such that the tips curl under the top plate. The ferns produce a string of inverted diamond shapes around the capital. The 'traingles' above where the tips meet would be filled with celtic knotwork. Below, in the smaller triangles there'd be small eagles in a semi bas-relief.

Now as if I could afford that. ;)

Maybe in house 2 or 3, eh?

This time it'll prolly jsut be Corinthian.

We're BAAAAAAAAAAACK!

Discovery launched. Woo!

I even took the time this morning to watch at home before going to work.

Auto manufacturing in Ukraine?

I have to wonder why there aren't any auto makers dropping manufacturing plants in Ukraine?

Consider that there is a very educated populace there. Literacy is excellent. The number of people that have university or technical college degrees.

Consider the cost of personnel. Right now, it's a pitance. Even if you quintupled it, your costs would be a fraction of any western nation. Even probably competitive with China or other Asian Tiger.

Consider the very good ports on the Black Sea.

Consider that it would be in the interests of the West to do so. It'd help along Ukraine and integrate it into the world economy.

The problem is that Ukraine is not a member of the WTO. Additionally, it has issues with corruption, but often less than some of the Asian Tigers. It also has a very fubared taxs code. Finally, there are some issues with infrastructure, though less than in some of those same Asian Tigers, to be honest.

So why not?

Planetary Society Hopes for Cosmos 2 in 2006

Read about it here in Avleak. Sounds like tehy're going to fly on something other than the Volna again.

Can't imagine why. ;)

Good for them that they're trying again.

Wow...Chinese on the MOVE

They just bought the imploded MG Rover.

Talk about shifts in the world. Whoda thunk it a century ago.

India and America sitting in a tree...

Did we just see a special relationship get born? Y'know, the one like between Britian and the USA. The reason that I ask is no sooner than Bush has stated that there's a shift in the relationship between the US and India than Boeing is seeking to sell the F/A-18E to them.

Hrm.

I could see why it might happen. I could even approve, really, now that India has gone techno pseudo Western and has a land border with China. It'd be interesting if the West successfully moved India back into its orbit and Russia (though the Cold War, India's semibuddy) ended up in China's.

Interesting. Very Interesting.

Reading update

Okay! I made it through the building book. The one thing that it did impress on me was the need for a very specially crafted and detailed timeline for the construction phase. The critical path makes me a bit nervous. I have a sinking feeling that I am not going to be doing the general contracting this time out. Bummer, but true. I really don't have a lot of experience in construction, but I do have some. I helped remodel our home growing up and done some other more minor work. Those included foundation, framing, insulation, painting, drywall, and some electrical work. That last I have a lot of experience at. Though not for construction.

At any rate, I have started Baxter's Ring. Interesting. I'm only on page 30 though. We'll see how well it ages from start to finish. I do have a gripe already though. Magitech nanobots irritate me.

Cosmos 1 postmortem

The rocket failed. The Planetary Society couldn't participate in the Review Board without State Department permission - which they didn't get or didn't get in time - and here's their commentary. Dr Friedman mentions at the end that they might take another stab at it. I certainly hope so. This is gonna be important in the coming decades, IMNSHO.

Trifecta Attempt

We've been making some progress. We have some basic videos, but what I'd like to share is the simplest of visualizations that our viz team member has done so far. Cristina has been damned good at this and had no time at all. Even so, she's done miracles.

here

here

here

here

She's impressed me to no end with her resourcefulness given our time and data set constraints. The videos you can find easily enough, but I'd suggest not looking at them at this point. I'll post a link in a week. BTW, you're looking at the eye of a hurricane at different times.

Minas Tursiops: Stone Walls

I have always wanted to have a home that has stone walls. I have never really liked wood houses that much. They're fine and all, but lack some romantic element. I'm not sure what. It's not really possible right now to build a home that meets code out of strictly large stone blocks. That means using some modern materials and I was hoping to build something that'd be around for a long, long time.

The people over at Castle Magic have some interesting designs and work they've done. Their techniques for building are interesting. They're not that different from the concrete forms that people are starting to use. However, their buildings that they do are all a fantasy version of western Europe during the Middle Ages. "Faerie Tale" Byzantine has similarities to SCA Middle Ages, but it has some strong points of departure. Worse yet, CM also has a three year backlog (and growing).

So it looks like a traditional contractor is more likely to be the builder this first go around. The material that I really like though is the arizona cinnamon sandstone. It strikes me that it'd be great in the style that I have in mind (think the churches of Byzantium rather than the fortresses or otherwise). The first house we build won't be as elaborate as I'd like, but it'll be interesting.

Federal European Union: DOA?

Europe is caught, in Matthew Arnold's famous words, "between two worlds; one dead, the other powerless to be born." The world that is dead is the European nationalism that turned the continent into a blood-soaked battlefield in the first half of the 20th century. The hope of the founders of the European Union was that it would replace the cycle of war with a cycle of cooperation in sustaining basic principles of democracy, human rights--and no more war.

[...]

Jobs--not cows. On the economic side, Europe has failed to provide the better jobs and opportunities people expected. Neither the single market nor the single currency has delivered on its promise. In those countries sharing in the euro since 2002, average unemployment is 9 percent and getting worse. In the past 30 years, average incomes have declined relative to America's. Growth has been anemic, which led to higher unemployment, which begat higher social expenditures, which begat higher taxes, which begat even lower growth.

The long-term prospects are even more daunting, as the number of pensionable people for every 100 people of working age will double over the next 35 years, rendering the elaborate welfare states of countries like France and Germany increasingly unaffordable and limiting Germany's capacity to subsidize programs further integrating Germany in Europe.

A chasm has opened up between two versions of what a single European market should be. The British, the Irish, and the Scandinavian countries pushed for an economically liberal, outward-looking EU free from the interference of Brussels-inspired regulations and can point proudly to their lower unemployment rates compared with those of France and Germany. The Brits are pushing hard for change. Prime Minister Tony Blair soon to be the EU's new president, wants to take on the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, which distributes 40 percent of the EU budget to 5 percent of the population and keeps food artificially expensive. Agricultural subsidies--i.e., keeping French farmers happy--amount to seven times the money the EU spends on science, research, and education. "Money for jobs," says Blair, "not cows."

The clash between market-oriented Anglo-Saxons and welfare-minded continentals has left both sides unhappy. Too diverse to be contained, the EU may have to become a looser, less federalist, and more decentralized club, for the lack of a political center puts the equity of the euro at risk. As one commentator put it, European citizens "don't want to break 25 eggs to make the great European omelet." Which means a United States of Europe is a world increasingly powerless to be born.

Extracted from here

Minas Tursiops

I think I know where I am getting the front door from for the house!

Wow!

Almost as impressive is here.

The combined cost of my amazon.com wishlists

Books:

AI Coding:___________________$109.00
Architecture/Construction: _______$1855.5
Biotech: _____________________$680.50
Politics: _____________________$236.00
History: ____________________$2177.00
Misc: _______________________$343.00
Paleontology: _________________$984.00
Rocketry: ____________________$754.00
SF:__________________________$409.00
--------------------------------------------------------
Subtotal:_____________________$7548.00

DVDs: ______________________$1175.50

Music: _______________________$575.50

Total:________________________$9299.00

Ouch. Glad to see that the books dominate though.

Baby Pict

Great Vision

There are a few things I'd do if I were an uber-rich gazillionaire that I'd love to go out and tinker with. One of them would be an attempt to build an artificial ecosystem. I can hear the Greenies screaming even now! The problem is if things get loose. That means that either build it somewhere very inhostpitable here on earth or in space. While the idea of doing it on the moon or Mars definitely has its appeal, the costs go, well, nuts.

There's only one place that it'd work here on Earth and still have enough space for a very large ecosystem. You guessed it: it'd have to be Antarctica! Y'know, this has promise as a novel premise.

Imagine a gazillionaire with vision. Real vision. Even vision that lasts past even the lifetime of humanity as a species. A vision that wants to paint on the geological time frames. This individual's vision is for when humanity is finally kaputt and Antarctica has moved off the South Pole, thus, warming up. This rich and nutty person has decided that he or she wants to place the seed for the ecology to come. How to make it happen?

You would have to build structures and energy sources that culd provide heat, light and safety (in essence a friendly environment) for ten million plus years. That would be the minimum time frame before Antarctica could move off its current polar position. Most likely it'd need to continue to provide a haven even after the initial ten million years. The haven would have to be huge: thousands of square kilometers! It'd have to be up above at least 30 meters above sea level just to be sure that it'd not end up being submerged.

There'd be a lot more.

Wow.

I'll have to ponder this one.

Seems like there's more candidates

What's up with the Republicans?

We have another candidate for the Duct Tape Award.

Oh fsck!

The latest candidate for the Duct Tape Award.

Oy! Update on a lot.

This has been messier than I planned. The blog is getting neglected in favor of life. Go figure! ;) Friday we had what was close to the last major dental work on my wife so Avrora and I hung out at the dentist's office for several hours while my wife had waaaay too much fun. We just have to go back for her to have a crown cemented. We're going to do that on that day that *I* go in for my dentistry fun. I don't have as much to do or even close to it really. However, I still have work to be done that I put fof because my wife's work was so extensive.

I am finished with Furious Gulf. This was a touch disappointing. You could see some retcons underway here. The first was that the Family Bishop were giants for people: the way around aging according to Benford was that people would continue to grow much like repltiles do. We never leave adolescence in a sense. There was no hint of anything like this before, really. There was also no hint of a lot of other stuff. Something that has bothered me some is that the Bishops are supposed to be 'techno nomads', yet there's no hint that they have any sort of cultural shift and difference between them and, frankly, Americans put in a similar situation. There are more differences in my wife's native culture and the USA than these people that have all these differences in technology and lifestyle, nevermind prolly just basic life experiences. I'm sorry I'm not being more specific, but I don't have the book with me. I want to get at least a minimal thought and commentary out here since I've been so neglectful in writing and my daughter is eating my free time. The book itself is readable, but not anything that's really going to be memorable. Pick it up at a used book store or library.

I am currently reading the home building book I mentioned earlier. I went in thinking I knew nothing about the subject - loans, inspections, etc. - other than the basic construction (done a good chunk of it through remodeling my parent's old house with my Dad) and architecture aspects (been reading a lot here for some time). It seems that I have picked up 90% of it already from just reading online and through conversations. Not bad. I'm almost half way through (it's not a big book, really). I'm feeling pretty good about that actually.

Speaking of the house, I have a design. It appears that it would work with some doing. I'll have to walk through the whole kit and kaboodle. It's long and narrow to fit the lot. I've always wanted to name a house. It seems to give it more character. Other designs have picked up other names over timea s I played with different layouts and whatnot. I like using latin for this. It's a little classy IMO and makes for an interesting tidbit for the home. Ever since I started rereading Tolkien to go along with the movies when they came out. I was joking with friends that I ought to name my home Baird-Dur (instead of Barad-Dur, fortress of Sauron). So something a little Tolkien in the name would be cool too. On top of that! I also like comparing the homes to animals. Long and narrow in this case made me think of a serpent. My wife hates snakes, bugs, and especially spiders, so 'serpens' is out: also means that there's no chance that any child we have is going to get to have a snake in the house as a pet...*sighs*. At the moment, I am favoring 'Minas Tursiops'.

Once I am done with the building book I am going to go get a copy of Baxter's Ring. I am willing to give Baxter another try after Evolution. That last one was interesting, but not quite as good as it could have been. It was a gut wrencher in some ways - the future posthistorical aspects, really - and just unbelievable in others. I'd like to see the concept of this done right...but since someone has already done it, I doubt we will. My reading style if you haven't noticed is to place a fiction book between each nonfiction. It allows for a mental rinse and spit after each book.

Next month looks like I am going to need to be using everything nonconstruction related to be the between stuff that fiction normally does. That's not to say that I am not going to get some SF books. I think Stross needs another outing and so does Friedman since the paperback came out of her latest...even though its not as good as the past ones supposedly.

Dinosaurs Breathed like Birds

Big meat-eating dinosaurs had a complex system of air sacs similar to the setup in today's birds, according to an investigation led by Patrick O'Connor of Ohio University. The lungs of theropod dinosaurs -- carnivores that walked on two legs and had bird-like feet -- likely pumped air into hollow sacs in their skeletons, as is the case in birds.

Look here, here, and, definitively, here.

It seems that dinosaurs are becoming something rather different than what they were when I was very young. How wonderful! :D

A little update

The Snuggly Baird is 24 3/4 in (~63 cm) and 15 lbs 15 oz (~7 1/4 kg). Picture will be posted tonight.

I am now reading Furious Gulf by Gregory Benford. This will be done in a couple more days. After this it'll be either be Everything You Need to Know About Building or AI for Game Developers.

Notes

Don't worry today's baby picture will be out. We'll have official stats too. We have a Dr's appointment at 9:40 for Baby Baird.

In otehr news, I finished The Pentagon's New Map. Talk about wishy washy wishful thinking. The first and most damning thing that I have to say about it is that its almost purely ancedotal in writing. Its his experiences, thoughts and vision on national security as an analyst in that field. The problem is that only evidence other than handwaving is his map he drew. Beyond that, there's no hard economic data present. There's no demographic data. There's nothing other than him just coming out and hoo-rahing his vision and mocking the others. I'll give specific examples and quotes later. I gotta get to my daughter's Dr Appointment.

Seizing the LaGrange Points

I was reading slashdot yesterday and they had an article up about the USAF advocating in a journal that they seize the LaGrange Points so that someone else doesn't do it in the future. I haven't found the specific article in the PDF of the journal yet, unfortunately. I don't have time to dig through it right now. I have a supicion that it's in the article submited by Lt Col GW Rinehart starting on page 46. The article just prior by Major Elizabeth Waldrop looks to be really juicy (starting page 34). She served at the time of its writing as Chief of Space and International Law for the USAF: the article is about the legalities of space weapons. Zary Intervesting, no?

The link is here.

A pair of planets around HD 202206 or a circumbinary planet?

A pair of planets around HD 202206 or a circumbinary planet?
Authors: A.C.M. Correia, S. Udry, M. Mayor, J. Laskar, D. Naef, F. Pepe, D. Queloz, N.C. Santos
Comments: 9 pages, 14 figures, accepted in A&A, 12-May-2005

Long-term precise Doppler measurements with the CORALIE spectrograph reveal the presence of a second planet orbiting the solar-type star HD202206. The radial-velocity combined fit yields companion masses of m_2\sini = 17.4 M_Jup and 2.44 M_Jup, semi-major axes of a = 0.83 AU and 2.55 AU, and eccentricities of e = 0.43 and 0.27, respectively. A dynamical analysis of the system further shows a 5/1 mean motion resonance between the two planets. This system is of particular interest since the inner planet is within the brown-dwarf limits while the outer one is much less massive. Therefore, either the inner planet formed simultaneously in the protoplanetary disk as a superplanet, or the outer Jupiter-like planet formed in a circumbinary disk. We believe this singular planetary system will provide important constraints on planetary formation and migration scenarios

The link to the PDF of the paper is here.

Back to the regularly scheduled blog

...starting next week. Baby picts and all that. Things ought to have settled down. There are appointments and meetings, but I ought to have time to dribble out thoughts, muttering, and postings then.

BDay Activities

That's taken care of. We had a good time. We went to the Monterey Aquarium. My wife was a little upset at first - she thought it was a cheesy little aquarium like she'd seen before - but that very quickly changed. She had a great time. We walked around Monterey for a while, but she was a little underwhelmed with the experience. It's a little too little, frankly. We left when Avrora's "battery ran out". I'll post some pictures later.

For presents, she recieved a Tivo, a Mommy's ring with her birthstone (ruby) and our daughter's (amethyst), a book on child brain development, and some DVDs (in Russian). We watched Battleship Potemkin last night at the end of the day because she was so tired. There are two more gifts tht didn't arrive in time. I'm less than pleased, but we'll live.

Two bits

Tomorrow is my wife's birthday. She's turning 27. I've got something up my sleeve so I can't say what it is here until after we are back. Last year we went flying in a friend's small plane. We flew up from Concord, CA to Clear Lake. we had dinner and flew back. Lyuda flew the plane for a time. We really enjoyed ourselves. This year...well, it's different. O:)

My proposal was accepted by management for SC05. The first of three submissions has been done for the conference itself. We're weakest in the analytics. We'll have a meeting with the Viz dept this week or next. We'll see what we can do. I'm cautiously optomistic.

Finished Centauri Dreams

I have been too busy with my rotation duties, getting the first step in the SC05 proposal up and running, my family, and other work duties to blog much. The proposal was well recieved in that they let me go ahead with it. They're a bit skeptical that it will work, but they gave me the go ahead to try. heh. ]:)

I finished Centauri Dreams a little while ago. With the lack of blogging, I've not stopped reading. I have to say taht the book has some interesting comments and ideas that are worth looking at: the combination Orion and M2P2 seems rather fascinating, but as a whole it doesn't really come across as worth as much as I paid for it (~$17). The writing itself wasn't bad, just not as tight as I would like. There have been a slew of popular science books as of recent that have been obcessing more about the people involved than about the concepts being explored. I noted this with Snowball Earth and now with Centauri Dreams. It's annoying. If you want to capture my attention by humanizing the situation or writing something other than a dry, technical tome extrapolate! This is SFnal already. Spin a fictionalized scenario and its consequences! You can write. Right? I'd rather read about that thought experiment than hearing about riding around in a convertable with Geoffrey Landis and *mumble* (Sorry Geoff). There were a few times I'd have liked to know why some people were quoted. A short blurb wasn't sufficient for me. I'd like to know why this person was being used to belittle or raise up some concept. There was one in particular that I can't remember his name at all that (a former colonel in the air force, iirc) that was being used to comment on stuff when his background in the blue beanies wasn't propulsion, iirc, and he was now working on some concepts post retirement, but I hadn't heard of him before (where as I had for most of the others or the institutions that they are working for). If he'd done a bunch of good work and cranked some papers that people thought very high of, then by all means include him (or her), but if he's just some individual playing with ideas and they've not been put out for everyone else...well, let's just say I can be just as good a source for, oh, say, running a naval ship, as that.

At any rate, get it at the bargain table or used. It's a nice addition to library...at a cheap cost. I've started The Pentagon's New Map. Interesting, but underwhelming so far.

DEW available to the US military for 20 years?

When I was reading the short snippet of an article here.

Much work has to be done on understanding the effects of these types of weapons, army officials said. The US has had a classified directed-energy weapon for 20 years but it has never been used because commanders have been unsure what the effect on people would be, said Brigadier General Philip Coker, director of capabilities developments at the Futures Center, Training and Doctrine Command.

What is it? I've worked on DEW (directed energy weapon) before at HELSTF: big mucking chemical lasers. The Solid State Lasers from Livermore were just coming in a month or two after I left. I ahve to wonder though what has been around for 20 years for the US military to use?

Talk about piqued interest!

Phytoremediation article

I knew other parts of work were dealing with the selenium eating mustard plants. This article has some more information about that and other efforts. I am disappointed that the Sierra Club has come out in opposition to the use of genengineered plants for environmental clean up. I understand their concerns, but it seems like - just like with their whole nuclear stance - a knee-jerk reaction to a technology. Rather than dialog and work together to make sure that their concerns are taken into account, they're in a whole scorched earth policy stance instead. *sighs*

The Damned

That would be me.

Y'see, that proposal that I made to the center director for SuperComputing 05 was accepted. This has caused me no end of grief. It's teh reason that I have not been writing in my blog lately. Why would that cause this? Well, I have to have a solid proposal and full conference paper ready by a week from tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. Getting the proposal down in one thing. The fact that my boss' boss added that he wanted me to participate in all of the challenges with this proposal was a whole different ball game! I was planning on putting up something for the StorCloud Challenge. He felt that the proposal only needed a small tweak to make it an excellent candidate for the Trifecta Award for a demonstration that would participate in all three SC05 challenges: StorCloud, Bandwidth, and the Analytics Challenges.

Oh Fraq!!!

I've started the paper. I have found some collaborators. One to help with the paper. One to help with the networking. Another to help with the actual simulation. I'm trying to rope in the one of the analysis types as well. To with the triple crown award, you don't have to win each of the individual awards. You just have to participate and do something very interesting. I'm doing that. Something very interesting. Real science on the floor of SC05.

The stress level is absolutely insane. The deadlines are worse. This might even be impossible.

We...

...Shall....

...See!

Keep your fingers crossed.

More on Cosmos 1 (launch date tomorrow!)

Look here

Woo!

Quick Thoughts

Okie! I was more than a little busy yesterday. I was working on finishing the cluster file system paper (it's ready for it's first reaming,a hem, review except for the section on the unique capabilities of the file systems. Oh, I better say what its on better than this? I did a comparison of cluster file systems that can share teh same disks between Linux machines and AIX machines. This boiled down to IBM's GPFS 2.3, ADIC's SNFS 2.5, and IBM's SFS 2.2 (aka StorageTank). There was a lot of comparison between the three. However, the one section that remains to be written is the unique capabilities section. The problem is that SFS has a lot of things different than normal for a file system. In fact, this thing when its mature is gonna just plain rock. However, maturity is a couple more years from now at least. This is my second paper. The first one was my 'trials and tribulations' paper on getting GPFS 2.2 to share a single instance of storage (aka disks) between Linux and AIX boxes.

That was half of the day. The latter half. The earlier half was spent entertaining my daughter in the dentist's office. Why? Because my wife had Yet Another Dentist Appointment. If I ever meet a Ukrainian dentist, they better have plate mail and kelvar on. The work they did for my wife when she was young is plain old fashion shit. No worse than that. Now we're paying for it. The end is in sight though. Hopefully by the end of the month we'll have done all the work that's gotta get done short of whitening. All I can say is that I am delighted that we have dental insurance. This wouldn't have been possible at all if we didn't. There's been damned serious work done in there. The cost has already been staggering without insurance...*horrified look*

I also started an email exchange with an architect. The intent is to find out if there's someone willing to work on the design with me for the house. I know at times I can be a PITA. For a house, I betcha I'd be a royal PITA. That's a crap load of dinero. I don't want to see it get flushed down the toilet...or creek as it may be. I dragged out all of my architecture books last night and plopped them down in front of my wife. I told her that I really wanted her input on the house and that she needed to do a bit of crawling through the styles and such to pick out details she likes (or doesn't). She agreed. She's always told me that she loves what I come up with her input, but I really don't want to have her unhappy that she didn't get any input at all for the house after we live there.

Also at work, I proposed that NERSC (where I work) do an application for StorCloud @ SC05 rather than just set up the file systems for other groups. I want to do soem real science on the floor of SC05 using a centralized file system. The work would require different machines: one for preprocessing, another for the simulation, another for postprocessing and finally for visualization and analytics. All done on the floor of SC05. I proposed four different groups that I could work with. The one I am really hoping for is the climate folks. I proposed it a little while back and got backing from my boss for it. His boss and the top dog of SC05 hasn't voted up nor down on it yet. :S

One more

Gonna be busy tomorrow

So I am going to put up some baby pictures. Enjoy!

Hip Baby

[Home Architecture]: Wow that was quick

I got the response back from the planning director. We have an appointment come Monday at 2 pm.

[Home Architecture]: So it begins...

I made contact with the building department in that town I'm looking at in Marin County. They gave me a call back this morning. They're going to make an appointment with the director of planning and the bulding dept so that we can go over all that needs to be done (if anything can at all). The man I talked to stated that it is very possible to build in their town, there just needs to be some patience.

I've also started to proactively reach out to the people that might be opposed to us building on that property we climbed around on. I have a feeling that if I can get these folks to sign on, this would go rather smoothly. I have to be diplomatic and creative here. I have to get them to want this as much as I do or at least not want to object because of the carrots and morsels that could come of this. This biggest challenge would come from the people trying to protect or improve the watershed. Actually, I'd like to work with them to improve the watershed at the same time as building.

We'll see what comes of this. I hope it works out. If this does, it'll move up our time table for a home considerably.

Singularity Sky review postponed

This will have to wait a couple days. Too many things happening right now.

grrr.

Behind the Green Door: Return of the Mosasaurs?

After thinking about the book I read a few back (Sea Dragons), I started pondering the mosasaurs. They were speciating quite prolificly in the 25 million years prior to the KT Event. They seem to have been something of a success story in their adapting to the sea. They're also rather interesting and look like a crocodile, monitor lizard, and eel had waaaay too much to drink one night doing some rather unnatural things. Mosasaurs are supposed to be relatively close relatives to to the varanids (monitor lizards). We definitely have a number of species there alive and well.

James Nicoll created for SHWI a thread called 'Behind the Green Door' where the US found a wormhole that opened up to the far, far future (250 million years) where humanity had died out. Life has undergone some rather radical changes. There are intelligent, land living octopi. There are others that are equally strange. Birds have all but gone extinct: the sea going ratites are all that are left. It sounds like whales and such are long gone too.

It occurred to me that 'what-if' the mosasaurs reemerged? The varanids (or their descendants) are prolly still around. They're an amazingly versatile bunch. There is an inland sea in the map of future earth that James was using. It's equitorial and would prolly be rather warm. If the sea going ratites evolved in Australia, it means that they are 'restricted' to the World Ocean (was Pacific) rather than the Inland Ocean (was Atlantic). The varanids live in a lot of the places that are going to be along that second ocean...

Just a thought.

Alternately, if by some blessed chance that the Marine Iguana survives humanity and the passing of the whales, etc, then they have a chance to be a major seagoing critter too. That'd be...interesting.

Sunset on Mars

As seen from the NASA Mars Rover Spirit:

The Most Earthlike Extrasolar Planet Yet

8 Earth masses around a red dwarf. Too close for life, but we're getting better at detecting the planets now.

Read about it here.

I miss working in astronomy (as a student @LANL). :S

Weekend Activities

We had a pretty fun weekend. At least I thought so. Besides to runs to go shoppping for groceries, we went and looked at a property to build on. There is one that is relatively inexpensive and still a large piece of land close enough that I can commute to and from work. It's about 45 minutes away during the good times and about an half and change during the bad. It's also .4 acres. The problem is that to build there, we'd have to get a variance with the city its in since most of it is creek bed. My wife and I have been discussing what we could do for mitigation for the construction. We've got a few good ideas that I just discussed this morning with someone at work that's done a good deal of construction work: he thinks they're very good ones that ought to be excellent for convincing the city in question. With that encouragement, we're going to do all the research we can prior to buying the property.

If you didn't notice on SHWI, I love architecture. I have become enthralled with variants of Byzantine architecture. I love the churches of Thessalonica and Mystra. I even have rolled a few threads on alternate archiectures. One of which was to seek out ideas of a house waaay back. The architecture thread that I am most proud of comes from my Morean Empire TL. There I wrote about the Senate of Trebizond and its architectual design while hinting at politics and history up through the Age of Tourism.

For the house, if we get to build it, I am going to take my base of extrapolation to be Byzantine architecture. I'd like to steal a thing or two from the architecture that comes from the Great Camps of the Adirondacks in New York. I especially like Camp Topridge (and here) and its style of everything having grown from into place. However, I am equally salivating over Art Nouveau for the interior designs. There are bits and pieces from other eras and places, but the biggest contributor that I can think of I'd love to incorporate (or mutate and then incorporate) would be the hallway and entrance from Bag End in the movie version of _The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring_. IDK how much we'll be able to incorporate in this first house. We shall see though.

I'll be sure to post pictures when the time comes. If it does.

Where I work now and then

I'm kinda amazed that Google has this first one up, but...

HELSTF (High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility) @ White Sands Missile Range and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

ESA Supports Russia's Kliper

ESA's director of human spaceflight has been quoted as saying that ESA will support the development of Russia's proposed Kliper spacecraft. It's a follow-on to Russia's very old, but reliable Soyuz design. The Kliper is something of an answer to NASA's CEV (Lockmart's version is here) . However, there's a note that the Russians via ITAR-TASS are saying this and not the European media. There's been false starts from there before. However, I ahve to wonder how much of this is to ensure an independant access to space from NASA or China.

Space Race? HOOOOYAH!

LANL Whistleblower's Beating Revisited

Wow!

It seems that the plot thickens.

That seems a bit more plausible than what I had thought was happening. Seems everyone was found and the cops have turned the whole thing over to the DA. Hitting a pedestrian outside a strip bar is not such a wise thing to do.

Russia and NATO...again

The Russians are oozing paranoia again while showing the world exactly how toothless they are. Frex. There are some good reasons not to like NATO, but its not eactly built around the idea of launching offensive operations against the Soviet Union, ahem, Russia.

The reason that Georgia and Ukraine would like to become members is to avoid being swallowed by a resurgent, or at least revanchist, Russia. Under the umbrella of NATO protection that is not possible. If you read at least Ukraine's history, I think you can understand the sentiment. I wish I had even a basic knowledge of Georgian history to make any comments from that POV: its on the list, but down there a ways.

I my ideal world, Russia would be getting ready to make their own leap into NATO and the EU. They'd have another decade and change to get there, but I'd think they'd really want to do this. Their falling population, weak borders, decaying military, and having an aggressive and growing future superpower on its southeastern border makes it seem to me that finding permanent friends in the form of NATO and EU membership an obvious and even best possible choice.

However, the Russians don't think like that. At least those in power. There's this damned Great Russian mentality that haunts and infects almost all their decisions. Russia has been one of the great nations in terms of power for a very long time (mostly true, at least since the beginning of the modern era, but only true now because of their decaying nuclear arsenal) and will be for the far, far future (prolly false). The chauvanism that runs through this mentality can be seen through their attitudes to Ukrainians, frex, in that they see it as there are no Ukrainians, only malorus - Little Russians. Through this, they have alienated even the Left Bank Ukrainians who are russophonic.

The Great Russians seem to believe that they can continue and stand as a separate pillar of power in the future. They have convinced themselves that Russia can have all the influence that the old Soviet Union had or at least that of what Czarist Russia had. If you look at the growth rates, I don't think its going to be possible. Brazil is in the process of overtaking Russia as an economic power. The EU, PRC, USA, and Republic of India are all leaping ahead like economic juggernauts with ten league boots. Sadly, the rate Russia is growing and her true economic and military strength will put her in a position to be at best playing a Canada or Finland tune to either the EU or the PRC.

They say pride goeth before the fall. This pride seems to be lasting even through the first fall. That might have been the disentegration of the Soviet Union was the smaller of the two falls. We'll see if the coming one will be as bad. It might be. It might be worse. Their - the Great Russian - irrelevancy to the rest of the world might be interesting to see as time and again they're ignored for the EU, American, Indian, or Chinese opinions. Hopefully it won't spawn anything ugly.

Finished _Singularity Sky_

I was planning on reviewing the book during lunch here, but I accidently left the book at home. There are some things I wanted to quote rather than simply recite from memory so that I could get them right. I have been known to misremember things at times and I didn't want to do that here.

I can say that I rather enjoyed the book. It did something that I've been wanting for some time. The future felt like The FUTURE rather than a tacked on bit of tech in the present day. He captured that sense. It was great. Well done, Charlie.

There are some things I rather didn't like. That's fine for when it comes to the meaning of $TECH or some such. However, there are some problems with the way the story was told that I didn't care for. When I get the book at home, if I have time this weekend, I'll write my review with quotes so I can keep everything straight.

I am now thinking whether or not I will read The Pentagon's New Map, AI for Game Developers, or Centauri Dreams next. I do need to put up a post on my thoughts on Gregory Benford's Tides of Light and the rest of the Galactic Center series.

I have to think up what I am going to purchase next month for books. I am almost out of books to read and the month is only a third done. I've been reading at a faster pace again and this will prolly consume the remaining three books by month's end. I have to remember its my wife's birthday though next month, so we might have to do that first...

France and the EU Constitution: A Finnish Perspective

Jussi Jalonen has been an interesting man to discuss history and interact with over the years online. In a discussion on alt.history.future, he made me laugh with his irritation with France over their no vote for the EU Constitution:

Again, I have to wonder why the hell this Union really needs to have France as a member. Personally, I think that the EU should organize a swap with the U.S.; basically, Brussels would voluntarily transfer France under the federal authority of Washington, and in return, the EU would get one or two U.S. states to work with. Preferably some that would be easier to handle than the present-day France, and would have a more intelligent population - Mississippi or Florida would do nicely, for example.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry.

Couldn't help it.

SC 05

It seems that I am actually listed as part of the StorCloud Initiative comittee for SC05!

Sweetness!

:D