Planet RGSB

handyman

2012-02-07T18:37:00+00:00

Some people blog about the five-piece bedroom set they built from self-harvested hardwoods from the jungles of Brazil. The wood was obtained, and the set assembled, using nothing more than a screwdriver and a hatchet.

Some people blog about the mother-of-pearl inlaid tile they laid all over their bathroom and kitchen. Said tile was painted by artisans on some far-flung Pacific island.

Some people blog about the basement they re-finished themselves after excavating it over a three-day weekend.

Me? I blog about making the toliet seats not wiggle by tightening the plasic widgets holding it to the bowl. Because that's how I roll.

the politics of the cross

2012-02-05T14:29:00+00:00

I have been reading The Politics of the Cross: The Theology and Social Ethics of John Howard Yoder recently. I admit that I am skeptical of Yoder's position, so I have been reading the book as a partial corrective to my opinion. (I also read The Politics of Jesus several years ago; I think I must go back and re-read it after this book.) Reading what Yoder says is quite challenging, not because he writes in a complex way, but because his style is disarmingly simple. Samples:

...the most important error of the Christendom vision is not first of all its acceptance of an ethic of power, violence, and the crusade; not first of all its tranference of eschatology into the present providence with God working through Constantine and all his successors in civil government, not its appropriation of pagan religiosity that will lead to sacerdotalism and sacramentalism, not its modeling church hierarchy after Roman administration, nor any other specific vice derived from what changed about the nature of the church with the epoch of Constantine. Those were all mistakes, but they were derived from the misdefinition of the place of the people of God in the world. The fundamental wrongness of the vision of Christendom is its illegitimate takeover of the world; its ascription of a Christian loyalty or duty to those who have made no confession, and thereby, its denying to the non-confessing creation the freedom of unbelief that the nonresistance of God in creation gave to a rebellious humanity.

The question is not how we want the whole world to be or how we want our society to be but rather how we are to behave in a society that for the time being wants nothing of us of our faith or our Lord.

If we were to carry on that other, traditionally doctrinal kind of debate, I would seek simply to demonstrate that the view of Jesus being proposed here is more radically Nicene and Chalcedonian than other views. I do not here advocate an unheard-of modern understanding of Jesus. I ask rather that the implications of what the church has always said about Jesus as Word of the Father, as true God and true Man, be taken more seriously as relevant to our social problems, than ever before.

Dawn

2012-01-22T13:21:40+00:00

Daniel_Clayton posted a photo:

Went out again, still no sun.

Used a graduated neutral density filter.

Tree

2012-01-21T13:33:34+00:00

Daniel_Clayton posted a photo:

Went out at dawn, there wasn't a sun. It was still nice though, cold, but nice.

Bad housekeeper! No cookie!

2012-01-19T00:40:06+00:00

So far the house cleaning has not gone well. I always come home to find the cat scratchers pushed up against the wall or this week stacked up on top of the cat perches, denying the cats the use of all of the above. This weekend I went shopping and got a bunch of frozen dinners, some Lucky Charms, and two bags of cookies. The frozen stuff I put in the freezer, and the rest I left in the grocery bag in the living room. Today I decided I wanted to have Lucky Charms for breakfast. I go to the living room, look around, nothing. I check the kitchen, nothing. I look through all the cabinets, even where I keep the dishes, nothing. Finally I call the cleaning service. Apparently the cleaning ladies saw they were within ten feet of the garbage, and threw them away. Brand-new, unopened packages. Lucky Charms, Oreos, and Chips Ahoy.

I am irritated and annoyed. The cleaning service owner apologized and offered to pay for the food. But I don't want money. I want my food. For me, money means little, and going out to go shopping is a huge burden. I don't want the money back, I want the food back.

Brats for dinner

2012-01-10T00:23:13+00:00

Melissa made buns that went right on the brats tonight. They look great!

I was wrong

2012-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

I did manage to make it to the range in December, which makes a total of three trips for all of 2011 (not counting AAC's Silencer Shoot, which was pretty awesome, you guys). Not a great year, on multiple fronts.

I shot the Hi-Power, an AR I completed back in May, the 870 (purchased last January) and the Sterling carbine (re-received back in October). I had the CZ and Sig Mosquito packed, but they never got brought out. C'est la vie. I emptied the magazine in the Hi-Power, and fired the AR, 870, and Sterling for the first time. Everything worked! Huzzah!

Alas, I am way out of practice, and hardly hit anything.

I only have one magazine for the Sterling at the moment, but shooting it's a gas. There's almost no recoil, and very little noise or blast (pistol ammo through a 16" barrel: go figure). I couldn't tell how much of the problem with hitting with it was due to the sights and how much was me. (I wasn't impressed with the peep sight, though.) Still, fun.

Just FWIW: the Sterling carbine is a Wise Lite build purchased and worked over by the guys at Crusader Weaponry. Fun gun, and I've been pretty pleased with the customer service.

App sales

2012-01-06T18:17:22+00:00

My iPhone app sold 59 copies in the 1.5 months that it was for sale in 2011. Not bad for a really niche app. (:

Homemade New Year's Eve LED Ball Drops

2011-12-30T10:17:44+00:00

(This article was supposed to be written a lot earlier, but food poisoning had a discouraging effect on the author.)

Every New Year's Eve, up to a million visitors crowd Times Square NYC to see a massive crystal and LED ball descend at the stroke of midnight. The ball has grown increasingly large and complex over the past few years, now 12 feet in diameter and over 32,000 LEDs. While an impressive sight, it's not easy to drop by Times Square when you live on the West Coast. And seeing the ball drop on TV, 3 hours early, just isn't the same. So why not build your own LED ball?

Dropping our own LED ball is a 4-year macetech LLC tradition (well, four drops, and three elapsed years to be precise). The first ShiftBrite LED Modules were produced in early 2008. By the end of 2008, we were doing higher volume production and had founded a new company, macetech LLC. ShiftBrites are a small PCB with an RGB LED and a PWM controller, capable of 1023 levels of brightness for each of the red, green, and blue channels. They can be chained together with 6-pin cables, and sent color commands by a microcontroller. Only 4 data pins are needed to fully control up to 255 pixels in a single chain.

NYE Ball 2008/2009

The first ball was a spur of the moment idea during Christmas vacation. I happened to have a "stellated icosahedron" made from a bunch of drinking straws (it was something to do between interviews during a few months of unemployment in 2006). A stellated icosahedron has 32 intersections where ShiftBrites could be placed...coincidentally, I had a bunch of used ShiftBrites that had been sitting out in the rain for a Christmas light display on our front fence. I had seen an article about the new six-foot, LED and crystal New Year's Eve ball, and decided to give it a try. A few minutes, an Arduino, and some zip ties later, and the ball was ready. We made a 20 foot pole out of electrical conduit, a pulley, and some light rope. Unfortunately no video of the actual drop, but the neighbors all came out to celebrate!

Read more»

I Only Have a Green Thumb in Video Games

2011-12-12T02:19:52+00:00

I play Minecraft. One of the things you can do in Minecraft is farm resources. I finished building a greenhouse around an island last night. Here is a screenshot of a view of the greenhouse taken from the glassed-in second story of my home base. That is where I grow wheat and pumpkins.

The sugar cane plants along the shore line are also part of my cultivation project. Unlike my gardening skills in real life, I'm getting significant virtual return on these plots.

Lady Gaga

2011-11-13T10:41:57+00:00

Was flipping channels late at night and came across Lady Gaga's Monster Ball special. She certainly has talent and personality. It was a very good show.

mtAtmo: Insanely Bright 60W LED Backlight for a 58" Plasma Screen

2011-10-26T05:21:21+00:00

Ever since Philips released their Ambilight enabled televisions, hackers around the world have gone "ooooh, cool" and then immediately "how can I build that?"

If you're not familiar with the concept, it's basically a light source that surrounds a display screen. It's not a new idea...many very old televisions had a white "halo" around the screen both to make the screen seem bigger, and to reduce eyestrain. Flat panel televisions are usually mounted on or near a wall, so the idea of putting a glow on the surrounding wall was born. Philips improved on the idea by building a processor into their TVs that analyzes the signal and adjusts a ring of LEDs to match colors. Supposedly this increases immersion and reduces eyestrain...but we all know it just looks really cool.

DIY Ambilight-style setups have been around for years. One of the more popular video viewing programs, VLC, even ships with a plugin to control external LED hardware. Many purpose-built devices and DIY designs exist too. But you can use general-purpose controllers, like an Arduino, with general-purpose LED modules. Here are a few easy to build projects (some of which are pretty recent): Read more»

I'm blogrolled where?

2011-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

I keep forgetting that I'm actually linked one or two places other than the RGSB list, which tends to contain people I have actually met. Just discovered I'm on a list of 'gun blogs', which, I guess, is as accurate a label as any other.

I expect I'll have some relevant content again, soonish. Before the end of the year, surely. Probably not before the end of the month.

Delux!

2011-09-19T04:13:35+00:00

the master gardener

2011-09-19T02:27:30+00:00

DSLR on Vacation

2011-05-23T02:36:55+00:00

I wouldn't usually bring a large, expensive camera on a trip that is mainly about relaxing and sand. But, now I've got this older DSLR that just sits around most of the time and wouldn't get $200 on eBay if I tried to sell it. I took it to Cozumel for our vacation, and at the very least I loved having a real viewfinder to look through on those sunny days. I only brought a few lenses, none in my "first tier" class, but more than serviceable in the Caribbean light. I even treated the post-processing more casually than usual, simply clicking the "Perfectly Clear" box in Bibble 5 and adjusting very few other parameters. Here are some of my favorite pictures:

Range Report

2011-01-09T19:47:55+00:00

So yesterday I took my NRA basic pistol course and at the range finally got to break out my brand new Kimber 1911. I ran 195 rounds through it with only a couple of minor feed problems. My accuracy needs work, but I feel reasonably good given the fact that it was my [...]

No subject.

2010-11-02T01:07:52+00:00

Every once in a while I think, "Hey, I should start blogging again."

And then I think, "Nah."

Election

2010-10-24T16:26:23+00:00

Perhaps I’m being over critical, but I don’t think I could ever cast my vote for a candidate whose website is almost entirely in Comic Sans.

All talk and no action

2010-10-13T16:25:16+00:00

This article is 100% true, yet at least 90% useless - if you look closely, they barely offer any practical solutions to the problem. Scientific software development is little different from experimental protocol development and execution; there's no substitute for expertise, attention to detail, and lots of time and effort.

Computational science: ...Error: why scientific programming does not compute

Quality, quantity, and academic promotion

2010-10-11T03:15:43+00:00

After my last detail-oriented post, I thought I'd write about something more abstract; on a day like today, something like coincidences or binary arithmetic might be appropriate. But apropos to the topic actually at hand, life goes on pretty much as usual here, both today and tomorrow. Academia is infamous for its Byzantine promotion criteria, and it's striking how many of them boil down to quantity versus quality.

Parental enlightenment

2010-09-13T18:37:13+00:00

"... if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?" (Matthew 7:9, NLT)

Since I became a parent, I've had this verse floating in my head as something like "If your child asked for food, would you refuse him?" I took that a bit as a challenge, and tried to be accommodating. When my son asks for food, I try to get it for him.

However, this has its limits. For a while, at bedtime, he would ask for food. I could ask if he was hungry and wanted food, then ten minutes later say it was time for bed, and he'd ask for food. As this game became more obvious, more limits were defined, usually in the form of a timer.

So, having been a parent for almost four years, I would answer Jesus's rhetorical question now with, "Of course not. I might not always give him the food he's asking for, but it would be very cruel to give him a stone. Sometimes he gets bread, and sometimes he gets nothing."

I reply to the Internet

2010-08-20T01:19:59+00:00

Some guy named John Cook begged the question! On the Internet!

I, of course, did my civic duty. I commented.

You are begging the question by defining “minimalism” as necessarily thoughtless. So, of course, minimalists are!

As you mentioned in the comments, “minimal” is a superlative meaning (roughly) “no less of X is possible.” You appear to define ‘X’ as “things necessary for life without conforming to required social norms.” But your more-minimalist-than-thou minimalists could just as easily have a different definition, e.g., their statement could be “Buy my book. I have only 39 things, while still maintaining appropriate social relationships with my friends!”

Indeed, it is good you did not link to the man in question because context because or facts could undermine your point; your hypothetical man, by definition, does give you things you want in exchange for the hypothetical things he needs from you. With context, he could have been a brilliant mathematician who trades knowledge, co-authorship, and bragging rights for a warm place to sleep. I'd take that over 4 eggs and a cup of flour any day.

Then again, maybe he’s just douché. I guess it depends on the minimalist instead of the minimalism.

Running Gnus in a dedicated Emacs

2010-08-06T23:37:33+00:00

Gnus is an awesome mail and news reader, but it can be a bit of a performance bear, especially when using IMAP. Since Emacs is single-threaded, IMAP operations that take too long can disconnect you from IRC, Jabber, or any number of other network services you also use from Emacs.

The typical solution to this problem is to run Gnus in a dedicated Emacs instance. Doing so is really easy—just make a gnus shell alias like so:

alias gnus 'emacs -f gnus'

The catch is, such an Emacs doesn't know it's a dedicated, Gnus-only Emacs. When I used this technique, it was always confusing that quitting Gnus didn't quit its Emacs.

We can use command-switch-alist to define a custom -gnus command line argument that does what we want. Here's what I have in my .emacs file:

(add-to-list
 'command-switch-alist
 '("gnus" . (lambda (&rest ignore)
              ;; Start Gnus when Emacs starts
              (add-hook 'emacs-startup-hook 'gnus t)
              ;; Exit Emacs after quitting Gnus
              (add-hook 'gnus-after-exiting-gnus-hook
                        'save-buffers-kill-emacs))))

To use the above, we just alter our shell alias to use our new argument:

alias gnus 'emacs -gnus'

The only other thing to keep in mind is how this sort of setup interacts with emacsclient. (This is a command that lets you edit files in an already-running Emacs.) I really only want emacsclient to open files in the other Emacs I have running, and not in my Gnus-only Emacs. Let's fix this by restricting when we start the server that emacsclient talks to.

(defvar ted-server-emacs t
  "If non-null, this emacs should run emacsclient.")

Now that we have a flag we can use, let's only call server-start when the flag's been raised:

(add-hook 'emacs-startup-hook
          (lambda ()
            (when ted-server-emacs
              (server-start))))

The only bit left to do is to (setq ted-server-emacs nil) inside the custom command line argument handler above.

A simple shell lifehack

2010-08-06T19:18:00+00:00

OpenSSH lets you use per-host settings in your ~/.ssh/config file, like so:

Host foo
HostName foo.example.com
ForwardX11 no

If you have the above in your ~/.ssh/config file, you can simply type ssh foo instead of ssh -x foo.example.com.

It’s pretty much always the case that I’ll fire up GNU Screen when SSHing into a remote host. Here’s some code that’s been banging around in my .cshrc for a few years. It sets up handy shell aliases for all of the machines I commonly SSH into:

set ssh_hosts=`grep '^Host [^*]' ~/.ssh/config|cut -c 6-`

foreach host ($ssh_hosts)
    alias $host "ssh -t $host screen -DR"
end

Now I can simply type foo and I’ll be up and running with a screen session on foo.example.com. If I want to SSH into a box without firing screen up, I simpy ssh foo directly.

Now that we have this handy ssh_hosts variable, we might as well use it for other things too, like for adding intelligent tab completion:

complete ssh 'p/1/$ssh_hosts/'

Now I can just type ssh f TAB RET and I’m good to go.

Convert 720p/ac3 mkv to 720p/aac iPad-compatible mp4/m4v on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

2010-07-30T03:47:52+00:00

# Video is not transcoded, just demuxed/muxed
# Audio is downmixed to stereo with DRC 
#
# You need these tools:
# * mkvextract (to demux the Matroska file)
#   * http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/
#   * Just install through MacPorts, it doesn't pull in anything annoying
# * a52dec (to decompress and downmix the ac3)
#   * http://liba52.sourceforge.net/
#   * Compile from source
# * faac (to recompress the audio to mp4a/aac)
#   * http://www.audiocoding.com/
#   * Compile from source
# * MP4Box (to remux into MPEG-4 container) 
#   * http://kurtnoise.free.fr/mp4tools/
#   * Pre-compiled standalone OS X executable

mkvextract tracks ${BASE}.mkv 1:${BASE}.ac3 2:${BASE}.264
a52dec -o wav ${BASE}.ac3 > ${BASE}.wav
faac -b 96 --mpeg-vers 4 -o ${BASE}.aac ${BASE}.wav
MP4Box -add ${BASE}.264:fps=23.976 -add ${BASE}.aac ${BASE}.m4v
rm ${BASE}.{264,ac3,wav,aac}

Update: Here's a gist of an mkv2m4v script that automates the process: http://gist.github.com/502844

Economic quiz for the day

2010-07-06T17:55:28+00:00

Suppose you own and operate a Jimmy Johns franchise. You normally have two counters producing sandwiches, but since the 2008 recession you've been getting fewer customers, so you laid off half your staff and only operate one counter. The other one sits idle and unused.

Given that you already meet the reduced demand for lunches, what will motivate you to rehire your staff and open the second counter?
(a) A sack full of cash
(b) A loan from the bank
(c) Less government spending
(d) More customers

Bonus question: The sandwich counter manufacturer wants to sell you another counter, which of the above will cause you to buy a THIRD counter?

This is the mental exercise you should do whenever you hear a politician talk about tax breaks vs. stimulus spending. Tax breaks are (a), stimulus spending is (d).

Nerding Right Along

2010-06-11T18:38:16+00:00

Software Nerd
So, in the past two weeks I’ve kicked out a prototype web site for a theatre I work with: The Improv Shop , which is a great place for those who are interested in long form story based improvisation. The theatre owner wanted something minimal, which was great for me, since I don’t really relish doing art much.

So, now, of course, I’m taking the static file template and redoing it in as a full fledged CMS in django, as my, “Dave teaches himself Django” project.

Improv Nerd

Last weekend was spent making a film for the STL 48 hour Film Festival. It showed last night, and will show again at the Tuesday ‘best of’ showcase. Which is so wonderful.

I was lucky enough to work with Clinic Improv, and act, film, light in that one. Rhiannon busted out her violin to provide depressing Eastern European riffs for our ‘foreign film’. I’ll post that one as soon as the festival’s publishing embargo is lifted.

A Relaxed Moment

2010-05-14T20:50:47+00:00

I’m working in the home office, snacking on coffee and stuff from the local coffee shop, listening to Cake and Mc Frontalot. Rhiannon is taking a half day. We had kolaches together for lunch. Now she’s napping on the couch with a DVD of Daria playing in the background. The screen door is open, and the house smells like gentle rain.

I didn’t have to comb my hair today.

Alumnus Tim Cindric Sets the Direction for Penske Racing's Success

2010-04-09T19:32:00+00:00

When Roger Penske needed help to restore its stature in open wheel racing, he called upon Tim Cindric in 2000 to lead Penske Racing's daily operations. Since then, as team president, the 1990 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology mechanical engineering alumnus has helped the organization dominate the Indianapolis 500, with four wins since 2001 and a record-tying three wins in a row from 2001-2003; become one of the top teams in the Indy Racing League, with victories in the first two races of this season; and become competitive in NASCAR's Sprint Cup league, with a victory in the prestigious Daytona 500.

Rose-Hulman Faculty Earn Emeritus Status, Promotions and Tenure

2010-03-24T19:32:00+00:00

The Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Board of Trustees granted emeritus status, promotions, tenure and leaves to several faculty members during its winter meeting. Emeritus faculty status was awarded to Art Western, who is retiring after 23 years as vice president of academic affairs, dean of faculty and professor of physics and optical engineering; and Thomas Mason, who is retiring after 37 years as professor of economics and engineering management and former vice president for administration.

"Biotechnology" == evil

2010-03-05T15:40:44+00:00

Now that he's not at Microsoft, I generally find myself more tolerant of Bill Gates. I think it's awesome that he's throwing himself (and his fortune) into solving some big problems. I might not totally agree with it all, but it's certainly more noble than his previous occupation.

That said, I really really wish I could convince him that biotechnology (specifically, genetically engineered food) is not the answer to modern or future food supply issues. It's not his main deal, but I was reminded of his views by his article about a new farming book.

My thoughts on this subject have gone from almost complete ignorance a couple years ago, to vague malaise a couple months ago, to downright disgust with biotechnology in farming (read: GE crops). Granted, much of my education has been from biased sources, but I think I still have some fairly reasonable reasoning. And I'm not ragging on other kinds of biotech -- there is clearly a lot of good that it can do. But I am very opposed to GE food, for two basic reasons. The first is the way it is treated from an intellectual property perspective. The second is its lack of benefit when compared to its known and unknown risks.

The problem with GE intellectual property is this: when you put an unnatural gene into an organism, you can patent it. Not just the process, but the actual seed, the organism. This means that every plant with that gene belongs to the patent-holder. Farmers are criminals if they save seed. Compare this to conventional breeding: when I make a better variety of some plant, you can keep the seed. This change in options for the farmer results in a change in the formula for pricing the seed. If the farmer has the option of saving seed, the breeder has to keep the price low enough that it makes more sense to buy seed than to save it. If the farmer doesn't have the option to save seed, the breeder just has to keep the price low enough that the farmer still farms. This exact thing has happened: seed corn is somewhere around 400% of its price 20 years ago. Compare that to the CPI, currently about 200% of its value 25 years ago. So, if I make a GE seed, I can gouge you. And if I make the best conventionally-bred variety and then stick in a gene that you don't really care about, then I can gouge you some more.

The other problem with GE crops is the lack of benefits when compared to problems. The promise is this: higher yields, drought-resistance, pest-resistance, herbicide-tolerance. Compared to conventional breeding, GE fails to produce higher yields. GE has not produced a drought-resistant crop. GE achieved pest-resistance by making plants produce a toxin. Granted it's a "safe for humans" toxin. At least, it is when used in moderation and given a certain amount of time to wash off. However, the toxin is produced by plants at a rate 2-40 times higher than the toxin would have been applied by farmers, according to one estimate I heard. And every cell of the plant is producing the toxin: there is no "wash it off". Herbicide tolerance encourages the use of more herbicides. And that's the mostly-known effects of planting GE crops. GE seed is notoriously closed to scientific scrutiny.

So, that's my rant. I could go on and on, but that's enough for now.

Time,

2009-12-11T19:08:12+00:00

I've started writing 2010 on things. In my mind it's still June. I think I just lost 6 months. How odd.

The Puffin Perch

2009-10-18T05:21:40+00:00

Renaming A Dead Horse

I decided that the previous name of this blog was becoming unseemly, so it is now “The Puffin Perch”. Maybe I’ll finish some of those drafted posts now that I won’t be embarrassed to have people find them. But no promises!

Weighing myself in THE FUTURE

2009-10-13T17:42:13+00:00

Why am I posting about a bathroom scale? Because this thing is probably the slickest, most polished gadget I've ever used.

Yes, I bought the Withings Wi-Fi Scale. If you're connected to me via any social networks or meet me in person, you've probably heard me drone on and on about my recent weight loss. But keeping track of that with pen and paper, or even an iPhone app as I had been for a while is so early-to-mid-2009. Now, I have a bathroom scale that connects to my wireless network at home and updates a private Web site and iPhone application. It measures not only weight, but also fat percentage by measuring impedance in one's feet (though I wonder how accurate that is).

What makes it so slick? Withings seems to have gotten everything right from the start. I've been using their iPhone app to manually track weight for a while, and after setting up the scale, bam - the scale displayed my name (taken from the website/iPhone app) on its screen, uploaded the data, and seconds later I had a push notification (badge) to my iPhone indicating there were new measurements to view. The new measurements uploaded from the scale appear just like the ones I was putting in manually, only now with additional information.

Of course, it should be easy to be easy when you're talking about a bathroom scale, but the setup is what could have been really complicated. While the scale does have a screen, it doesn't make sense to integrate a whole input device into the scale so you can configure the wireless networking, which they could have done but would have been really bad. Even worse would have been to do something where pressing on the scale would scroll through letters or something obtuse like that.

What Withings did, which is brilliant, is to let you configure it with an iPhone. To do that, all you do is load up the iPhone app in configuration mode and turn the scale over. There's a little iPhone shaped indentation on the bottom, with a single button below it. When you press the button on the bottom of the scale, it emits a tone and the iPhone and scale communicate audibly like a modem. Then you just configure the scale using a full interface on the iPhone. There's also a USB cable included that connects to an equally slick Mac or Windows application to configure it. Both processes work as easily as I could possibly imagine. I think that in addition to my name that it also pulls some other info from the website, but I need to play with it a bit more to make sure.

When I said "polished" up above, I meant cosmetically as well as functionally. It is an awfully good looking scale. The display is bright and easy to read. By looking at the photos on their website you can tell they spent some time on design, and it looks even better in person.

The iPhone app and Web interface to view the data is still a little clunky to me, but I'm pretty picky about software and besides, that can always be upgraded later. They got the hardware and integration parts down flawlessly and that's what counts. I'm hoping they come up with a real API to access the data, but for now, you can get a CSV export of all the data recorded through the website.

So, bravo Withings. My only complaint about the hardware is that it doesn't work well on the stupid carpet in my bathroom, even when using the special carpet feet included.

Disclaimer: I've only used the thing for a day, so if you want to buy one you might want to wait and make sure I don't rant about it breaking in a week or something.

repos.rb

2009-10-04T20:55:58+00:00

The RubyCocoa project makes Ruby an incredibly powerful scripting language in Mac OS X.

As an example, here's a script that I used to rearrange windows when switching between various monitors. Based on the width of the main screen (something which I couldn't find a robust way to query outside of the NSScreen Cocoa API), it applies my preferred size and positioning to specific windows I care about. If you run it with '-q', it instead dumps a structure with those windows' current sizes and positions, for feeding back into the script as configuration.

Enjoy:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -w

require 'optparse'
require 'osx/cocoa' # http://rubycocoa.sourceforge.net
require 'pp'

options = { :query => false }
OptionParser.new do |opts|
  opts.banner = 'Usage: repos.rb [options]'
  opts.on( '-q', '--query', 'Query rather than set positioning' ) do |q|
    options[:query] = q
  end
end.parse!

def first_window_of( s ) %Q{the first window of process "#{s}"} end
WindowsOfInterest = {
  :adium_chat     => first_window_of('Adium')   + ' whose name is not "Contacts"',
  :adium_contacts => first_window_of('Adium')   + ' whose name is "Contacts"',
  :firefox        => first_window_of('Firefox') + ' whose name is not "Downloads"',
  :ical           => first_window_of('iCal'),
  :iterm          => first_window_of('iTerm'),
  :itunes         => first_window_of('iTunes'),
  :mail           => first_window_of('Mail'),
  :terminal       => first_window_of('Terminal'),
  :tweetie        => first_window_of('Tweetie') + ' whose name is "Tweetie"',
}
PropertiesOfInterest = [ :position, :size ]
ConfigurationForWidth = {
  2560 => {
    :adium_chat     => { :position => [2058, 1241], :size => [501, 357]   },
    :adium_contacts => { :position => [2419, 22],   :size => [141, 357]   },
    :firefox        => { :position => [632, 223],   :size => [1459, 1096] },
    :ical           => { :position => [3199, 800],  :size => [640, 715]   },
    :iterm          => { :position => [0, 740],     :size => [786, 860]   },
    :itunes         => { :position => [1080, 22],   :size => [1336, 946]  },
    :mail           => { :position => [0, 22],      :size => [1079, 717]  },
    :terminal       => { :position => [2560, 800],  :size => [641, 795]   },
    :tweetie        => { :position => [2058, 549],  :size => [500, 690]   },
  },
  1920 => {
    :adium_chat     => { :position => [1419, 844],  :size => [501, 357]   },
    :adium_contacts => { :position => [1785, 22],   :size => [135, 319]   },
    :firefox        => { :position => [397, 72],    :size => [1208, 1034] },
    :ical           => { :position => [949, 1203],  :size => [640, 715]   },
    :iterm          => { :position => [0, 355],     :size => [810, 844]   },
    :itunes         => { :position => [494, 22],    :size => [1280, 715]  },
    :mail           => { :position => [0, 22],      :size => [1079, 717]  },
    :terminal       => { :position => [312, 1202],  :size => [641, 723]   },
    :tweetie        => { :position => [1418, 293],  :size => [501, 550]   },
  },
}

def do_apple_script(s)
  result = OSX::NSAppleScript.alloc.initWithSource(s).executeAndReturnError(nil)

  # Return an array of the values (AppleScript uses 1-based indexing)
  (1..result.numberOfItems).map do |i|
    result.descriptorAtIndex( i ).int32Value
  end
end

main_display_width = Integer( OSX::NSScreen.mainScreen.frame.width )
window_properties = {}

if options[:query]

  WindowsOfInterest.each do |key,spec|
    window_properties[key] = {}
    PropertiesOfInterest.each do |prop|
      window_properties[key][prop] = do_apple_script(
        %Q{tell application "System Events" to get the #{prop} of #{spec}}
      )
    end
  end

  puts "#{main_display_width} =>"
  pp window_properties

else

  config = ConfigurationForWidth[main_display_width] or
    raise "No configuration for main display width #{main_display_width}"

  config.each do |window,props|
    props.each do |prop,rubyval|
      value = '{' + rubyval.join(',') + '}'
      do_apple_script(
        %Q{tell application "System Events" to set the #{prop} of #{WindowsOfInterest[window]} to #{value}}
      )
    end
  end

  system %Q{/Users/ryan/bin/emacsclient -e '(rdj-smartsize-frame-for #{main_display_width}))' > /dev/null}

end

Quoting Myself

2009-09-29T19:24:47+00:00

Dave Imler's IM status earlier: "Are you there, God? It's me, Dave. I've found several usability bugs in creation. Enclosed are the instructions for reproduction. Do you have any ideas about a bugfix timetable?"

Me: Can't you just fork the project?
Me: Or hasn't He gotten around to putting it on github yet?
Him: Man, I don't like reading that code. I can't even get through his 'documentation'. Leviticus reads like a freaking switch statement.
Me: BEGAT considered harmful
Him: winner is you!

6 month update

2009-08-21T12:20:16+00:00

Smiley here! Forget the dreaded post-less month, I've been out of it for 6. And I really don't know where to start, but I haven't updated Live Journal in the last six months, or the equivalent of an Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike. And when I put it in those terms, it's hard to think about.

The biggest news that most people know, is that I'm engaged to Audrey (Homeward Bound)! Yay!

After that, I'm hanging in there. Still employed, and in the Arlington Heights IL area for awhile longer. (Lease is up in mid-November so will be switching apartments then for sure.)

I don't know how much I'll be updating, but my continual goal is to make time for social interactions. How well I meet that goal is another thing entirely.

Good luck to everyone, and even if I have been hiding away just trying to survive for the last year, that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking of you. And yes that includes my family, friends from Robinson and college, friends from the trail, and all of my running buddies from Chicago! I'm Wishing I was better at striking a balance, and I'm working every day to be better. But lately that's all that it feels like I can do, work at getting through one day at a time, doing the best I can. And that's what I'll keep doing, the best I can.

All in all, life is good, and worth every effort. Still Smiling!

Scott (Smiley Happy Feet :-)

WordPressalypse

2009-06-16T05:58:32+00:00

Something went terribly wrong in my WordPress install today, and I’m not sure what, or why. The database is fine, along with all the posts and comments, as far as I can tell. Those who read by feed probably won’t even notice a difference.

Once I have time to descend back into the Jeffries Tubes around here, I’ll get it sorted.

My thoughts on a piece of bad news

2009-06-07T21:45:23+00:00

A really terrible story.

http://www.dreamindemon.com/2009/06/04/emily-mcdonald-made-her-daughter-sick/

I am on another web site from whence I am familiar with this woman and her children. Sometimes I have a feeling about people but not this time. When she took her blog off line I figured it was because the child was dying and she didn't want any more public scrutiny.

But no, it was not that. At all. Much worse.

I do wonder what makes someone crack up like this. Certainly she was under a lot of pressure and was something of an overachiever (raising three young children, one with a lot of special needs, while going to school as well.) But what kind of person are you to start with, that this is what happens inside your head? Why do some depressed/ mentally ill individuals hurt others, while most just destroy themselves? If science could solve that problem the world would bow down and worship it..

I'm glad that technology was used for so much good in this instance. Modern medicine saved her child over and over. A camera caught her in the act. So often I tend toward seeing the darker side of technology and medicine. It was good to see them as the heroes (along with the medical professionals who suspected something like this) of a detective story. For my fellow bloggers who ask, "What is redemptive about this?" I'm going to answer, "The surveillance camera, and the people who figured out what was going on."