Dutch Perl Workshop
posted: 2008-02-22
I, along with my colleague Stephan Kuijf, will be attending the Dutch Perl Workshop next Friday in Arnhem. I'm pretty stoked about this, if you don't interact with other programmers on a regular basis, it can make your thinking insular and narrow. You need the brownian movement of ideas in a social context to elevate your thinking. http://www.perlworkshop.nl/wiki/wiki.cgi
Wikileaks
posted: 2008-02-20
I'm pretty upset that some people, who do not like what information Wikileaks is . . . leaking, have resorted to having a court order remove their DNS entry. So, in the interest of helpfulness:
http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
Independence of Kosovo
posted: 2008-02-18
warning: I don't know what I'm talking about
A part of your country declaring independence just for funsies is illegal. Many lands have had lot's of wars over this very issue. The American Civil war comes to mind. There have also been wars where the secessionists have succeeded, the American revolutionary war also comes to mind. (this is a bit US centric, but I actually attended school there and read books about US history, so deal with it)
So, secession is a great wrong that must be fought against and a great virtue to shake off the chains of a corrupt government. Isn't that nice? Everybody is right and wrong at the same time. So, I started thinking about it, what tilts secession in one direction or another, what makes it a virtue or an evil?
The answer, when you think about it, is 'Whoever wins gets to decide.' It is just that simple. Declare your independence, get enough allies or some really good representatives talking up your side of the situation to foreign governments (PR is always an essential element of the revolution) and win the war. Tada! It was a glorious revolution. In the alternative, you keep those crazy bastards from stealing a chunk of your land and weakening your country and, Presto! It was a sad page in your nations history that everyone is trying to forget about now.
Countries with secessionist movements in their borders (Spain and Russia, just two totally random examples) are very much against Kosovo's indepdence. They say that Kosovo will set a precedence for their own separatists. Most nations recognize the basic truth in the paragraph before this one: whoever wins gets to write the history.
I think Kosovo will keep its independence, no matter how much some countries pound their chests. Serbia is guilty, as a nation, of attempted genocide and horrific attrocities against their own countrymen. They lost the moral high ground, and, in my opinion, the right to stop Kosovo from seeking its own destiny.
Typing speed
posted: 2008-02-01
I was typing an email earlier today and about half way through I noticed how fast my fingers were moving. The keyboard sounded like a heavy rain on a tin roof. I know that I am speeding up in my old age (this, coupled with the fact that I type ALL DAY). Just how fast am I? Forward Google search and a visit to an online typing test. The answer: 54 words per minute. Which is hardly as impressive as I thought it would be :(
Peak Oil, Airships, and Helium
posted: 2008-01-27
America is squandering what will, in the near future, be an important national asset.
Some Facts:
- The world is running out of oil. There is a lot of talk and hope for the future of alternative fuels. These alternatives will, with care and attention, lessen the blow, but they will never match the current energy wealth that we all enjoy today.
- Airships (or dirigibles or Zeppelins) have always enjoyed a fringe enthusiasm. Many companies over the last 60 years have tried to bring back (actually, the height of the 'Zeppelin age' wasn't all that high) airships as a viable alternative to fixed wing aircraft. Slashdot article or this Popular Mechanics article for a little light reading on the future and this Wikipedia article about it's past.
- The United States has the largest reserve of Helium in the world. An increase in demand for lighter than air vehicles means that this helium will become more important, even vital, to our future. And they are wasting it.
- When you read the article above, you will see that most helium comes from natural gas wells. And who is ramping up to be the world's largest producer of natural gas? Why, Russia of course. But I haven't seen any evidence that they are trying to collect this strategically vital resource.
- An American company recently developed a technology that I think will put airship usage over the top. Thin film flexible solar cells could provide an additional power reserve for airships (I do not think that you could fly SOLELY using solar energy, at least fast enough to be useful). But if you could save up to 30% of your fuel costs during daylight operation, that's a bargain!
Taken together, what does this all mean?
Airships ARE the future. They are fast, consume less oil than fixed wing aircraft, have massive lifting capabilities, are quiet, and require less real estate than fixed wing aircraft airports. Airships are not as fast as jets, but I think if the choice was between a 9 hour jet flight cramped up like a sardine, or a 2 day flight in relative comfort (think a long train journey with sleeping berths) it would be a close run thing. If the 2 day flight was 1/5th the cost of the jet? No contest. The jet would lose out for the same reason that the Concorde lost. If taking an extra day of travel time means saving 2 or 3 thousand dollars, I'll take the extra day.
I've only seen a little bit of this (see the HAA design in the Popular Science article in the fact section), but the design doesn't seem to take it far enough. Imagine if the total upper surface of a 120 meter airship was covered in thin film flexible solar cells. You could slap an electrical power assist on the airship's engines to increase your fuel savings. As a bonus, when not in flight you would have a large solar array plugged into your power grid whenever an airship came to town.
Hydrogen as a lifting gas is not a good idea, it is a big reason why the Hindenburg went up in flames. The designers KNEW this was a problem. The Hindenburg (and its sister ship the Graaf Zeppelin) were both designed to use Helium as a lifting gas. Unfortunately for the Germans, the only big reserve of helium in the world was owned by the United States, and they weren't sharing. When airships become important, even vital to world transportation, the USA was poised to be in control of the most vital component, the helium gas that makes it all possible. Unfortunately, they are letting it hiss away, (see facts section). So, whoever has access to the most natural gas wells, and acts NOW to start capturing 'new' helium will have a tremendous advantage in the near future. If you have the helium, you get to say who flies and who doesn't, isn't that nice?
Recommendations / Predictions
The United States should immediately redirect its efforts toward increasing its strategic reserve of Helium and should designate it as a strategic asset. That means you get selfish about what you have and greedy for what you can buy from others.
Russia, and other oil and gas producing nations, should start collecting and storing the helium that they are currently (probably) just letting escape into the atmosphere where it is very difficult to recover. The United States will:
- charge obscene amounts of money for helium that they control
- give preferential treatment to their own civilian and military uses, perhaps to the point of attempting to establish a monopoly on air travel
- as the oil gets used up, our last chance to recover helium in usable quantities disappears with it
Airships will not catch on with the public for another 5 to 10 years. Steadily increasing oil prices (and consequently, the rising cost of airline travel) will make airships not only attractive financially, but also aesthetically. It will take one of the major aerospace companies taking an interest in passenger service airships before this moves forward. The smaller companies that spring up and quickly die do not have enough depth to deal with the myriad infrastructure issues that airships will need to have addressed.
Airships will bring back a more genteel mode of travel (slower, but more comfortable). Think about what this will mean culturally to the west. Fedex and UPS slow down, flying away for a long weekend becomes prohibitively expensive, airship-ports can be placed closer to population centers because of reduced noise/pollution/runway space, etc etc. There is a lot to consider.
Can intelligence be learned?
posted: 2007-11-29
I just finished reading an article in the Scientific American How to raise smart kids. I have a kid, and I am trying to raise him, so I thought a little extra reading on my part would be a good idea. The article bascially says that effort is more important than innate ability. I have a lot of innate ability, and as I was reading the article I kept thinking that, "yes, that's exactly what happened to me." I breezed through high school, all 16 of them, with no problems or even much of a challenge. When I started college, my lazy, 'it will just come to me' mode of operation hit a brick wall. Unfortunately, by that time I didn't know how to study. American high school does not teach you how to learn, it teaches you how to obey and fit in. Obediance and fitting in are not exactly the kind of life skills you need to excel. The most important indicator of future success is your level of persistence.
The article gave some concrete evidence that effort is very important (usually even more important than innate skill). It also gives some specific examples on how to talk to your child so that you don't screw them up. I recommend it.
These things stick in your mind
posted: 2007-11-19
Memes. 11 years ago I started working for Wachovia bank in Winston-Salem, NC. My previous job was a call support drone, so moving into a nice downtown building and working in a team where everyone else was as smart as (or smarter than) me was a BIG change. On my first day, my new coworker, Ron (not the same Ron located on the right side of this screen) decided he would show me some of the culinary delights offered by downtown Winston-Salem. We walked to a restaurant about 3 blocks from the office and as we walked in the door, he turns to me and says, "The food here is smack your mama good." To this day, I still don't know precisely what he meant. Was it so good that you would spontaneously hit someone? Was it so tasty that I would hit my mother for not making food this good when I was a child? Who knows? As a meme, it is a good one. I mean, it's been with me for 11 years. So, now I pass it on to you. I welcome your suggestions about what YOU think it means.
I am not dead
posted: 2007-11-18
A handy look at the last update time for my index.html file (the file you are enjoying at this very moment) shows me that I haven't made a SINGLE update or modification to this page in over 6 months. I guess I would wonder, if I wasn't actually inhabiting this corpus, if Richard was still with us (us being YOU in this odd sentence syntax).
What I want to believe, and what I keep telling myself, is that I am currently waiting for the next big idea to gel in my thoughts. I should mention that I have lots of thoughts, and even produce useful work output for my employers, all the time, but the last BIG thought I had was many moons ago. I'll give you a hint, the next big idea I have has to do with a turn-key total organizational culture/value/personality/style map that can be performed within 1 week and can scale to over 25,000 employee companies. Or it has to do with alternative energy innovations. Or it has something to do with helping other normal people find ways of increasing what has been called "the ultimate currency" (Tal Ben-Shahar).
That's the problem with big thoughts, until they click with enough force to produce action, they are amophorous, void and without form. And you can never tell whether all of the pseudo thoughts currently racing in your brain are kernels for the big thought or simply things that needed to be thought before the big one arrives. I will admit that some of these pseudo ideas branch into fictional writing. I have had just too many whacky things happen in my life to NOT make a good story.
So, to recap.
- Richard still alive
- Thoughts a little undirected right now
- Family continues in good health
A quick side note if you are under 30. Write down all of your ideas RIGHT NOW. My friend David Oates told me this once when I was 25 and he was 37, and I can't tell you how pissed off I am at the 25 year old me that he didn't follow that advice enough.
A short synopsis
Oakbox is me, Richard Still.
I have a degree in Electronic Engineering, worked as a DJ, did tech support for Prodigy before this whole 'internet' thing picked up, worked in a bank, worked for a magazine publisher, am married, have a son named Derek, spent 3 years participating in and hosting poetry slams in the south east of the USA, moved to the Netherlands in late 2001, enjoy reading, program and maintain several web sites, advocate open source and free software, and participate in a few online communities.
My office from space
I thought you might like to see my office building. I am on the top floor in the north corner. Sweet. Here is the link to Google Maps.
Website for my father
I was talking with my dad on the phone a week ago and he mentioned
that he was thinking about setting up a web site for his paving
company in Northeast Tennessee. This was a bit of a shocker for me
because I should have done this about. . . oh, 6 years ago! So, you
can see my father's web site here: http://www.stillpaving.com.
I thought the play on words was nice for the URL :)