Mission: Accomplished!

I passed my private pilot checkride yesterday, so I am now an officially licensed pilot. The checkride didn't go especially smoothly, but I performed well enough on the various sections to satisfy the examiner, so I now have my magic piece of paper that says I'm allowed to fly myself and others wherever I wish.

Harris Ranch, anyone?

Bomb Disposal Expert Analyzes Latest Attack

An excellent commentary on the latest terrorist attacks in Britain. To wit:

To recap: an exceptionally incompetent group of troublemakers, unknown to the plods or spooks, decided to bring a spot of terror to old Blighty starting last Friday. These people had no actual explosives, and were apparently too lazy and ignorant to learn how to make them.

Full article here.

Phoenix Motors

Phoenix Motors is making a smallish pure-electric SUV. Got this from a Register article about new quick-charging batteries, which are used by both the Phoenix and the British Lightning. The Lightning appears to be taking a page from Tesla's book and going for the less cost-sensitive sports car market, but Phoenix is taking a more interesting tack and selling them to fleets and municipalities, both of which are more sensitive to operations cost than capital costs.

Selective Democracy

Interesting article in the LA times about Hamas and Fatah. Not sure if anyone in L.A. will actually read it, but since it also made the top-three list on Google News, it's guarenteed to get some readership.

Once again it seems like the U.S. is choosing to back a politically-acceptable dictator (OK, jury is still out on whether Abbas is a dictator or not, but dismissing the elected assembly is not a good start. Who wants to bet Hamas won't be allowed to run in the next election?) over the radical but popularly-supported alternative.

The U.S. is scared of creating another Iran in Palestine, but the more opposition the U.S. creates to the current Hamas leadership, the more they empower the radical elements of the party. The way to moderate them is to bring them to the negotiating table. Radicals cannot abide compromise. When people have nothing, the guy standing up for their rights is a hero. When people see a promising offer on the table and the guy next to them says "No! XXX at any cost!" they stop seeing him as a hero and start seeing him as a loony.

(Found a Wall Street Journal article following writing this, on why support for Fatah isn't the answer. It illustrates the problems with support for Fatah pretty well, although I have serious doubts about the author's proposed solution)

Night Flight

I put in my final night flight, in a long but spectacular evening flying from Reid Hillview to Gnoss Field in Sonoma, to Livermore, and then back to Reid Hillview. Weather was clear through the whole flight, which was good luck -- SF is frequently covered in fog.

With this flight I've met all my hour requirements, so now I just have to brush up on some of my maneuvers and get my FAA checkride scheduled. Can't wait!

Memorial Day Trip

Joahnna and I visited my parents over memorial day, and did a whirlwind tour of some of the Seattle highlights. We managed to get a ferry ride in, along with a trip to the Seattle Art Museum and the new sculpture garden in downtown. We didn't manage to make it to the Boeing Flight Museum, but I guess we have to save something for the next trip.

New Front Lawn

Finally did something with the front of the house. I now have all new grass front and back, as well as a little ring to make my remaining tree look neat and under control. Now it's time for a backyard BBQ.

Soon.

Really.

Chickens

I found this video over at Groklaw. Anyone who has ever sat through a boring, technical presentation will definately appreciate this. If you haven't, well, count your lucky chickens.

Aviation Records

As Jon can attest, there aren't a lot of records around waiting to be broken. However, Barrington Irving, a young man from Jamaica, found one: The first African American to fly solo around the world. He put himself through flight school, managed to get a plane (!!!) and fuel donated to set the world record, and founded a non-profit to introduce aviation and aviation careers to inner-city youth.

More Cross-Country Work

Last week I did my first long solo flight, flying from Reid-Hillview down to Coalinga, back up to Salinas, and home to RHV. Total time was a little over three hours. However, I need at least 5 hours of solo cross-country time to get my license, so I need to do another cross-country solo this weekend.

Last weekend's flight was fun, and pretty straightforwards except for the second landing in Salinas, where they were having a convention for Light Sport aircraft. In retrospect, I should have parked for a while to chat with people about their planes, but I was so stressed to land the plane amidst all the traffic that I didn't even think about the event.

This weekend, weather permitting, I'm flying out over the central valley to Fresno, to get some practice at flat-land navigation while racking up my cross-country hours. After that's done, then it's time to do a little night flying, and afterwards it's just polishing up my skills to pass the practical test.

Simple Ideas

An article about Virgin's Richard Branson supporting research into aircraft biofuel also mentioned a simple idea he had for reducing noise and fuel consumption at airports -- have push-back tugs actually taxi aircraft all the way to the runway.

Woman sets records for the wrong team

Interesting interview with Hanna Reitsch, a German test-pilot during WWII and close associate of Hitler. By the 50-mile rule, she was the first astronaut, almost 20 years before John Glenn achieved sub-orbital flight.

U.S. Loses Top Tech Spot

Reading this article wasn't really a surprise, since the tech industry (and the VC industry) has seen this one coming for a while, but it's interesting to see it hit the news as a fait accompli instead of dire predictions of the future. Remains to be seen if this is enough to get the U.S. to address the issue, since we seem to be preoccupied with "staying the course".

Alternative Fuel Day

I was reading an article about new batteries that run off of sugar water. Similar principle to a fuel cell, except using a fuel that neither leaks through its container or explodes. Apparently can run on almost any sugary liquid (not Coke, though -- the carbonation screws it up).

Then, to top that, Sachin sent me a link to a car that runs on air. How much cheaper than that can you get? Of course, with a top speed of 40mph, it's not going to get you anywhere in a hurry.

One More

Apparently I missed mentioning the Milner Aircar, which looks like more of a garage-type development effort. However, their development is further along and they have a couple features which makes them more attractive than the Terrafugia. Chief of those is that the rear wing placement allows greater visibility in car mode, but also the styling of the car is more attractive, and they're targetting a four-seat vehicle, which is more in line with the car form factor.

The Jetsons Era Arriving?

It appears that the mythical flying car may soon be a reality. For many years Moller has teased us with his "Skycar" that was always "just a few years away". I've worked on a few projects like that, too...

However, recently a bunch more similar ideas have been popping up, fitting in under the new light-sport aircraft rules in the U.S. and Europe. The most famous is probably Terrafugia, which was started by a team of MIT students after their concept won a cash prize. I have some doubts about this one, but my main one is that they'll be able to get it made street-legal, since cars are so heavily regulated.

Which is why I found the new PAL-V to be much more interesting. For starters, they went with a gyrocopter design instead of a winged aircraft -- folding rotors is much easier than folding wings. More importantly, three wheels makes it technically a motorcycle, which means as long as the motor passes noise emissions you're golden.

And apparently they're not the only people to have come up with this idea -- an American gyrocraft designer has come up with a similar concept, although his vehicle looks much more like something from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

Will I be first to line up for a flying car? Probably not -- I'll let a few other people test them out for reliability first. The Terrafugia looks clumsy, but the PAL-V seems like something I could see myself owning one day.

Passed Written Test

I took -- and passed -- my FAA written test today, so that's one more milestone on the road to getting my license. I spent more time studying for this relatively easy test than I did for most of the tests I took in college, which was somewhat amusing in retrospect. I think it's been so long since I took a real test that it made me a little nervous.

Also, today was chart expiration day. Since all my sectional charts just turned into pumpkins, I stopped off in the airport store and picked up a new SF terminal and sectional charts. I've now realized it doesn't make sense to "stock up" on charts as they go out of date every six months.

I have a short flight schedule for this weekend to brush up on some more skills, and after that I'm ready for my next (and last) stage check. After that I do some long-distance solo flights, and then I'm ready -- supposedly -- to face the examiner.

Excellent Site

Just found a site called FlightAware after reading some aviation newsgroups. It's a really slick site with a tie-in to the U.S. air traffic control system - it will tell you exactly where any flight under IFR conditions is located. You can track flights by tail number (for small aircraft) or by airline flight number.

Unfortunately it doesn't report on VFR flights, even if the flight is being tracked by ATC. So no help for me in the short term.

A Bargain at Three Times the Price

I was reading about an Air Force procurement program for a next-generation combat, search and rescue helicopter. The contract is currently awarded to Boeing, and is expected to be worth 10-15 billion dollars for 140 aircraft.

For the math-impaired, that works out to about $71-$107 million dollars per aircraft. A not-inconsiderable sum. Especially when you consider that it's an upgrade of the CH-47 Chinook, an aircraft that's been in service since 1966. The feature list for the aircraft includes fancy sounding items like "terrain-following-radar", "foward-looking infrared" and "net-ready cockpit". Pretty impressive, until you look around and find this: An MH-47D Chinook, special-forces equipped, already comes with FLIR.

No wonder the GAO is going to pay close attention to this one. Paying $10bil to buy a minor variant of aircraft we already have sounds like pork to me.

Cirronimbus

I cancelled flying (and work) on Monday because I was still recovering from the cold I acquired over the weekend. Actually I'm still recovering from it now, but I'm down to the sniffly-nose part that can be tackled with Kleenex and decongestants.

The weather this morning was iffy for flying, due to heavy clouds coming in, but it wasn't raining, so my instructor decided we could fly as long as we just did pattern work (that's flying circles around the airport, for the uninitiated). We did some more practice on unusual takeoffs and landings, which are pretty fun. I scraped the tail skid on one of my soft-field takeoffs, but other than that they went well. The landings weren't quite as pretty but I got a lot better as the day went on. Some better flare technique helped out here, as well as learning to use some rudder to correct for crosswind alignment.

I have homework for the weekend -- some final studying for my FAA written test, as well as plotting out a detailed course for my cross-country trip, which (weather permitting) will be this sunday.

Oh, and a cirronimbus cloud is a big, puffy raincloud, which is exactly what the sky was full of this morning.

Air America

I watched "Air America" with Joahnna the other night, which is a fun flick. What I hadn't realized is how close to reality it came. Air America was a fully-functioning CIA airline which operated all over southeast asia.

I had this little epiphany while reading an article on proper leaning techniques for piston engines (fun stuff!), and noticed in the author's bio that he spent some time flying for Air America.

When at first we practice to deceive, it usually ends up as a good plot for a movie.

The Eagle Has Landed

Today I completed my first unsupervised solo (on my first solo, my instructor was sitting on a bench watching me fly the plane). Although, actually, it turned out to be semi-supervised, since my instructor was giving a demo flight to a prospective student, and he ended up in the traffic pattern right behind me. So he was watching my first landing.

It was definately a thrill to go out and do everything on my own, with no one watching over my shoulder (or correcting my mistakes). I could have held the plane for longer, but I decided to keep this session short at just over an hour. Sometimes it pays to quit while you're ahead.

It did take a while to get here, though, because of the weather minimums I have as a student pilot. For me to fly solo, the weather doesn't have to be merely good, it has to be darn near perfect. The past few weeks I've tried to go up several times, but when the time came around, the weather was below minimums every time. My biggest enemy recently has been haze (frequently smog), which on otherwise nice, sunny days reduces visibility below the 10 miles I need. Finally a storm system blew in and got rid of all the built-up haze, but then I couldn't fly because of the storm. If it's not one thing, it's another.

But I'm finally past that, and the weather should be getting more predictable as we head in to spring. And if I land the plane a few more times without bending the landing gear, they'll probably drop my minimums a little, too...

HD DVD Copy Protection Cracked

This Register article reveals that a crack has been found for HD-DVD copy protection. And, apparently, it wasn't even that hard.

Score: Hackers 2, Hollywood 0.

Wonder if the Blu-ray guys did any better of a job on their security?

Kevin Smith Interview

Just finished watching a really funny interview with Joahnna and Adam. Actually, the interview is with Kevin Smith, and I watched it with Joahnna and Adam, but you get the point. Enjoy.

Friendly Fire Video

The Sun somehow got ahold of the gun cam video from an A-10 involved in a friendly-fire incident. Illustrates a number of things, among them the communications lag between disparate parts of the service (the A-10s make two passes and have already figured out that it's probable friendly fire by the time the call comes in from the unit under fire to break off the attack).

Mission: Possible

I got a very excited phone call from Shana the other night, saying that she had been (finally) accepted into Vet school. She got an acceptance letter from Kansas State, and she's still waiting for responses from Oregon and North Carolina. But with this letter it changes from a question of "if" to a question of "where."

Congrats, Shana!

Contracting

I had a running discussion with Awais a ways back about the number of contractors and contractor deaths in Iraq. Like so much about the war, it is difficult to get any sort of accurate information out of the murk presented by the government. A prime example is the latest casualty report:
Since the start of the war, the U.S. military has suffered 3,094 fatalities in Iraq. Seven civilian contractors of the Defense Department have also been killed.
This is pretty much your standard casualty report, except in this one I saw a key phrase I hadn't seen in previous statements: that key little caveat "of the Defense Department."

Of course the vast majority of contractors in Iraq aren't Defense Department contractors; they're employees of Halliburton or Blackwater or some other private company, and paid via sufficient indirection that you can claim they're not Defense Department contractors.

Some quick searching showed that I'm not the only one who can't figure this out (Here is a news article on the subject, as well).

Buying Opinions

If there was any doubt in people's minds about how "analyst reports" are generated, this one should pretty much put the nail in the coffin. The article details some of the relationship between Microsoft and IDC, when Microsoft was struggling to come up with a plausible argument on how Windows costs less than a free operating system.

To be fair to the analysts, they did have a bit of trouble finding someone to write the study:

In a different Nov. 3, 2002, message, Houston said that the company had been unable to convince any other major research company to do the TCO study, and specifically mentioned Gartner as one that turned down Microsoft's request.

This may not be researcher integrity, however, so much as having a good sense on which way the wind is blowing:

"We approached Gartner about doing this study and they declined," said Houston. "They said it was because they didn't know that their model for TCO would work well with Linux. I privately wonder if they want to take on this debate."

Gratuitious Cross-Posting

Jon has decided to silly thing (defined as silly, of course, by the fact that I would never attempt such a thing. Myunique activites are not silly, of course -- they merely enchance my character). To wit, he has decided to break the unsupported, unresupplied speed record for the John Muir Trail, and he's launched a blog to document the attempt. I'll let you read all about it for yourself.

I think the distances involved would probably kill me, but I'm certainly interested to see how Jon's progress goes.

Solo!

Today I achieved my first major milestone in my flight training, which was my first solo flight. I was a little nervous going into it, but I figured if my flight instructor thought I was up to it, and the rental company was willing to toss me the keys to a $180k plane, then I must really be ready.

Or something like that.

The event itself was, fortunately, uneventful. I made three circuits in the pattern with my instructor in the plane, then after the third landing, he had me taxi over to the "instructor bench", where he sat and watched while I made three more circuits on my own.

After my third landing, I taxied back and picked him up, after which we returned to the office/classroom for the festivities. This involved a couple after-action photos and a ceremonial shirt-doodling, as well as congratulations by the office staff and other instructors.

I spent the rest of the day bouncing inside.

Pushing The Limits

I was reading this article on CNN about "signing statements" that Bush appended to a recent postal services bill. I found this interesting because, although I may have slept through a few social studies classes, I had never heard of such a thing as a "signing statement" (link goes to Wikipedia article).

Bush's statements often reserve the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on national security and constitutional grounds.

"That non-veto hamstrings Congress because Congress cannot respond to a signing statement," ABA president Michael Greco has said.

The practice, he added, "is harming the separation of powers."

Not surprisingly, Bush has used more signing statements in his term in office than all 42 presidents before him combined.

Patent Surfacing

Ahh, the joy of submarine patents. For those of you not familiar with patent lingo, a "submarine patent" is one where the owner of the patent surfaces, seemingly from nowhere, at an inopportune moment.

Usually after you have completed the design and testing and are shipping millions of units. Like in this example -- the patent licensing company for Washington State University has just asserted a patent covering Bluetooth. Which is used, oh, pretty much everywhere these days.

New Look and Feel

Busy day for the blog today. To kick off the New Year (and to make my new shiny labels more relevant) I switched my blog to a new look and feel. I liked the austere look of the old template, but as I work in the networking industry, I also felt a need to increase the bandwidth consumption on the internet.

I'm creating a market for fiber-to-the-home one bit at a time.

Update:
Labels are very cool. I've gone back and labelled a bunch of my old posts, so now you can find all my travel info more easily.

Labels

Also played around a little bit with labels, which will allow those of you who are only interested in, say, my political rants, to skip past my posts on the progress of my flying career. I'm not sure that my legions of fans have swelled to quite the number where they are incapable of sorting through this on their own, but I'm usually willing to take some shiny new piece of technology for a test-drive.

DIY Electric Car

I was spending some quality time Googling today, and ran across this kit to do an electric conversion of a Porsche 914. It could make an interesting summer project, and of course it would be available much earlier than the Tesla...

I was a bit worried when I didn't see any 914s for sale on Trader Online (finally found one in Arizona), but apparently that's because they're just not expensive enough. A quick search on Craigslist found 7-8 of them for under $3000.

First need to get the Morgan out of the garage, though.

UFO Finds Gate Occupied at O'Hare, Returns Home

"To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," said union official Craig Burzych

The funny thing is that I found this on CNN, and as opposed to the tabloids...

It's Electric

Over the Christmas holiday, I watched "Who Killed the Electric Car", an interesting documentary on the history of electric vehicles in the 90s. The story primarily covers the vehicles created after California's historic mandate to make 2% of all vehicles on the road zero-emissions vehicles, and the subsequent development of the EV-1 by GM.

The short answer to the film's title question is that GM killed it, and in a very emphatic manner. When the leases on the EV-1s expired, GM did not allow owners to renew the lease or purchase the cars, but instead forced them to return every EV-1 to GM, where they destroyed. No question about it, GM wanted those vehicles gone.

One of the lessons I picked up from this is how easy it is to buy into hype. The EV-1 was a workable electric vehicle -- it had good acceleration, decent styling, and a range of 120 miles, which is good enough for any normal commuting. But shortly after the vehicles were coming out, many questions were raised about battery life, recycling, accident danger due to acid spills, total environmental impact, etc. And I remember giving these arguments some weight, since they are legitimate concerns.

The problem is, although these concerns are legitimate, they are also mostly non-issues when you dig into them. The batteries could be completely recycled, battery life is mostly a problem with lead-acid batteries rather than the NiMH batteries the EV-1 used, acid is far less dangerous in an accident than gasoline, and even if more coal-fired plants were built to provide the electricity, they still put less carbon in the atmosphere total than a gas burning car.

And whoever raised these issues, probably knew all that.

Ultimately, I think the problem was that the electric car was forced upon the manufacturers, and most companies are unwilling to promote a product that makes their existing product line obsolete. No existing car manufacturer wants to touch these for fear of making their existing cars look bad.

Which is why my hopes are with a couple new companies making next-generation electric cars with state-of-the-art battery technology. Tesla Motors, a new silicon-valley startup, is building a line of high-performance electric sports cars, with a range of about 250 miles. Full production won't start until 2008, and it will probably be a year or two after that until we see something a bit more affordable, but hopefully they'll have a sports sedan out in time to replace my Subaru STi.

Stage Check, Take Two

I tried to take my first stage check last week, but I was foiled by the weather -- it was raining lightly and looked like some nastier weather was going to move in, and I didn't want my first practical flying test to be in marginal weather. So we completed the ground portion of my stage check (apparently acceptable), and put off the flying part.

The reschedule flying portion should be tomorrow, and as of now the weather for tomorrow looks good -- plentiful sunshine, winds N at 5-10mph.

We'll see how the weather actually turns out, but I'm hoping for the best -- I'm trying to get a little extra flying in over the Christmas break.

Bah Humbug

'Tis the season, with all the usual reminders of Christmas cheer -- people putting little bow ties on the front of their diesel trucks, abnormally low temperatures (i.e. approaching freezing), obnoxious songs on the radio, 1.8M people trying to cram themselves into Valley Fair Mall over the weekend, and, last but not least, my favorite December activity -- trying to cram a month's worth of work into two weeks.

Needless to say, I have not completed my Christmas shopping yet.

In somewhat related news, the Sweaty Ball is coming up friday, which promises to be a fun event. The planners are pretty much evenly split on worrying that too many people will show up and worrying that not enough will show. Jon manages to worry about both at the same time -- I think this is a skill you learn in project management.

In aircraft news, I'm coming up on my stage check, where my flying progress will be evaluated. If I pass that, then I'm ready to do my solo flight, which is my first major milestone in flight school.

Flying Instructions

Basic flying instructions:

• Try to stay in the middle of the air.
• Do not go near the edges of it.
• The edges of air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees, and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.

Found while reading the 2005 Nall Report summarizing aircraft accidents. Original source of quote unknown.

Israel

I took a business trip to Israel a week ago, but I've been so busy since then that I haven't had time to write anything about it. Most of my trips I don't get the chance to see much of anything outside the hotel lobby, but on this trip I was in the country on the weekend (Israel takes friday and saturday off instead of saturday and sunday), so I got the chance to do a little tourism.

Awais wanted to visit the Al-Asqa mosque, so he gathered up a couple of our local co-workers and we drove out to Jerusalem. It wasn't very far, a little over an hour drive from our hotel in Hertziliya. It's something that's a little tough to get used to -- pretty much everything in the country is less than two hours drive from Tel Aviv.

We spent the day touring the old city. The old city is, by definition, the portion of Jersusalem contained in the city walls. These walls were built by the Ottomans in the 16th century (or thereabouts), so they're in pretty good condition.


As soon as we entered the city we were in the middle of a market. We spent the first part of the day in the Muslim quarter, where pretty much every available square inch is used for retail purposes. The way to the mosque was packed with people and hemmed in on both sides by stalls.


As we got close to the mosque, a group of Israeli police motioned me over. They asked about, roughly, my ethnicity (I said I was American), and then asked if I was a Muslim. I said no, so they replied that they wouldn't let me in ("Maybe on a weekday"). Awais said I should have said I was Muslim -- "they can't tell" -- but one of our friends in Israel said that they've been known to issue a pop quiz on the Koran if they doubt you. Which I would have failed miserably, of course.

Awais went in and I wandered around the city for a while. I went and saw the Christian quarter (no security guards there, but then again it wasn't Sunday), and then wandered into the Jewish quarter.


The Jewish quarter seemed pretty quiet, except for a couple tour groups. At one point we did hear someone around the corner launching into an angry tirade of some sort, but didn't investigate that. In the afternoon, the whole city shut down, which put a pretty effective end to our outing -- we had already walked around the city, seen the city walls, and visited the West Wall of the temple of David, so shopping was about all that was left to do.


I found Jerusalem to be a fascinating city. I wasn't as impacted by the religous aspect, since I don't participate in any of the three religions which vie for control of the city (or any other religions, for that matter, unless "Linux" counts), but the whole city oozes history. The four-hundred year old wall surrounding the city is new.

On saturday my stomach didn't feel very good, so I cancelled my plans to go see Tel Aviv. I spent the day hanging out in my hotel room and on the beach in front of my hotel.


Weather was nice -- I was worried about getting a sunburn while I was on the beach. Security wasn't too bad, although Awais was detained for 5 hours while they ran a background check on him. My biggest problem was getting the customs official to actually pay attention to me. They don't pretend to be even-handed on security, and aside from the beard, I look pretty darn white.

I actually ran into much stiffer security on leaving the country, where they gave me a short (6-7 question) interview on why I was there, who I visited, if I had friends the country, etc. They appeared satisfied that I only associated with co-workers and let me through.

Flights to and from Israel were long, but I actually managed to get some sleep on the plane there and back, so it wasn't as gruelling as previous trips. I was tired but functional by the time I showed up on both ends. Which is good, because it looks like I'll be going back.

On Our Way

Got out of work a little later than I would have liked -- didn't manage to really hit the freeway until after 6pm. We got caught in 680 traffic headed northbound, which wasn't a surprise, but it starting moving OK once we got over the hill.

Had dinner at In-n-Out in Fairfield -- let's hear it for road cuisine. It was sprinkling lightly as we walked back to the car after dinner, and it started picking up as we went from I-80 to I-505. By the time we were on I-5 north it was a full-fledged rain.

Started to feel a bit tired as it passed 10PM, so drove until we hit Redding and stopped for the night. Joahnna was already asleep by the time we got to the motel, so woke her up long enough to get her to the room, where she curled into bed and promptly went back to sleep.

Going to hit the sack after I finish posting and brushing my teeth, as we still have about 9-10 hours of driving to do tomorrow.

Driving to Seattle

I decided to donate my old truck to my high school in Seattle, so Joahnna and I are going to spend today and tomorrow driving up I-5. Hopefully this will be a reasonably adventure-free road trip, but I have packed the chains along just in case we hit snow along the way. That and I figure they'll do the new owner more good than they will me.

I got back from Israel last week, but despite the fact that it was a work trip, there was still somehow a week's worth of work backed up for me once I returned, so I haven't had a chance to write it up or post photos. I'll try to find some time this weekend to upload photos and write it up this weekend.

Tel Aviv or Bust

I'm leaving for the airport in a few hours to fly to Tel Aviv for a week. It's mainly a business trip, but I hope to have some time on friday and saturday to do a bit of sightseeing (Israel does not work on fridays).

This trip has been scheduled a couple times before but called off. The joke has been that I won't believe I'm going until I'm actually walking down the jetway, but I'm pretty close to that now.

Who Shot JFK?

I'm in Dallas for a few days to attend a conference, and ended up with a bit of free time. I don't have a car, so it's tough to get very far from the hotel, but I did walk over to the 6th Floor Museum to check that out.

The museum is interesting mainly because you get to put yourself at the actual scene of the shooting, and see Oswald's point of view. The rest of the museum was interesting, with exhibits about the shooting, the immediate history afterwards, and some of the conversy surrounding the shooting, but it's nothing you haven't seen before on the History Channel.

The part of downtown that's within walking distance of the hotel rolls up the streets at night, so it's not a very interesting area for cuisine. We did take a cab the other night to a place called the "Cosmic Cafe", which is a Hare Krishna-esqe Indian restaurant. It's more like a funky hippy reinterpretation of Indian food, but it was good and pretty spicy. More interesting than eating at the hotel restaurant again, in any case.

High gas prices? What high gas prices?

An article from Fortune about how domestic car buyers have apparently entirely forgotten that gas was well over $3 a gallon this summer, and are shunning fuel-efficient American cars and chalking up record sales of big SUVs. The author blames this on "amnesia" and says that as soon as high gas prices went away, middle America went straight back to their big, fat cars.

While I can't argue against the truth of this, I think there's something he's overlooking about the trend in Ford and GM purchasing.

Basically, small American cars suck.

U.S. manufacturers small cars are invariably their cheapest models, and feel like it as soon as you drive one. There is no U.S. equivalent to the Honda Civic or Mazda '3' -- small, efficient cars that are actually fun to drive, instead of being basic transportation. No one wants to drive a car that makes the statement "This is all I could afford."

Gone Hiking

Went for a hike with Joahnna on sunday, around Rancho San Antonio. The day started out looking a little gloomy, but burned off quickly into a nice day. We took the Rogue Valley trail up and connected to the PG&E trail on the way back, which works out to around 6 miles.

Afterwards we were ravenous, so we stopped by the Los Gatos Diner for bacon cheeseburgers. So much for that exercise...

The Great Wall of Texas

Bush is apparently trying to work on another facet of his Legacy, by creating a 700-mile fence between the U.S. and Mexico.

Apparently the legacy he's working on is Political Backfires That Cost A Lot Of Money. In what should be a familiar theme, it is ineffective (Border Patrol officers estimate that a fence will only slow people down by a minute or two), expensive (estimated price tag: $2.5B dollars), and has been most successful so far at pissing off people that were previously reasonably friendly to the U.S.

Keep up the good work!

Voter Apathy

This article on CNN pretty much sums up how I feel about the upcoming elections. Democrats will likely win a bunch of seats, but it's not because they really have a good plan, but simply because they're not Republicans.

Mark's Wedding

Went to Minnesota for Mark and Sarah's wedding last week. The St. Paul Cathedral was a beautiful locale. I was drafted to shoot video of the ceremony -- fortunately it was not a full Catholic mass, after 50 minutes of shooting hand-held my arm was cramping up in a bad way.

The reception was a few blocks away at old Victorian house. We used the first and second floors, along with the (furnished) basement, and found out later that the owner and their family still live on the third floor.

Wipe That Drool Off Your Chin, Soldier!

I was reading this article about lowering the recruiting standards for the armed forces in order to make recruiting targets (now why would we have to do that? Doesn't everyone want to help bring freedom to the Iraqis?), and could help but be reminded of an article I read in The Onion a few years back:

Clinton Deploys Very Special Forces To Iraq

Morale is said to be high among members of the very special forces, who were flown Monday from Sheppard Air Force Base to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in a squadron of specially modified C-130 "short planes." Upon arriving, the troops were given a thorough mission debriefing by Gen. James Herzog and a butterscotch-pudding snack cup. Each soldier was then issued an AR-15 rifle, three clips of NATO 7.62 mm rounds, a combat helmet with a velcro safety-strap, and a fanny pack with his name written on it in black magic marker.

(Follow the link for the full article)

Google Transit

Spent a couple minutes playing around with the "Google Transit" tool. It's like Google Maps, but it shows you what sequence of buses will get you from point A to point B, as well as breaking down the ride times for each bus and when they arrive.

An improvement over the "maps" tool is that it seems to be better about picking up non-street-address locations. I punched up some directions for Seattle (Bay Area isn't supported yet), and asked for a bus ride from the Space Needle to Sea-Tac. The results are pretty good: it figured out where the space needle was, and that "SEA" was the airport abbreviation. It also can take an arrival time and back-calculate when you need to leave (although that's also obvious by the departure time of your first bus).

Now, if they wanted to make money on it, they should make it so you can do it from your mobile phone. Maybe call up a phone number, talk to an automated search engine, and have it send you back a text message with the instructions and itenerary.

NIE Wake-Up Call

The recently declassified NIE sounds like interesting reading, if this article is at all accurate about it's contents. I'm interested to see what sort of reaction it gets, since the author points out what the government goes great lengths to avoid talking about -- that general Muslim sentiment about the U.S. is a reaction to its policies around the world, and not some sort of relgious crusade against freedom.

In some ways this article really surprised me. This is a view that's been frequently expressed by some of my friends, but rarely examined by mainstream media. It's occasionally admitted that U.S. support for Israel might be a reason for some anti-U.S. sentiment, but even more so than anti-U.S., reasons for anti-Israeli feelings are never to be examined. The implications are always that it's because there are no reasons, just a vague, irrational hatred that can't be appeased.

After all, if there were reasons for these feelings, you could do something about them, couldn't you? And that would be a far more difficult situation.

Walking Around York

I spent some time yesterday and today walking around York, which, like many old European towns, is wonderful for walking, because it was designed for it (as much as it was designed for anything). Inside the old city (York still has intact city walls), many of the roads are closed to vehicle traffic.

I went to see York Minster, which is one of the oldest (and most-visited) cathedrals in England. The cathedral is very impressive, with enormous ceilings, and an organ mounted mid-way down the main corridor (I'm sure there's a better term for it than that). I won't try and describe it, but I did get some inside photos that I'll try and upload. Connections are iffy here in the hotel.

The photos from inside the cathedral came out slightly blurry, because the lighting inside was fairly dim, and the flash isn't remotely able to light it up.

After walking through there, I wandered around the rest of town, managing to find a small shop selling adapters for the massive U.K. electrical plugs, so I can recharge my laptop. I also spotted a used bookstore, which I will probably hit prior to my return flight.

Travel to York

9/24/06, 10:45am PST

I’m flying to York today on business, which basically means I’m spending the next day and a half in various airports. I flew out of Santa Barbara this morning at 8:20, having dragged my grandparents out of bed early to schlep me to the airport. The hour-long flight left me with several hours to kill until my London connection, which I decided to spend “productively” creating blog entries. Besides, I have power here in the airport, so I can spend as much time as I want on the laptop (I decided not to buy an inverter to run the laptop on the plane. I’m already carrying around enough crap).

6:15 pm PST

I tried to sleep on the plane, with no real success. I think I might be able to if it was actually time for me to sleep, but I think my internal clock still knows it’s too early to be hitting the sack.

Foiled in the best available time-waster, I also tried looking at the in-flight video/movie selection. They have some 40-odd channels available on the in-seat video system, but they have apparently decreed that now is sleepy time, so they’ve killed all the video feeds as well. Joy.

At this point all I have left is trying to read some engineering specs. They’re dull as dishwater even when I’m bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, hopefully a few paragraphs of spec-language can knock me out.

8:42 pm PST

I have reached the end of the Internet. Or, at least, the end of the programming cycle for the plane’s 5 or so channels of entertainment. The spec turned out to be dry as dust, but completely ineffective as a sleep aid. I am considering filling out my U.K. immigration form, which they helpfully provided at the beginning of the flight, giving me adequate time to fill out the 6 items of information which are, um, exactly the same as those on my passport. Couldn’t they just take a photocopy? It would undoubtedly be more legible than my handwriting.

Hmmm. I just discovered that Windows comes with games other than “Solitaire.” Perhaps I have found my next diversion.

12:15 am PST

I have successfully navigated customs (I went through a detailed interrogation this time – they actually asked *what sort* of business I was on in the UK), and made my way to the gate. By some miracle, it appears my laptop may have actually picked up a public access point, which would allow me to post my thrilling dialog shortly. As soon as I find out what time it is.

Whoops, ix-nay on the access-point-ay. It did pick up an access point, but it’s T-mobile, and again I’m not paying however many pounds for the 15 minutes I’ll be sitting here. Posting of my magnum opus will have to wait.

~ 3 AM PST

Arrived at the Manchester airport, collected my baggage and made my way over to the train station for York. Picked up a train ticket and had a relaxing 2-hour ride through the English countryside, which made me appreciate, among other things, why people talk about taking a relaxing ride through the English countryside. Quite pleasant, with rolling hills and little farms dotting the view. Well, quite pleasant once you get out of Manchester, that is.

~ 5:30 AM (PST)

Have arrived at the Monk Bar Hotel, in York, which is where I’m staying for the week. I'm now working on what could be my most challenging task of the day, which is staying awake until sometime vaguely around bedtime, so my clock is sync'ed up in the morning.

Air Combat

I woke up bright and early yesterday for Air Combat school. Keith picked me up at my grandparents’ house and we headed over to the school, which was flying out of the Santa Barbara airport.

The pre-flight briefing was pretty short. First they gave us a couple of flight suits (well used, and mine a bit short in the legs. I’m a little tall to be a fighter pilot). Nails, the chief pilot, gave us a brief run down on the safety equipment (parachute and Mae West vest), and the bail-out procedures for the aircraft. Afterwards he grabbed a couple aircraft models and briefly discussed the maneuvers we would practice in the morning session, which were the high and low yo-yos.

Afterwards we hung around the facility (a receiving area for private/corporate jets) and waited for the aircraft to come in from the previous session. The aircraft we would fly in the day are Marchetti combat trainers, which are propeller aircraft built to handle more like a jet fighter.

For the morning session, Keith flew with Nails, and I flew with Obie, a former F-16 pilot. We practiced some formation flying on the way out to the practice area (out over the water), and I immediately found that the Marchetti is far more sensitive than a Cessena. The smallest movement sent me drifting towards or away from the other aircraft, and I had to learn to make very small corrections to keep in place.

Once at the practice area (an arbitrary dot in the middle of the ocean), we set up drills. We would take turns being the bogey (target) and the fighter (aggressor). The bogey aircraft would fly in a constant bank turn, and the fighter practiced high and low yo-yo maneuvers, which allow a faster plane to maintain separation while setting up a good position on the tail of the bogey. The idea of the yo-yo is that you go high and then low (high yo-yo) or low and then high (low yo-yo), and turn tighter than the bogey during the low-energy part of the maneuver. At least I *think* that’s the idea of it. In light of the fact that both Keith and I are engineers, Nails told us during our briefing to “just do it” and not over-analyze what was going on.

After our drills we flew back to the airport, again in formation, although I got to try a barrel roll back on the way in. Fun.

The afternoon was the “practice” part of our theory & practice setup, so after flying out, we spent just a short amount of time running drills (I did two more yo-yos, and then a barrel roll on to target), and then we went on to the real thing. Or the simulated real thing, at least. We swapped up instructors – Keith flew with Obie, and I flew with Monk, the third instructor who was present that day.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they’re different.

The dogfights were tough work. The basic idea is you line up and head at each other, with the opposing aircraft on your left. As soon as you pass, the instructor calls “fight’s on!” and you immediately go into a maximum-G left turn and try and turn in behind the other fighter. If you can turn faster than the other plane, you keep doing this until you get behind him and line up a shot. Once the shot is lined up, the instructor radios “guns guns guns!,” the target aircraft pops smoke to acknowledge, and you set up the next engagement.

The first engagement was short and sweet. I turned, but not at max rate, and Keith dropped in behind me and got the kill. Note to self: turn harder.

The second engagement lasted longer – I kept pulling hard, and we spiraled around until we hit the soft deck, at which point I backed off and Keith tagged me.

The third time, having lost twice in a row, my instructor had me try something new. Instead of doing a hard left turn, I pulled straight back into a loop, then rolled out into a turn. At this point I had a few angles on Keith, so I kept doing yo-yos to work the angles down. Eventually he flew straight into the sun, but I managed to line up a shot on him anyways and ended the engagement.

The fourth and the fifth engagements were similar – more difficult fights, as I started to figure out the dynamic. One win each for me and Keith’s plane (now flown by the instructor, as Keith was feeling a little green).

The final engagement was the longest and most difficult of the bunch. I managed to get an early angle advantage, but Keith’s plane still had altitude on me, and our speed was low. We started with a hard bank, I think we did a loop in the middle (it’s a sign of how much attention you’re paying to the dogfight when you suddenly find yourself inverted, and only know you are inverted by feel), and then we got an angle advantage and started doing yo-yos to work it down. The problem was at this point I was about 50-100’ lower, and slow, so every time I tried to pull up to make the shot the plane would start to buffet (edge of a stall). So at that point we would have to dive and turn it into another low yo-yo. I finally managed to line it up and end it, but everyone was pretty beat by that time.

I had chatted some with Monk about my (limited) time in the Cessena, so he had me fly the approach into SBA while he worked the radios, finally taking the aircraft about 500’ from the runway to flare and land. By this point I had become somewhat accustomed to the Marchetti, so I was no longer weaving about like a drunken sailor trying to maintain a heading.

It’s hard to describe feeling of doing the dogfights. For starters, I would say that it’s way, way, way cool, except that that’s not enough “way”. It’s also seriously hard work. Once the fight’s on, you’re pretty much pulling 2-4Gs until you win (or lose), because if you’re not doing a max-rate turn, you’re toast. Also, if things are going OK, the opposing aircraft is directly above you, so you’ve got your head cranked all the way back to keep him in sight while you’re loading on the Gs (if it’s *not* going well, of course, he’s *behind* you, and even harder to see). And the plane is moving all over the place, as you do lots of maneuvers to try to line up or shake the other guy. Fortunately, I’m nearly immune to motion sickness, but anyone with any susceptibility is likely to get queasy.

We have the whole dogfight on video, so I’ll be editing up something as soon as I’m back from traveling, but as I have nearly four hours of footage to sort through from the two planes, it may take a while.

Learning to Fly

I have ranted in the past about the silliness of the recent "binary liquid explosive" scare and the resulting ban on any sort of liquid in aircraft. After this, and the complete lack of any significant criticism of the decision by our lawmakers ("Hey, we're doing someting" does not constitute criticism), I figured the situation about airline travel was only going to get worse before it got better.

So, with option A ("don't fly") not particularly practical, and option B ("submit oneself to personal indignity and unpredictable delay in the name of security") getting worse, I decided to look into option C -- fly yourself there.

Is it a practical alternative to airline travel? Not really. But I've been fascinated by flying for forever, so it didn't take much of a push to convince me to learn.

Today I just completed my third lesson. Highlights of today's lesson were that I performed two unassisted take-offs, and landed the plane with only minimal assistance. I also started learning how to say all that cool airport talk.

I've been trying to get one lesson in per week, although upcoming travel is going to cause problems with that. By the official plan, that gives me 17 lessons left until I test for my license (VFR), although I suspect in reality it will take more than that. Which is fine, I'm not in any hurry.

Changing the Standard

Q: How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. They declare darkness to be the standard.

In a fine example of reality imitating, well, reality, it turns out that the U.S. Military has made significant progress in controlling the insurgency in Baghdad, having cut the murder rate to one-half its rate from the previous month. And they accomplished this significant feat as a result of a security operation by U.S. and coalition forces.

Oh, and somewhere in there they redefined what "murder" is.

This has apparently led to some confusion inside Iraq. They seem to be a bit off-message. Perhaps no one sent them the memo. Or maybe they're just confused, because approximately the same number of people died of violent causes in August (1536, for those counting) as died in July.

When confronted with this curious statistic,

Johnson would not provide the figures used to calculate the percentages and said the military would not give detailed information about trends because that could provide "our enemy information they need to adjust their tactics and procedures to be more effective against us."

Which, though it sounds a bit odd, makes perfect sense when you connect that statement with Rumsfeld's revelation that the enemy is, in fact, the liberal media and unpatriotic Americans who have the temerity to question their fearless leadership.

See? It all makes sense if you think about it long enough.

True Colors

Excellent Washington Post article analyzing Rumsfeld's American Legion speech. In some ways it was quite refreshing -- after all, this is the Rumsfeld that many of us suspected was there, and he's starting to reveal his true colors. Namely, that while he knows all the proper catch-phrases and hot-button adjectives, he doesn't really believe in democracy.

The Register Pours Cold Water on Liquid Bombs

When I first read about the dastardly plot to blow airliners out of the sky using some handy bottles of hair gel and sport drink bottles, my little engineering BS-detector went off. This is the little warning that goes off in my head that says "This is too good to be true, so it probably isn't".

However, as with most everything reported on terrorism and security these days, the articles were rather short on facts and long on "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!".

Fortunately, The Register, my favorite bastion of sarcasm, scorn, and skepticism, wrote this article on the subject, which says, basically, that it's not as easy at it sounds.

Autonomous Flight

I ran across this paper while doing some random Googling today. It's an interesting research report about the development of a prototype UAV.

The ultimate development target was a cargo UAV capable of autonomous takeoff, flight, and landing from land or water. The research was stopped after development of the initial prototype, but the journal of the development efforts makes for interesting reading. At least, it does if you're an engineer.

Battered from the Weekend

Had a fun weekend, but I was pretty sore walking into the office on monday. Drove up friday to Loon Lake, and camped out there friday night (well, saturday morning, really, since we showed up at the campsite at 1AM). Woke up bright and early on saturday and headed out to the Rubicon Trail and onwards from there to some single track further back in the forest.

My 600 proved more than capable over the big rocks on the trail and out on the slab (I did not bring a camera, which is a shame, but the terrain was pretty rough), but I had trouble on some steep single track, and got stuck several times. Eventually Adam swapped bikes with me, and he was able to get my 600 up the track. Once I got it started -- Adam's bike has an off switch, which foiled me for some time -- I was able to get his bike up the hill without a problem, as well.

After that I was pretty tired, having fought with my bike and Adam's for several hours, so we headed back to camp, and I relaxed and slept for the rest of the day.

Sunday morning we packed up early and headed back to the bay area. Got home a little after noon, unloaded the bikes, and kicked around for a few hours before my two hockey games in the evening. We won both games, so both teams advance to the next round of the playoffs, but I took a little bit of a beating in the second game.

It's nice to go in to work. It gives me a chance to rest from the weekend.

Scariest News Item Today

Opened up the news sites today to read about the latest terrorist plot that has been foiled. No more water on planes, apparently. Pretty soon we'll have to fly naked.

But for me, that wasn't the scariest item in the news today. No, that item was an extract from the Anderson Cooper blog by a reporter in Lebanon. The reporter, Jim Clancy, was talking with a cab driver on the way to a funeral, and the cab driver shared this:

Near the end of the interview, he shared a thought about how the present in Lebanon will affect the future in the Middle East. He told me his 7-year-old son, Mohammed, approached him last night to announce that when he grows up he's going to get a gun and go fight the Israelis.

At seven years old you're still supposed to be thinking about toy guns.

Dirt Bike Drama

I went riding a couple weeks ago and Adam and I swapped up bikes. He's been trying to convince me that I have so much trouble on single track because my XR600 is just too big and heavy.

To make a long story short, he was right. I hopped on his bike and all of a sudden the sections that had been giving me so much trouble weren't that bad any more. So we went bike shopping.

Last weekend I picked up a 2004 XR250 from a guy in Santa Cruz. Shook hands on the deal and then he tossed in "Oh yeah, there's no pink slip for the bike." Grrr. But he told me who he bought it from and the name of the dealer, so I didn't think he was trying anything too shady.

I called the dealer today and, far from being surprised that my bike had no title, the sales manager there said they had had a rash of bikes with no titles over the last few years. Said that someone at the DMV blew a gasket and just dumped the paperwork, so now they've hired someone to go over recent sales and figure out what happened.

Hopefully this paperwork problem will be cleared up before the weekend, when we're supposed to do a two-day dirt-biking extravaganza. Otherwise I may be back on the XR600 due to the lack of a green sticker.

On The Midway

Took a brief tour of the Midway while I was in San Diego. In addition to some nice sunburns, I got a good impression of how big (and how small) an aircraft carrier is. For such a large vessel it's quite cramped inside:


There was a wide variety of aircraft parked on the flight deck. I was quite surprised at how small the Huey was; I always got the impression that it was a much bigger aircraft.



I took this photo of one of the nuclear carriers moored at San Diego (I think it's the Ronald Reagan), framed by the flight deck of the Midway:

CoinStar Sucks

I had used the CoinStar counting machine once before, to count up my pennies when I had a bunch of them accumulated. They charge 8% of your change value for the convenience of counting it, which I considered a little steep, so I had the rest of my change counted somewhere they don't charge you anything (South Lake Tahoe).

However, I'd seen ads about using the machines to convert change into gift cards (with no fee). And I figure I hit Starbucks often enough to justify getting a card. So I went in today with my accumulated change, dumped it in (about $65 worth), and picked "Give me a new Starbucks card".

The machine took about a minute or two grinding away thinking about it, apparently couldn't contact the mothership, pope, Grand Poo Bah or whatever controlling entity it uses, and said "Nope. Can't do it. I'm giving you cash instead."

And they charged me the 8% fee. No choices, no options, no "choose another gift card", no "give me my change back".

Needless to say, CoinStar is now on my black list.

Still Warm

It's 2:30 in the morning and it's still 84 degrees inside my house. I've had the fan running since 6pm and it barely made a dent. I like warm weather as much as the next guy, but this is just silly.

Bad Day

My plan for today was to get a haircut and have new tires put on my car for the track day on monday. Unfortunately it seems like I got a bit too much sun in San Diego, and came down with a bit of sun/dehydration sickness.

And, let me tell you, today was a lousy day to be sick.

My house has no air conditioning. Most days that isn't a problem; Mark put in sufficient insulation to keep the temperature down to a reasonable level for most of the year. Excepting those few days where it gets really hot.

For those of you that haven't guessed by now, today was one of those days when it got really hot. And instead of doing what I normally do on those days, which is either going in to work or finding some excuse to hang out in the mall, I was either on my couch or in my bed trying to sleep.

I have a fan set up that's pulling some air through the house, giving me a little bit of a breeze. It seems like it's pretty ineffective -- the thermostat inside the house says it's 92 degrees -- until you go outside the house, and realize that, yes, it's effective. Because outside it's a balmy one-oh-three.

Fortunately I'm feeling a bit better now (I'm complaining, which is a sign of good health), so it may be time for a quick jaunt to, well, anywhere that has AC.

Sunny San Diego

I'm in San Diego for a conference, which has more or les swound down, so I got a little bit of time today to play tourist. I went and toured the Midway, which has been turned into a museum. For such a large vessel, it's amazingly cramped. Apparently by the end of its service it was carrying almost a thousand more crew than it was designed for.

I took a bunch of photos, but I'm waiting until I'm back home (tomorrow) to dump them on to my computer.

I'm now linked

Sachin just shot me an invite to LinkedIn, a business-oriented social networking site. Of course, I probably don't need to tell you that, because apparently I'm the last one in the world to create an account there...

I've spent a couple hours that I could have spent productively checking my email or reading news online (well, I suppose I could have worked, but that just doesn't sound nearly as appealing) sorting through my contact list and seeing who had an account there. The answer: pretty much everyone.

The answer? Pretty much everyone. The only ones I found who didn't have an account were Jeff and Adam. Even Grace had an account.

I'm so behind.

What I Want for Christmas

I need one of these. Seriously.

MS Selling Spyware?

A recent class-action suit filed in Washington and California is suing Microsoft for violating the spyware laws of those states. This article in the Register about the "Windows Genuine Advantage" (a.k.a. "cripple your computer if you're using a non-verified copy of Windows") program talks about what MS says WGA does, and what it actually does (a lot more).

One of the interesting parts of this was the relevant portion of the Washington state anti-spyware law that's being used:

(1) Induce an owner or operator to install a computer software component onto the computer by intentionally misrepresenting the extent to which installing the software is necessary for security or privacy reasons or in order to open, view, or play a particular type of content; and

(2) Deceptively cause the execution on the computer of a computer software component with the intent of causing the owner or operator to use the component in a manner that violates any other provision of this section.

I'm sure they'll manage to weasel their way out of the "intentionally" part through a finely-developed case of corporate amnesia ("We did what? I'm sorry, we deleted all records of everything we did more than 30 days ago. I forget. Next question?"), but perhaps a little bit of public shame would clairify things.

Pointing Out the Obvious

Microsoft and Cisco are backing a patent challege based on the "obviousness" clause of patent law, which states that an invention must be non-obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art. It's been appealed to the Supreme Court, in the hopes that the court will put some teeth into the "obviousness" clause and stem the tide of 1-Click patents.

Murder Mystery

I just finished reading "The Black Dahlia" by James Ellroy, an author who was recommended to me. The book is set in post-WWII Los Angeles, and depicts a gritty, hardnosed police department with some shady mob connections, that isn't afraid to bend the rules every now and then to get a conviction.

The book is an engaging read, especially since you never actually meet the title character. Her life is revealed through interviews with her friends, associates, and ultimately with her murderer. There are no innocents in Ellroy's story -- all the characters have significant lapses in moral character, and even if the guilty are punished in the end, justice is not necessarily served.

This is the first book in a four-book series set in the same period (the most famous being "L.A. Confidential"), so I'll probably plow through the other three fairly soon.

Julia's Bike

Adam and I went dirt bike riding for the first time in about a month and a half. Had a good day (i.e. no one got hurt), then when we got back and put the bikes in the garage, we realized that Julia's bike (which has been living in my garage for the last few months) hadn't been started in a while, and she probably wouldn't be able to ride until she recovered.

Poor bike.

So we pulled the bike out and started it up. It was unhappy from sitting and had to crank for a while, but eventually it fired up. And then we figured we'd ride it around a little bit to warm it up. It's not a street bike, though, so where to do this?

We clearly needed to ride it around the back yard.



Hey, I wonder if you can do wheelies on this thing? Let's find out...



Why, I do belive you can.

Rest assured, Julia, your bike is in good hands.

Ethanol Wars

A CNN article with a new take on Ethanol -- according to the article, the adoption of ethanol is a foregone conclusion, and the only debate is over what it will be made from. The most straightforward answer -- sugar -- is apparently complicated by subsidies and the corn lobby, which make it too expensive to import sugar (it competes with high fructose corn syrup. If you wonder why every soft drink and candy bar contains it, that's why).

But corn is not efficient to use as a fuel. It's a high-maintenence crop -- you burn around a gallon of ethanol to create a gallon of corn ethanol to the pump.

So companies are looking into other ways to produce ethanol. Importing refined sugar ethanol from Brazil is one possibility, but might run afoul of the corn lobby, again. The big-bet alternative seems to be making ethanol from the non-edible portions of plants (or non-edible plants). This is where the President's oddball comment about "switchgrass" in his state-of-the-union address comes from.

Also interesting is that the increased ethanol content in new gasoline has apparently doubled the price of fuel-grade ethanol.

Broken Skate

I managed to break my hockey skate at a game the other night. In my first shift, unfortunately, which pretty much canned the rest of the night for skating. I did a pretty good job of it, too:
You can see the whole frame has separated from the bottom of the boot. You can't really see it here, but all the rivets that hold the frame on have rusted completely through, and snapped. Also, there's a little crack in the frame around the third rivet.

I think I got my money's worth out of this pair.

"Interest Tapering Off"

According to a recent article I read, interest in embedded Linux is "tapering off". Which just goes to show that sometimes it doesn't matter so much how many design wins you have, as who those wins are.

Witness this article which said that:

Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo, NEC, Samsung, Panasonic and Motorola are joining forces to work on an open source operating system for mobile phones based on Linux.

To me, this says two things: first, that the handset manufacturers see that the money is in services and applications, and not as much in the handset or its operating system. Second, that they have no interest in paying per-set royalties so that all phones run on WinCE.

Interesting to see that Nokia, which is also interested in Linux for mobiles, isn't on the list...

New Blog

I've created a 12 Shots Blog for discussion/announcements, since it seems like we're on track for that...

Disingenuous

The ACLU has brought a lawsuit against the U.S. government over its warrantless wiretapping program. The government has sought to have the case dismissed on the rather disingenuous grounds that the plaintiffs aren't sure they're directly affected by the program.

Coppolino said that the plaintiffs' beliefs that they are among the likely targets are insufficient to establish that they have been directly affected by the program.

"You don't get standing by saying the president has a program, and I'm concerned it might cover me," he told the judge.

Of course they aren't sure. You won't say who's targetted and who isn't. By that logic, conveniently, no one has grounds to challenge the program because no one can be sure they're on the list.

Creative lawyering is bad enough when it's being used to, oh, say, get O.J. off the hook for killing Nicole. But it's really disturbing when it's used by the government to pass of its activities as legal.

E85 Hits the West Coast

A gas station in San Diego has started selling a wide variety of fuels, including E85 (85% ethanol/15% gasoline) and BioDiesel. Once you get over the heart-stopping price of high-grade gas ($3.73, read it and weep), a couple interesting things come out of the sign: bio-diesel is only $.10 a gallon more expensive than dino diesel, and E85 is a whopping $.74/gallon cheaper than high-grade gasoline (a fair comparision, since E85 is about 100-105 octane).

Of course, at present, the only cars that can use E85 are cars that come dual-fuel from the factory, or pre-'74 cars that have been modified to run on ethanol. But it's a start.

Banlieu 13

Saw "District B13" tonight, which is a French maritial arts/action film. Adam and I laughed at the plot synopsis, since it's basically a re-done "Escape from New York". But it was a well done film, and enjoyable as such -- lots of long-running chase scenes, mostly on foot. Parts were very similar to this Russian Climbing video. If reading subtitles doesn't bother you (and it's an action film, so you can probably figure out what's going on anyways), then I'd recommend it.

The backstory of the movie is that a neighborhood is so full of undesirables and criminals that it gets walled off from the rest of the country, and services within the wall are gradually cut off. Then the government "loses" a low-yield neutron bomb and sends in a super-duper SWAT guy along with a local Robin Hood-type character to get it back.

Proof that you can still make a good film without spending $100M or blowing up everything in sight. Come to think of it, nothing blows up in the entire movie...

12 Shots Rides Again

Had lunch with Jon and Ethan (and Ethan's minion) today, and around stuffing our faces with burritos, Jon raised the prospect of ressurecting 12 Shots as a charity event. His reasoning was that the original charter of 12 Shots as a big house party had run out of steam as the organizers got older (and got married, chimes in Guy), and that we needed a different motivation to bring people together. A charity event, where people give $10 or so at the door, and the proceeds go to someone relatively noncontroversial, seems like a good thing to organize around.

Personally, I think people could be talked out of $20 for a charity event. Since 12 Shots XII finished up with roughtly 800 people, and we didn't really have any desire to throw an event that size, I don't have any problem upping the donation amount a wee bit. Besides, you feel better if you can say you rounded up $4000 for charity...

Also, after some reflection, I realized that getting drunk for charity has a long and honorable tradition. It's just that people usually dress better when they're doing so.

Spectrum Plot

Ran across an article for the GnuRadio project, an open-source software radio implementation. One of the most interesting things was seeing a spectrum plot of the radio frequencies between 0 and ~450kHz, and which ones are used and unused.

The theory of a software radio is you could put a single, fairly simple chunk of hardware on your computer, and at that point it could transmit and receive pretty much anything -- walkie-talkies, AM/FM radio, GPS, HDTV, you name it.

All of a sudden a few geeks have scared the crap out of the FCC and MPAA. The FCC because, well, airspace is their turf, and the MPAA because they see control of transmission mediums as a way to prevent "piracy".

Anyways, the spectrum plot is interesting because, among other things, it shows how little of the existing broadcast spectrum is being used in everyday life. Software-defined radios are already here in a number of commercial products -- we'll see if open-source SDR results in cool new tech or nasty new leglislation. Or both.

Those Who Ignore History

I've just gotten to the part of "Cobra II" where the U.S. has declared, by executive fiat, that major combat operations are over in Iraq, and it will be transitioning to post-war operations. Rumsfeld is putting significant pressure on Franks to not only stop deployment of further units to Iraq, but to plan for removing the units already there. Franks' plan (or, more accurately, guidance from the administration) is that the existing 140,000 troops would be reduced to somewhere around 30,000 within six months (that would be November 2003), and reduced further to a skeleton advisory force afterwards.

For those of you wondering how well this plan turned out, here is a chart of the strength of U.S. ground forces in Iraq from 2003-2006.

"Do not innovate on business models. " -- Guy Kawasaki, presentation at TiEcon 2006

This is something I've run across in the start-up world, and it's as true there as it is in politics. If someone tells you that the rules have changed, the old rules do not apply, and everything is going to be different this time, do not walk to the nearest exist. Run screaming in fear.

At its heart, this is the one, basic mistake the administration made -- the assumption that they could sufficiently control the conduct of the war so to simply lop off the head of the Iraqi government and leave the body intact, thus entirely eliminating that mess post-war operations phase. Administration planners, instead of starting with assumptions and working towards a goal, started with a goal and worked backwards to find their assumptions.

It's not that people didn't know that these requests were illogical -- Jay Garner, McKiernan, the Joint Chiefs, and most of the rest of the people tasked with implementing the war and the post-war knew there were serious problems with the assumptions being made. However, with the administration's mind-set firmly fixed, information only flows one-way, and the commentary that "Hey guys, this isn't going to work" never got back to the president.

Admittedly, hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes reading this book so painful I have to, well, put it down and rant for a while.

Hang Together

In the early days of the Iraq war, Dave Williams' Apache helicopter was shot down, and he was taken prisoner. After a few days (and nearly getting hit by a friendly airstrike) he was placed with some of the survivors of the 507th Maintenence Company.

He has an interesting anecdote about talking with one of his Iraqi guards:

"The Iraqis had a hard time understanding something," Williams recalled. "Shoshana is Panamanian. Edgar is Hispanic. Joe is Philipine, and Patrick is from Kansas. The Iraqis could not conceive how we could all have been in the same army and not fight one another. One Iraqi said to me, 'You no fighting each other? Why?' "
-- From "Cobra II"

Strange Lawsuit

Those who have known me for any length of time are usually aware that I'm not a big Microsoft fan, but the latest lawsuit against them by Adobe has left me scratching my head. Adobe has been promoting PDF has a de facto standard for some time now, to the point that Massachusetts adopted it as such in its requirements for official document formats. There are many non-Adobe products which create PDFs, including a variety of open-source products, OpenOffice, and Mac OSX.

Which is why Microsoft was a little surprised when Adobe threatened to sue them for antitrust for including PDF creation in the next version of Office. After all, it's no more than what's being offered by their chief competition. Adobe apparently feels that this would kill the market for Acrobat.

They might find some sympathy in Europe, but my feeling is that Adobe just got hit by the law of unintended consequences. They opened up PDF as a format to drive adoption, effectively making it a standard. And if it's a standard, anyone can implement it -- even if they have 90% market share. Standards are explicitly exempt from the rules of anti-trust, since it is in the public interest that companies comply with them.

Sorry, Adobe. Of course, if you're looking for more product revenue, there's a big Linux market that would probably be interested in Flash creation and video editing...

Testing useless tech. Post by

Testing useless tech. Post by email allows me to post from my phone. If i ever travel where my phone it could be a neat feature.

Update: The main drawback to the feature is that, on my current V710, it's so clumsy to send a message by banging away on the number keys that it would effectively prohibit me from posting anything of consequence. For example, it probably took me almost two minutes to pound out the simple test post above, but only 30 seconds or so to type in my much-longer update on the computer...

Blog Guilt

Mark and I were IMing the other day, and talked about a shared phenomenon we've experienced: blog guilt.

Blot guilt is that mild guilty feeling you get when you haven't updated your blog in a while. For me it usually kicks in after about a week without a post. For me it's usually a realization that I haven't posted in a while, followed by the nagging question, "Is my life really so dull that I haven't come up with anything blog-worthy in an entire week?"

Sometimes I console myself by saying that, actually, all sorts of interesting things are going on, but some of them are in the if-I-told-you-I'd-have-to-kill-you category, so they just can't be put up here. So this week I'm assuaging my guilt by meta-blogging.

There is no problem in computer science that cannot be solved by an extra level of indirection --David Wheeler