Shana's House

I arrived at Shana's house (minus luggage) and Mina promptly investigated my foot.

Shana's Graduation

I am queued up to board the plane, having been warned multiple times that this aircraft will run out of overhead space. No worries for me, my only carry on is my ipad today.

Full day of flying to get out to Raleigh for sis's graduation from vet school. I had no reading material so I bought three books at the barnes and nobles online site while waiting to board; battery should last all day. If I'm lucky I'll be able to take a nap and it won't have to be my sole source of entertainment.

Turning 27

Today I turned 27, at least if you count in hexadecimal. The numbers don't seem that big this way. I don't think I'll make it to FF unless medical science churns out some real miracles in the next few years.

This morning Joahnna took me out for a birthday breakfast at our local diner before packing me off to work. Planning on having a quiet dinner out this year, although my parents have said that they are planning something big for next year.

We went in monday for our most recent exam, and listened to baby Luc's heartbeat. She also gave us a kick-counting chart for measuring how long it takes him to kick, which we have failed to do with meticulous consistency. I'm sure we'll get to it tomorrow.

Caesar and Shana

Caesar found a new best friend - sacked out on the couch watching movies with Shana.

The blue mosque

Another trial for post by email, this time from my phone. This is from my recent trip to israel.

Sample post from email

Trying to figure out if I can create posts from an email with pictures in them.  To figure out if it works, here is a post with a picture of a train from the train museum in York.

Using git for revision control

As a hardware engineer, I spent most of my career designing chips using CVS for version control. It was free, simple, and workarounds for its more obvious warts were well-understood. It left me with a few side-effects, such as a pathological fear of branching, but was otherwise OK.

A couple years ago, I decided to try "git", the revision control tool used by the Linux kernel development team, and see if it had any benefits over CVS. Two years down the road, I don't think anyone on my design team would switch back if they had a choice. Fear of branching has been abated, although likely we will carry the scars of CVS for some time, and we no longer need to muck with the respository or have detailed meetings about directory structures due to a directory rename. In short, it's a good thing.

The biggest problem we have had with git migration is that git is relatively unstructured. It does not force a central repository to be used, and allows engineers to pull directly from another engineer's repository. For a small design team, we found that this was a drawback rather than an advantage, because it broke the central-repository model we were familiar with, and created confusion about what the "master" version of the code was. We tried electing one member of the design team to be the master, but this caused problems if the team member was unavailable for some time, due to travel, etc.

So we changed to using a central repository for git. Now everyone pushes and pulls from the central repository rather than from each other, and there is no confusion about what the mainline source code tree is, or who has to resolve a merge conflict. The CVS model may not have been fair (he who commits first, wins) but it was understood, and the central git repository brings us back to that same place. By looking at public repositories such as Github, it seems that this is now recommended practice for small teams.

It turns out setting up git to work like this is not straightforwards. Just as for CVS, there are some magic commands which must be issued to get a properly-functioning central repository. The main requirement for using a central repository is that all members of the design team must be members of the same group. With that in place, the repository can be created by doing (as root):

mkdir proj_name
cd proj_name
git init –bare –shared
cd ..
chown -R nobody.group proj_name

Replace proj_name by the name of your project, and "group" by the name of the group which all engineers are part of. nobody is a predefined user on Unix, so that repository files are not owned by root.

Don't put near hard disk

I just read a teardown article on the new iPad 2. Apple has integrated a bunch of magnets for its "smart cover", which made we wonder how this new version would fare in the cockpit.

The iPad has recently been certified as an EFB (for those non-pilots, this means it can replace the briefcase of printed charts you see airline pilots pulling around behind them in the airport). However, magnets are not a good thing in this environment. Already the iPad has a strong enough field to cause a compass to mis-read when it is within a foot of it; magnets could make this even worse (then again, maybe they are no worse than it is already. Someone want to loan me an iPad 2 so I can find out? :).

The Trek to Manila

On Thursday we rousted the crew out of bed dark and early for the first part of our bus trip to Manila. We manage to get moving within 20 minutes of our 4AM scheduled departure time. Soon thereafter we learned a practical lesson on taking long road trips in the Philippines - fly. Our plan was originally to drive to manila and then to Bataan, but after a full day of getting pounded by a combination of patched pothole roads and our bus' extra-stiff suspension, we revised the plan to spend some extra time in Manila and skip Bataan.

We stopped halfway to Manila at Villa Escudero, where we had a nice lunch under the waterfall, and spent two nights at the Taal Vista Hotel in Tagaytay, which was a very nice hotel with a beautiful view of the Taal volcano. The volcano is recursive - it is a volcano in a vay of water with a lake in the caldera, with another volcano coming out of the lake. Yesterday we took a quick day trip to the "Castle in the Sky", a palace built on top of a mountain that was partially constructed by President Marcos.

Today we loaded up the bus, took a quick stop for Jaiden, Mila and Joey to ride ponies for a couple laps, then made our way into the city to get to our hotel. We switched hotels because our original choice didn't have enough rooms for our party, and ended up instead at the Lotus Garden Hotel. We are in the old part of the hotel, which has beautiful hardwood floors and staircases. An unexpected benefit is that it is located in the red light district. Apparently these would be the Lotus Flowers.

Tomorrow we are gathering up early (again? Why do I keep getting up early on my vacation?) to go to Corregidor, the site of some of the fiercest fighting of WWII.

Return to Jurassic Park

Today we are headed out to the hot springs near Naga, which Joahnna and I nicknamed "Jurassic Park" because of the vibrant growth and huge cliff walls directly over the springs. We are looking forwards to it since this was one of our favorite parts of the last trip.

Last night uncle Chito treated us to dinner at his house, including his special Bicol Express (very good). I spent some time syncing up with my dad on our favorite topics - guns, cars, and politics - and he also spent some time chatting with Raoul. After dinner we came back to the hotel and watched the kids and adults practice their performances for the reunion.

Yesterday Joahnna took a family photo for auntie Irma, which turned out so well that auntie lyn and imbot both asked for photo shoots with their families, which Joahnna is doing this morning. Work is never done!

Also different for this trip, last time we took a sub notebook, but this time we left it behind in favor of the smaller iPad. So far it has worked quite well, as long as you are willing to slow down your typing rate a little bit (you have to be a little more careful on the virtual keyboard). The biggest limitation of it so far is that we cant use it to download photos from the camera, so we need to borrow someone's laptop to do that. Not a big limitation here in Naga, where we have tons of family, but could limit its usefulness if you were traveling alone.

How private enterprise saves money

I was reading this article from AvWeb about the SpaceX launch and recovery of their "Dragon" capsule. Sometimes you can save a little money here and there by privitization, but sometimes you can save huge chunks (emphasis added):

It's worth noting that while nuclear-powered aircraft carriers have been dispatched to recover space capsules in the past, an inflatable boat with an outboard motor accomplished the task this time.

Moral roots of liberals and conservatives

I saw an excellent talk on TED about the psychological roots of liberals and conservatives. Makes the point that despite our innate desire to group with like-minded individuals, both viewpoints bring valuable mindsets to the table and if we want to be a whole country again, we need to understand the other half.

Motivation and Reality Checks

I read this article on aero-news about a "new" aircraft being developed. The concept is a "light attack" aircraft, which is basically an admission that our cold-war fighters and attack aircraft are massive overkill for the missions they are being used on. The other interesting thing is that the pilots are all on board for this idea, since most of them can clearly see that the alternative is having their job replaced by a drone.

The light attack concept is simple: instead of building a massive, jet-powered, state-of-the-art mach 3 fighter to drop bombs on camels, go use something that works a lot more like a WWII fighter. After all, they did a perfectly good job at ground attack then as long as there weren't other fighters to shoot them down, which matches fairly well with the conflicts we fight today.

And they're cheap. Prices for these should be close to parity with current drones, if not less expensive, and operating costs are low as well ($600/hr instead of $15,000/hr, per the article). I'm not sure how they managed to get the project going, but I wish them success before someone realizes they're not spending enough money and kills it.

Evolution of Presidential Eloquence

The (Uncensored) Evolution of Presidential Eloquence

by Martin Horn

"My friends, circumstances render it impossible that you can flourish in the midst of a civilized community. You have but one remedy within your reach, and that is to remove to the west. And the sooner you do this, the sooner you will commence your career of improvement and prosperity." - Andrew Jackson, Addressing Native Americans while discussing his Indian Relocation Policy

"Moreover, the negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does not dwindle away in the presence of the white man...From this point of view the presence of the negro is the real problem; slavery is merely the worst possible method of solving the problem." - Teddy Roosevelt (Source: "Winning of the West" by Teddy Roosvelt)

[Spies] are all Jews. Every one's a Jew. Gelb's a Jew. Halperin's a Jew. But there are bad-Hiss was not a Jew. So that proves something. Very interesting thing. - Richard Nixon (link: http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=48623)

"I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 12, 2009

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

Just for giggles:

"Go f*ck yourself," -- Vice-President Dick Cheney, on the Senate Floor

Found this series of quotes posted in the comments section of the Economist, and found it sufficiently amusing that it deserved re-posting. - Guy

Homeward Bound

We are just waking up and getting our final internet time in before heading to the airport for our return leg. Just a quick 14-hour plane ride and we will be back in the good old USA!

Out and About

Joahnna and I spent yesterday walking around Melbourne, since she has mostly recovered from the plague. I was hungry so we stopped at the Lord of the Fries on the way to the Gallery of Victoria. I admit that I picked it just because the name was clever.

At the Gallery of Victoria we walked through their modern artists exhibition. Afterwards we stopped in their gift shop and had tea and carrot cake before heading back.



Rather than walking we decided to catch the tram on the way back. Melbourne has a number of trams criss-crossing downtown, and they also have a free city circle tram which runs around the downtown perimeter. It was a nice ride back, and also the robo-guide pointed out the sights as we circled back.



In the evening Glenn came by and took us out for dessert. We started out at Portorussells (?) where we Joahnna and I both had the spicy pudding, and afterwards walked to Max Brenner where we finished up with hot chocolate and cheesecake.

The Plague

We moved from Gladdy's house to Glenn's, located in downtown Melbourne, last sunday. However apparently we took some unintended souvenirs along with us -- Joahnna and Zach came away with a cold. They both spent the day yesterday in bed, and the symptoms are starting to spread to the rest of the clan.

I spent the day walking around Melbourne along with Jazylette, JR, and Ning, and later met up with Josh and Kathy. The weather was blustery and cold so we spent a lot of the day wandering through the indoor malls in downtown.

Today Joahnna is feeling better, so we are heading out the gallery of victoria.

The Shuttle Bus

This is a photo of the shuttle bus I have been tasked to drive for the next few days (driver shown for scale).

Kangaroo Hunt

We've been here for a couple days so far but we didn't really feel like we were getting the full Australian experience, so this morning we told Gladdy that we wanted to go see some kangaroos. It turns out there is a park not too far from her house (Gladdy lives on the outskirts of Melbourne) with some free-range 'roos available, so we loaded up the van with Gladdy, her two children Caitlyn and Jakson, Jazylette, her two children Alton and Jaiden, Joahnna and their intrepid van driver, me.

We drove the van to the park, parked, and started looking for kangaroos. A short walk from the parking lot we started to see curious heads poking up over the crest of a hill. The kangaroos were skittish and maintained a distance of about a hundred feet, so we didn't get any good close-ups, but we did manage to get a few good shots with the zoom lens.

(If you look closely in the above photo, you can see a joey sticking its paw out of its mother's pouch)

Most of all we really felt that we're actually in another country. Of course after that we somewhat spoiled the effect by going to the local Westfield mall, grabbing lunch at (for Jaiden) Subway and picking up some groceries at Woolworth (aka Safeway).

Joahnna is cooking up her signature broccoli beef as I type. Tomorrow is Glenn's wedding, and Joahnna and I have a number of stops to pick up and drop off people throughout the day. Driving around today driving on the left was starting to feel more normal again, so I should be all ready for shuttle bus duty tomorrow.

On our way

We are on our way to the airport to catch our flight to Sydney. From there it is on to Melbourne to meet up with the family. Had a photo of us in the car but guess I can't upload from iPhone. :(