A Friendly Wedding

:: kathy, stacy, betsey (photo by eliz) ::

Our tribe gathered in North Plains this afternoon, with family and friends from across the nation, to affirm the marriage of Kathy Hyzy and Stacy Woodbrook according to the good order of Friends, with Multnomah Meeting's clerk Betsey Kenworthy officiating.

Tara and I both signed the certificate, along with myriad others, after a period of expectant worship, during which people offered their love and encouragement to the happy couple. I helped out with the pirate pinata, fun for the kids, and consumed some of Stacy's fine homemade beer. We brought way too much of our lentil dish, given the abundance of good food, had fun making it though.

Of course there was some small talk among Friends during the reception afterward, of the various political dimensions of marriage, affairs of estate and so forth, an always shifting picture. Bonnie Tinker and I compared notes on the doings of other tribes, the Coquille in particular, with Elizabeth Braithwaite attending.

Probably many felt as I did, glad of our simpler ways and plain dealings. I felt complemented when this out of towner and friend of Stacy's told me I looked just like he expected a Quaker should look (even minus my black hat I was thinking, plus I couldn't find my camera, look forward to getting some pictures).

PPUG 2008.9.9

Jeff is explaining about pdxferment, literally about making yogurt, beer, other fermentables. Dark Horse Comics is here, recruiting a Python coder, as is Patrick (a Wanderer), Jason having moved on to full time work (right Jason?). We're about twentyfive strong this evening.

Brett Carter of Kavi (and a former astronomy student of Dick Pugh's at Cleveland) is talking about Python eggs, which are similar to Java jars. There was no eggified Zope 2.x MySQL adapter, which scared him. Summoning his courage, he tackled egg-making. Brett: "setuptools is just a giant monkey patch on top of disutils, adding on eggs, some other stuff." Getting your egg to include non-Python files takes some tweaking, then host your package at PiPy when you're done maybe.

Mark Frischmuth is here telling us about DemocracyLab, a think tank for building "democracy engines," a first one evolving as a Python application. He pointed us to the data model and source code threads on Clearspace. Coincidentally, I'm wearing a DemocrayLab T-shirt, but I don't say anything about my role.

Leo Soto is our visiting speaker, in the USA with Google's Summer of Code, also a Jython developer. He's here at Cubespace to share about his work around running Django on Jython.

What are the advantages? No global interpreter lock (GIL) for one thing. The Java ecosystem is rich, will read Excel files natively for example, through Apache POI support of OLE. You've got scalability with Hadoop, Hbase, JRuby... it's a lot like .NET, in terms of being packed with goodies.

In retrospect, J2EE was a big, horrible mistake (picture of Titanic). Sorry to hear that.

OK, so there's a new Web ARchive format (war). Unpacking a Django war looks something like jython manage.py war --include-java-libs = XXX.jar. War files are a kind of jar, so sort of like eggs you may have realized. There's no native MySQL or SQLServer adapter for Django on Jython, but then there's zxJDBC.

Leo showed us some back end code for talking to Postgres, importing from the original django.db.backends, but also from zxJDBC for more Java specific operations. There's only an experimental SQLite back end, per a question from the audience (not from me).

So Leo was able to get Django working on Tomcat, showed us a demo.

We can expect a finalized Jython 2.5 towards the end of the year.

I joined the more informal conversations afterward, at Green Dragon, a new brewery on 9th and Belmont, incorporating that old Q-hut that use to sell recycled computer junk. I like Jason's idea of organizing a Python 3.0 release party.

Ruminations

I've been reflecting back on what we learned at Kiwanis Camp, saw with our own eyes, in terms of snow damage. Quakers should offer to step up to the plate and do some hard labor on behalf of this camp, if there's a real opportunity. That could be run as a fifth interest group, or sixth if we count the challenge course, which didn't seem damaged.

I like Teri's point that we have a lot of control over the stories we tell, the very same facts (not counting disputed ones) amenable to multiple interpretations, many of which "come true" only in retrospect, and so "after the fact" is actually a good time to refocus. I've learned similar lessons from some of my savviest business partners.

I still think back to OSCON and that high powered meeting on the future of databases. I complained that few open source projects seemed targeted at the gap filled by Microsoft Access, making SQL generation a drag and drop experience. Some in the older generation have a different spin: SQL itself was to "meet you half way" i.e. all further use of training wheels in the corporate sector is just pandering, not counting web services.

I think what mystifies a lot of students is why they work so hard, some of them, and have to pay for the privilege, whereas so many desk jobs involve little more than zapping memos to and fro, shooting the breeze as it were, and getting paid for it. They're right to be mystified.

:: debut September 16 ::

The Python Briefing

My Python Briefing concept has a lot of market potential, but lest I bite off more than I can chew, I'm being pretty open about the business model.

My target demographic is math teachers, but Glenn is thinking no reason to be so restrictive, and yes, if we have a stable of presenters, we'll be able to serve more groups than just the one.

I'm mostly not recruiting computer science professors with a reason: my goal is to inspire imitators, and at the high school level a lot of the computer teachers have come up through the ranks, might've been gym teachers, don't necessarily have a college level degree in that field. "No problem" I'm saying, "we'll take you where you want to go anyway" (shades of Microsoft's advertising).

Given my focus, I've got all these GnuMath memes in play, like I'm wanting to have geometry tables in SQLite (a light weight and free SQL engine) pulling rows from within Python's scaffolding and projecting colorful polyhedra on screen, aiming to be up front with the eye candy (this is a dog and pony show after all).

If teachers like the performance, think we might be sympatico, then I'm happy to offer more follow-up experiences from our catalog, including customized trainings, retreat weekends etc. The briefing itself is short, to the point, and pretty much free (except I'm not offering to eat a lot of travel & fuel costs either, would still need my sponsors at least).

Speaking of sponsors, we might get more of those for the bizmos, as we keep moving in that direction per my long term plans. The question of "what decals?" is an old one by now, as is the topic of product placement more generally.

As a Fuller Schooler, it's a lot about artifacts, and of course we want to show these in action, so it makes sense we'd be thinking "what brands?" right from the get go. Like, who's into "extreme remote livingy" (XRL) technology already? That's one place to start. We want our students to see the stars, without too much light pollution getting in the way.

More Debate

:: more fun & games @ math-teach ::

More Hermeneutics

See Synergeo #43202 (typo fixes, hyperlinks added):

Re: Whitney review

> Not condoning laziness but Synergetics is tough going-
> I've been re-reading it and it comes off as more of a
> compilation of ideas- you can see Applewhite's indexing
> and the massive effort it took to organize.

Synergetics is "round" and so may be started anywhere, one of Applewhite's points when talking about the many scenarios it goes into, i.e. the passages aren't disjoint but hook together into long trains of thought -- not unlike Wittgenstein's Philosophical Inventions in that way, also with numbered entries (a comparison he liked).

> I noticed some inconsistencies that might scare off less
> adventurous readers like the contradiction over Universe
> as largest system and Universe not a system-gives readers
> like Rybo too much flexibility in interpretation

I see that more as a matter of nuance i.e. he harps on Universe as aconceptual mostly, but when push comes to shove, we're bound to systematize and so "largest system" gets some airplay -- but isn't that what it's like experimentally? Can you flash on some image and say that's the universe? But don't you pretend you can think of it as a whole, galaxies floating around, someone feeding their pet canary?

My recommendation is don't waste a lot of time on Rybo. As more people realize that Synergetics is both subtle and fun, we'll get some more interesting interpretive literature. Likely some of the greatest contributors to this growing body of work haven't been born yet.

> Wish we had more books like Amy's to bring folks gently into
> the fold (sic)
>
> Lou

The Pound Era was also quite good. Don't forget my Synergetics on the Web, getting thousands of hits monthly last I checked, lots of people getting Synergetics out there.

Kirby

Report from FCNL

Joe Volk (right) at Reedwood Friends near Reed College

Joe Volk recently had the privilege of joining an AFSC delegation to China, his only previous trip in 1984, and a lot had changed. Officials were easier to understand, their readings dovetailing more, plus China's charm offensive was bearing fruit, the new landscape more a collaborative enterprise, between internal and external engineers, architects etc.

Joe's story is compelling in that he started testing his belief system while still an enlisted soldier in 1968, open to the Just War doctrine, yet resolving to uphold the Nuremberg Charter and disobey orders to go to Vietnam, should push come to shove, which it did.

He liked the matter of fact way the AFSC office handled his case, offering to periodically phone the stockade where he was imprisoned, just asking about his welfare, and he resolved to later study the Quaker peace testimony, which he understood informed these actions. Today he heads one of the oldest, most respected lobbies on Capitol Hill (FCNL), which has a brand new "green building" -- a hot commodity in DC these days, with lots of MVPs asking for tours.

Back to China, Joe's previous trip had been in the company of Lewis Hoskins, a stalwart of the Quaker Men's Group I've attended for years, and ambulance driver for Friends in China during the WWII era. On this trip, the delegation's Chinese hosts expressed gratitude and appreciation for this service, which was delivered without regard for political affiliation or ideological predilection.

My only trip to China to date was way back in the 1970s, in the company of Glenn Baker and his parents. I recently uploaded some pictures from that trip, taken by Glenn, to my "good old days" folder on Flickr.

On another topic, I notice Kiselev's Geometry / Book II, Stereometry is now available in a language I know. I just ordered my copy from Sumizdat with a discount for having purchased Book I.

Elitism

The word "elitist" usually has a negative connotation, as in snobbish, stuck up, arrogant, vain, or at the very least privileged, but undeservedly so.

Yet I well remember J. Baldwin's spin on the word, when he phoned me in advance of including my name in the front matter of his new book, Bucky Works. He said he was "an elitist" in not using email that much, as he considered it shallow, too superficial.

True to form, the only time we really communicated after that was in person, in San Jose especially where we talked for a few hours. The guy is not snobbish, nor rich, but he takes justifiable pride in his accomplishments and skills, his integrity and intellect. He deserves to be an elitist in that way, and was just as proud of his son I recall, a Navy SEAL.

One would like to feel justifiably proud of one's team, an "elite crew" of some type, respected. So that's the positive spin on this word -- nothing to do with hogging more than one's share, feeling over-entitled.

Some of the Wanderers have been chatting about elitism in connection with a new book The Axemaker's Gift, which I've not yet read. So is it true there's some elite controller cast, pulling all the strings, making it all happen behind the scenes?

Let me quote from one of my posts of yesterday (#2553):

I think more kids should get to experience the Ouija board in their regular school setting, complete with the psychological explanation that there are more of them than there are of you, so it always feels like others are making it move, whereas you're just along for the ride, very innocent of making the thing spell what it spells (does everyone know what I'm talking about?).

If you've experienced a Ouija board, then you know how it's possible for everyone to feel angelic and innocent, and yet the demon possessing that infernal pointer (to revert to atavistic metaphors) manages to say something pornographic or worse (how did that happen?, everyone wonders, looking accusingly at their peers).

Unless one is schooled in basic psychology (a hole in many a curriculum), then one is easy prey to gazillions of paranoias, all premised on the idea of secret cabals with infinitely greater powers of coordination and cover-up than one lowly, innocent, powerless peon.

My basic rule of thumb is if a person doesn't regard themselves as a member of some "powerful elite" (could just be some well known group like Kiwanis or Rotary) yet is over 30, I probably shouldn't work with them, as their feelings of powerlessness will just get in the way and we won't get any work done. People who feel powerless are dangerous because in denial about having power, whereas conscious and aware people at least know they're powerful (responsible) to some degree, and are therefore less dangerous in many cases.

Or I put it a different way on Synergeo (#43089):

Somehow there's this belief it must all go back to one supreme apex of power, some game room, where all the insiders whisper in secret, plot diabolical next moves. There's no empirical evidence that such a supreme apex exists, except in the minds of the simple minded. On the other hand, sure there are conspiracies, duh, and Bucky was in on several of 'em....

I like to remember Marshall McLuhan at this point, and his remark to Fuller when they met: "I have joined your conspiracy!"

Background reading: Tower of Babel, USA (1995)

Block Party

Today, Richmond, PDX, 97214, USA, all photos by me

Activists

I've noticed lots of Kimberly-Clark products at OHSU.

Over on Hawthorne, you'll find activists sharing lore about the Greenpeace battle to end said company's war of choice against a defenseless, ancient Canadian forest.

Here's from the website:

( click for larger view )

Thinking back to my Project Renaissance namespace (1997), I'd have to say Greenpeace is doing a better job than NATO these days, of branding, of communicating its core mission.

Followup: Operation Kleercut successful.

Wanderers 2008.8.16

This wasn't an official Wanderers meeting, more a conclusion of what we'd started in Eugene, at the Starbucks.

The painting project kept happening as well, me doing lots of trim in the early hours, then some rolling of Ruby Slippers (a color name), Elizabeth at the helm, Tara first mate, Rose joining later.

However much of my day was devoted to meetings with Glenn and Nat, thinking some more about a Wanderers wiki, but mostly just comparing notes, talking about health care a little.

SQL is old hat, but we still need professionals with the skills and/or overview vis-a-vis this technology.

We talked about bridging to geometry from this data based side of things, perhaps with an audience of medical scientists just wanting to bone up on another tool of the trade?

The main table would have lots of polyhedra and their "topological inventories" (how many corners, faces, edges, maybe relative volumes according to some schema). We could store pictures of the shapes, even movie clips, as "blobs" (learning about field types).

The subtables would relate duals, provide vertices with coordinates, provide faces using these vertices (as in OFF format, already standard in CG).

Perhaps a server side process could ray trace a chosen shape on the fly and deliver it over the Web -- all part of our general purpose model of core technologies in action.

Geometric shapes form a neutral "plain vanilla" kind of content ("generic widgets"), useful in their own right (valuable heritage), unarguably primitive, and something to replace the over-used "parts in inventory" approach found in too many text books (gets stale after awhile) -- not that we have anything against supermarket math.

My thanks again to Elizabeth.

:: inside a polyhedron ::

Abuse of Power

So here's a clear case of putting undue stress on the indigent who don't pay a water bill on time: you get a reminder every week, to the tune of $10 each time (adds to your balance), but if you mail your check between two such letters, they grind on you to pay that additional late fee, even if the check is post marked and cashed in between.

What they say on the phone is you have to phone them and ask for a waiver, don't understand that a check in between should have bought freedom from any additional penalty charge.

Most "down and outers" won't dare stand up to a bureaucracy so it's up to those of us with some fight in us still, to point out this kind of petty abuse (it all adds up), this kind of nickle and diming that counts on (presumes) a "grin and bear it" attitude, is not modeled on serving proud Americans willing to stick up for themselves.

:: customer complaint ::

Coffee Shop Hopping

Somewhat atypically, I shelled out $9.99 for 24 hours on Tmobile, not my usual habit because so many Portland coffee shops offer free wifi, more like in Whittier.

I'm at my third Starbucks of the day, this one in Eugene, 13th & Alder, enjoying a slice of lemon pound cake (visited the gym this morning, doing that "fool your own metabolism" diet on the sly).

To my gnu math readers: maybe help with these questions about Python? Good chat room topics in any case.

Nick is holding court, shops like this his native habitat. I brought him the shoes he ordered delivered to my address and some literature he may not have seen: the New Yorker article on Bucky (hard copy version, a present from Matt) and the new Whitney catalog, recently acquired from Powell's Technical, capping this Xmas in July (a good one).

We'll be meeting with Nat pretty soon, probably moving somewhere else.

Some Summer Memories

:: Alana and Mary (formerly neighbors) ::

:: a freedom T-shirt tableau ::

:: a heron near PDX ::

:: a secluded scene ::

:: sisters ::

Dead Languages

Over on edu-sig we've been discussing the teaching of math as a language, or set of partially overlapping language games, including with more machines getting into the action, since Turing especially.

Glenn and I walked Sarah this morning, got her toe nails clipped, discussed Alan, working conditions at Bletchley Park, the UK's Navy Department's resistance to this new kind of intelligence and so on -- Glenn is perusing a new biography of the guy, plus we're both Neal Stephenson fans.

Computer programming has been around long enough, since Ada Byron's groundbreaking speculations, to give us "dead languages" already, but that's a somewhat misleading term, as a "dead language" may be very much alive in terms of continuing to run.

It's more just that brand new or so-called greenfield projects tend to go with more contemporary offerings, given ongoing advances in our tools of the trade. You don't start new COBOL projects, but may tend an inherited code pile, keep it "well oiled" so to speak, i.e. in running condition.

Some of the best matrix manipulations still happen in FORTRAN, and there are ways to wrap code in other code, such that a Python coder might hand off to FORTRAN and receive back -- so again, being a dead language doesn't get you off the hook from being in a responsible position necessarily.

So how shall we go about recruiting new talent into maintenance jobs? Aren't those too unglamorous, isn't the danger that dead languages will have no new students? In answer I say, look at ancient Sumerian, how people still study it, even in the 21st century. To be a serious-minded computer programmer might mean knowing two or three dead languages and a few contemporary new ones. It's not either / or.

That being said, some dinosaur operating systems and / or applications run too inefficiently or ineffectively or have otherwise exceeded their warranties, their maintainability.

Especially in light of how open source philosophies have driven down costs, lowering barriers to entry, those with the right skills have many more realistic pathways into the future to choose from, if anything have too many options rather than too few (I'm not complaining).

So whereas I think it's safe to envision some classical FORTRAN packages continuing in operation for decades to come, a lot of the vertical market stuff, especially if aimed at specific hardware, will find (has maybe already found) it has a shorter active duty cycle.

I'm sure many of my peers have come to similar conclusions, although usually in connection with a more specific company, silo, brand or project.

Boat Back in Action

Barry the banker, Peace Corps volunteer, helped our Captain mastermind the rebuilding and installation of a spare maritime internal combustion engine, getting expert assistance with borings etc.

Barry knows his boat engines.

I didn't help at all this time, except with encouragement. This work took several months.

Now that she's back under power (already to Oregon City and back), but with a new engine, a name change may be in order.

MySpace might stick?

Another positive development: DWA is getting its certificate of compliance from the city, having passed the fax test.

Equipment Test

Mom, 78, did marvelously on her giant cot in the Travis's tent, as did we all.

However the rains and temperature were such that we decided this qualified as "not summer camping" even though it's summer.

So I brought them back, dog too, by way of Frys (Hwy 214 through Silverton to Woodburn, then I-5 to Wilsonville), to check on the ailing Sony Vaio, lugged with us, because we took the I-205 route going out, by way of Molalla.

The laptop, mom's main workhorse, had a hard time coming out of hibernation, but did eventually, so good outcome, didn't need to leave it for repairs.

I'm returning to the venue to pick up with the threads around the fire, eat more marshmallows, plus we've had some turnover (e.g. Ron & Liz, Gayle), expecting it'll be fun, has been so far. I've got my own dome, had a wet dog for company.

Anyway, the equipment (much of it purchased at Joe's) performed well, camp stove and everything.

These camp sites are in high demand with most of them booked well in advanced, and so are filled regardless of weather, by families grateful for the opportunity. The trees are really big, the vistas spectacular. This was an annual event for us, so a little rain isn't much of a damper, Pacific Northwesterners that we be.

No wifi, and that's fine with me.

Geeking Out in July

As a matter of professional pride, I have to poke around in the guts of my computer now and then, just to stay in practice. Also, I was wanting to walk my talk around "Christmas in July", an overtly secular holiday, all about shopping, like the real Christmas, but with none of the guilt -- just doing our part for the economy, foot soldiers for capitalism and yada yada.

The upshot is I'm pleased with the new 600W ATX power supply (a StealthXstream from OCZ Technology), quiet and with all the right plugs. I mail ordered from TigerDirect.

The Diamond ATI Radeon 4850, on the other hand, bought for cheap at Frys, is too into rebooting KTU3 whenever I try to control it, with consequent bug reports aiming at Microsoft for some reason (I doubt it's their problem). Plus there's this upcoming Quaker camping trip and I'm short on gear.

So maybe this Christmas in July takes a new twist and the video card goes back for a refund and instead Joe's gets my business as a wannabe camper (an easy "sport" likewise popular in Russia especially where eATVs are involved). My 78 year old mother wants to join in the fun, so I'm seeking a cot also (because of injuries, an air mattress is "suboptimal" -- as geeks like to say).

I mention Russians because I'm thinking ahead to our Bearing Strait project, a piece of company lore we Fuller Schoolers tend to rally around, almost as if it had theological significance. I won't try to explain everything in a short blog post though (go Google).

Now if I wanna be really greedy, I might try a different Radeon, on the off chance this one was returned because flaky, whereas a full priced one might not disappoint. We shall see. My sponsors keep me very lean when it comes to unnecessary expenses, a way of keeping me mean I think (hey, it works). Given all the hostility to Bucky type projects, it pays to have lots of hungry Quakers on short leashes, other exotic krew.

Update: Xmas continues, thanks to Joe's, and yes, I'm gonna try a new video card (a different brand though). Tara and Carol: off seeing a Narnia movie. We're planning on borrowing a tent, so delayed getting a new one, but I did get that cot for mom, looks pretty usable.

:: thx to sam by way of trevor ::

Looney Tunes @ Amazon

(click for larger view)

Check out this screen shot, made with SnagIt, just a drop shadow added.

The page is ostensibly about a philosophy of mathematics title, but the Review (cut short) thinks it's about India, whereas the Product Description thinks we're talking about Susan's book on landscaping.

I saved verbatim quotes in the Math Forum, as a footnote in remarks about the philosophy book in question.

I rode TinkerBell to the gym today, hoping to work off those extra NPYM pounds. My fitness coaches, themselves quite athletic, are in consensus that I should keep shedding the dead weight, especially if I'm back to Guinness for protein (smile). Here's a weighty Friend looking to be less weighty. One snore doctor said I'd lightened up some, usually a good sign.

OSU is largely an Ag school, as in Agriculture, so all that wholesome cafeteria food is most welcome if you're gonna go out and "ag", work out on the gridiron or whatever. I'd have swelled up at Princeton had it not been for Rodrigo, my highly talented resident adviser and future exMarine. He got me out running, doing cardiovascular activities, leaving behind infrastructure I depend on to this day.

Once civilian volunteers get more of what their counterparts get, food, shelter and basic training, plus maybe officer training, then they'll have more time for the job at hand, driving those tractors, running those milking machines, laying that track, fixing those pumps -- all jobs that take calories, as well as an education.

Saving Worlds

"Always back up your data" was the rule of thumb, soon after the personal computer showed up in homes, and people started losing work. A single hard drive might've had all this redundancy, multiple writes of the same stuff, but that wouldn't have been a realistic response to the likelihoods. When a hard drive fails, it's often a mechanical failure, a part wearing out. Multiple writes of the same data blocks doesn't help, as the platens themselves are now inaccessible.

Fast forward to RAID, redundant disk arrays. Now it really does make more sense to mirror data across drives, such that a mechanical failure leads to a hot swap (insert a new drive without powering down) and mathematically low risks. Mirroring across independently breakable parts is engineeringly sound, solves a real problem.

Fast forward again, and now we're looking at huge rack spaces, commodity hardware, with attendant problems of dissipating heat, and interconnecting these clusters to mirror data across data centers. Why? Because you want your web services to be in closer physical proximity to users, for performance reasons, and because you want robust mirroring, as before. Frameworks like Hadoop and GFS solve these kinds of problems.

So what's the analogous trajectory in terms of archival or peripheral media? On a personal computer, once you back off to DVD or flash drive, you have a mounting issue. Not all media remain mounted, much goes off line. Sometimes the archived copies are the only copies i.e. we're not mirroring disk content, but saving a snapshot of what a disk used to contain, contains no longer.

The DVD juke box is another good example, hearkening back to those signature tape drives of the early mainframe business, with personnel taking them from passive storage and mounting them on high speed spoolers (serial access to magnetic tape -- one of the earliest storage media).

What we come back to, using Fuller's namespace some, is a question of lag times. If one assumes accessibility in principle, i.e. the data is saved somewhere, then it's more a question of "when" does one get access. One might imagine a science fiction story in which some time capsule storage gets mounted only once every hundred years. Trying to mirror the whole shebang is way too energy intensive, so the smart searchers just hone in on the specific puzzle pieces they need, like it's some game with glass beads.

Safe to say in many cases: the answers don't arrive in the same order the questions were posed. Put another way, the "jobs queue" and "results stack" are in need of collation, of sorting.

MapReduce might be the appropriate design pattern here, with the initial key a job number, leading to parallel processes doing the information harvesting, with the reduce process remembering the original job number, so the original submitter has at least a fighting chance of knowing when prayers have been answered (ding!... wish 08-7564 is now granted).

Women and FOSS

Speaker: Emma Jane Hogbin (from Canada). Taking notes live:

Women Don't Ask and Unlocking the Clubhouse are two good titles on women in computing. Susan Pinker's The Sexual Paradox, new, is also good, also Glass Houses.

In India, there's a much higher percentage of women in the technology sector, Pinker thinks because of pay scale issues. Women can more easily afford a non-technical career in the west. Is she right in her analysis?

Talking about "the lack of women" isn't moving us forward. We need to change the conversation, to world domination by FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). Currently, 98.5% of FOSS projects are headed by males.

The HOWTO for encouraging women's participation in the Linux community includes 26 rules of engagement. In sum: don't be a dick, encourage participation.

She cited Mark Shuttleworth's talk, with his crack about creating sexy software that helps people "get laid" (citing some philosopher). Accept awkward moments and move on?

The challenge of recruiting to FOSS is a marketing challenge, so lets think in terms of branding.

Women are more likely to switch brands "based on a good cause" (men less likely). Women place more importance on brand characteristics and personal assistance than men do -- but FOSS is self serve (no store).

The Red Hat Society provides more of a model -- look for groups of people (especially women) to recruit. Charities (nonprofit sector) tend to employ a lot of women -- there's a group.

Help seniors escape from routines. They have grandkids don't forget. Help forge an alliance across the grandparent / grandkid bridge, based on FOSS -- a way to develop that relationship.

Women are workshop junkies (if not conference junkies): quilting bees, scrap booking retreats. Women will pay for these workshops. Having a cost increases the perceived value and commitment (Larry Dotson).

HICK Tech: How the Internet Connects Knowledge -- a good model? Women predominate at this conference, plus are more likely to register early. The focus is on the impact of technology on rural lifestyles.

Constructive suggestions:

• If we have consciousness on every daily action, we can change the "mainstream" conceptions (Claudia Lulkin) -- mindfulness (do one thing different).
  
• Live in the future, behave as if already surrounded by women (because you are, duh).
• Ask women to be role models (www.geekspeakr.com).
• Ask men to help make change happen too.
• Empower people to make foolish mistakes. Reduced stress will empower you to work more creatively.
• Empowerment eliminates fear (how people deal with foolish mistakes makes a big difference).
• Clearly transfer authority.
• Encourage women to question the software, ask them how to improve it, teach them to change reality.
• Allow for matriarchies to run geek communities, participate in viral marketing etc.

During Q&A I mentioned my "party line" that computer science is already "matriarchal". Perhaps I live more in the future in that respect?

More Geek Anthro

In contrast to yesterday's breakfast, today's was quite social. I started by bragging to R0ml about my 79 year old mom, degree in history from a Jesuit academy in the Philippines, reader of Latin, who now administers web sites, a big fan of Drupal.

Then I got into deep discussions with a gentleman from Philadelphia (National Board of Medical Examiners), with Wanderer Keith Lofstrom joining us (I explained about our designer cult, Terry our fearless leader).

This morning, we're hearing from the legal community, in the person of this OIN guy, about various protection schemes that'll help defend us from patent trolls, especially in the software biz.

One may envision lots of jobs in this area, given the inventiveness of lawyers and their boilerplates (an older kind of code -- he actually uses the word "codify" a lot).

We lose lots of potentially talented geeks to that world and its often higher pay scales.

Peter H. Salus, an historian, is providing great context, focusing on the last 60 years and the evolution of "solid state". Timesharing got going in 1963. December 6th, 1969: Arpanet switched on. First Unix paper, 1973. Ten years later: GNU. 1991: Linux on FTP. Look for The Daemon, The Gnu and The Penguin next fall.

Looking ahead, the web as a platform is giving rise to a new emphasis on open data, not just open software. OpenID, Oauth, OpenSocial are among those inventions helping with B2B and B2C interoperability. The Open Web Foundation is wading in to this area, of working with open specifications and licensing issues.

Danese Cooper's talk on "whinging" (win-jing) was interesting, although we say "whining" (wyn-ing) in Portland. Complaining isolates us and makes rain fall on us, wasting energy. She's addressing the gender disparity in geekdom, suggesting a stronger response than just complaining about it.

Ubuntu ad from Danese's slides

Confirmation bias: what you believe reinforces what comes to you. Move out of your biases, even just a little each day (morph) -- a worthy goal in many cases. Recalibration of language (invention in language) is our solution. Acknowledge others, be the world you want to live in.

Nat Torkington is recounting his adventures as a volunteer teacher of future hackers in New Zealand.

Programming is a basic skill, like pumping gas and driving a car, and you'll have a lot more fun in life if you learn some -- pure CP4E talk by the sound of it.

He started with the latest Lego Mindstorms, and discovered that "robots are dorky" -- and Logo blows. scratch.mit.edu is the better way to go with these kids. Show them the ropes and let them invent. Students came up with jokes, stories, books, games using this package.

Moving to processing.org is a next logical step, doing pair programming with his son.

Lessons learned: lectures suck (two minutes max); at 8-11 girls are way smarter and more focused, boys too unrealistically ambitious; keyboards are a challenge; not much in the way of math skills at that age (in NZ anyway); robots = lame; even the teachers need teaching.

Immodest proposal: volunteer in schools; share courseware; don't expect to make a profit. Sounds familiar. He ended with success story involving a Lego robot, for balance.

Geek Anthro

I'm in the vast Expo Hall in the Oregon Convention Center, with coffee, melon, bagel & cream cheese, coffee (other options available). O'Reilly treats us well.

Geeks think nothing of spreading way out among tables, deliberately choosing a very remote one, flipping open a laptop, and getting lost in some world (Uru?). That's me for ya. But other times we glom together for social networking (as some call it) i.e. there's no penalty for flipping between these behaviors.

Some geeks just gaze into space. You don't really need a laptop to get lost in a world.

Once I'm on-line, I have access to friends who might be in this very room. For example I see Robin Dunn of wxPython sitting three table hops away, gazing into his Powerbook.

In theory, I could Twitter about that and, if Robin subscribed to the right feed, he could notice I'm mentioning him in real time, and check the relevant blog link. That'd likely be interruptive of his train of thought though. Mostly we're "asynch" in geek world, more like in Twisted.

Razz turns into a pumpkin at 10 AM (the parking meter expires), plus I have a lot on my plate today. I'm hoping to meet up with DemocracyLab folks in the exhibitors' area at some later time, maybe blog about it some.

OK, so I just walked over to Robin, waving my Ubuntu Dell laptop, babbling about my blog and about needing more coffee, said I'd send him a link. Ah geekdom.

Business Buzz

Mark Shuttleworth is rattling out a high bandwidth talk about "software cadances," the rhythms of development in a permission-free, multiple suppliers environment.

He's passionate about facilitating collaboration across communities and tools within our global free software ecosystem. I'm squeezed between Steve Holden and Duncan in the front row of the Portland Ballroom.

Canonical is interested in the economics of funding this stuff. On the demand side, the advantages are obvious, but how do we innovate on the supply side? He doesn't see how "just advertising" is going to accomplish this, but on-line services just might (I'm thinking "learning a living").

He just got sporadic applause for sharing his vision of raising the Linux desktop to the level of art (beautiful, elegant), blowing right by Apple even. "Software that helps people get laid" as he put it, quoting a favorite philosopher (other bloggers will have the citation).

Prior to Mark's talk, Steve whipped through a State of the Snake report, doing about ten slides in 30 seconds, briefing everyone on where we're going in Python Nation, what with 2.5, 2.6... 3.x.

Jython is going gangbusters these days, with support from Sun Microsystems, with a 2.5 alpha just out recently. He then presented the Frank Willison Award, to Martin von Loewis, a major contributor to Python culture (Steve himself is last year's recipient).

A few Google O'Reilly awards were then granted. Angela Byron was actually present to receive her Best Contributor award, for her work on Drupal. Martin Dougiamas was awarded Best Education Enabler, for Moodle.

R0ml talked next. Then came the White Camel Awards, to Republic of Perl MVPs.

Interest Group

Key: Qs = Quakers, Ws = Wanderers

The children were off enjoying DaVinci Days, a Corvallis tradition, so I heisted their meeting room, given the retractable screen, ethernet... the perfect venue.

I lugged the Saturday Academy pack from Portland: Logitech X-230 speakers; Optoma projector; Ubuntu Dell laptop -- but not so many geometry toyz this time.

I felt privileged to have some very relevant peers present: a sociologist (Jim), a media pro (Steve), a treaty enforcement expert (Jennifer), a company coach (Larry), a health educator (Leslie).

I separated my talk into four Z-layers: personal, metaphysical, situational and historical, with an eye towards interconnecting them.

We mostly went on a tour of my blogs, pausing to watch a few YouTubes along the way. I also projected my Quakers on Youtube, itself not on YouTube (yet).

Q-Meter (oops, spelled hopeful wrong)

The idea of a Q-meter is somewhat tongue in cheek, a play on Scientology's E-meter. With the Q-meter, we ask ourselves where we stand on the utopian to dystopian spectrum, like are we feeling more like Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde today?

A "corporate query" is where we ask about Quakers, not just about ourselves as individuals, although of course it's ultimately as individuals that we freely seek, discover and speak.

Here's a dynamite title for some futuristic interest group: James Nayler: Cold Warrior. Think about it anyway, not saying I have to lead it.

Quaker Portal?

Ed Averill led an interest group focusing on the computerized infrastructure Together Friends might develop, with an emphasis on strong security. Not everyone attending Quaker events wants this known to the public, or at least isn't advertising this fact.

The Quaker Portal idea got some heads nodding (nodding off?), perhaps prototyping as a sandbox (a simulation) using only fake data to begin with, giving Friends something to talk about (a conversation piece, a first draft). Lots of randomizing web services provide such infill automatically:

Lorem ipsum in legimus apeirian quo, mea in elitr percipit dissentias. Noster sententiae inciderint mel an, qui quot albucius at. Disputando adversarium cum in. At delicata salutandi efficiendi quo.

The Directory is another perennial challenge. Some just want their email addresses listed, whereas others specifically don't want that shown (because of spammers mostly).

Ed is quite familiar with the issues involved, heads up our IT committee. He's been focusing on the General Secretary position and the need for encryption on laptops, which might be lost or stolen.

Running a secure data center is a separate can of worms in some ways, although not if you're using the laptop as a front end only, saving nothing special on the local drive, keeping anything sensitive at the central office, connecting by VPN or whatever encrypted tunneling system.

P.O.S.H.

One of my valued sources, a Together Friend, informs me this morning that this "port out, starboard home" etymology is considered an urban legend by sticklers, as the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang decoding well post dates first occurrences of the word.

The colorful and embellished stories of where this word really originates, leave the gatekeepers highly suspicious. Anything "gypsy" is not to be trusted, unless also verified (cross-checked and peer reviewed).

Speaking of posh, I'm ensconced in an Oregon State University dorm room and finding it comfortably spartan. As long as there's ethernet I'm a potentially happy camper. Excerpting from the Wanderers eGroup (me posting yesterday):

One perennial proposal is to bring in a safety net that assumes "the life of the mind" as a desirable component, i.e. "being in college on a scholarship" sets the base line, and includes work amidst study, including sometimes at dirty jobs (as seen on TV -- doesn't mean "unskilled"). You don't get to live in high style necessarily, but you're not in any danger of starving.

Just talking up the Global U again, per my usual rap, an updated version of what came out in Education Automation quite a few orbits ago (about 46).

More Quaker Futurism

Excerpt from Quaker-P (Mon Jul 14 08:02:49 PDT 2008):

Part of the falling home values slash retail housing crisis is Americans are fed up with a stupid, unplanned lifestyle involving urban sprawl and strip malls, exorbitant commutes to work and really shoddy workmanship in the case of a lot of these McHouses (like living inside of fast food). On the horizon: genres of positive realism that promise much better lifestyles, including in places like the Andes, where your Verizon call center might feature a high tech cosmopolitan village, lots of gringos amidst those call center personnel, the better to serve those fussy gringos back home who can't abide "broken English" when calling their bank or whatever, get really nasty about it, tsk.

WRDL: Grain of Sand

click here to visit applet

Quaker Roots

In doing the research for my upcoming interest group on American Transcendentalists and their influence on Friends, I'm discovering how useful it'd be to not confine my attention to the western hemisphere and the Americas. For example, Emilia Fogelklou of Gothenburg contributes strong writings. Plus Margaret Fuller, friendly to Friends, wrote some of her best stuff as an expat, so once again we're outside of Walt Whitman's favorite stomping grounds (where he sang of himself).

I think I'll start off by looking at barbs and/or spoofs aimed at Quakers, for example this one blog alludes to Quagans, our Quaker-pagan subcultures (not like others haven't played with exotic hybrids), whereas this other contains an hilarious review of a first person "non-shooter". What's especially revealing is the following paragraph:

Multiplayer Discussion
Rainbow Six: Quakers features online multi-player that lets you and the opposing team talk it out in a variety of highly-detailed maps like Village Café, Modern Boardroom and Comfy Mattress.

In other words, the tools of diplomacy have a transcendentalist flare, hearkening back to the "make love not war" aesthetics of the 1970s. One of our best "east meets west" collaborations was Yoko Ono's with John Lennon, a couple who helped us awaken from the Vietnam nightmare. I'm not saying either is Quaker (not my call), but that their personal testimonies well fit with such as we find in Lives That Speak.

Of course in practice I'm rubbing shoulders with only a tiny minority of Friends, a wandering (if not lost) bunch of Beanites and fellow travelers in the Pacific Northwest, circa Seattle.

IDLE Language Games

:: Python using Akbar font ::

When teaching for Saturday Academy, one of my first moves is to show students how to customize IDLE to better suit their personal needs. This includes choosing a font.

Some students like a more informal look and feel, such as shown above (click for larger view).

IDLE is Python's "batteries included" text editor, making use of the Tkinter module which provides bindings to Tk. John Zelle has contributed graphics.py, a yet simpler API letting Python programmers control Tk widgets, such as window-framed canvases.

IDLE (Interactive DeveLopment Environment) is also a pun on the name Eric Idle, one of the original cast in the Monty Python troupe, for whom Python was appreciatively named.

Dog Tubes

dog agility tunnel from canine concepts

Some of our XRLs (remote bases) will be pet friendly, yet designed to contain pets to the designed environment, by keeping the wilds outside relatively free of alien species.

"Leave it as you found it" is the prime directive in many a protected wilderness.

Pet owners have long used plastic tubing to vector hamsters into harmless holding patterns. Dogs may also be coaxed into traversing short distances through tunnels, Dachshunds especially.

In other words, structures needn't directly connect in order to provide safe passage to controlled species, by means of appropriately sized tunnels. Humans needn't be restricted in this way, having trained themselves to obey the appropriate rules even when set at liberty.

Given RFID, some systems will offer fancier control paneling for monitoring pet whereabouts, whereas other communities might consider this overkill, an invasion of privacy, and opt for stronger training instead (like our pets don't "get stuck" thank you very much -- or if they do it's none of your business).

rover

An Amnesty Proposal

The Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers) sponsored a letter from many of Canada's faith communities requesting the federal government stop deportations. "Canada has always been a country of citizens who prize peace and peace making. We hope that public policy will reflect those aims," said Jane Orion Smith, spokesperson for the organization. "Corey's case and that of all the soldiers are based on substantive rights of conscience under international law that must be respected."
[ from CNW Group earlier today]

If the Iraqi legislature passes similar legislation for a post pull date amnesty, for USA soldiers left behind past their pull date (timetable talk much in the news again [1]), then soldiers closer to the action will have their own "underground railroad" and won't need to escape to the homeland first, where domestic sentiment is also in their favor (plus family members). [2]

Not saying this'll be for everyone, especially as most soldiers are scheduled to rotate home under ordinary duty, are looking forward to an honorable discharge etc. However, given the usual sense of disarray in fog of war conditions, we might anticipate some units on the ground getting confused, like Japanese in the Philippines post WWII, still trying to hold out for their Emperor, long after the switch to Indochina as the new theater, and start of the cold war. [3]

Iraqi legislators have reasons to want to stay on good terms with their USA counterparts and passing such laws on the model of Canada's would help emphasize the point that friends help each other in times of need. Canada has always been there for us.

Bar Hopping

I'm using the term somewhat tongue in cheek, as these are family friendly and more healthy hippy than those smoke filled taverns in other zip code areas, even if both have pool tables (this one doesn't, Centralia's does).

I'm patched in through the company WiFi, from my Ubuntu Dell, awaiting a Lynchburg Lemonade (just sampling the Jack Daniels, No. 7 -- if anyone ever takes my order, not a given seeing as how I blend in with the decor). Most customers are eating outside, but I'm into darkness and airconditioning, on this beautiful blue day.

On my plate this morning, Darwinism again, and this idea of randomness. What's true about random is it might just be pseudo-random, perhaps even signaling a close encounter of some kind -- but how would we know for sure?

Wolfram's A New Kind of Science studies this question, among other books in the chaos tradition (dynamical systems theory). Eternally incommensurable medio-phase seems optimized for problem solving in some important ways.

As I post in the archives, the idea of "an alien intelligence" becomes oxymoronic at some limit, given ye old "man is the measure of all things" cliche (is all too human in other words). Like, we don't recognize what we don't recognize, if "passing the Turing Test" is not the criterion.

Ned's Excellent Adventures

ned likes twinkies... bigger cake in the wings

My cousin Ned celebrates his birthday at our annual July 4 family picnic, as does my sister Julie.

This year he told us this joke: a man is fishing with a stone for bait, hits an eagle after the same fish, accidentally killing the eagle, a protected species. When the game warden comes by to investigate, our man tells a good story, about not wanting to waste a national treasure (he has cooked and eaten the eagle), which the game warden buys. But upon leaving the warden asks: just curious, what does eagle taste like? Reply: oh, somewhere between a spotted owl and a condor. Oops. Kaboom.

Ned hasn't been shy about traveling the world, including the Amazon Basin, tells many good stories, many of them true.

More cuRRiculum writing

phi from fibonacci numbers
(click for larger view)

Per Math Forum and other venues, I've been pioneering some Pythonic Math in the context of a free web delivery framework.

Some assume use of "distance education" tools means the teacher isn't on site, or that the students are remote from one another.

This may well be the case.

On the other hand, there's no reason a teacher can't have small, intimate classes, and yet still make use of the very same web frameworks, for in-class use (as when projecting).

If each student has a personal screen, then using a web framework to deliver content, even with students in the same room, may be the teacher-preferred modus operandi (M.O.), i.e. it beats making 'em squint at a chalk board, listen to squeaking.