One idiot's blog

Image-based Shavian Test

His iz a test uv mF nV SEvIan font sistem in mF blog. plIz let mI nO if V kAn sI it. Convert this to shavian!

Paean to Lilypond

So I've been stressing out a bit about this Moldau thing (see prev. entry), right? But, with the miracle of modern technology, I think I bloody well got the Sturm und Drang part (which carries the title "St. Johann - Stromschnellen", a fact surely known almost exclusively to musicians who have played the piece) down.

I, erm, "obtained" a recording of the Moldau (matter of fact, I asked someone to download it for me, since I really have very little idea about that sort of thing, and I don't even know if there are any good downloading programs for Linux for the p2p networks that are popular these days), and followed along with my sheet music. That was good, but the tenor clef (and all those funny # symbols) was messing me up. So... I broke out my GNU Lilypond, learned how to do ties, slurs, and multi-measure rests in it, and typed in the notes for the relevant part, and produced a near replica of the sheet of paper I was looking at. Well, not the whole sheet, just the tough part, and I didn't bother with dynamics. Then... changed the line

     \clef tenor

to

    \clef bass

in the source file, re-generated my output, and ta-da! Something I can read! I did the listening to the MP3 thing again, this time looking at the bass clef mini-score I had created on my screen, and I actually knew what I was doing musically, finally.

It probably took me an hour to type in 55 measures of 6/8 time, dotted halves, quarter-eighth pairs, including learning all the ties, the multi-measure rests, etc. And the output kicks ass!

Must learn tenor clef despite how easy Free Software makes it to cheat.

GAAAH! Bad Blogger!

Looking at my little blog calendar, it's been almost a week since I wrote in my blog. That means that, on submitting this entry, the number of entries shown on the front page for this blog will be very short -- like one or two. Unless, that is, I decide to change the settings on MT to show 20 days' worth or so, to account for my current low level of posting.

Would be nice if MT supported a more complex rule set for how many entries to display on the Main page.

For the past two weeks I've been playing for an orchestra. Woohoo! I love playing the music I love. We're doing the Moldau, among other things, which is my new favorite piece. Just wish I had more time to practice. The 2nd bone part is in tenor clef, which I hadn't read in yearsnyears, and of course, instead of flats, the key signatures and pitch modifiers usually contain these symbols -- wait, my keyboard has one: #. That apparently means play the note a half-step up from what it would otherwise be. Easy to say, hard to do in real-time.

Where Are They Now?

You know what I'm talking about. That's right, those stupid (as in "innocently ignorant") messages with the conspiracy theories and whatnot. Remember, years ago, getting messages about how Bill Gates was the Antichrist, and you could prove it by doing certain things with Microsoft Word (you could type something like "I'd like to kill all Jews" and do a spellcheck or something and it would come back with "I'll drink to that", for example), getting emails about kidney harvesting, etc.? These sorts of things went around back when everyone was first getting on the Internet.

I think we're all just so much more jaded now. We've gotten over the fact that we have this easy access to information, and realized that what we're really getting is a flood of information the likes of which we'd never imagined. We've learned to be judicious about what we believe, to check our sources, and to know that anyone emailing us telling us where to get cheap prescription drugs is no friend of ours. We're quick with the delete key, and only send on the really good stuff if we have time.

But some of that junk we were sending around was, just, interesting. For some of us, it was fascinating/fun to believe or just funny. For others, it was fun to shoot back erudite retorts disputing the authenticity of whatever had jut been passed to them. It felt OK to waste that sort of time, because, dammit, we were using the Internet, the newest technology which was going to provide those of us who knew how to use it with lifestyles beyond our wildest dreams.

I don't know, maybe I don't see as much of it because I'm not in college anymore. Back then, most of my email friends were younger, more gullible, and more apt to pass the conspiracy theories around. Also, I'm older now, and I've noticed I don't tend to get worked up about stuff the way I used to. So maybe I'm still getting as much of that crap as I used to, but simply deleting it without thinking twice. Either way, I miss it.

Robot Secretary Slaughters Unemployment Claimants

I think this is the only possible explanation for both these headlines occurring on the same day, on Yahoo[ungrammatical punctuation omitted] News. Otherwise, wouldn't the unveiling of the robot receptionist coincide with a rise in unemployment?

Implementations of Python

The official implementation of Python is written in C. There is also a well-known implementation in Java, called Jython. This latter implementation has the twin advantages that the portability is already taken care of, and that it compiles to Java bytecode instead of Python bytecode, so you could actually write a "Java applet" in Python (well, Jython), and it would run on anyone's Web browser. Both these implementations have their uses. You might be asking yourself at this point, "self, are there any other language implementations of Python that might be useful?"

So, some idiots are re-writing Python in Python. Criminy. Writing C in C is one thing -- writing such a huge thing in assembly is just too hard, not to mention unportable -- but implementing a slow lumbering language like Python in a slow, lumbering language like Python... that's just gotta be a great way to drive Sominex off the market.

Do You Know What Coffee Is?

Did a Google search for "reminiscing coffee", simply because those two words popped into my head as something to search for that might find me something bloggish. Found a brief page on Portugese coffee customs, or How To Order Coffee in Portugal. The summary: if you order "café" in Portugal, what you'll get is espresso. It doesn't mention what you will get if you order espresso. Maybe that's how you get regular coffee!

Happy Presidents' Day

As I got into my car this morning, the first thing that came on the radio, which was tuned to WETA, was Copland's "A Lincoln Portrait", narrated by James Earl Jones. That's pretty powerful stuff; there is no other piece I know of where the music is designed to serve as a background to a particular speech. God, when he talks about democracy and survival of the nation, it really reminds you, if you allow it to, that despite all the imperfections of this country -- and there are many -- that we've got one of the best systems going on here. And the music... well, it is the embodiment of forceful, determined righteousness, the nobility of humanity, and the resolute struggle of a people to make their nation a great nation, one which strives to deliver dignity and rights to all its citizens.

I had just gotten onto the Beltway from the Kenilworth Ave. on-ramp when JEJ started talking about Abe talking about the sacrifice of the dead at Gettysburg. At that moment, I passed by the Hummer dealership, which has a huge flag on a pole right beside the highway, and the wind was blowing it just perfectly. I just wanted to cry; it was like I was in a bloody commercial or something :-).

Wow, this post should get me a free ticket to the RNC.

OBTW

I'd be remiss in mentioning that I was sort of asked out on a date a few days ago, by a woman who, from a certain point of view, is a perfect match for me. I said yes, and went. [girly scream]. Life is happening to me! Someone make it stop!

I sort of wish I hadn't taken that particular offer up; it was pretty much in full view of another woman I want to keep available. This whole exclusivity thing makes life so difficult. Maybe I need to go join a free-love commune. Except I'd still get jealous, because I just know there'd be some studly guy who'd be able to get my favorite woman/women whenever he wanted, while my needs would be filled on an as-available basis.

I'm just kidding, of course. Really.

Nice

Everybody's read how Windows Source Code Segments Were Leaked, right? The WP article actually says what everyone is probably saying on Slashdot right now, that Linux source code is already out there for all to see, which makes it more secure to begin with. Well, they didn't state that as fact, they simply said that Linux supporters have always said this, which is fair enough; whether one OS is more secure than another is frankly pretty hard to prove, especially when they keep getting patched.

But it's almost sad they way the Softies have been going on about how this is a serious blow for security (actually, on second reading, no one from M$ has said there's any security concern, as you might predict). I wonder what would happen if this sort of leak occurred in the Linux world. Oh, right, I forgot: IT'S ALREADY AS EXPOSED AS IT CAN POSSIBLY BE! I guess I already said that in the previous paragraph. Sorry.

I'm an Idiot

Idiot Blogs. TSIA.

Geez

I guess I won't worry too much about whether my useless ramblings are polluting the Web. There are pages out there filled with (figuratively) tons of (literally) random words. Check out this Google search on "bitwise storyteller adverb" (done without the quotes). I was looking for an old friend called the Bitwise Storyteller (friend insofar as I found his blog and posted at least one entry on it), but he seems to have disappeared from the Web, but there are a few pages filled with random crap that contains those two words, along with actual useful pages, though the latter were not relevant to my search. So I arbitrarily picked the word "adverb" in hopes that that word would be found in some of these random-word pages, but not the bona-fide content pages. It worked!

I wonder if the presence of these pages is at all related to the new trend in spam of making a spam mail consist primarily of random words.

Right as Rain

A couple of days ago, I checked out the Rain theme for Mozilla. I liked it; for one thing, it used the GTK themes. It's what I'm using now (on my Gentoo iBook).

I decided to grab that theme for Mozilla on Windows at work. Should not have really bothered, since I hardly ever use Windows at work these days except to fill in my timesheet, but I did. Unfortunately, compared to the Modern theme, at least, the effect of the Rain theme is primarily to make it look like IE. The widgets (scrollbar, etc.) are windows widgets; the 3D objects are the same color as the MS stuff. What's different are the icons and the rounded ends of the location field (the place where you type URLs). But it's disturbing how much it looks like IE [shudder].

Suicide Bombs Hit Kurds

The source of violence, terror, and sabotage in postwar Iraq has been fairly murky from the start, but there are a handful of good possibilities. I put people into three groups: Saddam loyalists (read: Sunni Arabs who are afraid of a Shiite-controlled state, plus a handful who just really love Saddam); the Al-Qaeda faction -- not necessarily directly reporting to Al-Qaeda, but basically inclined towards establishing a theocracy, and in particular, getting rid of foreign influences; and others who are glad to see Saddam go but are unhappy with the way the U.S. is doing things, frustrated by joblessness and crime, and eager to take the country back into Iraqi hands. The former two will attack foreign personnel and Iraqi "cooperators". The latter, I suppose, will mostly attack U.S. troops. The religious groups will be the most successful at recruiting suicide bombers; the fedayeen may also be able to do so, with more difficulty, I would imagine. I doubt the frustrated folks would be inclined to such acts.

But I can't figure out who would be motivated to bomb a bunch of Kurds. I mean, whichever side you're on, how does this work to your advantage? It seems to me that it increases the likelihood that eventually the Kurds will end up as a separate state. Who exactly wants to give up their life -- or, more significantly, kill a bunch of Kurds -- for that?

Maybe I haven't thought this through completely. Oh, well. I'm at work. Must code. Or at least go to lunch.

Power of Blogs, Part II

Do a Google search on "Spolsky's blog". Wait, before you do it, what would you expect to find? For those of you not in the know, Joel Spolsky is a guy who writes software and runs his own company, and pontificates every now and then on software design, development, etc. He's entertaining to read, and very well-known. And though he doesn't call his site a blog, that's what it is. Most recent entries on top, some of them short, trivial, and having little to do with software or the site. OK, back to thinking about the search. OK, obviously, if said search pointed to his blog, I wouldn't be writing about this. Then perhaps it points to his greatest critic? Someone who is in the habit of writing "Spolsky's blog sucks"?

No, the top result in that search (at the time of this writing, of course) is my post on his Bionic Office. That ain't right, but what's a conscientious blogospherizen to do? Do I take "Spolsky's" out of the title? Do I change the title of my blog from "One idiot's blog" to something that doesn't have the word "blog" in it? No, I think I'll be forgiven for just throwing up my hands and saying, Google has swung and missed again.

Update 2/6: Never mind. At some point in the last 4 days, I dropped down from #1 to... actually, I couldn't find my entry with that search, after going through 12 pages of results. As if Google had seen this post and said, "we're not going to let him get fame that easily, mwha-ha-ha-ha. Ha."

Yahoo[ungrammatical punctuation omitted] Ups and Downs

Yahoo mail provides the option to not load images from emails. This is good, because if you're a Linux user, you can't be hurt by the executables that get sent to you in virus form, but remotely loaded images can act as beacons, letting the spammer know that the message sent to your email address was opened, and that you are a good target for future spam. So I turned on the feature to block the spam.

But half of the email I receive that contains links to images and is not spam is from Yahoo itself. Hello, Yahoo![this exclamation point is part of the whole sentence, not acquiescence to the way they would like their name spelled.] Don't you trust content from your own servers? How hard would it be to check what the images were before blocking them? And especially when it's a service message about Yahoo Mail. It's a pain to have to go and turn on the images to an otherwise quite strange-looking e-mail.

Fox News Really Is a Tool

I just decided to check the Fox News site to see how they covered the stampede at the Hajj. That's when I discovered that, following Cheney's(?) suggestion, they actually use the term "homicide bomber". That's the only news source I've seen do that. I'll allow that the death of the bomber should be mourned least among all the deaths, but a suicide is a suicide, and the term "homicide bomber" is just stupid.

I've Got My HFSPlus

OMG, I can't believe I've had this iBook for a year and I just found out that Linux can mount the OSX partition and read it.

Then again, I just upgraded my kernel; maybe this is a new capability. Prolly not, though; an email from Vince Weaver, from the time when I was considering whether to buy a piece of Apple hardware for the first time, talks about how it can do so.