Octopodial Chrome

Back in 1960 the Royal Canadian Air Force commissioned the 5BX Plan for Physical Fitness. The idea is that with five basic exercises done a few times weekly one could over time get fit. It’s arranged into a series of six charts, each of which is divided into four grades, each subdivided into three sub-grades. One starts at the very beginning and continues up the chart until one’s at the proper level for one’s age.

I’ve used it in the past, but had slacked off. Once again, though, I’m on the horse. Only up to the level of a seven-year-old boy, but I shan’t stop there.

There’s also a similar plan for women, called the XBX Plan; it uses ten basic exercises. I’m not certain why women have such a different scheme than men, but my guess would be that it has to do with the fact that their bodies are much more delicate than ours: a fellow can get away with a brute-force regimen, but a women needs to use a bit more finesse.

My cousin Anna was in town yesterday, and so I took her to downtown Denver to play some pool, which was fun enough. The problem is how to account for the expenditure. It’s not drinking, even though I’d a half bitter, since drinking wasn’t the point. It’s not eating, even though we’d some food, for the same reason. It’s not entertainment, even though I was entertained, since that is limited to my own entertainment and doesn’t include others’. It’s not skirtchasing, even though she’s a girl, since she’s my cousin. It’s not charity, since charity is giving to causes. It’s not a gift, since I was a benefactor. It wasn’t a household expense, since it wasn’t at home (otherwise it’d have been a good fit).

And those are the only expense accounts which come even close to fitting: it was neither academic expense, nor bad debt, nor sales commission, nor computer, nor insurance, nor medical, nor theft, nor transportation, nor anything really.

This is driving me crazy, to tell the truth. The best I can do is drop it into my personal account, but even that’s not very good, since personal accounts are supposed to cover things I do for myself, not for others. It’s a truly unclassifiable expense. Perhaps I should create a new category: Entertaining Family or something. But would it better fit under personal or household expenses?

I just found a link to freeshell.org, which offers free Unix shell accounts. It sounds very neat, like Unix accounts were in the good old days: large numbers of users online all the time; chatting with your friends; playing games. They also offer email and web space.

Well, for the second year in a row I biked to work on Bike to Work Day. I did see thrice as many cyclists on my route as I normally see (which is to say, I saw three rather than one…), so apparently the effort to get folks out of their cars and onto more humane transportation worked. The upshot of participating in BtWD, of course, is that one can hold oneself as morally superior to those who drive 365 rather than 364 days of the year:-)

Seriously, though, if more folks biked to work the world would no doubt be a better and more pleasant place. The cyclist does a steady pace, while the motorist is constantly accelerating and slowing. The cyclist enjoys the scenery and gets to know the very matter of the road; the motorist speeds through to his destination. Cars, of course, have their place—I wouldn’t trade mine for the world (actually, to be quite honest, I would trade mine in return for title to the Earth), but still there’s something about getting to one’s destination by one’s own power.

After way too much sewing, my Elizabethan slops are complete! Yard upon yard of fabric, thread, pleating and stitching—but it’s all done with now. I hate sewing, but I do love having sewn. Now all I need to finish are my netherstocks and a codpiece to cover the join in the front of my slops, and I’m finished. Well, for now; eventually I need to make sleeves. And a ruff & cuffs. But for now, I’m nearly done…

A month or two ago I started a project to construct a set of Elizabethan clothing, most importantly a doublet (kinda like a vest with sleeves), slops (kind like knee-breeches) and netherstocks (imagine woven knee socks). Well, the doublet is essentially finished and the slops wait only to be stuffed. It’s been a long hard slog, but the end approacheth.

There’s a new site out which explains what the SCA is & is about. It’s pretty attractive.

We’ve all been on sites which offer avatars—that is, small images which represent one. It’s possible to tell a lot about a man from his avatar, and The Buttafly Guide to Friendster Photos tells it like it is.

Me? My avatar is either me drinking a Bass (in a Guinness glass…) or me in my 15th century Italian clothes, depending on the circumstances.

Oh sweet glorious joy of living! I love the world and all that is in it!

You see, there is an alternate way home from work, a way which involves a large hill, and which until today I had not yet attempted to cycle. I had figured that I should be able to hit 35 or 36 mph, and was looking forward to racing down it.

I could not have been prepared for what was to come. I hit the downslope, and switched into my downhill gear, then started ratcheting up, keeping an eye on my speedometer. 24-26-28-30-34-36-yes! But there were still gears to go! 36½-37-37½-38-38½39-39½…could I; would I?…I could and I did: 40 miles per hour! I was going the speed limit; I was going as fast as a car; I was going faster than I had ever gone under my own power; I was one with the road and the wind; I was on top of the world!

It was absolutely incredible, like no other feeling in the world. My next goal: to break the speed limit on that hill…

Meet Dr. Mike Adams a professor at the University of North Carolina. He has devised a manner in which to derive pleasure from leftists: every time a PETA member pesters him, he goes hunting; every time a leftist professor is defeated, he smokes a fine cigar. He even donates shotguns to schools with NRA chapters on campus—and names them after an anti-gun activist.

Curiously, he recommends a Rocky Patel Vintage ’90 as the best cigar he’s ever had (smoked in honour of a professor who called religious folks moral retards stepping down from a position of authority), and the first cigar I grabbed from my humidor this evening was a Rocky Patel ’92.

I was just listening to the Eagles tonight. The DVD of Hell Freezes Over is absolutely incredible. I remember back in college an acquaintance had the CD; it’s nothing compared to the DTS surround-sound experience.

It’s odd to think that it was nearly a decade ago that I first heard Hell Freezes Over. I was much younger, and happier, then.

I’ve just added the Jamaican Black Strap to my bachelor recipes. It’s perfect for the summer.

Interesting, miles per gallon equal furlongs per pint. Which isn’t that surprising, since a furlong is 1/8 mile and a pint is 1/8 gallon. But it’s amusing nonetheless.

My car gets about 35 furlongs to the pint…

Seen on Occidentalis, Bishop Basil on the necessity of monasticism. He often gives this same essay as a sermon.

The New York Daily News thinks that women prefer nerds. I wish that they were correct, but I fear what they have demonstrated is that women like fabulously wealthy guys who are slightly geeky. Hardly the good news one might wish for.

From the Netflix blurb for Jeremiah:

Based on the graphic novels by Hermann Huppen, this sci-fi epic stars Luke Perry and Malcolm-Jamal Warner as survivors of a deadly virus that, two decades ago, killed everyone but the young. In a world ruled by anarchy and danger, Jeremiah (Perry) is in search of Valhalla, a place that his father told him held hope for the survivors. As a new leader, Jeremiah faces warring groups of survivors who are hoping for peace, but desperate just to live.

Dear Lord, could it possibly be any worse?

…this sci-fi epic stars Luke Perry and Malcolm-Jamal Warner…

Has-beens…check.

…deadly virus that, two decades ago, killed everyone but the young

Hackneyed post-apocalyptic plot…check. As an aside, if it were two decades ago, then the survivors would hardly be very young now. Which explains, I guess, the casting of Messrs. Perry & Warner.

…Jeremiah…is in search of Valhalla…

Goofiness…check.

As a new leader, Jeremiah faces warring groups of survivors who are hoping for peace, but desperate just to live.

Piss-poor economics and back-story…check. Here’s a hint: very few are ever new leaders; generally it’s a long, hard slog to the top. Also, in situations of limited resources warfare is often the most counter-productive strategy possible. Let me guess—this is one of those post-apocalyptic tales in which everyone has a US Army brigade’s supply of ready-made ammo?

And once again sci-fi fans are left in the lurch. My question is: who thought that this could possibly be good?

del.icio.us (which is a right royal pain to type) is a wonderful little personal-bookmarking/collaborative-tagging application. You create an account and add a few JavaScript scriptlets to your browser toolbar—then use them to bookmark pages you like. Instead of categorising bookmarks in an hierarchical manner, like most bookmark managers, del.icio.us lets you tag them: I can note that my brother’s blog is both a blog and from family.

What is more, you can see other folks’ tagging, and you can manage your own tags; you can even see who else has linked to a page. For example, say I’d like to see all pages categorised as having to do with elephants; I’d merely got to http://del.icio.us/tag/elephant and there they are. Or perhaps I want to see all the folks who’ve tagged this blog: I can go to a list of all entries for my blog.

Oh—and anyone can see my bookmarks by going to http://del.icio.us/eadmund. How cool is that?

What’s best, of course, is that it’s free.

Years ago in school I was introduced to Lisp; my opinion was not very favourable. It appeared to be a goofy theoretical language, useful for exploring functional programming and maybe for AI work, but not for solving real-world problems. I don’t believe that I’m alone in having gotten that impression; for some reason all too many college CS programmes focus on teaching C and Java.

Be that as it may, I had the sneaking suspicion that Lisp might actually be far more practical than it had appeared. Folks like esr wrote that Lisp is worth learning for a different reason—the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; Paul Graham wrote many articles detailing, among other things, how Lisp was a competitive for his successful startup; Phil Greenspun expounded the famous Greenspun’s Tenth Rule of Programming: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of CommonLisp. And so I began to wonder what I’d missed.

Then Slashdot published a review of Practical Common Lisp, which I then bought. It was as though a door had opened in a hitherto-impenetrable wall! Seibel’s superlative work showed how Common Lisp could be used usefully.

So, what is Lisp? Well, it’s a functional language. And an imperative one. And an object-oriented one. It’s interpreted. And compiled. It’s dynamically extendable: the programmer has full access to the entire language when programs are read in, when they’re compiled and when they’re run. He can create new syntax; he can replace standard syntax. He can connect to a running application and modify it, correcting bugs as he goes.

CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System, is amazingly powerful. Rather than having methods tied to a single class, as with most object systems, methods are specialised on one or more classes—and they can be added after the class has been defined. This means that any programmer can easily and seamlessly extend a built-in class. Want to add regexp matching to strings? Then do it—there are no hoops to jump through.

Quite frankly, Common Lisp is an incredible language which has spent far too long in the background. So, of course, I’m rewriting my tasting notes app in it to see how it works. So far, it’s really cool.

Well, the big news today is that Apple Computer have decided to switch from PowerPC to x86 for their CPUs. Quite frankly, this makes no sense to me, for I cannot see an advantage and yet can see many disadvantages.

I used to be a very big Macintosh fan years ago; in fact, nearly all of my college friends now use Macs. Eventually, though, I realised first of all that not all command lines are created equal (see Unix); that freedom trumps other concerns (see GNU/Linux); and that Apple has lost its once-vaunted user interface skills (see OS X). I had, however, been considering the purchase of an iBook in order to get some nifty Linux hardware.

That’s part of why this is so confusing. The x86 is an ugly architecture. Why switch to it? It has much less room for growth than PowerPC.

Don’t Apple realise that no-one will buy a Mac for the next two years? This announcement end-of-lifes all their hardware in one fell swoop.

I predict that this will cause yet another wave of Mac developers to quit the fold; this is one change too many. First 68K->PowerPC, then Classic->OS X, and now this: it’s clear that an investment in apple technology is building on ever-shifting sand.

Lastly, I don’t care what sort of hardware goofiness Apple get up to: within a matter of months after the release of x86 Mac OS X, it will be possible to run it on Windows and/or Linux. If it’s on the same architecture, it’s easy to emulate whatever hardware DRM they care to implement.

So Apple is giving up a technical advantage, drastically cutting revenue, losing developers and losing its platform dominance. Why, again?

This is turning into a recap of the NeXT saga…

Today I participated in my first-ever organised shooting event, the Aurora Gun Club’s D-Day Memorial Shoot, in which the only guns used are those of WWII vintage. What, when did Bob start collecting guns? you might ask yourself. Actually, I’ve not: my good buddy Martin (who’s on the Board of Directors of the club) invited me, lent me an Enfield and gave me the 35 rounds of British .303 I shot.

It was a lot of fun. The course of fire was 5 practise rounds, then 10 rounds prone (that’s lying down, for those of you unfamiliar with the lingo) in 10 minutes, then 10 rounds prone in 80 seconds, then ten rounds either kneeling or sitting in 10 minutes (I opted for sitting). The Enfield is a wonderful weapon to shoot, with a nice bolt action. The rounds do have a slight tendency to get a bit stuck loading, but that's relatively easily fixed. I wonder if the rounds I was using are not the same form factor the originals used—indeed, they almost certainly are, since I’m pretty sure that jacketed hollow point ammunition is illegal to use for warfare.

I didn’t shoot very well, but then I’m no marksman. Still, I didn’t do too badly, all things considered, and of course it’s just a fun shoot.

One of the cool things was that a fellow brought three WWII-era machine guns for a demonstration shoot: two American guns (an M2 and something whose name I forget) and a German (a MG23 or MG43?). I’d never seen a machine gun used, and it’s very cool. They do eat ammunition very quickly: in a matter of seconds he had spent over $100. But man are they cool! I didn’t know this, but each weapon makes quite a distinct sound; IMHO it’d be very easy to distinguish them on a battlefield.

It wasn’t a completely perfect day, for someone had ordered authentic weather: cold and rainy. It was so wet that we were all soaked through-and-through by the end, and so cold (beyond chilly) that when Martin & retired indoors to finish scoring that our hands could barely write. But it was all fun anyway, and of course it really just helped add some atmosphere. I gotta say that the last relay rather hurried through their final set, though: one would swear that it’d been a speed-fire event…

Afterwards we’d a raffle and door prizes: I got a free hour at K2 Firearms Training Centre as well as a beer cosy shaped like a T-shirt. And I got my Civilian Marksmanship Program certificate, so now I’m eligible to purchase old surplus guns at a nominal cost. All in all a very fun day!

My sister-in-law Emily was in town this weekend for Stephen’s Eagle ceremony, lots of pictures for my Mom and (of course) to see her husband, my brother (they’d not seen one another since March). I always enjoy spending time with her, but this time it occurred to me that we’ve not spent three days’ worth of time together: in many ways she’s really a stranger. I like her, of course—but it’s a kind of associative liking through Thomas, in the same manner that one likes one’s buddy’s friends because, even though they are unknown to one, they must be cool if one’s friend likes them.

I have every expectation that if we did know one another well that we’d get along famously, and indeed when our paths have cross such has been the case. But it’d be so great if Tom & Em were here in Denver and we had dinner or drinks at least once a month.

For that matter, I hardly know my own brother; it’s been almost a decade since we’ve spent a great deal of time with one another. We’re family, of course, and that means that I don’t feel like a left-behind childhood friend or anything like that—but we each are that in a small way to each other. We grew up together once, but we no longer do.

Of course, no-one can know what the future might bring. Thomas & Emily might end up in Colorado; for that matter, I might end up in California. And of course there are my other two brothers to consider. All in all, the odds of the four of us living in the same state again are pretty slim.

Johnny Lechner has been in college for 11 years. His grades are good; he just sees no reason to graduate. In response, the regents of his university have doubled his tuition. Why? He’s not hurting anyone; he’s paying his own way; he’s certainly improving his mind. And he’s having the time of his life. I envy the man.