Some call me... Tim (Menzies)

And, to end that story...

2007-01-31T17:11:00.000-08:00

Further to my last post, it is now a down deal. Helen starts at UMBD in September.

Houston, we have a solution to the two-bodied problem.

Her Brilliant Career

2007-01-21T10:09:00.000-08:00

Meet Helen Burgess, super star! Slayer of search committees!

We used to say that he (the computer geek) was more employable than her (the english prof).

No longer! We moved to West Virginia so I could catch a rare beast- an SE job. Then Helen went looking for jobs- sent out 10 resumes, got 6 preliminary interviews, 3 offers for on-site interviews, then got a job offer on her first on-site visit.

Let's review. 10:6:3:1. That's almost the golden ratio. Certainly, they are exciting numbers here in Chez Burgess-Menzies.

And all this at a time when there is much published lamentation about the lack of jobs in English: "many desperate, hollow-eyed job-seekers- a sea of unemployed misery gives me something one might call sympathetic nausea - many of whom are bound for adjunct hell- they just keep coming -- like Steinbeck's Oakies puttering into California in their jalopies " (from chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/01/2007011901c/careers.html)

Far away in the snowy mountains

2007-01-21T10:05:00.000-08:00

I rarely feel that Morgantown is an isolated mountain town.

Until the snow comes.

Then I get a sense of slopes and altitude and being high and away from the rest of the world.

The photo you weren't meant to see.

2007-01-21T09:59:00.000-08:00

Helen was horrified when I set up this shot.

"It looks like something on CNN", she said, "you know the one - in the back there's a guy in a hood about to behead you".

Me, I thought I was being an ewok.

Just goes to show how the differences in our head spaces!

One the last day of Christmas

2007-01-07T21:35:00.000-08:00

(Everybody sing now...)

On the last day of XMAS,
my students came to see,
what kind of house contained me

We meet since, before the whole academic whirlwind began again, I wanted the clan to meet and greet and eat. Most of the grad students came. Some folks showed that I haven't seen for years (Greta and Nana) Even Dan Baker shook off his jet lag and made an appearance (after this picture was taken). Very nice.

Before their arrival, I was a mite worried that my start of semester soiree would be a somewhat staid affair- that the Australian-at-a-party might be too raucous for the gentle graduate students.

It was a simple problem to solve- just add wine. Bottles and bottles and bottles of wine.

Just think- billions of years of evolution to produce the brain cells that we wiped out in a single evening.

Andromeda Strain

2007-01-05T05:56:00.000-08:00

When I was 12, the pinnacle of hi-tech Sci Fi was Crichton's "The Andromeda Strain". And this was the key to it all- the arming device of the nuclear bomb that was meant to blow our heroes away if the alien bug got out.

One of the technical consultants on that film was Bill Koselka. Then, he worked at JPL and did things like shot lasers at butcher's meat to show the art department what a laser burn would look like.

Anyway, these days Bill works at IV&V and he's been bragging for months about his role in the film. I didn't believe it- I wanted proof. So, to secure his place in history, Bill obliged. "The arming device for a fictional nuclear weapon good enough for you?" he asked.

Chincoteague, Dec'06

2007-01-04T22:03:00.000-08:00

Just before new years, we went down to the ocean, to Chincoteague.

Surprisingly warm weather. Surprisingly long drive there and back (Google map directions under-estimated by 2 hours in each direction).

Very few people there, cheap hotels, great seafood, relaxed little town.

Couldn't ask for a nicer place.

Barbie and Helen at XMAS time

2007-01-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

Oh, little town of Morgantown,
How still we seem to lie
But through deep and endless tubes
The internet(s) flows by

And in thy eyes, pages shineth
The neverending sight
The hopes and fears of hackers here
That it compiles, tonight.

The church of beer.

2007-01-04T21:06:00.000-08:00

Like any Australia, Ron Davenport worships his beer. So it was no surprise he found a pub in a church for us in Pittsburgh.

Data Mining Seminar, 2006

2007-01-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

I ask my data mining students to "do something amazing with data mining". And the stuff they get up to:

Building predictors for football games
Learning music preferences
Studying student record data to find patterns in who stays, who quits at WVU.
And a ton of other cool stuff.

Amazing stuff.

One thing that was very nice to see was the professional way they presented their projects. Most exciting to watch and, as an educator, most gratifying.

Halloween, 2006

2007-01-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

I'll work it out one day- why America is so obsessed by the dead. And why they organize their catharsis so rigorously- we were attached by ghouls and goblins for 59 minutes, from 6:00pm to 6:59pm. And all the ghosts and goblins were taken home by their mommies and daddies.

prolog(rules), ok.

2007-01-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

I've tried to fight it but there's no denying. Prolog rules.

It has been weird doing some Prolong-ing after all that recent LISP hacking. Somehow, all those old American arguments against logic programming rang louder in my ears as I sketched yet another pattern match. "Why give over procedural control to a resolution theorem prover?" and "Why add those extra layers of computation to your code?".

I have no real answer except this: I am v. productive in Prolog. In the last 3 days I've nearly recreated in Prolog about 2 months of procedural hacking that I did round XMAS 2004.

Revenge of attack of the kliller S-expressions

2006-11-14T14:55:00.000-08:00

Please ignore my last post.

It turns out that, under Mac, Fink Commander has a preference "use unstable packages".

After clicking that, and doing a Selfupdate, then all the missing packages appeared including scsh, scheme48, clisp, etc etc. Cygwin also has clisp so that is where my current search has ended.


[1]> (mapcar #'(lambda (x) (print x))
                '(that took far too long))

THAT 
TOOK 
FAR 
TOO 
LONG 
(THAT TOO FAR TOO LONG)
[2]>

Attack of the killer S-expressions

2006-11-14T06:33:00.000-08:00

In this era of open source, you'd think it would be a simple matter to compile a 45 year old language that has been used and update extensively during its entire life.

WRONG!

I was after a Lisp dialect that ran on Windows (Cygwin), Mac (Intel) and *nix. PLT Scheme looked good for a while- slipped onto all the platforms, no worries. But Scheme suffers from lack-of-standards and there was some note somewhere about PLT about to lose its NSF funding (read "insert dead-end language here"). Also, all the benchmarks I could find showed dull old Common Lisp whipping the pants off Scheme implementations.

So, onto Lisp. GCL had no Intel-Darwin version and while SBCL came highly recommended, it get dying on compilation. Offically, Fink has clisp but I could never get my local version to find that packagte. Then I tried DarwinPorts but that barphed cause Fink had got there first and added in headers that DarwinPorts saw as "not a registerred (Darwin) port". So that was that.

Currently, I'm trying ECL. It uses gcc and compiled cleanly on the Mac (after telling its configure to use my own directory structure for $prefix. Right now, I'm trying a Cygwin compile. Cross fingers.

This is day five of poking around web sites, looking at this, trying that. Not that I worked on it full time but this is much more work than I'd anticipated.

(print 'goodGrief)

(UPDATE: ECL compiled fine under cygwin, but now it won't recognize any command line arguments- it just quits after loading. grrr)

(UPDATE on the UPDATE: Cygwin's clisp compiles just fine so it looks like it'll be ecl on the mac and clisp on PCs. Which has its upside- I'll be less likely to use uncommon Common Lisp constructs if I have to satisfy two interpreters.)

Not visiting places in New York

2006-11-11T20:19:00.000-08:00

Here's just one of the many places Helen and I didn't visit in New York. The lines at the Empire State Building were so long, that we didn't go in.

We were in town because Helen had to give a talk at SLSA in New York. I'd never been there before so we fly off to New Your for a weekend.

Before we left, a West Virginia asked "what's in New York"? And the answer had to be "Well, New York is in New York".

When I got here, I was really surprised. My expectation was crowded sidewalks that you had to fight to get through. Crime, rampant in the streets, and "u lookin' at me?", everywhere. I thought I'd be fumbling down the streets, clutching my chained bag, avoding eye contact, trying to get out of everyone's way, and getting brused and kicked a little by the passing aggression. Every so often, I thought, I would flop into a coffee shop to sit quivering with all the other country mice, scared to go back out.

Instead, I found a tame herd of (somewhat crowded) apes who give each other space on the not-so-crowded sitewalks. There were trees everywhere where red and gold leaves were still changing on the branches or dancing on the side walk in little eddies. It was a really really wam Autumn weekend (60 degrees in mid-November: who'd a thunk?). My bag never got stolen, I wasn't mugged, and no one knifed me.

As to the night life, I'd like to say it was a wild weekend of partying till dawn in Soho. However, honesty requires me to report that we were tipsy by 9pm, then back to the world's smallest hotel room to sleep by 10.

After not going to the Empire State Building, we didn't go to the Statue of Liberty (again, line too long). Then we didn't go the Guggenheim (too much construction work).

We did get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There, the fates conspired against us.

See, after West Virgina, New York was amazing+++. After a day of wondering around, slack-jawed, like Mr and Mrs Gunderson from Minnesota, we were soooo tired. So, we were like zombies walking round one of the greatest collections of Art in the Western (?entire) World - had to drag ourselves from room to room.

So, all in all, we drank a little too much, walked a million miles, road cabs driven by maniacs/ subways packed like sardines, and ate ate ate such wonderful food. We'll like to come back but the hotel prices are scary. When we checked in, the clerk at the hotel blinked twice at our rate ($187/night for a little box with two single beds and a bathroom shared with someone down the hall). Who'd we kill for this one, he asked?

Subversion! Rocks!

2006-09-19T06:17:00.000-07:00

I've been using subversion now for a few months and, quite seriously, I think it rocks.

I work at four locations (NASA, WVU, a workstation at home, and a laptop when on travel) and on three operating systems (Windows/Cygwin, OS/X, various Linux dialects). After some fussing with make files, I can know log in into any of the above, update, run a make file, and hey presto my local environment is up to date.

There are two cool side effects of the above.

Holy multiple redundancies Batman: I get back-ups on my stuff on multiple machines AND my central repositories.
I play well with others: If people want to run my code, its a few minutes set up and then they get my environment running on their machine. Better yet, by giving them access to the repository, we can all work together on the same project.

But there are some traps to avoid. Don't just jump up and rush home at the end of the day. Depart elegantly. Allow, say, ten minutes to shut down and commit your changes (subversion somethings needs a little babying to get everything squared away).

Also, the operating system does not know about subversion. Its so tempting to grab an icon in the visual environments and move some directories around. Don't do it. Every file/directory manipulation should be done using subversions. For example, don't "mv a b" but "svn mv a b".

Oh, and incrementally add little things every day- bulk huge updates are a real problem. So don't do what I did- try to import 4GB into the repository. Instead, having an "old" space and a "new" space inside the repository. If you start working on some "old" stuff, first move that directory/file into the repository and then "svn add" it. (By the way, its a little humbling how little of "old" ends up in "new").

But the main tip is to get a Dreamhost account and plant your repositories there. No set up headaches- repositories running in minutes. Files accessible via the web. And Dreamhost gives you lottsa disk space, for nearly $0. And you can set up any number of repositories there. I run three:

http://www.unbox.org/wisp/: a space I share write access with my collaborators and the world can read it.
http://now.unbox.org/all/: the world can read it but only I can write it.
mine: no one but me can read/write it

That's all easy to manage. Just make a directory called "work" and install the repositories as sub-directories of work. A short script can then:

update with
cd $HOME/work; for i in *; do (cd $i; svn update);done
commit with
cd $HOME/work; for i in *; do (cd $i; svn commit);done

And the second script needs $SVN_EDITOR set to your favorite editor.

Lost: 1 family

2006-09-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

After 4 days in California of being a voyeur on family life at Chez Richardson, I went to D.C. for two days to a standard American soul-less hotel.

What a horrid contrast:

Before: intense sunshine light noise enthusiasm
After: disdained overcast hermetically- sealed sedated bored

When I left the hotel, they gave me a bill.

When I left California, they gave me a poem.

While he was here we ate, drank, talked and laughed.
Now, he has gone.
The glasses go unemptied, the uneaten food begins to spoil.
His legacy: a key, a cable, some money.
And a bundle of cheese sticks.
I hope that when I go, I will leave cheese sticks too.

I think I like poems better than bills.

Boehm singing "Ode to Fortran"

2006-08-31T20:39:00.000-07:00

(As sung by Barry Boehm at a private party in his honor at CSEET'06):

Fortran, Fortran, going so fast;
Fortran, Fortran, going so fast;
I don't know what loop I'm on;
Won't you tell me where I've gone?

Got a job, about a year ago;
Invert a matrix, row by row;
This, I said, will be a breeze:
Fortran will handle this with ease.

Coded it up, took it up to compile;
When it returned, I lost my smile;
I will never learn to spell,
"EQUIVALLENCE" with just one "L"

Finally got my octal deck;
Loaded it up without a tape check;
Suddelnly some red lights glowed;
It went into the trapping mode.

It ran right through my storage block;
Shorted out the on-line clock;
Spun the tape right off their reel,
And stripped the printer's gear wheels.

Now I'm doomed, forever to pore;
Over my assembly code and dump of core;
Trying to find where my Fortran code;
Took off into the trapping mode.

I love Ishtar

2006-08-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

(For years, the only web site that praised Ishtar was something I wrote back last century. That site is now long gone, but for history's sake, I show some of it below. For more information, see the very thorough Ishtar movie web page or the WIKIPEDIA entry).

Ishtar is the world's most under-rated movie.

Two terrible lounge singers get booked to play the Ishtar Hilton. Somehow they become pawns in an international power play between the CIA, the Emir of Ishtar, and the rebels trying to overthrow his regime.

This movie contains the most gawd-awful songs ever written. You have to be very very good to write stuff that is so very very bad:

Telling the truth can be dangerous business
Honest and popular don't go hand in hand
If you admit that you can play the accordion
No one will hire you in a rock and roll band

CHORUS (everybody now)
But we can SING our hearts out, (all night)
And if we're lucky then no neighbours complain
Nobody knows how the beginning part starts out,
But being human we can live with the pain

Because life is the way we audition for God
And we pray that we all get the job

Crying out loud gets you pointed and laughed out
Be like a baby, only babies should cry
Somebody tell me how that rumour got started
Something I know only god knows why

But we can SING our hearts out

The movie is usually hated by critics but it has many die hard fans. For example:

Martin Nohe (Woodbridge, VA):

Bob Helbig (Patton, PA):

Scott Johnson (Kent, Oh):

And, of course, there's me !!:

Geek Fest '06

2006-08-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

So yesterday Palo Alto had a festival of the arts. Hundreds of stalls, street muscians, food from around the world.

Of course, I didn't go. Instead, I spent the day geeking out with at Julian Richardson's swanky surburban pad, complete with jacuzzi.

Me and Julian hacked PowerPoint all the day and all the night. There were breaks (for the jacuzzi, for a wonderful Vietnamese dinner, for a run for groceries store) but we where PPing first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

Don't tell anyone, but I really liked it.

To the bat plane!

2006-08-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

Wired reports that Shunkworks has a new trick for silencing the sonic boom. This would enable a national American supersonic plane market (Concorde was banned in US skies due to the volume of the boom).

Their prototypes look wicked cool. I've started saving.

Terrorism and dieting

2006-08-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

Today, I nearly made it into the national newspapers by shutting down airports all over the country. I blame the South Beach Diet.

See I'm absent minded at the best of times (e.g. I'm 46 and I just realized I forgot to have children). But right now I am into "phase one" of the South Beach Diet and this carbohydrate cold-turkey (;-)) thing is doing sssttrrrannnnggggeeee things to my mind. Moments of sublime calm (or is that starvation - I can never tell). And extreme forgetfulness. For example:

Example 1: Part of the diet is to arm yourself with tiny snacky treats. Like string cheese. Which, I have to say, looks exactly like tubes of plastic explosive. So I saunter up to airport security with four tubes of this stuff hanging out of my breast pocket. While watching my bags go into the scanner, I realize I am carrying (what looks like) detonators, pull it out of my pocket, and stare at it dumbly. The security guard says "what's that?" and I proceed to pass the "detonators" to her with some lame story about "cheese". She backs off and tells me to dumb stuff into the trash bins "over there"; i.e. far away from the security check point.

Example 2: When I arrived at the airport, I got my boarding pass, and forgot to check my bags. At the security scanner, just after the cheese incident, I dumped my huge black bag onto the conveyor belt and thinks "hmmm... what is wrong with this picture? .... D'oh!". So, in front of a security guard, I start pulling the bag off the conveyor belt while telling the guard, "whoops, forgot to check this one". Which, to the security guard would have looked like this:

there is a strange, confused man going through my checkpoint.
the cheese incident has jolted him back to reality
he's just remembered that his other explosives are in the bag on the conveyor belt
so he's just invented some bogus reason to pull the thing off the scanner

Of course, she stopped me. Happily, all she made me do was to scan all my bags, walk through the metal detector, then turn around and walk out back to the airline check-in. But, at this time of heightened airport security, you might have expected that I got taken away, stripped, probed, etc etc etc. That Pittsburgh gets shut down for a morning while they search from my accomplices. Which, in turn, costs the American economy hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue which I have to pay back toiling night and day, locked and chained in the basement of an accountancy building with anti-aging drugs keeping me alive for the centuries required for the task.

Example 3: Once past security, I buy some coffee and some bottled water and sit round waiting for the plane. Ho hum, dum de dum de dum, twiddling my fingers, sipping my coffee, time to go,walk on the plane, seal the hatch, wait on the tarmac. Hot in the plane, reach for the bottled water. Stewardess sees the container of fluid. "What's that!" she demands. "Er... water," I say, pointing to the label. "What's it doing on my plane?" she demands. "Um..." I offer.

She debated calling the SWAT team to disarm this terrorist from his chemical weapon. Then she looked me over and realized what a duffus I was. The water got dumped in a rubbish bin (in defiance of 1000 anti--terrorist regulations).

Example 4: when I landed I took the buss to the car hire place and, on arrival, remembered that I'd forgotten to collect my checked luggage. So I had to ride the bus back to the terminal, grab the bag-of-terror, then ride back to the car hire place. Made be half an hour late for dinner with my hosts in San. Fran.

So, there you have it. Proof positive Dieting causes incompetent terrorism. And loss of luggage.

The answer? MacDonalds for all! The BigMac can save the world.

His Noodly Appendage (sighted)

2006-08-21T05:51:00.000-07:00

A rare public appearance of the Flying Spaghettii Monster.

The Air Force released some tissue thin set of lies about this just being the dump or something out of a plane. Typical.

His Noodly Appendage

2006-08-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

All is clear to me now. My doubts answered, my fears relieved. I have accepted the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my personal saviour.

Soon I will assume my pirate garb and teach the true alternative to evolution and intelligent design.

"Blasphemy!" I hear you cry. "No one insults evolution and gets away with it!".

I understand your pain and fear since until all too recently, I too shared. Please believe me when I say that I hold love in my heart for you.

Know too that I am here for you and my most fevernt hope is that one day soon, you will now the peace and love of his His Noodly Appendage.

May the sauce be with you.

Papers, papers, papers

2006-08-13T19:10:00.000-07:00

There's a bit of cult of effortlessness in academia: "and I've got a paper on that coming out next month in the international journal of bright and shiny things". According to that cult I should not boast.

But what the hell. Here's what in the works:

Two short papers in IEEE Software (July'06) and IEEE Computer (Oct'06);
Two papers [1, 2] recently accepted, pending minor revisions, to IEEE TSE;
And there's one long article in the works that stands a fighting chance of appearing in IEEE Computer (Jan'06).

Paradoxically, this could all be a problem for my tenure track stuff. I'm still in year one of a N-year tenure track process. How can I possibly top all the above in years two, three, four,...?

Hills and Oceans

2006-08-13T18:14:00.000-07:00

So we went driving for a week and instead of traveling thousands of miles to Prince Edwards Island and Montreal, we decided to see what was to see in our own backyard. We found:

the world's greatest Barbie collection
a strangely absent atomic fallout shelter;
the strangest marine museum;
rockets
giant radio telescopes;
beautiful mountain swimming holes;
an incredible rich-bastards mountain retreat;
a beautiful road across the clouds;
a gorgeous ocean beach;
the greatest marine wetland;
a sea-side town so daggy that I could almost call it Australian
and took a sublime sunset harbor cruise.

All in all this was one of the nicest trips Helen and me ever ever ever took.

And, or course, there's lottsa photos.

Best place in USA

2006-08-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

"This will be difficult to photo blog", I thought, as the camera disappeared bubble bubble bubble into the deep dark green waters next to the dock.

Reverting now to manual mode.....

We spent the day driving round Chincoteague day dreaming of buying a place down here. Yes, some places cost $100,000,000,000 but there are daggy little shacks at around $100K.

Then it was back to the best bits of yesterday: beach, marshland, ice cream shop, docks, etc etc etc. Finally we hit the pool and played fish for a while before going on a sunset cruise (which is where I lost the camera).

Since there is no camera to contradict me, I can assert that the cruise was indescribably beautiful. The sky was blue, the temperature warm (not hot). Gentle swell below, birds flying formation above, sunshine sparkling on the water all around. Either side of the setting sun where sun dogs (rainbows) iridescence in the clouds. We saw

a bald eagle flying high overhead
pelicans playing with ground effects as they swooped low over the water
marshes with yellow sheens stretching to the horizon
rare birds nesting on low sand islands

I could go on (and on and on and on) about it but suffice to say that in the entire Unites States, this is the best-est we've ever seen.

Chincoteague Island, Virginia

2006-08-10T20:28:00.000-07:00

Chincoteague Island, Virginia
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Chincoteague Island is perfect. No ubermen anywhere. Daggy. Its a real town- real fishing boats. Fresh fish. Great great great fresh fish.

This whole trip has been blessed by good luck- like getting fireworks right outside our room at Virginia Beach. Here, the "curse" continued:

Normally, Chincoteague is packed with summer tourists but gas prices kept them away this year.
This island is famous for plagues of incests but it was unusually dry this summer so we didn't get bit once.
Without booking, we scored a sweet room overlooking the harbor.

So we rolled (walked) into town and had to wait for the resteraunt we wanted. They suggested a little waterfront bar round the corner where the bartender poured me a double gin and tonic. Standard stuff followed, plus great seafood along the way.

Assateague Welands, Virginia

2006-08-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

Assateague Welands, Virginia
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

These wetlands have a wildlife loop that everyone takes at three miles an hour. Every car bristtles with cameras, like some CIA training exercise on how not to do covert surveillance.

The air there smelt wonderful- so clean and crisp. You kind of drive along, stop, point, and go "wow! look at the cranes" or "check out the deer/ wild ponies" or "hey, I never new marsh came in all those colors".

Half way round, we took our coffee and sat on a bum-numbing wooden bench. There, we stared at fleets of refuelling fowl. It was sublime.

After a (long) while it started raining again, just a little, and we said things like "hmm... really need to leave sooner or later.... heh, look at that drake over there... is that a starling?.... check out that little one....".

Assateague Beach, Virginia

2006-08-10T20:26:00.000-07:00

Assateague Beach, Virginia
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Screw Virgina Beach. Here's a shallow sandy grade, no high rises, warm water. Sweeeeet.

NASA Wallops

2006-08-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

NASA Wallops
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Home on the (rocket) range.

Wallops is a small facility that tests sub-orbital sounding rockets. It used to have a much larger role. Over the years, some 14,000 rockets have taken off from here (only 15 of which were orbital). Before they launched humans from Cape Canaveral, monkeys were launched from here to prove that mammals could survive launch and space conditions.

I heard tell that the state of Virginia wants to expand the Wallops center- seems its a good place to do polar orbit launches. And that was heard at a party so it must be true.

Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel

2006-08-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Big, isn't it?

This thing is miles and miles long- has two underwater tunnels

Virginia Marine Science Museum

2006-08-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

Aquarium, Virginia Marine Science Museum
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

This museum is designed for rainy days at Virginia Beach. 100,000 diversions for kids. Lots of little things to poke and prod (hey, I liked petting the horseshoe crab).

Sadly, not much for adults. I've never seen so few fish spread over such a large area. A few large tanks and turtles and a few small sharks but for a museum with so much space, there was so little on show. We walked over acres of manicured marsh lands and there was nothing to see.

There's so few live exhibits in this museum- they're exhausted for performing for the audience. All over, there were blank spaces were the exhibits were a.w.o.l. For example, there was this one otter that was so tired of performing that he just lay comatosed on a rock. He waved at us before rolling over and falling back to sleep. "Call my agent," I think he said, "I'm touring again in the Spring."

Clearly, these folks went insane thinking of how to fill up this HUGE space with stuff to entertain the kids:

There was one exhibit where a mock grandfather sat in a mock garage making mock duck decoys (which are used for hunting- so this should be in an avian preserve because....?).
But the best, by far, was the the solid waste kangaroo. Go figure.

Helen conqueors Virginia Beach

2006-08-09T20:37:00.000-07:00

Helen conqueors Virginia Beach
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

its 23:37 and a completely perfect evening at Virginia Beach is drawing to a close.

We arrived, a little tired and worn about 7pm. We said hello to the ocean, then had a gentle walk at dusk up and down the boardwalk.

This was followed by yummy sea food and much fireworks- which were set off exactly opposite our room. Afterwards, we watched from our balcony as a full moon rose over the ocean.

We walked along the warm sands, happy++ not to be roasting in the mountains any more. Then we strolled the streets- clowns and bands and such on every corner. Whole families wondering around at 11pm at night. Little girls, aged 3, never been up so late.

(Postscript: next morning we awoke to brilliant sunshine and the sounds of the ocean lapping on the sandy shore and dolphins swimming out beyond the breakers. Damn fine.)

American industrial might

2006-08-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

Chesapeake Bay
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

If you ever want to get a sense of America's industrial might, take a drive across Chesapeake Bay and look at the HUGE shipyards that line its shores.

Warning: squirrels on sugar

2006-08-09T20:34:00.000-07:00

Squirrel, UVA
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

This little fellow rejected our beans but snapped up a coconut marroon.

This was irresponsible of us. Imagine the results- a squirrel with a sugar rush beating up pedistrians, demanding "coconut! give me coconut!"

U. of V. Charolettesville.

2006-08-09T20:31:00.000-07:00

Big building, UVA
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

This place is old- not Al-Azhar University old (founded 969 A.D.) or Unviersity of Bologna old (1088) or Harvard old (1636) but still has the right to be called old (1819).

The University boasts (?hides) numerous secret socities sich as the Seven Society (founded circa 1905). Members are only revealed after their death, when a wreath of black magnolias in the shape of a "7" is placed at the gravesite.

Blue Ridge Parkway

2006-08-09T20:28:00.000-07:00

Blue Ridge Parkway
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

One of the great Aussie myths is that the Blue Mountains that ring Sydney owe their color to gum oil from the trees.

WRONG! Check it out- blue mountains, sans gums, Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia, Not Australia.

The country round the parkway is savage++. How this thing ever got built through such a landscape is a great mystery.

While the land around the parkway is quite wild, the road itself is quite genteel. The road surface is perfect- flat, no cracks, no patches of different color. The grass either side is immaculate lawn, mowed to around 6 feet either side of the road.

And this goes on for mile after mile after mile after...

Lost: one atomic bunker

2006-08-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

So the PLAN was to travel to White Sulphur Springs and check out the Senate's former super-secret atomic bunker.

(FYI: the secret got blown years ago by the Washington Post and now there's tours there, twice a week. Now, like many other Cold War relics, the space is available for "special purpose theme parties".)

But the best laid plan of best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. We couldn't find the thing after driving through town, twice. Me, I'd have a huge flashing neon sign hanging from dirigibles "secret bunker! here!". But this is West Virginia and we don't like showing off.

So the bunker's secrets remain safe. We went to the Greenbrier resort instead.

Scarry ass mountains, Virginia

2006-08-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

Scarry ass mountains, Virginia
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

If you want to get a sense of West Virginia's isolation, take a drive across I68 in Maryland or I64 from South WV into Virginia.

Big big big scarry mountains.

Almost paradise, West Virginia

2006-08-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

Almost paradise, West Virginia
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

The Greenbrier Resort looks like a standard rich-bastard resort (a three night package costs a mere $2900).

But they take pains to give it a local flavor- like astro turf on all the outdoor steps.

Chilling at the Greenbrier

2006-08-08T20:19:00.000-07:00

Swimming, Greenbrier style.
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

So here's a common method to extract $$$ from rich bastards.

1) travel to some remote mountain location;

2) find a smelly hole leaking water and sulphur

3) truck in the rich who are (a) fit enough to make the journey, and (b) scared enough to pay $$$ for the honor of bathing in the smelly sulphur.

The results can be seen everywhere: the Banff Center in the Rockies and the Greenbrier Resort in South East West Virginia (where a three night package costs a mere $2900).

Greinbrier summer white house

2006-08-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

The summer white house at the Greinbrier
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Q: Its summer. Its hot. Its 1850. Where do you go to get away from it all?

A: Why, the summer white house in the hills of West Virginia at the Greenbrier resort, of course

Best Barbie collection?

2006-08-08T20:16:00.000-07:00

Something to remember me by
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

(Seen at Annies Home Cooking Pizzeria, White Sulphur Springs, WV)

The woman in the portrat died in the car crash in 2004. Her friends and family erected this shrine in her honor- it display her amazing Barbie collection.

Includes Star Trek Barbie, X-files Barbie, and (of course) Secret Agent Bond Barbie.

This shrine is a mile down the road from the Greenbrier Resort- one the most expensive resorts in North America. Talk about going from the sublime (barbies) to the ridiculous (Greenbrier).

Me, in infra-red

2006-08-08T20:14:00.000-07:00

Me, in infra-red
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

The Green Bank Telescope

2006-08-08T20:12:00.000-07:00

The Robert Byrd
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

The old jokes are the best jokes.

Q: what is the state flower of West Viriginia?

A: The satellite dish

So in WV, of course there's the biggest steerable radio telescope in the world.

The telescope was built to replace an older one that collapsed in 1988. The story goes it collapsed one night while the single scientist on duty was in the toilet. Apparently it was his first night on duty.

The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope measures 100 by 110 meters. This puppy is NOT falling down, unlike its predecessor. This thing has struts connecting the struts that connect to the struts. Its sensitivity is measured in janskies (equal to one-hundredth of one-trillionth of a trillionth of a watt per square meter per hertz). Its thousands of panels, each with their own motors, that struggle to keep the parabolic shape despite wind, gravity, thermal...

The telescope operates in normal model; safe mode (shut down for routine maintenance); and snow mode (when it has to melt off the snow fall).

Inside Cathedral State Park

2006-08-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

Inside Cathedral State Park
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Oldest forests in West Virginia. Here, trees are up to 500 years old while, in the rest of the state, it all got chopped down and had to regrow.

Finally, a place to swim

2006-08-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

Swimming, Audra State Park
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

When I first got to WV I remember calling someone up asking "where is the tire on the tree over the swimming hole?". There was no answer. Seems all the streams round here were polluted with mine tailings- toxic metals and the like.

8 years later, I can report that we've found two swimming holes. There's Bull Run, near Morgantown but that gets a little crowded. And, as we found out today, there's Audra State Park.

We got there after a day in the car. It was delightful. We spent a happy hour here, blowing bubbles, duck diving, paddling, paddling, paddling.

I'll be back.

Downtown anywhere, WV

2006-08-07T20:34:00.000-07:00

Downtown anywhere, the WV way
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Actually, this is Philippi but with these red brick buildings and lack of decoration, it could be anyone of a dozen towns in ths state.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2006-07-31T19:00:00.000-07:00

Gary Boetticher strikes again.

And I get roasted on my 46th birthday.

Cooperate or free-ride?

2006-07-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

Dan Jones blogs that "Cooperation can get off the ground when people can punish cheats, and a new study shows that people choose environments that allow punishment over ones in which cheats go free".

It ain't all good news. In a variety of scenarios, the above results won't hold and humans will live up to their reputation as nasty petty back-stabbing apes (e.g. information about alternative institutions is poor).

Still, I'll take the current results as good news.

Debugging, coast to coast

2006-07-06T16:12:00.000-07:00

I'm just off the phone to JPL where the conversation got to "so why don't you checkout from my subversion repository the code and compile it under CYGWIN and oh, that's funny, better check your pathnames and..."

Well you get the idea. Over the phone, talking to a total stranger, we were working on my code from different sides of the country.

I love the 21st century.

Magnetic Floating Bed: Oh. Your. God. - Gizmodo

2006-07-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

"Every so often, we like to take a look at things whose functionality isn't measured in gigabytes or megabangs, but instead just look amazing. This magnetic floating bed, I submit, may be among the coolest things we've ever covered. Designed by Dutchman Janjaap Ruijssenaars, it's got enough magnets to keep 900 kilograms (1,984 pounds) floating in the air. To make sure that the bed doesn't float away should it become windy (or 'interesting,' wink wink), it's tethered to the walls by four cables.

Technically, the magnetic floating bed is for sale, but at a price of 1.2 million euros ($1.53 million), you're not likely to find it in your local mattress store. – Nicholas Deleon"

Baseball Team

2006-07-03T21:31:00.000-07:00

Such honesty is rarely witnessed in western sport.

Wanna justification to study software?

2006-07-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

Cost overruns constrict already tight budgets GAO says

In fiscal 2006, the Defense Department will spend as much as $12 billion on reworking software—30 percent of its estimated budget of $40 billion for research, devepment, testing and evaluation. By comparison, Motorola—and other large commercial companies—spends just a small percent of its budget on rework.

Seven years, no itch.

2006-07-02T20:28:00.000-07:00

xmas03wa005.jpg
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Helen and me were looking at some fireworks and we worked out that we've known each other seven years.

Seven years ago, nearly to the day, we hung out on a golf course watching July the 4th fireworks in the sky and lightning bugs way down the other end of the fairway.

"I'm happy", she said and I think she was talking about more than the fireworks.

Cirque du Soleil : Delerium

2006-07-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

Just back from Pittsburgh after seeing Cirque de Soleil do their Delerium show. So cool!

Big emphasis on the music- huge numbers sung by awesome singers with dozens of gymnasts leaping all around.

They used these see-through curtains as video projection screens to impose images over the performances. Insanely beautiful- and it effectively extended the stage hundreds of feet.
We sat through most of it with our jaws dropped round our ankles.

Afterwards, a little reality check- we got stuck in an infintely long line of cars trying to get out of downtown Pittsburgh. Which gave us plenty of time to talk about the show. "Remember that bit, when that guy did that thing, and then that other thing happened? Wow!".

(Oh- if you want a taste of the show, there's a great video preview on-line).

Crusin', down under style

2006-07-01T00:39:00.000-07:00

Me and my iPod had a euphoric time this weekend driving round.

I was driving to the hardware store to get something or another and the sun was high, the air was Australian (hot, not humid). I recalled that I've been hanging with the Australians at a conference last week. Clearly, time for some serious nostalgia. So I hit "play" on the Down Under mix on my iPod: Midnight Oil; Not Drowning Waving; Paul Kelly; The Whitlams; Skyhooks; ....

The turn for the hardware store came and went and I ignored it. The window got rolled down, the volume went up and I cruised the back road to Cheat Lake, singing up a storm.

I even took the long way back since this was just too much frigging fun!

ICML 2006

2006-06-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

ICML = the International Conference on Machine Learning. ICML is different to KDD. KDD grew out of an applications/database community. ICML is much more theoretical.

Two big surprises:

ICML isn’t about AI. At ICML there is no talk of “beliefs” or “goals” or "teams". Rather, we study ML since it is like some sub-routine that is used by many fields. ML is a great foundation for a varied career- ML grad students learn how to leap from application to application in a single bound.
This was that this wasn’t some big industry-funded, government sponsored, DARPA-saturated, NASA-business-level stuff. Instead, a bunch of theory types sat on folding chairs in a gymnasium and discussed arcane mathematics. And such mathematics- I meet so many people who left meetings with a puzzled look on their face asking “how many people in the audience understood that last talk? Two? Three?”.

But it wasn’t all quadratic programming in concave manifolds. They played the world cup on a television in the foyer and it attracted a huge crowd. And the final score: maths=0; soccer=1.

Too much here for one blog so see:

Ornate dinner
Pretty good time
I meet lots of Aussies, and I liked that.

ICML'06: pretty good time

2006-06-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

I’m so used to doing conferences via flying. Jet lag and tedious waits in nameless airports. Herded into tiny tubes in cattle class. Dehydration. Sensory deprivation torture (its called “in-flight movies”).

ICML was different. It was at Pittsburgh so I could drove there. On the way up, it rained a ton. Down on the coast that rain was bad news- thousands of homes evacuated. But up here, it was real pretty- billowing mists around tiny farms nestled into the green hills of rural Pennsylvania.

So when I got to Pittsburgh I was conscious and alert. In times past, I arrived to three-day conferences and only woke up on day two. This trip, I was good to go on day one. Pittsburgh put on a nice show- sunny days and, over where we where at CMU, uncrowded streets. I meet my old supervisor from my Ph.D. days and him and me walked round sunny streets, gossiping. Age hasn’t wearied Claude- he still strides forward, never doubting, always exploring proof by refutation of (sorry- in joke).

The next day, I had the strangest little moment in time, taping away in on my laptop in the evening sun, seating in front of the Carnegie Museum. The whole scene was gothic- feeble sun glowing in the sky through darkening clouds, just up over the hulk of the Cathedral of Learning. Next to me was, I kid you not, a 40 foot inflatable squirrel- turquoise covered in commando markings.

It seemed all so bizarre, removed, private. I could totally focus on what I was doing while the world benignly ignored me, left me alone be to do my thing. Just another wireless yuppie hanging on a street corner.

ICML'06: ornate dinner, but a little hard to swallow

2006-06-30T21:08:00.000-07:00

Dinner at ICML was amazing- at the Music Hall of the Carnegie Museum. The most ornate room I’ve even been in- those robber barons really knew how to party.

I love Americans and their selective memory. This is the 23rd machine learning conference and, for the first time, it is being held back where the conference series started- at CMU. So, after dinner we were treated to an American view of the history of machine learning.

Michalski took his rightful place in the sun and told the story of “AQ”: a 1983 learner that received much press since when the local expert reviewed the learned rules, he dumped his own and adopted those generated by the machine.

Then someone else gave an American view of the history of machine learning (which goes something like this:)

ebl ⇒ neuralNets ⇒ analogy ⇒ reinforcementLearning ⇒ ? ⇒ SVM and graphical models ⇒ structural learning and active learning

No where in all that history was any mention of:

• the the English like Turing and Michie

• or the Australians like Quinlan who’s empirical methods clarified a murky murky field (and whose work on entrophy-based decision tree learning was recognized at IJCAI91) or Wallace (whose 1968 publications on MDL pre-dates much of the current thinking on information theory in machine learning) or Sammut (whose thesis spawned inductive logic programming)

• or my aunt (who made great scones).

ICML'06: I like the Aussies

2006-06-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

One nice thing at ICML was meeting all the Aussies. Some of them I’ve known for, well, decades. Hell, I meet Geoff Webb back in 1988.

Man, the Aussies can tell a good yarn. Much better than the Yankees (who are all to worried about offending God or getting sued).

And they can write, again in a very unAmerican way. Clarity is not rewarded in the U.S. of A. Here, the tradition is to find some murky complexity, split it two, and sell a bit of it to DARPA or the NSF.

The Aussies, on the other hand, have another approach. Something like: “nah mate, nah, leave it out”. The result? Simpler clearer prose and more novel ideas per kilometer than an under-populated desert island like Australia deserves.

What's the point of universities?

2006-06-28T20:54:00.000-07:00

What's the point of universities?
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

I was walking around University of Washington wondering why societies support universities. And not just support them, but so many of them, down through the centuries.

Then I came across this statue of giant pencil. Its author has long gone but had clearly written with great fury, breaking the pencil as they drove home their last point.

And that's the point of universities. The author might be gone but, if they work hard enough, their point might last longer than next weekend.

Sure, it ain't easy and most of what we say will fade away. But, sometimes, out of the tedium of the everyday, we can create ideas that speak to those who follow.

Quiet days

2006-06-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

Its been cloudy in Morgantown the last few days. Not Portland's oppressive rain clouds that dissolve your soul. Rather, a comforting blanket you can rest under.

Gives me cause and pause to reflect. Helen's been here a month and Chez Menzies/Burgess is starting to get settled. Last few days we did a little garden stuff, had some friends over for a movie night, ate cheesy-poofs (which, for years, I've been calling cheesy-poops). Lots of sitting round, reading, eating, taping on keyboards.

Ok, so nothing spectacular but a whole UNIVERSE away from the bachelor isolation tank called Brunswick court. This place is so BIG and BRIGHT and I like it. Even more than cheesy-poofs.

Industrial detritus

2006-06-26T07:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday we took a run across the river to dump some cardboard. Found ourselves in an industrial park by the river that had seen better days.

Talk about industrial detritus. Huge brick chimneys tried to rear skywards but the ivy wasn't impressed- just another tree to surround and consume.

There were these football-field sized tin sheds, disemboweled of all their fittings, dust and disuse everywhere. From the holes in the roof, little drops of rain sprinkled onto tiny lakes on the floor, shiny with some nameless toxic gunk. And all over the floor were huge gouges where something huge had been poured, pushed, or pressed onto something even huger.

I'm give these buildings another decade or so before entropy reclaims them all. In the meantime, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Say goodbye to Gmail

2006-06-22T19:35:00.000-07:00

So I've stopped using Gmail. Got worried that the Gmail format was not standard- and that 2GB limit will bite me sooner or later.

So now I'm back to Dreamhost mail with IMAP and reading it all on Thunderbird on various machines. Which is a little sucky since I can't do a unified contacts list or a .jnewsrc files. Oh well- still get a standard mail box format (IMAP) and Dreamhost's incredible growing disk file space.

Freaky naked Barbie on her throne

2006-06-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

Freaky naked Barbie on her throne
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Barbie likes her new room too.

Helen, on her throne

2006-06-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

Helen, on her throne
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

The decoration around the new home continues.

This place is great. So LIGHT and BRIGHT. I think we'll stay here for a while.

I'm at a symposium, it must be Tuesday

2006-06-21T21:44:00.000-07:00

I'm at a symposium, it must be Tuesday
Originally uploaded by diminishes.

Animals in the veldt at the water hole, butterflies flocking across the oceans, herds of migrating wilderbeasts, suits (and skirts) to a symposium.

Welcome to the NASA 2006 cost symposium, Cleveland, Ohio. Same chairs. Same white sheet over the tables. Same water glasses. Same bat time, same bat channel.

But there were some differences. This was the first NASA meeting I've been to in quite a while that was upbeat and focused on the future. I'm used to NASA meetings where (e.g.) researchers take issue with declining funds or certain NASA centers complain that they are being cut out of the new manned space flight work. But here, it was all CEV-go-go-go. Plans shown for the future of lots of rockets going VROOOOMMMMM.

Another nice thing here was the sense of continuity and tradition. There were folks here who where Apollo old-timers. And the next generation of NASA types. All working together towards the CEV/Constellation stuff. Most inspiring.

The eager Pat Callis

2006-06-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

At Cleveland, for the NASA Cost Symposium.

The eager Pat Callis
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Welcome to downtown Cleveland

2006-06-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

Welcome to downtown Cleveland
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

This empty plaza, stretching to the horizon, is downtown Cleveland.

Cleveland, Chicago and Pittsburg are all "rust-belt" cities- places that rose and fell with the steel industry. After the dust settled, these cities tried to reinvent themeselves, with different degrees of success.

Chicago rebuild itself into the cosmopolitan food capital of the United States.

Pittsburgh scrubbed itself (mostly) clean.

But Cleveland has not been so successful. Here, nothing new seems to have been built downtown since 1975. And what is left seems a little... sad.

It ain't rocket science, or is it ?

2006-06-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Rocket science
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

At your basic WV BBQ there are rituals.

For example, here is the home made bazooka made with cardboard tubes and lighter fluid.

Lord(s) of Dog Town

2006-06-21T20:42:00.000-07:00

Lord(s) of Dog Town
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Who's in charge here?

Ken McGill who earns the $$$ to buy the dog food?

Karan McGill who is the chair the dog sits on?

Or could it be.... the dog?

Don't forget those other 27,000 nukes

2006-06-08T07:14:00.000-07:00

Now why do other countries want nukes? What scares them so much? Hmmm...

From the International Herald Tribune: "While it's desirable that the foreign ministers talk about Iran, they don't seem to devote any thought to the fact that there are still some 27,000 real nuclear weapons in the United States, Russia and other states, and that many of these are on hair-trigger alert."

Oh sh**t, Fink not available for the Intel Macs

2006-05-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

i don't compile downloaded source code- i usually let some package manager do it for me. apple has a good one for os/x: its called _fink_ and it is _good_. whenever i get a new mac i instantly install xcode/xwindows/fink, then spend hours chasing my favorite toys.

but, i've hit a road block. fink is not available for the new intel chips. yes, the fink team is working towards that and a preliminary version is available (http://fink.sourceforge.net/news/index.php?phpLang=en) but no binaries and when i tried to install the prelim version: KABOOM!

which is a real pisser. i knew i had to do some latex slides and i spent yesterday happily playing with different packages. latex-beamer is ok (not as good as powerdot) but it has the advantage of being a standard package, available for install from debian, fink, etc.

but i did all that work on the laptop, which is a powerpc. so today, as i turned tothe mini, i has horrified to realize that i could not install latex-beamer cause that was an intel386 box.

day wasted! back to the drawing board! start trying other packages!

(postscript: turns out that powerdot is now an easy install- just unzip and reset TEXINPUT. so i'm using that)

NASA - Earth's Antarctic Ice Sheet

2006-05-26T20:05:00.000-07:00

Nothing to say about this except... wow.

more...

mikas blog » Blog Archive » Addicted to vim?

2006-05-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

Like me, Mikas is addicted to vim.

My name is tim and i am a vimaholic

2006-05-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

vimaholic
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

It has been seven minutes since my last acrane keystroke.

Once, I used emacs but then I saw "vim" won best editor (2005) at the Linux Journal Reader's choice awards. So I thought, heh, I'll give it a go. That was a year ago and now I can't get enough. Often, I just logged on via an xterm and move the split bars around in ascii mode, just to show that I can. Sometimes, I just fire up gvim and gaze in awe at the list of syntax definition files for different langauges.

I got it bad, My .vimrc file gets editted daily. My color scheme is "darkblue" on cygwin and "delek" on a mac. My "make" files for a new site automatically build $HOME/.vim and $HOME/tmp/backup to store vim and vim backup stuff. My .bashrc rebuilds .vim/tags/mine every time I logged on.

But there's more. I've cracked the secret. I know the code "v.i.m. file " is German and short for "Very Impressise, Must edit file".

I don't need help, I don't want help. It can't hurt- just one more click around the screen watching pretty colors and and and I have to go and edit something.

Who are they kidding?

2006-05-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a news headline: WVU ranked one of `best workplaces’ for commuters.

"WVU has been chosen as one of the nation’s “Best Workplaces for Commuters” for its innovative and effective transportation services for employees and students. WVU’s unique Personal Rapid Transit System, our arrangement with the local Mountain Line bus system and our own University buses were the primary reasons WVU was given this honor,” said Bob Roberts, WVU director of public safety and transportation said. More on the Net: http://intranet.wvu.edu

ROTFLMAO

I take the judges of this honor have never sat in the University Avenue traffic jam going into town in the afternoon?

On the other hand, at least the Star City traffic jam is fixed.

t

Jerry Pournelle's method to win the space race

2006-05-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

Jerry Pournelle Wrote:

"I can solve the space access problem with a few sentences.

Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:

The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:

1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.

2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.

3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.

4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megaWatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.

5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.

That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can't be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury."

more...

Gaiman's 1602

2006-05-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

Neil Gaiman's 1602 is wickedly good:

The Marvel super-heroes, all in Elizabethan England. Great bad guys (Baron Otto von DOOM).
Dialogue worthy of Joss Whedon (after dispatching someone down a deep abyss, she leans over and says "tell the devils or angels or whoever you, 'hi!' from the most dangerous woman in the world").
Time travel.
Aliens.
Conversations with the dead
Excellent excellent graphics.

Did I mention I liked it?

The book is an incredible "up yours" to modern American politics. Sometimes, the message is overt (there's a dig at a George-Bush-like fellow who, in the modern world, has made himself president for life and has driven all the super heroes to despair) but mostly its far subtler than that, and only really reveals itself in the author's after notes.

Gaiman writes that he could not write a book of hero's in the post 9/11 world. In the modern world there are villains aplenty, but no way to be a hero, no way to perform a righteous act without oppressing someone, somewhere. So he gave up and sent all his heroes hundreds of years into the past where, by their own words, they achieved nothing and saved nothing but the status quo.

Ouch!

Less Subversion woes

2006-05-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

O.K. after HOURS of waiting for things to (not) happen, I have some new Subversion rules:

To do a bulk add, don't import. Instead, copy over the new directory into the working version, then do a recursive add, then do a commit. Much much faster than an import.
Wait. Subversion terminates, it just takes it sweet time.
Always START with an update and END with a commit.

Subversion woes

2006-05-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

Subversion woes
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Spending far to much time sorting our stuff with subversion (a version control tool). Having lots of trouble doing bulk imports (large directory structures).

I think growing large directories would be fine, within a subversion working copy. But bulk import is very problematic. I'm 2 hours into an import of 48MB. Things have screwed up at least twice (things copied into the wrong directory, svn hanging, etc).

I half think Subversion is not designed for this and I half-think that my mental model of Subversion is wrong. Sometimes, operations are on the remote copy and sometimes they are on the local copy and I can't guess which is which.

Case one: to add a lot of stuff, I can do an "import" which adds things to the central repository. Which means that, afterwards, I need to do an "update" to get the local copy up-to-date.

Case two: if I "add" it is just to the local copy and, afterwards, I still need to "commit".

Anyway, the worst of it is that after 2 hours I still can't do any real work. I'm starting at this 48MB "import/commit" and "Monitor" is report that RapidSvn is "not responding"; i.e. is hung. MEANWHILE, the activity monitor is reporting that something big is still being transferred. So I have to sit and wait and wait and wait and...

Pepa and Julian reproduce

2006-05-08T21:12:00.000-07:00

Gmail - IMG_0204.jpg

The spawning was successful. Pepa did some hard work and Julian ran for coffee. A child was born (weighing 9lbs 4oz!!!!) and was named Oliver. Yee haa!

Gmail don't rock

2006-05-08T18:55:00.000-07:00

So I'm trying out Gmail. IMAP is such a confusing thing to search. Always losing stuff these days in my 500MB of mail.

Thing is, Gmail don't rock. Its not an emailer. Its a different model that I keep tripping up over. Fascinating stuff but right no its more irritating that wonderful.

OTOH, nice to see what can be done with a good AJAX interface these days.

JOE STRUMMER & THE MESCALEROS - BHINDI BHAGEE LYRICS

2006-05-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

I knew Joe Strummer (ex-Clash, now dead) was smart but I didn't know he was daggy. The following song from Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros is so daggy that you could imagine The Mutton Birds or Dave Warner singing it.

(Oh, there's no point explaining daggy to American-types. The idea that we are better by embracing our failings is a little alien to the "be all you can be" types).

Well, I was walking down the High Road
And this guy stops me
He'd just got in from New Zealand
And he was looking for mushy peas
I said, no, we hadn't really got 'em round here
I said, but we do got

Balti, Bhindi, strictly Hindi
Dall, Halal and I'm walking down the road
We got rocksoul, okra, bombay duck-ra
Shrimp beansprout, comes with it or without - with it or without
Bagels soft or simply harder
Exotic avocado or toxic empenada
We got akee, lassi, Somali waccy baccy
I'm sure back home you know what tikka's all about - what tikka's all about

So anyway, I told him I was in a band
He said, 'Oh yeah, oh yeah - what's your music like?'
I said, 'It's um, um, well, it's kinda like
You know, it's got a bit of, um, you know.'

Ragga, Bhangra, two-step Tanga
Mini-cab radio, music on the go
Um, surfbeat, backbeat, frontbeat, backseat
There's a bunch of players and they're really letting go
We got, Brit pop, hip hop, rockabilly, Lindy hop
Gaelic heavy metal fans fighting in the road
Ah, Sunday boozers for chewing gum users
They got a crazy D.J. and she's really letting go

Well, I say, there's plenty of places to eat round here
He say, 'Oh yeah, I'm pretty choosy.'

You got
Balti, Bhindi, strictly Hindi
Dall, Halal, walking down the road
Rocksoul, okra, bombay duck-ra
Shrimp beansprout, comes with it or without
Let's check it out

MONEY Magazine: Best Jobs in America

2006-05-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

How'd a thunk it? According to the May 3, 2006 edition of CNNmoney.com, three out of their list of top ten jobs in America are IT related. And since I am a college professor interested in software engineering, I guess I have two to the best jobs in the land.

BTW, that same article's list of ten fasting growing jobs in the land. Five of the ten are IT related. According the them, by 2014:

- 54.6% growth in network systems analyst
- 48.4% growth in computer software engineer, applications
- 43.0% growth in software software engineer, systems software
- 38.4% growth in network and computer systems administration
- 38.2% growth in database adminstration

For more, see http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/02/technology/business2_nextjobboom_hotjobs/index.htm

The Computer Bed - Euro FlyingBed

2006-05-06T20:17:00.000-07:00

Geek bed: converts from bed to desk in 30 seconds.

The Computer Bed - Euro FlyingBed

The Combimouse - Engadget

2006-05-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

The Combimouse - Engadget

how's this for a cool idea? right-hand side of the "keyboard" is really a mouse!

For more, see http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/05/the-combimouse/

Wit beyond her years

2006-05-05T15:52:00.000-07:00

rubes
Originally uploaded by jeannetteok.

Ruby Altmann is four years old and a budding poet and song writer. Don't believe me? Well, check it...

Ruby wanted to know which was my computer and which was Helen's. Helen said the powerbook was mine because it was bigger than hers, just like I were bigger than her. She came out with the following:

he's bigger than my mom and dad,
he's as big as a tree,
he doesn't fit into my house!
...he is a stump tree boy, huh.

?????

Evidence for the first corollary to Sod's law

2006-04-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my nightmare
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Let us pause and think of the worst possible time for my office furniture to arrive for me to assemble.

Thinking, thinking,...

I know, how about in the two weeks when I am at conferences. And, straight away afterwards, I close on a house and have to move out of my old apartment and set up the new place.

Now, using the first corollary to Sod's Law (anything that is to go wrong will do so at the worst possible moment) take a WILD guess about when my furniture actually did arrive. And you'd be right.

The garbage tip in the photo is the office of the internationally renowned data miner, Prof Dr Timothy Menzies. At a guess, I'll be living in the midst of all this cardboard for weeks to come. Which will be quite handy- it'll let me try out a career change I am planning (from Lecturer to full time homeless person).

Congressman in (more) trouble.

2006-04-29T23:41:00.000-07:00

Mollohan is in more trouble. His financial dealings are under investigataion by the FBI and he announced last Friday (April 21) that he was “temporarily” relinquishing his post on the House Ethics Committee. He blames the investigation into his financial dealings on “politically-motivated” attacks spearheaded by an “ultra-conservative” group in Washington. Meanwile, the October elections are getting closer and closer and closer and...

Finally, leaf

2006-04-29T23:32:00.000-07:00

Finally, leaf
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Helen's west coast trees have been springing for a while. But out east here in WV, it takes till the end of April before there is more green than brown stick.

The IKEA moment

2006-04-29T23:22:00.000-07:00

The IKEA moment
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

The IKEA moment comes after you unpack and sort out all the parts. Then you reach for the construction instructions, read them once, read them twice, turn them upside down, peer at them sideways, and realize that there is no way to delay actually BUILDING the sucker.

Buying a house

2006-04-29T23:18:00.000-07:00

Oh dear....
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Buying a house is easy. Work like a demon for two years then write a little cheque with lots of zeros. Fold it three times counter-clockwise, blow on the bottom left corner, then give it to some magicians masquerading as lawyers. The cheque then turns into a 3 story 2400 sq.ft. house in a really nice part of town.

The signing was a real circus. I was there and my realtor and banker came along. The seller was there with her lawyer and realtor. And since that is clearly not enough to sell a house, every so often a legal secretary bustled in to grab stuff to photocopy.

The photo shows me at the exact second when I realized out how much I will be paying for the house, plus interest, over the next 25 years (hint: nearly double the sales price). Oh my.

Helen couldn't be there for the signing (its still exam times at WSU). So we'd organized a P.O.A. (power of attorney) which let me sign for her. Which meant that I signed, about a million times "T.J.Menzies and H.J.Burgess (by Tim Menzies, P.O.A)". And when that was done, there was a million more initials: "TJM and HJB by TJM (POA)".

Still, even after all that, it was all very exciting. Afterwards I did a walk through the house with my realtor. She's about 5-foot no-inches; I'm 6-foot something; and I was puppy dogging around going "wow! cool! f*&king great! mine! mine! mine!". She was like "yes, it is a quite nice house".

William Gibson, eat your heart out

2006-04-29T20:43:00.000-07:00

William Gibson, eat your heart out
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

(My days in Morgantown were spent in carbo-comas, my nights in algorithmic ectasies.)

It was hot, the night I burned Chrome. Out in the malls and plazas, moths were batting themselves to death against the neon, but in my office loft the only light came from a monitor screen and the blue and red LEDs on the face of the matrix simulator....

Home at last

2006-04-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

Home at last
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

So this is the end of a two week voyage from Morgantown to Hawaii to Portland to Baltimore then back to Morgantown. After a very hustle and bustely two weeks, Morgantown seemed ultra-peaceful.

I got in mid-evening to a basically deserted town. Right now, it is late in the session and all the students are off the streets, studying like mad.

I needed something for tomorrow's breakfast so I went shopping. The grocery store was deserted and as I walked round empty ailes, the Musak played only for me.

I68 wilderness

2006-04-27T08:02:00.000-07:00

I68 wilderness
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

After southern Utah, my favorite drive in the USA is I68 going east at sunset in the fall.

Its a very lonely part of the world- top of some steep ridges. Late at night its just you and 1000 deer eager to be hamburger.

And in the winter, I68 is a treacherous son of a bitch. The worst blizzard I've ever drive through was on I68- crawling forward at 5 mph, unsure if I was driving across or down the road.

I68 it gets pretty crappy at times. The section through Cumberland, Maryland is infamous as the most substandard part of any interstate, anywhere (narrow lanes and very limited line-of-sight, a 40 mph speed limit, most exits are posted at 15 mph).

But even when scary, its beautiful. One winter's day I saw a funny gray cloud around the ridge ahead. It turned out to be an odd kind of frost- a 1" condom of ice around every tree, stick, and shrub. Branches were broken off everywhere and some trees where bent horizontal under the weight. Most spectacular.

2006 NASA SEL SEW

2006-04-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

At the conference
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

AAMOF (as a matter of fact), AIUI (as I understand it), N.A.S.A. is the National Aeronatuics and Space Administration and S.E.L. is the Software Engineering Laboratory.

Oh, and BTW (by the way) S.E.W. = Software Engineering Workshop

Why all the acroynms? BTSOOM.

21 (again)

2006-04-23T21:46:00.000-07:00

21 (again)
Originally uploaded by timmenzies.

Helen turns 21 (again) so the clan converged on Jo and Jeanette's place.

Candles were blown and tumblers were poured and tongues were wetted.

Then we proved how old we'd all become since everyone went home before midnight.