::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

Facebook friend lists

Technical ·Thursday February 26, 2009 @ 23:17 EST (link)

When (initially) making friend lists on Facebook, it'd be nice to have an exclusivity option (i.e. don't show someone in the selection box if they're already in at least one list) and/or to be able to drag people into lists.

$10,000 a year for everyone and universal healthcare

Political ·Tuesday February 24, 2009 @ 23:57 EST (link)

I just finished In Our Hands by Charles Murray, which describes "A Plan to Replace the Welfare State", and wanted to discuss his ideas on this lively and erudite forum (note: originally posted to a "lively political discussion" forum at work; I hope this forum is equally erudite). I encourage people to read the book (it's not long, and your library should have it), but I'll summarize. Overall I think it'd be an improvement over the current system.

Short form: give everyone $10,000 every year, but scrap all income transfer programs (including Social Security, welfare, and Medicare).

Details: Why is this better than what we have now? It's a definite step in the right direction (towards libertopia, of course…) yet one that should find widespread agreement (only parasites and government fiefs lose—but I repeat myself; everybody else wins).

Molehills: preparing for battle

News ·Tuesday February 24, 2009 @ 21:09 EST (link)

Honey bought a metal rake so I can rake out the molehills in the lawn. At least there haven't been any new ones for a while; maybe it ate the gum we put out and choked. That'd be really sad. (Not really.) It's still pretty frosty out there, although we get the occasional thaw. I'll probably wait until spring, in case the little rat makes more holes.

I finished Red Planet (Heinlein) audio book today (6 CDs). I really enjoy listening to it on the way to and from work, and will pick up another audio book.

Books finished: Red Planet.

In which I start using Facebook

News, Technical ·Monday February 23, 2009 @ 23:55 EST (link)

I was reluctant to start using "social networking" sites since they seemed faddish and content-free; the original reason I got a Facebook account (October 22, 2008) was because the University of Washington's Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) group only had a Facebook page. So I added myself, poked around a very little, but didn't do much until recently. I found out yesterday from the conservatives and libertarians group at work (CLAMS) that the Redmond "Tea Party" event (which unfortunately didn't materialize) was organized there. That's when I started seriously looking for—and finding—people: lots of people, all the way from relatives and classmates in England, to more classmates (and friends from the assemblies, in Niagara, Ottawa, Waterloo, and Toronto) in Canada, to colleagues at work (and from previous places I worked: Toronto, Niagara Falls, Memphis, and Waltham).

(If you want to find me, since my name is rather common: I'm in the Seattle, WA and Microsoft networks, with Waterloo and University of Washington as my schools.)

Facebook Notes' blog import is handy (I updated my RSS feed generator to include the full content and fixed a time zone bug, then set the importer on it; it lets you preview first, so I made some tweaks and let it import). By design, my RSS feed only includes the last 10 entries; older material will always be on davidrobins.net.

One thing I really liked about Facebook is that it has an API, i.e. it can be programmed. (The other thing I like is that it doesn't let people create "home pages"; to see why, I give you MySpace as exhibit A, with oldies like GeoCities and a "great cloud of witnesses" trailing behind in garishly blinking splendor.) Naturally, I'm using the perl WWW::Facebook::API interface. It has a way to automatically upload and caption photos, which I'll be using when I get my huge backlog of photos organized (I'm writing a long-delayed local Javascript application for that, the Vortex Photo System, right now). I'll mass upload some photos over a period of time, in the hopes that people will tag them.

Fbcmd, a command-line interface to Facebook, seems cool (except: PHP, ew); had to fix a Unix bug (path separator, sent it to the author, who said thanks).

I was up until 3am finishing my Facebook photo upload test (random test photo, which my cousin immediately recognized).

Getting the application to talk to Facebook was a bit of a trick; the documentation is unclear. I learned some of it by looking at the Fbcmd application, too, since it's also a desktop application. It's necessary to go to the Facebook developer site (allow the Developer application access), add your application and get a key for it, then get a token by going to https://login.facebook.com/code_gen.php?api_key=your API key here&v=1.0. Pass that token to the WWW::Facebook::API $client->auth->get_token() method, which will populate $client->secret and $client->session_key, which can be saved and passed to the new method on subsequent invocations (initially, pass the application secret for secret; always pass the API key). I hope this information helps; the best Facebook desktop application information I could find was here on use.perl.org, and it was missing a lot. There's also an old Facebook login thread on Perlmonks (Perlmonks also has a Facebook group) and a status update script that's interesting since it uses LWP and not the Facebook API.

DVDs finished: M*A*S*H: Season Five, Stargate: Continuum, Dead Poets Society.

Walden

News, Media ·Saturday February 21, 2009 @ 23:45 EST (link)

Entered receipts into the computer; caught up on some shows (Damages, Terminator, ER, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Knight Rider); finally finished Walden (it was a long slog). I expected Walden to be a socialist guidebook like Walden Two, but the relationship is more that they both describe self-sustaining lifestyles with time for leisure, with Two ("Too") extending it from the individual to the group. The message I got from Walden was "Do not be possessed by your possessions, but possess your own life." Which is sensible advice even for free market capitalists.

Books finished: The Electronic Day Trader, In Our Hands, Walden.

Costco return policy

News ·Wednesday February 18, 2009 @ 21:44 EST (link)

Returned computer that I hadn't set up yet to Costco when we went tonight to stock up on groceries, and bought another one (again at online) for the same price with 50% bigger disk and 4 x 2.8GHz instead of 4 x 2.5GHz processors (AMD Phenom II this time).

Costco has an excellent return policy (very few restrictions; only a 90 day limit on electronics items), although in some way I feel I'm taking advantage of it since there was nothing wrong with the computer, although on the other hand, their policy doesn't require anything be wrong with the item and it was in perfect condition; I'd just opened the box, and then just not gotten around to setting it up.

Books finished: Unhinged.

The computer room fork

News, Technical ·Saturday February 14, 2009 @ 23:08 EST (link)

Went to local Teriyaki/Sushi place for dinner. They gave us some edamame while we were waiting for our food; neither one of us all that fond of it. As usual, I had sushi, Honey had chicken teriyaki.

Lothlorien picked up a DHCP address from the wrong place (wireless router); couldn't see an easy way to tell it to only hand out addresses for wireless, so disabled its DHCP server via the web interface, since I only use it for wireless and don’t use it much even for that. Now it should get the address from minas-tirith, which means it should add itself to the DNS via my DHCP DNS daemon. Lothlorien is moving upstairs, so I'd pinged it by name, which is how I found out about the DHCP issue. Apparently it was the noisiest PC in the room, too; it's almost eerily quiet now that I've moved it up (the laptop that I'm using now—connected to a regular keyboard, mouse, and my new 22" LCD monitor—is second; minas-tirith is very quiet as is cirith-ungol, the media box in the next room).

Books finished: Jennifer Government.

Red Planet on audio

News, Media ·Friday February 13, 2009 @ 21:57 EST (link)

I'm listening to a book on CD (first time trying it): Robert Heinlein's Red Planet, from the library. I like it: it's easy to follow and the narration and voices are well done. Got through 2½ chapters going to and from work today.

Books finished: The Puppet Masters.

In which I lament about catchup lectures

Technical, School ·Thursday February 12, 2009 @ 23:46 EST (link)

One-year anniversary of joining CLAMS.

Class tonight was more interesting (and more helpful for the current assignment) than it had been. The professor, Dan Grossman, is excellent and it's evident that he's taken a lot of time to prepare; he has a great set of slides (PowerPoint) each time and is easy to understand and good at explaining the material, but the material wasn't all that interesting for the first few weeks; it was material that people should have learned in undergrad, or things that people should have been able to quickly grok by reading the OCaml manual.

My expectations for a graduate-level course are that readings such as the OCaml manual or any necessary catchup (like Backus-Naur Form) should be specifically or generally assigned (generally, as in "You need to know X, Y, and Z, go learn about it from whatever source you like"). Some of these are as prerequisites: surely it's reasonable to expect that candidates have some sort of scientific undergraduate degree or at least a good background, and the intelligence to read and absorb material. In class, I expect the instructor to go over less obvious things that can't be gleaned simply by reading, or to go over things at a higher level, and, given that this teacher says attendance is important, some interaction to make it worth showing up rather than just watching the recorded lectures the next day. (Which has been true for all but the first few lectures. I wrote some of that early in the course.)

I had a bit of trouble getting my laptop connected to the network (several weeks back when I first attempted it); I had connected it in my office so that I could get the wireless certificates, and that seemed to work (at one point I'd turned off the wireless by mistake using the front switch); I needed to be logged on to the work (REDMOND) domain account for the (MSFTWLAN) certificate to be useful. To be able to reach the Internet I needed to install the ISA ("Internet Security and Acceleration") Firewall Client (from the internal "products" site); after installing it, ping and SSH work.

Obama's Magic

Political ·Thursday February 12, 2009 @ 22:20 EST (link)

This article was written by Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and dates from back in October 2008 (it was in the queue). Although it's still relevant, for something a little more recent, try Ann Coulter's latest column "Goodbye, America! It was fun while it lasted". (An alternate title that I briefly considered was "Barak the Magic Negro".)

And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world's most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.)

To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as "welfare," but please try not to ruin the show.

For his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he'll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation's biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Mr. Obama will, with a flick of his fingers, show them how to create more jobs with less money. It's simple, really. He has a wand.

Next up, Mr. Obama will re-regulate the economy, with no ill effects whatsoever! You may have heard that for the past 40 years most politicians believed deregulation was good for the U.S. economy. You might have even heard that much of today's financial mess tracks to loose money policy, or Fannie and Freddie excesses. Our magician will show the fault was instead with our failure to clamp down on innovation and risk-taking, and will fix this with new, all-encompassing rules. Presto!

Did someone in the audience just shout "Sarbanes Oxley?" Usher, can you remove that man? Thank you. Mr. Obama will now demonstrate how he gives Americans the "choice" of a "voluntary" government health plan, designed in such a way as to crowd out the private market and eliminate all other choice! Don't worry people: You won't have to join, until you do. Mr. Obama will follow this with a demonstration of how his plan will differ from our failing Medicare program. Oops, sorry, folks. The Great Obama just reminded me it is time for an intermission. Maybe we'll get to that marvel later.

We're back now. And just watch the Great Obama perform a feat never yet managed in all history. He will create that enormous new government health program, spend billions to transform our energy economy, provide financial assistance to former Soviet satellites, invest in infrastructure, increase education spending, provide job training assistance, and give 95% of Americans a tax (ahem) cut -- all without raising the deficit a single penny! And he'll do it in the middle of a financial crisis. And with falling tax revenues! Voila!

Moving along to a little ventriloquism. Study his mouth carefully, folks: It looks like he's saying "I'll stop the special interests," when in fact the words coming out are "Welcome to Washington, friends!" Wind and solar companies, ethanol makers, tort lawyers, unions, community organizers -- all are welcome to feed at the public trough and to request special favors. From now on "special interests" will only refer to universally despised, if utterly crucial, economic players. Say, oil companies. Hocus Pocus!

And for tonight's finale, the Great Obama will uphold America's "moral" obligation to "stop genocide" by abandoning Iraq! While teleported to the region, he will simultaneously convince Iranian leaders to peacefully abandon their nuclear pursuits (even as he does not sit down with them), fix Afghanistan with a strategy that does not resemble the Iraqi surge, and (drumroll!) pull Osama bin Laden out of his hat!

Tada!

You can clap now. (Applause. Cheers.) We'd like to thank a few people in the audience. Namely, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who has so admirably restrained himself from running up on stage to debunk any of these illusions and spoil everyone's fun.

We know he's in a bit of a box, having initially blamed today's financial crisis on corporate "greed," and thus made it that much harder to call for a corporate tax cut, or warn against excessive regulation. Still, there were some pretty big openings up here this evening, and he let them alone! We'd also like to thank Mr. McCain for keeping all the focus on himself these past weeks. It has helped the Great Obama to just get on with the show.

As for that show, we'd love to invite you all back for next week's performance, when the Great Obama will thrill with new, amazing exploits. He will respect your Second Amendment rights even as he regulates firearms! He will renegotiate NAFTA, even as he supports free trade! He will.

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