::::: : 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.

Deciding against a doctorate

News ·Thursday August 18, 2011 @ 20:38 EDT (link)

I entertained for a while the idea of going on and getting my Ph.D, most likely in Computer Science, but possibly—due to the influence of various articles by Dr. Walter Block—in economics; the math wouldn't be a problem and I could pick up the undergrad econ courses fairly quickly.

I looked into various schools, general admission procedures, and talked to a few kind individuals to gather information, among them DP and AS. I became confident that I could put together a good application with sufficient references (from professors from project courses or those with paper or presentation components primarily, to avoid the damning "did well in class" faint praise), and grades and GRE scores are not a problem (they also apparently don't count for much, to the point that it seems surprising they even bother asking for them).

Ultimately I decided against it for a combination of reasons: the long (5-6) year program with low pay and (potentially) miserable hours; the extremely poor job market for teaching or research (even privately), and I learned about the "postdoc treadmill"; I like reading, but there are limits, and this might push them!; earnings tend to be no higher, or even lower than a Master's degree holder (in science fields); I can learn most items of interest on my own while working a good job (the Internet, and accessible school libraries and online journals, are wonderful things); I can probably teach (adjunct professor?) without a degree if I want to give it a try; I can live without being called "doctor"; and while I would have liked to get some of my tax money back in the form of the paid tuition and stipend, I wasn't looking forward to being perceived as a parasite; basically, I want to move on, find a place and a bit of land to settle down on, not take a long timeout like this. I should note that Honey fully supported me doing a doctorate. But it does not seem like the right thing at this time; I may revisit the possibility at a later date.

Books finished: The Declaration of Independents.

A tale of four mailing lists

News, Political, Work ·Sunday August 14, 2011 @ 01:22 EDT (link)

The first list presents itself as an out of the way park. On the front gate, the company logo—it's clearly company property, but there's also a little plaque saying that the opinions of the park maintenance staff do not reflect those of the corporation. The hedges are generally well-trimmed, the grass manicured to within an inch of its life, and signs direct people to stay off it. Upon someone new entering the park, one of the fussy groundskeepers hangs up his rake and scuttles over, demanding the credentials of the individual that would dare seek admission. They are grilled as to how they found this secret park, assured that their association with it will be kept secret, and their bona fide adherence to the groundskeepers' (professed) creed is examined. Many are found insufficiently pure, and asked to leave. Others may enter, and converse with the other people in the park, although the groundskeepers are always listening in on the conversations and sometimes stamp their feet in rage and scream at the conversationalists if they are unhappy with what is being said. Although imperious, they can sometimes be calmed down and then they go back to their raking and clipping. Except sometimes, they get so angry at conversations others are having that they go home to their parents' basement, return with their father's shotgun, and violently drive the hated speakers of logic out of "their" park.

Our next is a park without gates (but a quiet sign lets entrants know they're still on company property, and again we see the plaque noting the opinions of the individuals within are not official Microsoft policy), and where the lawns and wild gardens may sometimes get a little unruly. But people speak freely; nobody monitors them; the groundskeepers keep the lanes clear, but on nice days people just stroll across the grass. People know the groundskeeper will stop any physical altercations if any should arise—none ever have, but he keeps the lawns and path free of damage and disease, and can sometimes be seen hoisting a mug with the others in the park and engaging them in fervent, even heated discussion.

The last one doesn't actually have any boundaries, exists outside of corporate property, and people are frequently seen beating others to death with shovels. They tend to come back as zombies and do unspeakable things to their attacker's pets, although at the end of the day they present very tasty-looking meals.

(I know I promised four, but the second park is really a two-fer.)

The interesting thing was that the last park made a change this year to move its users off of corporate property; so it is in fact two parks next door, one being the old corporate park which is sometimes still used, and the other the new private one (owned, not merely raked and maintained, by individual denizens). I haven't seen much of a difference, but I suspect HR is much less concerned with what goes on in the private one. It might be worth privatizing a few other parks, too; but the selected management would have to be a laissez-faire crew, not prone to bringing their shotguns around when their betters are having a discussion. That lesson has been learned.

Books finished: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, How Capitalism Saved America.

Pollocks, zoo, Mars Hill

News ·Sunday August 7, 2011 @ 20:45 EDT (link)

Honey's uncle and aunt and cousins from Pullman arrived Saturday afternoon (they stopped at a hotel half-way); we went to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle for the rest of the afternoon and evening. We were going to drive there but were saved the trouble by taking the free shuttle from the South Kirkland Park and Ride (@ 1415) across Lake Washington.

Unfortunately I didn't have my Microsoft Prime Card, which would have gotten us a substantial discount, so we ended up paying something like $35 for two tickets (even with a coupon that Aunt Lynn gave us). Oh well.

It was a beautiful day; the zoo was fun, lot of walking, glad I brought a water bottle for us. We took the second to last bus out, the 1745, heading back to Redmond. We stopped for teriyaki (I had chicken katsu) at Niko Teriyaki on Redmond Way; the Pollocks kindly treated us. That evening we played Scotland Yard—they caught me—and watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1, which was quite good.

In the morning we got up early (for us) and went to the 0900 service at Mars Hill Bellevue. We had sandwiches here for lunch (toasted banana!) and I talked to uncle Dave about doctoral programs, admissions, the process, etc. They left a little after 1330.

Books finished: A Patriot's History of the United States.

Cirith-ungol: new case fan

News, Technical ·Friday July 29, 2011 @ 17:34 EDT (link)

Cirith-ungol, the media box, got a new case fan from Hard Drives Northwest today. The old one had apparently died a while back, leading to the machine shutting down under high CPU load (uncompressing large RAR files, usually, while running MythTV), and also likely causing a blown capacitor on the motherboard, which may or may not lead to eventual death. I picked up a Stealth fan which is doing pretty well so far; runs quiet, and seems to be keeping the CPU fan quiet too.

Sliders: California Reich: stupid question

Political, Media ·Saturday July 23, 2011 @ 21:28 EDT (link)

Watching Sliders, episode California Reich: the "Racial Police" are rounding up all of the "impure" (nonwhites) into camps, calling them "migrants", chanting "America for Americans", etc. At one point Remy (Rembrandt Brown) is talking to another black man in the camp after they have been sent to work on processing piles clothing confiscated from other prisoners and their families. The other man, an older man, while he had resisted when they turned the firehoses on him at Selma, had given up in this present time; it's politics, he said, and it would cycle around back and they would eventually be free. "They took a vote," he shrugs—making the excellent point that majoritanism ("democracy") does not morally justify harming people; and from that we can see that neither is law necessarily moral (and by observation we can see that it rarely is, but I digress).

However, they ruin it a great deal with Remy's next question: "Did you get to vote?" It is unanswered and presumably the answer is meant to be "No" (although since the vote was necessarily before people were rounded up and their rights infringed in every way, "Yes" would be more reasonable). However, the question is irrelevant, and the writers seem not to understand that. Consider the two possibilities:

"Minorities" (not so much in California now, really) didn't get to vote. Violence was done against them simply by the choice of the rest of the populace, presumably because those others controlled the biggest gang around—the state.
They did get to vote, but were outvoted. This is more interesting, because the writers seem to have missed that this still doesn't justify violence or threat of violence—coercion—against peaceful people.

That is, in neither case is it right that violence was done against peaceful individuals: not when a majority including the victims wants it, or a majority excluding the victims, nor if the "representatives" chosen by either majority want it (a republic isn't any better than a democracy when you get down to it). Violence of this blatant sort against innocent people is not justified, nor any other, such as the extortion of "taxes" or the "laws" (opinions with a gun) against peaceful pursuits (drug use being a big one in the US, but consider the gigantic scam of licensure for a moment too; and there are many other categories of such harm done against peaceful individuals).

Books finished: Confessor.

2A day, Tinkham pit

News, Guns ·Saturday July 16, 2011 @ 17:15 EDT (link)

Another Microsoft gun group "Second Amendment" (2A) day was held at Tinkham pit (off I-90 exit 42) today, and this is the way of it. The meetup was scheduled from 1100-1600, but that seemed a tad early for a weekend so I didn't leave until a little after 1100, arriving at the pit at around 1230? perhaps. On the last stretch of road, where I was wondering if I had gone the right way (right at the fork), the driver of a green Nissan, Adam, hailed me, coming the other way; he too was looking for the pit and despaired of finding it, having turned after going about another quarter mile in my direction. I said I thought this was the right road, and so he followed me and indeed, about a half mile there was the pit and 4-5 vehicles. Some people had put up square tents to keep the rain off; it rained intermittently while we were there and the sun shone brilliantly as we prepared to leave. Such is the Pacific northwest.

I backed close to the firing line and set up my camping chair and brought my AR-15 and boxes and target cardboard over, as well as some bowling pins and pop cans, and waited for a ceasefire to set up. While waiting, I loaded some Glock and XDM magazines (AR-15 mags were already loaded, as was my one, lonesome SCAR 17 magazine). I set up a shooting gallery of pop cans for pistol, then further back the target cardboard (piece of cardboard with 3x2 printed bull's-eye targets on it), also stapling the 1040 guidebook to it (since it's illegal to shoot politicians and IRS bureaucrats). I also set up a row of bowling pins further back. When the range went hot, I preceded to demolish them all with abandon. The AR-15 sight needed a little adjustment, so I used the paper targets for that. Next ceasefire, I set up the pins again and another box of (cheap, diet—less sticky) pop cans; and that was about it. I shot my Glock 34 and XDM9, and AR-15, but not the SCAR 17S, although I did get it out for the picture and for some people to take a look at. Josh came out; apparently Tony was there earlier; Ken was there, and a few people I knew from the group but hasn't met previously; perhaps 10 in all. Not like some of the bigger gatherings at Sultan in times past, but a good-sized group for this pit.

That took us to just after 1500, which is when cleanup began, drinking was done (it is not snobbery to drink bottled beer!), and people started to leave. Got home about 1700—time to clean up, dry everything out, and clean guns.

Books finished: Phantom, Who.

Finding fireworks

News ·Monday July 4, 2011 @ 11:51 EDT (link)

We had almost decided to skip the fireworks this year. After all, it wasn't like there was much to celebrate; the state is bigger and more controlling than ever. We didn't relish the idea of going to any of the theft-funded displays ("watching our tax money go up in smoke"), especially the Bellevue Park one that was always packed, or having to find and pay for parking anywhere. However, when they started going off around 2200 we walked down the hill to the gates of our apartment complex, to the street, to see what we could; then after about ten minutes we decided to walk back and drive to a nearby (small) park off 116th to see if anything was going on. We parked in a mess of cars and set on the trunk to see a few fireworks, but nothing amazing; and as it seemed to be winding down we left so as not to block anyone in the parking lot.

On the way back, though, we decided to cruise to see what we could, so continued north on Avondale toward Woodinville-Duvall road; we saw some explosions from a side street, so stopped briefly to see a small showing—we drove past during a break then turned around and parked to watch; but that didn't last long. A few streets over, though (opposite the Woodinville Library, near Cottage Lake) there was a really excellent show; two, really; two groups of neighbors (two families?). We got to it about 1030 and turned around in that street and parked on the side of the road.

They had some really excellent fireworks. Just did my heart good to know it wasn't my tax money they were lighting on fire. I would have paid for admission; it was a great show! It went on for an hour or more; we left as it was winding down. It was the equal of any fireworks show I've ever seen.

Books finished: Chainfire.

SCAR and ACOG

News, Guns ·Friday July 1, 2011 @ 19:30 EDT (link)

Scope finally arrived. TA11H-308G (3.5x, green horseshoe reticle, .308 BDC).

Went and shot after work . Really great. Scope is very clear, good eye relief—nicer than the EOTech, and doesn't require batteries and is both reticle and magnifier in one. Talked to a guy there (only other person), Buzzy, for a while afterward, too; from Mississippi, does rifle accurizing and taxidermy.

Books finished: Official Lies.

Shared libraries and symbol versions

News, Technical ·Saturday June 18, 2011 @ 15:20 EDT (link)

I was doing some more work on XBMC recently; I set it up to build in two parts: as a shared library, libxbmc.so, and a small binary, xbmc.bin (same as now, but built only from xbmc/xbmc.cpp). (This is similar to how Word is structured, with winword.exe and wwlib.dll, except Word loads wwlib.dll dynamically at runtime.) The plan is to be able to use XBMC functionality from other programs and utilities, without having to boot the GUI (so the various interfaces such as HTTP are unsatisfactory here).

Originally I was going to break XBMC into several shared libraries, but it's so intertwingled—GUI calls are everywhere, for example—that that swiftly became infeasible, although I hope further splits are possible later. I learned a few things while I was separating out this new library and other tasks; I learned how to use git better, and GitHub for the first time; when incorporating some other patches into a pull request, I taught myself a little about autoconf. When making Makefile changes, I had to change Makefile.in, or create one if one didn't exist (as for my new test harness). I also noticed that GCC generates two copies of constructors and three of destructors, which I thought was some problem with my build until I saw it was a rather old bug nobody cared to fix yet.

The first problem I ran into was that the link complained about missing symbols from the FreeType library. It turned out that mysql_config --libs emitted a -Wl,--as-needed as part of its library specification, but never terminated it with -Wl,--no-as-needed to restore the default behavior: so that was fixed in configure.in, using awk to check for the condition (since bash's string matching isn't guaranteed to be available but awk was already being used). This poor practice had always been there but only became a problem with the shared library refactor.

After that everything seemed to work well but there was a strange error: no sound; failed to enable audio device popup, etc.—just for video sound; the sound effects in the menus worked. I tracked this down (with a debug reinstall of ALSA) to an innocuous-looking call to snd_pcm_hw_params_set_rate_near from CALSADirectSound::Initialize. Oddly enough, it was coming back with -EINVAL, invalid argument. Apparently the ALSA 0.9 version of this function took an intenger value, and then was later upgraded to take a pointer to an integer (so the actual set value could be passed back). And, incomprehensibly, we were calling the old compatibility version, slicing all over the place and passing in a large number (32 bits of the address that was passed in) which was naturally rejected. I don't know why the loader defaulted to use that version of the function, since the default symbol, marked with @@, was the newer one.

You can believe I played around a lot with readelf, objdump, nm, etc.; and everything looked fine. I even enabled loader debugging (LD_DEBUG=all). One of my searches, however, found an online version of the ldd manpage that mentioned that --verbose would show library symbol versions—the ones following @ or @@ in symbol names, not the version of the library itself. And it showed that libxbmc.so had very few library dependencies (the loader, pthreads, C library) while xbmc.bin had the usual suspects (a stack of video, audio, decoder, display, and other libraries). This is how I though it was meant to work: and apparently it almost does but not quite. Documentation on the runtime linker is scarce, but presumably since libxbmc.so didn't specify its dependencies explicitly, it picked the oldest (lexicographically?) version for versioned symbols. Fix: move the $(LIBS) specification from the Makefile line for xbmc.bin to libxmbc.so. And now audio works.

Books finished: Naked Empire, The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right.

Curling morale event

News, Work ·Monday June 6, 2011 @ 16:23 EDT (link)

Left work via carpool around 1030; was at Granite Curling Club of Seattle; done around 1500. Won our game. Rather getting the hang of it toward the end. Got a ride with Derek R.

Books finished: The Pillars of Creation.