Wood refinishing

short: guns, specifically leverguns, restoring wood, some photography, mild money ranting, and mild job rantingBoy, I've been goddamn prolific lately, haven't I? Sorry.I took the Marlin apart last night. It was a pain in the ass – I probably haven't done it in a year or more. I wasn't able to get the barrel unscrewed, I may have to use a vice for that, and I ain't got one. But I got all the wood off it!

There are some great links on refinishing older (WWI and WWII in particular, but also Viet Nam and older, flintlock rifles) weapons, and I see in my Marlin the potential to make a nicer rifle than it is. As I've mentioned, we bought it at a pawn shop, and it's chambered in .44 Magnum so, should I ever get that revolver I want (and I decide the Casull is too much – but I love me some Casull), they share the same ammo, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than the ultramagnum rounds.

The above photos were taken with my blackberry and show you the two (!) pieces of wood I have to work with. It's hard to see the grain of the wood, so I have taken two pictures with the D200 (well, I took a bunch, because wood grain is hard to get right, but two turned out pretty good). I also did some color correctionenhancement by adding brightness and contrast and bringing the exposure down a bit and the saturation up a bit. So they don't look this nice in person, but it gives you an idea of what they can look like when I actually get them finished. Here they is:

Hopefully these will display side-by side. If not, sorry for the awkward formatting.

So you can see with some proper work (sanding, re-oiling, epoxying, re-oiling, and a lacquer, and possibly waxing – none of this I could do without the help of said book). It's also going to get a better recoil pad (a LimbSaver) and maybe a cartridge trap (scroll about 2/3 down). Why the epoxy? Looking at the rifle, it's pretty clear it doesn't have any dings or marks that sanding can't take care of. However, I'd like to glass-bed the rifle. I think I'd also like to pillar-bed the rifle, but I am not sure the stock has enough material to really make that worthwhile. Besides, it's not supposed to be a lethal 600+yd marksman rifle. What I expect to get out of it is a serviceable hunting rifle, fun for target shooting, that either I or someone else will enjoy. 100-200 yards max; besides which, it's not like the 44 can do more than that.

What's really neat is most of the cost is stuff I do myself. If I get a 100yd duplex scope that only has to handle 44 mag, I could probably even go with a pistol scope, and spend very little money. I could even go with a reflex sight of some kind, but that feels wrong on a levergun.

Brockman's Beast is what I really want, but I just don't have $2,000+ to spend on it, the .45-70 or .450 Marlin is probably way outside Sandy's comfort range, and I'd rather spend the $2,000 on a barrel and action for my ultramag gun (or motorcycle gear even!). The bottom line here is, the ultramagnum gun (my .338 that I've been planning and have picked the parts out for) is on indefinite hold until I get a job that pays more. And as we've seen in the past, those jobs don't work out well for me (and are seriously bad for my health – my neurologist and several ER docs have said, if you get a higher-stress job again, it will kill you.).

So maybe I'll never get to build it. But the levergun sure can be fun, and any work I do on the .44 is translateable to the newer Marlins (like the laminated stainless 308 Marlin – oooooEEE, does that give me a chubby) or just a new cowboy action (i.e., just like mine) in .450 Marlin or 45/70. Ain't it great when new technology takes old tech (cowboy guns) and makes them awesome (400 yd 308 rounds)?

Weaver mounts

Anyone wondering (it's kind of hard to find the information on the web because there's a big argument between what "picatinny" and "weaver" mean) what a weaver base looks like, the holes are drilled 5mm, and they're 10mm between eachother. That is, from the outside of one to the outside of the next, it is 20mm. On my personal rifle, I have another set of two 5mm holes, 10mm apart, 43cm from the outside of the second of the "first" holes. So the "second" holes would be from 43-48mm, followed by 10mm, followed by another 5mm, or 58-63mm.

The rifle in question is a Marlin 1894S chambered in 44 Mag/44 Spl. Weaver is kind enough to provide a base for this rifle, and while it's longer than the 63mm (and will thus stick "forward" of the action a little, this doesn't bother me. I could always have it machined anyways.

Incidentally, Weaver has pretty competitively priced optics – both riflescopes and spotting scopes. I'm at the moment torn between the Leupold FX-II in 2.5x28 (Brockman's preferred scope) and the Weaver 4.75x40. Both have that "look appropriate on a levergun" look, both have a duplex reticle, and the Weaver has a much bigger field of view. On the other hand, if I start spitting 450 Marlin out of one of their guns, the Leupold may be a better choice.

I've also been thinking of replacing the iron sights on this rifle (I bought it used at a pawn shop) with Brockman's tritium ghost ring sights, and essentially make this a 100-yd tack driving rifle.

Or I could get a 450 Marlin, they're not so bad (my .44 needs some repairs...) and that damn 308 Marlin is awful sexy. And while it's a cowboy rifle, and I'm gonna get me a Stetson and boots, the stainless with laminate has me all lubricated in my drawers. I wonder if Brockman can work with an XLR. I'd love me a blue laminate with an SS body in .450.... nnngh.

Why this bike?

edits: "blogger in draft" seems to be having issues with photos, so I've edited/reedited this more than a couple times. sorry. short: this is going to have a lot of pictures. the previews will be modest, but the "full size" pictures hover around 1mb in size. I have the original NEFs if anyone is interested. Also, some colors etc have been adjusted because the lighting at the show was hard.disclaimer: the bike in this picture is the 2008 Ninja 250R. It is styled very differently from the 2007 (or, ours, the 2001 – which hasn't changed much until 2008). They (Kawi) are bringing it in to line with bikes like the ZZR's (which are about as close to secks as bikes, uh, come):

But, the 250 was lacking. It had kinda pokey styling, and really, the 2001-2007 bikes really still did. But then Kawi went and sexed them up. Here are the pics of Sandy on the 2008:

The first time she gets her tush on the bike. I think the ass fell in love first.

Here we see that she has great ground clearance. Her biggest issue finding an appropriate seat height. The dirtbikes and dual-sports (the ones I like) and the sportbikes (the ones she likes) are both too tall, and too wide for her to sit on and still reach the ground. She's got a lot of room on this bike. Really.

This is deceiving for a non-rider. You can see her legs are bent here; she's hugging that bike with her thighs, and her knees are still really bent. She can put her feet on the ground, and this makes her a lot safer in traffic and "slow speed turn issues" (which bikes are terrible with)

And here we have great peg position. Many sportbikes have small pegs so you can drag the bike around turns. The pegs on the "baby Ninja" are a lot more generous (which is useful with my size 15 shoes!)l Note, again, how close her foot is to the ground.

Now here we see another important aspect. The handlebars are not very aggressive at all. On many sportbikes, they're really angled back towards the driver, making them very "twitchy" (which is great on a high performance bike, but not so good for learning).

Last image of her on the bike, I promise (at least not till we have her on her bike in her pink leathers!!). She has a very upright position here for a sportbike. Great reach to the ground, great peg control, great handlebar control, easy reach to the levers. All around, this bike is fantastic.

She did ask me to sit on the bike, and I obliged. I said I felt a little cramped (which is to be expected; the seat height is 32 inches and my inseam is 33.5 inches), and my knees were way up by the handlebars. Of course, since they're not canted back so far as the ZZR bikes, this doesn't matter much. She saw no point in taking a picture, evidently. Instead, I explained that I really liked the pegs and seating position on the Yamaha R1s:

Note this is more or less terrible posture on the bike, but that it is much bigger and just fits me better. My legs aren't anywhere near as compressed. But that's a litrebike, and that means danger. There's an R6, which might be not so bad (it's kind of like the gixxers and the ZZR's).

And I don't need to regale anyone with tales of the bike that not only fits me perfectly but fits my style perfectly, is stunningly beautiful, and powerful enough to haul my ass around but not so powerful I'm liable to get into any triple-digit tussles with some PFY on a CBR1000. Although, I may see if I can find an R1150GS that hasn't been beaten up too much and isn't too expensive. I am very interested in shaft-drive and paralever/telelever setups, just being the geeky sort. Most people hate these things. All the better for me, right?

This is the GS. I shamelessly stole this image from this dude. Sorry.

We will have pictures of our (read: her) Ninja up as soon as it sees daylight. At the moment, it's a garage queen.

First ride on the Ninja

short: we have a bike. I rode it. It's mostly Sandy's. The next post will be image-heavy, and this is all text.

Sandy recently spent about the sum total of the cash she works so fucking hard (and god, she works hard! All you assholes who want iPhones – she's the one you're bitching about its stupid color or font or whatever. I wish you'd all die so I can have a happy wife) for on a 2001 Ninja 250R. It seems like a small bike, but it's our first bike (I've never ridden either), and when our good friend Colin brough it home for us (from Hagerstown to Arlington – 79 miles, including interstates 270 and the dreaded 495 as well as the George Washington Parkway, he at one point had the thing up to 85 (Maryland is a weird place where people are really aggressive drivers, and drive really fast, especially on 270), and while "the wind is its master" at that speed, the bike was capable of it. It should be quite sufficient for puttering around Arlington on surface streets (I rarely get above 55 around town, and rarely above 65 on the freeway – although there are of course the occasional jaunts into way triple-digits).

When I failed my MSF course (Sandy and I took it at Apex), it was the dreaded figure-eight. For the uninitiated, this is turning a figure-eight in an eight-by-eight foot box (although I think Apex uses eight-by-sixteen). The problem is that motorcycles are pretty bad at speeds below 10mph, because they don't have all that force keeping them up. So there's a delicate balance between leaning and steering, and I just wasn't ready.

I won't say I conquered it today, but I will say that I managed several slow-speed turns (forty eight; twenty-four in each direction of a square parking lot, times six laps) and only once did I feel a little iffy, and I didn't have to put a foot down (which is safe at low speed, but looks like you're a rookie, and will fail your drive test). I learned how to do this, interestingly, on an MSF dirtbike course DVD we rented from netflix (although, curiously, I can't find it there...). What the instructor, Jun Villegas, told the "new riders" (actors) was going around a dirt turn, feather the clutch a little. You gotta lean in, and (real importantly) look where you want to be, not where you're going, and if you stay on the throttle it's going to want to fold up on you or high-side you. Maybe in more advanced riding, when they have better bike dynamics and so on, they can power right through turns dragging knees. But for me, feather the clutch a little, keep a constant speed (although keep that constant speed with light application of the rear brake), and throttle out of the turn (also taught in the dirtbike course).

This may be because I learned to drive in dirt pits, but I doubt it. I think the Apex instructors, while dedicated, had too little time, and too many students to pay particular attention to students with problems (like my slow-speed-turns thing).

The bike is also really touchy in first gear. As careful as I was with the throttle (and, as a newbie, I'm of course pretty ham-fisted; gawd I'm glad we didn't get a gixxer), the bike was always in fits-and-starts, and felt downright unstable. Always weight transferring front to back, back to front, and so on. I learned very quickly that shifting up into third was about the right way to do it in the parking lot, which is kind of surprising given it was mostly 10mph (although I'm not ashamed to admit I had it up to 30 once, mostly to test the brakes, but also to test the oomph of the 250; it is more than enough). The engine was just a lot smoother. Feather the clutch when necessary (this, for you slushbox drivers, is way different than how you drive a car), easy on the throttle, two (or one) finger on the brake, same with the clutch, and don't be afraid to use the rear brake.

The bike didn't get too hot for me, but Colin complained on the freeway the engine got a bit hot and the cans got real hot. With appropriate leathers, I think we'll be okay. But speaking of leathers, even though I took the weather liner out of my mesh Joe Rocket jacket (it's basically a vinyl liner that prevents it from getting wet, but is otherwise a nylon mesh with internal armor, so air can flow through to the cyclist), it was hot. This may because of the low speed and the 83° F temperature in the garage, so I'm hoping that out on the road, the "leathers" (nylons, really) will do the trick. I had my visor up, and the helmet didn't get so bad, but hair got real wet and I think I'd have to have grooming supplies at the office.

Performance deserves its own description. First is pretty short, as I said, and it makes the bike kinda touchy. Second is better, and it may make better sense to just keep a finger on the clutch and start in two for the most part. It's approximately as fast as the STI, really. The STI is a real beast and has no less than ten times the displacement (and a turbo!!). But for the most part, in this garage, I keep in first and hover around 3,000 rpm (at which speed, the STI is explosive – that's when it comes on boost), mostly because I'm lazy, but also because it kind of lugs in second and third. For comparison, the bike pulls in third fast enough to scare me (sort of like the STI in first at 3,000). I don't know how tall the Ninja's third is, but my guess is it's more than enough to get to freeway speeds. For those who have been reading this for a while, what I've really wanted is a car that scares me. The bike may be the solution until I can make the Z the beast it deserves to be.

We have been waiting a really long time to get here (about a year and a half now), and I think that we're both adult enough to handle the responsibility now, would enjoy this new hobby, and it makes perfect sense with the petrol situation. And, since I was a teenager, bikes (and gear) have gotten a lot safer. Back then, (and even as recently as, say, twenty) bikes were "forbidden fruit." I'd have died on a CBR600RR or something. I once hit 177 in the Z, imagine the evil things I could do with a bike.

The bottom line: I'm good with mechanicals, and I understand the mechanics of the bike well. It still scares me; I worry constantly I'll drop it because I will do something stupid. I think when I worry less and focus more on riding, I'll be a better rider. And, really, I love it. It's a blast to ride. This is gonna be a fun summer. I can tell we're going to argue over who "has" to ride to work.

And yes, I'll get a picture of the bike up soon, with Sandy in her pink leathers. She's just so fucking cute, I want to ride with her with a sticker on my helmet with an arrow that says "I'm with the hot chick on that bike."

280zx travails

short: gory details on 280zx suspension

So the 280ZX has these cursed four-bolt hubs which means tire rack doesn't even bother to stock wheels for them. I'd like 16x7 on the car, but I don't have a lot of choice. Now, the 300ZX has 5-lug hubs, and the "spindle" (the part that connects the hub to the knuckle") is the same diameter on the rear of the 300ZX and 280ZX, but on the front, it tapers to a bit wider diameter. Hopefully this isn't because of catastrophic suspension failure.

At any rate, if I lathe two 300ZX front hubs, and supply two 300ZX rear hubs, I can use their brakes, their bolt patterns, and – thank god – their wheels.

All I need is some goddamn machine shop work. See also this reference (which is slightly different than mine):

Front Race Version
On this version, I wanted maximum diameter rotors for racing applications. Thus, I bolted a 300ZX rotor (4 bolt) onto my Z hub (this is again a direct bolt on replacement for the Z rotors), then mounted the assembly onto the spindle of the Z strut. Next, I took the 280ZX front calipers and placed them over the new rotors, and with the aid of air pressure applied to the piston, held the caliper into a position similar to the old position of original Z calipers. Because of the 300ZX rotor's larger diameter of around , the caliper mounding holes on the strut and the caliper, do not match up. Thus I measured the difference, disassembled the entire assembly, and proceeded to weld up the old caliper mounting holes in the Z strut, added material to the outside of these bosses, and then drilled new holes for the caliper to bolt on in the new, extended position.

Insipid music required

 short story: new music... caution: itms links abound.

I like to pride myself on listening to a lot of pretty cerebral music. While from my last.fm profile, it might appear that I get a lot of mental cheesecake – you don't have to look far to find it in my "chart" – that can be kind of misleading. To listen to Jesse Dangerously, for example, is to listen to both poetry, Canadian political issues (!), the social stigma of being a young gay male, and others. One can't listen to Alkaline Trio without the frankly crushingly- and so very well crafted lyrics of suicide and anger. Nouveaux Punk, if you will (although I'm sure I'm abusing somebody's idea of what that term actually entails).

There's also a fair amount of what most people would consider classical, with Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and so on, but I think it takes a greater man to compare these traditionally intellectual composers with the less-traditional we have today, up to and including Eminem, who is entirely capable of being very intelligent in his chosen style of music (rap, of course, for those who've been living under a rock).

And then there's Electronic Music. I grew up raving in Southern California, so please, don't tell me I don't "get" it. I do. Really. How does one even typify or describe the complexity that goes into modern goa trance? Daft Punk, while most definitely in the "house" category (which is almost entirely bereft of anything involving thinking – preferring rather anthemic melodies and snare spirals and breaks) is enormously complex in their composition. A lazy listener would miss, for example, the incredible complexity of the oft-criticised track, Around the World. How the reviewers managed to miss the subtle blending of so many different instruments in a rhythmic, almost "cylindrical" (hence the name) melody? How about Aphex Twin and specifics of his such as Polynomial-C and Fingerbib? Music, especially electronic music, has merged with math in ways nobody really considered. And, if you're the kind of person who wants to listen to something that makes you think, Electronic Music is a treasure trove of thinking music.

I could go on, but I think rehashing Bowie or early Nine Inch Nails would be not only repetitive with everyone else talking about music, but I think it's pretty trite to say that Reznor's (I'd have added links here to the amazing Sin single and the Fixed remixes of Broken, but I can't seem to find them) "Closer" pushed the envelope of what could be done and said in music – in general, not just in his genre.

So I derive no small amount of enjoyment from music. It makes me think, it motivates me to write, and I have indelible associations of music with books (10,000 Maniacs "Our Time in Eden" with Clive Barker's Weaveworld, and Air's 10,000 Hz Legend with China Míevile's Perdido Street Station – both the album and the book still give me serious shivers).

But lately, primarily at work, I find that I am so intellectually (or at least physically, in the sense that what I do requires thought and correlated labour) drained by the ups-and-downs, ins-and-outs of the field, and trying (with some success, even) to manage the interpersonal relationships in a very diverse organisation (everyone from marines and airmen all the way to former intelligence officers turned project managers, if you can imagine). I am frankly too exhausted to listen to Alkaline Trio's "Trouble Breathing," which, while not the world's happiest tune, is so hauntingly written that I both love it and fear listening to it again (, and again, and again...). This is repeated over most of my musical library. Even Cake is so full of puns it requires thoughts to understand what's really going on. Even frickin' Matisyahu.

And I can't switch that off!

So, what to listen to in the office? A number of constraints pop up. First, I was listening to a lot of Velvet Acid Christ, which is pretty simple, has lyrics (when it has lyrics at all) that are insipid and mostly christianity-focused. Who cares, really? Well, it's serious industrial/goth-metal, and if that's coming out of the speakers in my office, when one of our more straight-laced employees shows up to tell me the internet down, the response is, "what IS that racket?" Explanations fail, of course. There is a huge generational gap (usually), an unwillingness to understand, and an entire lack of a frame of reference (how do you explain VAC to someone who loves classic-rock-"oldies"?)

I realised I needed something saccharine, poppy (so as not to really offend coworkers), not really too intellectual, and fast enough that I didn't get lethargic during the day (caffeine only goes so far). Kind of like Basement Jaxx or Aqua, only without being so... Aqua. That, and I've really listened-out Crazy Itch Radio, and I'm even really tired of the remixes.

4chan's /mu/ (and before you assholes get worried about rule #1, the secret is out. The honeymoon is over. Mootles is no longer teh sex.) was somewhat helpful, pointing out Crystal Castles, which I dig, but was really mostly interested in Vanished and Tegan and Sara's "The Con" (and this seems to not be an unusual perception of the duo). But I think they (/mu/) missed what I was really looking for (being music elitists, something like myself, and having little ability to come up with something insipid). They tired of me, and I tired of them, and in their defense, it's hard to ask elitists to come up with unelite stuff on command (they're quite ready to point it out when it's visible).

Enter Alice in Videoland (warning, music on load). I may discover a deeper depth to this music, but for the moment, it's quite upbeat, it's musically complex – but not too complex – and it has high-strung, sometimes vocoderised, vocals. Yay. It's kind of like Gwen Stefani was asked to do some vocals for Legion of Boom or I'm the Supervisor. I feel I have to say that Wide Open from Legion is one of the most amazing tracks Method has produced, despite it being sort of out of their genre, since I've mentioned Legion by name. Anyways, Alice in Videoland is pretty groovy. Pretty much what the doctor ordered. You have to check out the Outrageous (caution: music) album, but I'm pretty happy with She's a Machine, too.

Also is another one I'm not too sure about. Blind Faith and Envy is capable of some mind-warpingly intense techno tracks (and has a phenomenal goa trance mix of one of her songs) but can also be Sarah McLaughlin slow, and they have some Enya moments. We shall see. I hate to say it, because it kind of makes me a male pig (right?), but it may be a "chick thing." I clearly don't know, having a deformed chromosome.

And, then there's Futon. Who can resist gay club music? I absolutely loved Jonny McGovern's Dirty Gay Hits, but I've kind of listened it out. I picked up a couple tracks and considered it a win. Interestingly, it's part of a soundtrack from some HBO show along the lines of "HBO's XXX Thoughts." A compilation, which I normally detest, but, wow, has a lot of really cool shit, when I'm in this particularly braindead sort of mood. Sometimes, I suppose, not having cable has its drawbacks.

It will be a while before I bemoan "over intellectualism" again, so don't worry that I've become arrogant or anything. Pwomise.


(and there are probably lots of typographical, grammatical, and even insensibilities in this particular treatise; consider it irony and the fact it was awful complex to put together with all those links)

Anger management

Note to self:

Vulgar display of Enya may be better than Vulgar display of Pantera.

And if you get that not-quite-joke, you win one internet.

Moving up in the HR organisation

Frank Roche has a great piece on the kinds of people that get in to HR. In my time at Archstone-Smith, we had extensive experience with Ms. Michelle Levix. It's really kind of funny that, being the sort of punishment-type that she is, she is promoted and goes to work for Archstone corporate human resources. Undoubtedly, her primary goal will be to recruit more people just like her. With the winning sort of personality she has, it's no wonder that the web is full of complaints from their residents, the misdoings of the company, and the sort of feudal we-own-your-home setup they force upon those unfortunate enough to not own their homes. It's like being back in the 1700s again.

So a dvorianstvo gets her comeuppance, and uses it to further the power she so vindictively wields over her vassals, and even further, to recruit others like her. It's really no wonder the company is the thinly-disguised wage-slavery we had decades ago with share-cropping and plantations.

Such is the life of the renter.

Why do you need all that military stuff? You're a civilian!

Some friendly civilians armed with military weapons. See, they're being responsible.

Especially when the Feinsteins, Boxers, and Pelosis of the world start flapping their gums, the continual squealing is always "but that's military equipment! the military uses the M82A1! the military uses fully-automatic weaponry! civilians don't need military equipment!They're partially right on the gun front. I don't really need an M82A1, or an M24/M40. But here's the point. The military doesn't fuck around with equipment (although there have been concerns about the M-16 and the .223 round which I won't go into here), and when they make a decision on a weapons system, they tend to pick the right weapon. So, when it came time for me to pick a weapon to take to the range (I don't hunt; I'm a hobbyist), I picked a rifle almost identical to the M24 or M40. And I love it. When I build another rifle, it will be damn near the same thing, and if I had the money, I'd buy an EDM Arms Windrunner or a MacBros Tac-50, and I'd shoot that 50 BMG and enjoy the shit out of it. It's not really about whether civilians need military weaponry. Ladies, it's about whether they need to justify owning them. I just don't have to justify owning them. Not to you, not to my neighbors, or anyone else, really. And, to paraphrase Scalia, it's the constitution, stupid.

So what about other items? I own a USMC "boonie hat." I bought it because it's very good at its job. It's also very useful when keeping the sun out of your eyes when you're looking through high-powered optics on that "military rifle."One thing this war in the desert has brought us is a plethora of new technologies, be they garments or devices and compounds to keep particulates out, and so on. For better or worse, war tends to push the technological envelope.

And so I find myself buying what sounds almost laughable – tactical jeans. Yeah, denim pants, and they're "tactical." The main point here is they have an extra pocket for my leatherman (which I use at work, not to slit throats), and they have a little room in the back for an inside-the-waistband holster which fits a Glock 21 (which isn't to say I'm always carrying; rather the Lands End jeans I normally wear are not so accomodating). They also claim to be stronger due to some twisted weave or other (a good thing, I guess), and also wick sweat away better (Northern Virginia is absolutely wicked in the summer).

It gets even sillier. I bought a tactical belt. The reason for this is not that I'm some special forces dude who needed to attach extra magazines and such to my waist line, but rather because it's lighter, stronger, has a simpler clasp, is designed to fit my tactical jeans, and I think that's just great.

What about a MOLLE backpack? Fact of the matter is, MOLLE works. And the Camelbak gear not only "just works," but it's been through shit I'll never come close to putting it through. So why bother buying some REI or other fancypants outfitter's idea of what hiking in style is when this so-called "military equipment" is perfectly suited to civilian use?

I'd like a "drag bag" for my rifle and a shooting mat, and my god, they might even be in desert tan or OD green. Them's military equipment, too. Where does it end?

I'm no huge fan of McCain, but I seriously worry about an Obama administration, a new "assault weapons ban," and his ambiguous stance on these issues.

Let the record show

That I have in fact found my TDMA module, that it is in fact mostly complete, and not only do I understand parts (parts!) of it, I have even fixed me a few bugs. Awesome, huh.

sub new {
    my ($class, $zeroh, $epoch_time, $frame_number) = (@_);
    my $frame_start = ( $epoch_time / $FRAMES_PER_EPOCH ) * $epoch_num;
    my $slots = bless [
        $zeroh,
        $frame_start,
        $epoch_num,
        [ map TDMA::Day::Epoch::Frame::Slot->new(
            $zeroh, $frame_start, $frame_number, $_
        ), 1 .. $SLOTS_PER_FRAME ],
        sub { 1 },
    ], $class;
    return $slots;
}

There may well be bugs there, but then bugs are everywhere. It should be noted that perl is nowhere near fast enough to actually create a full TDMA-segmented day in one "slot" (1/128 of a second), but that you can redefine the granularity of your time division, and one day, perl may actually be fast enough to do it. So, take heart, this isn't just another useless module.

synctoy

Is there a tool/applet/whatever that lets me sync an iTunes playlist to a machine (e.g., my Air), which doesn't have the space that my "main" iTunes library does?

I would be a very crappy hamper if somebody had something like that.

Perils of dynamic storage

I may have lost that TDMA module I wrote in the switch between my Macbook and the Air. Which sounds insignificant, except that code was really cool, and I totally don't remember what it looked like.

Mirroring indeed. Fuck.

Organisation in an unorganised world

short: move along, nothing to see here

I've been trying extra-hard to keep myself organised with this laptop, as every time I move from one machine to another I have a brutal time of making sure I get everything from the current machine to the next machine.

Years ago, when my primary machine was a server sitting on a T1, I actually just kept my entire home directory in cvs. This grew very quickly into something unmanageable (although whether it started as manageable is open to debate) because of a few factors: churn, binaries, and size.

To address cvs' problem with binaries, simply moving to subversion is sufficient, and I've been very happy with it.

For size, I've been trying to keep things logically compartmentalised so I am only backing up what I want backed up (so, for example, I can back up my Documents/ directory without backing up my Pictures/ directory – at least on in version control). Subversion is also less balky with larger-sized repositories (I'm using fsfs; I don't know about the other options).

For churn, svn seems to also do a pretty good job of managing lots and lots of commits. However, there isn't a great way to make sure that new files get committed when they're added and files get deleted when they're removed. I could probably write a cron job that finds stuff that isn't in svn and emails it to me daily, or something. But what a pain in the ass.

So I think I have a reasonable system, by running stuff into subversion. This, combined with being fairly anal about file placement (having a Projects directory helps me keep piles of stuff organised) appears (after a couple months, I guess) to be working, as long as I'm religious about keeping stuff where it belongs (e.g., no 'crap' folder on my desktop).

But the missing component here is a good interface for the whole thing. Unfortunately, I'm juggling two (or three, depending on how you look at it) different interfaces for these carefully-laid-out files.

XCode, on the left, and TextMate on the right

I like XCode's interface a lot. I have a reasonably good editor (which is to say, it's not vim, but it'll do in a pinch), a reasonably good file manager (approximately as good as the finder), and some additional tools, like "make in this directory" or "find where this subroutine is defined." Unfortunately, it's pretty bad with perl code, and it doesn't know what to do with e.g., Word documents (I also keep all my writing in subversion, and manage it with a TM project).

I like TextMate's interface less. Substantially less, I think. However, it doesn't really get in my way the way XCode does, and it does the right thing when I double-click on a document it doesn't know how to work with (Word, etc). And it has support for subversion, and it understands perl. But its bundled packages are kind of clunky, and I don't like the way it formats text/syntax (yes, I know this is customisable; that's besides the point – the idea of this whole enterprise is to simplify things; If I have to create custom setups for each of these interfaces, I haven't simplified much at all!). Its management of C (& ruby, etc) projects is nowhere near as shiny as XCode's (and XCode is free!!).

So, unfortunately, I'm using both. I have TextMate organising files into its preferred project format (.tmproj) because it can keep a bunch of stuff in one pane, and preview in the other pane (with hilighting!) and it will DTRT if I doubleclick a document it doesn't know how to work with. One such document would be the XCode project format, .xcodeproj. So I have "parent" "project" files, which are viewed in TextMate and "sub-project" files, which are viewed in XCode. Boy, what a pain. Things are organised well enough, and both editors do what I want them to do (within the limits of their "responsibility"), but I can't help but being a little worried that I'm depending on two different sets of document management schemes.

As a footnote to this, when I explained this to Sandy, she told me that "you're always going to be stuck with a vendor." The correct response is, of course, "not on Unix...". In Unix, I'm happy to use vim to manage all this stuff, tar and cvs/svn to move things around, wget/rsync/scp to push/pull, $EDITOR to edit, and so on. At the same time, though, it feels kind of stupid to not be using all the shiny tools Apple has given me, especially since I supposedly pay a premium to get their fancy hardware and their fancy software.

At any rate, wasn't NeXTStep supposed to take all these individual tasks and make plugins for a Grand Unified Interface? So many of these tasks are common: file management, editing, store/retrieve, diff/blame/co/ci, etc., why do we still have so many programs that do some, but not all of them? I realise I can mount a subversion repository, over DAV, like I would any other filesystem. But the implementation of client-side DAVfs is slow and buggy, and I would still require something in the Finder that would give me a reasonable editor or preview pane, and some sort of "click this to commit/update/check out." I hope, as Apple attempts to court developers with all these fancy free SDK's, that they tie more of the functionality for developers into the user interface.

Maybe it's time Apple actually separated out the "more advanced" stuff (scm, etc) from the basic interface, and had some toggle mechanism to switch the advanced stuff on so as not to frighten the non-advanced-users. For a very long time, they steadfastly refused to use multi-button mice, or to have hierarchical displays in the Finder, and they've been slowly rolling back the "keep it simple" in particular places of the OS. As they begin to garner a bigger and bigger segment of the userbase, at some point, they're going to have to start providing the new Mac users the tools they want to use and previously were using Windows or Unix for.

I for one

…am looking forward to the AT-AT being once again available for purchase.

On a more serious note, it seems to me that there is much hand-wringing and squealing in the media (boy, NPR was a complete trainwreck this morning). Said pundits and editors seem outright shocked by the decision (were they really shocked?), and have predicted the sky will fall within three weeks.

But many of these same organizations have issued polls, including CNN, MSNBC, AOL, and of course your average not-quite-media-rich local paper sites, such as the Salt Lake City tribune. These polls seem to indicate a better than 2/3 majority of respondents are in favor of gun rights (or at least approve of the decision). How is that possible? Is it really the case that a third of the population is actually more vocal than another body, twice its size? I must admit, I really don't understand the dynamic.

I'm not surprising anyone by saying I'm actually pretty happy about the ruling, and Scalia has mostly summarized the more "traditional" reading of the amendment when he says,

It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service – M-16 rifles and the like – may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large.

Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

Which is actually very refreshing. I think that while many gun owners, especially owners of weapons which are decidedly not CQB or strictly "defensive" (such as high-powered rifles), really enjoy the sport/hobby, there's an undercurrent of pride (for lack of a better term) that their country won't be coopted by the same tyranny it sought to escape when it was founded.

Vote from the rooftops, indeed.

The easy solution to nabbing OBL:

Pakistani authorities Sunday [22 Jun 2008] reported a new outbreak of avian flu at a commercial poultry farm in the country's north west, killing thousands of birds, officials said.

Tests conducted at a government-run laboratory in Islamabad confirmed the presence of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu at a farm in Swabi district, local livestock department chief Ibrahim Khan told AFP. "The virus was detected after the owner of the farm informed us on Friday [20 Jun 2008] that some 4000 birds had died within the past few days," he said.

I suppose now would be a good time for the tinfoil hat brigade to start screeching about the CIA inventing H5N1 to oppress the black mankill the evil terrorists.

Ego & IT

I've been ruminating about some stupid politics in the office. The thought was along the lines of, "if only people would just go with the answer that makes the most sense, rather than sticking to their position regardless of its (lack of) merit." That's pretty short-sighted. I realize now that my thinking that way is simply a response to my own ego being bruised. I think. There's no point in going in to details. The problem is always the same. Somebody insists on doing something one way because they said so, and people that are told to do it that way disagree for whatever reason. With very, very few exceptions, it works out that the person who "says so" gets their way, largely because to admit that they were wrong is to suggest that their leadership is flawed at least occasionally.

I like to think I take such criticisms and change my mind when it makes sense to do so, but would I be this bent out of shape if that were the case?

When I took this position, deliberately "underachieving," I told myself I had a lot of room to back away from a project, or to not engage so tightly, and yet I find myself being not a little chafed by the prospect of my normal routine and preferences being stomped on. I must be kidding myself at some level. If I really was decoupled from this sort of thing, I'd happily do whatever was suggested of me, even if I don't think it's the right idea. And I wouldn't get heartburn over it.

Clearly, though, even in some of these stupid ideological skirmishes, the principle of the disagreement makes me unhappy.

There is another possibility, though, and that is there are certain people I have much more difficulty "just doing what I'm told" with. I'm not sure which is less probable: that I'm deluding myself about being less personally invested in this position or that there are people who are really good at making me unhappy (whether they think they are or not).