Month: August 2005

The server for www.greenspun.com is just about dead.  Fortunately this comes at a time when one of my nephews, last name of “Greenspun”, is reaching his 11th birthday.  I’m planning on shutting down the outsourced online community component of greenspun.com, which is these days better handled by Yahoo! Groups, and replacing the whole server with a family Web site.  The question then becomes where to get it hosted and what software to run.  I want the 11-year-old punk to administer the service; I will keep my own content primarily on http://philip.greenspun.com

It would be nice to have the following:

• email for the family, e.g., python-the-cichlid@greenspun.com to forward wherever
  
• places for family members to create personal Web sites, in the pre-Weblog days I would have said that these would be subdirectories off the root
  
• RSS feeds to which interested friends can subscribe; it would be nice if someone could say “I want to see new stuff by Benjamin and Harry but not from Philip” or “I want to see everything new”
  
• easy to upload and update content in various formats (text, photos, sound, video) by young family members using Web browsers alone
  
• long-run potential for doing some scripting and database programming (though this will not be an online community-style site; the Internet is too full of spam these days to make that worthwhile at a family level)
  
• if there is scripting it should be done in some tools that are likely to be popular in 2015 or 2020 when we are likely next to examine the server
  
• an annual cost of under $250 (Uncle Philip needs to save up for his turbine-powered helicopter)

Where to host this and what software to run?

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I would like to listen in my car to some of Doug Kaye’s IT Conversations and perhaps other podcasts and audio streams from the Internet.  The car has a Pioneer stereo with a fantastically horrific user interface (all faceplate and bouncing lights display; a handful of tiny buttons; the factory Toyota system was much better but it is no longer being made and the 1998 original is dead) but thankfully an AUX input and the ability to play MP3-encoded CDs.

What is the best way to get podcast items into the car?  An MP3 jukebox of some sort?  Burning CDs every now and then?  If an MP3 jukebox is the right way to go, which one makes the most sense given that a big part of it will get wiped and refreshed every week or so?

[Please don’t suggest an iPod.  I have used friend’s iPods and find the user interface to be confusing compared to the Creative MP3 jukeboxes (they have more buttons).  Additionally, various commenters on http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2005/07/16 thought that I might be gay and therefore it seems unwise to appear in public with anything made by Apple.]

[Resolution:  I bought a 1 GB miniSD card for my Motorola MPx220 mobile phone and I burned an MP3 CD that does in fact play in the car.  I still can’t figure out MP3 music CDs.  Is there a standard format for a playlist that you also burn onto it?  If not, how does the average player figure out in what order to play the tracks?]

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http://philip.greenspun.com/photography/exhibits/newport-jazz-festival-2005 contains some photos from last weekend’s Newport Jazz Festival.  Enjoy!

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I am releasing my scripts for using Adobe Photoshop CS2 to process camera RAW images into multiple sizes of JPEG, with black borders and copyright info, and deliver them from a Web server.  The software and an explanation are available from http://philip.greenspun.com/photography/photoshop-scripts/

I believe that I have solved the “huge thumbnails filled with extraneous crud” problem that my original Photoshop CS script had.  The thumbnails are now only about 9 KB in size.

http://philip.greenspun.com/images/200506-alaska-trip-s60/ and http://philip.greenspun.com/images/200506-kugluktuk/ are a couple of fun examples of directories produced with this script.

Comments appreciated.

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A couple of recent news stories have shed some light on the value of formal education.

Peter Jennings is dead, having held one of the most important journalism jobs in North America.  He was a high-school dropout and never attended college.

Microsoft, one of the world’s most valuable ($293 billion) and cash-rich ($38 billion) companies, was out shopping for a chief operating officer (COO), i.e., a manager.  With the ability to hire anyone in the world, whom did Microsoft choose?  Kevin Turner, age 40, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Wal-Mart.  Mr. Tuner was responsible for all the information technology at a company that is famous for its advanced use of IT.  What illustrious schools and brilliant professors prepared him for these challenges?  Mr. Turner got a bachelor’s degree in business from East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma.  He never obtained an MBA.  He never studied computer science or MIS at a college.

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Report to the Southern Greenspuns on my New England summer weekend… (with some notes for non-family)

Friday night:  One of the nice things about Boston in the summer is that people actually come through on their way to vacation spots.  It becomes a bit like Manhattan.  One need not travel to see friends and family because they come to us.  Doug and Leslie show up from California with the girls in tow, en route to a couple of weeks of renting a place on the Cape.  Doug’s family history efforts have uncovered an 18-year-old girl in their neighborhood who is distantly related to us, and she [we’ll call her “Linda”] comes to dinner as well.  I explain that Yiddish has a word for relatives of whom one no longer even knows how or if they are related: “mishpocha“.  Thinking that their hotel room will be a little crowded they leave Allie (almost 8 years old now) and Linda with me for the night.  We walk into Harvard Square around 10:30 pm.  The night is a perfect warm shorts and T-shirt temperature.  We have ice cream at Toscaninni’s.  Afterwards a pleasant fellow walks up and introduces himself.  He attended a one-day course that I taught five years ago and reads my Web site periodically.  Thinking that it might be complex to discuss first cousins once removed and more distant relationships I simply said “this is my daughter Allie and my wife Linda”.  He accepted this uncritically.  Allie found a couple of Brookline High School kids who were practicing juggling and they let her use their bean bags.

Saturday morning:  The family reunited in East Cambridge for breakfast.  Linda talks about her plans to defer college for one year and spend the time snowboarding, wakeboarding, learning Spanish in Argentina, traveling, and generally enjoying herself and seeking physical thrills.  It occurred to me that times have changed in the past few decades.  An 18-year-old in 1970 whose family had enough extra resources to support a year off would at least consider some sort of activity aimed at fixing what ails the world.  The Peace Corps, some sort of political agitation, etc.  18-year-olds today, though, seem to leave these activities to the paid professional poverty industry and paid professional political consultants and just want to go off and have fun with their bodies while they’re still free of aches and pains.

Saturday afternoon:  Alex and I trundled down to the MIT Club of Boston picnic and a good time was had by all.

Saturday evening:  Drive to Nashua, New Hampshire to do a night helicopter flight.  The FAA requires five hours of night solo experience before issuing a Commercial helicopter rating.  At 8:15 pm I started up the Robinson R22 and listened to the ATIS, the recorded information that the control tower wants pilots to hear before calling.  The ATIS mentioned the wind, the runway in use (32, oriented toward magnetic 320 or northwest), and the inoperability of some lights at the approach end of the runway.  I called the tower for permission to do some touch-and-goes.  “Unable,” they responed, “we had a plane crash here a few minutes ago.”  A guy in a brand new Beechcraft Bonanza, the famous doctor-killing plane of the 1970s still being hand-built in tiny volumes by Raytheon, had lost power and tried to make a landing on Runway 14 but had come up short.  As this newspaper article reports, David Massad, the 77-year-old pilot managed to maintain sufficient control that the landing in the trees wasn’t too hard.  He and his 56-year-old passenger, Pamela Putnam, were “were unhurt but heavily mosquito-bitten”.  Their friend in a Beech Baron came in to pick up Massad and Putnam just as I finally took off at 9:00 pm.  Not wanting to interfere with any investigation I departed straight south to Norwood, Massachusetts and landed there before coming back towards the Needham radio towers and flying over the Mass Pike into downtown Boston and Cambridge around 1000′ above sea level.  It was a beautiful smooth clear night and the buildings really sparkle.  I departed the downtown area by flying up Interstate 93 to Rt. 128 and from there back up to Nashua for a total flight time of 1.5 hours.  I went to the Extended Stay America efficiency suites hotel just about 1.5 miles from the airport.  It was after 11:00 pm and the ladies working the front desk were just closing up shop.  The hotel, which is in back of an office park, and would be tough to find without a GPS, was 100 percent full.  “Who wants to stay in suburban Nashua on a Saturday night?” I asked.  “Nobody should stay here unless they are forced to,” she replied.

Sunday:  From Nashua, NH to Rockland, Maine and back in the Cirrus SR20, which has been getting some warranty service and an oil change (130 hours so far on the meter) but the folks at Keyson buttoned her up for weekend use.  I picked up my friend Lisa at Pease, home to the longest runway in New England (11,321′; those Air France guys would have appreciated this instead of the 9000′ runway to which they were assigned in Toronto), KC135 refueling tankers, Chinook dual-rotor helicopters, and various other curious military and civilian planes.  Lisa was in a good birthday (12th annual 29th) mood and I had her sit in the left seat as we flew low up the coast.  The airport houses a transportation museum with an important collection of antique planes and cars and a lot of weekend events (classic convertibles yesterday).  Downtown was in the throes of the last day of the lobster festival, in which thousands of innocent creatures were horribly scalded to death each hour, .  In between the lobster course and the chowder course we stopped into the Farnsworth Museum to look at a very impressive Alex Katz exhibit.  The place is also filled with interesting work by three generations of Wyeths and it is air-conditioned.  Back to Pease in the late afternoon to drop Lisa off, letting the problematic left fuel tank run almost dry by my calculations in order to verify the fuel gauge’s accuracy (the tank had 1.2 gallons usable, enough for about 7 minutes of operation; the gauge read a cheerful “5 gallons remaining”).

Sunday night:  Left the SR20 with the mechanics at Nashua and drove back to Boston to host an 8 pm party that didn’t break up until 2:45 a.m. (Harvard-educated woman arguing that an Al Qaeda nuclear bomb destroying Manhattan would be really good for the world because it would mean the end of American hegemony; this set my voluble friend Barry (a NYC native) off rather loudly…).

Next weekend:  Newport Jazz Festival.

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A must-read from this week’s New Yorker magazine:  “What I’d Say to the Martians” by Jack Handey.

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Africa came up at last night’s Port and Stilton party.  It has been two months since our last blood donation party at Children’s Hospital and a few of us were planning a return.  One woman who expressed interest is married to a South African Jewish emigre.  I reminded her that she would be disqualified because they now ask “Have you ever had sex with an African or a person of African descent?”  Her husband observed “Well, at some level we are all of African descent.”

Another guest had been working in public health in Tanzania for nearly three years.  Tanzania has about a 10 percent HIV infection rate, which is enough that they are setting up special clinics to give drugs to those who test positive.  Despite mortality due to AIDS and emigration of the talented and educated to Europe (people leave Tanzania at about the same rate that they arrive in the U.S.) the country’s population is still growing at a vigorous 1.83 percent according to the CIA Factbook and its 36 million people will soon have plenty more company.  What are the economic growth prospects for these new Tanzanians, we asked?  Tourism is doing nicely on Zanzibar, which was once owned by the Sultan of Oman and has interesting architecture from its 19th century position as the world’s most active slave-trading port.  The Italians are investing massively in building beach resorts.  Otherwise, she noted, things were tough and she thought it was immoral for the U.S. to continue to operate its space program when the $billions could be sent to save lives in countries such as Tanzania.

It would seem like a great time to be a poor country.  Commodity prices are high.  Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore have demonstrated a foolproof method for economic development (stable government, learning English, getting educated, working hard).  And capital is cheaper than it ever has been.  The after-inflation return on a low-risk investment such as a U.S. T-bill is about two percent.  If capital is cheap and there is a surplus of labor Africa should be booming (and maybe it actually is; the CIA Factbook shows that the economic growth rate in Tanzania is larger than the population growth rate and much larger than the U.S. economic growth rate).

In the 1990s an investor could get a fabulous return by rounding up some nerds, buying ping pong tables, and renting an office in Santa Clara.  Now that same investor is desperate to find any outlet for capital that will earn more than a few percent above inflation.  Could it be that over the next generation this wellspring of cheap capital will bring labor-rich Africa out of poverty even if the foreign aid industry withdrew from the continent?

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Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan was a disturbing and painful book to read back in 1998.  I hadn’t caught the movie version until very recently on DVD.  Both book and movie start with an aviation angle.  A botched hot air balloon landing leads to the death of a passerby who tries to help. The main character in the book is a science journalist who is plagued by the attentions of an intense guy whom he meets during the balloon crash.  The filmmakers apparently didn’t think audiences would be sympathetic to a scribbler about nerds.  So the main character has become a college professor spouting off about love to a rapt audience of undergrads.  It could be literature or philosophy course.  We’re not really sure.  But most definitely the character has been stripped of his association with science and math.

I recommend the DVD if you missed the movie in the theaters.  It is almost as disturbing and more painful and intense than the book.  There are good tips in there if you want to stalk a stranger and drive them crazy.  Start by being gay and talking about God’s love.  When you do run into the stalkee say “I think you know what I’m talking about.”

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The news today is full of reports that George W. Bush is quietly suggesting that our public schools teach some sort of creationism alongside evolution.  Journalists from big cities love writing about creationism and the hayseeds who believe in it because it reinforces their sense of superiority for having chosen to live in a $1 million two-bedroom apartment choked by smog and surrounded by gridlock.  One problem with these reports is that if one actually travels to small towns and rural areas across North America it is almost impossible to find people who espouse creationism.  On the contrary these areas are in my experience much more likely than cities to contain people who want to bend your ear about local geology, fossils, etc.  If you survey people coming out of a church and ask them “did God create the Earth” they might indeed say “yes” but then if you ask them how old those mountains in the distance are very few indeed would say “5000 years”.

It is unclear why the President of the U.S. saying something about education is news.  Public schools are run at the state or local level, though with an increasing level of federal interference.  And in any case the students don’t seem to believe or remember much of what the teachers say.  A kid who is unfortunate enough to be stuck in public school for 12+ years has more serious problems than a teacher blathering on about “intelligent design” for a few hours out of those 12+ years.

[Darwin was actually grossly wrong about the speed at which evolution occurs.  The Beak of the Finch is an excellent book about year-to-year natural selection and evolution among finches in the Galapagos.  The book also covers more rapid evolution in populations of guppies in aquariums with varying quantities of predators (guppies in a more dangerous environment evolve to be plainer in coloration; guppies in a safe environment evolve to be more attractive to the opposite sex) and, most terrifying, yet more rapid evolution of drug resistance in viruses.]

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