August 2007 Archives

My grandmother was one of these 6 million women. She worked for Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank during World War II. I don't know the whole story but she retired from Lockheed in the mid '70s, having worked for Lockheed for close to 40 years. I think it's cool that someone is honoring these women. I wish we were doing more to capture their stories about that time in America's history. “The Greatest Generation” is quickly fading from this world. The depression, World War II and the rebuilding of the world's industries are some of the most fantastic stories in history. All in one generation, all in one life time.

I hope the five women had a great time.

aloha

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[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: family, sociology

First the music, now the television content. It appears that NBC Universal, like Vivendi's Universal Music Group, believes that it might get more control of pricing if they shop around. Direct control of pricing is rumor to be at the core of both moves.

No one really believes that Apple knows what it's doing where iTunes is concerned. The big five music distributors want to charge more for popular stuff, presumably less for less popular stuff, though I'm not sure I really believe that would ever happen. The music distributers would basically like to reduce Apple to service provider that they control. They'll dictate pricing, Apple just provides the infrastructure for them to use.

It's kind of like, “thanks for building the entire music download industry for us and then creating a market for television content as well, we'll take it from here.” Until Apple, the music industry wanted nothing to do with downloading music. They had just shut Napster down and they were looking to stomp on the next young, whippersnapper, upstart that tried to deviate from their tried and true business model. Once Apple proved that it could be successful, others ventured in. Most prefer to offer a licensing model which is attractive to some. At this point, it is clear that online music delivery is here to stay. Even the dinosaurs running music companies get it. So, now that they get it, they want to milk it for all the cash it is worth. And they don't believe Apple is doing that properly.

It will be interesting to see how this next chapter plays out. I'm on my way to the Apple Company Store to buy a Mac mini which I plan to attach to my TV. I expect the Mac mini to quickly become the prime delivery system of choice for audio and video entertainment in my house. iTunes will figure large in that. September 5th Apple will be announcing new products. I can't wait.

[posted with ecto]

This decision by the Pentagon is absolutely going to translate into dead soldiers. MRAP vehicles are the only general transport vehicles that provide any kind of real protection against explosively formed projectiles.

This is all about money. Getting the vehicles to Iraq can happen overnight if we just spend a more money.

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aloha

Technorati Tags: iraq, military, politics

We're house hunting. If you've been watching the financial news you know this might be the worst possible time to sell a house. However, it is also a great time to be buying. So, we're house hunting.

The ready accessibility to the MLS for the counties around us makes it a lot easier. We can see what is for sale, how much it is listed for, square footage and all that. So, we've been using mlslistings.com to make a list of houses that we think we're interested in and then, on the weekend, we drive out and do drive-bys of the places on our list. At the same time we drive around the various neighborhoods to get a feel for the community. When we got home, I was had a hard time associating the fliers we picked up with the location from which we got them. I figured this was an excellent justification to learn about geocoding.

I already have a Canon PowerShot Pro 1 camera, which will have to do until I pick up my Canon 5D. I needed a way to embed the latitude and longitude into the EXIF of the image. I was hoping my Garmin StreetPilot i3 would provide the lat/long information I needed but it can not. So, I purchased a Magellan eXplorist 210. I chose this particular device because it was the cheapest handheld GPS device with a display and a USB connection. For those wondering, the eXplorist 210 connects to Mac OS X and appears as a volume and is completely usable with Mac. So, now I have a way to track where I've been.

The trick then, is to use a track file from the GPS device to determine the exact lat/long where the photograph was taken by using the time of the photograph. The EXIF data in the photograph will have the time it was taken. The GPS log file will have a lat/long associated with that same time provided that it is on, logging and with the camera. There are a number of applications that might help us out. I only tried as many as was necessary to accomplish my intended goal. There might be others out there. Here are the applications that I tried.

HoudahGPS

This one did not work for me. No idea why. Might have been me, maybe it's the software. It simply did not work.

LoadMyTracks

This works great for my purposes. Using LoadMyTrack's Translate File from the File menu I translate the Magellan track.log file which is in a proprietary format to GPX which is an XML interchange format. I've never been able to get any of these applications to talk directly to the 210. Not sure why.

Next, I connect my camera to the PowerBook G4 and let iPhoto import them. While iPhoto is importing I'm wondering why iPhoto does not already support geocoding. Because iPhoto does not support geocoding, I have to export the images. So, I now have the pictures I want to geocode and the GPX file from which to get the geocode in a single directory on my desktop.

HoudahGeo

While HoudahGPS did not work for me, HoudahGeo works great. I used it twice and then paid the shareware fee. HoudahGeo first loads the photo images, then the GPX file. It then matches times to determine the lat/long of the photos. HoudahGeo then gives you the option of writing the data to the image files, importing the data and the photos to Google Earth, or exporting the photos to Flickr. I do all three. You can take a look at our house hunt here.

It is a lot of fun to associate the photos you take with the location they were taken. I think all of us have sorted through the family photos and wondered, where was this taken. Additionally, we wonder, who is that person. I'd like as much information as possible embedded in the image file itself so that, when you have the image file, you have the whole story. This is a fundamental reason that I think iPhoto sucks. iPhoto provides things like keywords and description fields but the information is not attached to the image file. It is put into a separate database. Lose that database file, you've lost whatever information was in there. IPTC Core picks up where EXIF leaves off providing metadata fields for keywords, descriptions, photographer, copyright, etc. All of this information is embedded into the image file so that any application that supports this metadata can, at a minimum, diplay it. iPhoto ought to be leading the way. It ought to already support geocoding, IPTC, and it should be using the image file as the storage medium for the information.

aloha

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: commentary, computers, mac os x, review

This stylish 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bath condo is located in Soquel Knolls on quiet cul-de-sac. The complex is well cared for with beautiful landscaping and provides a large pool and spa area. This Condo is wonderfully outfitted with a living room, separate dining area, kitchen and second floor bedrooms. The home has fantastic accents with beautiful Pergo flooring, custom paint colors, and lighting. Located in the town of Soquel, this condo is convenient to some of the areas best schools, shopping, and beaches. All reports, disclosures, and inspections are completed and available.

MLS #745615

Surf City Properties

aloha

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: family, for sale, life, middle-age, real estate, santa cruz

Someone finally said it. The Democrats will not get us out of Iraq. The Democrats will NOT get us out of Iraq. The Democrats want to keep everyone focused on getting us out of Iraq while the Republicans are in office. It all sounds so good. However, the fact of the matter is that there are American -- not to mention global -- interests in Iraq such that we cannot simply pack up and leave.

Here it is folks. US involvement in Iraq is about oil. Always has been, always will be. The world's economy runs on oil. You can cuss it, you can hate, you can talk about how it shouldn't be, you can talk about how we should change it but after all that talking it will still be the case that, right now, today, the world economy is dependent on oil. The day that the world discovers an alternative source of power, no one will care any more about what happens in the middle east than they currently care about what happens in Africa.

It's about oil, y'all. And damn well it should be.

aloha

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[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: iraq, politics

The word is discipline.

aloha

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All of Hawaii suffers an interesting and well known economic phenomenon common to areas that have high tourist or resort traffic. Infrastructure employees cannot afford to live in the cities and/or towns they serve. Resort areas require a disproportionately large number of hospitality industry employees as well as government services such as public safety and law enforcement. Salary norms for such workers are typically not sufficient for them to afford property in resort areas where property values are high. A friend of mine is a resource planner for the Lake Tahoe area. He's the one who helped me understand this issue.

The North Lake Tahoe area is an extremely popular travel destination rivaling Las Vegas. Property values in the North Lake area reflect this. Hotel workers, waiters, police officers, firefighters and the other infrastructure employees that work in the upscale North Lake Tahoe area typically live either in South Lake Tahoe where homes are a little cheaper or, more commonly especially for police and fire, many miles way where property values are significantly less. This is typically how the issue is addressed. The work force required to keep the hotels and restaurants running commutes into the resort area from surrounding cities and towns where the cost of living matches their income. In the case of Hawaii, the problem is more complicated. The entire island state is a resort area. There aren't any outlying areas from which employees can commute. Thus, hotel and restaurant employees are competing with the significantly wealthier people for homes.

Multiple families living in a single house is common in Hawaii. In most cases, all the family members of all the families are working multiple jobs in order to pay the rent or mortgage. Typically, they will work some type of day job and then work in the hospitality industry at night. Often, they will work at several different hotels in order to work every night, since all of the jobs are part time. They don't have weekends off because that is when the hospitality jobs are most plentiful. A friend of mine who lives on the mainland says, "there's no sense living in paradise when you have to work like hell." Recent increases in property values and the associated increase in property taxes have only served to make this worse. What is interesting to me is that the state and county governments of Hawaii do not seem motivated to do anything significant to help the state's residents.

On the island of Kauai voters, led by the Ohana Kaua'i, passed an amendment to the county charter that rolled property taxes back to 1998 rates and capped increases at 2% for resident owners. This would have gone a long way toward helping Hawaii residents keep their homes if and when they managed to buy them. With property values rising at a rate of over 100% per year and property taxes chasing hot on their heels, keeping the house after you've managed to buy it is a real problem. The county of Kauai reacted swiftly to the voter voice. They redefined the charter amendment as a ballot initiative and declared that it violated the county government's sole right to set taxes. The county then sued to have the charter amendment/ballot initiative declared invalid.

The suit was essentially filed by the county of Kauai, against the county of Kauai. So, the county sued itself and won. Image that! Kauai is not the only place where voters are fighting back against local government attempts to cash in on the recent raise in property values. This article recounts similar actions across the country.

aloha

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: politics, commentary

The story of Hamandiya has been reduced to,

Angry Marines went looking one night for a suspected insurgent. They failed to find him, so they snatched the man next door from his bed. He was shot to death, and the Marines planted phony evidence.

I doubt that the verdicts of the three Marines surprises anyone who has served a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan. The only thing that surprises me about the verdicts is the way in which the jury managed to deliver something relatively close to fair given the rules that they had to work with. I think the juries might have actually managed to deliver justice in spite of the system.

We would like to believe that the killing of an unarmed man is always wrong, always a crime. It is true in most people's experience. However, most people have not lived in Iraq. Most people have not been out on patrol in a combat zone where the enemy flagrantly defies all of the accepted rules of war. Most people have not held their dying buddy in their arms, angry at the fact that they were unable to prevent it.

Yet, for the men on trial and most of the men sitting in the jury box, all of these things are a part of the reality of their lives. They understand the incredible complexities of trying to complete a mission and survive in a modern day combat zone. It's not like the war movies where the enemy is clearly identifiable by their uniform and their military bearing. Civilians are the ones cowering in the corner, huddling their children and crying in fear. In today's war, those civilians cowering in fear may very well be the folks who triggered the IED that killed your buddies two hours ago. And it might have been his child that was playing in the street so that you would have to stop, rather than run her over, which is when they triggered the IED. Yes, it does happen that way.

Life in Iraq is not simple. There are no simple solutions. Every option in Iraq has a myriad of complicated ramifications, some of which only become evident after the fact. I believe an innocent man died at the hands of that squad of Marines. I believe it was wrong. I believe that our system is working in that the men of that squad were arrested, tried, and convicted. I believe that the men of the jury delivered, as best their were able, a fair and just sentence. I believe that everyone involved, the men in that squad and the juries made the best choices they could in the situations they faced.

aloha

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[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: iraq, military, politics

Some one needs to send this guy and his sister a copy of Michael Moore's latest movie, Sicko. They clearly do not understand how wonderful their health care is. No wait, I have a better idea. Let's send Michael Moore to explain it to them, in person.

aloha

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: health, politics, sociology

I'm one of the odd balls that loves bagpipes. Specifically, pipe & drum corps and the military aspect of the bagpipe.

The 58th Edinburgh Tattoo is about to get underway. It is my dream to one day attend the Tattoo in person though it sounds like getting tickets can be a challenge. The dancers and non-military acts are fine but what I really enjoy is watching the tight precision of the best military bands in the world. I've seen units march unto the field, straight into a wall, executing a counter-column within inches of the wall. It was beautiful.

I love military music and marches. Watching and hearing a military band in a parade can bring me to tears. On a few occasions I've marched with the band, either behind or in front of it. That is an incredible experience. I can understand how it helped the armies of the Napoleonic era as they marched into certain death that was the fighting style of the day. The music combined with the camaraderie and esprit de corp derives hugh emotional energy. It's really pretty awesome.

aloha

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Technorati Tags: military, music

The study interviewed 444 people and came up with 237 'unique' reasons to have sex. Then 1500 and some odd college students were surveyed to find out how those 237 reasons ranked. Statistically, there are a couple of problems here.

444 people provided 237 unique reasons and the surveyors thought they had a comprehensive list. It should have been plainly obvious that they did not yet have anywhere near a complete list. 237 unique answers from 444 people means that a large number of those answers were original, that is the answer was given by only one of the 444 people. While it is impossible to compile a list of every possible reason for doing anything, collecting answers until you have at least two votes for every answer on your list would be a good start.

So then, 1500 and some odd college students taking psychology were asked to rank those 237 reasons at they applied to their experience. It is important to recognize that population sample for what it is. 1500 college age people who take psychology. The article does not indicate that any bias analysis was done but that sample group was very probably full of bias. It was not a reasonable sample of any population group save college age psychology students.

The article is kind of fun and it talks about sex which means it will be the talk of the water cooler for a few weeks. However, I have seen a few articles that make broad application of the conclusions mentioned in the article without acknowledging the fact that the samples involved clearly do not, in any way, represent any significant demographic other than college age psych students.

The headline might be more accurately stated: Why do college age psych students have sex: It feels good.

aloha

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[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: health, life, parenting, philosophy, psychology , sex, sociology

KUWAIT CITY, Aug. 1 -- U.S. commanders in Kuwait said Wednesday that they have enormous capability to handle the tens of thousands of troops and their equipment that would stream out of Iraq during a U.S. withdrawal.

I'm not sure I believe the "enormous capability" part. At least not in the inference offered here.

I spent six months watching the port where the military equipment is loaded and unloaded. I was stationed there. While I was there it took about a month to load the equipment for one regiment, working pretty much around the clock. It took about a week or ten days to load one of the ships used to transport military equipment. I think the statement that it took over a year to move half a million out of Kuwait through the same facilities is more telling. That sounds about right to me.

I think to get 250,000 troops and their equipment out of Iraq would take about six month to eight months. And, at that pace, initial movement would indeed look like a dash for the border. In the initial stages of a withdrawal, if they were planning to withdrawal quickly, they would need to preload the staging area where the equipment is loaded onto the ships that haul it home. That would look a lot like a race for the border as those first units headed south.

aloha

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[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: iraq, military, politics

When I was a kid I used to like to put numbers into the calculator - they had just been invented - and see what words I could make. Pretty quickly I discovered that 7734 spelled hell when you turned the calculator upside down. But hell is a bad word so I figured out that if you used the decimal point you could spell hello. Cool! Now I can show my parents this cool trick. 5 minutes later we discovered that 77345 spelled shell. I'm sure you've all played the game. Well, enter the 2007 version of that same game.

The trick is really pretty cool. I first saw it several days ago in r3v's IM status message. This web site takes a text string and turns it upside down, using some idiosyncrasies in the character encoding standard - Unicode - used by most computers today. The results can be copied and pasted into email, web sites, iChat status messages and the like. Some phrases work better than others. Some characters don't really have a suitable upside down substitutes. It is fun to play with various phrases and see how they come out.

ɐɥolɐ

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[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: computers, geek