Silicon Valley Redneck

Give me a villain with style and grace...

... And a little bit of fencing skill?
So the Washington Post had this bunch of hyper-analytical psycho-fluff about the Secretary of State's new clothes.  The WaPo piece has, in turn, been shredded by Cori Dauber.
All this is completely missing the obvious.

Clearly, Condi has accepted the role assigned her by the Left, and is seeking her rightful place in the Evil Geniuses' Hall of Fame.
Perhaps it's true that she has no interest in the Republican nomination for President in 2008... because she already has the Evil Overlord Party nomination sewn up!

Hmmm... y'know, that outfit does seem to call for a dress sword.  Might not be the most diplomatic fashion accessory imaginable, but... that outfit, that posture... yeah.  Definitely needs a blade.

Update: Aha!  I had a suspicion she might have found that outfit at Villain Supply.  I just checked, and villainsupply.com has (as of 25 Jan 2005) vanished down the Network Solutions memory hole!  That proves it!

Mud, mud, glorious mud...

Just back from the second hike of the weekend, at Pt. Reyes.  The trail was very muddy in places - this was definitely a good weekend to be wearing the mil-surp mud-stompers instead of my usual sandals (though the side panels seem to need their water-repellent treatment renewed, for dealing with puddles more'n about four inches deep).
The weather looked promising at the beginning: cloudy, but it didn't really seem to be threatening rain, despite the forecast.
Just as we approached the far end of our planned outing, the wind picked up, and the drizzle started.  Then the wind got strong enough that standing near a cliff to look at the view below started to seem like a Bad Idea.  Then the drizzle turned into real rain....
At least the rain only got up to moderate strength, albeit driven by an unpleasantly strong wind.  On the way back down 280 afterward, there was some seriously heavy rain.

Photos from today, and from yesterday's Big Basin hike, coming soon.

Have a cigar.

It's a...

...bouncing 4.5 ounce motor controller!
(Bouncing?  Well, PWM at any rate.)
Of course, there's already quite a change list for the production version, but this one has just demonstrated its ability to control a pair of motors.  It still needs a series of load tests, and some firmware enhancements, and then four of the prototypes get put in battlebots for torture testing, while I hack up the fifth unit to test some of the proposed enhancements for the production model.

Only one barnacle so far (an 0603 cap; you'd never notice it), and an observation that it really needs a fifth heatsink screw, in the middle.  Also, a bit more copper around the 5V regulator seems a good idea for high-line conditions.  All else is minor tweakage (and the inevitable footprint corrections).

Hmmm.  For proper testing, it'll need loaded fractional-HP DC motors.  Cobble together a "my little prony" brake?  Use the motors to drive water pumps, and valves to adjust the back pressure?  Motor-generator sets and big honkin' (250W) rheostats?

D'OH!

The DEC instruction on the AVR doesn't affect the carry flag.
Ergo, you can't do a decrement-and-branch-on-underflow, where underflow is defined as "wrapping from 0 to FF."
This might explain why I toasted a FET earlier today, and a transformer primary a bit later, when the PWM duty cycle unexpectedly wrapped from "nearly zero" to 100% when running lightly loaded.
So, I take out the "branch on underflow," and branch instead to the post-increment range check... being as how it's unsigned, 255 will get rejected as greater than 192.  Should clear up that category of mysterious surges, and I think I've got the bridge direction-switching timing right now (gotta check that, too, and make sure there's some reasonable margin).

Well, somebody's on the ball...

I just ordered a VariCAD license, after playing with the demo for a while (it's not perfect - for one thing, 3D import capablity would come in mighty handy, and it's not there yet - but it seems like it'll pretty much do what I need in a mechanical CAD package, at a decent price, and it runs under Linux).  This involved an international credit-card transaction, via WorldPay.

A few minutes later, the phone rang.  It was the credit card company, wanting to know if I'd just used my card.  Guess they're alert over there.

Now to see if VariCAD tech support will explain why, after being fed the license key, their program gives a weird error message about not being upgradeable, and refuses to run.  I have a feeling I left out a step somewhere, but, as seems to be typical, the licensing process isn't clearly documented in engineer-comprehensible terms.

(I expect it'll get sorted out.  If memory serves, I had a minor SNAFU with EAGLE when I first bought it, but all's been well since.)

Hmmm... also need to order some IPC standards, and some new cutting tools.  Especially cutting tools.  That random chunk of steel I tried to machine yesterday turned out to be some nasty grade of stainless.  Took the corners right off my best 3/8" endmill.  Heeere, carbide, carbide, carbide!  (Picking up some lumps of mild steel - and/or annealed tool steel - might be a good idea, too.)

Update: Looks like my VariCAD license problem was a function of having downloaded the version for Debian, which is out of date (took some fiddling to install it under Debian-unstable, too - it's built for the previous version of KDE, so I had to muck about with old libraries).  I grabbed the .rpm for Fedora Core 2, converted to .deb using alien, and it installed without complaints, took the license key, and seems to be running happily ever after.

Heresy!

Vis SSDB (followup here), with a link to some fine coverage at ASV,

Aieeee!
What happened to the cute wittle gway wabbit?  He was here just a moment ago....

This. Is. Just. Wrong.
The old rabbit was a cute scamp.  That new one is the stuff of nightmares.  And this is supposed to be kid stuff?
Looks like the poster boy for anorexia, too.  Have the body mass index fiends infiltrated the cartoon world?

The official word is here.  "Buzz Bunny," forsooth!  (Follow the first SSDB link to see what that means... WB might have a trademark infringement problem if they use that name!)  "Each character possesses a special crime-fighting power."  Er... crime-fighting?  Is that what Looney Tunes are about these days?  Isn't that more the territory of Superman and Batman and that crowd?  Aren't Looney Tunes all about fun, and playfulness, and gleeful, mindless violence?
(Yeah, OK, so during WWII some of the toons had special Nazi-fighting powers.  Or, rather, their normal Looney Tune powers, exercised in pursuit of military objectives - mainly, making America's enemies look like very proper Charlies.)

I like this response:

Update: Maybe the new bunny is some sort of attack rabbit?

Naw, doesn't look like that one.  The Navy's new attack rabbit?

Doesn't seem to be that one, either.  The new bunny is far more evil than either of these.

I know Easter comes early this year...

...but, come on, not this early!

Must be the Chinese New Year Bunny. Or the Lent Bunny?

(Actual retouched photo, with diabolically glowing red eyes removed.)

Update: Maybe it's the Hegirah Bunny?

Chinese New Year FAQtoids

Q: Why does Chinese New Year come in the middle of February?
A: Because it has to come all the way from China.  Have you ever had anything from China arrive in less than six weeks?  Especially around Chinese New Year?

Q: What does "Gung hay fat choy" mean?
A: It's a corruption of the Scots Gaelic phrase, "Gang hae fat joy," or, "Go have lots of fun," traditionally said (possibly in sarcastic tones) by Scotswomen to their husbands as the latter leave the house to head for the Hogmany party.  The phrase was first used in China in 1868 by the wife of Herbert Giles, as he left for the New Year's parade without her.

Q: I heard this is the Year of the Rooster.  What does that signify?
A: Chinese New Year's Eve festivities traditionally include a chicken dinner.  Every twelfth year is a Year of the Rooster; on these occasions, the year is eaten before it has even gotten started.  This reflects the traditional Chinese 12-year feast-and-famine cycle (where Egypt runs on a 14-year cycle), with the Rooster being the last year of the famine.  Pessimistic view: things will get better next year (Dog), but it's mighty slim pickin's this year.  Optimistic view: devouring the year on its first day is like swallowing a live frog first thing in the morning: nothing worse is likely to happen.

Q: How come you know all this stuff?  You're not even Chinese!
A: I'm as Chinese as Ward Churchill is Indian, and my facts are just about as good as his.

[May be updated, as inspiration strikes.]

Gazos Creek hike

It's not that much of a hike, really - about 6 miles total, basically flat, though a fair amount is on sand, which makes for harder walking - but it's a Superbowl Sunday tradition: go out to the coast, park at Gazos Creek, and hike south in search of stray elephant seals.
The forecast had been gloomy for the few days beforehand: Sunday expected to be mostly cloudy, rain arriving by evening, and so forth.  Perhaps this explains the light turnout (10 people), or maybe everybody was at Superbowl parties, or got scared away by the 4.4 earthquake Saturday morning.

Mostly cloudy, storm coming in... er, right.  It was cool and rather windy, though.
(As usual, click for larger images.)

Birds at play in the surf.

Little bitty bird, marginally out of the surf.

There was a fair bit of surf, at that.

A nice clear view of the Pigeon Point lighthouse.

The scrubby little willows seem to think it's spring already.

One large egret, on the rocks.

An arbitrary view along the coast.

Ah, the secret island of the elephant seals, seen hazily in the distance!  You can just make out the Elephant Seal Hostel.

A cluster of cormorants.

Orf!  Orf!
Hey, wait a minute!   You ain't no elephant seal!
Are sea lions supposed to have shaggy backs?  Is this one molting, or just moldy?

Behold the noble lion of the sea!
(No, I wasn't close enough to pet it, nor to offer it a herring.  "Objects in telephoto lens are not as close as they appear.")

"This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council."

This time, we found two elephant seals (and that sea lion) on the little beach where normally we find just one.  Most of the group had taken the usual route along the cliffs, and climbed down the steep trail to the beach.  I, meanwhile, had taken advantage of the low tide to walk along the rocky beach, which is why I almost tripped over the sea lion - shortly after which, I walked up onto the "beach sofa" to see why there weren't any elephant seals there, only to find, on turning around, that I'd walked up right between two of them.  They're pretty well hidden from the downhill side....

Lying on his sofa and applauding?  I guess we must have been putting on a good show for him.

This rock formation would be pretty impressive if it were more than knee high.  I don't recall having seen it before; guess I'd never been there when the tide was low enough.

There sure were a lot of these li'l snowy plovers scurrying around the beach!

Gimme!  Despite the apparent abundance of sand-dwelling creepy-crawlies for the birds to eat, they were forever trying to steal each other's food.  I guess the other plover's sand bug is always juicier.

Ah, here's our third elephant seal.  We've made our quota for the day.

Poor harbor seal... everybody's pointing cameras at him.

More plovers, also arguing over food. Hmmm... somewhere around here, there must be the proverbial plover's egg the size of an emerald!

Curiously, just a few minutes before this, we'd come across 3/5 of a starfish, and the question had arisen: "What eats starfish?"
This doesn't really answer that, but it's clearly a partial answer to the closely related question, "What tries to eat starfish?"

Open season on DVD menus?

Looks like the hot topic for gripeblogging is DVD menus!  I'll jump in....
The complaint at Instapundit and Shape of Days centers around the presence of the menus themselves, and the need to navigate through them, as opposed to just popping a DVD in the player and having it start to play automatically.
I disagree, to some extent: given that there's a bit of startup time, my usual routine for playing a DVD is to turn on the projector and player, pop in a disk, hit MUTE, and go raid the refrigerator while things get up to speed.  In this mode, it's useful to have an automatic pause after the obligatory, can't-fast-forward-over, FBI warning.
Besides, having one menu right at the beginning - "hit PLAY or choose one of these extra features" - makes the features accessible to those who haven't figured out which of the MENU buttons on the remote brings up the features menu for the disk.  (It's frequently nonobvious, and pushing the wrong menu button on the remote can get really confusing.)
What really bugs me is the animations.  Put in a disk, wander off, come back after a couple of minutes, and it's just finished the three or so animated sequences, plus FBI warning, that precede the main menu.  Can you watch it yet?  No, you have to push a button, then there's another freakin' 30-second animation, then it comes up with the "play" menu.
Oh, and why did I hit MUTE?  Because the compulsory animations aren't even quiet!
If you're using a legal DVD player (as opposed to, say, Xine or Ogle, or one of the less reputable bargain-basement players), you can't even skip or fast-forward over the animations, because the wonderful DVD companies always feel these things are so important that they have to set the bits to lock out all the controls.  At least they don't override the MUTE button.
It's enough to make me contemplate retiring my official DVD player in favor of one of those tiny PCs running non-compliant software, so I can skip directly to the movie.  (I think this would also let me watch out-of-region DVDs, though I don't have any of those to try it with.)

(Scrolling down, I see that commentors at Shape of Days have addressed this... and some other annoyances.)

Today's lesson

Never eat a fist full of artichoke garlic herb bread just before riding back over Highway 84 in the back seat of a car.

Other than that, it was a fine day... photos later (gotta weed through 107 of them).

Whatwhatwhatwhatwhat????

This can't be right!  I demand a recount!

How evil are you?

(Via Schadenfreude)

Post-Capitalist visions

Over at Harry's Place, Marcus has an edifying post on Marx's prescription for a post-Capitalist society - and much commentary on what's wrong with it.
There are a couple of items in the 10-point list that Marcus doesn't particularly address, and that get my attention - specifically, items #1 and #3.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
This makes sense in the context of a typical highly-stratified society with a bathtub-curve distribution of wealth and power: a small ruling class owns all the land, controls all the wealth, and has effective control of the government; the bulk of the population has nothing; and there's no middle class, and no mobility.  In such a society, land reform is an essential part of overall social and economic reform, and the temptation to abolish property rights outright must be strong.
On the other hand, a society with more of a bell-curve distribution of wealth - with a broad middle class having decentralized control of much of the land and wealth - the idea of putting the land under central ownership is highly regressive.
Contrary to what the fashionable pseudo-Left likes to proclaim, the wealth of the West is largely decentralized, and in the hands of ordinary people rather than a tiny oligarchy.  The "ownership society" concept (the concept, mind you, not necessarily any particular program for implementing it) emphasizes this, and aims to strengthen it, on the premise that a wide distribution of ownership is preferable to centralized control.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
Again, this makes sense from a class-struggle perspective: in a society with a bathtub-curve distribution of wealth, the rich pass on their estates to their children, while the poor pass on oly their debts.
In a society with upward mobility, however, abolishing the right of inheritance is a demotivator: parents lose the incentive to work harder for their children's future.

---

As has been noted in various places, the post-Capitalist future is emerging spontaneously, without overt revolution nor the need for central authority.  The cost of capital equipment in many industries is now low enough that an ordinary worker can easily start a small business, and potentialy have it grow into a large business.  (Of course, this doesn't apply to all industries: steel mills and shipyards are not backyard enterprises, and never will be.)
There are obstacles: small businesses may find it impossible to cope with regulations written for megacorps, and the runaway patent system (among other factors) makes any sort of new technology venture legally risky.  The big businesses have money, lawyers, and lobbyists to protect their business models against little innovators.  Also, expect the established labor unions to see decentralization as bad news; it's hard to organize a one-man shop, or to pursue an agenda defined around factory workers when the new workers are also owners.

Just stuff to think about.  This all ties in with a series of rants I've been meaning to write... but, for now, I really should be getting to work.  Especially since I'm the boss this week. Now, where'd I put my pointy wig?

This doll business is getting out of hand

Just in case anyone hadn't heard... G.I. Joe* has been taken prisoner.  (Click a few of the links.)

Well, now his diary is on line for all to read.  Husayn, never exactly a fan of al-Qaida, now regards them as "a rather bad comedy brigade."

Have the dreaded terrorist masterminds been reduced to very proper Charlies?

Update: a rescue mission is in the works.

* Technically, not G.I. Joe®, but rather one Commando Cody.

(The soldier in the recent hostage photo bears little resemblance to the Commando Cody seen in the undated photo on the left.)

Happy woodchuck day!

It's the twoth day of the twoth month, and I'm off to the dentist.

Update 1:
A Marmota monax by any other name would hog as much ground.

Update 2:
Q: If a woodchuck saw SHADO, would that mean six more weeks of UFO attacks?
A: Don't be silly.  Woodchucks are indigenous to the eastern portion of North America.  SHADO is in London.  What would a woodchuck be doing there?
Q: Perhaps it's from the zoo.
A: I don't have time for this - gotta take Tinga to the vet.

Update 3:
I guess some of those frozen Chinese dumpling thingies I nuked for lunch contained some ground hog.

Update 4:
Just back from DesignCon.  Had to drive all the way to Santa Clara through a blinding sunstorm, in 70° weather.  Dunno if I can take six more weeks of this!
DesignCon, like most of the other trade shows these days, seems to lean heavily to things I either can't afford or can't afford to use... high-end design and simulation software, ASIC foundries, IP macros for ASICs, and so on.
There were a few companies with immediately relevant products and/or services (Molex, Samtec, Sierra Proto Express).  I gathered a moderate amount of literature.
Also, I ran into some people I hadn't seen in a while... one of them I hadn't seen since high school.

Now, let me get this straight...

Am I to understand that, for the last few days, the leaders of the Free World have been meeting with Davros?
If the World Economic Forum is even contemplating an alliance with the Daleks, maybe the anti-globalization protesters are on to something.
What are they up to anyway?  Are our leaders selling us out, receiving power and effective immortality for themselves while the Daleks come to steal the Earth's core?
Just what is going on here?