Silicon Valley Redneck

WTF Gtk?

So here I am looking for a quick & dirty way to display something resembling a scope trace within an existing Ruby GUI framework, which uses Gtk.

There doesn't appear to be a handy way to turn a list of values into a curve on a drawable, but there's this thing called a Curve, which has a function called set_vector; it's apparently meant for editable curves, e.g., color-fudging curves for the GIMP and such, but mayhap it'll suffice for my display-only purposes, at least for now.

Well.  My first attempt, for an input dataset with a fixed number of traces worked kinda-sorta OK: I created Curve objects for traces 0..3, added them to the outer container, then, once the user had selected a data source, set their vectors.  Worked as well as could be expected, though I was thinking of putting each in its own window so's to have room for a bit more vertical scale.

Next up: handle a dataset from the other model (capability just added)... which can have anything up to 16 traces, and not necessarily with contiguous trace numbers.

So: read the data source first, create Curve objects as needed and add them to the container, setting the vectors along the way.

I get flat lines at Y=0.

Read back the vector: an array of NaN.  [A NaN, a NaN, a NaN, a NaN]: Batman!

WtF?

If I feed it another data source (actually, the same one again), Gtk complains bitterly about how I'm trying to re-add existing objects to the container (what with the program having been set up for a single run)... but the Curves get their vectors set properly the second time around.

It looks like, somehow, Curve needs to have been actually on the display for a while before it'll correctly handle having its vector set.

????

Oh, well: Curve doesn't really do what I want anyway.  Perhaps I should settle for massaging the data into a format that can be conveniently imported into a graphing utility.  And, later, after I migrate to Qt, I can revisit this matter.

An exercise in precise communication

I made a batch of my Seasoned Shredded Chicken.  Joy, initially skeptical of the entire concept, liked it.

Herewith, my formerly secret recipe:

Ingredients: one package boneless chicken thigh meat from the Chinese market, and stuff from the pantry.

Procedure: in the heavy aluminum pot, put some water, a moderate slosh of balsamic vinegar, a sprinkle of red pepper flakes, a fair bit of thyme, plenty of tarragon, and a little salt.  Stir.  Add a goodly slosh of olive oil, and stir some more.  Toss in the chicken meat, and unroll it and swish it around so as to get the herby liquid on all surfaces.  The liquid is almost enough to cover the meat?  Good.

Bring to a boil, reduce to low simmer, cover, and cook for a couple of hours, peeking occasionally.  When the liquid gets kind of low, poke one of the lumps with a fork.  It falls apart, right?  Good.  Tease the lumps apart into shreds, getting the liquid on the newly exposed surfaces.  Cover, and leave on simmer until the aqueous component of the liquid is nearly gone, leaving mostly oil under and around the chicken.

Stir while the last of the water evaporates.  You should now have moderately oily seasoned shredded chicken.  Turn the burner off now.

You can eat the stuff right away, as-is or maybe over rice, but it's really meant to be stuck in the refrigerator for later use in constructing burritos and similar.

So there you have it.  Simple, no?

Let's hear it for the Supreme Court!

Yes, our wonderful SCOTUS has ruled that you - yes, you, Mr. or Ms. Unemployed and Broke American - can be compelled to pay hundreds of dollars a month to Big Finance for the privilege of breathing.  And!  While you can't legally be penalized for non-compliance, you can be taxed for non-compliance.  Even if you have no income.  How this doesn't fall under the "capitation or other direct tax" clause escapes me, but apparently it's allowed by the general taxation power (which is only to be found in the Special Edition of the E Plebnista*, along with the general police power and the President's power to declare war).

* Which is kept locked away in an ornate trunk, safe from the prying eyes of the unworthy.

Meanwhile

As the world breathlessly waits to learn the fate of the Affordable Care Prevention Act - whether the Court will keep the whole thing, just throw out the air tax, or throw out the whole thing - I'm going walkies.  Gotta take care of my own health.

How not to handle a pushed update

This morning, my Android phone (HTC Incredible, Verizon) announced that it had an upgrade it wanted to install.

One very lengthy reboot later (hey, I was out on the trail with no signal anyway), I had... build 4.0.mumble of Android 2.3.4.  So, the phone hadn't transmogrified into an Ice Cream Sammitch in my pocket.

And what's new with it?  Not much obvious except:

This minor upgrade reset all my screens to more-or-less factory-default.  Looks like all (or at least most) of my downloaded apps, and their data, are still present... but I'll need to repopulate the screens with app icons and widgets where I want them.

Really, Verizon?  I expect KDE to do that sort of thing, once in a while, after an update in an -unstable distro (and, alas, in -testing these days), but production, mass-market software being pushed by a carrier should bloody well leave my configuration alone.

Update: more worser.  The following morning, 0200ish, I was awakened by "DROID".  Then it did it again a few minutes later.  Then again a few minutes after that.

Reboot loop WTF???  Turned the bugger off, and went back to sleep.  On waking up properly, I did a bit of searching, and found this: seems there's a humongous update in process involving multiple reboots over a 3 hour span.  From 0200 to 0500, when, yeah, the typical customer won't be trying to use his phone, but might very well be trying to sleep... and having the phone loudly announce that it's rebooting, repeatedly, is bound to cause alarm.

And, y'know, the update that installed yesterday?  Asked for permission to install itself and reboot.  Though it wasn't altogether housebroken about installing itself.

Update 2: the morning after the previous update, the phone spent roughly 0200 to 0500 chanting "DROID" to itself.  This time, I didn't interfere, except for turning the sound off, after which it continued playing "Main screen turn on" every few minutes.

After all this hubbub, it's at Android version 2.3.4, kernel version 2.6.35.13, and build number 4.08.605.15.

No, I don't remember what the version numbers were a couple of days ago, before this all started.

Update 3: Saturday night, I put the phone on silent, to avoid awakenment by any further droidery-chantery.  Being sporadically awake anyway during the interval of interest, I didn't notice the phone being lit up, so maybe it's done being peculiar.

Another revelation

I just realized why certain politicians are so obsessed with bayonet lugs, and the urgency of banning same.

It's because you should never bring a knife to a gunfight!

Revelation of the Century!!!!1!

Actual headline in today's Murky News:

Asians in U.S. a varied lot

Ya think?

(Maybe, years from now, it'll even be socially acceptable for Filipinos not to express solidarity with the Japanese over the events of the 1940s...?  Naw, who am I kidding?)

Market day

I finally got around to checking out the Sunnyvale Farmers' Market.

It's a modest-sized market morning, spread out over a larger area than the Palo Alto one (so, less crowded!) and with a decent amount of nearby parking.

Plenty of fresh fruits & vegetables on offer, as well as baked goods, specialty prepared foods, and hot lunches.

Resisting the vast quantity of blueberries on offer (my bushes are producing now, and I'd just had my first homegrown-blueberry muffins of the season), I escaped with a few nectarines, rather a lot of ripe-smelling strawberries, and a dozen free-range eggs - quite a bit pricier than grocery-store eggs, but, if these are anything like the ones I sometimes get from Deer Hollow Farm, there ees a deeferance!

Anyway: that needs to get added to my weekly shopping routine, now that I've seen where it is and what's on offer.

Update: meh.  These particular farmers'-market free-range eggs are somewhat better than grocery-store eggs, but not that much better.  Back to the much cheaper ones from the store, unless I happen to be passing the farm when eggs are available, in which case I'll get the farm-direct, fresh-this-morning ones.

Resembles an idea I had back around '96

...but did nothing with.

Behold, the inflatable-frame tent!

My concept was somewhat different, involving a high-pressure pneumatic skeleton more or less embedded in the lightweight tent fabric - so, it'd look like a nice clean dome, without the clunky external structure.  Inspired, as I recall, by a combination of pondering current backpacking gear and re-reading a sci-fi novel (Imperial Earth?) that had a bit on futuristic backpacking tech.

 

TSA intercepts twonky!

Seems TSA screeners in SF caught someone trying to get on a plane with a futuristic artifact.

And we all know what it means when someone from the future tries to get on a plane, right?

Awww...

Hey, CadSoft (or Element14, or somebody) is having a design competition!

And I've got a flurry of nifty designs in the works, and I'm using version 6 of EAGLE, and...

Aw, the contest requires incorporation of a Microchip MCU.  I'm using NXP, ST, and Atmel MCUs, and some Microchip support chips, but I haven't used a PIC in, what, 20 years?

I have some interest in Microchip's 32-bit (MIPS-based) parts, but haven't found the Copious Free Time to investigate them.

Now, one of the designs that's using an AVR is just doing low-level bit fiddling, and I suppose getting sufficiently back up to speed on PIC architecture to accomplish that wouldn't take all that long... but, given all the other stuff I'll be needing to get up to speed on in the next few months, I think I'll pass on this one.  (Hmmm... though a PIC that looks like it'd work in that role is a tad cheaper than the AVR I picked out.  But!  I'm not familiar with in-system programming of the current generation of PICs, nor do I have current PIC development tools.)

Now, if they had an ST-related contest... one of my gadgets is practically an ST showcase (apart from the physically largest component on the board being a Freescale product, and various support chips coming from NXP, TI, and, yes, Microchip).

Do I gotta start wearing a top hat now?

An hour ago I couldn't spell antrep entrip entrepon capitalist oppressor, and now I are one!

Turns out, if'n you file a Schedule C with expenses, yer supposed to have a business license... and California has just started notifying cities of denizens who are dutifully filling out their proper tax forms.

So I'd gotten this letter from the city, see, and after much puzzling over the enclosed form (I'm not much good at forms at the best of times) I decided to take the partly-filled-in form down to City Hall and try to get things sorted out.

Fortunately, this is Sunnyvale.

Walk in the front door of City Hall: there's the "One-Stop Permit Center" or some such, consisting of a desk with a bubbly helpful person behind it, and a complete lack of bulletproof glass.  Yes, this is the right desk for my first stop.  Takes a few minutes to get me straightened out on what needs to go in some of the blanks.

Next up: needs Planning Commission approval.  Walk about 10 feet, have a seat, wait 30 seconds or so from the helpful planning person to show up and spend a couple of minutes going over the form and assisting with the other bits I'd been unclear on, then sign off on it.

Then off to the Finance Department in the next building.  License fees for this year and next, plus the last three years (penalties and interest waived).  At around $30/year, not too bad.

Elapsed time, well under half an hour (I neglected to bring a stopwatch).

Oh, and there's a Page of Rules for home businesses.  Like, no advertising signs, business visitors by appointment only, no detonating work-related explosives in the yard, that kind of stuff.

It doesn't detail the Official Capitalist Oppressor Uniform.  Guess I need to review 1984 to refresh my memory on how a member of the oppressor class is required to dress.

Free-associating on a low-quality image

Yesterday morning's fishwrap had something about that new movie, The Runes on Weyland's Yutani Prometheus.

Had a picture with various images, presumably from the film, kind of blended together.

In which condition, something spaceship-like came across as having a certain Firefly-esque quality, what with sticky-out engine pods and whatnot.

And I thought I heard, somewhere, that the Alienses had some human ancestry?

So: are the Reavers the missing link?

(And now I'm trying to mix up "The Runes on Weland's Sword" with "Tarrant Moss.")

Reminder

Tomorrow is National If You Can't Say Something Nice About Convicted Domestic Terrorist Bomber Brett Kimberlin Then Don't Say Anything At All Day.

 

Hey, it's the Protocol Day of the Beast!

6/6, IPv6: at last, every electron in the known Universe can be numbered with its very own IP address!

I don't have near-term plans to do anything with IPv6.  Haven't even asked what my ISP's plans are, and there's no immediate incentive to add IPv6 support to AGROS (being as how networked devices using AGROS are, so far, intended for use on extremely local, tightly-managed networks).

I voted Wookie!

...But I can't prove it, courtesy of voting in person using a big friendly anonymous cardboard mark-sense ballot - thanks, Debra!

Anyway, in the one and only Republican primary election, the only candidates on offer were Mittens, Spink-Bottle's friend, Chewbacca, the sweater-vest guy, a perennial fringe candidate, and some guy I'd never even heard of before.  So, Chewie it is.

I predict the outcome of the U.S. Senate primary!  The two candidates allowed onto the general election ballot will be DiFi and a name pulled out of a hat at random.

And, thinking back: when I first heard of this wacko scheme for a combined primary, with the general election becoming a two-candidate runoff, my first reaction was, "That's a solution to a problem that was proven not to exist by the Gray Davis recall election."  My second reaction?  "Ya know, in some races we'll probably end up with the general election ballot offering a choice between two Democrats."

State Senate, District 13?  The primary features three Democrats and a Libertarian (which shows how useless the California Republican Party is).  I boldly predict that, come November, we'll be offered a choice between two Democrats.

And the U.S. Senate race points out the real effect of this new system: the incumbent gets a huge advantage - basically, a nearly-guaranteed spot on the ballot (which has always been the case) vs. an essentially randomly-chosen challenger.

Update: how's this for a perverse outcome?

Alarming demographic observation

Joy notes that attendance at Indian dance classes has dropped off dramatically - not the usual summer-vacation decline as families go on out-of-phase 3-week vacations, but a sharp and drastic drop as families move back to India for keeps as school lets out here.

I'm assuming this is based on rational economic considerations overriding the investment they've made, over the last couple of decades, in building Indian-friendly communities around the Bay Area.

Hey, the departure of guest workers will reduce the unemployment statistics, right?  We may still have fewer jobs, but they'll be divided by a smaller workforce!  Uh... win?

Hey! Classical radio is back! (Almost.)

Looks like KDFC* will be returning to the local electromagnetic radiation in the middle of the month!

The announcement says June 15th @ 1900.  Gotta set my ACR**.

 

* A radio station, having nothing to do with Deep-Fried Chicken.

** Audio-Cassette Recorder, duh!

Unintended consequences

It hasn't quite gone into effect yet, but still: effective June 20th, local stores are forbidden to use plastic bags (for which I, personally, never had much use) and required to charge 10¢/bag for paper bags.

Well, I've already mostly gotten into the pattern of bringing my own woven-plastic bag when shopping for groceries, so that's no huge deal.

But...!

For the last forever years, I've been lining the kitchen bin with paper grocery bags.

I just used the last one.

Ergo, I shall henceforth be purchasing plastic bin liners just to line the kitchen bin, rather than repurposing used paper bags.

Was this really the idea?