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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.

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    Saturday, May 25th, 2013
    kate_nepveu
         		9:46p
    obligatory WisCon connections post
     If we have met at WisCon (or didn't talk but encountered each other via panel or suchlike), please feel free to say hi! Especially if I may not connect up journal handle with face/badge/etc.--comments are screened (and DW lets us talk without unscreening).

    comment count unavailable comment(s) | add comment (how-to) | link
    kate_nepveu
         		9:28p
    Wiscon: Dispelling Trans Myths 2
     Panel notes! It's easier to tidy up reports of other people than recreate my own, so this one comes first.

    ( Read more...Collapse )

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    james_nicoll
         		6:46p
    More developments in Ford Saga

    The brother of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has vehemently denied allegations in Saturday's Globe and Mail that he was involved in the illicit drug trade in the 1980s.



    The Star's account.

    Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are comment count unavailable comment(s); comment here or there.
    carandol
         		10:59p
    Short story
     Teaspoons!  Where would we be without them?

    Still in that prison cell.

    Shush.
    tanais
         		12:00p
    My tweets
    redbird
         		2:24p
    too tired for proper panel writeups
     So far I have been to Intergenerational LGBT Dialogue, which included a bunch on shifting vocabularies and how those reflect and/or can help shape self-identification; the delightful Imaginary Book Club (each panelist described/reviewed an imaginary book, and the others then commented on it, including inventing reviews they had seen, fanfic, possible movie adaptations, etc.; and most of the Xenogenesis. I wish I had reread the books pre-con (and might have if I had read the program schedule in time). (Good panel, I left for purely physical reasons.)

    I am underslept, possibly jet lagged, and taking some time in the room to talk to Adrian by IM.

    Cross-posted from Dreamwidth (http://redbird.dreamwidth.org/1386960.html), where there are comment count unavailable comments. I welcome comments here or there (OpenID and "anonymous" are fine if you don't have a DW account).
    gridlore
         		12:00p
    My tweets
    supergee
         		2:19p
    james_nicoll
         		1:53p
    Spotted in various places
     Adventure Rocketship! is a new magazine in book form [...]

    How many bookazines have there been over the years?

    Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are comment count unavailable comment(s); comment here or there.
    james_nicoll
         		1:48p
    Hope Johnson's The Natural Satellites Song -

    Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are comment count unavailable comment(s); comment here or there.
    james_nicoll
         		1:34p
    CBS Radio Workshop:The Enormous Radio (based on a story by John Cheever)
     The Enormous Radio

    A couple's seemingly perfect life is disrupted when their new, expensive [1] radio turns out to allow them to listen in on other tenants in their building. This leads to a series of increasing disturbing revelations, ones the wife can never unhear.

    I think Mind Webs did this as well.


    1: $400 in 1947 $ = ~$4100 in current US dollars.

    Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are comment count unavailable comment(s); comment here or there.
    andrewducker
         		6:37p
    Adventures in Networking (and history)
     My Dad got himself a Synology NAS box for backup purposes, and I spent a chunk of time today setting it up.

    The major thing that took time to work past was that the insulation that permeates the upper floor is covered in aluminium, and the wireless router that covers this end of the house is sitting on the other side of it from the Synology.

    So we made a trip to Maplin, bought some Powerline* kit, a switch and a bunch of network cables, and moved his TV, Sky box, and the NAS over to hardlinks rather than wireless connections. Now it all just works.

    The funniest bit was the insert in the switch - switches are ancient technology (particularly this one, which is 10/100MBit, because the Gigabit ethernet switch was larger for the same number of ports), and clearly this one had been sitting on a shelf for a long time. It came with an insert that was advertising BTOpenWorld business internet connections. A shiny new form of internet connection that could, apparently, give speeds of up to _2,000_Kbps, so long as the computer it was plugged into had 32MB of RAM, a 4-speed CD-ROM and either Windows 2000 or an Apple Mac running on PowerPC 601 or equivalent running Mac OS 8.6 or higher...

    *Sends networking signals over the electrical cables. Incredibly handy if you can't run networking cables absolutely everywhere.


    Original post on Dreamwidth - there are comment count unavailable comments there.
    james_nicoll
         		1:31p
    CBS Radio Workshop: The Toledo War
     The Toledo War

    This is a musical using as its subject matter the 1835–36 conflict between Michigan and Ohio War over the exact location of the boundary between Michigan and Ohio.

    Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are comment count unavailable comment(s); comment here or there.
    nwhyte
         		6:07p
    2013 Hugos: Best Novelette
     Now that the Hugo Voter Pack is out, I'm working through the various folders and files; in response to one query, all the fiction (as far as I've checked) is available in .mobi and .epub formats as well as PDF. I've been reading them on iPhone/iPad in Kindle format (ie .mobi).

    I liked this list more than the novels but less than the novellas. There was one that I felt definitely should not win, and my top vote is not very far ahead of my fourth.

    ( and my votes are:Collapse )

    See also: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
    liam_on_linux
         		4:43p
    Why did Symbian lose out to bigger, slower, less-efficient OSes?
     Symbian was OK. EPOC, its progenitor, was in some ways better. (I write as a Psion owner, user and -- TBH -- fan.)

    AIUI, and I do not have good solid references on this, EPOC was a very early adopter of C++ as opposed to plain old C, and as a result, it did many things in extremely nonstandard ways compared to later C++ practice. Its string handling, error handling and all sorts of things was very weird and proprietary compared to the way that the greater C++ community ended up doing.

    This meant that by the time EPOC turned into Symbian and entered the wider, more competitive market of cellphones, its "proprietariness" counted strongly against it. If you wanted to develop on Symbian, you had to learn the weird Symbian ways of doing things, not the ways that worked on Windows or Unix or Mac.

    Also, everything was very in-house - a bad case of NIMBY-ism, but they had no choice, because when they started out, the standards didn't exist. So one of the reasons for Nokia's acquisition of TrollTech for Qt was that Qt on Symbian would have been a more standard way of building apps for Symbian than using native Symbian tools - and since Qt is cross-platform, in theory, you could port a Qt app from Window or Linux or MacOS to Symbian (or /vice versa/) far more easily.

    However, this meant that Qt-based Symbian apps were much bigger and slower than "traditional" Symbian apps. This made them uncompetitive with native Symbian apps, and meant that Symbian phones had to become bigger and more powerful in order to compete with Android and iOS and so on. Traditonal Symbian was tiny and its apps were tiny. So, vicious circle: Nokia had to tempt developers to Symbian. This meant making it easier to port to, or write for, Symbian.

    They chose Qt, over internal dissent. Result, more apps, but bigger less efficient apps. Meaning they needed to up the spec of the phones. Meaning that they threw away Symbian's core advantage - that it was tiny, used little power and could run quickly and responsively on low-spec phones. Which meant cheaper phones and kept Symbian competitive in the market.

    The pre-Symbian smartphone OS, inasmuch as there was one, was GEOS - a Commodore-64 derived [yes, seriously] multitasking layer on top of MS-DOS [yes, really]. This meant a 386-based phone.

    Symbian scored over that because it ran on the much smaller, much more efficient ARM chips.

    Then once ARM chips caught up, Unix came to ARM chips - Apple's iOS is a Unix, Android is Linux which is a Unix, some of the early Chinese smartphone (and PDA) OSes were Linux-based too. So the ARM hardware suddenly  expanded and got more RAM and more storage and more MHz, in order to run Unix and Unix GUIs well.

    Result, easier development of pocket-platform apps, using existing desktop Unix tools.

    Result of that, Symbian is now competing with a bigger, more capable OS with decades more development and a huge range of tools - many of them free, as were many of the OSes.

    With hindsight, there's a sort of majestic inevitability to it all, but it was not really possible to see it coming.

    For example, I had a Sharp Zaurus - the SL-5500, with its weird little slide-out keyboard. That would be about 2003, 2004 when I got it. (I had 2 actually.)

    They were clever, but dreadful. Linux on a 200MHz CPU with 64MB of RAM, no swap, and just 16MB of permanent storage in the form of Flash - so, yes, less "hard disk" than RAM! - was not a good platform. It was slow, it was unresponsive, with so little memory it was unstable, and it *ate* batteries. Pocket sized device, laptop battery life: 2hr or so.

    At that time, it was "obvious" that this wasn't competitive and that Symbian had compelling advantages.

    By 5y after the first Linux Zaurus appeared, the first iPhone appeared, essentially running NeXTStep - i.e. FreeBSD on Mach - in your pocket, and it was smooth and fast and gorgeous and really stable.

    By the time that was out, it was just a matter of counting the days for Symbian.

    What Apple did, Android copied, but with FOSS tools. (Early Android was a Blackberry ripoff. That was hastily dumped and replaced with a finger/touchscreen UI that was clearly directly inspired by iOS.)

    Once the pocket hardware caught up, there was no need for a weird, proprietary, lightweight, paid-for pocket OS when you could use a free one and free tools for a better development environment and a better user experience.

    So Symbian had its time in the sun and it did OK.

    I believe Symbian phones continued to (and maybe  still do) sell well in the developing world, where people don't have landlines or indeed mains electricity and they are all jumping directly to cellphones and mobile-phone Internet. These markets are /extremely/ price-sensitive and thus the fact that a Symbian phone could run well with a quarter of the CPU speed, RAM and Flash storage of an Android phone meant that you could sell them at a profit for US$100 or less.
    But the gap is narrowing. Look at the Raspberry Pi. Half a gig of RAM and three-quarters of a gigaHertz sold at a profit for $35. That's usable with Android and more so with lower-end pocket Linux OSes such as FirefoxOS (which in a way is Palm WebOS but done with more mature, all-Free tech.)
    james_nicoll
         		11:39a
    I don't know if this is true for other people
     Few things kill my WSOD as quickly as legal procedurals where the lawyers and cops make reference to the possibility of the death penalty in legal regimes that do not have the death penalty.

    Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are comment count unavailable comment(s); comment here or there.
    nwhyte
         		5:32p
    Ten years on: my Livejournal anniversary
     slemslempike pointed out to me the other day that 21 May was the tenth birthday of this Livejournal. Happy birthday to it! This was the first entry, in which I met both Neil Gaiman and the then prime minister of Serbia, though I have since imported into LJ entries from two previous desultory attempts at blogging.

    Livejournal is not what it was. My backdated f-list page from the day I started it has about 150 entries of the same date; ten years on it's more like 50. Glad to see that some people are still posting just as much now as they did then (and you know who you are, or at least you will when you look at the page); some have drifted away entirely, but others are simply expressing themselves elsewhere these days. I guess the peak may have been around 2005-2006, before the lure of Facebook and Twitter and the irritations of LJ's policies and performance eroded the momentum. I'm aware that I don't post as often as I did in the hey-day, or comment as much as I used to on other people's posts; I agree with whoever it was that suggested that those of us who are now reading stuff online on devices with crappy keyboards (or no keyboards at all) write less than we used to, because it is a less pleasant experience. I detected a modest revival of fortunes in LJ activity last year, but I doubt that it will ever return to former heights.

    I've enjoyed it though, and I think I will keep it up until there is good reason to stop. I do like LJ's archiving of my thoughts about life, as opposed to the black hole of Facebook and the brevity of Twitter, and I regularly back up with ljarchive and onto mirrors at dreamwidth and my own site. I have got to know some very pleasant and very interesting people here - most recently I met webcowgirl, before her I think the aforementioned slemslempike. I'm sorry to have lost those who have gone - particularly thinking here of blue_condition, who I never met but who I had many excellent exchanges with before his unexpected departure from the scene, and also xnamkrad, davidstewart and astromachy. Stay well, the rest of you, and keep writing when you can.
    netmouse
         		8:39a
    It's moving time!
     Moving is upon us.

    Rosie and I fly to MI on Sunday. I pretty much have our bags packed. Brian follows with truck full of household and both cars (and two friends to help drive) on Wednesday. One of those friends arrives this afternoon to help pack. One way or another, it's going to happen.

    It's interesting to see Rosie adjusting and having moments of sadness, especially this last week as we see friends for the last time.

    She was also sad when Brian went away to a conference for a few days last week, and she was just extra cuddly with him last night as he put her to bed. I think she understands we're going to be apart from him the rest of the week. So sweet to see her love for her daddy.

    It's going to be hard on her though -- he's only home one day in MI, then off again to another conference for 3 days.

    It's going to be challenging for me too, but I understand more about why and whatnot.

    Anyway, we've read a few books about moving over the past year, including one I really like called The Goodbye Day. So I think she understands what's happening. She's a smart kiddo. Going to be 3 in August and she's already as tall and as verbal as most 3-year-olds.

    It's been a busy couple of weeks. While Brian was at a conference last Saturday to Tuesday, my sister came for a visit, and we three took a two day trip along the Jemez Scenic Byway/ highway 4 to see pueblos and Bandelier National Monument. It was a great trip that ended dramatically -- after a fun hike around the main loop to see caves carved in the walls of the canyon, navigating steep stairs and climbing up and down 12-ft ladders and such, I twisted my ankle and fell on the mostly flat path 30 ft from the visitor center, paved with rocky asphalt.

    I went down forward, with Rosie on my back in the pack.

    I hit with my knees and hands and I thought I had it, but her weight kept going over my head, and bowled me over. I ducked my head and planted the top of my head in the asphalt but I couldn't stop Rosie from hitting the ground. Luckily Sarah caught the pack right about then by the handle on the back, So Rosie got only superficial scrapes on her face, without her weight behind them. She has a tiny perfect red spot right on the end of her nose... I think here's where we bless our stars that toddler noses are still mostly cartilage... She says neither her nose nor her neck are hurting.

    She was mostly just shocked, and I was mostly just scared for her until I knew she was ok. I have a skinned knee and a lightly sprained ankle that I was able to walk on right away. Some truly lovely people-- two chiropractors -- stopped to take care of us, helped me over to a nearby picnic table, helped clean us up and apply bandages, got us ice and water and such. We used Brian's first aid kit to good effect. Helpful to have an eagle scout in the family!

    It was ok. We were ok. Later in the week she woke up hungry in the middle of the night and I sat with her. The subject of the weekend trip came up.

    "I was brave to ride in the backpack," she said.
    "Mm-hmm," I answered.
    "We fell. It was bad."
    "Mm-hmm," I said again.
    "I did a good job taking care of momma."
    "Yes, you did!" I said, and gave her a big hug.

    She also had her last day at her preschool. Lots of goodbyes. Her teachers gave her really nice cards we will save for her.

    I've had some moments of sadness too, of course. We have made some really good friends here. And it's been a good house, with huge bedrooms that have frankly spoiled us. But the new house in Ypsi will be a good house too.
    catsittingstill
         		8:44a
    Dutch
      The other day I was listening to a song Eli sent me (Buiten Spelen by Kinderen voor Kinderen if people are interested) and I understood two whole lines by myself.  "I'm going to play outside.  Come with me!"  I was very pleased.  I was getting prases in the middle like "it's nice in the sun" and "I see birds" and then I stopped (I was taking my walk) and looked down at my MP3 player.  Was this kid really singing about bird poop?  Well, it is a kid's song, so maybe so.  When I went home and googled the lyrics, yes, bird poop was (briefly) involved.

    I've figured out a few things about Dutch.  There are these syllables that go on the front of verbs (think un and re--and like un and re they are only useable with some verbs), and modify the meaning (not in an consistent way, alas, and some become detached from their verbs under some circumstances and some don't) and this is why the past participle is not always formed by putting a "ge" on the front of the verb--if it has another of these syllables on it, it doesn't get a "ge"; the past participle is formed in some other way.  Hopefully this will be less random and confusing now that I have noticed this pattern.

    Ik moet nu andere dingen gaan doen.  (I must go do other things now.)  Ik zal gauw meer schrijven. (I will write more soon.)  De mammoetjes zein "Dag!" (The mimmoths say "hello!" (or "goodbye" the word is used for both.))


    agirlnamedluna
         		2:00p
    My tweets
    feorag
         		12:00p
    My tweets
    marypcb
         		12:00p
    My tweets
    • Fri, 17:18: TechRadar Pro: How to set up DLP policies with Exchange Online - Using rules and policies for data loss prevention http://t.co/pnRqfFB1yL
    • Fri, 17:33: Even chained, Promtheus held fire, technology and love of mankind in his hands; that's what educators should have hold of #fire2013
    • Fri, 17:59: RT @sbisson: "Transparency is not a magic bullet: but it is the core of capitalism, law, science. Without it they stifle and die" @davidbri…
    • Fri, 18:01: groupthink and fashion? RT @tomspilman: We're Indie, we like Microsoft. Too Controversial? http://t.co/CIyc1bA3iU
    • Fri, 18:06: tech gives us always-on info level of gossipy village we can make supportive or intrusive says David Brin; might not be us making the choice
    • Fri, 18:08: RT @Mark_J_Perry: Prepare to Start Making Things Again; Why US nat gas boom is good news for US manufacturing and bad news for China http:/…
    • Fri, 18:14: RT @edbott: You don't have to be completely clueless about customer service to get in the domain registrar business, but apparently it help…
    • Fri, 18:16: RT @jtwentyman: TOP TIP: If you're asking a journalist for pre-publication copy approval, you probably shouldn't be talking to journalists …
    • Fri, 18:20: RT @jnack: Chinese Photoshop Trolls Are Way Funnier Than American Photoshop Trolls http://t.co/w7tp015XrJ
    • Fri, 18:25: Silicon Valley feedback to criticism of SV inequality does a fairly good job of proving the original point http://t.co/VzOy1wm3WM
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    sbisson
         		12:00p
    My tweets
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    tamaranth
         		12:00p
    My tweets
    • Fri, 15:57: "Horsemeat firm used migrants to boost production". Yummy migrants! (Dear @guardian, you might want to reword this front-web-page link...)
    andrewducker
         		12:00p
    Interesting Links for 25-05-2013
    Original post on Dreamwidth - there are comment count unavailable comments there.
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