Back in February, we lost our laptop to a tragic toddler and milk accident. We lost a lot of things, and we have restored almost all that we could. One item I was anxious to restore was some of my Image Editor work.
Anyhow, last night, I was finally able to get things back in order. After one failed attempt to find a good Java decompiler, I sat down a couple of nights ago and quickly found one that was promising. It even integrated right into eclipse.
The long and short of it is, The Shtick Image Editor is back in production.
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16/07: The Essetz and the Tilde.
While doing some indexing as part of the FamilySearch Indexing project recently, I came across the following name: Williã
To me it was a no-brainer that the name was William, but I suspect most people might have been inclined to mistake the tilde for a stray mark. However, the mark was no stray. The name Williã occurred 3 times on the image I was indexing, each time with a tilde over the a. The reason why I knew what it meant was because of the two years I spent in Portugal. Over there, (as well as in Brazil and other Portuguese speaking countries) the tilde is a very common mark. It is used as an accent mark which nasalizes a vowel/diphthong.
Since I was in Portugal, I had the opportunity to visit a lot of the old castles and read the old inscriptions, where I learned that the tilde was once a very common shorthand for indicating that a nasal consonant (m/n) was to follow. So, instead of writing "verano" (as you might find in modern Spanish), they would write "verão", but the pronunciation would have been the same as if they had opted to write "verano". I don't know how they pronounced it, but I always imagine the 'n' being very distinct. (I have recently noted that in French, the 'n' is still written, but is often very indistinct and has the effect of nasalizing the preceding vowel sound, having much the same effect as the current Portuguese tilde accent mark.) In such inscriptions you would often find this abbreviation used almost anywhere where there might be an 'm' or 'n'. However, nowadays the Portuguese only use the tilde in specific words and it is not considered a short-hand... that's just how the word is spelled.
I always thought of this as a purely Portuguese convention, so I was surprised to see the convention so clearly manifest in Essex during the late 1500's.
I was reminded of another similar short-hand that I'd come across a year or two ago in US census records of the mid-1800's. (was it Arkansas?) In this case I was trying to search for a Helen Cason who for a long time had been dodging me. I finally found a likely candidate in the 1880 census living as a niece of one John LeBass. So working with this, I set out to see how John LeBass might connect to the Cason Family. In my searching I came across what at first appeared to be a John Labop. However, the match was too good in other respects and what I quickly realized was that I was seeing an example of an old convention for writing the 'S', especially as part of a double-s. To be precise, there once used nto be two forms of the lower-case 's'. One was the form we are all accustomed to using today, but the other looked almost exactly like an lower-case 'f', so much so, in fact, that I've always had an extremely hard time telling the two apart. I was mainly accustomed to seeing the style in much older documents, but here it was. The funny f-looking 's' was used in different ways by different writers, but it would seem that the Germans eventually settled on using the f-looking 's' as the first 's' whenever two were required. This is the origin of the essetz, which is a funny combination of the two characters that looks like a capital 'B' with an open bottom: ß.
Anyhow, as it turned out, both the Cason's and the LeBass's had married into the Frost family. John's wife Volumnia Frost was the half-sister of Helen's mother, Mary Frost, and Helen had gone to live with her aunt and uncle after the apparent death of her own mother and father. The orthography, however, was the icing on the cake for me.
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The main point I see after analyzing the law, is that it doesn't match what anybody is telling us about it. We are told that Proposition 17 is creating a discount that was never there before, or, from other sources, that the discount is being newly allowed to have continuity from insurer to insurer. None of these claims seem to be true. (Though I could not find a good legal analysis by anybody making such claims, which I would find immensely helpful.)
For my part, I have done my own analysis of both the proposition, as well as the Attorney General's analysis of the proposition.
My analysis:
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As part of my research into judicial candidates this year, I crafted a question to email out to the judicial candidates in my area. The letter I came up with read as follows (italicized text was omitted in Mark Ameli's letter, as he was the first I emailed):
As a voter, I was wondering if you could offer me some brief thoughts on what the rule of law means to you, and what responsibility you see individual citizens as having in promoting their own welfare, and the welfare of society, and what kinds of limitations you see to that responsibility.
I had at first considered crafting a letter that asked about thoughts on specific current events, but I had my doubts that such a question would be well received, so I crafted this letter instead, with a question that is fairly obtuse, but which I felt might reveal something about the candidates' ways of thinking about the relationship between the people and the law.
I have thus far received 6 responses, and will update this blog entry if I receive any more. The responses I have received follow, in the order received:
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It's time again for my voter guide.
Much as I did in my last voter guide, I'll begin with a summary of my recommendations, for simplicity, and then continue with some review of the candidates and measures. With as much as there is to cover, I'm going to leave out partisan races, as well as the county assessor. My review of candidates will be bullet-pointed facts and source materials.
After having gone through this for this year, I think that I may want to move this to a wiki format some time in the future, and recruit others to help me. It is hard to research this many issues in a timely manner with as busy as I am. With a wiki, my research could be updated as I went, making much of the information available sooner.
The official California Voter Information Guide can be found at http://www.voterguide.sos.ca.gov/
Summary of Recommendations
State Propositions/Measures
- 13 - Yes
- 14 - No
- 15 - No
- 16 - No
- 17 - No
Judicial Offices
- 28 - Edward J. Nison
- 35 - Soussan (Suzanne) Bruguera
- 73 - Laura A. Matz
- 107 - R. Stephen Bolinger
- 117 - Pattricia M. Vienna
- 131 - Maren Elizabeth Nelson
Superintendent of Public Instruction
Alexia L. DeligianniAnalysis
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22/04: The Bilirubin Battle Blog
Cassey gave birth to a healthy baby boy at 6:56AM on April the 8th. (That was this past Thursday.) The hospital was St. Francis in Lynwood.
Compared to Bellflower Medical Center, the staff at St. Francis was much more friendly. They didn't forget to bring Cassey her meals, and they let Cassey have her baby as a rule, not just when she asked for the baby. The Bellflower staff kept Jasher separated from Cassey for long periods of time, and instead of bringing the baby to the mother to eat, they would sometimes bottle-feed, which was most alarming after the trouble we had getting Ephraim to breast-feed. (We couldn't get him to breast-feed, which, fortunately, is a difficulty we have not had since.) When I had questions, the St. Francis staff were willing (and obligated by policy) to answer.
The downsides are, that they charge for parking (I and my wife could get parking validated, but they weren't very forthcoming with that detail), and they had this odd and discomfiting policy whereby only hospital staff are allowed with the patient while they prepare her and her room for delivery. To me, that is a fundamental failure to see to the safety and comfort of the patient. Like having a lawyer in court, we should all have the right to an advocate at the hospital.
The hospital is one of many places where we would hope that people have our best interests in mind, but this is not always the case. It is, in fact, very often not the case. School guidance counseling is another similar scenario, but the level of vulnerability isn't the same. I'm not saying guidance counselors, nurses, and doctors are all evil. However, they do not really work for us like we would like them to. They work for schools, hospital, insurance companies, etc. They have enrollment quotas, hospitals, principles, insurance companies, malpractice insurers, and a host of other interests which can very often take precedence over our paltry best interests.
The day Cassey had the Baby, a pediatrician attached to the hospital came to visit and announced that he would be our baby's pediatrician proceeded to presumptuously talk about care our child would be receiving from him in the future. This being our third child, of course, we already had a pediatrician, and the overall impression I was left with was that this guy was hard up for patients. As soon as he left, my mother-in-law expressed the same feeling I had, that this guy was angling for a new patient. Little did we know how underhanded he would be.
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01/03: Spilt Milk and More
As many of my readers are likely aware, Jasher KO'd my laptop a few weeks ago, with a dash of liquid (milk), like it was the Wicked Witch of the West.
The witch took all her data with her.
I back up my code every once in a while, so I didn't lose much there (though I'd just created a new UML component that I think is now gone), however, family photos will be hard to replace. (Mom, we'll be looking into getting a copy of that CD we sent you for your Birthday, and anything else of that nature we might have sent.)
Anyhow, the old computers were not faring too well, but I just got my bonus at work, so we got a new computer for under $500, which arrived Saturday. I also picked up an external hard drive which I will be using to do regular backups. (I'll be keeping it disconnected and unplugged between backups in order to minimize the chance that an issue will be able to affect both hard drives.)
The new computer, oddly enough, came with Windows Vista, but that's just fine because that's what I had before, and I was quite pleased with it.
My old desktop was highly unstable, so it will be retiring.
Cassey's desktop picked up a virus last week, so I formatted and installed Ubuntu, which was trickier than usual. The Ubuntu install CD was complaining that it couldn't find a medium with a live filesystem. I finally realized that the CD-ROM drive I was using, was set to secondary slave, but that there was no secondary master. Windows hadn't been complaining, but it's not exactly a kosher configuration, so I figured Linux might have been having trouble with it. Once I got the drive switched to secondary master, things worked fine.
I've begun the process of restoring my code and setting up the new machine to do what I need it to do. However, we're also having Internet connectivity issues. We had these issues before, but it seems to have gotten worse. I think our recent rainstorm might have exacerbated an issue. The problem seems to be somewhere between my router and my ISP.
The front yard is getting prepared for grass and flower planting, and the back yard is being made suitable for Ephraim's upcoming birthday.
I've planted tomato, bell pepper, jalapeno, and onion seeds and I'm starting to see some sprouts, but I plan on waiting until after Ephraim's birthday to put them in the ground. If all turns out well, we'll have most of what we need for salsa canning this summer.
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A week ago, Cassey said she thought there was a cat in our attic.
I said "no way, it's just a cat on the roof".
I clearly wasn't keeping in mind the second law of marriage, which is, "the wife is always right". Sure enough, it wasn't long before I got a call from my wife while I was at work. Something in the attic had meowed at her and scampered away when she opened the hatch to peek in.
I'd never been in my attic before. I had many ponderings on the subject. I was certain the insulation was awful, and I was curious as to the state of the wiring and plumbing.
We have two attic hatches, one in the addition at the back and one in the original portion of the house, which is in the front. (Cassey's experience occurred in the addition.) I began my investigation last night by opening up the hatches and shining the flashlight around to see if I could get the attention of the cat (if it was still around). Nothing seemed to happen, so I followed this up by walking around the house looking for likely holes. However, all the vents were in good condition (and rather small for a cat), and nothing else seemed unusual.
After making these initial investigations, the real work began this morning. I rigged up something to allow me to climb up to the attic access hatches, and began in the front, as this was the easiest to get into. I discovered that the front did not provide access to the back and the insulation looked like lumpy gray foam. I expect it is ancient fiberglass. It doesn't seem to have been sprayed down. I didn't spend much time since the lack of connection to the back meant the problem I was investigating had nothing to do with the front attic.
The hatch in the back was harder to get into since it was smaller and located in a relatively open space. The tight access made me more nervous, so I decided to put a lamp up in the attic to provide a little more light. I also took a flashlight. (Cassey later sent up gloves and a camera to document my adventures.)
The first thing I noticed was that birds had evidently been there. There were droppings and feathers concentrated in a few different places. The second thing I noticed was that the insulation was awful... except for one spot where fiberglass insulation sheet had been piled up together. In fact, two packages were still largely intact.
It looked like someone went up there intending to put down some insulation, but never got around to really doing the job.
I'm gonna have to fix this situation. (Probably in the fall.)
The main portion of the attic did not evince any way for a cat or bird to enter. However, behind the pile of insulation was an offshoot which led out to the original roof. So, after shoving some fiberglass aside, I worked my way back to the eaves of the original house. Where I found some light streaming in from under the eaves of the original roof, where it connected with the new roof.
The lighting issues aren't apparent in the photo, but you can see how there could be a gap hiding under the eaves there.
I was able to find the hole from the outside of the house as well once I knew where to look.
I'm not sure how best to patch up this hole, but I expect I'll find some solution during the week.
My favorite part is that I have reason to hope to significantly improve the comfort level in this house before next winter.
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03/02: The Nature of Wiki's
This piece is being written at the instigation of a few co-workers.
What Is a Wiki
A wiki is a kind of content management system for a website. As such it is a system which is designed to manage web pages (often referred to as articles).
A wiki generally allows some (often all) users to edit the content of pages in their browser real-time. User discussions are also typically facilitated for the purpose of enabling collaboration. (Not simply to allow them to express opinions passively.) As such, a wiki is a collaborative endeavor which is designed to leverage the experience of individuals who do not manage the wiki. (Sometimes management tasks can even be delegated to interested parties.) This is the primary and definitive feature of a wiki.
A wiki is typically organized with a predominantly flat structure. Though, a superficial substructure can form based on the way pages relate to one another. This organization means that related pages will be interconnected and the substructure is typically organic. It also means that you don't typically have to go find the page about "termites", because there's probably only one place for it to be.
A wiki facilitates interlinking of content pages. For intra-wiki linking, you typically don't have to remember much more than the name of the page in order to connect to it.
The Strengths of a Wiki
Since wiki's allow real-time in-browser page editing by a variety of users, content can evolve rapidly. Small articles can be created when little is known because there's no expectation that you have to "finish it now", or even that you have to finish it yourself. The expertise of a variety of individuals with diverse experience on a given topic can easily be leveraged.
Due to all the topically relevant interlinking, wiki's typically rank well with Google.
The flat structure is particularly handy when the pages to be managed can be named in fairly obvious ways, the content is topical in nature, and the domains of interest don't intersect too much. That is, wiki's are great for managing reference material.
Some Examples of Good Wiki Themes
An encyclopedia. (See: Wikipedia) Often these are themed or fan based.Personal genealogy. (See: Cox Genealogy)
A dictionary. (See: Wiktionary)
Software Documentation (FAQ's, tips, supplimental documentation, signatures, constraints See: Wiki:NucleusCMS)
Some Examples that Don't Work
A meeting minutes repository: Since information in minutes is typically not topical in nature, interlinking becomes extremely non-intuitive if even practical at all (if even desirable). Page naming is probably best accomplished with a date and meeting title, which generally tells you little about the page's contents. All organizing and sorting must be done manually. In comparison, a simple file system's tree structure will usually automatically sort files chronologically, especially if named chronologically. A file system also provides the freedom to use whatever editor or file format one chooses, which is almost always easier than writing wiki markup. The one advantage a wiki might provide is the easy inclusion of auxiliary materials. A simple file system might even be easier for that purpose. Since minutes are typically not expected to be improved upon and revised, and since this is typically not desirable, minutes storage takes no advantage of the Wiki's primary and definitive feature.
A lessons learned repository: Lessons learned documentation suffers from almost exactly the same pitfalls. In short, a wiki is ill-advised for the storage of largely stand-alone and static documents. These may be included as source media, but they do not make good primary content for a wiki. A wiki would merely add a lot of overhead to the management of such a repository while providing hardly any benefit at all.
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06/12: A productive weekend
I woke up early and found that my blog had a significant amount of spam from some guy in Pakistan. I already have a decent amount of spam protection for my blog, but this guy was still getting through. I figure this guy was sitting down and actually manually posting the spam. Anyhow, the actual comment never had a link, but his user website was always the same shady business website. Blocking his IP wasn't stopping him. (He's probably using dynamic IP.) Anyhow, it was obvious to me that what I needed to do was block the website he was trying to promote, and after looking around and finding no plugin for that, I wrote one. It's not ready for public consumption yet, but I'm excited to be able to block special website promotions.
After that I went to Lowe's to pick up some supplies, weeded the garden, broke up some cement, and chopped some fire wood.
After lunch, I sprayed for weeds in the front yard and replaced an outdoor outlet I had installed incorrectly. (It needed to be GFCI, and it wasn't firmly attached.) The outlet was fixed in preparation for putting up Christmas lights. We made some further preparations, but determined we didn't have the lights we needed, so I'll finish that up next week.
I finished up the day by working on The Glyph Project. I worked on transliteration and translation, then performed my weekly word import.
Ephraim and Jasher enjoyed playing outside and got themselves about as dirty as they could manage without water to help.
Cassey reports that Ephraim will create pretend words in the tub. He'll jumble the foam letters together and ask Cassey what the word is.
I can't say that his reading has progressed much lately, but things seem to keep getting in the way of his lessons.
Cassey hates to watch Jasher while I quiz Ephraim, and Ephraim has lately expressed a preference to have Cassey work with him, so we've started this last week to give that a try. Ephraim has also started making up songs out of random things that he hears. It's terribly cute.
It's nice to have a moment to sit down and write. Such moments have become more and more scarce for various reasons. I've picked up a traditional paper journal to write in, as blogging has become less feasible. I use the journal for planning, some note making, and goal setting as well, so it's fulfilling a few different purposes. Still, I have some hope to be able to get more work done on my own personal computer. (I don't see that changing real soon though.)
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