Poetry is a good reason

traveling with class

gaal@forum2.org — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:58:28 GMT

A nonrefundable ticket TLV-SFO costs about $1100. A refundable one costs about $2600. This makes no sense to me.

(They both earn the same kind of mileage etc.; possibly the cheaper one has higher penalties on scheduling changes but still, $1500 still seems like a high premium for that.)

Murky -> Play

gaal@forum2.org — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:31:55 GMT

Say, does anyone know a play roughly fitting the following description: four women conversing among themselves, probably of different ages, maybe from different times and possibly all dead?

A friend is trying to remember, and I got nothing.

goop

gaal@forum2.org — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:16:35 GMT

The rains are starting and it's been a few months so I've treated my saddle with some recommended goop for the first time. It now smells pleasantly of honeyish beeswax. This was enjoyable, though now I'm wondering how long I should wait before riding it again without my pants getting all gooey.

math duh moment

gaal@forum2.org — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:59:17 GMT

Last night I realized something very obvious: cancellation in simplifying fractions is just basic exponent/logarithm arithmetic. That is, when you do

37~~000~~ / 9~~000~~, or
24 / 6 = (6 * 4) / (6 * 1) = 4

You're talking about xpⁿ / yp^m, and of course that equals x/y * p^n-m because the whole idea of exponentiation is that b^x * b^y = b^x+y.

Now, there's nothing profound about this at all, but it gives me an opportunity to lament the shitty math teachers I've had. You learn to reduce fractions and it's a mechanical operation and you don't give a second thought to why it's true. Then you learn about a higher-order operation that's very elegant and leads the way to lots of beautiful ideas (e.g., e^πi = -1 and all that). And the power is wasted—a technique you've been doing by rote can be explained in a mere sentence, that should be cause for celebration, not groaning about new drudgery homework.

11

gaal@forum2.org — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:16:33 GMT

Sweet soft foo! May your whiskers grow long as your naps; may your purrs persist and your fur shed just a little bit less.

eric

gaal@forum2.org — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:23:21 GMT

Pretty story in pictures (thanks, ink!)

decisions, decisions

gaal@forum2.org — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:54:29 GMT

I was invited by my hosts at work to watch the latest Harry Potter movie. I'm not sure I should go because I've not read any of the books yet and have managed to stay relatively spoiler free. All I know is that some dude named Dumbledore is gay.

battery pull

gaal@forum2.org — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:46:18 GMT

I'm working on a Lenovo thinkpad. By chance, I looked at the battery monitory, which said 23% percent and was green. Then he display flashed, turned red, and updated to mere 4%. A balloon popped out saying something called "battery stretch" has become active: apparently, it automatically enters a power-efficient profile.

I chuckle at the artificial extension and start writing this post. Halfway into the second sentence, the machine spontaneously goes into suspend. That's what I call a "stretch" of the imagination.

nice word game

gaal@forum2.org — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:59:32 GMT

http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/rowowor.html

11625 (241 words, 479 letters)

creak

gaal@forum2.org — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:42:04 GMT

My bike is making a noise I haven't debugged yet. It's a soft creak. I think the pitch is constant, and happens twice per full pedal revolution -- hard to say for sure because it's not very loud and I can't hear it when there's wind in my ears. It doesn't happen when I'm off the bike, holding the rear wheel up and spinning the pedals. It's not the seat post, either: still happens when I'm off the saddle. Or when I'm riding and take my feed off the pedals. When I lean forward against the handlebars, I can't hear it.

So this is probably drivetrain related, but the stack bolts are tight, and so are the cranks. And the rear axle bolts. The chain is new and recently lubed. What else can it be? Bottom bracket?

(I also thought front wheel somehow, but spinning that in the air there's no noise either -- and it's not clear to me why it would have such a relationship with the pedal rotation. Though that could be a fluke of not having other gain ratios?)

slow to the draw

gaal@forum2.org — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:25:08 GMT

About a week ago they finished casting the roof of the HaBima/Philharmonic Orchestra square parking lot. It's a huge underground structure on top of a hill in the middle of Tel Aviv. After the concrete did its initial set, they covered it with water.

I passed by this one evening on my bike — it's kind of awkward to see this any other way because pedestrians don't have a walkway close enough, and if you're in a car you likely drive past it too fast to notice. It was a pretty interesting sight, and now of course it's gone (hello, 35 degrees C). I'm sorry I didn't double back and snap a picture. Even on my crappy phone camera in low light, who knows, I might have gotten something.

I'm so on the opposite of the "obnoxious clicker" photography spectrum. (Does that make me an "annoying regretter"?)

future

gaal@forum2.org — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:49:16 GMT

Where will you be in ten years?

disgrace

gaal@forum2.org — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:29:54 GMT

אין דין אך יש דיין

A man tries to avoid payment while leaving a parking lot. He gets into an altercation with the attendent, who tries to stop him by blocking his car with her body. The man accelerates and runs her over. She is bruised, and amazed, hangs on to what she can—the hood of the car, crying out for him to stop. The man keeps driving out of the parking lot, and turns to a main road. Losing her balance, the attendent falls off the car in the middle of the road and passes out.

Luckily, she is hit by no more cars and survives. This happened on the first day of 2006. For some reason, an order was issued preventing the identities of the assailant and the parking attendant from being revealed. The criminal case is brought before Judge Moshe Drori, whose verdict in the matter of the State vs. John Doe I find outrageous. Here are his opening words, in my rough translation:

John Doe admits to performing actions, which are an offense: in the opinion on the State, a certain offense; and in that of the defendant, a different one, lesser in severity.
Is there justification for a conviction, and if so, under which offense, and is it possible to suffice in determining that this John Doe has done something prohibited by law, without his conviction?
Is there room to consider the damage about to be inflicted on this person following a conviction (his inability to be admitted as candidate for Dayan [A Rabbinic Judge under Beth Din, a religious judiciary body. —GY], and so not be able to hold office as Dayan), and thus, can it be sufficient to decree the doing of the prohibited act, without a conviction?
In the course of considering between the various options of conviction or nonconviction, should weight be given, and if so, what weight, to the fact that the complainant has made amends with the defendant during the court hearing, that the defendant has apologized, promised to compensate the complainant, and that she has announced—to the court—her forgiveness to the defendant?
What is the meaning, if it even exists, to the prosecutor's announcement that some two weeks after amends were made, the complainant told the prosecutor that she, the complainant, had not done the amends with a whole heart, despite the impression that the court got, which is recorded the the protocol, that sincere and complete amends were made?
These questions are at the center of this verdict.
— Peh 002003/06

To paraphrase, the judge is asking "though a crime has been committed, can we wave it away?". About 300 pages follow in which the judge convinces himself that the answer is affirmative.

Lest we forget, "at the center of this verdict" should actually be the facts of the case, the damage done to the complainant, and the criminality of the actions. I am not a lawyer nor any kind of legal expert, but it seems to me this is a criminal case of fairly aggravated assault; that the defendant had willfully hurt the complainant; that through his intentional actions brought her very close indeed to a gruesome and violent death. The court cannot but convict, and having convicted, sentence by law to at least the minimum penalty. But the court — Moshe Drori — has decided disgracefully:

I have determined that the defendant has performed the actions detailed in the revised indictment.
I do not convict the defendant.
[Emphasis in the original. Here follow punishments to the unconvicted defendant, including the impounding of his car, cancellation of his driver's license for 4 years, 10,000 ILS damages (about 2500 USD) awarded to the complainant, and 180 hours of community service. —GY]

Moshe Drori in article 559 is saying

I do not perform my duty as a judge.

For this, he should be held in contempt, and be relieved of these duties.

I have left out many additional sociological, cultural, and political matters that are going on in this case. I hope you will be able to find them out even if you can't read Hebrew and the blogstorm surrounding them. Many of them, to me, make Drori seem even less fit to act as a judge of an Israeli court. But, as they say, dayeynu.

progress

gaal@forum2.org — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:26:42 GMT

evan remarked once that a lot of video games were essentially watching progress bars. Upgrade complete is like a total satire on that theme: it's basically space invaders, but you get to "upgrade" not only your ship, but the game itself—the graphics, the ability to play music, the copyright message and so on. There's an "achievements" system too, which the game of course encourages to you to get to 100% in. If you attempt that, eventually your ship gets so good you don't have to do anything except keep the "fire" button pressed. The experience is completely hilarious, yet strangely addictive and constantly (well, it's short) entertaining.

American indie

gaal@forum2.org — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:56:27 GMT

I liked The Puffy Chair.

font rights

gaal@forum2.org — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:01:13 GMT

Does anybody understand IP/copyright law as it pertains to typefaces? You may be surprised to hear that Garamond, a font designed almost 500 years ago, has no good free version today. There are plenty of new interpretations by modern foundries, but these can cost hundreds of dollars.

Of course, these new versions have a lot that the original punches don't; they're scalable, contain more forms, and many more glyphs. (Some variants have beautiful Cyrillics, for example.)

But what about a newer font, like Gill Sans? Being more modern, I expect the original design to already have included italics etc.; it was first released in 1926. When does it enter the public domain?

Pics of new bike

gaal@forum2.org — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:54:35 GMT

From roo's fixie—click for more shaky pics

the hallway

gaal@forum2.org — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:30:18 GMT

Installation by Miranda July

(Thanks, Ink!)

new bike!

gaal@forum2.org — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:53:19 GMT

Today I finally got most of the last parts and assembled the bike I've been putting together. Sweet ride! For now I have to be extremely cautious riding it, because it's been a while since I was on a fixie, and since although I have good brakes, I don't yet have brake levers.

to foo, perched on the same bag as I left her 30 minutes ago

gaal@forum2.org — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:26:29 GMT

I know you moved, because when I was leaving you were faced the other way.

bikalism

gaal@forum2.org — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:43:40 GMT

It was bike to work day today. I bike to work almost every day anyway, but it's a happy occasion to see the bike room fuller than usual in the morning and go off to eat ice cream with coworkers in the evening. In anticipation of problems on the evening ride I brought along a wrench and a spare tube, under the advice that it's nicer to hand someone a tube than let them borrow a patch kit. Eventually fewer people than I'd have hoped showed up for the ride, but the ice cream at the end was excellent (pears in wine, mmmmm), and then something happened on the way home.

I had a flat. And only then I realized that didn't have a pump myself, nor any tire levers. Stupid! They were on my good bike which was stolen two weeks ago. I tried calling a friend who lived nearby, but couldn't reach him. But it's not so bad: I was only about a mile from home. But I no longer had another pump at home, I let another friend borrow the spare. Oh well, I remembered there were several bike shops on Ben Yehuda along the way, they'll let me use their stuff.

So I reached one such shop, where the proprietor was not very nice. He actually said he doesn't like this kind of imposition, though he did let me borrow tire levers. He got a bit nicer when I was done and offered to pay for the levers. The whole thing was actually a little humiliating, or I don't know, disappointing in a way. For a while I had a mind to buy an extra pair and immediately give them back to the guy there and tell them they were for the next people who come in stuck with a flat. But that's condescending and probably misunderstanding the real problem of small bike shops.

I came in with the expectation of willing helpfulness because I associate bikes with cheery freedom, but he probably makes a large portion of his income fixing flats, and it's easy for him to be taken advantage of. (I bet if someone starts asking for help in the middle of fixing a flat, he won't see a dime, or if someone damages the head of his air gun.) My intuition is that a shop that's friendly to bikers draws paying customers, but why should I presume to know his business better than he?

It's sad, though. I want to live in a world where people are generous to each other. Of course, in this ideal world, people will also be competent and not damage tools very often, and the risks of being generous would be lesser than in this. But I don't really know how to encourage this. The bike shop I always go to, who specialize in cheap-but-decent, always have an air hose out for passersby. Their canned response to the question "Can I fill up air?" is "you don't even have to ask!", but I can tell that their patience is worn thin and that for some kinds of service, they just can't afford to be comprehensive any more.

I'd been putting off buying replacement tools to the ones that were stolen but once I fix up my fixie I'll get them, and always ride with them, and if I'm not in a hurry and see someone who can use them, I will stop and help.

persist

gaal@forum2.org — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:18:32 GMT

I like GNU screen. Sometimes I forget to start a session though and only remember after I have some important scrollbuffer or local history I want to maintain (BTW: "history -a" / "history -n" on bash read and write the current shell's history to/from file; or actually better, they append new stuff).

So, what really is the Right Thing is for all interactive shells to start a screen session automatically, unless they already are in one.

That said: I'm not a heavy GUI user, but sometimes what I want is a window that's separate from anything else I'm doing just for scratch calculations. For example, a python interactive shell. The nice way to go about it is to have a keybinding that opens an xterm with a dtach with this python (or perl -de 42, or irb, whatever) REPL — and have just one such session on the whole machine. When you think you're done, either quit the REPL, or just kill the xterm. When you switched to another task and suddenly need a quick calculator, fine, press the magic key and bam, you steal the session even if it was in a different desktop. (The idea is you don't use this for things where history is very important. If you do care about that of course you can set it up with separate sessions.)

in his haste, he misidentified the vessel

gaal@forum2.org — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:17:12 GMT

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1082956.html

A speedy recovery to Ms. Feingold.
It's not a kayak, it's a skiff (or more precisely, a scull).
Good thing we still have some civilians around, eh?

unhybrided

gaal@forum2.org — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:44:55 GMT

My bike was stolen last week. This went almost entirely unnoticed by a security camera that happened to have it in its frame. The picture's too grainy to identify the thief, or indeed to see anything except that it happened a mere fifteen minutes after I parked, in full daylight in a good neighborhood.

Then during the night I had a dream — I don't usually remember my dreams, but this one's interpretation was clear: I was riding a bicycle and suddenly felt something was wrong, so I looked down and I saw I had flats in both wheels. Yeah. I really liked this bike :-(

Anyway, just a day before this all happened I was standing in line somewhere and struck up a conversation with someone who's clear chainline I had spied. Turns out the Raleigh it was on is a singlespeed he had converted beautifully himself, and he might be able to help me out with building a fixie. I'd been planning to do that anyway, but now seeing as this may turn out to be my main bike, I'll splurge on something nice.

In the meantime, I'm riding my old guest bike, which is the best crappy bike in the world, I love it.

last theft, last bike

dembra demo

gaal@forum2.org — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:25:31 GMT

Here's the tiny app I mentioned to help batch-scan books with an Android.

http://github.com/gaal/Dembra/tree/master