Month: June 2008

you rang?

While we were down on the field working on our forehand flicks , we saw some strange goings-on: turns out it was the 15th Annual Greater Seattle Open Boomerang Tournament . We got some details from one of the competitors, with the most interesting of all being that the world championship will be here in August.

While we were down on the field working on our forehand flicks, we saw some strange goings-on: turns out it was the15th Annual Greater Seattle Open Boomerang Tournament. We got some details from one of the competitors, with the most interesting of all being that the world championship will be here in August.

Tossing a flying disc, no matter how cleverly or for however many consecutive catches, seems pretty pedestrian after seeing boomerangs in the wild.

driving force

Explaining to a 9 year old girl why Air Mail paper is so thin and why the postage is so much more(almost US$1 per ounce), I was reminded that the mail has always been the driver of new transportation technologies…. The underlying reality is that the needs of commerce to move information — orders, bills, plans, proposals, contracts — and the competitive advantage of getting there first has driven the adoption of all these marvels.

Explaining to a 9 year old girl why Air Mail paper is so thin and why the postage is so much more(almost US$1 per ounce), I was reminded that the mail has always been the driver of new transportation technologies. From stage coaches and ships to trains to airplanes, the mail coach/train/plane was always the first service to some distant place. The telegraph, telephone, and fax emerged in parallel, and the internet is the ultimate manifestation of intangible communication. I wonder if there is a good history transportation/communications technology and markets?

The underlying reality is that the needs of commerce to move information — orders, bills, plans, proposals, contracts — and the competitive advantage of getting there first has driven the adoption of all these marvels. We think the telephone was invented so we could make birthday calls, but it was really about making deals.

adventures in regular expressions

Given a block of text like the following: BEGIN:VEVENT GEO:48.1667\;-123.1167 TRANSP:TRANSPARENT LOCATION:Dungeness\, Washington DTSTART:20080608T131700Z UID:D56BE4D5-F9A3-4026-B99A-C2D979639220 SUMMARY:High Tide 1.83 meters DTSTAMP:20080617T002129Z END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT GEO:48.1667\;-123.1167 TRANSP:TRANSPARENT LOCATION:Dungeness\, Washington DTSTART:20081012T013000Z UID:373CB6BD-F894-4826-8D04-6683AADFB4C4 SUMMARY:Sunset DTSTAMP:20080617T002129Z END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT GEO:48.1667\;-123.1167 TRANSP:TRANSPARENT LOCATION:Dungeness\, Washington DTSTART:20080125T035500Z UID:1EAC4C71-23B1-456D-9302-1436E407B84E SUMMARY:Moonrise DTSTAMP:20080617T002129Z END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT GEO:48.1667\;-123.1167 TRANSP:TRANSPARENT LOCATION:Dungeness\, Washington DTSTART:20080920T081500Z UID:CF306FB5-480D-433D-9E2C-34569BE0A654 SUMMARY:Low Tide -0.33 meters DTSTAMP:20080617T002129Z END:VEVENT remove all the SUMMARY:Moonrise|Sunrise|High Tide VEVENT mentions, leaving just the low tides.

…#!/usr/bin/perl local $/ = undef; my @low_tides = (); while (<>) { my @header = /(BEGIN:VCALENDAR.*?METHOD:PUBLISH\r?\n)/gs; my @events = /(BEGIN:VEVENT.*?END:VEVENT\r?\n)/gs; my $footer = “END:VCALENDAR\n”; push(@ical, @header); push(@ical, grep { /SUMMARY:Low Tide.*-\d/ } @events); push(@ical, $footer); } # Now @low_tides is an array of strings, each one containing just the # BEGIN:VEVENT through END:VEVENT lines of a single low tide event.

Given a block of text like the following:

BEGIN:VEVENT
GEO:48.1667\;-123.1167
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
LOCATION:Dungeness\, Washington
DTSTART:20080608T131700Z
UID:D56BE4D5-F9A3-4026-B99A-C2D979639220
SUMMARY:High Tide 1.83 meters
DTSTAMP:20080617T002129Z
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
GEO:48.1667\;-123.1167
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
LOCATION:Dungeness\, Washington
DTSTART:20081012T013000Z
UID:373CB6BD-F894-4826-8D04-6683AADFB4C4
SUMMARY:Sunset
DTSTAMP:20080617T002129Z
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
GEO:48.1667\;-123.1167
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
LOCATION:Dungeness\, Washington
DTSTART:20080125T035500Z
UID:1EAC4C71-23B1-456D-9302-1436E407B84E
SUMMARY:Moonrise
DTSTAMP:20080617T002129Z
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
GEO:48.1667\;-123.1167
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
LOCATION:Dungeness\, Washington
DTSTART:20080920T081500Z
UID:CF306FB5-480D-433D-9E2C-34569BE0A654
SUMMARY:Low Tide -0.33 meters
DTSTAMP:20080617T002129Z
END:VEVENT
 remove all the SUMMARY:Moonrise|Sunrise|High Tide VEVENT mentions, leaving just the low tides.

This (?s)BEGIN:VEVENT??.*?END:VEVENT will find just the VEVENT items.

This (?s)BEGIN:VEVENT.*?SUMMARY:Low Tide.*?END:VEVENT gets too much: it grabs everything from the first instance of BEGIN:VEVENT to the END:VEVENT after the Low Tide, no matter how many other events get collected. Looks I need a look-behind: find the END:VEVENT and the Low Tide that came just before it, and then, everything back to the BEGIN:VEVENT.

And ideally, I just pull out the minus tides, especially if I have to go that far (anything that includes a ferry ride needs to be carefully considered).

After a lot of back and forth with a perl guru (I really get tripped up by this stuff), it was clear that I was trying to do much in one pass (better to pull out the events, then extract the ones we want, all with the default delimiter/linebreak turned off). So what I ended up with appears below the fold. I had the regex right (those have always been my bête noire) but I had no idea what to do with what I was getting.

Continue reading “adventures in regular expressions”

why, indeed?

Popcorn was required this evening, and I had laid in some kernels a week or two ago in preparation for just this eventuality. So into a 2 qt pan went a couple of tablespoons of oil and, after some time seeking the right temperature, 1/3 cup of kernels.

Popcorn was required this evening, and I had laid in some kernels a week or two ago in preparation for just this eventuality. So into a 2 qt pan went a couple of tablespoons of oil and, after some time seeking the right temperature, 1/3 cup of kernels. The 11 year old, as he saw the drama unfold, asked, “why do people buy it when they can make it?”

My work is proceeding nicely.

capsule summary of the past 8 years

And let me get this straight: In what may have been the most successful intelligence operation in recent world history, Iran takes out both their chief regional rival—Iraq—and co-ops their main worldwide enemy—that would be us—by passing lies to a credulous bunch of right-wing Republican loons who have bought into the crackpot neocon theories of a gang of ex-Trotskyites. And DEMOCRATS are so terrified about appearing out of touch on national security they let them get away with it. That about cover it?

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