Category: I don’t do Windows

I am trying to import some Yahoo calendar data in iCal, and it looks like the only way to make it work is to use Palm’s Desktop software as a middle step.

Yahoo offers Palm’s dba format as an export option: what a pity Palm doesn’t support it as an import option.

<UPDATE> Nope, there sure isn’t. I can’t figure out how to export more than one event in a .vcs file, so that’s useless as well. Time to hunt up some parsing libraries and see what can be done.

[Posted with ecto]

Channeling Cupertino

Even over shorter distances, people rarely think of phone calls as being so casually cheap that one would simply leave the connection open for ambient telepresence and occasional conversation. To create shared spaces that span the planet, and to do so whenever you feel like it, and to leave them unpurposefully in place for hours, is not something people have done very often before.

Read this and see where it takes you . . .

CNN.com – Male enlargement ads prompt spam rage – Nov. 24, 2003

Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business.

Google Search: Notes from Underground [Dostoevsky]

I stumbled upon a passage from Notes from Underground, and was struck by how it echoed — in an ironic way — the intellectual premise of the Superior Professor’s research (no, I have not yet expunged all my recollections of that experience).

The resonance is on a couple of levels: first in the content, the notion that simple human contrariness and choice, good, bad, or indifferent, can somehow be “fixed” by a legal framework of rationalism in contract law. Everything would be subject to contractual terms and there would be no margin of error or doubt.

But I’ll sit down and let Mr Dostoevsky say his piece . . . .

The — this is all what you say — new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the “Palace of Crystal” will be built. Then … In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then (for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation. I, for instance, would not be in the least surprised if all of a sudden, A PROPOS of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: “I say, gentleman, hadn’t we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!” That again would not matter, but what is annoying is that he would be sure to find followers — such is the nature of man. And all that for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth mentioning: that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests, and sometimes one POSITIVELY OUGHT (that is my idea). One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice, however wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy — is that very “most advantageous advantage” which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply INDEPENDENT choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice.

The other resonance, the part that brought me up short when I read this, was the mention of a “Palace of Crystal” (it was the Crystal Palace in the other translation I read). This was the nickname I gave to the new building the UW School of Law moved into over the summer, inspired by the large skylights in the courtyard that illuminated the law library. They were always referred to as “the crystals” (I guess calling them skylights was vulgar) and coupled with the high expectations for the building as a means of unifying the institution gave me the name.

Anyway, the notion of a legal framework that obviates any other recourse — no more consumer protection laws, for example — is what the Superior Professor sees as her main chance for lasting legal fame. My experience in contractually-managed dealings with her suggest it’s a non-starter, but then I have no legal training (as she was wont to remind me) and therefore have no standing.

IHT: Meanwhile: Hot zombie love in the suburbs

[Director Paul] Rudnick noted that the “embedded biology” of romantic fantasies has not changed: “Men want a babe and don’t care about her earning power. Women want a rugged poet or musician with a private jet.”

It will still make a great thriller. But the real chiller is that the evil husbands in the original did not need to murder. They just needed to wait. In the long interval between the two movies, women have turned themselves into Stepford wives.

Found in Rebecca’s Pocket.

The Dubious Rewards of Consumption, by Alan Thein Durning

Measured in constant dollars, the world’s people have consumed as many goods and services since 1950 as all previous generations put together. Since 1940, Americans alone have used up as large a share of the earth’s mineral resources as did everyone before them combined. Yet this historical epoch of titanic consumption appears to have failed to make the consumer class any happier.

[ . . . .]

Any relationship that does exist between income and happiness is relative rather than absolute. The happiness that people derive from consumption is based on whether they consume more than their neighbours and more than they did in the past. Thus, psychological data from diverse societies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Brazil, and India show that the top income strata tend to be slightly happier than the middle strata, and the bottom group tends to be the least happy. The Upper classes in any society are more satisfied with their lives than the lower classes are, but they are no more satisfied than the upper classes of much poorer countries–nor than the upper classes were in the less affluent past. Consumption is thus a treadmill, with everyone judging their status by who is ahead and who is behind.

Food for thought when you get an attack of the “gotta haves.”

I can’t remember feeling like I had a great deal more pocket money when I made $100,000 a year versus when I made $15,000. A 6-fold increase should have felt different somehow. And now that I’m much closer to that smaller sum, I still don’t feel much, if any, different.

Interesting article.

Swiped from Rebecca.

News: Unique ‘twisting tower’ for Dublin

Dublin: A stunning design for a twisting tower has won a design competition for a site at Britain Quay in Dublin’s docklands.

The competition was held by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, and was won by Craig Henry Architects and Burdon Dunne Architects out of well over 500 entrants. They propose to build a 25-storey tower, twisting as it rises. The tower will contain a mix of uses, including residential, office, retail and cafes/restaurants. But the most unusual aspect of the tower is what will sit at the very top – a new recording studio for Irish band U2.

Evidently, they’re not retiring anytime soon . . . .

While I’m sitting here encoding LPs to iPod-ready tracks, I decided to do a little research into the various offenses my “person of interest” might be charged with.

First, we have “Theft in the second degree — Other than firearm”, reserved for goods valued at between two hundred fifty and one thousand five hundred dollars.

Next we have Possessing stolen property in the second degree — Other than firearm. I’m not sure if this applies, but I can’t find the section about sales of stolen property. But to sell a physical item, it stands to reason someone has possession of it. So we’ll leave that in.

By certifying that they were the owner, the person of interest has run afoul of Revised Code of Washington 9.38.020 false representation concerning title.

RCW 9A.82.050, Trafficking in stolen property, would seem to cover the sale of a stolen item.

My father was convinced on hearing the details that this was all about getting money for drugs (living in Florida these last 30 years would give him some insight there, unfortunately): all in all, it looks to be an expensive buzz.

System Metaphor

What ExtremeProgramming (XP) uses instead of a formal architecture. A simple shared story of how the system works. This story typically involves a handful of classes and patterns that shape the core flow of the system being built.

Ask yourself, what more familiar things is this problem like? Is it really like ordering coffee from a fancy coffee machine? Is it really mostly like steering (tacking) a sailboat across a lake? driving from Toronto to Paris?

I always find metaphors useful for casting a problem in a more understandable light: non-technical people don’t always want or need the details or how objects are created and destroyed or what methods do what. Abstractions and metaphors are more helpful.

Yet, at my last technical job, in technical management, I was told by the VP to whom I reported that metaphors were Bad. I think he saw them as a sign of weakness, but it turns out they were more an indicator of his inflexible mind. if metaphors are good enough for the XP crowd (irony of ironies: the same VP was a big booster of extreme programming, though to my knowledge he had never written any code), it’s good enough for me.

XML-RPC API for Waypath

The bright lads at WayPath have implemented an API to their document similarity engine (colloquially known as “more like this”). As slow as I am to code anything, I dunno when I’ll have something to show, but here’s hoping other more quicker minds have a go at it.