Latest sunrise of the year

This year, because the end of daylight savings time was pushed into November, the date of the latest sunrise was this morning, 1 November 2008. I went to the US Naval Observatory site here, entered Mountain View, California, and it said that today's sunrise was at 6:34 am PST. That is, 7:34 PDT. Tomorrow, Daylight savings time ends, so tomorrow's sunrise is 6:35. And the sunrise for the week or so after the winter solstice is 7:23.

zsh: missing end of name

I run zsh at work, and was puzzled by an error message I got today:

zsh: missing end of name

The command line was something like this:

echo J Random Guru (rg@example.com) is an email address.

A brief web search led to this old zsh source file, which helped to explain things a tiny bit. Based on it, I tried a slight modification:

echo J Random Guru (rg@example.com@) is an email address.

and got a much more satisfying error message:

zsh: unknown group

It turns out that zsh's parenthesis-based file filtering (called "Glob Qualifiers" in the man page) has some features I never new about. 99% of the time that I use it, it's for a command line something this:

ls -ld *(/)

which does a long ls of all of the directories (and not their contents) in $PWD. Next most common are *(^/) which is all non-directories, and *(*) (executable plain files), which I confuse with *(x) (owner-executable files). The reason that this is relevant to the puzzling error message is that two of the possibilities inside the parentheses are "u" for userid and "g" for group id. These take a numeric user or group id, or a matchable delimiter! So a slight modification of my pattern (*(rg@example.com@)) should match any files that are owner-readable (the "r"), and have group-ids matching the group named "example.com". Of which there are none. For reference:

$ echo $ZSH_VERSION
4.2.5
$

AX LOTL

License plate of the day. See this wikipedia entry, I guess. I'd seen the word "neoteny" before, but not "neotenic".

Reminded me somehow of my wife's favorite Latin faux-blessing. Imagine having a nice satin robe and miter, so you look like a pope, and saying "Dasypus novemcinctus". Sounds plausibly like some kind of blessing, but ... well, you can look it up.

Not my baby

Assimilation in progress

I finally accepted an offer made 2.5 years ago. More details later.

Reddit greasemonkey script: see a headline ONCE

For reddit freeloaders like me (i.e., readers who rarely care to vote), one slightly annoying thing about reddit's presentation is re-reading the headlines I've already seen. So I wrote a start towards a greasemonkey script to make it easier to ignore stuff. Usage: when I look at a reddit page, I scan all of the headlines, and hit my scroll-wheel-button ("Open in new Tab (in background)") on any that I care to look into. With this script, I never have to do anything else in order to avoid ever seeing any of the other ones again. The script is here. Bugs: It inappropriately eats the comment-submit box/button; I should disable it on comments pages. Next to do: It needs a toggle on-off key, and it might be nice to shrink and pale-ify the already-seen headlines, instead of removing them altogether. For reddit to do: when I open a raft of tabs from a reddit page, I sometimes forget what reddit submitter-supplied headline made me choose to read this page. It would be nice if reddit could arrange to have the "referrer" be the comments page for this entry, instead of http://reddit.com/?offset=25 . Nicer would be to set it up so that "Back" would work even when I did the open-in-new-tab trick. Bonus: The script works on ycombihacker news, too.

Headline of the Day

LA turns 226 on Sunday ... but can still pass for 115 thanks to all the work it's had done

(from fark.com).

Cherry Creek trip

A few weeks ago, I led a very fun backpacking trip down Cherry Creek Canyon. Here's one of my favorite pictures from the trip. See how many levels of rock, water, and sky are in it. http://homepage.mac.com/landauer/pix/gh2-gh7-CherryCreek/

Saw a bobcat at Rancho San Antonio

The weird thing was the timing and nonchalance with which this guy just sauntered through the parking lot, as if he knew most of these Cupertinans (Cupertinoix? Cupertines?) were, basically, cat people. The weirder thing was that I actually got some photos. The stupid thing was that I forgot my silly little Sony has a movie mode. Anyway, here's the photos: http://homepage.mac.com/landauer/pix/ggV-bobcat/ Then I walked my required four miles, preparing for the Cherry Creek backpack trip.

Record lows

This past few weeks have been might cold (for California) -- record low temperatures. My posting frequency here and elsewhere has also hit record lows. (My main weblog is not on blogger, and I wrote only 28 entries in it in all of 2006.) But the nearly six months away from here is pretty bad. I guess I ought to upgrade to the new version. But hey, wait! Wasn't it supposed to be a feature of web-based software that upgrades would happen automatically and effortlessly? Here's hoping that it works that way from now on ...

Sad phrase of the day

In the midst of Scott Heiferman's 50 Reasons Why More People Aren't Using Your Website, a list that ranges wryly between humor and truth, one reason in particular struck me as quite sad: "... because they can't think of what they're passionate about."

Toxic Evangelism

In one of the comments on a Rands In Repose article about context and version control, someone mentioned Arch. I've never used arch, but my only encounters with its supporters have ensured that I never will. They are an example of Toxic Evangelism -- a kind of support for something, that unwittingly reveals an utterly repulsive community attitude.

New Dashboard widgets test

This is a test of dashboard posting to my blogger weblog, using one of the new Mac OS X Dashboard widgets.

It looks pretty cool, but only for very small weblog postings.

Oddly news

A legal firm in Florida had an ad comparing themselves to pit bulls. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that it was an affront to the legal profession. [via Reuters' "Oddly Enough"]. My take on the story was to wonder why PETA hasn't sued that firm, for the way it demeans a particular breed of dog. (* RubyURL is like TinyURL; this one should expand to Reuter's horribly long URL that may or may not even be a perma-link. )

gmail as a social networking site

Cryptic thought of the week: Orkut is a diversion. gmail is the social networking site that actually matters to Google. (I posted some similar thoughts to an internal weblog pilot system at my employer's site, some time last year. It included the wonderful phrase "-ster"-crazy. As in Jason Kottke going "-ster"-crazy about keeping up with those labor-intensive social networking sites. (Well, I thought it was wonderful when I made it up.)) Short version: social networking sites are a fad, a means to a meat-space end. In order to get long-term extractable social networking data from the customer base, a SN operator needs to be able to get that data from things that its customers do anyway, every day. Like, say, sending and receiving email. The links may not be the same quality as the explicit ones that users create on SN-Sites, but who's to say which ones are actually more meaningful? The ones that are created self-consciously, or the ones that reflect how people's communications really work?

Misspelling folksonomy

I don't really like the term "folksonomy", mostly because it's not a taxonomy: not hierarchical, not tree-shaped. Chris McEvoy suggests "usersaurus". And Tom Coates says that the first time he heard the term, he really thought it was spelled "fauxonomy". I think I'll adopt that one, and hope that it at least becomes an acceptable alternative spelling.

QOTY -- 43 Folders

Quote of the Year (2004): "Be careful not to let doodling on your pretty map replace the important business of walking the actual territory. (See the end of Merlin Mann's GTD summary for 2004.)

Sparklines and Edward Tufte

Out of the blue, I was thinking Friday today about those little word-sized graphics that I read about many months or years ago. Had some vague recollection that it related to that guy who "wrote the book" about visualization. Napoleon's march to Moscow -- that guy. Well ... it took more google-power than I thought it would to restore the name "Edward Tufte" to my mind, and even then it took some time to track past that to confirm that my vague recollection was correct -- it was indeed Tufte who wrote about what he calls "Sparklines" or "Wordgraphs". It's related to my weblog table of contents ideas from last year ... which in turn were inspired by the outstandingly unobtrusive navigation system exemplified by Textism's http://www.textism.com/writing/ Evolution of Writing, where what looks like a decorative row of dots along the top is really a navigation mechanism. For weblogs, what I wanted to do is make it a row of dots and bars, like for example .....|.||||.||....|||||....||..|||| where

each bar indicates a day with entries, and each dot is an empty day. That way you get an instant visual clue about how active the weblog has been, in a very small screen-space. And the bars are direct links to the entries, and they should have tooltips that consist of the titles of those entries. Anyway, more experimentation is needed. I think it was the little graph at Mind Hacks today http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2005/01/spike_activity.html that triggered this minor mindstorm. (Posted via email; I'll go back and fix the URLs later.) (Or not. The post-by-email attempt got a weird error message returned from bloggers postfix email processor.)

EDUCATION as tsunami death prevention

It's hard to understand how many reports I've heard on the radio in the past couple of weeks, where survivors say things like "the water went way out to sea, so I brought my children to the beach to see it". Before we spend a shitload of money on technological warning systems, how about a half a shitload of money spent on education? Why is there anyone in the world who doesn't realize that if the ocean goes away, it'll come back, worse? Yes, we need to do a hell of a lot now, for relief and rebuilding, and yes, an eventual global techno warning system will make sense. But before that can be built, it sure makes sense to me to do some serious education, to make sure that EVERYone's first response to seeing the ocean go away, is to run like hell for high ground.

Erik T subset ... and test

I'm sure this'll look a mess, but it's a collection of "catch up with Erik T" links, and at the same time a test of what formatting is done by blogger when you email a posting. So, I catch up with Erik Thauvin not by reading nor even skimming all of the articles, but rather by collecting the ones that I otherwise might have clicked on, here in this text file labeled as an html file. Sort of a link-reskimming of the Web's premier Java-orientd link-skimmer. Timeline starts about 12/22 or so.

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Extra tidbits to note: - lucane.org free "groupware" - that logger "anti-framework" - neward's predictions for 2k5, except that his site is currently down. Note that Bruce Eckel has a new weblog for shorter thoughts.

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http://j2medeveloper.com/weblog/page/eortiz/20041228#about_predictions_the_cross_of C. Enrique Ortiz' (J2ME guy) self-prediction review http://www.weiqigao.com/blog/2004/12/24/1103918583000.html Weiqi -- Blogging Year In Review: 2004. http://jroller.com/page/Trainer/20041223#struts_javaserver_faces_and_java Andrew -- Struts, JavaServer Faces, and Java Studio Creator: The Evolution of Web Application Frameworks. http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2004/12/23/books.html Ten for the Holidays. Greg Wilson reviews books for programmers and selects ten (or more) for your holiday reading. http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2004/12/23/patterns.html Holiday Party Guide to Patterns. A survey of some of the Gang of Four design patterns: Composite, Singleton, Factory, Adapter, Decorator, Facade, and MVC. http://www.blueskyonmars.com/archives/2004/12/23/index.html Kevin ... Where to put files on the Mac

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http://www.jazillian.com/reasons.html Joe -- Why Java is better than C http://www.clientjava.com/blog/2004/12/22/1103726737000.html Scott ...Scott -- Java Graphing, JGoodies, Screenshots with Java. http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/12/22/jakarta-gems-1.html The Hidden Gems of Jakarta Commons, Part 1. The Jakarta Commons has a wide-ranging collection of handy classes that can save you the trouble of reinventing the wheel yet again. http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/12/22/2004-yearender-1.html ONJava 2004 in Review: Popular Articles. Editor Chris Adamson takes a look back at some of the most popular articles published on ONJava during the last year.

Recursive animations

I wrote a little about this two years ago on GIGO. Last week (I can't keep up with those guys), boingboing noted a similar picture, and linked to instructions for how to make such a thing. I couldn't find any names on the mantasoft.co.uk site.

Topo! National Geographic

It's time to get the all-of-California National Geographic Topo! map collection. The UI could be better, but it's good enough to plan a couple of backpacking trips a year. Time to check out the current best discounts at the Apple store...

Greenways

I participated in a "Trails and Greenways" conference in San Diego a few years ago (1998). (I was co-sponsored by two of the SF Bay Area's mountain biking advocacy organizations, ROMP and MBOSC.) That's where I first heard of the East Coast Greenway. Now it looks like someone is blogging a bicycle adventure along it, to raise funds to complete it. Interesting claim (on its profile page) that the ECG is the nation's first long-distance urban, shared-use trail for cyclists, hikers, and other non-motorized users. I guess the American Discovery Trail isn't urban. (Always gotta be careful about those adjectives.) [Bonus link: if you do a google search for long trails north, my page here is the first link. Today.]

work away today

think about tomorrow

BlackCap Basin

Plan for some time next summer: Start at one of those SCE reservoirs (Florence or Wishon). Walk up and southeastish, until near the crest that divides that watershed (North Fork of the Kings?) from the one that's inside Kings Canyon NP (Middle Fork of the Kings?). Buncha cross country. Nothing anywhere near as gnarly as what we did a couple of weeks ago in the NFSJ area.

Donner Pass

Between Grass Valley (Deb's Mom in hospital) and Reno (my dad in another hospital), I stopped by at Donner Pass. There's a nice little Glacier/geology-oriented half-mile interpretive trail up there. Maybe next time, I'll actually walk it.

Big Sur Ventana Molera

Took the new pop-up tent-trailer down to Big Sur for the weekend. Its maiden voyage. Went remarkably smoothly. Under two hours to drive down there, not too much trouble backing it into the site, despite its small size and cramped access road. It was great to be up out of the dirt -- the Ventana campground is pretty thrashed, and there's lots of loose dirt. Marty and I walked up the Gorge trail one day; he and Ben and I walked up to Pfeiffer Falls, way up to the Valley View, and then out from the Andrew Molera parking lot to the beach, and down along the Ridge Trail for around a mile and a half. Fun scramble-climb up the bluff in order to take the north (trail-camp side) trail back to the parking lot. Probably walked about 7 miles that day. Deb remodeled the Columbia, and put together some fabulous meals. She and Mary got to "do the spa thing" on the day the rest of us did the hike thing. Next weekend: (i.e., starting Thursday night): NFSJ!

Training for the NFSJ trip

The NFSJ trip is getting close -- two weeks from today. Looks like there will be four of us. And meanwhile, next week Deb and I are planning to spend a few days in Big Sur. Under 90 minutes from home, it's a shame we don't get down there more often. Gotta get the tent-trailer prepared for that one.

NFSJ, over the hill

Time for the NFSJ trip is drawing near. Gvdl was off this past weekend on a serious Sierra Club trip, taking the PCT from Tuolomne Meadows to Sonora Pass in four days, light- and fast-packing 20 to 23 miles a day. I was mostly hiking from the back bedroom all the way (12 to 15 feet) out to the hot tub.

Going SE of Yosemite

Later this summer. NFSJ trip. Five days, but only 28 miles or so. Time to get the permits!