Black Coffee (Deprecated)

Word from Kochi/Cochin India

Happy to announce I'm online from Kochi, India. Have already set up a trip report for you to follow along with.

Rough Draft

Solid State Physicist

Example of Adobe Photoshop Tutorials

Searching for help on the Photoshop 'Unsharp Mask' I ran into this video clip from one of the training tapes that I rejected during my search.

Turns out to be pretty good. Searching around leads to more of these tutorials running a gamut of topics.

Catch-up

Another long week... Oil prices have been settling at historic levels for the last month. Prospects of war with Iraq, and less telegenic trouble elsewhere have made the last month a zoo.

Still haven't found any good info on the Dakar Rally, just exhilirating snippets on CNN and BBC. I posted a question on Google Answers this afternoon, but so far no response. I sent Google Editors a message saying I thought there might be a problem because as soon as I posted the question it was locked for answering. Twelve hours later it is still locked and there is still no answer. Perhaps people who try to make a "living" off answering those questions have daemons that continually scan, trying to lock-in new questions first or something.

One of the Christmas deliveries 31die brought over were my "Adobe Photoshop 7 Techniques" cds that I discussed in November. I am working on the fourth of eight cds and so far I am very happy with it. Perhaps more than I even expected. The lessons have done a very good job of bootstrapping me into Photoshop. By bootstrapping I mean that she's teaching a good overview of all the elements of photoshop without trying to go into exhaustive, draining depth on any one of them. I know enough that I can fill in the blanks myself. The structure of the lessons is you see a movie of her computer screen, the audio of her voice instruction, and the copies of the files she is editing (if you care to try to replicate what she is doing). Each lesson is between 10 and 30 minutes long -- a nice size that I can try to tick off once each evening.

Want to inspire yourself to work on a project? Last year a guy from Newark, California (not far from where we used to live) built his own Aerial Platform -- a weather ballon hauling a huge package of electronic equipment (cameras, gps, thermometers, ham radio packet gear) tied together with a miniaturized linux box. He launched it to 17,000 feet and recovered it hours later. What really impresses me is that he did this project himself, working on it for two months non-stop. It's been our experience that working on solo-projects like this is never nearly as much fun. This fellow must have some staying power. The other thing I liked about his great writeup was that the actual launch sounded so realistic -- the unexpected problems, the quick solutions, and reasonable outcome. Sounded very, very believable. Hopefully he makes and documents some more flights soon. At the very least, I am sure he has received a lot of job offers from people looking for clever, creative, independent engineers.

Still waiting for the Fall 1901 movement to resolve. We are waiting for the retarded Austria's move submission. That is a bad sign -- Austria is doomed, and he is probably going to abandon it. Then that means a wait as we search for someone to take over this very boned state.

This coming Friday, Ah-Ling and I head off for what has accidentally become the honeymoon-we-never-took-back-in-1999. We're going to spend ten days in Cochin, India. This is in the state of Kerala, the southwest tip of India. Should be very interesting. I'm planning on taking lots of photographs, finding lots of interesting antiques, hopefully visiting the Pepper Exchange, and relaxing in our excellent hotel arrangments.

Spring Move

So the first set of moves have been settled.

No suprises.

Turkey did what it said it would.

England and France didn't move aggressively towards each other. England set up its navies in a way threatening to me and Germany. I think England is a danger and that his non-aggression proposal was very much in his favor.

Germany didn't do an awful lot. He's looking at a later fucking, and I think he is biding his time right now.

Italy moved towards Austria. (So who is Austria in league with? Apparently no one, unless it is a very stealthy trap in conjunction w/ one of the other local powers).

France immediately went for the easy Western land grab.

My two goals right now:

1) the elimination of Austria
2) the deterrence of England to my north.

Elimination of Austria
By the Fall, I shall hold Rom and Turkey should hold Bul and Ser. I would like to enlist Italy in the elimination of Austria, to get it done quick. The idea would be I take Bud, Turkey takes Serbia, and Turkey helps Italy take Trieste.

Everyone gets one more supply center, and Austria is given a striking blow, including the destruction of an army and navy unit.

Turkey is well-set to have Gre supply center as well, by the next fall. This isn't good, but eliminating a power is my immediate goal. Furthermore, the quicker Italy and Turkey tangle on a naval basis, the less heat they'll be giving me. I'd prefer to take land further south than north, to avoid antagonizing Germany. I need Germany's support to help me cope with England.

Deterence of England
I need to beat the diplomatic grass with him some more, but my instinct is that he is a danger, and fuck our supposed non-aggression -- I put a naval unit into the barents end of next round. Otherwise, very difficult to dislodge him if he moves in there.

I've sent out a number of diplomatic mails to this effect.

Roster of My Enemies

Turkey

Some German guy. Google didn't translate the page very well.

France

He's on the other side of the board for at least a while.

Germany

Is some sort of Bridge Player. That's a bit worrying. Those folks are always nasty and clever.

Italy

Signed up as a 'militarist' instead of a 'legalist' or a 'Mohist' (whatever the hell that is). Well... he's Italy... he could have signed up as the Pope, but he's still going to lose.

All the other people were unlocatable on google.

Game 'Mayor' Begins

So my first internet-based game of Diplomacy has started.

I have drawn Russia. I guess I would have preferred France, but on the other hand, Russia has more potential than the crippled Baltic states.

You can track the game on the DEDO judge site. There is not much to see yet, as we haven't submitted our first set of moves. Everyone is (apparently) secretly negotiating for leverage.

I read a few brief articles on Russian strategy. The advice was to ally with either Austria or Turkey and immediately exterminate the other. With that in mind, I utterly ignored the lame posts I got from Turkey (if I even got one from Austria I don't remember it) and sent out some point-blank press to both of them...

Message from Blutig as Russia to Turkey in 'mayor':

Hey hi.

It is the state of nature that either RT destroy A or RA destroy T. The quicker this extermination occurs, the better for the two survivors.

I would prefer to destroy Austria, as I know that they will already be under the aggressive attentions of Germany and Italy.

Are we allied for the express, immediate purpose of destroying Austria =
or not?

If so we should immediately define our plans.

Regards

Message from Blutig as Russia to Austria in 'mayor':

Hey hi.

It is the state of nature that either RT destroy A or RA destroy T. The quicker this extermination occurs, the better for the two survivors.

I would prefer to destroy Turkey, as I know that they will already be under the attention of an unusually aggressive Italy.

Are we allied for the express, immediate purpose of destroying Turkey or not?

If so we should immediately define our plans.

Regards

England claims to want to establish a non-aggression pact. The problem is that I am not sure what he suggests as the arrangement of forces to invoke that truce is favorable or balanced for me.

What are your plans to the north? How about making BAR a DMZ ? I take NWY and you SWE If we can agree on that, I won´t borther you and we can concentrate our forces on other fronts.

I actually didn't even see how the Barent Sea (BAR) is of any use for anything. Yes, it touches Denmark, but how would I have a fleet up there in the first place to pressure Denmark. Perhaps it's what he is offering, as he'd have to use that if he were going to attack Russia in the North.

I guess strategically I shall agree to a truce with him, and then negotiate the tactical details. Last time I played France, I did quite well having a truce with England. I'd like to keep my immediate enemies to one or two.

Turkey has suggested some sort of shit alliance, but as I mentioned it before, I ignored his press as if I hadn't even received it. He was basically trying to get me to 1) not attack him and 2) focus on the north. I don't mind not attacking him, but the second point must be to exterminate Austria. In this I shall give no quarter.

Greetings Russia!

I would like to propose an alliance between our two countries. The
Russian/Turkish alliance can quite easily be one of the strongest on the
board, as we both have our own routes of expansion, Russia in the North,
Turkey in the south, and we are able to help each other throughout the
centre of the board. With possible opposition from England, Germany and
Austria, I would suggest that a Turkey alliance is the most beneficial,
since it frees up untis to operate on other fronts.

First of all, we should talk about BLA. If you wish to bounce over it
(though a waste of moves), that's OK with me. If you plan a northern
campain, I can assist as well. Let me know what you think.

The Sultan of Swing

(have I mentioned how tired I already am of cute pseudonyms?)

So the rules are technically due in Tuesday. Hopefully that is wednesday for me, and then I can still be late. The time burdens already seem tedious.

Mailing Lists

ZOE can be spirited and delightful. So I had signed up for the mailing-list distributing ZOE-based information. I kept hitting reload on my ZOE session to see the confirmation message arrive. It wasn't coming, although I could see the message using Outlook. This was pissing me off.

I kept being a dickhead about. About two hours later I realize there is a new item on the sidebar: "LISTS." Of course the first set under it was 'Zoe' -- Zoe cleanly isolates messages originating from mailing lists and tidily segregates them from regular personal messages! hahaha

Some basics

Here's some excerpts I found explaining how to turn the thing on and off,

Two ways to safely shutdown Zoe:

- In the app, go to zoe -> preferences -> application -> shutdown

- from the command line: "java -jar Zoe.jar shutdown"

Here's how to set it in debug mode. At least the java console will spew some details so that you could post on the Sourceforge site and get a help response.

No need to restart to toggle debug on/off. From the command line: "java -jar Zoe.jar debug"

New Software Experience...the Strange World of Zoe

I have 98% of my emails since I started sending and receiving them in 1990. 1990-1995 are in various unix .mbox formats. The rest are stored in the awful EUDORA and even worse MS Outlook formats. Nearly worthless and unusable, in other words.

So I stumbled onto a strange, strange program called Zoe. The idea is that it archives all your emails and indexes them in all their possible permutations. Then you can pick and browse through them sensibly and cleanly. (It actually does more than this, but read the O'reilly article for a summary)

Anyway, I tried twice to install it. It was weird in the way I imagine Mac software to be -- looked extremely sharp and clean, like an iPod, but with no help at all, as if the software itself is just supposed to osmotically explain itself to you. Well, it doesn't, and there is a shocking paucity of documentation on it.

I couldn't even get it to suck some email off my simple pop server, but the prospect of having all my emails locally Googled was so compelling that I returned a third time to play with it. I got it to work (in short I was telling it mine was a POP3/SSL server, not a simple POP server) and it sucked down all the emails left on my server.

I really still don't know how to use it very well, it's not configured to follow all my emails yet, and none of my historic email archives are available yet, but just seeing this small trial is very exciting.

Practically every word on the page is a hyperlink to some other search dimension with which you can view the mail archive. My impression is that the search and browsing functionality of this thing is excellent.

Looks interesting enough to pursue and try to set up. For the benefit of mankind I think I will record my efforts online here as some stream-of-experience documentation. I think this blog entry alone has trebled the corpus of Zoe documentation worldwide....

MusicMatch Solution... CyberLink MP3 PowerEncoder

So yesterday I was griping about how poorly MusicMatch software worked for ripping MP3s -- the CDDB lookup would not work reliably.

I grew frustrated with it this morning and looked for alternatives. For 9$ I downloaded CyberLink MP3 PowerEncoder expansion pack for the CyberLink PowerDVD player I already have (came free with my video card). It adds MP3 ripping functionality to the otherwise-unloved Microsoft Media Player. (Who the hell wants their cd library in .wma format?)

The results? The Ripping is faster and the CDDB lookup is instantaneous and complete, even downloading a cover image for the album!

The software seems much more reliable. It fully utilizes the CPU (MusicMatch didn't) and it doesn't groan and act unresponsive when I switch back and forth between task panes. CyberLink MP3 PowerEncoder works and MusicMatch sucks.

I think the fundamental problem must be that MusicMatch used to be ripping software, then they decided they wanted to be ripping software + WinAmp. Sorry. They aren't.

MusicMatch Internet Connectivity Error CDDB

I have recently installed a copy of MusicMatch 7.5 (wink). The idea was that I could rip some of my CDs to .MP3's locally on Unimog.

MusicMatch is supposed to take the CD and automatically goto the CDDB database on the internet, collect all the details of artist/album/track and add that to the MP3 tag.

So far it has worked like a total piece of shit.

I continually get the message "Are you connected to the internet? If you want Musicmatch Jukeboxto look up information for this CD, make sure you are connected to the internet and then click 'Refresh.'"

I've gone through this cycle several times. Unfortunately, I could find little help on Google. I did find some techsupport articles that were not encouraging on musicmatches support website.

The boilerplate answers were either:

How to disable automatic configuration in Internet Explorer - MUSICMATCH Jukebox Internet problems

MUSICMATCH Jukebox can sometimes have connection problems using the CD Lookup service as the result of automatic configuration settings in the Internet Options control panel. To resolve this trouble, please try the following:

- Close any Internet Explorer windows that are open.
- Close MUSICMATCH Jukebox if it is open.
- Open your Internet Options control panel.
- Click the Connections tab.
- Click the LAN Settings button.
- Turn off any checkboxes under the "Automatic configuration" section of the window.
- Click OK.

Now try viewing a web page with Internet Explorer. Verify that you can access and navigate web pages with the new Internet Options control panel settings.

Once you have verified that you can access web pages, open MUSICMATCH Jukebox and try to use the CD Lookup service to look up information on commercial CD.

or

I receive an error that I am not connected to the Internet

If you are having problems with MUSICMATCH Jukebox connecting to the Internet and if you are using a DSL Internet connection, please run the Internet Explorer Internet Connection Wizard by doing the following:

- Click the Start button on the Windows taskbar.
- Select "Settings".
- Click "Control Panel".
- Double click "Internet Options".
- Click the "Connections" tab.
- Next to "Use the Internet Connection Wizard", click the "Setup" button.
- In the Internet Connection Wizard window, select "I want to set up my Internet connection manually" and click "Next".
- When asked "How do you connect to the Internet", select "I connect through a local area network" and click "Next".
- When asked to "Select the method you would like to use to configure your proxy settings", click "Next" without changing any settings.
- When asked "Do you want to set up an Internet mail account now", select "No" and click "Next".
- When "Completing the Internet Connection Wizard", deselect the option to connect to the Internet immediately and click "Next".

I've tried both these solutions and neither work.

ONCE, the first time after I tried the second option (creating a new internet connection), when I went back to Musicmatch, I saw that it had found and downloaded the information for the BUSH/Deconstructed CD I had stuck in. Excited, when I tried other, very common cds, I continued to have the same 'not connected to internet' error.

I haven't been able to find any other solutions or explanations, either on Google, GoogleGroups, or the woeful MusicMatch site.

======

FOLLOWUP

So I saw a clue somewhere on Google Groups that removing and reinstalling MusicMatch would make it work. I tried that, and now I have got two CDs out of two to be identified. Fingers crossed. I originally installed some older version (5?) of MusicMatch, which then automatically updated to the new version. Perhaps the upgrade script work properly.

At any rate, on some of these CDs, I have to keep hitting refresh and it eventually works.

I just popped in some TOOL CD that it seems unable to recognize. I would have thought it would be in the CDDB. Groan. Fucking stupid software. You'd think that querying an external server with some id number wouldn't be the most challenging engineering feat for these people....

Forget the humvee... forget the unimog... We need Kamzas!

One of the side effects of living overseas is that CNN broadcasts all the weird sports Americans don't care about. It's not loss for me because I don't like basketball or baseball anyway. On the other hand, it is rarely a gain for me either, because I like cricket and horse racing even less. But this week I have been catching excerpts of a truly awesome sporting event that I am sure is getting scant coverage in the US. I myself am only getting teasers..

The DAKAR RALLY !

When I heard Dakar Rally, I thought something about rally cars racing from Paris to Dakar. Well, it's much better than that. Forget Paris, forget Dakar, forget faggot rally cars. The Dakar Rally has a category of trucks racing across the open dunes in marathon, unsupported legs!

You have to see the clips to get full appreciation of these monsters... they are blasting away at high speed, leaving a showering sand wake.

I'd really love to see some in-depth coverage of this division. CNN keeps playing the same tired clip. There isn't much good coverage around the internet, either, even the official website is pretty lame. It needs more multimedia and exposition. Such a shame Quokka.com went extinct. This would be a great event for their style of invasive coverage.

Followup from RogerDoubleTap...

Actaully dakar rally is open to amateurs.
Racing on open desert seems safer than rallying on icy tundra or little
greek islands.

Don't have a 4x4? You can rent one:
http://www.dakar-rally.com/wrental/wrental.htm

moahahahah...

Perspective

This photo of the 76 Truckstop outside Corsica, along Interstate 80, will put in perspective the scale of one meter resolution aerial data. Imagine the possibilities when 31die gets one centimeter color data...

Industrial closeups of Corsica

These are some close-ups of the 1m resolution aerial photography available in PreCog. Shown are the Pennzoil oil product tanks and the abandoned coal tipple. That the coal tipple is still standing in this shot should indicate some limit on how recent this photo can be. Sometime in the last many years it was torn away and the ponds filled in. In general, we have no idea when these photos were taken. It would be nice to be able to tell.

Tight Corsica Crop

Here is a zoom-in of the neighborhood where my grandparents lived and where I spent many joyous vacations.

The Genius of PreCog

So 31die came to Singapore for ten days of leisure and chitchat. Just before he left he installed his latest genius, PreCog, onto my new Unimog Monster Computer.

As a bug-free beta, this is an incredible program. It is a lean, tidy tool that allows you to pan and zoom through literally gigabytes of 1m aerial photography data as quickly, cleanly, and briskly as you would PgDn through a 15k text file in emacs.

A little gnome program hides in the background sucking raw data from the Terraserver mapping database and ripping it into a useful format. PreCog, featuring advanced graphical programming techniques, renders this onscreen. It's so efficient that you'll have no comprehension of how much data is actually being manipulated behind the scenes.

Here are some closer-in samples of my old hometown, Corsica PA. Keep in mind that the original image PreCog is dealing with covers the greater part of Pennsyvania...

This software has extraordinary visualization applications for several of our hobbies, including geocaching, four-wheel offroading, and infilitration. Be confident that 31die is feverishly working on more enhancements, including colorization, 1cm resolution, and artificial horizon generation.