Added a bunch of raw exitwp posts

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-03-22-hello-world-2.markdown

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+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-03-22 14:23:17+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: hello-world-2
+title: Hello world!
+wordpress_id: 498
+categories:
+- Journal
+---
+
+Welcome to [WordPress.com](http://wordpress.com/). This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-03-24-workfest-with-christian-appalachian-project-day-one.markdown

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+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-03-24 23:20:55+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: workfest-with-christian-appalachian-project-day-one
+title: Workfest with Christian Appalachian Project, day one
+wordpress_id: 37
+categories:
+- Journal
+tags:
+- christian appalachian project
+- Photos
+- workfest
+---
+
+
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+It's quite different.
+
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+People are open. Their groups are open.
+
+
+
+
+It's a difference between being pushed away from people constantly, and being pushed toward them, so one does not constantly need to fight back against the repulsion.
+
+
+Maybe it's the types of people. Maybe it's the environment. But it's wonderful. Maybe similar to the way I felt in Seattle when I visited there last year.
+
+Months in Cincinnati and I might never meet a new friend... hours here and I've made several already.
+
+It's good to see Lea for a change, instead of just emailing. Corrie's also very friendly, and so are most of the other people from the class for that matter. Max and Dan tolerate me being around them, which is good when they're the only two that I have talked to much.
+People I've seen so far just look like generally very good people - honest and practical and benevolent and grateful, and not trying to escape or cheat the system for their own greed. Put them in certain cities, and maybe that would emerge - but they're here.
+
+They're out of that context. They look like they're in the context they belong.
+
+My Canon camera is probably almost out of battery power, despite efforts. I should have brought the charger. But I have the Kodak too. Maybe it will show some of the picturesque terrain.
+
+[![Camp AJ from one angle (full size)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/img_6262.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/img_6262.jpg)[![Arriving at Camp AJ (full size)](http://hodapp.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/img_6253.jpg)](http://hodapp.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/img_6253.jpg)[![Playground and climbing wall near entrance road](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/img_6265.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/img_6265.jpg)

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-03-25-workfest-day-two.markdown

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+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-03-25 01:53:54+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: workfest-day-two
+title: Workfest, day two
+wordpress_id: 43
+categories:
+- Journal
+tags:
+- christian appalachian project
+- Photos
+- workfest
+---
+
+Proceed with first work day.
+
+Due to loud snorers and periodic heater-startup and my cell phone failing to be a usable alarm after its batteries drained in standalone mode for no apparent reason, causing me to believe it was 6 AM when it was probably around 2 AM . . . I had very little sleep, and woke up pretty groggily and felt like eating nothing and doing nothing.
+
+This wore off pretty easily once I was at the work site with my crew. I was working with Corrie at first, and she was cheerful and this helped; Connie, the owner of the house we were helping repair, was also extremely kind to us.
+
+Most of my morning consisted  of putting up fanfold insulation on some walls. Despite constant hammer-pounding and cold, it was pretty peaceful, maybe calming (in a "stage crew" sort of way, like in high school when I discovered that painting flats and beating the crap out of things with hammers was very stress-relieving)... though tiring for my hands and arms.
+
+It reminded me a bit of working on the grounds department at KMCN, except that the surrounding area was miles of country, not just a collection of flowerbeds and trees in the city. I will need to bring my camera and get some pictures of the rooms loading there, as well as the house and its environment.
+
+A bluegrass band (Phillip Akemon and Flatlick) also came tonight. They were very good; I have a few pictures and short video clips (though Kirsten probably has most of it in a much higher-quality format).
+
+I was talking to Lea and she told me she hated being around some of the Christians here... I don't totally blame her, even if I don't have the same view (yet). My view is that they are having a very positive outcome, and if they have to believe what they believe to achieve it, then so be it. They aren't pushing beliefs on anyone else, so I can't really criticize much.
+[![30 PM?](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6282.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6282.jpg)
+
+Phillip Akemon
+[![Phillip Akemon](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6285.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6285.jpg)
+Mike Morgeson
+
+[![Mike Morgeson](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6289.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6289.jpg)
+
+Kevin Amburgey & Phil
+
+[![Kevin Amburgey & Phil](http://hodapp.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/6291.jpg)](http://hodapp.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/6291.jpg)
+
+Phil & Phil Jr.
+
+[![Phil & Phil Jr.](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6292.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6292.jpg)

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-03-26-workfest-day-three.markdown

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+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-03-26 04:07:10+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: workfest-day-three
+title: Workfest, day three
+wordpress_id: 49
+categories:
+- Journal
+tags:
+- christian appalachian project
+- Photos
+- workfest
+---
+
+Well, scratch that part in the last entry about not pushing beliefs.
+
+I slept like a rock (as MJ predicted), woke up groggily, and started another day. Work was a bit slow at first because my wrist was sore and it was hard to hammer, but everyone was pretty productive in general.
+
+Deacon Gregory gave a long, slightly unexpected sermon at lunch today, which I disagreed with a lot of, but thought it a bit inappropriate if I spoke out and had no one on my side (though Corrie said later that she didn't like it much either). So, Lea perhaps was right.
+
+I also had some odd discussions with Max, Dan, and Paul. I've been trying to talk with everyone from UC, but I haven't see Lizzie or Holly much. Aside from that, I've tried to talk to some people in my crew and just around camp. Lolita has seemed to keep her distance from the rest of the crew (just as a general tendency, not like active avoidance), but she's very friendly. We walked around for 10-15 minutes to shoot pictures of the landscape and a nearby family cemetery.
+
+A speaker came to talk about poverty when the camp met after dinner. I don't recall much of this because I was dead tired, and the room was very hot and making me ready to pass out. Everyone from UC met after that, and Lea made a point that many of the volunteers were very ignorant in general and this bothered her (such as when they'd say things that were insulting to her and her heritage).
+
+I wandered in the cafeteria after that and eventually got Corrie, Dan, and Max to play Thirteen (the card game that my brother showed me days prior, and almost a year prior in Seattle). Paul replaced Max when he wanted to play euchre with another group instead, and William joined in; his girlfriend Laura wanted to play but then she was distracted looking at pictures on my camera and then reading a paper/magazine/something. We played about 3 or 4 hands before everyone else was too tired to play, so they left. I think they liked the game, but it's hard to tell for sure.
+
+I took a ton of pictures today... my 512 MB card is almost full in my Canon, but I have my 128 and 32 MB cards, and my old crappy Kodak with 512 and 64 MB cards. I am surprised the batteries have lasted so far in the Canon, as they've been at "low" since the first day.
+
+I understood some of what Jen Eich said months ago about being able to volunteer for a year without racking up debt - much of the staff lives in a sort of coop under CAP, with most expenses covered (like housing, insurance, and utilities) and a $150/month stipend. It looks very nice - if one is suitably dedicated.
+
+
+Early stages of the deck:[![Early stages of the deck](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6306.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6306.jpg)
+
+
+[![Deck from the other side](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6318.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6318.jpg)
+
+
+Corrie & Christine putting up soffit
+
+
+[![Corrie & Christine putting up soffit](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6310.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6310.jpg)
+[![Nearby road](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6338.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6338.jpg)
+
+[![Family cemetery](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6341.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6341.jpg)
+
+[![Some kitten](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6348.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6348.jpg)

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-03-27-workfest-day-four.markdown

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+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-03-27 21:45:58+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: workfest-day-four
+title: Workfest, day four
+wordpress_id: 56
+categories:
+- Journal
+tags:
+- christian appalachian project
+- Photos
+- workfest
+---
+
+Typical morning, finishing up of some work, watching a deck get assembled...
+
+After that we went to a church about 30-40 minutes away and had dinner with the families whose homes we were repairing. Some people got up to talk and expressed a lot of gratitude in general.
+
+Sometime on the drive back to camp with the rest of my crew, we all basically lapsed into some mix of a sugar-high combined with slap-happiness, and we were laughing and screaming the whole way back over really nothing in particular, fueled by the occasional 55-mph tight turn with a bus and semi truck in the other lane, and random songs on the radio (which otherwise had been off until now). Ma'Isah randomly grabbed me during her overdramatic dancing to "Rescue Me," which was a bit odd, but also quite funny.
+
+Once back at camp, the colleges split up to meet, and it seemed everyone from UC was just as slap-happy and high on sugar/caffeine/whatever. They already were laughing at MJ (or maybe with him) about some conversation revolving around underwear or something I completely missed, and the meeting was just a sort of continuation of that. We attended to all needed business, like evaluation forms that we had to fill out - we just happened to be laughing the entire time. Kim, for instance, saw that I had written "cute fluffy kittens" on the part of the form where I was supposed to note a high point of the trip, and she confused "kittens" with "mittens" and then proceeded to laugh her ass off for about 5 minutes.
+
+She also asked the group if they thought they'd like to meet afterward sometime just to get ice cream or something, because we all seemed to be enjoying being around each other and it would be weird to suddenly leave and cease to meet again. Holly also asked who'd like to return to Workfest next year, and MJ suggested talking to honors at UC about that, as people didn't have to come as part of a class - it could just be a university function.
+
+It's odd... it's like we all started meshing and being friends.
+
+It's miles apart from other environments I've been in, where I had suspicion that it was not my fault that I couldn't enter people's social boundaries and felt that they were putting up walls to keep me out. Sometimes those suspicions would leave and I'd blame myself for being who I am, but if I have no trouble befriending multiple people over a few days, I must be doing something right.
+
+Photos:
+
+[![Sky in the morning](http://hodapp.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/6359e.jpg)](http://hodapp.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/6359e.jpg)
+
+
+We were repairing Connie's house; this photo has Andy (one of the crew leaders), Connie, and Heather (Connie's daughter)[![Andy, Connie, Heather](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6389e.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6389e.jpg)
+
+
+
+
+More progress on the deck[![More progress on the deck](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6369e.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6369e.jpg)
+
+
+
+
+Random cat that would hang around[![Random cat with no tail](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6367e.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/6367e.jpg)

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-03-28-workfest-day-fourfive.markdown

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+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-03-28 00:45:08+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: workfest-day-fourfive
+title: Workfest, day five/sixish
+wordpress_id: 63
+categories:
+- Journal
+tags:
+- christian appalachian project
+- Photos
+- workfest
+---
+
+I was too busy/asleep to write much of an entry, so I'll just post the few photos I have from the last two days.
+
+
+Almost-completed deck[![Deck, almost finished](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/6422e.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/6422e.jpg)
+
+
+[
+](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/6422e.jpg)
+
+
+Crate of [Ale-8-One](http://www.ale8one.com/) donated by someone whose name I forget[![Crate of Ale-8-One](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/6425e.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/6425e.jpg)
+
+
+
+
+Pastries which Andy took a lot of time preparing for breakfast [![Pastries that Andy put a lot of work into](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/k6584e.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/k6584e.jpg)

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-03-31-stuff-i-experienced-at-work-today.markdown

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+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-03-31 22:48:15+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: stuff-i-experienced-at-work-today
+title: Stuff I Experienced At Work Today
+wordpress_id: 61
+categories:
+- Journal
+---
+
+
+	
+  1. Declared myself a complete asshat for writing a blog about nothing
+
+	
+  2. Declared myself a lazy bastard for using iTunes to subscribe to podcasts to put on my iPod and listen to while driving in to work. Whatever, I get sick of Clearchannel and raving right-wing lunatic talk radio.
+
+	
+  3. Broke the printer after two pages
+
+	
+  4. Discovered that while both my managers described the intern who had just left as essentially clueless, she had decorated the cubicle in interesting tiny artworks made with post-its and highlighter, like this:
+![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/cubicleart.jpg)
+
+	
+  5. Was very glad that I took 2 hours several months ago to document WTF I was doing when I left, because I certainly did not remember
+
+	
+  6. Was told I needed to cut my hair, which is true
+
+	
+  7. Heard the random Canadian guy comment about all the snake-handling that he thinks goes on in Appalachia (and the venom from those snakes, he claims, is from female brain cells)
+
+	
+  8. Was mistaken for someone who cared during some discussion about why baseball and the Cincinnati Enquirer suck
+
+	
+  9. Read [The Democratization of the Music Industry](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-price/the-democratization-of-th_b_93065.html) by Jeff Price
+
+	
+  10. Read about [TuneCore](http://www.tunecore.com/) of which Jeff Price is the CEO... it would be more interesting to me if I actually created any music to sell on it
+
+	
+  11. Read about [gizmo](http://gizmo5.com/pc/products/desktop/) which my friend described as like Skype, but better.
+
+	
+  12. Basically nothing
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-04-04-alexander-blu.markdown

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+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-04-04 00:06:22+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: alexander-blu
+title: Alexander Blu
+wordpress_id: 66
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- Music
+---
+
+[![Alexander Blu - May](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/may-150x150.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/may.jpg)[![Alexander Blu - Moderato](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/moderato-150x150.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/moderato.jpg)
+
+[![Alexander Blu header](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/header2.jpeg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/header2.jpeg)
+
+**Alexander Blu**
+
+
+
+	
+  * I had a song by this artist from 2005.08.13 (from Interconnected MusicMedia, now known as [SoundLift](http://www.soundlift.com)) which I never really listened to... but finally got around to listening to, and I found the artist is still around and writing songs.
+
+	
+  * His personal site is [here](http://www.alexanderblu.com/). His albums are available online under the Creative Commons. He also has a decent collection of digital pictures, some videos, and slide shows.
+
+	
+  * His description of the music: "...electro genre (Instrumental Music) with frequent use of electric guitar and Instrumental Lullabies for kids and adults in electro ambient genre. My music philosophy is that music should be relaxing and not burdening to the listener."    . . . basically lines up with how I'd describe it.
+
+	
+  * I've listened to "Moderato" and "May" so far, but a few other albums are there as well.
+
+
+_Where to get it:_  [Here](http://www.alexanderblu.com/AlexanderBlu/The%20Music/Music.htm) at his home page.

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-04-18-post-its-and-scrap-notes-starting-20080403.markdown

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+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-04-18 00:56:59+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: post-its-and-scrap-notes-starting-20080403
+title: Post-its and scrap notes, starting 2008.04.03
+wordpress_id: 71
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- books
+- politics
+- science
+---
+
+So, my bag now has a big stack of scrap notes in it, just from things I jotted down at work... these should probably go online...
+
+**2008.04.03**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [http://www.ucsusa.org](http://www.ucsusa.org) - Union of Concerned Scientists
+
+	
+  * [Study: Unskilled and Unaware of It](http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf) - some notable paper
+
+	
+  * [Ig Nobel Prize](http://www.improbable.com/category/ig-nobel/) - "Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK"
+
+	
+  * [Talking Points Memo](http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/) - I don't know why I wrote this
+
+	
+  * [Analog Devices - Blackfin](http://www.analog.com/processors/blackfin/) - 16/32-bit embedded core, 10-stage RISC MCU/DSP pipeline, full SIMD support
+
+	
+  * [Analog Devices - SHARC](http://www.analog.com/processors/sharc/index.html) - floating-point DSP
+
+	
+  * [Administration Asserts No Fourth Amendment for Domestic Military Operations](http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/administration-asserts-no-fourth-amendment-domestic-military-operations) - some article from EFF
+
+
+**2008.04.04**
+
+
+
+	
+  * "Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past" - Lloyd Gardner, Marilyn Young ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Iraq-Lessons-Vietnam-Learn-Past/dp/1595581499))
+
+	
+  * [Open Media Now! foundation](http://www.openmedianow.org/) - has the goal of open media infrastructure; apparently the same guys who made [Gnash](http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/)
+
+	
+  * [Ohio InfoSec](http://ohioinfosec.org/)
+
+	
+  * "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" - Eric Hoffer; published in 1951, discusses the psychological causes of fanaticism ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915))
+
+	
+  * [IBM Power6 at 4.7 GHz benchmarks](http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/239162-28-power6-7ghz-benchmarks)
+
+
+
+
+**2008.04.09**
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [David Allen, Getting Things Done and GTD](http://www.davidco.com/) - some sorta organizational system that NPR's podcast from 2008.02.20 mentioned
+
+
+
+
+**2008.04.11**
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Ken Miller](http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/) - biology professor, notable for combining evolution with belief in God and rejecting creationism and intelligent design; wrote "Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution" ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0060930497/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1208479139&sr=11-1))
+
+
+
+
+**2008.04.16**
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * "Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" - Bertrand Russell ([e-text here](http://www.solstice.us/russell/intellectual_rubbish.html))
+
+	
+  * "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" - Naomi Klein ([personal site](http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine), [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831))
+
+	
+  * same author: "No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs " ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/No-Logo-Space-Choice-Jobs/dp/0312421435))
+
+	
+  * "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot" - Naomi Wolf... for a bit more apocalyptical point of view ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/End-America-Letter-Warning-Patriot/dp/1933392797/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_k2a_3_txt?pf_rd_p=304485601&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-2&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0312421435&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=02T588HAKSC426C3JPNX))
+
+	
+  * "War is a Racket" - Major General Smedley D. Butler - booklet/speech from 1930's ([e-text here](http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm))
+
+	
+  * [MUCS-PCB](http://intranet.cs.man.ac.uk/apt/projects/tools/mucs-pcb/) - PCB design software (GPLed) from University of Manchester
+
+
+
+
+**2008.04.17**
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [www.linuxcnc.org](http://www.linuxcnc.org) - software to let a PC control a CNC machine; according to archivist in #electronics on Freenode, this can use a parallel port (with some level converters and optoisolators) to control four stepper motors, and the CNC itself can be made from largely a lot of scrap parts
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-04-26-more-scrap-notes-starting-2008-04-18.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,133 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-04-26 04:53:30+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: more-scrap-notes-starting-2008-04-18
+title: More scrap notes, starting 2008-04-18
+wordpress_id: 72
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- apps
+- books
+- Music
+- politics
+---
+
+**2008.04.something**
+
+
+
+	
+  * "True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society" - Farhad Manjoo ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/True-Enough-Learning-Post-Fact-Society/dp/0470050101)) - in a way, a more factual approach to people judging by "truthiness" rather than truth
+
+	
+  * "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think" - George Lakoff ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Politics-Liberals-Conservatives-Think/dp/0226467716/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209181316&sr=8-3)) - who knows, might be interesting
+
+
+**2008.04.18**
+
+
+
+	
+  * People that some guy labeled as "hard left": Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klei
+
+	
+  * Artist that I like who appears to have not released any songs in 2 years: John Schmidt ([CNet Music Library](http://music.download.com/johnschmidt/3600-8244_32-100382928.html))
+
+	
+  * Some other artist I also marked as liking despite the generic name: Digital Trance ([Dance-Industries](http://www.dance-industries.com/view_artist.php?ID=1041))
+
+	
+  * Artist I don't particularly like, but who has had songs in my collection for 4 years for some reason: Eye Candy ([personal site](http://www.eye-candy.info/))
+
+	
+  * One that I liked for being "ambient, pretty soothing + flowing": Organic Frequencies ([CNet Music Library](http://music.download.com/organicfrequencies/3600-8357_32-100405391.html))
+
+	
+  * Some artist that I like for similar reasons: Rec.Hat ([Myspace](http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=3945577), [CNet Music Library](http://music.download.com/rechat/3600-8357_32-100083306.html))
+
+
+**2008.04.21**
+
+
+
+	
+  * Glenn Greenwald ([Wikipedia entry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald)) - apparently wrote some interesting books, criticized the corporate media, and so on.
+
+	
+  * [Economic Mobility Project](http://www.economicmobility.org/) - "The Economic Mobility Project is a unique nonpartisan collaboration...blahblahblah... Our purpose is to provoke a more rigorous discussion about economic mobility in America by presenting new findings and research, and analyzing the effects of social, economic and human capital factors that may impact one’s ability to move up the economic ladder over a generation."
+
+	
+  * Another netlabel I like some music on: [Rohformat](http://www.rohformat.de/) (and I was listening to "flight of birds" by ronin, which I'd link to but the site is down right now)
+
+	
+  * Artist which makes me most sad to find he has not released anything in years: LMK ([CNet Music Library](http://music.download.com/lmk/3600-8263_32-100127064.html))
+
+
+**2008.04.23**
+
+
+
+	
+  * Decent album by Easily Embarassed: [Darkened Emotion EP](http://www.cardamar.com/releases.php?release=MARP009) (free download courtesy of Cardamar Music)... I wrote "electronic, flows pretty well, beat-oriented"
+
+	
+  * From the same source, "Another Day in the Clouds" mixed by Cardamar is good; it's available at their [mixes](http://www.cardamar.com/mixes.html) page . . . I wrote "gentle, ambient, soothing"
+
+
+**2008.04.25**
+
+
+
+	
+  * More artists: Windcheater ([Beatpick](http://www.beatpick.com/Windcheater), [Myspace](http://www.myspace.com/windcheater))
+
+	
+  * [Beatpick](http://www.beatpick.com/), apparently, is a service that offers DRM-free music under the Creative Commons, allows people to license the music, splits profits 50/50 with the artist, allow free non-commercial use, etc.
+
+	
+  * Another artist, also of the house genre: Zeropage ([personal site](http://www.zeropage-media.com/), [DMusic](http://zpage.dmusic.com/), and [SoundLift](http://www.soundlift.com/band/music.php?id=103006) for the tracks I originally had from 2005).
+
+	
+  * Another artist, this one more of the trance genre: Edzes, or Andreas Bruvoll Skaarung ([CTG Music](http://www.ctgmusic.com/artist.php?id=4))
+
+	
+  * An ambient artist that I think I like: Art of Infinity ([personal site](http://www.art-of-infinity.com/), [Myspace](http://www.myspace.com/artofinfinity)). The place I originally found him (Interconnected Musicmedia, now SoundLift) no longer has his page, but he appears to be thriving without it.
+
+
+**2008.04.25**
+
+Software I had at one point for some reason:
+
+
+
+	
+  * [arbaro](http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/): tree generation for POV-Ray as described in ["Creation and Rendering of Realistic Trees"](http://www.cs.duke.edu/education/courses/fall02/cps124/resources/p119-weber.pdf)
+
+	
+  * [Bliss](http://bliss.kylesblog.com/) intellivision emulator
+
+	
+  * [DarkPlaces](http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/): modified Quake engine that, for me at least, works a bit better on modern hardware and OSes than the original
+
+	
+  * [Flock](http://www.flock.com/): "the social web browser", or, the browser that I used to use because it allowed me to do bulk uploads to Photobucket. It appears to now support a lot more, with regard to interaction with online social networks.
+
+	
+  * [knotplot](http://knotplot.com/): plots knots... or, visualizes knots from a mathematical perspective.
+
+	
+  * [Nosefart](http://nosefart.sourceforge.net/): Nintendo Music Player which handles NSF files from NES games.
+
+	
+  * [ScummVM](http://www.scummvm.org/): multiplatform VM to play old adventure games, such as from LucasArts (I am probably completely butchering these terms), provided you have their data files. [Beneath a Steel Sky](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_a_Steel_Sky) is one such game, now available as freeware, apparently of the cyberpunk genre.
+
+	
+  * [Namazu](http://www.namazu.org/): full-text search engine, as in a piece of software that you can install on your own servers if you wish
+
+	
+  * [Art of Illusion](http://www.artofillusion.org/): "Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering studio. It is written entirely in Java..." . . . I've used it to make 3D meshes for POV-Ray and it works quite well for being written in Java.
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-05-05-alix1c-board-edirol-repair.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-05-05 01:32:43+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: alix1c-board-edirol-repair
+title: Alix.1C board & Edirol repair
+wordpress_id: 73
+categories:
+- Technobabble
+tags:
+- Hardware
+- midi
+---
+
+I guess I'll repeat what some other people do, and put up blog entries about what they do with hardware...
+
+**Alix.1C**
+
+My [Alix.1C](http://www.mini-box.com/Alix-1C-Board-1-LAN-1-MINI-PCI?sc=8&category=754) mini-ITX board just arrived, hopefully to replace the server that's sitting in the closet collecting dust, and making a lot of noise and heat due to having 5 hard drives (all of which could be replaced by a single drive for about $30).
+
+This board is a 500 MHz AMD Geode with 256 MB RAM onboard; it uses about 5 watts and runs from 12VDC. It has a CompactFlash header onboard, so right now I am running Linux from a 128 MB card.
+
+[![Alix.1C](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6547.jpg?w=300)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6547.jpg)[![Alix.1C other view](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6549.jpg?w=300)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6549.jpg)
+
+**Edirol PCR-M50**
+
+My brother got me an Edirol PCR-M50 keyboard about 16 months ago. When I used it recently to mess around with [Reaktor 5](http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=reaktor5_us) I found that a number of the keys had stopped working. I figured this was probably because for the past several months I'd used the MIDI keyboard primarily for putting books on top of rather than any music-related purpose, due to being in a dorm room with nowhere else to put the books. But after some online searching, it looks like a number of people have had the same issue. and it's due to some corrosion/oxidation/dirt on the contacts that the keys activate.
+
+Some said they'd taken it apart and cleaned it to fix it. So I figured that would be easier to do than try to memorize which notes didn't work. I took some pictures... mainly for my own reference in case I forgot how things were supposed to go back together... but I am putting them up here too:
+
+Front cover off, after removing like 50 screws:
+
+[![Edirol keyboard 1](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6553.jpg?w=300)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6553.jpg)[![Edirol keyboard 2](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6554.jpg?w=300)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6554.jpg)
+
+So I started the process of removing keys because I could not see any other way to access the contacts. They grey part on the left in the first picture looks like about the same mechanism as a keyboard or older joystick pad. There are two pads for each key rather than just one, and my guess is that the one nearest the fulcrum is hit slightly sooner than the further one, and the time elapsed between the two hits is used to guess the velocity with which they key was struck.
+
+Other than that, just a pretty easy-to-understand design. Each key is held up by a tension spring on the opposite side, and keys slide in and out pretty easily once the springs are gone. The only annoying part was all the white grease everywhere that kept getting all over my hands.
+
+[![Edirol keyboard 3](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6555.jpg?w=300)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6555.jpg)[![Edirol keyboard 4](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6556.jpg?w=300)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6556.jpg)
+
+And it's just connected electrically with a ribbon cable, normal 0.1" pitch, like an IDE header.
+
+[![Edirol keyboard 5](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6557.jpg?w=300)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6557.jpg)
+
+So I proceeded to remove the first dozen or so keys by pulling out the springs, then white keys and black keys.
+
+The PCB in the next pictures looks almost black, but it should be more of a dark green. The lines are dust that came between the keys. In any case, these show the rubber(ish) part on top that the keys strike, and the gold PCB contacts beneath them.
+
+[![Edirol keyboard 6](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6562.jpg?w=300)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6562.jpg)[![Edirol keyboard 7](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6563.jpg?w=300)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/6563.jpg)
+
+Conveniently, there are four rubber sections (one per octave). Each two gold pads correspond to a key, and the holes between each are where the rubber section is secured.
+
+I removed the first section completely, but fully re-seating the rubber took awhile. What I eventually did was lift up just the portion enough to get to the PCB contacts underneath. As only a few keys were problematic, it was just a matter of pounding the keys or rubber to hear which ones didn't respond right. Electronics are really supposed to be turned off when you service them, but it is much easier to audibly hear the response of a key/contact to determine how well it's working, so I had it plugged in... oh well, the electronics are all low-voltage.
+
+From there I just needed to clean off the contacts underneath the problematic keys with some rubbing alcohol on a q-tip. I didn't exactly need to remove all 48 keys to do this, but I wanted to clean the keys off anyway.
+
+Yay. Keyboard is working well again.

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-05-05-scrap-notes-20080425ish-20080503.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-05-05 01:54:01+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: scrap-notes-20080425ish-20080503
+title: Scrap notes, 2008.04.25ish-2008.05.03
+wordpress_id: 83
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- os
+---
+
+
+	
+  * [Adobe Open Screen Project](http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/) - apparently Adobe is now opening up the SWF and FLV formats, which hopefully soon means significantly less trouble getting Flash to work for me on Linux.
+
+	
+  * [Tilera TILE64](http://www.tilera.com/products/processors.php) - some sort of chip with 64 interconnected cores (or "tiles"); according to their site, tiles can be grouped into clusters, and the chip can run multiple operating systems simultaneously. Maybe kinda neat.
+
+	
+  * [Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest](http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/) - "whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." Kinda interesting to read.
+
+	
+  * [Contiki OS](http://www.sics.se/contiki/) - "Contiki is a small, open source, highly portable, multitasking computer operating system developed for use on a number of memory-constrained networked systems ranging from 8-bit computers to embedded systems on microcontrollers, including sensor network motes." (from [Wikipedia entry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contiki)). Apparently can run from a few KB and provide multitasking and TCP/IP, as well as a full GUI if given about 30 KB. It runs on a variety of systems, including AVR micros, Commodore, Apple II, blahblahblah. Looks handy.
+
+	
+  * Sort of reminds me of the [TRON Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_Project) despite not really being anything like it.
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-05-17-overdue-scrap-notes-20080501-0516.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,121 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-05-17 14:39:34+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: overdue-scrap-notes-20080501-0516
+title: Overdue scrap notes, 2008.05.01-05.16
+wordpress_id: 84
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- electronics
+- linux
+- politics
+- programming
+---
+
+**2008.04.30**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Reaktor diary](http://reaktordiary.blogspot.com/): might be helpful as I learn to use Reaktor
+
+	
+  * Despite that this program is not open source but proprietary, it offers more comprehensible insight into its workings than any of the open source synth software I have tried so far.
+
+	
+  * Given, I've only used a couple premade instruments, but their internal structure is out-in-the-open in the form of modules, not as blocks of code that I would have a hard time finding and a harder time comprehending.
+
+
+**2008.05.06**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Chilling Effects Clearinghouse](http://www.chillingeffects.org/): "A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and (about a dozen schools).... Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities."
+
+	
+  * [Linux Softpedia - EDA](http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Science-and-Engineering/Electronic-Design-Automation-EDA-/): looks like a good collection of Electronic Design Automation software for Linux
+
+	
+  * [Signs](http://www.iti.uni-stuttgart.de/~bartscgr/signs/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) (or [here](http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Science-and-Engineering/Electronic-Design-Automation-EDA-/Signs-7965.shtml)): "a tool for logic synthesis and gate level simulation... include synthesis of RTL-style VHDL circuit descriptions and a dynamic graphical netlist viewer..."
+
+	
+  * [KTechLab](http://ktechlab.org/): "...an Open Source Intergated Design Environment (IDE) for electronic and PIC microcontroller circuit design and simulation."
+
+	
+  * [Alliance CAD](http://www-asim.lip6.fr/recherche/alliance/): "a complete         set of free CAD tools and portable libraries for VLSI design... includes a VHDL compiler and simulator, logic         synthesis tools, and automatic place and route tools."
+
+	
+  * Octeon Plus - some chip, 4 to 16 MIPS64 core, 600-1000 MHz, 15-40W power usage... looks pretty fast ([Linuxdevices link](http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6961076616.html))
+
+	
+  * [Helpful link ](http://nomediakings.org/doityourself/howto_silkscreen_posters_and_shirts.html)about silkscreening/screenprinting from [nomediakings.org](http://nomediakings.org)
+
+
+**2008.05.09**
+
+
+
+	
+  * "This Film is Not Yet Rated" ([IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/)) - some movie my friend Adam recommended; looks like the [full version](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-559517494445537267) is online, for now, at Google Videos
+
+	
+  * [Univ. of Manchester, Advanced Processor Tech. Group](http://intranet.cs.man.ac.uk/apt/) - good link for some software projects and papers relevant to processors
+
+	
+  * "In Defense of Lost Causes" - Slavoj Zizek ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Lost-Causes-Slavoj-Zizek/dp/1844671089))... maybe an interesting book from a "Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic." who describes himself as a Marxist
+
+	
+  * "Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe" - Arianna Huffington ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Right-Wrong-Hijacked-Shredded-Constitution/dp/0307269663)) . . . just in case you needed more anti-conservative propaganda
+
+	
+  * Past public lectures from Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics are available [here](http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/Outreach/Public_Lectures/View_Past_Public_Lectures/) (though videos look like mostly Windows Media Player or Flash).
+
+	
+  * [SIMH](http://simh.trailing-edge.com/): software from the Computer History Simulation Project, able to simulate (not emulate?) a variety of rather old hardware, like the DEC PDP
+
+
+
+**2008.05.16**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Excerpts](http://www.relativitybook.com/resources/Einstein_religion.html) from Einstein's letter to Eric Gutkind on 1954-01-03 - expresses some of his views on religion pretty well... apparently lining up a bit with the "Deus sive nature" views of [Spinoza](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza)
+
+	
+  * [Reconfigurable computing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconfigurable_computing)... worth learning about.
+
+	
+  * [Microcode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcode)... also worth learning about, particularly with x86
+
+	
+  * [FpgaC](http://fpgac.sourceforge.net/): "FpgaC compiles a subset of the C language to net lists which can be imported into an FPGA vendors tool chains... excellent alternative to VHDL/Verilog for algorithmic expression of FPGA reconfigurable computing tasks." . . . like an HLL rather than an HDL.
+
+	
+  * [Atmel FPSLIC](http://www.atmel.com/products/FPSLIC/): AVR microcontroller and SRAM-based FPGA combined on one die
+
+	
+  * [Achronix](http://www.achronix.com/): FPGAs running up to around 2 GHz
+
+	
+  * [OpenCores](http://www.opencores.org/): Designs and publishes core designs (for FPGAs, CPLDs, ASICs in general) under a license based on the LGPL
+
+	
+  * [OpenFPGA](http://www.openfpga.org/): Promote FPGAs in blahblahblah by trying to have open standards and information and practices
+
+	
+  * [Pragmatic Marketing](http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/): I dunno, but I've read a few useful links here
+
+
+**2008.05.16**
+
+
+
+	
+  * "Commonwealth - Economics for a Crowded Planet" - Jeff Sachs ([link](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/03/common-wealth-e.html) at [marginalrevolution.com](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/))
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-05-24-20-pages-of-scrap-notes-20080519-0523.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,101 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-05-24 04:06:44+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20-pages-of-scrap-notes-20080519-0523
+title: 20 pages of scrap notes, 2008.05.19-05.23
+wordpress_id: 85
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- linux
+- politics
+- programming
+---
+
+I astound myself by how many pages of scrap notes I accumulate over 5 days, just during my down time at work.
+
+**2008.05.19**
+
+
+
+	
+  * "Exposing the Modern Racist Paradigm," extremely long page [here
+](http://www.opposingdigits.com/racistparadigm/)
+
+	
+  * Someone's opinions on why the Amiga is awesome, [here](http://www.basden.demon.co.uk/amiga/amigade/features.html) . . . meaningful to me because I haven't used an Amiga
+
+	
+  * [Simputer](http://www.simputer.org/) - "self-contained, open hardware handheld computer, designed for use in environments where computing devices such as personal computers are deemed inappropriate." (quoth [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simputer))... this looks like a project that didn't do as well as expected and is rather old right now, but it looks interesting anyhow.
+
+	
+  * Someone's [blog](http://thomaskraemer.blogspot.com/2008/05/hp-memristor-math-visualization.html) about the memristor, and why it's the 4th circuit element, and why he thinks it's useful/revolutionary.
+
+	
+  * [Reversible computing](http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/reversible.html) . . . worthy of consideration
+
+
+**2008.05.20**
+
+
+
+	
+  * Intel Atom D945GCLF motherboard from [Tranquil PC Ltd.](http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/acatalog/Motherboards.html) - $82 for motherboard with 1.60 GHz Atom 230; looks like a pretty good deal
+
+	
+  * [OLPC XO 2.0](http://www.xconomy.com/2008/05/20/negroponte-unveils-2nd-generation-olpc-laptop-its-an-e-book/) - new version of the XO, which "isn’t really a laptop at all but a double-screened, fold-up electronic book", and which Negroponte has a goal of being producing for $75 each.
+
+	
+  * [Pen Computing](http://pencomputing.com/) - good resource on mobile/handheld/rugged computing products
+
+
+**2008.05.21**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Lulu](http://www.lulu.com/) - Self publishing service; allows you to publish (as in, actual physical books that can be purchased online) with no setup fees. You keep 80% of creator revenue on sales, and you keep the copyrights to the material.
+
+	
+  * [Adam Smith's Lost Legacy](http://adamsmithslostlegacy.com/) - because someone's pissed about how people constantly mangle what Adam Smith said
+
+
+**2008.05.22**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Digilent Inc.](http://www.digilentinc.com/) - Offers some inexpensive starter boards with Xilinx Spartan FPGAs or Atmel AVR microcontrollers
+
+	
+  * [Xtreme Data, Inc.](http://www.xtremedatainc.com/) - "Database Analytics Appliance able to sustain 1TB/min of SQL processing"... well, that's kinda boring, but I suppose it does live up to the name, and somehow accomplishes this with FPGAs.
+
+	
+  * [DRC Computer Corporation](http://drccomputer.com/) - offers Reconfigurable Processor Unit which fits into an AMD Opteron socket on a multiway board, allowing it to directly connect to its bus and access memory, and offload CPU-intensive software routines to hardware; they use Xilinx FPGAs for this.
+
+	
+  * [Project VGA](http://wacco.mveas.com/) - "Low Budget, Open Source, VGA Compatible video card"
+
+	
+  * [FPGA Central](http://www.fpgacentral.com/) - Good resource for FPGA links
+
+
+**2008.05.23**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Llamasoft Blog](http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/blog/) - From the maker of one of my favorite games, Llamatron. He has written some interesting software.
+
+	
+  * [JavaSpaces](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuple_space#JavaSpaces) - distributed shared memory in Java, along with other stuff, and part of [Jini](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jini) from Sun. This could be neat if I actually used Java.
+
+	
+  * [VX32](http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~baford/vm/) - "virtual extension environment" for x86; one can run x86 apps in this for a secure, isolated environment in which they are limited in what they are allowed to do.
+
+	
+  * [ACL2](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~moore/acl2/) (Applicative Common Lisp) - "both a programming language in which you can model computer systems and a tool to help you prove properties of those models," and part of the Boyer-Moore family of theorem provers
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-05-27-old-tattered-notebook-from-1999-notes.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,140 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-05-27 02:06:04+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: old-tattered-notebook-from-1999-notes
+title: Old-tattered-notebook-from-1999 notes
+wordpress_id: 86
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- linux
+- politics
+- programming
+---
+
+So, these are probably more useful here than sitting in a dusty binder...
+
+**2003.07**
+
+
+
+	
+  * "Common Lisp, Typing, and Mathematics" by Francis Sergereart - good (long) paper about one application of Common Lisp; [Postscript here](http://ai.king.net.pl/articles/common-lisp.ps)
+
+	
+  * "Getting Started With LaTeX", David R. Wilkins - [here](http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/)
+
+
+**2004.07**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [AT&T Graphviz](http://www.graphviz.org/) - very very useful program for visualization of directed and undirected graphs
+
+
+**2005.04**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [](http://www.opencroquet.org/)[Croquet](http://croquetconsortium.org/) (from the Croquet Project, not to be confused with the Croquet Consortium) - by my description, an attempt to extend the original 2-dimensional paradigm for a GUI into 3 dimensions; by their description, "Croquet is a powerful new open source software development environment and software infrastructure for creating and deploying deeply collaborative multi-user online applications and metaverses on and across multiple operating systems and devices."... I think it's an interesting project, anyhow. Check out some of the papers Alan Kay helped write, and look at some of the videos.
+
+
+**2005.??**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [JGraph](http://jgraph.com/) - some sort of graphing and visualization software, open-source and written in Java
+
+	
+  * [Ploticus](http://ploticus.sourceforge.net/) - more graphing and visualization, not as shiny as JGraph, but not Java either; apparently good for on-the-fly graph generation, for websites and such
+
+	
+  * [TeXmacs](http://www.texmacs.org/) - "           GNU TeXmacs is a free wysiwyw (what you see is what you want)           editing platform with special features for scientists."... it puts Mathematica's rendering to shame.
+
+
+**2005.08.23**
+
+
+
+	
+  * Very useful [link](http://www.geocities.com/evilsnack/matrix.htm) for using matrices in POV-Ray
+
+	
+  * Media and Particle Systems in POV-Ray, [here](http://www.willamette.edu/~gorr/classes/GeneralGraphics/Media/)
+
+	
+  * Photons & caustics in POV-Ray, [here](http://nathan.kopp.com/photons.htm)
+
+
+**2006.12.11**
+
+
+
+	
+  * ["Weaving the Web"](http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Weaving/), Tim Berners-Lee - "The original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web, by its inventor."
+
+
+**2006.12.15**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Grasshopper Enterprises](http://www.grasshopper.com/), "Borders of science, boundaries of imagination," might be complete and total bullshit, but the page has some interesting things on lucid dreaming and other workings of the mind
+
+
+**2007.04.19**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [cachegrind](http://valgrind.org/info/tools.html) - cache profiler, part of the valgrind suite, designed to pinpoint cache misses in code
+
+	
+  * I don't know why, but I wrote down "BDI2000 JTAG", maybe because the Abatron BDI-2000 can be used to debug the Linux kernel via JTAG?
+
+
+**2007.04.26**
+
+
+
+	
+  * ["The Grand Inquisitor"](http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/grand.htm) from "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky  -  I think I'm supposed to read this because I don't know why else I'd have written it down.
+
+
+**2007.11.02**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Voyage Linux](http://linux.voyage.hk/) - Debian-based distro, designed for embedded systems, like [Soekris](http://www.soekris.com/) boards; it is suitable as a WAP, firewall, gateway, NAS, etc.
+
+	
+  * [IPv6 Tunnel Broker](http://tunnelbroker.net/) - reach IPv6 internet freely by tunneling over existing IPv4 connections, courtesy of Hurricane Electric Internet Services
+
+	
+  * [The Honeynet Project](http://www.honeynet.org/) - goal is to increase the security of the Internet by "learning the tools, tactics, and motives involved in computer and network attacks, and sharing the lessons learned"
+
+	
+  * ["Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads"](http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/9/5/05113/70314)
+
+	
+  * "The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier" by Bruce Sterling; available [here ](http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html)as "literary freeware"
+
+	
+  * ["The War on the Unexpected" by Bruce Schneier](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html)
+
+
+**2008.05.26**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/](http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/) - helpful web applet for figuring out chords and scales and numerous other things about which I am clueless but trying to learn[
+](http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/)
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-06-01-semi-organized-scrap-notes-20080526-20080601.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-06-01 16:55:32+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: semi-organized-scrap-notes-20080526-20080601
+title: Semi-organized scrap notes, 2008.05.26-2008.06.01
+wordpress_id: 87
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- crackpots
+- linux
+- politics
+- science
+---
+
+**Political/otherwise controversial
+**
+
+
+
+	
+  * Seen on a bumper sticker on a semi truck: [http://www.headsneedtoroll.org/](http://www.headsneedtoroll.org/) . . . looks to have a pretty good stated mission[
+](http://www.headsneedtoroll.org/)
+
+	
+  * [Vote Apathy Party 08](http://www.apathyparty08.com/) because at least I'm honest.
+
+	
+  * Just discovered [Utah Phillips](http://www.utahphillips.org/) upon hearing an interview with him after his death on May 23
+
+	
+  * "Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine On Trial" by Simon Singh ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Trick-Treatment-Alternative-Medicine-Trial/dp/0593059042))
+
+
+**Technical blah**
+
+
+
+	
+  * For some "brilliant" explanations of why most science is completely wrong, [Louis Savain's site](http://www.rebelscience.org/Crackpots/notorious.htm) is a good reference
+
+	
+  * You can score the site on [The crackpot index](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html) by John Baez ("A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics")
+
+	
+  * [The Join-Calculus](http://moscova.inria.fr/join/index.shtml) from [INRIA](http://www.inria.fr) in France - "...a process calculus. It provides a simple support for distributed programming."
+
+	
+  * [JoCaml](http://jocaml.inria.fr/) from the same place; basically [Objective Caml](http://caml.inria.fr/ocaml/) plus Join-Calculus
+
+	
+  * INRIA also made [SciLab](http://www.scilab.org/) which is quite useful as a free tool for numerical computation, particularly if you hate MATLAB.
+
+	
+  * [uClinux](http://www.uclinux.org/) - embedded Linux/Microcontroller project, for MMU-less systems... website is very slow as of late for some reason
+
+	
+  * [ELKS](http://elks.sourceforge.net/) (Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset) - in case you really want to run a subset of Linux on an Intel 8086, 8088, 80186, 80188, 80286, 386 in V86 mode, or Psion SIBO
+
+	
+  * [JLime](http://www.jlime.com/) - Jornada Linux Mobility Edition, which runs quite well on some HP Jornadas, like the 680, which is good in cases like mine when the included WinCE is one giant pile of fail
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-06-07-notes-20080601-20080607.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-06-07 18:24:56+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: notes-20080601-20080607
+title: Notes 2008.06.01 - 2008.06.07
+wordpress_id: 88
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- apps
+- books
+- programming
+---
+
+**Technical stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Red Hill Technology](http://www.redhill.net.au/) - decent articles pertaining a lot to old x86 hardware
+
+	
+  * [TRIPS](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~trips/) (utexas again) - "developing a new class 	of technology-scalable, power efficient, high-performance microprocessor architectures 	called EDGE (Explicit Data Graph Execution) architectures." and I've got at least one technical paper that's been on my computer for over a year that I've put off reading somehow
+
+
+**Programs and stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Xournal](http://xournal.sourceforge.net/) - "  Xournal is an application for notetaking, sketching, keeping  a journal using a stylus."; open source, of course, and maybe I can make it run on my Jornada
+
+	
+  * [OPIE ](http://opie.handhelds.org/)- Open Palmtop Integrated Environment... some sort of interface for smaller devices; I tried it on my Jornada and found it uselessly slow, but kinda neat
+
+	
+  * [GPE](http://gpe.handhelds.org/) - GPE Palmtop Environment, which might be a better option than OPI
+
+	
+  * [BlenderCAD](http://projects.blender.org/projects/blendercad/) - "a Blender script created with the aim of expand the functionality of Blender, so that it could be used for the Computer Aided Drawing." ...haven't tried it but it might be worth it
+
+	
+  * [GNU Radio](http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/) - the GNU software radio; can be combined with minimal hardware (like the [USRP](http://www.ettus.com/)) "allows the construction of radios where the actual   		waveforms transmitted and received are defined by software," which is probably a good way to totally piss off the FCC
+
+
+**Books**
+
+
+
+	
+  * "Tainting Evidence: Inside The Scandals At The FBI Crime Lab" by JF Kelly and PK Wearne ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Tainting-Evidence-Inside-Scandals-Crime/dp/0743236416))
+
+	
+  * "Confessions of a Record Producer - How to Survive the Scams and Shams of the Music Business" by Moses Avalon ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Record-Producer-Survive-Business/dp/0879308745/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212861002&sr=8-1))
+
+	
+  * "Rainbow Painting: A Collection of Miscellaneous Aspects of Development and Completion" by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Rainbow-Painting-Collection-Miscellaneous-Development/dp/9627341223)) - was recommended very highly by a program I listened to, related to Buddhism and meditation
+
+
+**Political**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [The Memory Hole](http://thememoryhole.org/) rescuing knowledge, freeing information - "The Memory Hole exists to preserve and          spread material that is in danger of being lost, is hard to find, or is          not widely known.... The emphasis is on material that exposes things that we're          not supposed to know (or that we're supposed to forget)."
+
+	
+  * [Cryptome](http://cryptome.org/) - "Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments       worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology,       dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret       governance -- open, secret and classified documents -- but not limited       to those."
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-06-18-20080607-20080617-yay-notes.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-06-18 03:24:08+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20080607-20080617-yay-notes
+title: 2008.06.07 - 2008.06.17, yay notes
+wordpress_id: 89
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- political
+- programming
+---
+
+**Potentially political**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Meetup](http://www.meetup.com/) -  find groups of a given topic or interest, near whatever location you give... or "Get on the Internet to get off the Internet
+
+	
+  * [Legal Rights of Photographers](http://www.kantor.com/blog/2005/12/legal-rights-of-photographers/) by Andrew Kantor  (or [this PDF](http://www.kantor.com/blog/Legal-Rights-of-Photographers.pdf)) - very informative and helpful to know
+
+	
+  * [The Photographer's Right](http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm) flyer by Bert P. Krages II, which is actually what I was trying to find when I found the link from Andrew Kanto
+
+	
+  * "The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir" by Isabel Allende ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Sum-Our-Days-Memoir/dp/006155183X))
+
+	
+  * Local indie band, "[Bad Veins](http://www.myspace.com/badveins)" - my friend Carolyn wrote their name down a few years ago and told me to check the band out, and I stuck the piece of paper in a folder and forgot about it... then coincidentally when I finally looked them up online, realized I had already read an article about them months prior in Citybeat
+
+
+**Pretty obviously political**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [The Ruckus Society](http://www.ruckus.org/) - "provides environmental, human rights, and social justice organizers with the tools, training, and support needed to achieve their goals."
+
+	
+  * [Free Press](http://www.freepress.net/) - nonpartisan organization working for media reform
+
+	
+  * "The New Media Monopoly" by Ben H. Bagdikian ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/New-Media-Monopoly-Ben-Bagdikian/dp/0807061875))
+
+
+	
+  * [Daily Kos](http://dailykos.com/) - "State of the Nation",
+
+
+
+**Technology/electronics**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Arduino](http://www.arduino.cc/) - "an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software." Can be purchased pre-assembled or built by hand; software and CAD files are available at the site.
+
+	
+  * [FreeIO](http://freeio.org/) - "Free Hardware Design Resources for the Free Software Community" though looks slightly dead
+
+	
+  * [Gallium3D](http://www.tungstengraphics.com/wiki/index.php/Gallium3D) - "Tungsten Graphics' new architecture for building 3D graphics drivers."; only interesting to me because it might mean better Linux drivers for 3D graphics cards.
+
+	
+  * [BAZIX One Chip MSX](http://www.bazix.nl/onechipmsx.html) - apparently implements some computer called the MSX, and does it using an Altera FPGA... I don't know
+
+	
+  * [Hypercomputing HC-62](http://www.starbridgesystems.com/hypercomputing/HC-62/) - just some ridiculously fast computer with 36 GB of RAM and eleven FPGAs
+
+	
+  * [Holografika](http://holografika.com/) - true 3D holographic display, visible with naked eye, so the site claims (and has videos to show)
+
+	
+  * [Astak Mentor](http://www.astak.com/e-book.html) ebook reader - epaper-based, claimed to get 8000 pages per charge, support TXT, PDF, RTF, HTML, on a WinCE-based OS, with SD expansion card and wireless; there is a 5" version (800x600) should be $200, 9.7" (1280x825) for $350. Should be available Real Soon Now(tm).
+
+	
+  * [iRex iLiad](http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad) looks to have better specs and it is Linux-based, however it's also $600-$700 (but it's actually for sale)
+
+	
+  * [Graphics Gems](http://www.glassner.com/andrew/writing/books/gems.htm) by Andrew Glassner - a set of books I should probably read eventually so I stop reinventing the wheel every time I program anything
+
+
+**Software**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [serdisplib](http://serdisplib.sourceforge.net/) - library to drive serial displays with built-in controllers (like the Optrex LCDs I messed around with at work)
+
+	
+  * [ACML (AMD Core Math Library)](http://developer.amd.com/cpu/libraries/acml/Pages/default.aspx) - heavily optimized routines for [LAPACK](http://www.netlib.org/lapack/), [BLAS](http://www.netlib.org/blas/), FFT, transcendental & random number generation, utilizing SIMD instructions available on AMD CPU
+
+	
+  * Similar - [SIMDx86](http://simdx86.sourceforge.net/) - optimized SIMD library for x86 (I don't think it does x86-64)
+
+	
+  * [FBReader](http://fbreader.org/) - ebook reader for Linux/Windows, intended for portable devices. Handles [Plucker](http://www.plkr.org/) which I found really useful on Palm
+
+	
+  * [sdtcon](http://sdtcon.sourceforge.net/) - "Simple and secure remote access over SSH... provides easy to configure, easy to use, secure remote and out of band access to systems and devices inside a private LAN or management network."; works via SSH and Java on Linux/Windows
+
+	
+  * [FreeRTOS](http://www.freertos.org/) - free, portable, open source, mini realtime kernel for embedded systems, like ARM7, ARM9, Cortex-M3, MSP430, MicroBlaze
+
+	
+  * [DjVu](http://djvu.org/) - digital document format with very high compression and quality for scanned documents or photographs... too bad it's not nearly as well-supported as JPEG and other raster formats, lossy or otherwise
+
+	
+  * [C optimisation tutorial](http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/tutorial.html) - from 1998 but still pretty relevant
+
+	
+  * [DSP DesignLine](http://www.dspdesignline.com/) - lots of useful articles and technical papers about programming for DSPs (such as [this one](http://www.dspdesignline.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=N1PJTSHS1PDP2QSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=197006981&queryText=c+code) about Programming and Optimizing C Code)
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-07-10-20080618-20080709-really-overdue-notes.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,116 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-07-10 03:35:24+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20080618-20080709-really-overdue-notes
+title: 2008.06.18 - 2008.07.09, really overdue notes
+wordpress_id: 91
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- Hardware
+- hippies
+- programming
+---
+
+**Hardware**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [http://www.ucapps.de/](http://www.ucapps.de) - "Non-commercial DIY Projects for MIDI Hardware Geeks"
+
+	
+  * [http://midibox.org/](http://midibox.org/) - Looks like a blog about various other MIDI-related DIY projects
+
+	
+  * [Nvidia Tegra](http://gizmodo.com/5012159/nvidia-tegra-all+in+one-mobile-processors-aim-to-nuke-intels-atom-promise-30-hours-hd-playback) -  "features a GPU, media processor, system memory, peripherals and a CPU all in one ultra-low power chip, smaller than a US dime (10-cent piece)."
+
+	
+  * [Ethernet Mini Board](http://futurlec.com/Mini_Ethernet.shtml)
+
+
+**Geek Articles/Software**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [An Interview with the Old Man of Floating-Point](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ieee754status/754story.html) (William Kahan)
+
+	
+  * [Numerical Workbenches, pt. III](http://linuxgazette.net/issue71/spiel.html) (Christoph Spiel) - plotting in [GNU Octave](http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/), [Scilab](http://www.scilab.org/), and [Tela](http://www.ava.fmi.fi/prog/tela.html)
+
+	
+  * [Scilab lecture notes](http://math.unipune.ernet.in/free%20maths/scilab-maxima-doc/engr2200_lecture4scilab.txt) from University of Pune
+
+	
+  * [Basics of Scilab Control Toolbox](http://www.wolffdata.se/scilab/controltools1.html)
+
+	
+  * [freemind](http://freemind.sourceforge.net/) - "is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java."... I could probably benefit a lot by using this properly.
+
+	
+  * [Art of Illusion](http://www.artofillusion.org/) by Peter Eastman - "Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering studio." . . . looks very powerful and capable; another manual [here](http://www.housepixels.com/aoimanual/contents.html)
+
+	
+  * [xpra](http://partiwm.org/wiki/xpra) - "persistent remote applications" for X; think like GNU Screen, or like a remote application rather than a remote desktop
+
+	
+  * [Scale](http://www-ali.cs.umass.edu/Scale/) - Scalable Compiler for Analytical Experiments; right now, a research/instructional compiler (open source, Java) used mainly for generating code for the [TRIPS](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~trips/) architecture
+
+	
+  * [raw Architecture Workstation](http://cag.csail.mit.edu/raw/purpose/) - project at MIT for "simple, wire-efficient multicore architecture that scales with increasing VLSI gate densities"... tiled, multicore, highly parallel
+
+	
+  * [Sun Labs Lively Kernel](http://research.sun.com/projects/lively/) - positioned as a Flash alternative for the iPhone, for instance (interview with creator Dan Ingalls [here](http://twit.tv/floss29))
+
+	
+  * [The Sentinel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sentinel_%28computer_game%29) - old computer game that was notable for generating its levels procedurally
+
+	
+  * [.kkrieger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger) - procedural generation taken to an extreme, from [.theprodukkt](http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger)
+
+
+**Hippie Stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [MoBo Bicycle Coop](http://mobobicyclecoop.org/) - "The MoBo Bicycle Co-op is a non-profit, volunteer-run collective dedicated to providing every member of the Tri-State area access to bicycles, maintenance, and education." (also [Myspace site](http://www.myspace.com/mobobicyclecoop))
+
+	
+  * [AskWish](http://www.askwish.com/) -
+
+	
+  * [Hegelian dialectic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic) - remind me to read this in detail and find why it pertains to politics
+
+
+**Hippie Geek Stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Owner-free Filesystem](http://wiki.offdev.org/Main_Page) - "distributed filesystem in which everything is stored in reference to randomized data blocks" and bound to be soon pissing off a legal system near you
+
+	
+  * [What Colour are your bits?](http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php) - relevant to intellectual property somehow but I haven't read it yet.
+
+	
+  * [Traffic Waves](http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html) - "sometimes one driver can vastly improve traffic."
+
+	
+  * ["Big and Bad"](http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html) - Malcolm Gladwell's opinions of SUVs and their marketing. (same Malcolm Gladwell who wrote [Tipping Point](http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/) though I didn't make this connection when I read the article)
+
+
+**Food**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [http://www.tonychor.com/archive/000443.html](http://www.tonychor.com/archive/000443.html) . . . I now know that it's better to cook bacon in the oven.
+
+	
+  * [Jewish Purist's Bagels](http://www.masterstech-home.com/The_Kitchen/Recipes/Vegetarian_Recipes/JewishPuristsBagels.html)
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-07-26-20080710-20080726-debris.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,188 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-07-26 15:11:54+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20080710-20080726-debris
+title: 2008.07.10 - 2008.07.26 debris
+wordpress_id: 92
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- Hardware
+- Music
+---
+
+**Food-related
+**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Chai recipe I tried](http://www.odie.org/chai/rec/rec104.html)
+
+	
+  * [Using fresh and ground ginger](http://www.seedsofknowledge.com/ginger.html) - which I looked up because I had a lot of ginger root left over than just the 1/4" that I used for the chai
+
+	
+  * [Wikibooks cookbook](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook) - I don't know much of what else is on it, but my recipe for hardtack came from here.
+
+	
+  * [Stuff to do with cloves](http://herbal-skin-care-products.blogspot.com/2008/05/clove.html) which doesn't really belong here because these are mostly medicinal uses
+
+
+**Music**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [The Future Freaks Me Out](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_Freaks_Me_Out) - album from a band my friend Shannon likes
+
+	
+  * [Jamglue](http://www.jamglue.com/) - remixing for the masses... I haven't looked at it in much detail. but Corina uses it
+
+	
+  * [John Walsh](http://www.myspace.com/americasmostpositive) - local (as in Cincinnati) punk/hardcore band that Joc likes
+
+	
+  * [The Seedy Seeds](http://www.theseedyseeds.com/) (and also [here](http://www.myspace.com/theseedyseeds) on Myspace) - another local band (electronica?) that Joc likes
+
+
+**Shiny stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Dafont ](http://www.dafont.com/)- site full of categorized fonts for download (free for personal use)
+
+
+**Books/Authors/Literature**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Paul Ekman](http://www.paulekman.com/), "cutting edge  behavorial science for real world applications" with some downloadable articles
+
+	
+  * [The Silent Language](http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Language-Edward-T-Hall/dp/0385055498) and [The Hidden Dimension](http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Dimension-Edward-Twitchell-Hall/dp/0844665525/) by Edward T. Hall . . . pertains to non-verbal communication and emotions
+
+	
+  * Mentioned by Meredith and probably directed to a female audience but maybe still worth a look: [Memory Keeper's Daughter](http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Keepers-Daughter-Kim-Edwards/dp/0143037145) and [The Fall of a Sparrow](http://www.amazon.com/FALL-SPARROW-NOVEL-Robert-Hellenga/dp/0684850273) and [The Picture of Dorian Grey](http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext94/dgray10h.htm) and some books by an "up and author" Emily Giffin: [Something Blue](http://www.amazon.com/Something-Blue-Emily-Giffin/dp/0312323859), [Something Borrowed](http://www.amazon.com/Something-Borrowed-Emily-Giffin/dp/031232118X), and [Love the One You're With](http://www.amazon.com/Love-One-Youre-Emily-Giffin/dp/0312348673)
+
+	
+  * [Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583940790/)
+
+	
+  * Like [this one](http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=470) about how Science should find a way to make farts smell better.
+
+
+**Hippie & Political Stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * Joc showed me this: [Freecycle](http://www.freecycle.org/) - "It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills."
+
+	
+  * [The Problem with Music](http://www.negativland.com/albini.html) by Steve Albini
+
+	
+  * [Courtney Love's](http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html) commentary on record label profits, Napster, music, and piracy
+
+	
+  * [Order of Death](http://youtube.com/watch?v=rdi8R3vXV-I) on Youtube - someone told me I should watch it. I haven't yet. There's a high chance it's complete BS.
+
+
+**Software stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Bart's way to create bootable CDs](http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/) -  very handy
+
+	
+  * [Squeak](http://www.squeak.org/) - VM (open source) implementing Smalltalk  (this [FLOSS Weekly](http://twit.tv/floss29) talks about it)
+
+	
+  * [Seaside](http://www.seaside.st/) - "framework for developing sophisticated web applications in Smalltalk"  (this [FLOSS Weekly](http://twit.tv/floss21) talks about it as well)
+
+	
+  * [Squeak by Example](http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/SBE/) - pretty good book (available as a PDF for free, or as a printed copy from lulu.com for $20.10)
+
+	
+  * [Early History of Smalltalk](http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html) by Alan Kay - it is from 1993, but is still a very in-depth paper
+
+	
+  * [Smalltalk: Getting the Message](http://www.chronos-st.org/Smalltalk-Getting-the-Message.html) - article more focused on the "why" and "how" of Smalltalk than its history
+
+	
+  * [SliTaz](http://www.linux.com/feature/140573) - a Linux distro designed to run out of RAM and still have a usable desktop; current version is only about 25 MB
+
+	
+  * [Rocks Clusters](http://www.rocksclusters.org/wordpress/) - a CentOS-based Linux distro designed to make building and managing clusters a lot easier (mentioned in this [FLOSS Weekly](http://twit.tv/floss30))
+
+	
+  * [Webconverger](http://webconverger.com/) - "open source web kiosk", or basically a Linux distro designed to boot quickly into Firefox
+
+	
+  * [VR Juggler Suite](http://www.vrjuggler.org/) - some sort of open source virtual reality suite
+
+	
+  * [Englab](http://englab.sourceforge.net/) - open source mathematical platform, similar to MATLAB, in very early versions right now
+
+	
+  * [Quotes about C and C++](http://www.sysprog.net/quotec.html) and [Programming Quotes](http://www.gdargaud.net/Humor/QuotesProgramming.html) which are mostly good for being funny rather than useful, or for pissing people off
+
+
+**Hardware stuff (DIYish)**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Making a solar baker from an abandoned satellite dish](http://www.backyardnature.net/j/solardsh.htm)
+
+	
+  * [LyngSat](http://www.lyngsat.com/) - free satellite channels to receive, in case you wanted something else to do with that satellite dish
+
+	
+  * [Journal](http://slashdot.org/~evilviper/journal/189083) from evilviper on Slashdot, also about FTA satellite reception
+
+	
+  * [Atmel AVR ATmega16 / ATmega32 programmer](http://www.captain.at/electronics/atmel-programmer/) - needs parallel port and ATmega16
+
+	
+  * [Really simple AVR ISP programmer for ATmega128](http://www.scienceprog.com/simplest-128-atmega-programmer/) - uses just parallel port and a few resistors
+
+
+**Hardware stuff (non-DIY-unless-you-have-a-fab-or-a-CNC)**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Loongson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson) - general-purpose CPU made at Chinese Academy of Sciences; MIPS-compatible and used in some small devices like [this](http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8003782690.html)
+
+
+**Research**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [3D holographic display](http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/06/usc-lab-creates.html) at USC (uses projector + rapidly rotating mirror)
+
+	
+  * [Lest We Remember:](http://citp.princeton.edu/memory/) Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys  -  research from Princeton about how information can be recovered from memory after a system is powered off, and how to utilize this to defeat most encryption systems because they leave their keys in memory.
+
+
+**Video game-related**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [FIFE engine](http://www.fifengine.de/) - open source 2D engine designed for isometric and top-down views
+
+	
+  * [XGameStation](http://www.xgamestation.com/) video game development kit - looks like they have various kits for programming games, old-school style, and a lot of user-submitted programs
+
+	
+  * 
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-08-04-20080726-20080803-stuff.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,154 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-08-04 04:10:45+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20080726-20080803-stuff
+title: 2008.07.26 - 2008.08.03 stuff
+wordpress_id: 95
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- electronics
+- food
+- Music
+- politics
+- programming
+---
+
+**Music**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Kaskade](http://www.myspace.com/kaskademusic) - House/electronica artist I came across many times on [imeem](http://www.imeem.com/)... was good for calming me down while doing homework[
+](http://www.imeem.com/)
+
+	
+  * ["5th & Avenida" by Afterlife](http://www.imeem.com/groups/rGPu33gx/music/ftln18R0/afterlife_5th_avenida/) - an ambient track I liked... it's on "Café del Mar, Volumen Cuatro" ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Caf%C3%A9-del-Mar-Vol-4/dp/B00000JZO3))
+
+	
+  * ["100 Billion Stars" by Lux](http://x.imeem.com/rtgRivRc3j) - another ambient track I liked, from "Cafe del Mar, Volume 8" ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Cafe-Del-Mar-Various-Artists/dp/B00005LNH3))
+
+	
+  * ["Alive" by Mads Arp with Julie Harrington](http://www.imeem.com/anniebettyblue/music/xEHhE7nf/mads_arp_featuring_julie_harrington_alive/) - yet another, from "Cafe del Mar Dreams, Vol. 4"  ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Caf%C3%A9-del-Mar-Dreams-Vol/dp/B000H5UKHG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1217798510&sr=1-1))
+
+	
+  * [Cafe del Mar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_del_Mar), since I didn't realize all those songs came from the same set of albums until I looked them up
+
+
+**Food**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [The Black Beast](http://www.chocolatebytes.com/the-black-beast/) - my friend Jessica made this flourless cake and it's pretty supremely awesome
+
+
+**Research**
+
+
+
+	
+  * ["The Limits of Quantum Computers" by Scott Aaronson (draft)](http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/limitsqc-draft.pdf) - or, why articles professing how quantum computers can do anything are complete bullshit
+
+	
+  * [Rendering for an Interactive 360-degree Light Field Display](http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DDisplay/)
+
+	
+  * [From RenewableEnergyWorld:](http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=53145) More efficient way to convert waste heat to electricity, from research at Ohio State University
+
+	
+  * [arxiv draft](http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2781) - Funky chemical bonding that happens at very high pressures (officially, "Tetrahedral clustering in molten lithium under pressure")
+
+
+**Political & hippie stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * ["In Debt We Trust" by Danny Schechter](http://www.indebtwetrust.org/) - film about the national and personal debt crisis in the US (trailer [here](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8816019997709201699))
+
+	
+  * ["If This Is a Man" by Primo Levi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_This_Is_a_Man) - novel by an Italian author, inspired by his time in Auschwitz during WW2
+
+	
+  * ["No Tech Hacking" by Johnny Long](http://www.amazon.com/No-Tech-Hacking-Engineering-Dumpster/dp/1597492159) (Amazon) - "A guide to social engineering, dumpster diving, and shoulder surfing."
+
+	
+  * ["Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow](http://craphound.com/littlebrother/) - novel, available freely online if you so desire
+
+
+**Programming & computerish crap
+**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Papers about Self and OO](http://self.sourceforge.net/papers/papers.shtml) - I haven't read any of these, but I should
+
+	
+  * [Bad Mojo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Mojo) - some pretty well-reviewed adventure/puzzle game from 1996 which happens to run on DOS/Windows/Mac
+
+	
+  * [The not-so-short introduction to LaTeX 2e](http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf) - PDF about [LaTeX](http://www.latex-project.org/)
+
+	
+  * [Kile](http://kile.sourceforge.net/) - integrated LaTeX environment
+
+	
+  * [XeTeX](http://scripts.sil.org/xetex) - a merging of [TeX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX) with Unicode and modern font technologies
+
+	
+  * [Apache FOP](http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/) - "print formatter driven by XSL         formatting objects (XSL-FO) and an output independent formatter." from the [Apache XML Graphics Project](http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/)
+
+	
+  * [Hercules 390](http://www.hercules-390.org/) - The Hercules System/370, ESA/390, and z/Architecture Emulator... incidentally, [TRON Guy](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3609OtM138c) is in charge of the project
+
+	
+  * [The LiveCD List](http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php) from FrozenTech - Table of info about Linux distros available as LiveCDs
+
+	
+  * [INSERT](http://www.inside-security.de/insert_en.html) - the Inside Security Rescue Toolkit, a Linux distro that comes with various tools for rescue and recovery; it's a 60 MB download so it works well as a LiveCD or USB-stick
+
+	
+  * [Open64](http://www.open64.net/) - the Open Research Compiler, used originally on Itanium and now on Nvidia [CUDA](http://www.nvidia.com/cuda); it is under GPL
+
+	
+  * [BrookGPU](http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/brookgpu/) - "Brook for GPUs is a compiler and runtime implementation of the [Brook](http://sourceforge.net/projects/brook) stream program language for modern graphics hardware."
+
+	
+  * [OpenCL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL) - "a language for programming heterogeneous data and task parallel computing across GPUs and CPUs."; initial implementation is on [LLVM](http://llvm.org/) (Low Level Virtual Machine) and [clang](http://clang.llvm.org/)
+
+
+**Electronics**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [LM317](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LM317) - According to Cowclops, this variable linear voltage regulator can be a good way to limit current and voltage for charging an SLA.
+
+	
+  * [JOP: A Tiny Java Processor](http://www.jopdesign.com/) - A hardware implementation of the Java Virtual Machine; it can be put onto a low-cost FPGA, so the site claims, with the VHDL source (which is GPLed)
+
+	
+  * [OpenPCD](http://www.openpcd.org/) - Open RFID Reader for 13.56 MHz; site provides the schematic, PCB layout, Gerber files, bill of material, and some software
+
+	
+  * [OPEX](http://www.atmanecl.com/EnglishSite/opex.htm) - A "Unique Operating System" for the AVR microcontroller
+
+	
+  * [Use, Abuse, and Misuse of Amplifiers](http://www.national.com/onlineseminar/2002/amps/transcript.html) by Bob Pease - online seminar from National Semiconductor (or "webinar" if you prefer... which I don't); beware, page is quite large
+
+	
+  * [Operational amplifier usage](http://www.national.com/an/AN/AN-31.pdf) (also from National Semiconductor)... handy for stuff to do with op amps.
+
+
+**WTF?**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [The Roommate Files](http://www.wyseguys.com/default.asp?pg=roommate) - This will put to shame any story you have about bad roommates.
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-08-22-20080804-20080821-more-technical-blah.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,212 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-08-22 04:15:51+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20080804-20080821-more-technical-blah
+title: 2008.08.04 - 2008.08.21, more technical blah
+wordpress_id: 97
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- flamewars
+- food
+- mind
+- Music
+- politics
+- sleep
+---
+
+**Ideas ranging between "unconventional" and "BS"
+**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Uberman's Sleep Schedule](http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/15/103358/720) if you are insane enough and need the extra time
+
+	
+  * [Live Longer: The One Anti-Aging Trick that Works](http://www.livescience.com/health/080708-fountain-of-youth.html) (no, "live longer" is not the trick, it's caloric restriction)
+
+	
+  * [How Your Inner Athlete Makes You Smarter](http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080806/sc_livescience/howyourinnerathletemakesyousmarter)
+
+	
+  * [Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind](http://www.livescience.com/health/top10_mysteriesofthemind-1.html)
+
+	
+  * [Collected Writing of Don DeGracia](http://www.geocities.com/ddegraci/) - pertains to lucid dreams & astral projection. I originally found his writings on a BBS in about 1999, and the files I found were from Compuserve in 1994. Wow.
+
+	
+  * Software for binaural beating: [binaural](http://sourceforge.net/projects/binaural), [sbagen](http://sourceforge.net/projects/sbagen), [AutoZen](http://freshmeat.net/projects/autozen/)
+
+
+**Political stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Corporate Swine](http://corporateswine.net/) - certain companies, and why they suck.
+
+	
+  * [They Rule](http://www.theyrule.net/) - "They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class." The page is almost all Flash-based, but given its interface I don't see how else it could have been done. Check it out.
+
+	
+  * [SaveNetRadio](http://www.savenetradio.org/)
+
+
+**Food**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [The cottage cheese page](http://www.stumptuous.com/cms/displayarticle.php?aid=23) - more things to make with cottage cheese than I thought was possible
+
+	
+  * [Kalyn's Kitchen](http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/) - a blog with lots of colorful pictures... oh, and recipes
+
+
+**Music**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Netlabels collection](http://www.archive.org/details/netlabels) at Internet Archive; "This collection hosts complete, freely downloadable/streamable, often Creative Commons-licensed catalogs of 'virtual record labels'."
+
+	
+  * [Discogs](http://www.discogs.com/) - lots of information on music from obscure labels and artists
+
+	
+  * [Tangerine Dream](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangerine_Dream) - I wrote this band down in 2005 and I haven't listened to them yet
+
+	
+  * ["My Freedom" by Beat Foundation](http://www.imeem.com/groups/rGPu33gx/music/f-kqrsX2/beat_foundation_my_freedom/) - yet another ambient (or chillout?) track I liked, from Cafe Del Mar: Ibiza vol. 3 ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Caf%C3%A9-del-Mar-Ibiza-Vol/dp/B00000JWQ1))
+
+
+**Literature and Other Stuff With Words**
+
+
+
+	
+  * ["Mysterious Stranger"](http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/authors/Twain/Mysterious-Stranger.htm) by Mark Twain
+
+	
+  * and a very creepy claymation version [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PodRqjeUBjw)
+
+	
+  * ["The War Prayer"](http://www.ntua.gr/lurk/making/warprayer.html) also by Mark Twain
+
+
+**Technical Stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [SynDEx](http://www-rocq.inria.fr/syndex/) from INRIA - "a system level CAD software based on the "algorithm- architecture adequation" (AAA) methodology, for rapid prototyping and optimizing the implementation of distributed real-time embedded applications onto "multicomponent" architectures."
+
+	
+  * [Data visualization tools for Linux](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-datavistools/) - covers [GnuPlot](http://www.gnuplot.info/), [Octave](http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/), [Scilab](http://www.scilab.org/), [MayaVi](http://mayavi.sourceforge.net/), [Maxima](http://maxima.sourceforge.net/), [OpenDX](http://www.opendx.org/)
+
+	
+  * [gnuplot tips](http://t16web.lanl.gov/Kawano/gnuplot/index-e.html) & not so frequently asked questions
+
+	
+  * [memcached](http://www.danga.com/memcached/) - "a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load."
+
+	
+  * [BeOS bootdisk collection](http://bootdisks.beuser.de/) which I have no idea if I'll ever use but here it is
+
+	
+  * [Thesis paper](http://www.erights.org/talks/thesis/index.html) from Mark Samuel Miller (Robust Composition: Towards a Unified Approach to Access Control and Concurrency Control)
+
+	
+  * Another [thesis paper](http://publications.csail.mit.edu/lcs/specpub.php?id=773), by D. P. Reed (Naming and Synchronization in a Decentralized Computer System)
+
+	
+  * [P2P-Radio](http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/) - Internet radio distributed via peer-to-peer means
+
+	
+  * [PGP Digital Timestamping Service](http://www.itconsult.co.uk/stamper.htm)
+
+	
+  * [Manent](http://freshmeat.net/projects/manent) - algorithmically strong backup and archival program
+
+	
+  * [DSPACE](http://www.dspace.org/) - an open source solution for accessing, managing, and preserving scholarly works
+
+
+**Shiny Technical Stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Project Looking Glass](http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/) from Sun Microsystems
+
+	
+  * [Videos](http://www.croquetconsortium.org/index.php/Screenshots/Videos) of Croquet from Croquet Consortium
+
+	
+  * [LaTeX Beamer Class](http://latex-beamer.sourceforge.net/) - something for making presentations in LaTeX
+
+	
+  * [http://www.visualcube.org/](http://www.visualcube.org/) - 3D volumetric display with 6x6x6 voxels
+
+
+**Electronics/Programming/Lower-level**
+
+
+
+	
+  * More FPGA stuff - [Xilinx USB/Parallel JTAG cables on Linux without proprietary kernel modules](http://rmdir.de/~michael/xilinx/)
+
+	
+  * [OpenOCD](http://openocd.berlios.de/web/) - Open on-chip debugger, ISP, boundary scan
+
+	
+  * [Objective C & programming musics](http://jaortega.wordpress.com/category/objective-c/) at another wordpress blog
+
+	
+  * [GNUstep mini tutorials](http://www.gnustep.it/nicola/Tutorials/index.html)
+
+	
+  * [Implementing an Interpreter; or, Going Fast Without Writing Code](http://www.sidhe.org/~dan/presentations/Parrot_Implementation.pdf) - good presentation on the [Parrot Virtual Machine](http://www.parrotcode.org/)
+
+	
+  * [Perl 6 and the Parrot Virtual Machine](http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/pohjalai/k05/okk/seminar/Fagerholm-Parrot.pdf)
+
+	
+  * Ken Silverman's [voxel engine](http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm) with source code available
+
+
+**Flame Wars about technical stuff
+**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [On the Thesis that X is Big/Bloated/Obsolete and Should Be Replaced ](http://linuxfinances.info/info/xbloat.html)because I've heard that too many times
+
+	
+  * [BSD vs. Linux](http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php)
+
+	
+  * ["He Who Controls the Bootloader"](http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/) by Scot Hacker (it's from 2001)
+
+	
+  * [Essay](http://lists.essential.org/info-policy-notes/msg00005.html) by Jean-Louis Gassee (of BeOS fame) on why PC makers don't sell non-MS stuff
+
+	
+  * [Article](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/08/31/jean_louis_gass_233_e/) on a similar matter
+
+
+**Games**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Interview with Wendell Hicken](http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/scorched.ars), creator of [Scorched Earth](http://scorch.classicgaming.gamespy.com/) which is only one of my favorite games ever
+
+	
+  * [Outcast](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcast_(game)#Technology) - some voxel-based engine that was very well-done, apparently
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-09-27-20080822-20080926-or-something-like-that.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-09-27 04:08:24+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20080822-20080926-or-something-like-that
+title: 2008.08.22 - 2008.09.26 or something like that
+wordpress_id: 99
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- Hardware
+---
+
+**Reference stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [National Criminal Justice Reference Service](http://ncjrs.gov/) - good collection of papers and resources from the DOJ
+
+	
+  * [Secrecy News](http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/) - "Secrecy News from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy", [FAS](http://www.fas.org/)=Federation of American Scientists
+
+	
+  * [Stanford Engineering Everywhere](http://see.stanford.edu/SEE/Courses.aspx) - free online courses from Stanford in CS, AI, and Linear Systems & Optimization; includes transcripts and video lectures
+
+	
+  * ["Life Incorporated"](http://rushkoff.com/books/life-incorporated/) by Doug Rushkoff, or "How We Traded Meaning for Markets, Society for Self Interest, and Citizenship for Customer Service."
+
+	
+  * ["Fooled by Randomness"](http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Markets/dp/0812975219/ref=ed_oe_p) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, or "The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets"
+
+
+**Technical stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Creating DjVu documents in Linux howto](http://www.bcri.ucc.ie/~vk1/djvu-HOWTO.html)
+
+	
+  * [Kicad libraries converted from EAGLE](http://library.oshec.org/)
+
+	
+  * [pfSense](http://www.pfsense.com/) - "free, open source customized distribution of [FreeBSD](http://www.freebsd.org/) tailored for use as a firewall and router."
+
+	
+  * [How to apply color curves in ImageMagick](http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/color/#curves) - came in handy for optimizing files from massive numbers of scans before DjVu conversion
+
+	
+  * [Internetworking Technology Handbook](http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/internetworking/technology/handbook/ito_doc.html) from Cisco - lots of freely available guides
+
+	
+  * [FreeMind](http://freemind.sourceforge.net/) - a free [mind-mapping](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) program written in Java. I haven't used it much yet, but it looks really useful.
+
+	
+  * [Mathesaurus](http://mathesaurus.sourceforge.net/) - quick reference for switching to open-source mathematical computation environments for computer algebra, numeric processing and data visualisation (e.g. MATLAB to Octave/SciLab/Python+Numpy)
+
+	
+  * [Advice in Mini-ITX](http://myreader.co.uk/msg/10238071.aspx) - mailing list conversation
+
+	
+  * [KolibriOS](http://www.kolibrios.org/) - OS for x86 written in assembly; runs on one floppy; a fork of MenuetOS. This runs well in VirtualBox.
+
+
+**Music, demoscene, and other shiny stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Future Crew - Second Reality](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G_aUxbbqWU) - very impressive demo from 1993 (actual program for DOS [here](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=63))
+
+	
+  * [ChibiTracker](http://www.chibitracker.com/) - portable Impulse Tracker clone (i.e. "a small, compact music composing application that is easy to learn and powerful enough to sound good"); GPLed and runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS, BSD, and BeOS
+
+	
+  * [Map of Science](http://mapofscience.com/) - trying to visualize connections between various sciences... Flash-based and interactive and kinda neat
+
+
+**Miscellaneous**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [10 Steps to Becoming Enlightened](http://www.ascendedbeings.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3&mode=threaded) (yeah, slightly lofty title)
+
+	
+  * [List of Fallacious Arguments](http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html)
+
+	
+  * [38 Ways to Win an Argument](http://www.searchlores.org/schopeng.htm) - from Schopenhauer's "The Art of Controversy" (which can be found [here](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controversy/))
+
+	
+  * [The Happiness Project](http://happiness-project.com/) - read about this in Citybeat; "I recount some of my adventures and insights as I grapple with the challenge of being happier," from an author before the release of her book by the same name in late 2009.
+
+	
+  * [Intelius](http://www.intelius.com/) - People search, free and apparently pretty good
+
+
+**Religious**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Major Writings of Nichiron Daishonin](http://nichiren.info/gosho.html)
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2008-11-09-20080926-20081109-really-overdue-stuff.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,156 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2008-11-09 17:33:09+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20080926-20081109-really-overdue-stuff
+title: 2008.09.26 - 2008.11.09, really overdue stuff
+wordpress_id: 101
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- books
+- economics
+- electricity
+- graphics
+- linux
+- Music
+- networking
+- programming
+---
+
+**Linux**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [http://www.spencerstirling.com/computergeek/powersaving.html](http://www.spencerstirling.com/computergeek/powersaving.html) - "Saving Energy in Linux" from Spencer Stirling
+
+	
+  * [PowerTOP](http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/) - tool to assist with such energy-saving (on Intel boxes at least) by telling how well hardware power-saving is utilized and which software is causing problems
+
+	
+  * [Improving Boot Time on a General Linux Distro](http://blog.crozat.net/2008/09/improving-boot-time-on-general-linux.html) from Frederic Crozat
+
+	
+  * [Handy One-Liners for sed](http://student.northpark.edu/pemente/sed/sed1line.txt) from Eric Pement... I used the venerable [sed](http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html) extensively at work to un-screw-up CSV files
+
+	
+  * [MediaTomb](http://mediatomb.cc/) - an open source UPnP media server with a web interface; my coworker Uriah said he used this to stream things to his PS3 from his Linux box
+
+
+**Graphics**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [MeshLab](http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/) - free 3D triangular mesh processing software
+
+	
+  * [Caustics Mapping](http://graphics.cs.ucf.edu/caustics/) from UCF
+
+
+**Networking**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [A Look at NoMachine NX](http://www.gnome.org/~markmc/a-look-at-nomachine-nx.html) - I discovered NX performs better for remote access than anything else I've tried (i.e. RDP, X11, VNC, and straight SSH+screen if you happen to need GUI), particularly over slow links. Unfortunately, it doesn't handle links with 93% packet loss very well.
+
+	
+  * [Quagga Routing Suite](http://www.quagga.net/) - GPLed routing software for IPv4/IPv6 that handles a number of routing-related protocols (a list of them is [here](http://www.quagga.net/docs/docs-info.php#SEC5))
+
+	
+  * [Yersinia](http://www.yersinia.net/) - network tool designed to take advantage of some weaknesses in different network protocols... I haven't used this but the guys from cinci2600 did a presentation with it
+
+	
+  * [Etherboot/gPXE booting](http://etherboot.org/wiki/index.php) - an open source network bootloader, providing a direct replacement for many proprietary PXE ROMs. I have yet to try this.
+
+	
+  * [LTSP, Linux Terminal Server Project](http://www.ltsp.org/) - adds thin-client support to Linux servers, so thin clients or dumpster PCs can be used for something useful within a school or business.
+
+
+**Programming/general computer stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * ["Roles Before Objects"](http://g.oswego.edu/dl/rp/roles.html) by Doug Lea - some sort of pattern for software development, particularly for "organizing activities that separate object-independent from object-dependent matters"
+
+	
+  * ["10 Amazingly Alternative Operating Systems etc."](http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/09/26/10-amazingly-alternative-operating-systems-and-what-they-could-mean-for-the-future/) - maybe overly prophetic and lofty, but a good article nonetheless
+
+	
+  * [Twibright Optar](http://ronja.twibright.com/optar/) - OPTical ARchiver, a codec for encoding data on paper; it gets about 200 KB per page at 200 DPI which is reliable for most paper, and contains some pretty heavy error correction. This might be neat for long-term archival purposes of smaller data.
+
+
+**Other projects**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [MAgtALo](http://occam.computing.dundee.ac.uk/arg/?page_id=14) (MultiAgent Argumentation, Logic and Opinion) - a prototype tool for virtual round-table meetings. I don't really know much about this. I just read about it in some IEEE publication I found on the ground.
+
+	
+  * [LibriVox](http://librivox.org/) - free audiobooks from the public domain
+
+	
+  * [Geographic British Isles](http://www.geograph.org.uk/) - a project aiming to collect geographically representative photographs of every square kilometer of Great Britain and Ireland
+
+
+**Electricity**
+
+
+
+	
+  * ["High Voltage Sparks and Arcs"](http://capturedlightning.com/frames/longarc.htm) - My friend Mark found this, and it has a collection of videos and photos of some pretty spectacular incidents at high voltages. The only casualties are machines, if you are worried.
+
+	
+  * [How Transistors REALLY Work](http://amasci.com/amateur/transis.html), from William Beaty who is annoyed at the way many textbooks teach transistors to students
+
+
+**Music**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Lunar](http://lunarmusic.net/) - an artist Jeremy likes, self-described as "An eclectic blend of electronica, rock, dance, ambient, drum 'n' bass and classical." They have two albums available for free download as of now.
+
+
+**Tinfoil hat stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America ([Google Video link](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936))... I don't know what to think of this, but I did watch it.
+
+	
+  * [Maltego](http://www.paterva.com/maltego/): "Maltego is an [open source intelligence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_intelligence) and forensics application. It allows for the mining and gathering of information as well as the representation of this information in a meaningful way."
+
+
+**Economics of the non-tinfoil-hat variety**
+
+
+
+	
+  * ["Where to put your money if it's just sitting in a checking account"](http://www.spoofee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26285)
+
+	
+  * [ABSEL](http://absel.org/) - Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning; "professional association whose purpose is to develop and promote the use of experiential techniques and simulations in the field of business education and development"
+
+	
+  * [M.U.L.E.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.U.L.E.) - an early video game that was praised for its elements of economic simulation
+
+	
+  * The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, by Gregg Easterbrook ([Amazon link](http://www.amazon.com/Progress-Paradox-Better-While-People/dp/0679463038))
+
+
+**Other stuff**
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Anti-pattern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern) - something that distinguishes itself from a conventional bad idea or bad practice in a particular way; "Some repeated pattern of action, process or structure that initially appears to be beneficial, but ultimately produces more bad consequences than beneficial results."
+
+
+<!-- more -->

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-04-21-20090420.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-04-21 01:32:16+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '20090420'
+title: 2009.04.20
+wordpress_id: 105
+categories:
+- Scratch
+---
+
+2009.04.20 - If I am lucky, then this text file is being posted from the commandline via blogpost from http://srackham.wordpress.com and possibly screwed-up by being processed first by AsciiDoc which I have not yet bothered to learn.

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-04-21-20090420b.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-04-21 02:28:02+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20090420b
+title: 2009.04.20b
+wordpress_id: 107
+categories:
+- Scratch
+---
+
+  * This hopefully occurs in a bulleted list. 
+  * This hopefully is a URL: [http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/asciidoc.css-embedded.html](http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/asciidoc.css-embedded.html)

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-04-26-20090426-2.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-04-26 16:52:02+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20090426-2
+title: 2009.04.26
+wordpress_id: 137
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- graphics
+- log
+---
+
+* * *
+
+## log
+
+  * Here is the first post made to my Wordpress in an automated way…
+  * I guess here is where I put "Hello, world" and for once it's actually kind of accurate because the post is going where the world can see it. 
+  * So, uh, _Hello, world_
+
+* * *
+
+## log,graphics
+
+  * [http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview](http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview) (John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more) 

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-04-26-20090426.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-04-26 16:02:02+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '20090426'
+title: 2009.04.26
+wordpress_id: 109
+categories:
+- Scratch
+---
+
+2009.04.20 == log * If I am lucky, then this text file is being posted from the commandline via blogpost from [http://srackham.wordpress.com](http://srackham.wordpress.com) and possibly screwed-up by being processed first by AsciiDoc which I have not yet bothered to learn.

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-04-27-20090426-3.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-04-27 12:53:16+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20090426-3
+title: 2009.04.26
+wordpress_id: 139
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- blogs
+- books
+- graphics
+- links
+- log
+- notes
+---
+
+* * *
+
+## log
+
+  * Here is the first post made to my Wordpress in an automated way…
+  * I guess here is where I put "Hello, world" and for once it's actually kind of accurate because the post is going where the world can see it. 
+  * So, uh, _Hello, world_
+  * Well, damn, my program has a bug that makes it impossible to post more than one entry per day. It's a very obvious bug, too. 
+
+* * *
+
+## log,graphics
+
+  * [http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview](http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview) (John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more) 
+
+* * *
+
+## log,graphics,links,blogs
+
+  * [http://www.tanashabitat.com/](http://www.tanashabitat.com/) (Tana's Habitat - a site Jane recommended for useful information about living on your own. It looks far more suited to her gender than to mine, but it still has some good advice.) 
+
+* * *
+
+## log,graphics,links,blogs,notes,technobabble
+
+  * [Perl 6](http://dev.perl.org/perl6/) has two main interpreters: 
+    * [Rakudo Perl](http://rakudo.org/) which uses [Parrot VM](http://www.parrot.org/) and PGE 
+    * [Pugs](http://www.pugscode.org/) which uses [Haskell](http://haskell.org/) (and [Hugs](http://haskell.org/hugs/) or [GHC](http://haskell.org/ghc/)) 
+  * Stuff about [Erlang](http://erlang.org/) I should remember: 
+    * shared-nothing, async message passing 
+    * single assignment 
+    * strict or eager evaluation (as compared to lazy evaluation like in Haskell) 
+
+* * *
+
+## log,graphics,links,blogs,notes,technobabble,books
+
+  * [http://www.truly-free.org/](http://www.truly-free.org/) - The Burgomeister's Books, a large library of ebooks; you have a borrowing quota but items are downloadable and in open formats 

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-04-28-20090426-4.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-04-28 12:13:00+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 20090426-4
+title: 2009.04.26
+wordpress_id: 141
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- blogs
+- books
+- graphics
+- links
+- log
+- notes
+---
+
+* * *
+
+## log
+
+  * Here is the first post made to my Wordpress in an automated way…
+  * I guess here is where I put "Hello, world" and for once it's actually kind of accurate because the post is going where the world can see it. 
+  * So, uh, _Hello, world_
+  * Well, damn, my program has a bug that makes it impossible to post more than one entry per day. It's a very obvious bug, too. 
+
+* * *
+
+## log,graphics
+
+  * [http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview](http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview) (John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more) 
+
+* * *
+
+## log,graphics,links,blogs
+
+  * [http://www.tanashabitat.com/](http://www.tanashabitat.com/) (Tana's Habitat - a site Jane recommended for useful information about living on your own. It looks far more suited to her gender than to mine, but it still has some good advice.) 
+
+* * *
+
+## log,graphics,links,blogs,notes,technobabble
+
+  * [Perl 6](http://dev.perl.org/perl6/) has two main interpreters: 
+    * [Rakudo Perl](http://rakudo.org/) which uses [Parrot VM](http://www.parrot.org/) and PGE 
+    * [Pugs](http://www.pugscode.org/) which uses [Haskell](http://haskell.org/) (and [Hugs](http://haskell.org/hugs/) or [GHC](http://haskell.org/ghc/)) 
+  * Stuff about [Erlang](http://erlang.org/) I should remember: 
+    * shared-nothing, async message passing 
+    * single assignment 
+    * strict or eager evaluation (as compared to lazy evaluation like in Haskell) 
+
+* * *
+
+## log,graphics,links,blogs,notes,technobabble,books
+
+  * [http://www.truly-free.org/](http://www.truly-free.org/) - The Burgomeister's Books, a large library of ebooks; you have a borrowing quota but items are downloadable and in open formats 
+  * [http://www.storyofstuff.com](http://www.storyofstuff.com) - The story of stuff - a flash video Joc sent me; it's kind of long 

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-05-01-20090430.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-05-01 12:10:59+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '20090430'
+title: 2009.04.30
+wordpress_id: 147
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- blogs
+- books
+- comic
+- graphics
+- links
+- log
+- notes
+---
+
+* * *
+
+## log
+
+  * Here is the umpteenth post made to my Wordpress in an automated way…
+  * I guess here is where I put "Hello, world" and for once it's actually kind of accurate because the post is going where the world can see it. 
+  * So, uh, _Hello, world_
+  * Did I fix my idiotic bugs yet? 
+
+* * *
+
+## graphics
+
+  * [http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview](http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview) (John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more) 
+
+* * *
+
+## links,blogs
+
+  * [http://www.tanashabitat.com/](http://www.tanashabitat.com/) (Tana's Habitat - a site Jane recommended for useful information about living on your own. It looks far more suited to her gender than to mine, but it still has some good advice.) 
+
+* * *
+
+## notes,technobabble
+
+  * [Perl 6](http://dev.perl.org/perl6/) has two main interpreters: 
+    * [Rakudo Perl](http://rakudo.org/) which uses [Parrot VM](http://www.parrot.org/) and PGE 
+    * [Pugs](http://www.pugscode.org/) which uses [Haskell](http://haskell.org/) (and [Hugs](http://haskell.org/hugs/) or [GHC](http://haskell.org/ghc/)) 
+  * Stuff about [Erlang](http://erlang.org/) I should remember: 
+    * shared-nothing, async message passing 
+    * single assignment 
+    * strict or eager evaluation (as compared to lazy evaluation like in Haskell) 
+  * Stuff about Smalltalk I should remember: 
+    * ["Messaging" is more important than "objects"](http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-October/017019.html)
+
+* * *
+
+## books
+
+  * [The Burgomeister's Books](http://www.truly-free.org/), a large library of ebooks; you have a borrowing quota but items are downloadable and in open formats 
+  * [The story of stuff](http://www.storyofstuff.com), a flash video Joc sent me; it's kind of long but worth the watch 
+
+* * *
+
+## comic
+
+  * [This Modern World](http://thismodernworld.com/) by Tom Tomorrow - a webcomic and blog I first came across in Citybeat, but came across by accident later 

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-05-02-20090501.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-05-02 11:59:57+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '20090501'
+title: 2009.05.01
+wordpress_id: 149
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- Hardware
+- local
+- software
+---
+
+* * *
+
+## software
+
+  * [Finnix](http://www.finnix.org/), 'Finnix is a self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution ("LiveCD") for system administrators, based on Debian testing"; I came across this while looking at what common distros were out there for PowerPC since I recently acquired an iBook. 
+  * [Open64](http://www.open64.net/), the Open Research Compiler, "an open source, optimizing compiler for the Intel IA-64 (Itanium), AMD Opteron and Intel IA-32e architecture" 
+  * [GCC UPC](http://www.intrepid.com/upc.html) - extensions to GCC to provide a compilation and execution environment for [Unified Parallel C](http://upc.gwu.edu/)
+    * "UPC is an extension of the C programming language designed for high-performance computing on large-scale parallel machines, including those with a common global address space (SMP and NUMA) and those with distributed memory (eg. clusters)." 
+
+* * *
+
+## local
+
+  * [http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Cincinnati](http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Cincinnati) - Hackerspace wiki for the currently-under-heavy-development Cincinnati Hackerspace 
+    * Also [http://cincinnatihackspace.wikispaces.com/](http://cincinnatihackspace.wikispaces.com/)
+
+* * *
+
+## hardware
+
+  * Awesome MIPSy stuff: 
+    * Lemote Fulong miniPC ([Linuxdevices story](http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8003782690.html)) - powered by a 666 MHz Loongson 2E 
+    * Rather similar to the $150 YellowSheepRiver "Municator" ([Another Linuxdevices story](http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6301677114.html)) based on a 500 MHz 64-bit Godson-2 
+    * [Lemote YeeLoong](http://www.lemote.com/english/yeeloong.html), a laptop with completely free software (including BIOS and firmware) and a power usage of about 12W, based on an 800 MHz Loongson 2F; Richard Stallman supposedly uses one of these 

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-05-04-20090503.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-05-04 11:54:41+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '20090503'
+title: 2009.05.03
+wordpress_id: 151
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- education
+- software
+- video
+---
+
+* * *
+
+## software,education
+
+  * [Scratch](http://scratch.mit.edu/): "Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web. Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills." 
+
+* * *
+
+## video
+
+  * [Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog](http://www.hulu.com/watch/28343/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog#s-p1-st-i0) - I don't know what this is but my friend Patrick tells me I should watch it. 

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-06-15-2009-06-14-4.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-06-15 12:06:08+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 2009-06-14-4
+title: 2009.06.14
+wordpress_id: 162
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- article
+- diy
+- food
+- game
+- geometry
+- links
+- log
+- motivational
+- photography
+- practical
+---
+
+* * *
+
+## log
+
+  * Well, after my computer exploded and my hard drive became an orphan, I finally built a working computer again and fixed up my scripts so they didn't suck. Now I shall attempt to post the giant piles of stuff that have accumulated. 
+
+* * *
+
+## diy,links
+
+  * [The Repair Manifesto](http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/03/repair-manifesto.html) from Platform 21 - worth thinking about. 
+
+* * *
+
+## motivational,practical
+
+  * [Twelve Steps to Practical Problem Solving](http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.3955149/) by Paul Polak 
+  * [No Nonsense Self-Defense](http://nononsenseselfdefense.com/) - This is a helpful site. The author gives a vast collection of useful, well-informed articles about self-defense - and why too much of martial arts completely misses the point of it. 
+
+* * *
+
+## food,photography
+
+  * [http://www.tastespotting.com/](http://www.tastespotting.com/) - My friend Cassie sent me this link. In its own words: "Think of TasteSpotting as a highly visual potluck of recipes, references, experiences, stories, articles, products, and anything else that inspires exquisite taste." 
+
+* * *
+
+## game,geometry
+
+  * [The eyeballing game](http://woodgears.ca/eyeball/about.html) - Another link from Cassie… it's a Flash game that's sort of interesting, related to one's ability to eyeball something and tell if it's straight 
+  * [Nomic Game](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?NomicGame) - A paperwork table game that looks a bit complex to actually play. The object of the game is to change the rules of the game. 
+
+* * *
+
+## article
+
+  * [The Score: How childbirth went industrial](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/09/061009fa_fact?currentPage=all) - An article in The New Yorker giving a (critical) opinion of why C-section is used so often. Interesting read. 
+  * [Perils of pop philosophy](http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/06/01/perils-of-pop-philosophy/)
+    * Probably related to [Dunning-Kruger effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect) - "…people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it" 
+  * [The Zen of Drinking Alone](http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/issues/03_03/03-03_zen_drinking_alone.htm) from Modern Drunkard Magazine. I can't say I've ever heard of Modern Drunkard before, but this is a surprisingly cogent article about the value of… drinking alcohol alone, or "using alcohol to find your inner monkey". 
+  * Well, more of an essay than an article… [On Liberty](http://www.bartleby.com/130/) by John Stuart Mill is something I should probably read at some point 
+
+* * *
+
+## music
+
+  * [Jake Speed and the Freddies](http://www.freddiesmusic.com/) - just saw them at the Southgate House and was extremely impressed, despite that ordinarily I'd never listen to "folk blues" voluntarily. 
+  * [StumbleAudio](http://www.stumbleaudio.com/) - I don't really know what this is. but I wrote it down, so maybe it's good. "Guide to discovering music and sharing great new music." 

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-06-15-2009-06-14-5.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-06-15 12:06:26+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: 2009-06-14-5
+title: 2009.06.14
+wordpress_id: 164
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- apps
+- cheatsheet
+- editor
+- hack
+- links
+- linux
+- programming
+- scheme
+- wii
+---
+
+* * *
+
+## technobabble,links
+
+  * [http://www.cbkihong.com/index.pl?op=perltut](http://www.cbkihong.com/index.pl?op=perltut) - A tutorial on Perl from Bernard Chan that I found helpful 
+
+* * *
+
+## apps,linux
+
+  * [http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/116353](http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/116353) - Article on [Siag Office](http://freshmeat.net/projects/siagoffice/) for those who don't feel like using any remotely mainstream office applications 
+
+* * *
+
+## editor,cheatsheet
+
+  * [http://www.viemu.com/vi-vim-cheat-sheet.gif](http://www.viemu.com/vi-vim-cheat-sheet.gif) - A Vim cheat sheet that is essential to me. 
+
+* * *
+
+## programming,scheme
+
+  * [Is Scheme Faster than C?](http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~jsobel/c455-c511.updated.txt) - An oldish article about some interesting performance benefits found in Scheme 
+
+* * *
+
+## hack,wii
+
+  * [http://www.smoothboard.net/](http://www.smoothboard.net/) - Interesting thing from my friend Lincoln. It uses a Wii remote, IR transmitter, and PC (with Bluetooth) to "Transform your screen into a user-friendly interactive whiteboard with Smoothboard." 

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-06-23-2009-06-15.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-06-23 07:07:44+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '2009-06-15'
+title: 2009.06.15
+wordpress_id: 178
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- apps
+- photography
+- video
+---
+
+* * *
+
+## video,apps
+
+  * [MediaCoder](http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/) - "a free universal batch media transcoder, which nicely integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution." Only natively works on Windows, but came in handy trying to re-encode some video at work after I found that fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/ liked to either crash or screw up the encode (on Windows at least as I know I've used it without problems on Linux) 
+  * [CamStudio](http://camstudio.org/) - An open source screen recorder (screencast?) application. Only works on Windows, but works pretty well. 
+
+* * *
+
+## photography,apps
+
+  * [http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/58887](http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/58887)

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-06-23-2009-06-16.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-06-23 07:07:55+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '2009-06-16'
+title: 2009.06.16
+wordpress_id: 180
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- Music
+---
+
+* * *
+
+## music
+
+  * Saw these two at Rohs Street Cafe and was very impressed: 
+    * [http://www.myspace.com/hickoryrobot](http://www.myspace.com/hickoryrobot)
+    * www.myspace.com/thehappymaladies 

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-06-23-2009-06-18.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-06-23 07:08:03+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '2009-06-18'
+title: 2009.06.18
+wordpress_id: 182
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- photography
+- rant
+---
+
+No Content Found

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-06-23-2009-06-19.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,204 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-06-23 07:31:07+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '2009-06-19'
+title: 2009.06.19
+wordpress_id: 186
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- apps
+- photography
+---
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## apps,photography
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * So, I’m on a quest to find a photo organization tool for Linux (or, on a later note, for any OS) that does some things like…
+
+	
+    * Allow me to apply metadata to images, like comments and groups and tags (preferably hierarchical)
+
+	
+    * Store the metadata IN THE ACTUAL IMAGE, IN A STANDARD FORMAT. This also means it will probably need to support IPTC or XMP, preferably XMP. (No, shut up about GQview, it doesn’t cut it.)
+
+	
+    * Allow me to set metadata as a batch operation. I am thoroughly uninterested in having to manually go through the process of setting metadata for each individual image. And when I say "batch operation", "batch" really needs to be more generic than "all files in a directory." (No, shut up about scripting it with [ExifTool](http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/) or [Exempi](http://libopenraw.freedesktop.org/wiki/Exempi) or [Exiv2](http://www.exiv2.org). Yes, they can edit XMP data on groups of files, but scripting doesn’t cut it as a solution unless someone can show me how to make this integrate with a GUI.)
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * Here are the apps recommended thus far:
+
+	
+    * [digiKam](http://www.digikam.org)
+
+	
+    * [F-Spot](http://f-spot.org/)
+
+	
+    * [imgSeek](http://www.imgseek.net/)
+
+	
+    * [Picasa](http://picasa.google.com/)
+
+	
+    * [GQview](http://gqview.sourceforge.net/)
+
+	
+    * [KPhotoAlbum](http://www.kphotoalbum.org/)
+
+	
+    * [gThumb](http://gthumb.sourceforge.net/)
+
+	
+    * [GwenView](http://gwenview.sourceforge.net/)
+
+	
+    * [Mapivi](http://mapivi.sourceforge.net/)
+
+	
+    * [LightZone](http://www.lightcrafts.com/linux/)
+
+	
+    * [Razuna](http://www.razuna.org/)
+
+	
+    * [Lightroom](http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/)
+
+	
+    * [PicaJet FX](http://www.picajet.com)
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * And my responses thus far:
+
+	
+    * digiKam:
+
+	
+      * Has a pretty nice UI (though overdone sometimes)
+
+	
+      * The built-in editing features and plugins are handy and quick. I’m kind of cheating here because I’m already pretty familiar with digiKam.
+
+	
+      * Searching capabilities are pretty good.
+
+	
+      * Only wants to edit IPTC/XMP metadata one image at a time.
+
+	
+      * All its metadata (besides IPTC/XMP that you do one image at a time) is stored in an SQLite database, not in the image
+
+	
+      * Interface can get pretty slow sometimes.
+
+
+
+
+	
+    * imgSeek:
+
+	
+      * The interface works okay but it’s a little clumsy, and sometimes things are slow (I loaded about 10K pictures).
+
+	
+      * Finding pictures based on similarity to other pictures or to a hand-drawn image is an interesting feature.
+
+	
+      * The grouping/batching features are powerful, but a bit slow.
+
+	
+      * I am unsure if imgSeek lets me add IPTC or XMP data easily.
+
+	
+      * There is no easy way I can see to search based on date.
+
+
+
+
+	
+    * F-Spot:
+
+	
+      * I’m told the IPTC/XMP support in this isn’t that great.
+
+	
+      * I have yet to try this program.
+
+
+
+
+	
+    * LightZone:
+
+	
+      * This is proprietary, but they have a 30-day trial.
+
+	
+      * "Linux users will especially enjoy access to the new LightZone Relight Tool l which can achieve HDR effects from a single negative revealing hidden HDR detail in both the highlights and the shadows, using just a single exposure. For instance, you’ll see both saturated colors of a sunset and bright detail in the face of a back lit subject that was formerly lost. Achieving such stunning results from a single exposure without LightZone would require multiple flashes, reflectors and shades at the time the photograph — if it could be possible at all." . . . sorry, but if you honestly believe this, you don’t have the slightest understanding what HDR is. Oh well, it’s all marketing.
+
+	
+      * Having tried this software, I cannot see any batch metadata editing capability, or any reason why I’d want to pay for this.
+
+
+
+
+	
+    * PicaJet FX:
+
+	
+      * This is proprietary with a 15-day trial.
+
+	
+      * I tried this software and could not find any batch-editing features for XMP.
+
+
+
+
+	
+    * Lightroom
+
+	
+      * This is the expensive stuff from Adobe ($300, but there’s a 30-day trial). Some people in #photogeeks on Freenode recommended it.
+
+	
+      * This is a "workflow app designed for professional photographers" and it’s from Adobe. If anything at al supports XMP batch-editing, and a billion other features, this would have to be it.
+
+
+
+
+	
+    * Razuna
+
+	
+      * I don’t know. This is an open source, web-based Digital Asset Management application.
+
+	
+      * It looks very nice (check out the videos there), but I don’t think it’s what I need for this task.
+
+
+
+
+	
+    * Any application I failed to mention: I either ignored it on the basis of provided specifications, or I ignored it because I’m just too lazy.
+
+
+
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-07-22-2009-07-21.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,140 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-07-22 02:22:28+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '2009-07-21'
+title: 2009.07.21
+wordpress_id: 188
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- books
+- games
+- historical
+- links
+- lit
+- local
+- programming
+- software
+- video
+---
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## local,links
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Queen City Discovery](http://queencitydiscovery.blogspot.com/) - An interesting blog about urban exploration in Cincinnati that some guys in [Hive13](http://www.hive13.org/) told me about
+
+	
+  * Amidst a pile of other new-age and holistic bullshit in some free magazine, I miraculously discovered an ad for the "Uptown Farmer’s Market" at Garden Park - 3581 W. Galbraith Road, Fridays 12-7, Saturdays 10-2, 513-238-6616
+
+	
+    * In trying to find a record that this existed, I came across the [Central Ohio River Valley Local Foods Guide](http://www.eatlocalcorv.org/) (which does indeed acknowledge that this market exists).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## programming
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [MapReduce](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce) - I don’t care what your opinion of MapReduce is or how much it might suck, I am just putting this here so I will encounter it later and remember that it exists.
+
+	
+  * [Epigrams on Programming from Alan Perlis](http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html) - Written in 1982 but still pretty true.
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## software
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Vanish: Self-Destructing Digital Data](http://vanish.cs.washington.edu/) - Pretty clever.
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## video,books
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions?](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html) - A video of a talk from this guy, who’s also the author of the book Predictably Irrational ([here?](http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp/006135323X) the [official website](www.predictablyirrational.com) looks gone)
+
+	
+  * [Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness](http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/0300122233) ** Not sure why I wrote this down. I haven’t read it.
+
+	
+  * [the deliberate dumbing down of america](http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/) by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt - I have not yet read this but it looks good. PDF is available [here](http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf).
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## games
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Balance of Power](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_%28video_game%29) - A geopolitics game by Chris Crawford (also with his interesting essay/article [here](http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/Balance%20of%20Power.txt)).
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## lit,historical
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [We the People Network](http://www.wtpnet.org/library) - I was searching for an image of the Declaration of Independence here and discovered they have rather high-resolution scans (like, the Declaration is 63 megapixels) of that and many other historical documents too.
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-08-14-2009-08-12.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,201 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-08-14 02:31:59+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: '2009-08-12'
+title: 2009.08.12
+wordpress_id: 190
+categories:
+- Scratch
+tags:
+- books
+- food
+- games
+- hippie
+- linux
+- paranoia
+- programming
+- software
+- videos
+- web
+---
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## videos,paranoia
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Here](http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-4097602514885833865) and [here](http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=6014022229458915912) - videos from Prof. James Duane and Officer George Bruch about why talking to the police is almost never a good idea.
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## software
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [omploader](http://omploader.org/) - A place to upload files. It can also be done with a firefox extension or in a script.
+
+	
+  * [Paperback](http://ollydbg.de/Paperbak/), from the [OllyDbg](http://www.ollydbg.de/) guy. This lets you store data on paper (about 500 KB for A4 at 600 DPI).
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## web
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [HTML5 Canvas Experiment](http://9elements.com/io/?p=153) - Perhaps good for comparing different Javascript engines. It chokes on Firefox 3.5 on my Atom 330, but works well on 3.6.
+
+	
+  * [drop.io](http://drop.io/) - A file sharing site which Wired mentioned because of its ability to set an expiration date on any file you upload. It also appears to have a collection of other, much cooler features for collaboration.
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## programming,linux
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Bash cures cancer](http://bashcurescancer.com) - Some helpful stuff for commandline Unix/Linux. It seems to have not been updated in about a year though.
+
+	
+  * [Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!](http://learnyouahaskell.com/) - My friend Lincoln showed me this. It’s a decent Haskell tutorial with some very oddball illustrations.
+
+	
+  * [How to Design Programs](http://www.htdp.org/2003-09-26/) - A book, freely available online, which teaches software design using Scheme (or is it [DrScheme](http://www.drscheme.org/)?)
+
+	
+    * [How to Design Worlds](http://world.cs.brown.edu/): Interactive Programming in DrScheme - Another freely available book from the same guys that made HtDP, but this one is about writing interactive applications using pure functional programming.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## games
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Kongregate](http://www.kongregate.com/) - A large collection of rather addictive online Flash games.
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## books
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [The Underground History of American Education](http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/) by John Taylor Gatto; the full text is readable for free online. I haven’t read it, I just noted the link, so I can neither agree nor disagree with the contents of it.
+
+	
+  * [Wishcraft](http://www.wishcraft.com/) by Barbara Sher; I came across this motivational book from [Havi Brooks](http://www.fluentself.com). I haven’t read this either, but I should at some point. It’s free as a series of PDFs.
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## food
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Basic Beef Stew with Carrots and Mushrooms](http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1142004) - made this last week and I’m noting it here so I can find it later. No, I don’t use bookmarks.
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## hippie
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Living on NST - Nomadic Standard Time](http://www.technomadia.com/2009/08/nst-nomadic-standard-time/) - Some post from "Tales from Technomadia".
+
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+## something
+
+
+
+
+
+	
+  * [Seth Godin’s Blog](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/) - I can’t remember why I saved this, but it looks like it’s full of thought-provoking articles.
+
+	
+    * [The bandwidth-sync correlation…](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/the-bandwidth-sync-correlation-thats-worth-thinking-about.html) is worth looking at.
+
+
+
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2009-10-15-fun-with-nx-stuff.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,110 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2009-10-15 01:56:22+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: fun-with-nx-stuff
+title: Fun with NX stuff
+wordpress_id: 192
+categories:
+- Technobabble
+---
+
+So, I was trying out various NX servers because I'd had very good luck with NX in the past and generally found it faster than VNC, RDP, or X11 over SSH. My options appeared to be:
+
+
+
+	
+  * NoMachine's server ([here](http://www.nomachine.com/select-package.php?os=linux&id=1)), which is free-as-in-beer but supports only 2 simultaneous sessions.
+
+	
+  * [FreeNX](http://freenx.berlios.de/) made from the components that NoMachine GPLed. It's open souce, but apparently is a total mess and notoriously hard to set up. However, it doesn't limit you to two sessions, as far as I know.
+
+	
+  * [neatX](http://code.google.com/p/neatx/), implemented from scratch in Python/bash/C by Google for some internal project because apparently FreeNX was just too much of a mess. Like FreeNX, it lacks the two-session limitation; however, it doesn't handle VNC or RDP, only X11.
+
+
+NoMachine's server was a cinch to set up (at least on Fedora). The only thing I remember having to do is put my local hostname (idiotbox) in _/etc/hosts_. Performance was very good (though I haven't tried RDP or VNC over a slower link yet - only a LAN with VirtualBox's built-in RDP server).
+
+neatX was a bit tougher to set up, primarily because the documentation I saw was very sparse. This [blog post](http://people.binf.ku.dk/~hanne/b2evolution/blogs/index.php/2009/09/01/neatx-is-the-new-black) was helpful. It advised that you should make sure you could log in with SSH manually before checking anything else, which gave me a starting point for my problems.
+
+I took these notes on how I made it work:
+
+
+
+	
+  1. Install all of the dependencies it says. ALL OF THEM!
+
+	
+  2. Follow the other instructions in "INSTALL".
+
+	
+  3. Go to /usr/local/lib/neatx and run ./nxserver-login
+If it looks like this, you're probably good:
+`
+[hodapp@idiotbox neatx]$ ./nxserver-login
+HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.3.0 - GPL
+NX> 105
+`
+If not, you may need to install some dependencies or check paths of some things. If it complains about not being able to import neatx.app, add something like this to the top of _nxserver-login_:
+`
+import sys
+sys.path.append("/usr/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages")
+`
+Replace that path with your own if it's different, of course.
+
+	
+  4. Set up password-less login for user '_nx_' using something like _'ssh-keygen -t rsa'_ and putting the private & public keys someplace easy to find. Check that this works properly from another host (i.e. put the public key in the server's _authorized_keys_ file in _~nx/.ssh_, copy the private key to the client, and use _'ssh -i blahblahprivatekey nx@server'_ there to log in. It should look something like this:
+`
+chris@momentum:~$ ssh -i nx.key nx@10.1.1.40
+Last login: Sun Oct 11 13:11:49 2009 from 10.1.1.20
+HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.3.0 - GPL
+NX> 105
+`
+If it asks for a password, something's wrong.
+If it terminates the connection immediately, SSH is probably okay, but something server-side with neatX is still messed up. SSH logs can sometimes tell things.
+
+
+Once I'd done all this, neatX worked properly. However, I had some issues with it - for instance, sometimes the entire session quit accepting mouse clicks, certain windows quit accepting keyboard input, or things would turn very sluggish at random. But for the most part it worked well.
+
+After setting up SSH stuff, FreeNX server worked okay from Fedora's packages after some minor hackery (i.e. setting user the login shell for user '_nx_' to _/usr/libexec/nx/nxserver._ I haven't yet had a chance to test it over a slow link, whether with X11 or RDP or VNC, but it worked in a LAN just fine. Someone in the IRC channel on FreeNode assures me that it runs flawlessly over a 256 kilobit link.
+
+Then, for some reason I really don't remember, I decided I wanted to run all three servers at once on the same computer. As far as I know, all of the NX clients log in to the server initially by passing a private key for user '_nx_'. The server then runs the login shell set in _/etc/passwd _for _nx_ - so I guess that shell determines which NX server handles the session.
+
+So, amidst a large pile of bad ideas, I finally came up with this workable idea for making the servers coexist:  I would set the login shell to a wrapper script which would choose the NX server to then run. The only data I could think of that the NX client could pass to the server were the port number and the private key, and this wrapper script would somehow have to get this data.
+
+Utilizing the port number would probably involve hacking around with custom firewall rules or starting multiple SSH servers, so I opted to avoid this method. It turns out if you set _LogLevel_ to _VERBOSE_ in sshd_config (at least in my version), it'll have lines like this after every login from the NX client:
+`Oct 14 18:11:33 idiotbox sshd[15681]: Found matching DSA key: fd:e9:5d:24:59:3c:3c:35:c5:29:74:ef:6d:92:3c:e4`
+You can get that key fingerprint with '_ssh-keygen -lf foo.pub_' where foo.pub is the public key.
+
+So I generated 3 keys (one for neatX, NoMachine's server, and FreeNX), added them all to _authorized_keys_, found the fingerprints, and ended up with a script that was something like this:
+
+    
+    #!/bin/sh
+    FINGERPRINT=$(grep "Found matching RSA key" /var/log/secure |
+         tail -n 1 | egrep -o "(..:){15}..")
+    if [ $FINGERPRINT == "26:dd:67:82:c1:2d:cc:c0:c6:13:ac:d4:49:0e:79:a3" ]; then
+        SERVER="/usr/local/lib/neatx/nxserver-login-wrapper"
+    elif [ $FINGERPRINT == "35:fb:bd:45:c5:71:91:ce:d6:d9:7f:0b:dc:84:f4:b3" ]; then
+        SERVER="/usr/NX/bin/nxserver"
+    elif [ $FINGERPRINT == "b5:d7:a5:18:0d:c4:fa:18:19:58:20:00:1d:3b:3c:84" ]; then
+        SERVER="/usr/libexec/nx/nxserver"
+    fi
+    $SERVER
+
+
+I saved this someplace, set it executable, and set the login shell for _nx_ in _/etc/passwd _to point to it. Make sure the home directory points someplace sensible too, as the install script for some NX servers are liable to point it somewhere else. But as far as I can tell, the only thing they use the home directories for is the _.ssh_ directory and all the other data they save is in locations that do not conflict.So I copied the three public keys to the client and manually did '_ssh -i blah.key nx@whatever_' on each key.
+
+    
+    chris@momentum:~$ ssh -i freenx-key nx@10.1.1.40
+    HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.2.0-74-SVN OS (GPL, using backend: 3.3.0)
+    NX> 105
+    chris@momentum:~$ ssh -i neatx-key nx@10.1.1.40
+    HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.3.0 - GPL
+    NX> 105
+    chris@momentum:~$ ssh -i nomachine-key nx@10.1.1.40
+    HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.4.0-8 - LFE
+    NX> 105
+
+
+The different versions in each reply were a good sign, so I tried the same keys in the client, and stuff indeed worked (at least according to my totally non-rigorous testing). Time will tell whether or not I completely overlooked some important details or interference.

posts/exitwp_raw/2010-04-03-hacked-infrared-camera-attempt-1.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2010-04-03 22:34:54+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: hacked-infrared-camera-attempt-1
+title: 'Hacked infrared camera, attempt #1'
+wordpress_id: 284
+categories:
+- Albums
+- Project
+- Technobabble
+tags:
+- fixphotos
+---
+
+[This page](http://geektechnique.org/index.php?id=254) at GeekTechnique discusses how most digital cameras are easily turned into infrared cameras by removing the IR blocking filter in front of the CCD, and replacing it with a filter that blocks visible light but passes IR. As luck would have it, exposed film negatives work very well as such a filter.
+
+So I attempted this on my Kodak EasyShare CX6200, my first camera, which somehow still works after 6 years of abuse. It was surprisingly easy, minus the part where I had to manually resolder the coil which controls the shutter on the lens because it was attached by single hair-thin strands of uninsulated wire. But I digress...
+
+gallery orderby="ID" (yeah, this is a relic from some Wordpress nonsense)
+
+I think it's working well. It very clearly passes IR light because the IR pens for the Wii whiteboard showed up quite brightly; it blocks light from LCD monitors and passes sunlight, but red LEDs seem to show up a bit. Trying it on another camera with more manual controls, and perhaps with a sharper filter, might prove interesting.

posts/exitwp_raw/2010-06-09-angry-rants-2010-summer-edition.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2010-06-09 04:36:30+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: angry-rants-2010-summer-edition
+title: Angry Rants, 2010 Summer edition
+wordpress_id: 380
+categories:
+- rant
+---
+
+Apparently I have written a lot of angry rants this quarter while I was supposed to be studying. Since I'm throwing the paper away anyhow, I'll go ahead and put its contents here:
+
+1. If its creators pay it little respect, do I really owe it any respect beyond this?
+
+2. Every hour I work in the world of numbers, algorithms, and electronics convinces me further of the value of humans.
+
+3. His refusal to play your game does not mean he is stupid. The fact that he is playing some other game does not mean he is stupid. His neglect of what is a high priority for you does not mean he is stupid. His focus is a separate context from your chosen context does not mean he is stupid. His rank in your game does not mean he is stupid. 99% of your definitions of "stupid" consist of defining part of you as a standard and then labeling everything else that falls short. Why not, instead of dismissing it all, you pull your head out of your ass and learn how people actually behave? I don't want you to regard all people as equal and correct in their own way or all with equally valid viewpoints or engage in any other pointless exercise in vague relativism. I want you, when you think you're surrounded by idiots, to take a good, hard look at how contrived and confused your own definition of "idiot" is, instead of just putting up another brick in the wall that closes off your mind further.
+
+4. Your game is a game, not reality. Go ahead and judge people on their ability to play, but recognize it for what it is instead of insisting that the game is some sort of universal truth.
+
+5. Use abrasive speech that wears through a person's ignorance, and expect a backlash as though you'd shredded that person's clothes off.
+
+6. It's pretty straightforward. When I see you judge a person by one facet of their behavior, you have in your mind turned that person into a tiny fraction of one. I can't expect you to not have instincts or emotions, but I can expect you to carry about you a self-awareness that turns you from an instinctive, emotional animal into a rational human.
+
+7. My realm of familiarity is a dead end.
+
+8. Moment of clarity, drowned in a sea of distraction.
+
+No, I have no idea what I meant.

posts/exitwp_raw/2010-11-19-venue-222-rooftop.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2010-11-19 02:38:42+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: venue-222-rooftop
+title: Venue 222 rooftop
+wordpress_id: 421
+categories:
+- Photoblog
+tags:
+- cincinnati night photo
+---
+
+Gawd, it's been forever since I've posted. Seeing Mandy post wonderful pictures regularly at http://kalpanasutra.wordpress.com/ has been an inspiration, but alas, I am still incredibly lazy when it comes to blog posting. I'm working on it.
+
+In the midst of an eggnog party at Venue 222 I found myself on the roof of the 5-story building, and I absolutely loved the view of downtown Cincinnati from up there.
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101113-DSC_1325-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101113-DSC_1325.jpg)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101113-DSC_1330-685x348.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101113-DSC_1330.jpg)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101113-DSC_1338-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101113-DSC_1338.jpg)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101113-DSC_1339-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101113-DSC_1339.jpg)

posts/exitwp_raw/2010-12-05-cyanotypes-first-attempt.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2010-12-05 05:46:09+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: cyanotypes-first-attempt
+title: Cyanotypes, first attempt
+wordpress_id: 459
+categories:
+- Project
+---
+
+Having procrastinated for around a month, I finally got around to acquiring the chemicals for a standard cyanotype (I went with [digitaltruth.com](http://www.digitaltruth.com/)) and followed the method given in "The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes" by Christopher James, which my friend Lea loaned me. I started out with a 1/5 batch of each solution (thus 20 g ferric ammonium citrate & 100 mL water, and 8 g potassium ferricyanide & 100 mL water).
+
+The book had wonderful, detailed instructions, most of which I ignored for now because I was just trying to get the feel of the cyanotype process...
+
+
+
+	
+  * Sunshine was in short supply and it was snowing anyway, so I used someone's UV lamp instead. It doesn't provide very even lighting, but it looks plenty bright.
+
+	
+  * The book said to let the individual chemical mixtures "ripen" for 24 hours before mixing them. I was too impatient to do this.
+
+	
+  * I attempted all my prints on some crappy 8.5x11 paper that is flimsy and likely has some detrimental chemicals in it.
+
+	
+  * I probably should have invested in some clothespins to hang things up to help them dry.
+
+	
+  * I still don't have any dark glass containers to store the mixtures in, so I just coated a jar in a layer of tape.
+
+	
+  * I don't know where to find a hake brush, so I used some (metal-free) foam brushes from the hardware store.
+
+
+Dave from Hive13 already had a transparency on hand that he had used to burn an image for screenprinting, and I used that as my negative. It had only black-and-white, but I'll try with a negative with actual gray tones later.
+
+The first attempt sort of worked and had a clear image exposed after about 20 minutes. I thought was a good first step since it indicated that I'd mixed the chemicals properly and that the UV light was sufficient. However, when I washed the paper in cold water, nothing at all remained. This looked to me like major underexposure, or a case of the paper just being unsuited to cyanotypes.
+
+I tried again with a different image and exposed it a little longer, but results weren't much better. Some of the darkest areas developed to a very light, almost invisible blue. I looked to the textbook for advice on how long to expose, and it said to go until the darkest parts had exposed past blue to almost a silvery-gray sort of shade.
+
+So I tried to follow that advice on the third attempt I made... actually, I wanted to expose it longer than I did, but I needed to get back home so I rushed it a little.
+
+Here's the exposed, but not developed, print:
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/cyanotype0001-685x523.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/cyanotype0001.jpg)
+
+The gradient in the top left is a strip of paper that I moved away at periodic intervals. I placed several strips of paper to the right but they were removed first and aren't visible here. The Hive13 logo also has a faint image to the left, probably from me moving the print early in the exposure and jolting the negative a little.
+
+I developed the print (just rinsed it in cold water until the water ran clear) and let it dry for maybe 7 hours:
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/cyanotype0002-685x533.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/cyanotype0002.jpg)
+
+There are a lot of artifacts here. The darker border might be from the edges of the acetate on the negative. The things in the top left are some etching on one of the plates of glass that I used to hold the negative. In the undeveloped print, the strip to the right of that has clearly visible steps of tone, and I find it a little weird that all of these developed to pure white, while areas that are all the same color in the undeveloped print turned into clearly different tones in the developed one. I probably should read up on how to control this better.
+
+But all in all, I'm impressed with how it turned out after 3 tries.

posts/exitwp_raw/2010-12-30-cyanotypes-better-results.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2010-12-30 23:09:09+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: cyanotypes-better-results
+title: Cyanotypes & better results
+wordpress_id: 473
+---
+
+Lack of some amount of sunshine is rarely a problem here, it seems. I did this next cyanotype outdoors in very overcast light while it was snowing lightly. The snow was minor since a sheet of glass covered everything, and overcast light possibly was perfect because of how even and omnidirectional it was. The contrast that I got in this print surprised me; the dark areas just turned out so much darker than the last print.
+
+[caption id="attachment_474" align="alignnone" width="530" caption="Same paper & solution, but exposed in overcast sunlight.  "][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101206-cyanotype0003-530x685.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101206-cyanotype0003.jpg)[/caption]
+
+I still had sensitizer left, so I decided to try some prints on fabric as well. These I exposed for almost 2 hours, maybe longer, under a 200 watt bulb. They didn't turn out as even as I'd like, but I was rushing things a bit and some spots of the towel weren't fully dry when I started exposing. However, I'm still impressed with how it turned out.
+
+[caption id="attachment_475" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="Exposure on a towel from Target; exposed ~ 2 hours under 200 W bulb."][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101212-CIMG0269-685x513.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101212-CIMG0269.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[caption id="attachment_476" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="Same towel up close(ish)"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101212-CIMG0270-685x513.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101212-CIMG0270.jpg)[/caption]
+
+Rob next door to the Hive loaned me a halftone negative he had (since I had nothing else on hand in the way of transparencies) and I made a few exposures of this, but had some problems with the highlights. I really should find some negatives that aren't monochrome (as this was, being a halftone image) so I can figure out how to get the tones right.

posts/exitwp_raw/2010-12-30-macro-photography-attempts-1-and-2.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2010-12-30 22:46:22+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: macro-photography-attempts-1-and-2
+title: 'Macro photography, attempts #1 and #2'
+wordpress_id: 464
+categories:
+- Photoblog
+- Project
+---
+
+I picked up some very cheap extension tubes and a reversing ring for my DSLR, hoping to do some macro photography with them. However, I sort of ignored that both my lenses default to having their apertures at their narrowest setting (rather than their largest, which for some reason I assumed) until instructed otherwise whether electronically or via the aperture lever. This made it a bit more difficult to do a lot of the shots. I have a 49 to 52 mm step-up ring coming in the mail which will let me use the old SMC Pentax 50mm lens, which has an aperture ring, but it appears to be on a slow boat from China so it's not coming anytime soon.
+
+[caption id="attachment_465" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="Part of business card"][**![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101208-DSC_1517-685x454.jpg)**](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101208-DSC_1517.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[caption id="attachment_467" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="LCD monitor"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101208-DSC_1533-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101208-DSC_1533.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101208-DSC_1520-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101208-DSC_1520.jpg)
+
+
+    CFL
+
+
+
+[caption id="attachment_468" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="Plastic edge in alligator clips"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101209-DSC_1535-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101209-DSC_1535.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101209-DSC_1539-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101209-DSC_1539.jpg)
+
+
+    Those same alligator clips
+
+
+
+[caption id="attachment_470" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="PCB"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101209-DSC_1546-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101209-DSC_1546.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[caption id="attachment_471" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="Solder pads"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101209-DSC_1550-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/20101209-DSC_1550.jpg)[/caption]

posts/exitwp_raw/2011-02-07-blender-from-a-recovering-pov-ray-user.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: false
+date: 2011-02-07 02:21:39+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: blender-from-a-recovering-pov-ray-user
+title: Blender from a recovering POV-Ray user
+wordpress_id: 478
+categories:
+- CG
+---
+
+This is about the tenth time I've tried to learn [Blender](http://www.blender.org/). Judging by the notes I've accumulated so far, I've been at it this time for about a month and a half. From what I remember, what spurred me to try this time was either known-Blender-guru Craig from [Hive13](http://www.hive13.org/) mentioning [Voodoo Camera Tracker](http://www.digilab.uni-hannover.de/docs/manual.html) (which can output to a Blender-readable format), or my search for something that would make it easier to do the 2D visualizations and algorithmic art I always end up doing (and I heard Blender had some crazy node-based texturing system...)
+
+Having a goal for what I want to render has been working out much better than just trying to learn the program and hope the inspiration falls into place (like it would appear all of my previous attempts involved). This really has nothing to do with Blender specifically, but really anything that is suitably complex and powerful. I have just had this dumb tendency in the past few years to try to learn all of the little details of a system without first having a motivation to use them, despite this being completely at odds with nearly all things I consider myself to have learned well. I'm seeing pretty clearly how that approach is rather backwards, for me at least.
+
+I took a lot of notes early on where I tried to map out a lot of its features at a very high level, but most of this simply didn't matter - what mattered mostly fell into place when I actually tried to make something in Blender. However, knowing some of the fundamental limitations and capabilities did help.
+
+The interface is quirky for sure, but I am finding it to be pretty intuitive after some practice. Most of my issues came from the big UI overhaul after 2.4, as I'm currently using 2.55/2.56 but many of the tutorials refer to the old version, and even official documentation for 2.5 is sometimes nonexistent - but can I really complain? They pretty clearly note that it is still in beta.
+
+However, I'm starting to make sense of it. Visions and concepts that I previously felt I had no idea how to even approach in Blender suddenly are starting to feel easy or at least straightforward (what I'm talking about more specifically here is how many things became trivial once I knew my way around Bezier splines). This is good, because I've got pages and pages of ideas waiting to be made. Some look like they'll be more suited to [Processing](http://processing.org/) (like the 2nd image down below) or [OpenFrameworks](http://www.openframeworks.cc/) or one of the too-many-completely-different-versions of Acidity I wrote.
+
+[caption id="attachment_479" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="What I learned Bezier splines on, and didn't learn enough about texturing."][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/hive13-bezier03-685x279.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/hive13-bezier03.png)[/caption]
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/20110118-sketch_mj2011016e-685x685.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/20110118-sketch_mj2011016e.jpg)
+
+
+    This was made directly from some equations. I don't know how I'd do this in Blender.
+
+
+[POV-Ray](http://www.povray.org) was the last program that I 3D-rendered extensively in (this was mostly 2004-2005, as my much-neglected [DeviantArt](http://mershell.deviantart.com/) shows, and it probably stress-tested the Athlon64 in the first new machine I built more than any other program did).  It's quite different from Blender in most ways possible. POV-Ray makes it easy to do clean, elegant, mathematical things, many of which would be either impossible or extremely ugly in Blender. It's a raytracer; it deals with neat, clean analytic surfaces, and tons of other things comes for free (speed is not one of them). However, I never really found a modeler for POV-Ray that could integrate well with the full spectrum of features the language offered, and a lot of things just felt really kludgey. Seeing almost no progress made to the program, and being too lazy to look into [MegaPOV](http://megapov.inetart.net/), I decided to give up on it at some point. My attempts to learn something that implemented RenderMan resulted mostly in me seeing how ingeniously optimized and streamlined RenderMan is and not actually making anything in it.
+
+Blender feels really "impure" in comparison. It deals with ugly things like triangle meshes and scanline rendering... ugly things that make it vastly more efficient to accomplish many tasks. I'm quickly finding better replacements for a lot of the techniques I relied on with POV-Ray. For instance, for many repetitive or recursive structures, I would rely on some simple looping or recursion in POV-Ray (as its scene language was Turing-complete); this worked fairly well, but it also meant that no modeler I tried would be able to grok the scene. In Blender, I discovered the Array modifier; while it's much simpler, it is still very powerful. On top of this, I have the interactivity of the modeler still present. I've built some things interactively with all the precision that I would have had in POV-Ray, but I built them in probably 1/10 the time. That's the case for the two work-in-progress Blender images here:
+
+[caption id="attachment_480" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="This needs a name and a better background."][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/20110131-mj20110114b-685x385.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/20110131-mj20110114b.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[caption id="attachment_481" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="This needs... the same, actually."][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/20110205-mj20110202-starburst2-685x385.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/20110205-mj20110202-starburst2.jpg)[/caption]
+
+My desk

posts/exitwp_raw/2011-06-10-first-attempt-at-slide-film.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2011-06-10 03:45:07+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: first-attempt-at-slide-film
+title: First attempt at slide film
+wordpress_id: 487
+categories:
+- Photoblog
+---
+
+Having acquired a Nikon FE and some lenses quite inexpensively and verifying on some cheap Walgreen film that they did indeed work, I picked up some Fuji Velvia RVP50 from Cord Camera in Kenwood back in April (it was expensive compared to what Amazon would have charged, but I wasn't about to waste a trip to Kenwood over $10ish). I'd heard enough lavish praise lumped onto slide film, particularly Velvia for its fine grain and color, so I figured it was worth a try.
+
+Few places left will process slide film but as luck has it I am really close to [Robin Imaging](http://www.robinimaging.com/) who still processes it (and, it sounds like, might be the only lab left in Cincinnati that does). I had them scan it as well and received a disc of 6 megapixel images which is decent (I'm told you can get much higher resolution than that out of a fine-grained film, but I'm not complaining).
+
+While, somewhat stupidly, I don't have a slide projector yet and so I've only seen the scans and the 35mm slides themselves, I still am very impressed with the results.
+
+[caption id="attachment_495" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="Cincinnati (Over-the-Rhine specifically) near Vine"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-008-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-008.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[caption id="attachment_494" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="Vine Street in about the same area"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-007-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-007.jpg)[/caption]
+
+Sadly, my favorite image of the bunch is also the only one where I managed to advance the film wrong:
+
+[caption id="attachment_493" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="E. Liberty & Walnut. I love how well the film brought out the color."][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-006-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-006.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[caption id="attachment_492" align="alignnone" width="454" caption="Downtown someplace for Taste of Cincinnati"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-005-454x685.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-005.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[caption id="attachment_491" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="Obligatory country road shot, this one in Indiana near 56 & 156"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-004-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-004.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[caption id="attachment_490" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="56 & Thuermer Hollow in Indiana... little boring, but here it is."][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-003-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-003.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[caption id="attachment_489" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="Cincinnati, near John & Ezzard Charles"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-002-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-002.jpg)[/caption]
+
+[caption id="attachment_488" align="alignnone" width="685" caption="Over-the-Rhine & downtown Cincinnati seen from Bellevue Hill Park"][![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-001-685x454.jpg)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/20110606-20-001.jpg)[/caption]

posts/exitwp_raw/2011-06-10-i-can-never-win-that-context-back.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2011-06-10 03:03:27+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: i-can-never-win-that-context-back
+title: I can never win that context back
+wordpress_id: 485
+categories:
+- Journal
+- rant
+---
+
+I stumbled upon this: [http://www.soyoucode.com/2011/coding-giant-under-microscope-farbrausch](http://www.soyoucode.com/2011/coding-giant-under-microscope-farbrausch) . . . and promptly fell in love with the demos there from Farbrausch:
+
+[.the .product](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ydAHt78v2M)
+
+[.debris](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBNZ9JiFCKU)
+
+[.kkrieger](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aV1kzS5FtA)
+
+[Magellan](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00SdDZyWSEs)
+
+That melding of music and animated 3D graphics grabs a hold of me like nothing else. I don't really know why.
+
+The fact that it's done in such a small space (e.g. 64 KB for the first one) makes it more impressive, of course. Maybe that should be a sad reflection on just how formulaic the things I like are, if they're encoded that small (although, that ignores just how much is present in addition,  in the CPU and the GPU and the OS and the drivers and in the design of the computer), but I don't much care - formulas encode patterns of sorts, and we're pattern-matching machines.
+
+But leaving aside the huge programming feat of making all this fit in such a small space, I still find it really impressive.
+
+It's been a goal for awhile to make something that is on the scope of that (highly-compressed demo or not, I don't much care). I've just not made much progress to accomplishing that. My early attempts at Acidity were motivated by the same feelings that draw me to things like this.
+
+(Obligatory [Second Reality](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G_aUxbbqWU) as well. Maybe I am putting myself too much in the context that it came from - i.e. 1993 and rather slow DOS machines - but I still think it's damn impressive. Incidentally, this is also one of the only ones I've run on real hardware before, since apparently the only fast machine I have that runs Windows is my work computer.)

posts/exitwp_raw/2011-06-13-openframeworks-try-1.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2011-06-13 06:04:35+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: openframeworks-try-1
+title: OpenFrameworks, try 1...
+wordpress_id: 499
+categories:
+- rant
+- Technobabble
+---
+
+My attempts at doing things with OpenFrameworks on MacOS X have been mildly disastrous. This is a bit of a shame, because I was really starting to like OpenFrameworks and it was not tough to pick up after being familiar with Processing.
+
+I'm pretty new to XCode, but it's the "official" environment for OpenFrameworks on OS X, so it's the first thing I tried. The first few attempts at things (whether built-in examples, or my own code) went just fine, but today I started trying some things that were a little more complex - i.e. saving the last 30 frames from the camera and using them for some filtering operations. My code probably had some mistakes in it, I'm sure, and that's to be expected. The part where things became incredibly stupid was somewhere around when the mistakes caused the combination of XCode, GDB, and OpenFrameworks to hose the system in various ways.
+
+First, it was the Dock taking between 15 and 30 seconds to respond just so I could force-quit the application. Then it was the debugger taking several seconds to do 100 iterations of a loop that had nothing more than an array member assignment inside of it (and it had 640x480x3 = 921,600 iterations total) if I tried to set breakpoints, thus basically making interactive debugging impossible. The debugging was already a pain in the ass; I had reduced some code down to something like this:
+
+
+
+    
+    int size = cam_width * cam_height * 3;
+    for(int i = 0; i < frame_count; ++i) {
+       unsigned char * blah = new unsigned char[size];
+       for(int j = 0; j < size; ++j) blah[j] = 0;
+    }
+
+
+...after a nearly identical _memset _call was smashing the stack and setting _frame_count_ to a value in the billions, so I was really getting quite frazzled at this.
+
+Running it a few minutes ago without breakpoints enabled led to a bunch of extreme sluggishness, then flickering and flashing on the monitor and I was not able to interact with anything in the GUI (which was the 3rd or 4th time this had happened today, with all the Code::Blocks nonsense below). I SSHed in from another machine and killed XCode, but the monitor just continued to show the same image, and it appeared that the GUI was completely unresponsive except for a mouse cursor. I had to hold the power button to reboot, and saw this in the Console but nothing else clear before it:
+
+_6/13/11 1:11:19 AM	[0x0-0x24024].com.google.Chrome[295]	[463:24587:11560062687119:ERROR:gpu_watchdog_thread.cc(236)] The GPU process hung. Terminating after 10000 ms._
+
+A little before trying XCode for a 2nd time, I had also attempted to set up Code::Blocks since it's OpenFrameworks' "official" IDE for Linux and Windows and XCode was clearly having . First I painstakingly made it built from an SVN copy and finally got it to run (had to disable FileManager and NassiShneiderman plugins which would not build and make sure it was building for the same architecture as wxWidgets was built for). As soon as I tried to quit it, the Dock became totally unresponsive, then Finder itself followed along with the menu bar for the whole system. I was not able to SSH in. Despite the system being mostly responsive, I had to hard reset. I found a few things in the console:
+
+_6/12/11 9:43:54 PM	com.apple.launchd[1]	(com.apple.coreservicesd[66]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault
+__6/12/11 9:43:54 PM	com.apple.audio.coreaudiod[163]	coreaudiod: CarbonCore.framework: coreservicesd process died; attempting to reconnect but future use may result in erroneous behavior
+__6/12/11 9:43:55 PM	com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[18181]	2011-06-12 21:43:55.011 ReportCrash[18181:2803] Saved crash report for coreservicesd[66] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/coreservicesd_2011-06-12-214355_localhost.crash
+__6/12/11 9:44:26 PM	com.apple.Dock.agent[173]	Sun Jun 12 21:44:26 hodapple2.local Dock[173] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowTransformsAtPlacement: Singular matrix at index 2: [0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000]_
+
+It started up properly after a reset, but I couldn't do anything useful with it because despite there being a script that was supposed to take care of this while building the bundle the application was not able to see any of its plugins, which included a compiler plugin. I attempted a binary OS X release which had a functioning set of plugins, but was missing other dependencies set in the projects, which were Linux-specific. I could probably put together a working configuration if I worked in Code::Blocks a bit, but I have not tried yet.
+
+This is all incredibly annoying. There is no reason a user process should be capable of taking down the whole system like this, especially inside of a debugger, yet apparently it's pretty trivial to make this happen. I've written more than enough horrible code in various different environments (CUDA-GDB on a Tesla C1060, perhaps?) to know what to expect. I guess I can try developing on Linux instead, and/or using Processing. I know it's not quite the same, but I've never had a Processing sketch hose the whole system at least.
+
+**_Later addition (2011-06-20, but not written here until November because I'd buried the notes somewhere):_**
+
+I attempted to make an OpenFrameworks project built with Qt Creator (which of course uses [QMake](http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/qmake-manual.html)). OpenFrameworks relies on QuickTime, and as it happens, QuickTime is 32-bit only. If you take a look at some of the headers, the majority of it is just #ifdef'ed away if you try to build 64-bit and this completely breaks the OpenFrameworks build.
+
+Ordinarily, this would not be an issue as I would just do a 32-bit build of everything else too. However, QMake refuses to do a 32-bit build on OS X for some unknown reason (and, yes, I talked to some Qt devs about this). It'll gladly do it on most other platforms, but not on OS X. Now, GCC has no problems building 32-bit, but this does no good when QMake keeps adding "-arch x86_64" no matter what. I attempted all sorts of options such as CONFIG += x86, CONFIG -= x86_64, QMAKE_CXXFLAGS -= -arch x86_64, or  += -m32, or += -arch i386... but none of them to any avail.

posts/exitwp_raw/2011-07-15-my-experiences-with-apache-axis2c.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2011-07-15 00:40:17+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: my-experiences-with-apache-axis2c
+title: My experiences with Apache Axis2/C
+wordpress_id: 500
+categories:
+- Project
+- rant
+- Technobabble
+---
+
+(This is an abridged version of a report I did at my job; I might post of copy of it once I remove anything that might be considered proprietary.)
+
+I was tasked at my job with looking at ways of doing web services in our main application (which for an upcoming delivery is to be separated out into client and server portions). Said application is written primarily in C++, so naturally our first look was into frameworks written for C or C++ so that we would not need to bother with language bindings, foreign function interfaces, porting, new runtimes, or anything of the sort.
+
+Our search led us to [Apache Axis2/C](http://axis.apache.org/axis2/c/core/). We'd examined this last year at a basic level and found that it looked suitable. Its primary intended purpose was as the framework that the client and server communicated over in order to transfer our various DTOs; that it worked over SOAP and handled most HTTP details (so it appeared) was a bonus.
+
+I discovered after investing considerable effort that we were quite wrong about Axis2/C. I'll enumerate a partial list of issues here:
+
+
+
+	
+  1. **Lack of support:** There was a distinct lack of good information online. I could find no real record of anyone using this framework in production anywhere. Mailing lists and message forums seemed nonexistent. I found a number of articles that were often pretty well-written, but almost invariably by WSO2 employees.
+
+	
+  2. **Development is largely stagnant:** The last update was in 2009. In and of itself this is not a critical issue, but combined with its extensive list of unsolved bugs and a very dense, undocumented code base, this is unacceptable.
+
+	
+  3. **Lack of documentation:** Some documentation is online, but the vast majority of the extensive API lacks any documentation, whether a formal reference or a set of examples. The most troubling aspect of this is that not even the developers of Axis2/C seemed to comprehend its memory management (and indeed our own tests showed some extensive memory leaks).
+
+	
+  4. **Large set of outstanding bugs:** When I encountered the bug-tracking website for Axis2/C (which I seem to have lost the link for), I discovered a multitude of troubling bugs. Most of them pertain to unfixed memory leaks (for code that will be running inside of a web server, this is really not good). On top of this, a 2-year-old unfixed bug had broken the functionality for binary MTOM transfers if you had enabled libcurl support, and this feature was rather essential to the application.
+
+	
+  5. **Necessity of repetitive code:** It lacked any production-ready means to automatically generate code for turning native C/C++ objects to and from SOAP. While it had WSDL2C this still left considerable repetitive work for the programmer (in many cases causing more work rather than less) and its generated code was very ambiguous as to its memory-management habits.
+
+	
+  6. **Limited webserver support:** Axis2/C provided modules only for working with three web servers: Apache HTTPD, Microsoft IIS, and their built-in test server, _axis2_http_server_. Our intended target was Microsoft IIS, and the support for IIS was considerably less developed than the support for Apache HTTPD. To be honest, though, most of my woes came from Microsoft here - and the somewhat pathetic functionality for logging and configuration that IIS has. I'm sorry for anyone who loves IIS, but I should not be required to _manually search through a dump of Windows system calls_ to determine that the reason for IIS silently failing is that I gave a 64-bit pool a 32-bit DLL, or that said DLL has unmet dependencies. Whether it's Axis2/C's fault or IIS's fault that the ISAPI DLL managed to either take IIS down or leave it an an indeterminate state no less than a hundred times doesn't much matter to me. _(However, on the upside, I did learn that [Process Monitor](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx) from Sysinternals can be very useful in cases where you have otherwise no real source of diagnostic information. This is not the first time I had to dump system calls to diagnose an Axis2/C problem.)_
+
+	
+  7. **Poor performance:** Even the examples provided in the Axis2/C source code itself had a tendency to fail to work properly.
+
+	
+    1. Their MTOM transfer example failed to work at all with Microsoft IIS and had horrid performance with Apache HTTPD.
+
+	
+    2. On top of this, the default configuration of Apache Axis2/C opens up a new TCP connection for every single request that is initiated. Each TCP connection, of course, occupies a port on the client side. On Windows, something like 240 seconds (by default) must pass upon that connection closing before the port may be reused; on Linux, I think it's 30 seconds. There are 16384 ports available for this purpose. Practical upshot of this: _A client with the default configuration of Axis2/C cannot sustain more than 68 requests per second on Windows or 273 requests per second on Linux._ If you exceed that rate, it will simply start failing. How did I eventually figure this out? By reading documentation carefully? By looking at an API reference? By looking at comments in the source code? No, _by looking at a packet dump in Wireshark, _which pointed out to me the steadily increasing port numbers and flagged that ports were being reused unexpectedly. I later found out that I needed to compile Axis2/C with libcurl support and then it would use a persistent HTTP connection (and also completely break MTOM support because of that unfixed bug I mentioned). None of this was documented anywhere, unless a cryptic mailing-list message from years ago counts.
+
+
+
+
+
+So, I'm sorry, esteemed employees of [WSO2](http://wso2.org/), but to claim that Apache Axis2/C is enterprise ready is a horrid mockery of the term.
+
+This concluded about 2 weeks of work on the matter. In approximately 6 hours (and I'll add that my starting point was knowing nothing about the Java technologies), I had a nearly identical version using Java web services (JAX-WS particularly) that was performing on the order of twice as fast and with none of the issues with memory leaks or stability.
+
+P.S. Is it unique to Windows-related forums that the pattern of support frequently goes like this?
+
+
+
+	
+  * _**Me: **This software is messed up. It's not behaving as it should._
+
+	
+  * _**Them:** It's not messed up; it works for me. You are just too dumb to use it. Try pressing this button, and it will work._
+
+	
+  * _**Me:** Okay, I pressed it. It's not working._
+
+	
+  * _**Them:** Oh. Your software is messed up. You should fix it._
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2011-08-27-isolated-pixel-pushing.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2011-08-27 16:48:44+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: isolated-pixel-pushing
+title: Isolated-pixel-pushing
+wordpress_id: 501
+categories:
+- CG
+- Project
+- Technobabble
+---
+
+After finally deciding to look around for some projects on github, I found a number of very interesting ones in a matter of minutes.
+
+I found [Fragmentarium](http://syntopia.github.com/Fragmentarium/index.html) first. This program is like something I tried for years and years to write, but just never got around to putting in any real finished form. It can act as a simple testbench for GLSL fragment shaders, which I'd already realized could be used to do exactly what I was doing more slowly in [Processing](http://processing.org/), much more slowly in Python (stuff like [this](http://mershell.deviantart.com/gallery/#/dckzex) if we want to dig up things from 6 years ago), much more clunkily in C and [OpenFrameworks](http://www.openframeworks.cc/), and so on. It took me probably about 30 minutes to put together the code to generate the usual gawdy test algorithm I try when bootstrapping from a new environment:
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/acidity-standard-685x473.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/acidity-standard.png)
+
+(Yeah, it's gaudy. But when you see it animated, it's amazingly trippy and mesmerizing.)
+
+The use I'm talking about (and that I've reimplemented a dozen times) was just writing functions that map the 2D plane to some colorspace, often with some spatial continuity. Typically I'll have some other parameters in there that I'll bind to a time variable or some user control to animate things. So far I don't know any particular term that encompasses functions like this, but I know people have used it in different forms for a long while. It's the basis of procedural texturing (as pioneered in [An image synthesizer](http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=325247) by Ken Perlin) as implemented in countless different forms like [Nvidia Cg](http://developer.nvidia.com/cg-toolkit), GLSL, probably Renderman Shading Language, RTSL, POV-Ray's extensive texturing, and Blender's node texturing system (which I'm sure took after a dozen other similar systems). [Adobe Pixel Bender](http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pixelbender.html), which the Fragmentarium page introduced to me for the first time, does something pretty similar but to different ends. Some systems such as [Vvvv](http://www.vvvv.org/) and [Quartz Composer](http://developer.apple.com/graphicsimaging/quartz/quartzcomposer.html) probably permit some similar operations; I don't know for sure.
+
+The benefits of representing a texture (or whatever image) as an algorithm rather than a raster image are pretty well-known: It's a much smaller representation, it scales pretty well to 3 or more dimensions (particularly with noise functions like Perlin Noise or Simplex Noise), it can have a near-unlimited level of detail, it makes things like seams and antialiasing much less of an issue, it is almost the ideal case for parallel computation and modern graphics hardware has built-in support for it (e.g. GLSL, Cg, to some extent OpenCL). The drawback is that you usually have to find some way to represent this as a function in which each pixel or texel (or voxel?) is computed in isolation of all the others. This might be clumsy, it might be horrendously slow, or it might not have any good representation in this form.
+
+Also, once it's an algorithm, you can _parametrize it_. If you can make it render near realtime, then animation and realtime user control follow almost for free from this, but even without that, you still have a lot of flexibility when you can change parameters.
+
+The only thing different (and debatably so) that I'm doing is trying to make compositions with just the functions themselves rather than using them as means to a different end, like video processing effects or texturing in a 3D scene. It also fascinated me to see these same functions animated in realtime.
+
+However, the author of Fragmentarium (Mikael Hvidtfeldt Christensen) is doing much more interesting things with the program (i.e. rendering 3D fractals with distance estimation) than I would ever have considered doing. It makes sense why - his emerged more from the context of fractals and ray tracers on the GPU, like [Amazing Boxplorer](http://sourceforge.net/projects/boxplorer/), and fractals tend to make for very interesting results.
+
+His [Syntopia Blog](http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/) has some fascinating material and beautiful renders on it. His posts on [Distance Estimated 3D Fractals](http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/index.php/2011/08/distance-estimated-3d-fractals-iii-folding-space/) were particularly fascinating to me - in part because this was the first time I had encountered the technique of distance estimation for rendering a scene. He gave a good introduction with lots of other material to refer to.
+
+Distance Estimation blows my mind a little when I try to understand it. I have a decent high-level understanding of ray tracing, but this is not ray tracing, it's ray marching. It lets complexity be emergent rather than needing an explicit representation as a scanline renderer or ray tracer might require (while ray tracers will gladly take a functional representation of many geometric primitives, I have encountered very few cases where something like a complex fractal or an isosurface could be rendered without first approximating it as a mesh or some other shape, sometimes at great cost). Part 1 of Mikael's series on Distance Estimated 3D Fractals links to [these slides](http://www.iquilezles.org/www/material/nvscene2008/rwwtt.pdf) which show a 4K demo built piece-by-piece using distance estimation to render a pretty complex scene.
+
+_(Later addition: [This link](http://www.mazapan.se/news/2010/07/15/gpu-ray-marching-with-distance-fields/) covers ray marching for some less fractalian uses. "Hypertexture" by Ken Perlin gives some useful information too, more technical in nature;  finding this paper is up to you. Consult your favorite university?)_
+
+He has another rather different program called [Structure Synth](http://structuresynth.sourceforge.net/) which he made following the same "design grammar" approach of [Context Free](http://www.contextfreeart.org/). I haven't used Structure Synth yet, because Context Free was also new to me and I was first spending some time learning to use that. I'll cover this in another post.

posts/exitwp_raw/2011-08-29-context-free.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,111 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2011-08-29 03:27:43+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: context-free
+title: Context Free
+wordpress_id: 504
+categories:
+- CG
+- Project
+- Technobabble
+---
+
+My [last post](http://hodapple.com/blag/isolated-pixel-pushing/) mentioned a program called [Context Free](http://www.contextfreeart.org/) that I came across via the [Syntopia](http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/) blog as his program [Structure Synth](http://structuresynth.sourceforge.net/) was modeled after it.
+
+I've heard of [context-free grammars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-free_grammar) before but my understanding of them is pretty vague. This program is based around them and the documentation expresses their [limitations](http://www.contextfreeart.org/mediawiki/index.php/Context_Free_cans_and_cannots); what I grasped from this is that no entity can have any "awareness" of the context in which it's drawn, i.e. any part of the rest of the scene or even where in the scene it is. A perusal of the site's [gallery](http://www.contextfreeart.org/gallery/) shows how much those limitations don't really matter.
+
+I downloaded the program, started it, and their welcome image (with the relatively short source code right beside it) greeted me, rendered on-the-spot:
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/welcome-685x656.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/welcome.png)
+
+The program was very easy to work with. Their quick reference card was terse but only needed a handful of examples and a few pages of documentation to fill in the gaps. After about 15 minutes, I'd put together this:
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/spiral-first-20110823-685x685.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/spiral-first-20110823.png)
+
+Sure, it's mathematical and simple, but I think being able to put it together in 15 minutes in a general program (i.e. not a silly ad-hoc program) that I didn't know how to use shows its potential pretty well. The source is this:
+
+    
+    startshape MAIN
+    background { b -1 }
+    rule MAIN {
+       TRAIL { }
+    }
+    rule TRAIL {
+       20 * { r 11 a -0.6 s 0.8 } COLORED { }
+    }
+    rule COLORED {
+       BASE { b 0.75 sat 0.1 }
+    }
+    rule BASE {
+       SQUARE1 { }
+       SQUARE1 { r 90 }
+       SQUARE1 { r 180 }
+       SQUARE1 { r 270 }
+    }
+    rule SQUARE1 {
+       SQUARE { }
+       SQUARE1 { h 2 sat 0.3 x 0.93 y 0.93 r 10 s 0.93 }
+    }
+
+
+I worked with it some more the next day and had some things like this:
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tree3-abg-300x225.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tree3-abg.png) [![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tree4-lul-283x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tree4-lul.png)
+
+I'm not sure what it is. It looks sort of like a tree made of lightning. Some Hive13 people said it looks like a lockpick from hell. The source is some variant of this:
+
+    
+    startshape MAIN
+    background { b -1 }
+    rule MAIN {
+        BRANCH { r 180 }
+    }
+    rule BRANCH 0.25 {
+        box { }
+        BRANCH { y -1 s 0.9 }
+    }
+    rule BRANCH 0.25{
+        box { }
+        BRANCH { y -1 s 0.3 }
+        BRANCH { y -1 s 0.7  r 52 }
+    }
+    rule BRANCH 0.25 {
+        box { }
+        BRANCH { y -1 s 0.3 }
+        BRANCH { y -1 s 0.7  r -55 }
+    }
+    path box {
+        LINEREL{x 0 y -1}
+        STROKE{p roundcap b 1 }
+    }
+
+
+The program is very elegant in its simplicity. At the same time, it's a really powerful program. Translating something written in Context Free into another programming language would in most cases not be difficult at all - you need just a handful of 2D drawing primitives, a couple basic operations for color space and geometry, the ability to recurse (and to stop recursing when it's pointless). But that representation, though it might be capable of a lot of things that Context Free can't do on its own, probably would be a lot clumsier.
+
+This is basically what some of my OpenFrameworks sketches were doing in a much less disciplined way (although with the benefit of animation and GPU-accelerated primitives) but I didn't realize that what I was doing could be expressed so easily and so compactly in a context-free grammar.
+
+It's appealing, though, in the same way as the functions discussed in the last post (i.e. those for procedural texturing). It's a similarly compact representation of an image - this time, a vector image rather than a spatially continuous image, which has some benefits of its own. It's an algorithm - so now it can be parametrized. (Want to see one reason why parametrized vector things are awesome? Look at [Magic Box](http://magic-box.org/).) And once it's parametrized, animation and realtime user control are not far away, provided you can render quickly enough.
+
+_(And as [@codersandy](http://twitter.com/#!/codersandy/statuses/108180159194079232) observed after reading this, [POV-Ray](http://www.povray.org/) is in much the same category too. I'm not sure if he meant it in the same way I do, but POV-Ray is a fully Turing-complete language and it permits you to generate your whole scene procedurally if you wish, which is great - but Context Free is indeed far simpler than this, besides only being 2D. It will be interesting to see how Structure Synth compares, given that it generates 3D scenes and has a built-in raytracer.)_
+
+My next step is probably to play around with [Structure Synth](http://structuresynth.sourceforge.net/) (and like Fragmentarium it's built with Qt, a library I actually am familiar with). I also might try to create a JavaScript implementation of Context Free and conquer my total ignorance of all things JavaScript. Perhaps a realtime OpenFrameworks version is in the works too, considering this is a wheel I already tried to reinvent once (and badly) in OpenFrameworks.
+
+Also in the queue to look at:
+
+
+
+	
+  * [NodeBox](http://nodebox.net/code/index.php/Home), "a Mac OS X application that lets you create 2D visuals (static, animated or interactive) using Python programming code..."
+
+	
+  * [jsfiddle](http://jsfiddle.net/), a sort of JavaScript/HTML/CSS sandbox for testing. (anarkavre showed me a neat sketch he put together [here](http://jsfiddle.net/anarkavre/qVVuD/))
+
+	
+  * [Paper.js](http://paperjs.org/), "an open source vector graphics scripting framework that runs on top of the HTML5 Canvas."
+
+	
+  * Reading [generative art](http://www.manning.com/pearson/) by Matt Pearson which I just picked up on a whim.
+
+

posts/exitwp_raw/2011-11-13-qmake-hackery-dependencies-external-preprocessing.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,261 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2011-11-13 21:34:35+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: qmake-hackery-dependencies-external-preprocessing
+title: 'QMake hackery: Dependencies & external preprocessing'
+wordpress_id: 522
+categories:
+- Project
+- Technobabble
+---
+
+Qt Creator is a favorite IDE of mine for when I have to deal with miserably large C++ projects. At my job I ported a build in Visual Studio of one such large project over to Qt Creator so that builds and development could be done on OS X and Linux, and in the process, learned a good deal about [QMake](http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/qmake-manual.html) and how to make it do some unexpected things.
+
+While I find Qt Creator to be a vastly cleaner, lighter IDE than Visual Studio, and find QMake to be a far more straightforward build system for the majority of things than Visual Studio's build system, some things the build needed were very tricky to set up in QMake. The two main shortcomings I ran into were:
+
+
+
+	
+  * Managing dependencies between projects, as building the application in question involved building 40-50 separate subprojects as libraries, many of which depended on each other.
+
+	
+  * Having external build events, as the application also had to call an external tool (no, not _moc_, this is different) to generate some source files and headers from a series of templates.
+
+
+QMake, as it happens, has some commands that actually make the project files Turing-complete, albeit in a rather ugly way. The _eval_ command is the main source of this, and I made heavy use of it.
+
+First is the dependency management system. It's a little large, but I'm including it inline here.
+
+    
+    # This file is meant to be included in from other project files, but it needs
+    # a particular context:
+    # (1) Make sure that the variable TEMPLATE is set to: subdirs, lib, or app.
+    #     Your project file really should be doing this anyway.
+    # (2) Set DEPENDS to a list of dependencies that must be linked in.
+    # (3) Set DEPENDS_NOLINK to a list of dependencies from which headers are
+    #     needed, but which are not linked in. (Doesn't matter for 'subdirs'
+    #     template)
+    # (4) Make sure BASEDIR is set.
+    #
+    # This script may modify SUBDIRS, INCLUDEPATH, and LIBS. It should always add,
+    # not replace.
+    # It will halt execution if BASEDIR or TEMPLATE are not set, or if DEPENDS or
+    # DEPENDS_NOLINK reference something not defined in the table.
+    #
+    # Order does matter in DEPENDS for the "subdirs" template. Items which come
+    # first should satisfy dependencies for items that come later.
+    # You'll often see:
+    # include ($$(BASEDIR)/qmakeDefault.pri)
+    # which includes this file automatically.
+    #
+    # -CMH 2011-06
+    
+    # ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+    # Messages and sanity checks
+    # ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+    message("Included Dependencies.pro!")
+    message("Dependencies: " $$DEPENDS)
+    message("Dependencies (INCLUDEPATH only): " $$DEPENDS_NOLINK)
+    #message("TEMPLATE is: " $$TEMPLATE)
+    
+    isEmpty(BASEDIR) {
+        error("BASEDIR variable is empty here. Make sure it is set!")
+    }
+    isEmpty(TEMPLATE) {
+        error("TEMPLATE variable is empty here. Make sure it is set!")
+    }
+    
+    # ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+    # Table of project locations
+    # ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+    
+    # Some common locations, here only to shorten descriptions in the _PROJ table.
+    _PROJECT1   = $$BASEDIR/SomeProject
+    _PROJECT2   = $$BASEDIR/SomeOtherProject
+    _DEPENDENCY = $$BASEDIR/SomeDependency
+    
+    # Table of project file locations
+    # (Include paths are also generated based off of these)
+    _PROJ.FooLib               = $$_PROJECT1/Libs/FooLib
+    _PROJ.BarLib               = $$_PROJECT1/Libs/BarLib
+    _PROJ.OtherStuff           = $$_PROJECT2/Libs/BarLib
+    _PROJ.MoreStuff            = $$_PROJECT2/Libs/BarLib
+    _PROJ.ExternalLib          = $$BASEDIR/SomeLibrary
+    
+    # ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+    # Iterate over dependencies and update variables, as appropriate for the given
+    # template type
+    # ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+    
+    # _valid is a flag telling whether TEMPLATE has matched anything yet
+    _valid = false
+    
+    contains(TEMPLATE, "subdirs") {
+        for(dependency, DEPENDS) {
+            # Look for an item like: _PROJ.(dependency)
+    
+            # Disclaimer: I wrote this and it works. I have no idea why precisely
+            # why it works. However, I repeat the pattern several times.
+            eval(_dep = $$"_PROJ.$${dependency}")
+            isEmpty(_dep) {
+                error("Unknown dependency " $${dependency} "!")
+            }
+    
+            # If that looks okay, then update SUBDIRS.
+            eval(SUBDIRS += $$"_PROJ.$${dependency}")
+        }
+        message("Setting SUBDIRS=" $$SUBDIRS)
+        _valid = true
+    }
+    
+    contains(TEMPLATE, "app") | contains(TEMPLATE, "lib") {
+        # Loop over every dependency listed in DEPENDS.
+        for(dependency, DEPENDS) {
+            # Look for an item like: _PROJ.(dependency)
+            eval(_dep = $$"_PROJ.$${dependency}")
+            isEmpty(_dep) {
+                error("Unknown dependency " $${dependency} "!")
+            }
+    
+            # If that looks okay, then update both INCLUDEPATH and LIBS.
+            eval(INCLUDEPATH += $$"_PROJ.$${dependency}"/include)
+            eval(LIBS += -l$${dependency}$${LIBSUFFIX})
+        }
+        for(dependency, DEPENDS_NOLINK) {
+            # Look for an item like: _PROJ.(dependency)
+            eval(_dep = $$"_PROJ.$${dependency}")
+            isEmpty(_dep) {
+                error("Unknown dependency " $${dependency} "!")
+            }
+    
+            # If that looks okay, then update INCLUDEPATH.
+            eval(INCLUDEPATH += $$"_PROJ.$${dependency}"/include)
+        }
+        #message("Setting INCLUDEPATH=" $$INCLUDEPATH)
+        #message("Setting LIBS=" $$LIBS)
+        _valid = true
+    }
+    
+    # If no template type has matched, throw an error.
+    contains(_valid, "false") {
+        error("Don't recognize template type: " $${TEMPLATE})
+    }
+
+
+It's been sanitized heavily to remove all sorts of details from the huge project it was taken from. Mostly, you need to add your dependent projects into the "Table of Project Locations" section, and perhaps make another file that set up the necessary variables mentioned at the top. Then set the DEPENDS variable to a list of project names, and then include this QMake file from all of your individual projects (it may be necessary to include it pretty close to the top of the file).
+
+In general, in this large application, each sub-project had two project files:
+
+
+
+	
+  1. One with **TEMPLATE = lib **(a few were **app** instead as well). This is the project file that is included in as a dependency from any project that has **TEMPLATE = subdirs**, and this project file makes use of the QMake monstrosity above to set up the include and library paths for any dependencies.
+
+	
+  2. One with **TEMPLATE = subdirs**. The same QMake monstrosity is used here to include in the project files (of the sort in #1) of dependencies so that they are built in the first place, and permit you to build the sub-project standalone if needed.
+
+
+...and both are needed if you want to be able to build sub-project independently and without making to take care of dependencies individually.
+
+The next project down below sort of shows the use of that QMake monstrosity above, though in a semi-useless sanitized form. Its purpose is to show another system, but I'll explain that below it.
+
+    
+    QT -= gui
+    QT -= core
+    TEMPLATE = lib
+    
+    ## Include our qmake defaults
+    DEPENDS = FooLib BarLib
+    include ($$(BASEDIR)/qmakeDefault.pri)
+    
+    TARGET = Project$${LIBSUFFIX}
+    LIBS += -llua5.1 -lrt -lLua$${LIBSUFFIX}
+    DEFINES += PROJECT_EXPORTS
+    
+    INCLUDEPATH += /usr/include/lua5.1 
+        ./include
+    
+    HEADERS += include/SomeHeader.h 
+        include/SomeOtherHeader.h
+    
+    SOURCES += source/SomeClass.cpp 
+        source/SomeOtherClass.cpp
+    
+    # The rest of this is done with custom build steps:
+    GENERATOR_INPUTS = templates/TemplateFile.ext 
+        templates/OtherTemplate.ext
+    
+    gen.input = GENERATOR_INPUTS
+    gen.commands = $${DESTDIR}/generator -i $${QMAKE_FILE_IN}
+    # -s source$(InputName).cpp -h include$(InputName).h
+    
+    # Set the destination of the source and header files.
+    SOURCE_DIR = "source/"
+    HEADER_DIR = "include/"
+    # What prefix and suffix to replace with paths and .h.cpp, respectively.
+    TEMPLATE_PREFIX = "external/"
+    TEMPLATE_EXTN = ".ext"
+    
+    #
+    # Warning: Here be black magic.
+    #
+    # We need to use QMAKE_EXTRA_COMPILERS but its functionality does not give us
+    # an easy way to explicitly specify the names of multiple output files with a
+    # single QMAKE_EXTRA_COMPILERS entry. So, we get around this by making one
+    # entry for each input template (the .ext files).
+    # The part where this gets tricky is that each entry requires a unique
+    # variable name, so we must create these variables dynamically, which would
+    # be impossible in QMake ordinarily since it does only a single eval pass.
+    # Luckily, QMake has an eval(...) command which explicitly performs an eval
+    # pass on a string. We repeatedly use constructs like this:
+    #    $$CONTENTS = "Some string data"
+    #    $$VARNAME = "STRING"
+    #    eval($$VARNAME = $$CONTENTS)
+    # These let us dynamically define variables. For sanity, I've tried to use a
+    # suffix of _VARNAME on any variable which contains the name of another
+    # variable.
+    #
+    
+    # Iterate over every filename in GENERATOR_INPUTS
+    for(templatefile, GENERATOR_INPUTS) {
+        # Generate the name of the header file.
+        H1 = $$replace(templatefile, $$TEMPLATE_PREFIX, $$HEADER_DIR)
+        HEADER = $$replace(H1, $$TEMPLATE_EXTN, ".h")
+        # Generate the name of the source file.
+        S1 = $$replace(templatefile, $TEMPLATE_PREFIX, $$SOURCE_DIR)
+        SOURCE = $$replace(S1, $$TEMPLATE_EXTN, ".cpp")
+        # Generate unique variable name to populate & pass to QMAKE_EXTRA_COMPILERS
+        QEC_VARNAME = $$replace(templatefile, ".", "")
+        QEC_VARNAME = $$replace(QEC_VARNAME, "/", "")
+        VARNAME = $$replace(QEC_VARNAME, "\", "")
+        # Append _INPUT to generate another variable name for the input filename
+        INPUT_VARNAME = $${QEC_VARNAME}_INPUT
+        eval($${INPUT_VARNAME} = $$templatefile)
+    
+        # Now generate an entry to pass to QMAKE_EXTRA_COMPILERS.
+        eval($${VARNAME}.commands = $${DESTDIR}/generator -i ${QMAKE_FILE_IN} -s ${QMAKE_FILE_OUT} -h $${HEADER})
+        eval($${VARNAME}.name = $$VARNAME)
+        # ACHTUNG! The 'input' field is the _variable name_ which contains the
+        # input filename, not the filename itself. If you put in a filename or
+        # either of those variables don't exist, this will fail, silently, and
+        # all attempts at diagnosis will lead you nowhere.
+        eval($${VARNAME}.input = $${INPUT_VARNAME})
+        eval($${VARNAME}.output = $${SOURCE})
+        eval($${VARNAME}.variable_out = SOURCES)
+    
+        # Now tell QMake to actually do this step we meticulously built.
+        eval(QMAKE_EXTRA_COMPILERS += $$VARNAME)
+        # Also add our header files. I doubt it's really necessary, but here it is.
+        HEADERS += $${HEADER}
+    }
+
+
+This one uses a bit more black magic. The entire GENERATOR_INPUTS list is a set of files that are inputs to an external program that is called to generate some code, which then must be built with the rest of the project. This uses undocumented QMake features, and a couple kludges to generate some things dynamically (i.e. the filenames of the generated code) from a variable-length list. I highly recommend avoiding it. However, it does work.
+
+These two links proved indispensable in the creation of this:
+
+[QMake Variable Reference](http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/qmake-variable-reference.html)
+
+[Undocumented qmake](http://www.qtcentre.org/wiki/index.php?title=Undocumented_qmake)

posts/exitwp_raw/2011-11-24-obscure-features-of-jpeg.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,315 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2011-11-24 05:22:08+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: obscure-features-of-jpeg
+title: Obscure features of JPEG
+wordpress_id: 526
+categories:
+- Technobabble
+tags:
+- image compression
+- images
+- jpeg
+---
+
+_(This is a modified version of what I wrote up at work when I saw that progressive JPEGs could be nearly a drop-in replacement that offered some additional functionality and ran some tests on this.)_
+
+
+# Introduction
+
+
+The long-established JPEG standard contains a considerable number of features that are seldom-used and sometimes virtually unknown. This all is in spite of the widespread use of JPEG and the fact that every JPEG decoder I tested was compatible with all of the features I will discuss, probably because [IJG libjpeg](http://www.ijg.org/) (or [this](http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/libjpeg)) runs basically everywhere.
+
+
+# Progressive JPEG
+
+
+One of the better-known features, though still obscure, is that of progressive JPEGs. Progressive JPEGs contain the data in a different order than more standard (sequential) JPEGs, enabling the JPEG decoder to produce a full-sized image from just the beginning portion of a file (at a reduced detail level) and then refine those details as more of the file is available.
+
+This was originally made for web usage over slow connections. While it is rarely-used, most modern browsers support this incremental display and refinement of the image, and even those applications that do not attempt this support still are able to read the full image.
+
+Interestingly, since the only real difference between a progressive JPEG and a sequential one is that the coefficients come in a different order, the conversion between progressive and sequential is lossless. Various lossless compression steps are applied to these coefficients and as this reordering may permit a more efficient encoding, a progressive JPEG often is smaller than a sequential JPEG expressing an identical image.
+
+One command I've used pretty frequently before posting a large photo online is:
+
+    
+    jpegtran -optimize -progressive -copy all input.jpg > output.jpg
+
+
+This losslessly converts _input.jpg_ to a progressive version and optimizes it as well. (_jpegtran_ can do some other things losslessly as well - flipping, cropping, rotating, transposing, converting to greyscale.)
+
+
+# Multi-scan JPEG
+
+
+More obscure still is that progressive JPEG is a particular case of something more general: a _multi-scan JPEG_.
+
+Standard JPEGs are single-scan sequential: All of the data is stored top-to-bottom, with all of the color components and coefficients together and in full. This includes, per MCU (minimum coded unit, an 8x8 pixel square or some small multiple of it), 64 coefficients each for each one of the 3 color components (typically Y,Cb,Cr). The coefficients are from an 8x8 DCT transform matrix, but they are stored in a zigzag order that preserves locality with regard to spatial frequency as this permits more efficient encoding. The first coefficient (0) is referred to as the DC coefficient; the others (1-63) are AC coefficients.
+
+Multi-scan JPEG permits this information to be packed in a fairly arbitrary way (though with some restrictions). While information is still stored top-to-bottom, it permits for only some of the data in each MCU to be given, with the intention being that later scans will provide other parts of this data (hence the name multi-scan). More specifically:
+
+
+
+	
+  * The three color components (Y for grayscale, and Cb/Cr for color) may be split up between scans.
+
+	
+  * The 64 coefficients in each component may be split up. _(Two restrictions apply here for any given scan: the DC coefficient must always precede the AC coefficients, and if only AC coefficients are sent, then they may only be for one single color component.)_
+
+	
+  * Some bits of the coefficients may be split up. _(This, too, is subject to a restriction, not to a given scan but to the entire image: You must specify some of the DC bits. AC bits are all optional. Information on how many bits are actually used here is almost nonexistent.) _
+
+
+In other words:
+
+	
+  * You may leave color information out to be added later.
+
+	
+  * You may let spatial detail be only a low-frequency approximation to be refined later with higher-frequency coefficients. _(As far as I can tell, you cannot consistently reduce grayscale detail beyond the 8x8 pixel MCU while still recovering that detail in later scans.)_
+
+	
+  * You may leave grayscale and color values at a lower precision (i.e. coarsely quantized) to have more precision added later.
+
+	
+  * You may do all of the above in almost any order and almost any number of steps.
+
+
+Your libjpeg distribution probably contains something called _wizard.txt_ someplace (say, /usr/share/docs/libjpeg8a or /usr/share/doc/libjpeg-progs); I don't know if an online copy is readily available, but mine is [here](http://hodapple.com/files/libjpeg-wizard.txt). I'll leave detailed explanation of a scan script to the "Multiple Scan / Progression Control" section of this document, but note that:
+
+
+
+	
+  * Each non-commented line corresponds to one scan.
+
+	
+  * The first section, prior to the colon, specifies which plane to send, Y (0), Cb (1), or Cr (2).
+
+	
+  * The two fields immediately after the colon give the first and last indices of coefficients from that plane that should be in the scan. Those indices are from 0 to 63 in zigzag order; 0 = DC, 1-63 = AC in increasing frequency.
+
+	
+  * The two fields immediately after those specify which bits of those coefficients this scan contains.
+
+
+According to that document, the standard script for a progressive JPEG is this:
+
+    
+    # Initial DC scan for Y,Cb,Cr (lowest bit not sent)
+    0,1,2: 0-0,   0, 1 ;
+    # First AC scan: send first 5 Y AC coefficients, minus 2 lowest bits:
+    0:     1-5,   0, 2 ;
+    # Send all Cr,Cb AC coefficients, minus lowest bit:
+    # (chroma data is usually too small to be worth subdividing further;
+    #  but note we send Cr first since eye is least sensitive to Cb)
+    2:     1-63,  0, 1 ;
+    1:     1-63,  0, 1 ;
+    # Send remaining Y AC coefficients, minus 2 lowest bits:
+    0:     6-63,  0, 2 ;
+    # Send next-to-lowest bit of all Y AC coefficients:
+    0:     1-63,  2, 1 ;
+    # At this point we've sent all but the lowest bit of all coefficients.
+    # Send lowest bit of DC coefficients
+    0,1,2: 0-0,   1, 0 ;
+    # Send lowest bit of AC coefficients
+    2:     1-63,  1, 0 ;
+    1:     1-63,  1, 0 ;
+    # Y AC lowest bit scan is last; it's usually the largest scan
+    0:     1-63,  1, 0 ;
+
+
+And for standard, sequential JPEG it is:
+
+    
+    0 1 2: 0 63 0 0;
+
+
+In [this image](http://hodapple.com/zenphoto/albums/stuff/20100713-0107-interleaved2.jpg) I used a custom scan script that sent all of the Y data, then all Cb, then all Cr. Its custom scan script was just this:
+
+    
+    0;
+    1;
+    2;
+
+
+While not every browser may do this right, most browsers will render the greyscale as its comes in, then add color to it one plane at a time. It'll be more obvious over a slower connection; I purposely left the image fairly large.
+
+
+# Code & Utilities
+
+
+The _cjpeg _tool from libjpeg will (among other things) create a JPEG using a custom scan script. I used a command something like:
+
+    
+    convert input.png ppm:- | cjpeg -quality 95 -optimize -scans scan_script > output.jpg
+
+
+Or if the input is already a JPEG, _jpegtran_ will do the same thing without needing a re-encode as it is lossless:
+
+    
+    jpegtran -scans scan_script input.jpg > output.jpg
+
+
+libjpeg has some interesting features as well. Rather than decoding an entire full-resolution JPEG and then scaling it down, for instance (a common use case when generating thumbnails), you may set it up when decoding so that it will simply do the reduction for you while decoding. This takes less time and uses less memory compared with getting the full decompressed version and resampling afterward.
+
+The following C code, based loosely on _example.c_ from libjpeg, will split up a multi-scan JPEG into a series of numbered PPM files, each one containing a scan. Look for _cinfo.scale_num_ (circa lines 67, 68) to use the fast scaling features mentioned in the last paragraph, and note that the code only processes as much input JPEG as it needs for the next scan. (It needs nothing special to build besides a functioning libjpeg. **gcc -ljpeg -o jpeg_split.o jpeg_split.c** works for me.)
+
+    
+    #include <stdio.h>
+    #include <jerror.h>
+    #include "jpeglib.h"
+    #include <setjmp.h>
+    #include <string.h>
+    
+    void read_scan(struct jpeg_decompress_struct * cinfo,
+                   JSAMPARRAY buffer,
+                   char * base_output);
+    int read_JPEG_file (char * filename, int scanNumber, char * base_output);
+    
+    int main(int argc, char **argv) {
+        if (argc < 3) {
+            printf("Usage: %s <Input JPEG> <Output base name>n", argv[0]);
+            printf("This reads in the progressive/multi-scan JPEG given and writes out each scann");
+            printf("to a separate PPM file, named with the scan number.n");
+            return 1;
+        }
+    
+        char * fname = argv[1];
+        char * out_base = argv[2];
+        read_JPEG_file(fname, 1, out_base);
+        return 0;
+    }
+    
+    struct error_mgr {
+        struct jpeg_error_mgr pub;
+        jmp_buf setjmp_buffer;
+    };
+    
+    METHODDEF(void) error_exit (j_common_ptr cinfo) {
+        struct error_mgr * err = (struct error_mgr *) cinfo->err;
+        (*cinfo->err->output_message) (cinfo);
+        longjmp(err->setjmp_buffer, 1);
+    }
+    
+    int read_JPEG_file (char * filename, int scanNumber, char * base_output) {
+        struct jpeg_decompress_struct cinfo;
+        struct error_mgr jerr;
+        FILE * infile;      /* source file */
+        JSAMPARRAY buffer;  /* Output row buffer */
+        int row_stride;     /* physical row width in output buffer */
+    
+        if ((infile = fopen(filename, "rb")) == NULL) {
+            fprintf(stderr, "can't open %sn", filename);
+            return 0;
+        }
+    
+        // Set up the normal JPEG error routines, then override error_exit.
+        cinfo.err = jpeg_std_error(&jerr.pub);
+        jerr.pub.error_exit = error_exit;
+        // Establish the setjmp return context for error_exit to use:
+        if (setjmp(jerr.setjmp_buffer)) {
+            jpeg_destroy_decompress(&cinfo);
+            fclose(infile);
+            return 0;
+        }
+        jpeg_create_decompress(&cinfo);
+        jpeg_stdio_src(&cinfo, infile);
+        (void) jpeg_read_header(&cinfo, TRUE);
+    
+        // Set some decompression parameters
+    
+        // Incremental reading requires this flag:
+        cinfo.buffered_image = TRUE;
+        // To perform fast scaling in the output, set these:
+        cinfo.scale_num = 1;
+        cinfo.scale_denom = 1;
+    
+        // Decompression begins...
+        (void) jpeg_start_decompress(&cinfo);
+    
+        printf("JPEG is %s-scann", jpeg_has_multiple_scans(&cinfo) ? "multi" : "single");
+        printf("Outputting %ix%in", cinfo.output_width, cinfo.output_height);
+    
+        // row_stride = JSAMPLEs per row in output buffer
+        row_stride = cinfo.output_width * cinfo.output_components;
+        // Make a one-row-high sample array that will go away when done with image
+        buffer = (*cinfo.mem->alloc_sarray)
+            ((j_common_ptr) &cinfo, JPOOL_IMAGE, row_stride, 1);
+    
+        // Start actually handling image data!
+        while(!jpeg_input_complete(&cinfo)) {
+            read_scan(&cinfo, buffer, base_output);
+        }
+    
+        // Clean up.
+        (void) jpeg_finish_decompress(&cinfo);
+        jpeg_destroy_decompress(&cinfo);
+        fclose(infile);
+    
+        if (jerr.pub.num_warnings) {
+            printf("libjpeg indicates %i warningsn", jerr.pub.num_warnings);
+        }
+    }
+    
+    void read_scan(struct jpeg_decompress_struct * cinfo,
+                   JSAMPARRAY buffer,
+                   char * base_output)
+    {
+        char out_name[1024];
+        FILE * outfile = NULL;
+        int scan_num = 0;
+    
+        scan_num = cinfo->input_scan_number;
+        jpeg_start_output(cinfo, scan_num);
+    
+        // Read up to the next scan.
+        int status;
+        do {
+            status = jpeg_consume_input(cinfo);
+        } while (status != JPEG_REACHED_SOS && status != JPEG_REACHED_EOI);
+    
+        // Construct a filename & write PPM image header.
+        snprintf(out_name, 1024, "%s%i.ppm", base_output, scan_num);
+        if ((outfile = fopen(out_name, "wb")) == NULL) {
+            fprintf(stderr, "Can't open %s for writing!n", out_name);
+            return;
+        }
+        fprintf(outfile, "P6n%d %dn255n", cinfo->output_width, cinfo->output_height);
+    
+        // Read each scanline into 'buffer' and write it to the PPM.
+        // (Note that libjpeg updates cinfo->output_scanline automatically)
+        while (cinfo->output_scanline < cinfo->output_height) {
+            jpeg_read_scanlines(cinfo, buffer, 1);
+            fwrite(buffer[0], cinfo->output_components, cinfo->output_width, outfile);
+        }
+    
+        jpeg_finish_output(cinfo);
+        fclose(outfile);
+    }
+
+
+**Examples**
+
+Here are all 10 scans from a standard progressive JPEG, separated out with the example code:
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto1-280x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto1.png)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto2-280x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto2.png)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto3-280x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto3.png)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto4-280x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto4.png)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto5-280x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto5.png)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto6-280x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto6.png)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto7-280x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto7.png)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto8-280x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto8.png)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto9-280x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto9.png)
+
+[![](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto10-280x300.png)](http://hodapple.com/blag/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cropphoto10.png)

posts/exitwp_raw/2012-08-16-some-thoughts.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+---
+author: Chris Hodapp
+comments: true
+date: 2012-08-16 08:18:14+00:00
+layout: post
+slug: some-thoughts
+title: Thoughts on tools, design, and feedback loops
+wordpress_id: 587
+categories:
+- rant
+- Technobabble
+---
+
+I just watched [Inventing on Principle](https://vimeo.com/36579366) from Bret Victor and found this entire talk incredibly interesting. Chris Granger's [post](http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/12/light-table---a-new-ide-concept/) on Light Table led me to this, and shortly after, I found the redesigned [Khan Academy CS course](http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/) which this inspired. Bret touched on something that basically anyone who's attempted to design anything has implicitly understood: _This feedback loop is the most essential part of the process._
+
+I reflected on this and on my own experiences, and decided on a few things:
+
+_(1) Making that feedback loop fast enough can dramatically change the design process, not just speed it up proportionally._
+
+I feel that Bret's video demonstrates this wonderfully. It matches up with something I've believed for awhile: That a slower, more delay-prone process becoming fast enough to be interactive can change the entire way a user relates to it. The change, for me at least, can be as dramatic as between filling out paperwork and having a face-to-face conversation. This metamorphosis is where I see a tool become an extension of the mind.
+
+[Toplap](http://toplap.org/index.php?title=Main_Page) probably has something to say on this. They link to a [short] live coding documentary, [Show Us Your Screens](https://vimeo.com/20241649). I rather like their quote: _"Live coding is not about tools. [Algorithms are thoughts. Chainsaws are tools.](https://vimeo.com/9790850) That's why algorithms are sometimes harder to notice than chainsaws."_
+
+Live coding perhaps hits many of Bret's points from the angle of musical performance meeting programming. Since he spoke directly of improvisation, I'd say he was well aware of this connection.
+
+_(2) These dynamic, interactive, high-level tools don't waste computer resources - they trade them._
+
+__They trade them for being dynamic, interactive, and high-level, and this very often means that they trade ever-increasing computer resources to earn some ever-limited human resources like time, comprehension, and attention.
+
+I don't look at them as being resource-inefficient. I look at them as being the wrong tool for those situations where I have no spare computer resources to trade. Frankly, those situations are exceedingly rare. (And my degree is in electrical engineering. Most coding I've done when acting as a EE guy, I've done with the implicit assumption that no other type of situation existed.) Even if I eventually have to produce something for such a situation - say, to target a microcontroller - I still have ever-increasing computer resources at my disposal, and I can utilize these to great benefit for some prototyping.
+
+Limited computer resources restrict an implementation. Limited human resources, like time and attention and comprehension, do the same...
+
+_(3) The choice of tools defines what ideas are expressible._
+
+__Any Turing-complete language can express a given algorithm, pretty much by definition. However, since this expression can vary greatly in length and in conciseness, this is really only of theoretical interest if you, a human, have only finite time on earth to make this expression and only so many usable hours per day. (This is close to a point Paul Graham is [quite](http://paulgraham.com/langdes.html) [fond](http://paulgraham.com/power.html) of [making](http://paulgraham.com/avg.html).)
+
+This same principle goes for all other sorts of expressions and interactions and interfaces, non-Turing-complete included, anytime different tools are capable of producing the same result given enough work. (I can use a text editor to generate music by making PCM samples by hand. I can use a program to make an algorithm to do the same. I can use a program such as Ableton Live to do the same. These all can produce sound, but some of them are a path of insurmountable complexity depending on what sort of sound I want.)
+
+In a strict way, the choice of tools defines the minimum size of an expression of an idea, and how comprehensible and difficult this expression is. Once this expression hits a certain level of complexity, a couple paths emerge: it may as well be impossible to implement, or it may cease to be about the idea and instead be an implementation of a set of ad-hoc tools to eventually implement that idea. ([Greenspun's tenth rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_Tenth_Rule), dated as it is, indicates plenty of other people have observed this.)
+
+In a less strict way, the choice of tools also guides how a person expresses an idea; not like a fence, but more like a wind. It guides how that person thinks.
+
+The boundaries that restrict _time_ and _effort_ also draw the lines that divide ideas into _possible _and _impossible_. Tools can move those lines. The right tools solve the irrelevant problems, and guide the user into solving relevant problems instead.
+
+Of course, finding the relevant problems can be tricky...
+
+_(4) When exploring, you are going to re-implement ideas. Get over it._
+
+__Turning an idea plus a bad implementation into a good implementation, on the whole, is far easier than turning just an idea into any implementation (and pages upon pages of design documentation rarely push it past 'just an idea'). It's not an excuse to willingly make bad design decisions - it's an acknowledgement that a tangible form of an idea does far more to clarify and refine those design decisions than any amounts of verbal descriptions and diagrams and discussions. Even if that prototype is scrapped in its entirety, the insight and experiences it gives is not.
+
+The flip side of this is: _Ideas are fluid, and this is good_. Combined with the second point, it's more along the lines of: _Ideas are fluid, provided they already have something to flow from._
+
+A high-level expression with the right set of primitives is a description that translates very readily to other forms. The key here is not what language or tool it is, but that it supports the right vocabulary to express the implementation concisely. _Supports_ doesn't mean that it has all the needed high-level constructs - just that it is sufficiently flexible and concise to build them readily. (If you 'hide' higher-level structure inside lower-level details, you've added extra complexity. If you abuse higher-level constructs that hide simpler relationships, you've done the same. More on that in another post...)
+
+My beloved C language, for instance, gives some freedom to build a lot of constructs, but mainly those constructs that still map closely to assembly language and to hardware. C++ tries a little harder, but I feel like those constructs quickly hit the point of appalling, fragile ugliness. Languages like Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, Scala, and probably Haskell (I don't know yet, I haven't attempted to master it) are fairly well unmatched in the flexibility they give you. However, in light of Bret's video, the way these are all meant to be programmed still can fall quite short.
+
+I love [Context Free](http://www.contextfreeart.org/) as well. I like it because its relative speed combined with some marvelous simplicity gives me the ability to quickly put together complex fractalian/mathematical/algorithmic images. Normal behavior when I work with this program is to generate several hundred images in the course of an hour, refining each one from the last. Another big reason it appeals to me is that, due to its simplicity, I could fairly easily take the Context Free description of any of these images and turn it into some other algorithmic representation (such as a recursive function call to draw some primitives, written in something like [Processing](http://www.processing.org/) or [openFrameworks](http://www.openframeworks.cc/) or HTML5 Canvas or OpenGL).
+
+