BYBS: Open Source Software

Open source software has done a great deal to make the modern internet that I know and love possible. Over the years, I've used quite a few of these packages to do my day to day work. Here's a very quick glimpse of a tiny fraction of the packages out there that have helped me:

GNU is one if not the pioneer in the open source arena. They were at it a long, long time before it was fashionable or even thought to be possible. Though not know by lots of non-technical people virtually nothing on the internet would be working today without these folks.

GNU is responsible for thousands if not more programs. One of the most fameous is a compiler suite known as "gcc"

The letters "GNU" are emblematically geeky of the organization and stand for "GNU's Not Unix." Yes, the "GNU" in the "GNU" are the same.

ASF is the Apache Software Foundation. The name "Apache" originally came from the observation that the major software package from them, a web server, was prone to problems and needed lots of adjustments, called "patches" by software people. Thus people observed that it was "a patchy web server." The name stuck and the server was called "Apache."

In addition to Wikipedia and other popular projects, the Wikimedia foundation also makes the software that is used to host their projects, MediaWiki, available for free. The package is used by a variety of people to host information sites.

The Eclipse Foundation is responsible for the excellent software development package, Eclipse. They hold a place that is near and dear to my heart since I have used that package to develop software for years and year. To my mind, it is one of the best environments available for such a purpose.

There are many, many other open software systems available that find use in a variety of situations. Click on the logos to find out more about them. I think that this sort of effort, with their emphasis on helping others rather than making a quick buck, are truely a blessing.

BYBS: A Walk in the Mountains

Rooiberg Mountain Pass by Martin_Heigan

Went for a walk in the beautiful mountains today and chose this for my BYBS entry. Didn't have a camera, so this isn't what it really looked like, but you get the idea.

BYBS: Wikipedia

I don't know how many times I've turned to Wikipedia for information, but it's a lot. The site consistently has very high quality articles on an unbelievable range of topics. What's more, the whole thing is put together by the very people who browse the web.

In short, the site is a showcase for what I wish more of the web was like: people working together to help each other in an "ain't it cool?" sort of way.

BYBS: Bananas

In addition to being tastee, bananas are also good sources of potassium. Like most fruits and vegetables, they have far fewer calories than processed foods of equivalent weight.

Modern bananas became popular because the previous popular type of banana, the "Gros Michel," has been largely wiped out due to a fungus.

BYBS: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

It was hard to find anything good to say today. This quote, however, made me chuckle:

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us,
we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to heaven,
we were all going direct the other way
- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

A Good Host

A strange host

There is one school of thought that says that we are just hosts to ideas: that the ideas are the species and that we are a way for them to perpetuate themselves. While that casts human beings as mere beasts of burden, I always liked to think that we have more to say about what's going on than that.

One way of looking at it is that we are hosts, as in "would you like to have dinner with me and the wife?" style of thing. In that sort of situation you have the choice about who is going to come to the event and who won't.

While this still does not allow for complete freedom (annoying commercial jingles that you cannot get out of your head anyone?), it does allow room for consciously trying to promote something by being the host. In particular, I like to think that we can choose to promote what we view as good, as beautiful, or right.

I admit that I don't have any original ideas, and that the best I can do is just borrow what looks good to me. This seems like a nice compromise.

BYBS: Oranges

Simple and yet delicious

I find it remarkable that something so simple compared to other things that I enjoy can be so good. On a cold and rainy day, when the sky is overcast and gloomy, its nice to be able to gaze out from my warm hole with a nice orange.

Photo by "Rock Paper Image"

BYBS: Help from the Web

Despite years of working with computers I'm still undecided as to whether they actually solve problems or create new ones. In particular, I find myself confounded over and over again by problems of the form:

Me: Move this from here to here.
Computer: <does nothing>
M: Why didn't you move the file?
C: You didn't say "simon says."
M: Alright - "Simon says."
C: What?
M: Move the file!
C: You didn't say "Simon says."
M: <gets out mallet>

I have found help countless times from those people who have posted information about how to solve problems like this; though the details might be slightly different.

As a means of "giving back" I have myself started doing this, though the information is so specialized as to be of use to only a very few people (ever want to know how to link C code dynamically with Java, but only when using MingW and Cygwin together through Eclipse? Neither do I actually). Nevertheless, posting even trival instructions has given me new appreciation for people who post help info --- it takes a lot more work than I thought!

I am going to try my hand at posting some stuff that may be more generally useful to people. We'll see how it goes. Till then have a great week.

VYSW: Rest in Peace

I'm sure that someone will miss you...

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I have created no Vent Your Spleen Wednesday (VYSW) postings in quite a while and it doesn't seem like the internet is exactly overflowing with people who want to join. Despite being #2 on Google for a search for vysw, I think it's time to like the mangey dog rest in peace.

The good thing about doing this that I can always have a "Back from the Grave!" style posting or a Halloween special :-)

BYBS: Reasoned Discussion

Copyright (c) threestooges.com

I enjoy being able to talk seriously every once in a while about stuff like the nature of consciousness, whether honesty and accuracy are the same thing, and other, ultimately pointless topics. I'm grateful that there are other people that I can talk about this stuff with and that they discuss it seriously...at least some of the time.

Part of the problem with such ruminations is that they tend to make me feel isolated. A lot of times other people are simply not interested in talking about such things at that instant, or maybe their attention is focused on other questions. The net effect on me, however, is that I feel very much alone.

When I can speak to someone about my ramblings, I do enjoy striving to communicate my point of view (i.e., that I'm right goddamn it!), but something else about discussion surprised me recently.

I was trying to explain something and got the "blank stare." In another situation I might have just written it off as the person not being interested in the topic, but, because it was such a serious topic, I realized that the problem was that my wonderful explanation wasn't.

The surprising thing was that the process of trying explain it better, and the experience of seeing the other person strive to get it made me feel less isolated, whereas I would have thought it would make me feel more isolated. Watching another strive for understanding made the whole "aha" moment for them much more satisfying than just pummeling another person's argument.

It also helped that they had brownies where we talked. Not that I ate one. Instead I had 3.

The Impossible Dream

Is striving towards an impossible but desirable and worthwhile goal a waste of time?

For time out of mind there have been people who strove towards perfect meditative state, achieve world peace, or total knowledge. From a practical standpoint, these people know that their goal cannot be attained, or perhaps attained by them, yet they strove all the same; and what's more, people continue to quest for these goals to this day.

So what do you think? It this a waste of time or is it a worthwhile activity? Should people only work on things that, while they cannot hope to achieve, they may contribute towards the achievement of (a great work)?

BYBS: Symbiosis

Symbiosis usually describes a situation where organsims of different species coexist for mutual benefit. For example, bees and flowers: the bee gets food and the flower gets pollination.

At least according to Wikipedia, this is actually a "mutualistic" relationship. At one end of the spectrum is parasitism, where one participant benefits and the other is harmed. The next step in the range is "commensilism" where one of the participants benefits and the other is not harmed, but does not benefit either. The other end of the spectrum is mutualism, where both participants benefit.

The interesting thing is that these relationships can change as time goes on. A relationship that starts out as parasitistic can evolve into one that is at least commensalistic and from there to one that benefits both partners.

There are many species of bacteria that when allowed into our digestive systems can become parasites. But other organisms that may have once been parasites have changed so that what currently lives more or less without trouble that we see today. There is even evidence that such "guests" may supply vitamin K. One possible explaination for the appendix was that it provided an area for "friendly" strains of gut flora to stay while the digestive tract is purged due to diseases such as choloera.

I find this ability to change from parasite to partner encouraging when I look at problems that we face with groups of people that are currently hostile to one another. If things in the natural world can change from fierce enemies to fast friends, then maybe there is reason to hope that various groups can eventually work out their differences.

Our wars and conflicts are nothing when compared to all out and total war that is often seen in the natural world. If they can make peace, then how hard can it be for us, whose conflicts are so much simpler.

Erm...you're sure about this, right doc?

I recently heard about a rather...unexpected medical therapy being used: using organisms that are commonly considered parasites to help treat certain conditions.

I'd like to ask those of you who are easily grossed out to stop reading now.

OK, I expect that most people, easily upset or not, are still reading, but just remember that I warned you!

I am talking about the medicinal use of maggots and leeches. Now aren't you glad that I didn't put up a picture at the start of this article!

Much to my surprise these approaches are actually being used today, and for very good reasons. In the case of leeches, the critter is very good at getting rid of blood that can accumulate in a reattached limb, such as a finger.

When something like a thumb is reattached, the artery (a very small one I guess) that carries blood to the digit is reattached, but the veins that carry blood away from the finger take a bit of time to reattach on their own.

Enter the leech! Rather than draining the reattached thumb of excess blood several times a day using a syringe, one can use a leech instead. The advantage here is that you don't end up with multiple syringe wounds, that are more likely to become infected.

The leech is very good at keeping blood from coagulating, which is the reason why you would have to create multiple syringe wounds to accomplish the same thing.

The maggots (yes, fly larvae) are used in some conditions where you have dead tissue that needs to be removed from a patient. One problem with such tissue is that it can be infected by bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.

Such situations are becoming more common because more people are finding themselves with diabetes. Apparently, people with that disease can end up with limbs that have dead tissue, hence the problem with infections.

Maggots were used more commonly in the past, but were abandoned in favor of antibiotics when such chemicals became available. Because strains of resistant bacteria are becoming more common, doctors are turning to novel therapies that do not rely on anti-bios.

Regardless of the benefits of such approaches, I find the idea of partnerships between species --- symbiosis --- to be an interesting one. Furthermore, it's something that seems to pop up again and again in biology. Finally, I'm a lazy person and I realized that my topic for the coming BYBS might need some more lead-in; hence the value of this posting :-)

P.S. Since we're at the end of the article, I can now show pictures. Actually, I don't think this one has a lot of "gross me out" value, but your mileage may vary.

P.P.S. This was taken from a very interesting article from Wikipedia.

A wound cleaned by maggots

BYBS: A Contribution

My blessing for the week is being able to make a contribution to something that I feel has been of benefit to me.

Over the years I've been able use the web to solve a number of problems. Many of these have been the sort of hair-tearing, swearing and gesticulating at the monitor sorts of things that cause people to question my sanity even more than they usually do.

The other day, I posted something that I hope will reduce the amount of hair- pulling and swearing that someone else may experience. I'm going to try and post a number of these articles over the next few weeks.

I'm also going to try sending some feedback to people whose pages I have used in the past to let them know that I appreciate the time they took to document solutions and that they helped me out.

Given the size of the internet, I don't think anything that I post is liable to be of much or indeed any help to anyone. This is more to see if it makes any difference in the way I feel about having "given back" to a community that has helped me.

I'll post a followup on this in a few weeks. If I don't then post pointed and guilt-inducing comments reminding me to do this :-)

BYBS: Small Things

Today's BYBS is going to center on "small" aspects that I am grateful for. This is partially because I'm lazy, but also because when I feel like the "big" things might not being going well, I have a hard time saying I'm grateful for them.

I sometimes find it hard to decide if I am grateful for things like the ability to judge "right" from "wrong", but I can't argue about liking the feel of a warm bed. While I'm not sure whether I have free will or if life is deterministic, I still like the taste of an orange. And when it sometimes seems that everything is going wrong, at least I am still grateful when my exercise hour is up and I can get off the treadmill.

So, in their great or small importance, here are some of the things that I am glad about today:

• Hot oatmeal
• Raisins
• Being able to sleep a bit longer
• Good, or at least engaging novels
• Laughing at various jokes
• Hot water, especially when showering
• VIM, the foundation of modern society
• USB drives
• Samba, at least when it works.

That's all for now. Have a good week.

Linux: Finding the Crazies at the Asylum

A friend of mine who went to West Point told me that the ones who went bonkers were the ones who tried to justify everything. After many years, I've come to the conclusion that Linux serves the same purpose in the context of computer geeks.

So imagine you are running some school that churns out people that have the unhappy job of sending lots of young people off to be killed in horrible ways and you are trying to find all the ones who are completely bonkers out of this group. You don't want to completely remove such people, I mean as long as they get the job done you leave em alone, but you want to know who they are so that, at least most of the time, you don't leave them in charge of everything.

You're sitting there working on a migraine and are just about to reach for the bottle of spot remover when you remember cadet what's-his-name. He's the one that doesn't have a problem with the sort of insane discipline that this place arbitrarily flings at everyone, he wants more of it.

He doesn't feel that it's wrong at all. He thinks everything's just fine. Where many of the cadets might, for example, be biting their nails and wondering when the hell they can get out of this place, he's looking around with the face that says "This is it! I've found my home!"

The really interesting thing that I've found is that most of the people I've met who have been through places like West Point are nice, well balanced, caring people. Perhaps it's sort of like "now that I've gotten all that out of my system, I think I'll be sane for the rest of my life."

At any rate, I've noticed a similiarity with computer people.

There's one group of people who, having seen the total hell and insanity that is Linux, have decided that, you know, they really don't need any more of that crap in their lives. They are the ones that realizes that while computers can be interesting, at the end of the day they are tools created to help make things easier, not some sort of goal in and of themselves.

The other group are the ones with the crazy light in their eyes. They don't think that some weird, command-line approach to using a system is too difficult! It all makes sense! It's what real men use. What do you mean that some cryptic blather like

semanage fcontext -a -t samba_share_t "/var/eng(/.*)?"

Doesn't make sense? The only problem with Linux is that it's not complex enough!

In the mad, "conspiracy everywhere" part of my mind, I see these two things and say "Hmmm...maybe that's what Linux is for!" You expose a group of people to sheer perversity and madness that only technical people can create and weed out the really crazy ones because they actually like it. Once this is done, you keep them away from everything else so that there is some tiny chance that it will actually work.

The true beauty of it all is that you don't have to do anything to keep them away: you just keep them working on making it worse! One generation of nuts helps you find the next generation of whack-jobs...what could be better?

This, my friends, is what I think has happended with Linux.

What may have started as a means to create a free and high quality operating system has degenerated through cannibalism and madness to create a sort of crazy person proving ground. Those who enter the realm of Linux and come out, gibbering and scared, are to be embraced and fostered: they are the sane ones.

Those that stay in the labryinth, however, grinning madly and gesturing for the others to come back, they are the crazy ones. Keep them away. Let them play in their asylum, capering about to the cheers of their fellows. Let them occasionally flight their detritus, in the form of books with strange, vaguely disturbing pictures of animals on their covers at the rest of us. It is a small price to pay.

And it is every generation's duty to send the next generation through those crooked halls so that we will know which people we can trust, and which ones were lost before they ever set foot in the place.

Image "asylum for insane" by kwazar@flickr.com

BYBS: Flickr Rocks

Japanese Rock Garden  |  (CC)  |  by vgm8383@flickr.com

During the past couple of weeks I have discovered that Flickr kicks major fundament.

I've needed some images for a talk that I've been preparing for some local professional groups. The subject of the images have ranged from two people talking over a "string and cup telephone" to a snail crossing a finish line. I've managed to find them all on flickr.

The really cool thing is that, in addtion to being able to put good quality images in my presentation, I've found amazing, spirit-moving pictures of other stuff there as well. Another image from the same author as the rock garden:

Scotland Cemetary  |  (CC)  |  by vgm8383@flickr.com

It nice to find exactly what I needed for presentation in one place, but what was better was to find a community of people who are willing to share very, very good work for no reason other than to enrich each others lives. It's stuff like that that really makes my day.

BYBS: Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to "rewire" itself in response to training or experience. Up until recently, it was believed that the brain could not change very much after age 5 or so.

It has been known that the brain of a person who was, for example, born blind could change so that portions of the brain that typically were used for vision could instead be used for hearing. Hence the brain of a person born with blindness was physically different from a person with normal vision.

It has also been known that a person who becomes blind later on in life may also acquire more sensitive hearing, but it was thought that the corresponding physical changes to the brain did not occur.

Recent advances in brain imaging, however, indicate that the same basic changes in brain structure are possible in people all throughout life.

While such changes are possible in adults, they are much easier for children. A person who becomes unable to walk after suffering a stroke, for example, may have to work at learning to walk again for hours every day for months before regaining their old ability.

If a person can change something as basic as what part of the brain they use to walk with, then it must be possible and perhaps easier to change other, less fundamental things like behavior. If a blind person can use the "visual part" of their brain to hear, then is it easier for say a shy person to become more gregarious?

While the short answer is "yes," I will leave the rest for my next BYBS entry :-)

BYBS: Benefits of BYBS

There is reason to believe that participating in BYBS may be, from a health standpoint, a good idea.

The results of a study by Emmons & McCullough seem to indicate that keeping a "Gratitude Journal," which bears a striking resemblance to writing entries for Blog Your Blessings Sunday, can have a positive benefit on ones outlook on life.

From the text of the abstract:

The gratitude-outlook groups exhibited heightened well-being across several, though not all, of the outcome measures across the 3 studies, relative to the comparison groups. The effect on positive affect appeared to be the most robust finding. Results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.

This article also describes the study in a more reader-friendly manner.

Another reason to keep on blogging.

BYBS: An Audience

I recently embarked on another abuse of the English language. That is, I started writing another story. This one is called "Evening" and is a spoof of the "Harry Potter" series as well as the movie "Twilight." I had attempted to write this story before, but stopped when I found that I didn't like the premise as much as I thought I would.

I'll hopefully do better this time because I'm writing for an audience, or specifically Tanis who has encouraged me to keep at this whole writing thing. Hence by blessing for the week is having an audience who is willing to read the stuff I write.

This neatly allows me to both creating another page in said story while creating a BYBS entry at the same time. What's more, I even have another idea for next week. Which I will write. I wont put it off. Honest.