Category Archives: OldBlog

Cherry Jam

Posted on 2010-06-07 by pappp

One of the better parts of having old DIY-ful hippie types for parents is getting do nifty things that people just don’t do anymore. One of the better examples is the yearly ritual of making jam from the North Star Cherry tree in my parent’s front yard. The tree was productive this year (and not so much last year) so we ended up making somewhere around four gallons of the stuff over two days last weekend.

Onward, to Jam Making pictures:
Pitting cherries, which is hand-staining and labor intensive:
pitting_sm.jpg
To make double-batch sized vats of cherries:
cherry_sm.jpg
Which get cooked down, sweetened, and thickened to make jam:
jam_sm.jpg
Which is then put into bottles:
jambottle_sm.jpg

Way better than the store bought stuff, and fun (if hot, tiring, and messy) to boot.

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DIY Molex Y-Cable

Posted on 2010-06-03 by pappp

diymolex_sm.jpg
I think this thing might hold the record for the most times I used the phrase “Don’t do this” in a single fabrication.
It’s a 20-pin ATX Y-cable (for running two motherboards off a single power supply), built from two dead power supplies and a dead motherboard. The cables are available commercially, and if it works out will be ordered in bulk, but the research group needed a quick test cable, and all the necessary components were just sitting there in the dead parts pile…
The plan for these is to double up old Athlon (Thunderbred and Barton) machines on single power supplies, to reduce the number of power supplies (and total power budget. Related facts: 1. Switch mode power supplies are way more efficient when heavily loaded. 2. Power supplies and fans are by far the most fragile parts on disc-less machines) on a 128 node cluster built from scraps from KASY0 and some machines we recently inherited from the Computational Fluid Dynamics group in Mechanical Engineering. This cluster will be for testing network topologies (particularly Fractional Flat Neighborhood Networks), so the important thing is that it have lots of independent nodes, and not much else.

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A Compiler Target Model for Line Associative Registers

Posted on 2010-05-31 by pappp

I just submitted my first “real” publication (which was already accepted based on the extended abstract) A Compiler Target Model for Line Associative Registers, to CPC2010 in Vienna, Austria this July. Very excited.

I got “a little less support” from my adviser than I might have liked, but I’m reasonably confident in my writing skills, and a lot of the material had already been worked over for putting in a (previous, rejected) paper I coauthored, so the process of putting it together wasn’t too bad. It was stated as “I trust you to take care of it,” but it was still really irritating. That said, there is something vaguely awkward about the paper that I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on; I think I thought about and played with it for too long, and lost track of what was actually there at any given time. Have a look and tell me what weirdness didn’t get caught because no one (else) read it closely before it went out, I’ve already found a redundant qualifier left in the last line of the abstract… just be warned that the topic is a little obscure.

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2009 Nebula Awards

Posted on 2010-05-17 by pappp

I just saw that the 2009 Nebula Award winners were announced while I was travelling, and the few I know are interesting choices. I’ve also read a few of the runners up in the Short Story/Novella/Novelette sections, which I remember as being particularly good. I’ll have to track down copies of the ones I haven’t seen, I’ve been trying to read at least most of the Nebula short form candidates for the last several years, and its always been a good experence.

The most interesting thing to me is that I had just read the Short Story winner (”Spar” by Kij Johnson) in the car on the way up to Madison … and been entirely underwhelmed, which was really surprising, since her previous successful short story “26 Monkeys, Also, The Abyss” was one of my favorites last year, and I’ve been found of most of her other short fiction. Figures that the first thing of her’s I’ve read that I didn’t like wins a Nebula. It definitely was the sort of thing that is challenging enough to be an award winner.

While talking about short stories, I want to note that I’ve always tended to like my fiction in extremely short form, or extremely long form, the past several years have mostly only afforded me time for the short form, and my main fix for the short form stuff has come from the “The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year” series, which is excellently curated by Jonathan Strahan. I picked up the first one on a suggestion+Whim shortly after it became available, and have picked up the others as they became available because they are reliably excellent collections. I’m still working on this year’s, and am a little bit less impressed, but it is still riveting reading. My two favorites (which haven’t aligned terribly well with the various awards) in previous years have been:
Vol. 1
“Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)” by Geoff Ryman, and “D.A.” By Connie Willis
Vol. 2
“Dead Horse Point” by Daryl Gregory, and “Sorrel’s Heart” by Susan Palwik
Vol. 3
“Beyond the Sea Gates of the Scholar Pirates of Sarsköe” by Garth Nix, “26 Monkeys, Also, the Abyss” by Kij Johnson
With “Dead Horse Point” being most under-appreciated of the above.
I also like that there have been several in each, but particularly in Vol. 3, that are really rich literary riffs, references, connections or extensions with sometimes improbable famous works. As a particularly weird example, I had the powerful impression that “Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel” is a riff off of Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev, but the genesis is officially explained differently. If you like SF/Fantasy, and especially if you have a limited amount of time to spend reading, this is the annual collection to get.

Posted in Entertainment, General, Literature, OldBlog | 1 Comment

Spring 2010 Semester Retrospective

Posted on 2010-05-17 by pappp

One of the intents of this blog is to publicly keep track of my before and after impressions of classes to share, and since another semester is complete, it’s time to repeat the process. The Spring 2010 “Before” post can be found here, and the link chain can be followed back. This one is a little belated from travelling immediately after the semester ended.

CS585:Linux Internals/Finkel
This is a very, very good class, which is also a HEAP of work. It really is taught by discussing the inner workings of some part of the kernel in class, and writing programs that manipulate them in some way… unfortunately, the detailed discussions and programs are not necessarily in the same order, or even the same topics, so very much of the value of the class is being given pointers on topics to learn indipendently. With that in mind, resources wise, Robert Love’s Linux Kernel Development is a really excellent book, that I would have done well to actually read ahead in instead of constantly using to catch up, and LXR is unbelievably useful for working with kernel code.
Keeping it short, if you want to be able to do *useful* things with operating systems, this class is perfect, and Dr. Finkel’s instruction was, as always, excellent. Just be aware you will be doing a lot of time consuming independent learning and programming.

PSY562:Human Technology Interaction/ Carswell
This class is in the unusual position of being at once very interesting and very easy. I love the topic, to the point that my current first-choice PhD program when the time comes is in the area, so getting some formal credentials to support my interest was a high-value proposition. While I would have liked a little more depth, and a little more variety in perspective; we took a very Human Factors/ Ergonomic perspective most of the time; the topic has historically also been approached from a more classical psychological perspective, an Industrial Design perspective, and (my favorite) an Information Theory perspective, it provided an excellent overview for people who didn’t have as much prior reading, and was still an excellent exercise for those of us who did.
The class dynamic was pretty cool with the mixture of psychology seniors and other-topic “upper level” (mostly graduate) students. The other-topic graduate students tended to be considerably more vocal (sometimes to a fault) than other groups in class, and we all seemed to have higher expectations of what would be demanded of us than other students or the actual expectations, which was instrumental in preventing it from ever becoming stressful. From talking to other students, finding the class easy wasn’t limited to people with significant prior knowledge, so I’m reasonably sure I’m not just expressing my own skewed perception.
The project around which a lot of the class work and discussion was based was a usability/Human-Factors analysis of Lexington’s Mass Transit System (LexTran). Although it wouldn’t have occurred to me as an obviously suitable topic, the sad state of LexTran, the broad variety of issues to be addressed, and the LexTran official’s willingness to to get involved made for a very good situation. My particular project was on designing appropriate mechanisms to display bus tracking (AVL/GPS) information to users, and focused chiefly on the design of suitable smart signage, but other individual projects included website design, map design, route planning and representation, and environmental improvements for the transit center itself. This is the UK PR article (which is, amusingly, on a webpage that is a usability nightmare) about the class project, and even has a terrible picture of me from the final poster session.
Apparently it will be offered again next semester, which is interesting because this was the first time it had been offered in a while, and I highly recommend anyone interested sign up, especially if you have an otherwise intense semester planned, as it manages to not be difficult or time consuming, while also avoiding being a waste of time. As best I can make out, the requirements for instructor consent are “Seem Competent/Interesting” and “Express Interest,” since Dr. Carswell is quite interested in having a variety of disciplines represented, making it is an option for a wide variety of students.

TAing EE281
It turns out I really do enjoy teaching, which is extremely fortunate given my intended career. Most of the kids actually seem to have learned something from being in my class, and initial opinions from both students and faculty seem to be that I did a good job. I cleaned up the grading policies (created a set of fixed-form rubrics for all the assignments, etc.), and have a set of notes from the labs on necessary modifications and improvements. It also really, really improved my ability to work with Verilog, especially debugging, since dealing with 30some inexperienced coder’s problems exposes one to a LOT of code, with a lot of different approaches and bugs.
The plan is for me to do a little bit of writing up (ABET, and some internal-to-UK thing) from my notes over the summer, and TA the same course again in the fall, which I’m actually kind of looking forward to.

Overall: Hooray. I like what I’m doing, I like where it’s headed, and I’m not feeling over-extended like I did in some of my more intense semesters as an undergraduate.

Posted in General, Navel Gazing, OldBlog, School | 1 Comment

Singer 201-2

Posted on 2010-05-14 by pappp

I just spent the week out of town, helping move the grandparents on my mother’s side into a more appropriate house, closer to some of the aunts to make life easier as they age. I’m not saying this because I intend to make my blog more personal; it is just prelude to a couple other posts, including the below.

While we were packing things up, I expressed interest in “The Singer” to the aunts, having spotted a featherweight (I believe it was a 221) in it’s case in the basement. My grandmother decided to keep it, but there was a second antique Singer down there, which wasn’t going, and is now mine. The second machine is a 201-2, made in 1947 (old enough to have the pretty metal work), in a Singer #42 “Deco” cabinet. It apparently belonged (briefly?) to my great grandmother, and later to one of the great aunts, where my mother learned on it, before finding it’s way into my grandmother’s basement. Most of it’s doodads (special function feet, zigzag, buttonholer, etc.) are still with it, and everything seems to be in reasonably good condition.

The machine (I’m aware the cabinet is not quite fully open in any dimension):
singer2012_sm.jpg
Some of the accessories, labelled as best as I am able:
accessoriesid_sm.jpg
Buttonholer:
buttonholer.jpg
If anyone who knows about these machines can tell me what the other metal bits are, or correct my tentative identifications, that would be really cool.

I had read about old sewing machines in general a while ago, because of my fascination with old electromechanical devices, but had never really got into the specifics. Because of this one falling into my possession, I’ve started reading in more detail, and there are lots of interesting things to read thanks to the big, active community around the things. As far as I can tell, this machine and its accessories are perfect candidates for restoring and using; nothing particularly unusual or desirable (at least that I’ve identified so far), not in extraordinary collector type good condition, but a very well liked old machine, and in good enough shape to be beautiful and functional with a little work. I know it’s going to need a thorough cleaning/oiling, and have the entire wiring harness replaced (the EE portion of me recoiled in horror when I looked it over, the existing wiring is a disaster in potentia), which should be a fun project in itself.
Right now, it’s sitting in the basement at an aunt on the other side of the family who lives near the grandparent’s old house until I can transport and store it, but eventually I’d love to restore and use it; it’s beautiful and has history, and based on the pictures of work produced on similar machines, very functional once you learn to work one.

Posted in General, Objects, OldBlog | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Roasted Eggplant with Red Pepper Cream Sauce

Posted on 2010-05-06 by pappp

My post-semester “I have time to cook again!” food, Roasted Eggplant with Red Pepper Cream Sauce:
peppercreameggplant_sm.jpg
The recipe was one of those “Popped, mostly formed, into my head” things that are always the most fun to make. The eggplant is just sliced into eighths, drizzled with salt, pepper, and olive oil, and broiled until cooked. The sauce is the real fun of the affair. In one pan, I cooked down a thinly sliced red pepper and some crushed tomato in herbs, garlic, and olive oil, to make delicious red slime.
peppersauce.jpg
In another pan, I set up a roux with some milk, then added the pepper mixture, some appropriate cheeses for texture (In retrospect, probably would have been better without), and more milk until it reached roughly the right consistency.
The combination was served over farfalle, which the foodblogging category here should make clear is my default pasta.
I got lazy and used the toaster oven to do the broiling, so the slices were too close to the source and got a little dry/singed on the tips. I also missed on ratios a bit, and made too much roux for the volume of cooked-down pepper, so the sauce was thicker and richer than I intended. For a first pass at an unreferenced idea, though, this was a pretty solid success. Very interesting flavors and textures, particularly the herb/garlic/spice mating to the sweetness of the cooked down peppers, and the two distinct kinds of creaminess from the sauce and the flesh of the eggplant.
As a side note, making this is caused me covet knives; despite the fact that the housemates and I have a pretty nice set of knives between us there isn’t a narrow bladed slicer or a Nikiri in the house, and they both would have been handy here.

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User Time Logged In

Posted on 2010-05-06 by pappp

A lab I sometimes do computer work for asked for a mechanism to account how long each user spends logged in on some *nix (Linux and ancient Solaris) boxes. I don’t know of a “proper” solution, so I did things the UNIX way: I wrote a stupid little awk script that parses the output of last -R to get a minute total. This isn’t a terribly clean or safe script, but it does “just enough” input sanitizing, and seems to work. Some (Linux) boxes I have access to appear to clear/archive/rotate wtmp on boot, so it doesn’t help on those.
Does anyone know of a better way to do this? Is there some utility I’m forgetting? Is this script dangerous in some way I’m not thinking of? Script follows:

#!/bin/sh
last -R | 
awk '
{
	user=$1;
	uselength=$9;
	
#	Check line format
	if (NF != 9) {
	print "Line " NR " discarded, " NF " entries. (Reboot messages, etc.)"
	}
	else if( $NF == "in"){
	print "Line " NR " discarded, still logged in."
	}
	else{
	
	logins[user]++;
# These times are (Days+Hours:Minutes)
	parsedtime=0;
	gsub("[()]","",uselength);
	split(uselength, sptime, "[+:]");
	parsedtime+=sptime[1]*24*60;
	parsedtime+=sptime[2]*60;
	parsedtime+=sptime[3];
	logintime[user]+=parsedtime;
	}
}
	
END {
	for (i in logins) {
		print i " Logged in " logins[i] " times, for a total of " logintime[i] " minutes";
	}
}'
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Windicator Fail.

Posted on 2010-05-04 by pappp

I’ve been following the recent noise about Mark Shuttleworth’s suggestion for future UI improvements in Ubuntu, and they seem to be steadily headed from “bad idea” to “worst idea.” I found the notification behavior in recent Ubuntu releases (especially that horrible, noisy, hard to interpret unified presence icon) pretty awful, but easily disabled without completely replacing the UI (I run XFCE where all is equal, but XFCE users are definitely second class citizens on Ubuntu). Then there was bitching because of the unpopular, unilateral decision to move window buttons to the left, which is pretty much ass backwards as far as most users are concerned. Hopefully, that will remain easy to replace by swapping the theme.
The crowning glory of bad ideas, however, is the latest. He is calling for the addition of “Windicators” to all windows, and proposing that it be implemented in the worst possible way. Let’s count reasons this is a really bad idea:
* Client-side rendering makes every application need a rewrite to use the feature – They just finished getting almost all tray rendering over to the server like it should be, don’t recreate the problem.
* No standard interface – If there were some kind of “I want a notifier” interface added to the standards, that would be one thing, but adding noncompliant behavior, downstream, to one environment is just silly.
* Break existing standard interfaces – DBus, NetWM and friends specify window interactions, that work right with any supporting environment. These don’t fit.
* Break existing assumptions – Except for title bar text (ie. the (n) next to gmail titles to indicate unread messages), the title bar is a title bar. The buttons up there manipulate the WINDOW via the WINDOW MANAGER.
* Replicate existing functionality – We’ve got a global notification area. We’ve got per-window notification. Tell me again why this is better?
* Clutter, Clutter, Clutter – Why the hell would I want more little doodads vying for attention on my screen?

This excellent refutation, and the discussion at OSNews are a more thorough description of the problem. Hopefully, the upstream devs will squash this by refusing to cooperate. Otherwise, this might be nice as it will drive users to other window managers/distros, and help keep the Ubuntu and Linux communities vibrant and diverse that way.

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Saturday Grading

Posted on 2010-05-01 by pappp

gradings10.jpg
See the giant piles of paper in the left of the picture? That is my last round of grading for the semester, and the entire plan for my Saturday. On the upside, FPAT is empty the Saturday before finals week, so I can spread out all over the ECE Commons and play loud music while I do it. Every time I use a massive 3-sided desk/table/workbench rig like that it makes me want one, it’s so nice to spread out on a huge solid accessible workspace.

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