Monday, August 23, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
Invisible Flying Spaghetti Monster In My Garage...
The Dragon In My Garage
by Carl Sagan
"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."
Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.
Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.
Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.
--- Excerpt from The Demon-Haunted World
by Carl Sagan
"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."
Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.
Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.
Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.
--- Excerpt from The Demon-Haunted World
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Fade out of focus windows in xmonad with xcompmgr and transset
Assuming that you have xmonad already installed on an ubuntu (or other debian based) machine:
Sources:
http://serverfault.com/questions/29866/using-compiz-with-xmonad
http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/xmonad-contrib/0.8/doc/html/XMonad-Hooks-FadeInactive.html
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xcompmgr
- Install xcompmgr and transset:
sudo apt-get install xcompmgr transset
- Add the following to your .xprofile:
xcompmgr -c&
- Add the following to your xmonad.hs:
import XMonad.Hooks.FadeInactive
myLogHook :: X ()
myLogHook = fadeInactiveLogHook fadeAmount
where fadeAmount = 0.4 --or 0xdddddddd etc
main = xmonad defaultConfig { logHook = myLogHook }
-- replace defaultConfig with your config class (ie gnomeConfig if you're using gnome+xmonad)
- Restart your x session (logout)
- Done
Sources:
http://serverfault.com/questions/29866/using-compiz-with-xmonad
http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/xmonad-contrib/0.8/doc/html/XMonad-Hooks-FadeInactive.html
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xcompmgr
Friday, July 30, 2010
Gnome + Xmonad
From http://markhansen.co.nz/xmonad-ubuntu-lucid
Here’s how to run XMonad as a drop-in replacement for gnome’s default window manager (Metacity):
Install XMonad. Open a terminal and enter:
Tell gnome to use xmonad instead of metacity. At the terminal, enter:
NOTE: To revert back to Metacity from XMonad, at the terminal, enter:
Here’s how to run XMonad as a drop-in replacement for gnome’s default window manager (Metacity):
Install XMonad. Open a terminal and enter:
sudo apt-get install xmonadConfigure XMonad to interact happily with gnome. Make a file ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs, and put in it:
import XMonadCompile this config file by typing xmonad --recompile at the terminal.
import XMonad.Config.Gnome
main = xmonad gnomeConfig
Tell gnome to use xmonad instead of metacity. At the terminal, enter:
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager xmonad --type stringLog out and log back in and you're done.
NOTE: To revert back to Metacity from XMonad, at the terminal, enter:
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager gnome-wm --type string
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Blogging for more than a year..
It's been more than a year since I started this blog. Wow. When I started the blog, I was working on finishing off the Shopgreen site, a site that was very well tested and laid out, but got no love (it really was kind of a dry project) from the higher ups.
A year ago today, I had just started on the CNN Trivia project for Red. Wait scrap that, I was waiting to get started on the trivia project and still working on shopgreen site while waiting for the 'producer' to figure out what to do. That project pretty much soaked up my time from July until it eventually finished after some delays in October, but was still ready for the re-launch of the Cnn site.
After that project I basically sat around for 3 weeks until I was let go the week of thanksgiving. Thanks, assholes. After that, I was annoyed with the whole prospect of having to work for another crappy non-engineering company and took the month of December off.
I started looking again in January, and with no work and no interviews beyond one at the beginning of the month, I started to get worried about paying to bills and actually applied for unemployment. But the interview earlier in the month panned out and I was able to tell the employment office that I didnt need unemployment after all.
February started with OpenID.. a crappy configuration hell project which made me doubt my skills as a python programmer due to bug after frustrating bug, most of which were in the repoze.who openid implementation. But at least I learned a ton about wsgi.
March brought the end of the OpenID project as it turned out OpenID didnt really provide what the tech lead wanted after all. At the end of the month I started on the Asset Admin project which entailed finally having to give up avoiding javascript/html/css. I've actually become rather good at it, but I'm still not entirely enthused about having to work on js/html projects.
In April I finished the first portion of the Asset Admin, the Playlist Editor, but due to work overload on the tech lead, it was never released. I completely rewrote Playlist Editor 5 times due to having to learn js/jquery at the same time, but in the end I was proud of the result. At the end of April I started on the second part of the Asset Admin, the Media Picker which was basically a continuation of what I had learned from Playlist Editor.
During May I continued working on the Media Picker, updating Playlist Editor as I learned more javascript/jquery tricks. Around this time I took the plunge into really understanding CSS. I got the two sub projects looking pretty good. I finished Media Picker and started on the last piece, the Asset Editor towards the middle of the month. I worked hard to make it so that the Asset Editor could be used anywhere (with Playlist Editor or Media Picker) and still look the same (no shifting of images or changing of heights).
But in June, the whole backend project which the Asset Admin was an administrative front end for was basically canceled through a decision by the parent company to allow serving of media through youtube and facebook etc. Everyone scrambled around looking for work until we started work on the current project which I'm not too keen on working on, the dashboard project, which is basically just a nice display of a bunch of CEO porn (aka random statistics about various things that are applicable to the company).
Non work related, I played soccer! From February '09 to August '09, I played soccer with the team we had at Red. Not since I was 17 in high school had I last played, but I was still one of the better players on the team. Surprisingly, one of the most artsy guys at the office was the best player on the team. We played for two seasons in which I had the most goals for our team the first season (3: headed the ball over the defender then blasted it in, the penalty kick, and the loose ball calm shot) but only got one second season (left footed shot!) That being said, we were a pretty sorry bunch with more than half the team having never played soccer before. Most scores were around 8-0 or some such.
In August, for the end of soccer party, I got drunk for the first time during an epic 14 hour pub crawl. Just a bunch of guys from the soccer team talking and drinking. Good times.
In October, the trainer I had been working out with for the past year finally opened his own gym. I trained with him in the gym as he was still building it; before the pull up bars were up, before the rubber mats were down. Previously we had been working out at one of those small gyms that big apartment complexes provide as an incentive to move in, but nobody really uses. And before that we were at some place in Monrovia which was owned by some guy who reminded me of a shorter smaller version of Mitch.
In November I got drunk for the second (and probably last) time during another pub crawl for JR's birthday. Wasn't as great as the first time as I ended up getting sick at the end of the night and had to crash at JR's place.
In December I did almost absolutely nothing.
In January I managed to find a job while continuing to save tons of money.
In February, my gf got a roborovski hamster (Hammie). A neurotic and seemingly suicidal hamster that is bascially crippled by fear. After a few weeks of having the hamster hurl itself from great heights to escape us, the gf got a second hamster. This one is a much more hamster-y hamster which we named 'Cookie'. Cookie lets us pet her and is very aware of heights and is generally adorable.
In April, for my birthday, the gf bought a second damn dog on complete impulse, chopped all her beautiful hair off, put on 15lbs, and was a complete bitch. The three weeks after my birthday she was basically the most unfriendly and bitch that I've ever known her to be. On several occasions I was bound and determined to call it quits, but I remained calm and kept telling myself that she was just going through some rough times. She eventually came out of it.
And so there's a year.
A year ago today, I had just started on the CNN Trivia project for Red. Wait scrap that, I was waiting to get started on the trivia project and still working on shopgreen site while waiting for the 'producer' to figure out what to do. That project pretty much soaked up my time from July until it eventually finished after some delays in October, but was still ready for the re-launch of the Cnn site.
After that project I basically sat around for 3 weeks until I was let go the week of thanksgiving. Thanks, assholes. After that, I was annoyed with the whole prospect of having to work for another crappy non-engineering company and took the month of December off.
I started looking again in January, and with no work and no interviews beyond one at the beginning of the month, I started to get worried about paying to bills and actually applied for unemployment. But the interview earlier in the month panned out and I was able to tell the employment office that I didnt need unemployment after all.
February started with OpenID.. a crappy configuration hell project which made me doubt my skills as a python programmer due to bug after frustrating bug, most of which were in the repoze.who openid implementation. But at least I learned a ton about wsgi.
March brought the end of the OpenID project as it turned out OpenID didnt really provide what the tech lead wanted after all. At the end of the month I started on the Asset Admin project which entailed finally having to give up avoiding javascript/html/css. I've actually become rather good at it, but I'm still not entirely enthused about having to work on js/html projects.
In April I finished the first portion of the Asset Admin, the Playlist Editor, but due to work overload on the tech lead, it was never released. I completely rewrote Playlist Editor 5 times due to having to learn js/jquery at the same time, but in the end I was proud of the result. At the end of April I started on the second part of the Asset Admin, the Media Picker which was basically a continuation of what I had learned from Playlist Editor.
During May I continued working on the Media Picker, updating Playlist Editor as I learned more javascript/jquery tricks. Around this time I took the plunge into really understanding CSS. I got the two sub projects looking pretty good. I finished Media Picker and started on the last piece, the Asset Editor towards the middle of the month. I worked hard to make it so that the Asset Editor could be used anywhere (with Playlist Editor or Media Picker) and still look the same (no shifting of images or changing of heights).
But in June, the whole backend project which the Asset Admin was an administrative front end for was basically canceled through a decision by the parent company to allow serving of media through youtube and facebook etc. Everyone scrambled around looking for work until we started work on the current project which I'm not too keen on working on, the dashboard project, which is basically just a nice display of a bunch of CEO porn (aka random statistics about various things that are applicable to the company).
Non work related, I played soccer! From February '09 to August '09, I played soccer with the team we had at Red. Not since I was 17 in high school had I last played, but I was still one of the better players on the team. Surprisingly, one of the most artsy guys at the office was the best player on the team. We played for two seasons in which I had the most goals for our team the first season (3: headed the ball over the defender then blasted it in, the penalty kick, and the loose ball calm shot) but only got one second season (left footed shot!) That being said, we were a pretty sorry bunch with more than half the team having never played soccer before. Most scores were around 8-0 or some such.
In August, for the end of soccer party, I got drunk for the first time during an epic 14 hour pub crawl. Just a bunch of guys from the soccer team talking and drinking. Good times.
In October, the trainer I had been working out with for the past year finally opened his own gym. I trained with him in the gym as he was still building it; before the pull up bars were up, before the rubber mats were down. Previously we had been working out at one of those small gyms that big apartment complexes provide as an incentive to move in, but nobody really uses. And before that we were at some place in Monrovia which was owned by some guy who reminded me of a shorter smaller version of Mitch.
In November I got drunk for the second (and probably last) time during another pub crawl for JR's birthday. Wasn't as great as the first time as I ended up getting sick at the end of the night and had to crash at JR's place.
In December I did almost absolutely nothing.
In January I managed to find a job while continuing to save tons of money.
In February, my gf got a roborovski hamster (Hammie). A neurotic and seemingly suicidal hamster that is bascially crippled by fear. After a few weeks of having the hamster hurl itself from great heights to escape us, the gf got a second hamster. This one is a much more hamster-y hamster which we named 'Cookie'. Cookie lets us pet her and is very aware of heights and is generally adorable.
In April, for my birthday, the gf bought a second damn dog on complete impulse, chopped all her beautiful hair off, put on 15lbs, and was a complete bitch. The three weeks after my birthday she was basically the most unfriendly and bitch that I've ever known her to be. On several occasions I was bound and determined to call it quits, but I remained calm and kept telling myself that she was just going through some rough times. She eventually came out of it.
And so there's a year.
Windows Key remapping
So today I wanted to remap more than just capslock -> lctrl. I searched around a bit to try and find scan codes for registry hacks but didnt find much. I did find, this little tool, which is great but you need to make sure that you're editing boot mappings and not user mappings.
Go to Mappings-> Show and select 'Boot Mappings' to ensure that you're editing the right keys.
Go to Mappings-> Show and select 'Boot Mappings' to ensure that you're editing the right keys.
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