|
|
Love it or hate it (or both!), Concurrent Versions System (aka CVS) is a major part of the development process in many organizations.
I've spent a bit of time over the last few hours becoming more familiar with CVS at the protocol level to understand some issues that a windows based Eclipse developer is having after a major CVS update last week. Through a long line of corporate ancestry, our group owns CVS and a pile of tools added on top. It wasn't really my problem, but it was interesting (and a few years ago I'd spent a bit of time wandering around in the client code, learning CVS and making custom client tweaks).
Somehow, the Eclipse folks figured out how to do something I'd always wanted on the command line, spitting out a list of top level modules without needing to care if it was in the modules file or not (something we'd avoided using because we have so many groups and mapping things at the top level will inevitably lead to confusion — not that some folks were deterred, damn the torpedos and that sort of thing).
It turns out that Eclipse does a double dip. First it uses an undocumented update command to get the list of top level module names and then it issues a more commonplace 'cvs co -c' which cats the contents of CVSROOT/modules. The first command is where things are failing on the windows client.
I've failed thus far to re-create this from a command line cvs client, but the request data looks like this:
Global_option -n Argument -d Directory . /cvs/root/dir/ Argument . Directory . /cvs/root/dir/ update
The return data is most interesting...
Strip out the binary cruft and you'll wind up with a list of commands to create new directories. The text portion of the reply data looks like this:
E cvs update: New directory `top-level-1' -- ignored E cvs update: New directory `top-level-2' -- ignored E cvs update: New directory `top-level-3' -- ignored ... and so on ... E cvs update: New directory `top-level-n' -- ignored
Aha! The top level module list without a modules file. I'll need to dig into the CVS server code again (it's been a couple years) and see how the heck this is doing what it does. It does suggest some ideas for an easy repository exploration tool.
Now that we've got a lot of working packet captures, we just need to capture some requests from the broken WinBox to figure out the problem.
There is one other thing about CVS that I'd never observed before. The data portion of a successful CVS authentication reply is 'I LOVE YOU'. When I realized what it was and what it meant, I had a whole new perspective and it left me laughing for a few moments.
This morning on NPR (which I listen to when stuck in the early morning stampede across the San Fernando Valley), the desperate media was stuck talking about the new kids on the block, the weblog folks. Dave Winer was interviewed and had his usual spiel. Jay Rosen was also quoted (it seemed a good quote but my mind had quite displaced it by the time I broke free of four lanes full of drivers with atrophied right legs just as we hit the crest at La Tuna Canyon). The whole interview ended with the standard DW brainwashing when the reporter opined that the dismissal of weblogs would be toast by 2008 because everyone would have their own. I'm sure that he really meant that everyone involved in such a major political activity would have a weblog. I'm still going to call 'time traveling' on this reporter.
I'll agree that by 2008, it seems quite possible that a large number of politicians will have adopted sanitized, well screened, frequently updated web sites. Oops, wait, they already did. We'll skip the staffers, hangers on, lobbyists and a hoard of others who influence policy and refine our final choices; their existence is predicated on backwater channels and money, they'll show up doing guerilla marketing (good luck counting that), but will otherwise be AWOL.
So, really, we're down to the people who are selected as delegates. They're usually a wonderful collection of local, county and state political hopefuls, appointees and the self appointed with politicians of every stripe in between. Four years from now, web based media will have made a more significant dent in their psyche, and perhaps the delegate who today trusts only "The New York Times" will have more places to look, and if they're really involved, dive in and comment. Making them more active and involved in more discussions will be win enough. Getting every delegate to bare their soul in a personal fashion will be a heck of a lot harder.
I'd never heard of Obama (the so called skinny kid with the funny name) until this weekend. I actually listened to the radio tonight just to see what he had to say...
"They would give me an African name, Barack, or 'blessed,' believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success," he said.
"They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren't rich, because in a generous America you don't have to be rich to achieve your potential."
He's a slick, polished and passionate speaker who has obviously been tagged for future stardom should he be elected in November. More when I find the full transcript.
Sunday also marked twenty years since the shooting in San Ysidro. We were living just outside Imperial Beach (about five miles away) and it affected the entire city of San Diego for quite some time. A very friendly city became less so for the rest of the time we lived there.
Today is the thirty fifth anniversary of the first moon walk by the lunar crew (the Eagle) of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. We stayed up late into the night (uhh, defective memory — the moon walk started at 10:56pm EDT, it just felt really late as a child) to watch the moon walk on the family black and white television; my mom, sister and I all curled up together under a blanket on the couch.
I can think of only two everyday technologies that seemed quite possible then and yet continue to elude our grasp today...
So what didn't we have back then? Well, Tang for one. OK, that's a bit silly, so let's try to be a little more serious...
How about solid state electronics?
The wholesale replacement of discrete electronics components (coils, caps, resistors, transistors et al.) with solid state (which led to everything having a CPU and an EEPROM or ASIC) was just beginning.
More than 5 or 6 channels?
Around bigger cities you had the three major networks and maybe a couple of UHF stations. Maybe. No PBS or public radio (yet).
Refrigerators the size of cars.
Cars the size of buses.
We don't have as many buses today... draw your own conclusions.
Tone dialing (and a rotary dialing mechanism).
Anyone remember party lines? For that matter, phones we can own are cool too.
Dick Tracy watches!
Seriously, everyone these days has a phone that does everything Tracy's watch did and most of what a Tricorder did. Or a PDA, or set of glasses and lately, maybe a watch.
Consumer satellite communications and all the rest of the wireless stuff was a direct outgrowth of the space program.
Unwired communications have yet to really make the societal changes that they're going to (or maybe they already have and I'm too dense to see it).
Radios the size of a finger nail.
Pretty much everything and anything digital.
Yeah, we had computers. I saw one at Princeton in '71 or so. An Apple ][ had more going for it 10 years later. No one outside a few labs on the east and west coasts had heard of a video game.
The next Xbox is rumored to have contain three (3!) 3.5 GHz PowerPC CPU cores along with a GPU and associated wizardry.
Alternate energy sources.
OK, not so good here. Wind farms and solar panels are pretty cool though.
My summary:
Communications have made enormous leaps forward, but only because regulation was imposed to create competition where none existed. Where we would be with a still whole AT&T? That's a terrifying thought. The remains of the split, the former Baby Bells have not only regained considerable power, they often seem to have the upper hand. It's depressing. We now lag Japan and Korea by a considerable margin in deployment of high speed 'wired' technology. We'll likely be followers for some time to come.
The Japanese were on the verge of a total end run on miniature electronics when a few Americans accidently leapfrogged the race to create functional unit, assembly type electronics (the wonderful world of Op Amps, FETs and TTL) by creating ultra stupid, single 'chip', general purpose processors. For the most part, instruction based logic is cheaper than gate logic. For the rest, a hoard of custom chip set developers owe their living. It's a race that won't stop any time soon and has benefitted us all.
Anything we could buy then, we can buy bigger today (unless it's electronic or land).
Our transportation and energy capabilities have gone no where.
Todays freighters, trains and big rigs are just about as big, just about as inefficient and wasteful as they were 25 years ago. We shave money by automation (minimize people) where we can, but it's still a grossly inefficient system. The only significant advance I can think of in this area is FedEx (and I still don't quite get it, maybe the competition stunk) who created a complex, seemingly over expensive system that beat competing delivery systems in time and cost.
Energy is where I really get heartsick. We chucked nuclear power. We won't pay for the development of other fuel technologies. So we're stuck raping the land (and oceans) to gather coal and oil, and finding ways to artificially create friendships for more of both. We've got some gas too, and we're busily suckling that teat for as long it lasts. Petroleum has an endgame, it is not unlimited. We're not only dependent as an energy source, but as a raw material. If we don't find another energy source, the later portions of this century are going produce wars we can not imagine.
This morning I wandered off to check out le Tour via my previous entry and while at Yahoo! Sports Cycling I saw something I hadn't noticed before.
There was a link to a stage 15 log and when I brought it up, it looked a lot like the live log data on the main Tour page. It also looked a little different and then I noticed... Oh, the UK version of Yahoo! Sports (called Yahoo! Sport there). I was off and running to poke around a bit. If you're interested in Football (no hands!), Cricket, Formula 1, Rugby, Snooker and who knows what else, go play.
The UK cycling page has all kinds of interesting information not available on the US pages and an entire section devoted to Tour de France with boatloads of stuff we don't get as nicely done (or at all) like team lists, maps, interactive results, and more. All of which is done in a way that's very familiar if you've used the US sports pages. I'll be heading back there to start next time.
I knew they were covering different sports, but it had never occurred to me that they might cover the same sport differently in different places.
Interesting!
I could (and perhaps should) write about various sports related events. Like Michael Phelps amazing trials and the interesting commercial that maybe only former swimmers can appreciate (it made me laugh each time I saw it). Or the Lakers unloading of the Big Paycheck and resigning of the lesser (but still daunting) Paycheck with an upside (who most fans here and elsewhere seem to hate with a passion right now). Or Lance the great, who lost 9 minutes in stage 5 and has now whittled it down to a 22 second deficit (with a couple more mountain stages yet to go) while putting more and more distance between himself and those considered as serious contenders.
The heck with all of that, I want to talk about the weather.
I've tried many times to explain the Southern California phenomenon of 'June Gloom' to people without any real success. I'm going to give it one more shot.
To those of you coming out to visit now, it's quite easy. If you are staying at the beach, you will still have mostly cloudy mornings and wonderful pleasant weather, lows in the mid sixties and highs in the mid to high seventies; unlike anything you can find anywhere else at this time of year. As time goes one, the coastal temperatures will increase, but only to about seventy / eighty (on average). Inland (and it doesn't take much to be considered for this category), our temperatures have gone banana's (as they always do). A friend who lives out past Riverside (to the east) related earlier this week that they're already regularly up into the 100's on a daily basis (I've lived out here for many years and still found that newsworthy). Prepare for temperatures in the low nineties (or better) and be happy if it's cooler. If you need to visit quite a bit inland (Riverside, the High Desert, etc.), bring a heat shield.
We should (given where we live), have a miserable time (weather wise) from April through October. Perched as we are in the southwest corner of the northern continent, we live on the edge of a great desert (and many think we should all burn in hell 'just because'). About ten days ago, we had an outside temperature of 56 degrees at 7:30 in the morning. We were in the midst of what I hoped might be a gloom extension. It didn't last. Tuesday morning, it was 77 when I looked at 8:15.
A couple factors come to our rescue, at least for a while. A relatively cool ocean and an onshore flow (winds from the west, southwest). The cool water, slowly warming land and onshore breeze helps to create what we call a marine layer (a perpetual low cloud layer). In the evening, it blows in over land and each day it is slowly evaporated by the sun. Toss in some additions because of smog and it takes even longer. When it goes away, as it did in April of this year, temperatures rapidly climb as they should. We had a few miserable days back in April where it hit the low 100's when none of us were ready for it. It's one thing to ramp up gradually to high temperatures and quite another thing altogether when the daily high jumps from the the mild mid seventies to the scorching low hundreds over a couple days time. However uncomfortable this makes us, it does happen here and elsewhere.
I've been paying attention to this phenomenon for several years now and am still amazed by it. Perhaps because of the finality of its very regular disappearance, it is a marvel. Given a week of cloudless mornings after early to mid June, the temperatures will quickly adjust upward, and even a resurgence of clouds on the coastal plain won't reach us. The hillsides seem too hot to allow the coastal clouds past without breaking them up. The difference in temperatures is pronounced (as is the humidity difference on the east coast). We're only about 12 miles (or so) inland as the crow flies, but we're closer to 20 miles inland as the clouds fly (coming across the Oxnard plain). Combined with the western edge of the Santa Monica mountains (the Potrero Grade) and the Conejo Grade and Norwegian Grade (if you're local, also see this story about the grades creation which includes information on how the Olsen and Pederson names came to be so popular in the city), it's tough for the clouds to find a way here once the temperature starts climbing. This page about local hills from a biking perspective is also quite informative.
Summer is here, and there is no going back. We'll have some wonderful days and some blazingly hot, wilting days; such is the nature of the area. Mostly, what we're going to see is bright days with perfect blue skies. What we aren't going to see until summer passes are days (and weeks) on end of temperate (mild) weather.
So what is 'June Gloom'? Mostly, it's the way that the local environment helps to stave off the beginning of summer. When it ends, it seems almost as if someone has thrown a switch and it'll be like this until mid to late October, unless we get some rain (that would be a change).
Everyone has been making a big deal about Barry Bonds amazing walk record, how often he's intentionally walked and so on.
Ron Rex Rob Dibble was interviewing Mark Mulder during a lull in the home run derby and Mulder was asked if he was going to walk Barry tomorrow. He said he'd do everything he could to not walk him while avoiding a home run. He reminded us that Bonds is one of the most selective batters in the majors and when he passes on a ball, it's likely that the umpire will give him the call if it's close.
Sure, that doesn't really make a huge difference, but in the course of a series you're not likely to get anything but real strikes past him which probably isn't true for most players.
Update: Before I could finish posting this, Bonds was eliminated from the derby in the second round.
What a fine way to pass an afternoon.
As I mentioned earlier today, I was invited to go see the Dodgers by Tom earlier this week. We were joined by his daughter (for her first baseball game) and his brother Pat. We got to see a well played game, talk quite a bit of shop, drink some beer, eat Dodger dogs, sweat and generally have a fine time.
They were playing Houston and Roger Clemens (The Rocket) did start. For quite some time, he appeared to be beyond reach of the Dodgers. Wilson Álvarez was looking pretty darned impossible too.
In the bottom of the sixth, things changed.
Dave Roberts walked and drew several throws between Clemens and Bagwell (also drawing a lot of boos from the fans). On the second pitch to Izturis, Roberts took off and stole second base. And then things got really weird. César Izturis hit a blooper which Bagwell could probably have gotten, but Lance Berkman (who normally plays left but was in right field today) called him and Jeff Kent off and proceeded to let the ball drop a few feet inside the line. Izturis gets a double and Roberts moves to third. It wasn't scored as an error, but it was one in my book. Next up was Paul Lo Duca, the crowd was making a lot of noise and all he needed was a solid hit to right to score. Instead, he hit a powerful shot which floated into the left field bleachers and the crowd roared its approval. Dodgers, 3 - 0. Houston got out of the inning, but the damage had been done.
The top of the seventh was pretty wild. Bagwell walked. Berkman singled, moving Bagwell to third. Guillermo Mota came in and the crowd applauded Álvarez. Jeff Kent was hit by a pitch, the bases are loaded, none out. Carlos Beltran was sent in as pinch hitter (why isn't he starting?), hits a liner to second. Mike Lamb (in as pinch hitter), his foul in mid left field is caught and Bagwell scores. One more out to go. Ausmus hits a shot which Izturis covers, tossing to third for the force (and final out).
The Dodgers went quietly in the seventh and then to start the eighth, people started yelling. I was pointed toward left where Gagne was walking in. I asked, "isn't this a bit early?" and no one had a response. Turns out he hasn't worked since July 6, the all star game is coming up and the possibility of more runs was about zero. So why not?
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Astros | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Dodgers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | - | 3 | 5 | 0 |
Gagne shut down the side in the eighth and fanned 'em all in the ninth. Job done, game saved, Dodgers win.
Tom was kind enough to invite me to go see the Dodgers game today and when we talked about it the other day I said maybe we'd get to see Rocket pitch.
Talk about luck... Houston (44-42) at Los Angeles (46-38). Clemens is slated to start today for Houston!
I never did get around to putting up links for the Tour de France this year.
Here are the sources I've been using (I think this'll be easier than using bookmarks). For one stop updates, I've been checking the main site at Tour de France 2004 and Yahoo! Sports Cycling. I've also been following these tour reports:
If you know of some other consistent sources, please pass them along.
The quake on Tuesday morning happened to occur at a weird time. I'd already finished with our final check list of things to do before leaving in the afternoon for the Rush 30th Anniversary Tour concert at Hollywood Bowl (check this review for a good description of the show we saw, it was the first time we'd seen Rush in twenty years and yes indeed!, we had a great time).
Among other things, we were bailing on the kids and expected them to deal with a few items all by themselves. So, I was damned nervous.
What initially appeared to be a precursor quake turned out to be yet one more rattle on a fault line which has lived for a long, long time. Good luck getting any of that out of the local media.
We live near 34.19, -118.84 and the quake was located at 34.06, -118.85. About nine miles away; mostly south, and just a wee bit west (once I found a way to map the distance). Sadly, with the demise of all the popular Geo based systems I had been using, I was wandering around aimlessly looking for way to do a decent distance mapping.
All the geography based systems seemed to die around March of this year... I've been wondering what to do with my GeoURL locator for quite some time. Even the semi commercial sites pulled everything. The only lat/long mapping system I've found that still provides useful maps is probably going to go away because I mentioned it. *sigh*
Oddly (ironically?), Vince Cronin of Baylor University (in Texas!) seems to be the online authority on the Malibu Coast Fault Zone. Looking at his historical data, quakes of this size have been happening for a long, long time with even longer durations (I'd give this last one 15 seconds or so, hard to tell how long it might have been 'real time'). The largest recent quake in the area seems to have been the Point Mugu Earthquake, 21 February 1973.
The 3.4 quake this morning wasn't a big deal, but it is a bit weird that local reports peg the intensity lower than what we felt a few miles north.
I just want to know which fault line this thing lives on!
I was looking for a decent image of the Statue of Liberty to modify for my own purposes (as so many have already done) when I stumbled onto a wonderful Library of Congress page with some decently high resolution TIFF's from the very early days.
I also found my way to this bit of liberty impairing legal gobblygook (it seems that there are always too darned many lawyers).
Leica Geosystems was recently part of an effort (along with Texas Tech) to create a 3D map of the statue, which could be used to create digital images and CAD files (available to the public, one would hope). See this document for more information. I also found an interesting, all in one document (PDF) covering the history of the Lady. Of particular interest to me...
The best vantage point for viewing the Statue is from a ship in the harbor moving toward the port of New York. The island vantage point is too close; the back is not very exciting. The Battery Park view is too far away. Indeed, it is a colossus designed to be viewed from a ship’s deck. Although the Statue does not really face Europe, it seems to — one reason the site was selected by Bartholdi.
I had to go look at this, because I've always thought of the statue as facing the Mediterranean area (east by southeast, more or less). Uh, not quite. Seeing it from behind on the Jersey side while driving like a maniac on the Parkway (or Turnpike), or even from the train only yields a general idea on direction. From several maps, it's obvious that the monument faces just about completely southeast. The really strange thing is that I've only seen the statue closely from a ship or boat (the last time being during the summer of 1976, a good time to be in the area). So the century old idea seems to work. As many times as I saw it from the water, I wasn't piloting nor paying strict attention to our orientation. It just feels like it's pointing toward open ocean as you approach it (even if you know that you've rounded a bend).
Anyway... if you've never seen it from the water, you really should. I think there are boat tours which go out and more or less circle the statue; better ones might run up and down both sides of Manhattan (Hudson and East River views) and run as far south as the Verrazano Narrows Bridge (an impressive sight all by itself, especially at night).
The only view (that I'd ever experienced) which once contested that seen from the water (if only to put the monument in perspective) was from the bar area at Windows on the World (south end of the 107th floor of the North Tower). I'll save some more about WOW for another day.
I had a great conversation at lunch on Thursday which ranged over many subjects (for a change... we get rather stuck on work so often). Eventually, we got onto politics, which we don't do as often as we used to.
I'm certain that the people around us were uncomfortable, not that we cared. I mentioned it in passing as we left and we made some jokes about the idea of people making calls to report the muslim, jew and nominal 'christian' (I think L called me the 'white' guy which I found funny), who were arguing loudly about several things including the middle east.
The argument really got started because of the Michael Moore movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. I said I wasn't going to go see it because after some consideration, I felt it wasn't worth my time. I know where I stand and what I believe, I'm not completely ignorant of what has happened and why and I compared approach of Moore to Rush Limbaugh. By being just as biased in the opposite direction as the Limbaugh's of the world, he lessens the impact his message could have for those who don't exist on the fringes.
Somehow (and these things are impossible to understand from a distance) we wandered onto other issues that we largely agree on and then onto a discussion about freedom (which is still rolling around in my head) and Moore's previous film on Columbine (once again, serious disagreement on my part with the apparent conclusions — I guess I still cling to the idea of a citizen uprising if need be). That led to talking about prision, its meaning and the fear factor. Which led eventually to a discussion about financial issues which somehow led to Michael Milken, and then his recent introduction of Ariel Sharon in an LA temple (to talk about relaxing some of religious requirements in Israel — I need to find out more about this, it seems so out of character), and then a discussion of Sharon; the settlements and the attack on the Iraqi reactor complex in '81. That led back to a general discussion about the middle east and finally (for everyone around us), the bill came.
I just don't do this sort of rambling, circular argument often enough anymore, even though I really enjoy it. There just doesn't seem to be time. The hell with that, I need to make time.
So that's my simplistic message for this Independence Day.
Make time for the important things like family, your relationship with your chosen God and discourse regarding the world around us. Exercise your freedoms lest you find them dwindling.
