webglob

SiEd: Return of the files

Having trouble locating SiEd? Fret no more!

SiEd is my favorite general purpose editor for Palm pilot. It’s great, open-sourced GPLed software, that has a bunch of neat features like writing directly to the SD card, split screens, macros. I also love the fact that it writes plain text files.

One thing I wanted to add to the program, thanks to access to the source code, was support for the full 320x480 screen and rotation. However, locating the program and its source has been difficult.

The developer’s domain, benroe.com, has for some reason been taken over by squatters. There are huge numbers of hits for a google search of sied but they all point to the same domain… ugh.

But no longer! I’ve managed to locate an older version of the source and am making both the 0.9.9 source code and the actual SiEd 0.9.11 PRC palm program here, at least until benroe.com gets back in business.

If anyone has access to a more recent version of the source, I’d appreciate a little message on where I can get it before I starting making modifications. For the moment, please feel free to download and use this great program.

Elective surgery for electric guitars

I just performed a little surgery on my guitar and wanted to share the results which might eventually be useful to someone else.

The problem with my electric guitar: it’s old and cheap, the 5 position switch (used to select combinations of the three pickups) was acting up, as were the three potentiometers (volume and two tone knobs). By acting up, I mean they were adding noise, cutting in and out and generally being pains. In addition, I can’t stand where the volume knob sits as I’m touching it half the time when palm muting (causing yet more unwanted noise).

I had purchased a replacement Fender 5-way pickup selector switch (Fender part #099-1367-000), standard fare on most strat type guitars, but was hesitant to actually open the instrument up. However, tonight was more annoying than ever so I opened it up. A peak inside revealed that it was a big mess of wire with gobs of solder everywhere.

Call me barbaric but I decided to cut the crap and hook the pickups directly to the output–volume be damned, I’m always at 10 anyway, and the tone pots needed replacement. So I had a look at this very informative page about the 5-way switch and went to work.

My solution involved simply tying the ground leads from all three pickups together (black wires, in my case), along with the cable out ground and a nice little wire tied to the guitar’s bridge. Then I took other lead from the neck, middle and bridge pickups and tied them to positions N-A, M-A, and B-A as shown on the guitarnuts graphic at the bottom of the page. Finally, the common terminal was tied to the other cable out wire.

Done and done. Testing it was a breeze, just plug the guitar in and scrape a quarter against the pickups as you play with the switch. The guitar works great, without any noise or cutting out and the volume nicely maxed out. Huzzah.

Editor: please stick to the science in livescience

One site I like to visit regularly is LiveScience to which many of our News entries here link to.

A feature that comes up often is their “Top 10″ lists, which are often less informative than they are entertaining, but normally with that geeky science twist. Examples include Top 10 Amazing Facts About Your Heart, Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind and even the likes of the Top 10 Worst Heredity Conditions.

Unfortunately, I didn’t much enjoy going through the Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena which was a disappointment. Such a disappointment, in fact, that I was prompted to write the LiveScience editors. I am making the short letter public here.

Hello,

I’m a regular livescience.com reader and truly enjoy this informative site. Though not as keen on the various “Top 10″s, I’ve found some quite entertaining.

I was, however, a bit disconcerted by the recent “Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena”. A number of the items in the list would better be described as beliefs than phenomena–to be a phenomenon, you need something to detect and measure (anything that isn’t has, by definition, no impact on the world). Of course, you can say that “belief in [ESP] is so widespread”–true and, to me, THAT is really an unexplained phenomena.

I wouldn’t say I believe in ESP though I am open to the possibility… but before we hypothesize about the nature of an observable phenomenon we really must, well, observe it! The notion, for instance, that “psychic powers cannot be tested, or for some reason diminish in the presence of skeptics or scientists” might be very useful to the hucksters with such powers but it pretty much rules it outside the scope of scientific investigation.

Though I’m certain “ghost investigators hope to one day prove that the dead can contact the living” it’s like saying that my grandfather really hopes to prove there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: who cares, until he actually shows up with a leprechaun we can’t explain by other means.

Finally, I felt that many of the items had very strong implications of a dualist bent ("souls” distinct from bodies and the like) without questioning such a revolutionary assumption: NDE/Life after death, Deja vu (underscoring the possibility of “unbidden glimpses of previous lives” while brushing aside more interesting, and testable, naturalistic explanations), and Ghosts (!).

Personally, if I’m in the mood for this sort of thing I’ll head to livephilosophy.com but I’d much rather stick to liveSCIENCE

Thanks and kudos for the otherwise excellent site.

Fundraising: the smart way

Today, as I took my customary walk to the coffee shop, I passed by at least four teams of two green-shirted youths stopping people on the street to solicit funds. I think I like Greenpeace, I just hate how they generate cash. My problem with this approach is the amount of waste: hundreds of man-hours being spent to transfer cash from one pool (the general population’s pockets) to another (the Greenpeace bank account) without any accrued value for anyone.

We can assume these are all volunteers and will neglect the amount of time they take out of the lives of passers-by. My chief objection is that, once all the volunteer time and energy is spent, the organization does have more funds to do its thing with but the world is in essentially the same state as before save for the calories spent while doing the “work”.

What if, instead, those volunteer man-hours were spent actually producing value in a manner that enhances the world. Funds would still be generated but the world would already be a better place: we wouldn’t have to wait expectantly for our contributions to have some eventual impact–goodness would already have been spread.

For example, lets say Greenpeace organized (or, even better, trained) a team of landscapers. These would still be volunteers, at least for the most part. With such a resource in hand, Greenpeace could do things like bid on the construction of parks for the municipality. Their bid, thanks to the volunteers’ contributions of expertise and manpower, would undoubtedly be below that of other companies (seeing as it only includes the cost of material + whatever contribution is appropriate).

Actually winning the city contract would provide:
- funds for Greenpeace operations;
- experience doing actual work for young volunteers;
- added value and quality of life, through the creation of the park;
- lower cost for taxpayers, since the Greenpeace bid was lower than any commercial company could afford;
- the city with awesome spin, since they managed to build a new park for lower cost while simultaneously contributing to a worthy social cause.

After all these wondrous things have rained down on the world, Greenpeace now has the funds to do whatever goodness they’d first set out to do.

Isn’t that better? Such a means of fund-raising could sustain the organism while bringing immediate benefits before the group even began pursuing it’s primary mission.

For a large organization such as Greenpeace, it wouldn’t be such a big deal to manage numerous teams in various fields (landscaping, information technology, recycling, whatever) each of which could be carefully selected to be in sectors that enhance quality of life while providing volunteers with a means of contributing that’s both more interesting than standing on a street corner and much better on their resume.

Hey man, have you got a quarter?

No. I don’t have any change for you, sorry.

I know a lot about panhandling, and it’s not just because I live in the city core. I think I understand it, and I spend a lot of time talking with folks who spend most of their day doing it. But I never have any cash for any of them.

The first, purely selfish, reason is that when money leaves my wallet I am buying something. Unless there’s a hole in your pocket, this is your case too. Everyone who gives a squeegee a dime is buying something. It can be pride, it can be a sense of contribution, it can be easing a guilty conscience, it can be to feel the warm glow of human compassion… It can probably be very many things but it’s always something and I haven’t felt the need to purchase any of these things in a long time.

Though I respect, and will defend, the panhandler’s right to ask for cash, I don’t think this hidden tax is beneficial to the society. Notwithstanding the direct costs (cash value transfered and not spent elsewhere), the amount of human time and energy spent doing this could be used to actually generate wealth (by performing useful acts of creation) instead of just shuffling money around. If you assume just one calorie spent per participant, per exchange, and set the average number of queries in a day to 500 and multiply that by 2000 panhandlers, you get a total of 2,000,000 calories spent on basically nothing. That’s enough to feed 1000 people (based on a 2k calorie diet). Sure, you might say “but that’s what the panhandling was for–to feed people”. Irrespective of whether the money is actually used for food, the point is that those same calories, spent doing productive work would result in a salary (i.e. cash for food) AND productive work (i.e. more resulting goodness in the world).

There’s also the question of where the cash is really going. It might be for food, it might be for booze and cigarettes. Other than the potential health or public disturbance costs, these aren’t really a big deal. But what if it’s junk or crack? There is the possible moral dilemma in helping to sustain these bad habits but to me the most important question is where the money winds up. Whether it’s the hell’s angels, the gang of Jamaicans or the CIA, until these drugs are legalized the cash is supporting a system which inflicts pain and terror on many levels. No thanks.

Then there is the panhandling set point or critical mass. A city of a given size can support a certain number of panhandlers. This number is determined by things like number of people, cost of living and average donation. Though the former are relatively stable, average donation is a function of ‘generosity’ and demand (number of panhandlers). Obviously, people can only give so much so if there’s more demand the supply will be spread more thinly. But more importantly, there’s people’s mood and if you’re getting asked for some cash every three steps you’ll eventually get so annoyed that your donations will quickly drop to zero. You could say, that by making panhandling less attractive and keeping the numbers down I’m actually helping those that are already doing it… But that might just be sophistry

Also in relation to the demand density is the fact that as numbers increase, the amount of discomfort experienced by people also increases, probably not linearly. This is, in my experience, especially true for those unaccustomed to the experience such as tourists. And when tourism suffers, the influx of cash into a city goes down and everyone, including those panhandlers, suffers.

Finally, there’s the fact that I like adults. Adults are people who are free to make their own choices and responsible for the consequences of those choices. Yes, I might enjoy it if mom and dad or some surrogate would pay my rent and habits, but in the end I think we’re all better off when people fly with their own wings. I actually support a left-leaning government with social systems in place to aid those in need. At this time, it isn’t a great life but it’s enough to live on while you find your bearings. You need only ask, and you get a place to live and food in the fridge–so be my guest and just do it. However, I’d much rather have every able-bodied individual contributing something–anything, whatever they love or want to do–rather than sustaining themselves parasitically.

That’s why, I’m sorry man, but no: I got no change.

Dvorak on Palm OS 5

Finally… After a few months with my new Palm OS 5 device, I’ve been itching to get some real work done on the road. Graffiti is great and all, but I need keyboard input. However, my insistence in using the Dvorak layout has been causing issues, especially since neither Palm nor MobilityDevices (apparently the new name for ThinkOutside) feel like supporting it anymore.

A rough solution might have been Ken Mankoff’s Q2D hack. Unfortunately, it seems Palm OS5 doesn’t like these hacks so much and as a result the X-Master hack manager just barfs and dies.

TealMaster to the rescue! Seems the Tealpoint folks have figured out a way to sidestep the issue, huzzah. Installing TealMaster worked and it recognized Q2D, so now I’m happily typing away in Dvorak on my Tungsten device.

Since the q2d hack basically converts any input (even from the stylus) to dvorak, this combination should work with any keyboard recognized by your Palm.

Should any meat eater be called progressive?

Having decided to give the local "Environment Meetup Group" (at meetup.com) a spin, I came upon the message board which included a post: "You Call Yourself a Progressive, But You Still Eat Meat?".

I’m always a bit irked at the recurring link between environmentalism (which I’m into) and vegetarianism (which I ain’t) and I cringed a bit a the title (since I would consider myself "progressive") but an open mind required I give the linked article a look.

As I was reading it, a number of thoughts, questions and objections popped up and I decided that my first contribution to the group would be to take the time to actually formulate them in a sensible manner. Turns out the post was to verbose for the message board, so I’m sticking it here. It is addressed to anyone but is specifically targeted towards the vegetarians out there.

I won’t repeat large parts of the article, but will simply point out what I’m talking about, so it’s best to have read it beforehand (though not required).

The first part, problems related to eating too much fat and being overweight, is true but simply do not apply to me and anyone can have the same results by choosing wisely and eating sanely. I am living proof that it’s possible to chow down on animals and be healthy and there are many others that are in better shape than I. It’s easy: don’t eat too much fat (or too much of anything, duh). So I’ll just skip all that…

The point about AA and other inflammatory stuff in meat… True, but it turns out that omega-6 fatty acids (e.g. from corn and other vegetable fat), Dihommogamma-Linoleic Acid (DGLA) in particular, can be converted to either the anti-inflammatory PG1 or into arachidonic acid (AA). They can even promote the growth of prostate tumor cells. It’s important to be wary of chronic inflammation and the foods that cause it but the argument against meat is weak and is either ignorant or dishonest.

The arguments against concerns about "having strength and energy on a vegetarian diet"… I can’t contradict that it’s possible to function–the question is are you really functioning at maximum capacity?

Creatine (which you get from vertebrates and can synthesize yourself), administration was shown to significantly improve performance in cognitive and memory tests in vegetarian individuals involved in double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over trials. Vegetarian supplementation with creatine seems to be especially beneficial as they appear to have lower average body stores. (”Oral creatine monohydrate supplementation improves brain performance: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over trial” or ”Sport supplement gives vegetarians brain boost” at ). The fact you’d need this supplementation to be at your best on a vegetarian diet is certainly a concern to me, and just perhaps an indication that we’ve evolved to count on outside sources.

A deficiency in vitamin B12, which is naturally found in foods that harbor B12 bacteria including meat (especially liver and shellfish), eggs, and milk products, can lead to anemia (with accompanying feelings of fatigue, weakness and lethargy). Low intake of B12 and folate are also linked to Alzheimer’s disease ("Diet and dementia" ).

These are two examples of vitality/energy problems with vegetarian diets I know off the top of my head, there are probably more. Of course, vegans aren’t dropping like flies so it’s possible to survive and probably get around these things, if you have the knowledge and the means. But there is no denying we evolved as omnivores (about 2.5 million years ago) and, to me, it’s a lot more natural and easy to live fully as such.

Now we get to the part that’s actually relevant to the environment and, presumably, why this was posted on the Environmental Meetup group. The rain forest is being chopped down for animals and to grow soy for animals so that we can eat animals. From the article "it takes many pounds of soy or other plant foods to produce just one pound of animal flesh". I agree with this fully. Thing is: I, like most of us here, am animal flesh. Ergo, it takes many pounds of plant foods to produce (and then maintain) one pound of me.

Thermodynamically speaking, there must be waste from doing it with an extra step like:

plants -> chickens -> me

rather than just

plants -> me

What bugs me is that they’re always acting as if a person who replaced eating 10 chickens with eating soy would only eat the amount of soy a single chicken gulps down, rather than that for many or all the chickens they’ve replaced. This is patently false.

So if you’re going to make this argument, give me some numbers please… How much soy would we really save if I ate it directly? The argument isn’t worth much discussion without these figures.

As a side note, would everybody be happy if we made the process 99% efficient, say by making less wasteful chickens (i.e. chickens that don’t waste any soy for growing useless stuff like beaks, and intestinal tracks and feathers or for moving around) or would that be objected to as GMO-grossness?

In any case, we obviously need as much vegetable foodstuff per pound as other animals, most certainly more owing to our high-energy-consuming brains. On top of this, eating meat actually reduces appetite ("Why high-protein meat may curb appetite") compared to veggies, so you can eat less calories (i.e. less foodstuff) to reach the same level of satiation (meaning less resources to feed you and a healthier you because you’re eating less calories).

The article goes on to state that "no reputable scientific or medical body believes that eating animals is good for us". Uhm, what?

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) states that red meat is the richest source of iron and research has also suggested that the elderly would benefit from eating red meat, as the iron could prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The FSA goes on to say that "the iron in animal sources is absorbed easily by the body. There is also iron in pulses, dried fruit, green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds. The iron in these foods is not so easily absorbed by the body."

Lindsay Allen, of UC Davis, brewed a storm with the vegetarians when her study on Kenyan children found that "adding as little as two spoonfuls of meat a day to their starch-based diets dramatically improved muscle development and mental skills". The shit hit the fan when she commented "there’s absolutely no question that it’s unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans" because of the dire consequences of such a choice on their health (born small, grow very slowly and are developmentally retarded, possibly permanently). Yes, the study was on poor children–i.e. probably those with the smallest ecological footprint and no means of importing exotic plants to meet their nutritional demands–but it showed dramatic changes in the children given the meat, and to a lesser extent the milk or oil. This guardian article goes over both sides of the question rather well.

A number of studies have shown that Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA, found in found primarily in the meat and dairy products of ruminants) increases lean tissue and is an anti-carcinogen.

The author of the AlterNet article seems happy to ignore these and all the studies that have found eating meat to be more efficient (e.g 3 ounce serving of beef contains as much iron as 3 cups of spinach and it is more easily absorbed) and potentially healthful if done right (e.g. the Japanese diet, which includes lots of fish and meat, somehow leads to the highest life expectancy in the world).

In the end, we could go on all day finding studies which show great properties of meat-including diets and others showing the dangers of the same. The difference between these is a question of what and how much… there are distinct benefits related to eating certain meats and this almost faith-based approach that states "all meat is bad" or the lesser "nothing good comes out of eating meat", which you simply can’t question without being a treated like a right-wing, redneck dimwit is really narrow minded and annoying.

The only remaining point is that of animal cruelty. First off, the whole political incorrectness of eating meat embodied by the "meat is murder" catch phrase really gets to me. Murder is normally defined somewhere along the lines of "unlawful killing of a human being by a human being". The restriction to intra-human killing is evident to any fluent english speaker, as no one would say "Jeff was murdered" if he were eaten by a tiger.

If you take "human" out of the definition, eating cows still isn’t murder because it isn’t unlawful. If you then take "unlawful" out of the definition, you’re left with the "killing of a being by a being" as the definition of murder–in which case, you’re guilty when you eat a potato. So it’s a catchy phrase but doesn’t make sense and is, in my opinion, disingenuous.

The short version is that life feeds on life and that ain’t murder. That doesn’t mean we have to be cruel. So what is the difference between plants and animals in this context? It is the capacity to feel and appreciate pain. Animals have a greater capacity for this than plants, obviously. But the thing is, some animals have more than others. Single cell organisms… uhm,not so much. Bugs, hardly. Bigger, more complex, brains: more capacity for pain. And we, as humans, top the list in my opinion. Thus, I’m a lot more interested in ending human suffering–for this reason and, yes, just because they are my closest kin–first. Then maybe we can talk about chimps, and cows, and the rest.

I actually do have a solution to the whole cruelty aspect and some of the health concerns… we just need to stop using animals as our source of meat. I can envision a turkey plantation, where turkey breasts are grown in vats (powered by hydro-electricity/solar energy) and nourished by recycled waste. Many people think the idea of tissue farms are disgusting but we could make the meat as healthy as we like (lean, omega-3 packed etc.), have a smaller footprint (ecological and geographical) than traditional farms (both animal and plant) and avoid inflicting any pain (since we won’t waste any time/energy growing brains). If it turned out to be more ecologically friendly than growing plants and artificial hormone/saturated fat free would you be willing to switch to test-tube-turkey and vat-veal?

Why Cabs Suck

I’ve never had a profound love of taxis, whose drivers seem to think their special permit comes with a host of privileges not accorded to the mundane little people the rest of us are. Optional use of flashers, reckless driving, using horns as a form of speech, urinating on the buildings adjacent to taxi stands–these rights and many more are magically granted once you get that cab driver permit.

But what motivated me to write this was an advert I saw proclaiming that using a taxi is environmentally friendly. The gall.

True, using taxis may reduce the number of cars in circulation. But the environment doesn’t much care about how many cars there are, it’s all about how much they get used (i.e. burn fuel).

I have a propensity for living next to taxi queues, and I can attest that–at least here–these vehicles are always on. The taxi stand next to this place has a capacity for 8 cabs (so there are usually about 12 hanging around) and their engines run and run and run. For the radio, the air conditioning, the heating… for the pure joy of hearing the engine purr. I don’t know why, exactly, but these things run 24 hours a day. We passed a law requiring them to shut the cars down. Seems it doesn’t apply if you’ve got that permit.

If those 12 cabs were replaced by 100 cars, those 100 would still be parked most of the day and hence not be filling the air with hyrdrocarbon residues. Yes, it would make the parking situation worse. But that is a good thing, from the environmental perspective–the more terrible parking gets, the more people will give up their cars and using public transit. We have an awesome subway system, and you never need to fill the meter.

So, thanks to their insolent and false advertising, I’ve decided cabs are off my list of possibilities–even if I’m running late. The earth will thank me later.

One guy’s guide to and review of online dating

Here is my confession: newly single, I decided to give online dating a try. Oh my!

To be clear, I’ll admit I haven’t given it a fair chance (haven’t tried much and since I refuse to actually give pimps any cash, I only went to various free sites) but I don’t think I’ll be doing any more "research"–ugh!

My main rant is the astounding number of impersonal personals you come upon. E.g.

"I never know what to write in these things." Why not start with "This is the first sentence" Useless verbiage.
"I’m good looking." Uh, is that ISO-2006 good looking or are you sticking with the ANSI standard? This is so relative that a bit more detail might just be helpful…
"I like music." Arg, can’t you at least specify a type if not a few bands?! Same goes for movies, books or whatever.
"I like to have fun." My personal all-time favorite, a rare and unique trait–highly distinctive: you’re my type of gal, fer sure. Gaah!

The real kicker is the sheer amount of misrepresentation. If the goal is to actually meet someone in person, how does one expect to pull off all that BS? It just makes me wonder if these people really believe all that crap about themselves. I sure hope not…

The moral of the story is that if you:

were born after 1981;
don’t deviate from the norm by more that 2% in any manner;
enjoy pop culture, pop music and pop everything;
are ready to say whatever it takes to make another person like you.

Then you’ll probably have resounding success as an online dater. Otherwise, enter at your own peril.

Yes, I know I just sound bitter. I guess I might be… I thought it would be an easy way to hookup with that feeble percentage of people I really get along with but, alas, they are elsewhere.

In any case, there are so many variables involved in this type of interpersonal relationship that I’ve always trusted my senses and brain to pick up the subtle cues, ranging from body language and pheromones to verbal skills and philosophy, and perform the integration for me. This simply isn’t possible online, where your mind has a tendency to make up the missing pieces of the puzzle, often with idealized fantasies and the associated dire consequences.

I’ll be sticking with real life, going outside and doing stuff I like and will just see what happens. For those who are still game to give it a shot, you can check out these free sites:

OKCupid. A nice system, with profiles and a pretty awesome matching algorithm (provided you take the time to honestly answer a number of questions). Young and superficial crowd.
Plenty of Fish. An ugly site, which seems to attract the downtroden.
Craig’s List. Mainly brief descriptions, no profiles and often no pics… lots of scams and spammers

Enjoy and good luck.

Surf your way around the world

A friend recently introduced me to Couch Surfing and it is an amazing concept. The idea is to reunite people interested in learning about other cultures, meeting diverse and interesting folks and travelling dirt cheap.

Though some people can’t resist the urge to try and use the site to find cute potential mates, the couchsurfing FAQ is clear that it is not meant as a dating site and its users will quickly snap you back into proper behavior if you try this… so don’t bother. However, if you’d like to have some awesome conversations with open minded and adventurous people, there’s no better way.

As a couch surfer, you have access to thousands of places to crash in pretty much every country on the planet. More importantly, when you’re surfing your host will be there to give you the inside scoop on his or her hometown: you’ll find out where to shop, drink and hang out, what to visit and what to avoid and generally get a crash course on living as a local.

As a host, adventure comes to you. You get to meet travelers, learn of different cultures, hear lots of interesting tales and, often, rediscover your own city by seeing through the eyes of a newcomer.

Finally, as a CS member, you can join any of the many discussion forums and participate in all sorts of activities, from random parties, hiking expeditions, community kitchens and more–all in your own city.

The Couch Surfing site is open to all and is free… well, it’s member supported so you’re encouraged to donate (specifically through the verification process). But you don’t have to and can get started right now by creating an account and setting up a profile.

Give it a spin and you’ll be hooked.