Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

I finally got around to getting lm_sensors to work on my main desktop this evening. I now have gkrellm informing me that my CPU fan is spinning at 5443 RPM and the CPU's temperature is 49°C. Talk about useless information. I can't work out why this kind of thing appeals to me, but it always has; ever since I was a kid I have liked all kinds of data and stats.

I also spent a happy hour patching pppd to allow the use of the Sony Ericsson GC82 cellular modem under Linux. What a pain in the arse. It works now, but only as a GPRS modem. EDGE doesn't seem to be supported around these parts, which is a shame, as that would supposedly allow speeds of up to 200 Kbps. As it is, the speed is horrid and compounded by diabolical latency. This is strictly for when no other connectivity is available and you can't go another second without an on-line fix.

A few days ago, I upgraded the wireless PCMCIA card in my IBM ThinkPad T40 laptop to a Proxim 802.11b/g card. The madwifi driver that runs it seems to have come on in leaps and bounds over the last six months, but I still get random oopses when removing the card. Still, it mostly works, so now I can break the 11 Mbit barrier when I'm relatively close to an access point.

In case you didn't know, free speech and the freedom of expression are alive and well in the good old US of A. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

I finally got around to watching Koyaanisqatsi at the weekend. This film, made in 1983, is as relevant today as it was at the time of its release, if not more so.

If you liked Baraka, you'll likely appreciate Koyaanisqatsi. Like Baraka, it has no words, just a sequence of images set to music. Whereas Baraka was set to an anthology of atmospheric music, Koyaanisqatsi's music comes in its entirety from the distinguished avant garde composer, Philip Glass.

With no dialogue, the viewer is left to render his or her own interpretation of the images, influenced to some undetermined degree by the music. Time-lapse photography is used to great effect, making it very hard to ignore the parallels between the human and the insect worlds.

The title, a Hopi word meaning Life Out Of Balance, is almost certainly the most overtly political statement made by the film, but represents the virtually inevitable conclusion that results from viewing the film.

From the opening scenes of vast mountain ranges and lush vegetation, the viewer is plunged headlong into an odyssey of man's lasting impression upon the planet, depicting technology in all its marvellous glory, along with fearsome examples of its misappropriation.

Watch for yourself and decide what to make of this film. The DVD also contains an excellent monologue by the very erudite director, Godfrey Reggio, with comments from Philip Glass.

Since we're planning to move back to Amsterdam next year, I occasionally scan the on-line property listings in search of houses that take my fancy. Whilst doing so, I came across the following colourful house.

At a tad under €3,000,000, it's a little out of our price range for now, but it's definitely quite striking. A shame it's not along a canal, though.

After some deliberation, I've decided to replace our Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi with a DiMAGE A2. We've had the 7Hi for less than a year and it's most unlike me to replace a piece of hardware so soon after purchasing it — I went four years with our Nikon Coolpix 950 — but I really do like some of the features of the A2, such as its image stabilisation. Basically, this enables the camera to do a really good job of compensating for shaking hands, which will be very useful for those windy Icelandic and Faroese shots this August.

Another convenience is the powerful proprietary battery, which makes the A2 one of the most economically-powered cameras in its class. Happily, the battery compartment also supports an AA holder unit, so it'll still be possible to fall back on standard batteries when in places without much electricity and thus few opportunities to recharge.

We've been very happy with the 7Hi thus far (see our Icelandic gallery from last year), but I think we can probably get a reasonable price for it on eBay and not lose too much money, considering our relatively low usage of the camera.

Here are a few good reviews of the A2:

• Digital Photography Review
• The Luminous Landscape
• Digital Camera Resource Page

To our great surprise, Sarah noticed the other day that a small bird has decided to take up residence in a flower box attached to the fence around our front yard. At first, we thought there were chicks in the nest, but it now appears that it's currently home to just one adult bird, presumably an expectant mother, incubating her eggs.

The nest is far enough from our patio door and the flower box is high enough that observing our new feathered friend is difficult, even if one stands on a chair. Nevertheless, I was able to get a reasonable look at her this morning before I went to work.

I described her to a colleague at work, who seems to think she might be a Junco. While there's some similarity there, I haven't really been able to see her well enough to say for sure that that's what she is.

It's impossible to view her in poor light, so I may have to wait until tomorrow to get another gander at her. I'll use binoculars to see if that helps with the identification. We have the camera set up on a tripod in the hope that we'll be able to photograph her. I considered buying a wireless webcam to enable better observation, but I'm worried that situating the camera on the fence above her may disturb her or — God forbid — cause her to desert the nest. I'd never forgive myself.

Do birds even desert their nest? I seem to remember once being told that it's a myth. I should really google it and find out.

Since we have no long term plans to stay in the Bay Area, we've been responsible enough not to take on the responsiblity of pets. That's lamentable, however, and a home without animals doesn't seem like much of a home at all. Until we're settled back in Amsterdam, the presence of animals in our lives is scarce, which is what makes an unsolicited arrival like this such a delightful experience.

Well, it turned out that our one adult bird was actually two adult birds, plus at least one chick.

When I came home from work this evening, I managed to catch a glimpse of a gaping mouth, craning upwards out of the nest. Soon afterwards, either the mother or the father showed up and perched in a tree above me, so I made myself scarce indoors. I plugged in the trusty digital camera and set about trying to photograph the parent. Unfortunately, it's a small bird and was too far away, so the shots were pretty useless.

Eventually, the parent decided the coast was clear and headed down to the nest. It appeared to have something in its beak, probably food.

A short while later, the other parent turned up and landed on top of the fence. He or she was carrying what looked like a small worm in its beak. Sure enough, it, too, made its way down to the nest. Sarah had arrived home by this point, and she managed to grab a shot of it on the fence, while I peered at it through the binoculars.

The photo isn't great, because the bird was darting around and made a difficult target on which to focus, but it's probably good enough for a decent ornithologist to be able to identify the little fellow. It appears in cropped form below.

So; is it, in fact, a Junco?

Well, it seems those birds really are dark-eyed Juncos. Max, at work, positively identified them from the blurry photo I posted a few days ago. Jo also managed to trace them in one of her books.

With the weekend here, we managed to get some better shots of the birds in the brightness of today's early afternoon sun. I've put these photos up on our gallery.

It's a real joy to witness the parents coming back to the nest with food for the chick. The chick itself is a rare sight, seen only when it hears a noise and cranes its neck upwards, expectantly looking for a fly to be dropped into its maw.

Watching for the return of the adults has now turned into a popular pastime in our household, along with peering between the branches of the tree above the nest, trying to determine from where the unseen juncos' chirping is emanating. The adults seem to like to spend time perching in the tree, merrily chirping away. Perhaps the chirping is to comfort the lonesome chick; I really have no idea.

Often, though, both parents will fly away, only to return some time later with what appears to be a juicy fly in their beaks. As often as not, they'll then spend some more time on sentry duty in the tree, before flying down to the window box to drop off their tasty quarry into the chick's oversized beak. And then the cycle repeats, but for some reason never gets boring.

In the early evening, the parents will return to the nest and settle in for the evening, the chick totally obscured under the parents' plumage.

I have no idea how long it will take the fledgling Junco to reach adulthood and take to the air. At that time, I'm assuming the parents will abandon the nest, as it will presumably have served its purpose. Based on the chick's scrawny appearance and tiny size, however, I'm guessing we have at least a few weeks left to enjoy sharing our patio area with these uninvited yet delightful guests.

It was time to do some more research for our upcoming holiday on the Faroe Islands. In the course of this, I found myself at the site of Atlantic Airways and was surprised to find that they now host their own photo gallery of the islands. There are some nice aerial shots there, including some of the more obscure islands (obscure being a relative term here, of course). Click on the name of a place on one of the islands to display the associated gallery of photos.

Speaking of the Faroes, I found a couple of webcams in the northerly town of Klaksvík. Unfortunately, the view isn't all that inspiring.

More inspiring views can be found in Frantisek Staud's photo gallery. Clearly this guy knows something about photography. I can only hope to become that good over time.

A year after our trip to Iceland, I finally got around to making Web page showing a map of Iceland and the towns where we stayed. It has links to photos of each hotel and links to photos of some of the areas that we visited.

I hope that this will be useful to someone who is planning a trip to Iceland.

Our entire Iceland photo gallery can be viewed here.

Our new A2 has arrived and our first impressions with it are very good. Image stabilisation works really well and autofocus is very fast. I took some more photos of the Juncos a couple of days ago and they turned out very well.

Obviously, we still need to put the camera through its paces, but I already think we're going to be very happy with this purchase.

I've ordered a telephoto lens and a wide-angle lens to improve the versatility of the camera. A quick flash of the firmware was enough to add support for these attachments via one of the camera's menus.

Now I just have to put the 7Hi up on eBay at the weekend and try to recoup some of our money.

What's that, you say? No, you're right; we don't have any children, but, over the last couple of weeks, we've come to feel very parental towards the Juncos in our patio area.

Imagine my surprise, when I went downstairs this morning to find the chick teetering on the edge of his nest. I quickly grabbed a couple of photos, realising full well that I may be witnessing the exact moment that the chick had chosen to leave the nest.

Juncos usually nest on the ground, but ours had chosen a window box. Since the chick can't yet fly at the moment it starts to venture out with its parents, there will be no going back to the nest for our chick.

As I turned away to view the photos I had just taken, I heard a plop and looked up to see that the chick was nowhere to be seen. The nest was empty! Afraid that I had scared him into jumping out of the window box, I hurried over to the spider plants that line the edge of the ground under the window box. Sure enough, there was the chick. Not knowing what to do, I cupped him in my hands and placed him back in the nest and then retreated.

The parents were now in a frenzied state, thinking I was attacking their chick, but I was only trying to undo the damage I was afraid I may have caused by just being present. The chick jumped a second time. Again, I returned him to the nest. This cycle repeated itself one last time, before the chick seemed content to stay in the nest. The parents frantically flitted back and forth, crazily chirping their anger at me. I thought they may even attack me, so enraged were they.

After lunch at Le Boulanger in Los Altos, we returned home to find the baby had deserted the nest once again. After looking for him and enraging the nearby perching parents once more, we retreated inside and kept our eyes and ears peeled, hoping to observe some sign of him.

That sign came when one of the parents flew down into the spider plants to feed him an insect. So, it seems the baby was simply ready to leave the nest and I hadn't just scared him into jumping that morning. And, like an interfering human busy-body, I had got in the way of nature by putting him back in the nest. Not only that, but I had scared the chick and infuriated the parents. Even though my intentions had been good, I still felt very bad about my interference in the affairs of creatures I do not understand.

Satisfied that the baby was safe (but rather curious where the birds would now spend the night, with the chick unable to return to the nest), we went for a walk around Shoreline to relax and take some photographs. From there, a work-out at Google's gym was followed by a meal at The Cheesecake Factory.

When we got home, it was, of course, pitch black, so we couldn't see where the birds had decided to bed down for the night. Hopefully, the chick will be warm enough, even without the sanctuary of the nest that had been his home until today. As can be seen from the photographs, he now has most of his adult feathers, so he's probably quite well insulated. In any case, the nights are fairly clement now, at around 14°C.

I'll be curious to see where the chick will be sitting in the morning.

From the reading I've been doing on Juncos, we can expect about three weeks of ground foraging to ensue from the moment the chick first leaves the nest. After that, the chick and his two parents will fly away.

I've often said to Sarah that we will turn to each other a couple of years from now and bitterly bemoan the fact we didn't spend more time actively enjoying our current Californian surroundings. With my appreciation for nature and a long history of living in rainy cities, you'd think that getting out into sunny nature at the weekend would be, well, second nature. And yet...

With little more than a year to go before we turn our back on the US, we're now making a concerted effort to spend time outdoors at the weekend and see more of the state of California. With a little luck, we can squeeze enough in over the next twelve months, that looking back on life here won't make us feel that we squandered a unique opportunity to explore the countryside and coastline of a beautiful area with great weather all year round.

Yesterday, we drove up to San Francisco and walked the Land's End trail, taking a few photos on the way. It's a really nice hike, as the ocean almost never disappears from view for the full length of the trail. Grey pelicans fly in formation across the bay, seagulls soar overhead and the drone of the Golden Gate Bridge's fog horn sounds in the distance. I really recommend this hike if you want to see some beautiful, rugged scenery without wearing yourself out.

As suddenly as they arrived, they have departed.

Our avian patio neighbours spent yesterday morning feeding the chick in the crook of the rose bush into which he had somehow clambered during Saturday night or early Sunday morning. When we returned from our hike in the late afternoon, we purchased a bird feeder and some seed and hung it from a beam over our sliding patio doors.

It took about an hour before the Juncos noticed it and began to feed from it. The exhilarated chirping of the chick could be heard emanating almost invisibly from within the rose bush as the parents brought back seed for him. Then, the night fell and the patio became quiet once more.

Early this morning, Sarah could find no trace of the birds. Later in the morning, I went downstairs to see if I could determine their whereabouts, but they were nowhere to be seen. They have gone, taking our beloved baby Junco with them. We forgive them; after all, they are his real parents, not us, although it's been easy to forget that at times.

Sarah has just arrived home from work and swears she just saw one of the adult birds feasting at the new feeder, before flying off to the place where, presumably, the other adult and the chick now reside.

Hopefully, we haven't seen the last of them. They really brightened up our rather lifeless, petless house and made us realise how much we miss not having animals around the domicile.

Geoff alerted me to this story in The Guardian.

According to the story, the US is preparing to reinstate conscription, more commonly known as the draft in the local lingo. I didn't need yet another reason to be enthusiastic not to be an American citizen, but thanks, anyway, Mr. Bush.

The article states that conscription could be reintroduced as early as June of next year. Unlike its previous incarnation, it will not be possible to dodge it on educational grounds, nor can you expect to make a shrewd exit via Canada. The devious bastards have already plugged those holes, signing the smart border declaration with the neighbours to the north.

If you are a young American man under the age of 30, I would start looking for a new country in which to settle. Otherwise, before you know it, you could find yourself standing in some far-flung country with your dick in one hand and an M16 in the other, fighting an unsanctioned war in Bush's barmy army.

Many members of the professional services have clearly had enough of this country's state-sponsored terrorism and are not re-enlisting. This fascistic government's cynical response is to instead send its nation's youth to kill or be killed. My advice: don't hang around until it happens. Conscientious objection is unlikely to hold much sway in a society without conscience.

Google held its third annual party for its Engineering wing employees today. It was in the usual place, namely The Beach Boardwalk, down in Santa Cruz.

I wasn't really in the mood for it this year, truth be told. Intellectually, I realise that not every company pays for its employees to spend a day at the beach, but... well, I'm spoilt, I suppose. I woke up in a foul mood and it took a work-out back at the gym in the late afternoon to dissipate some of my bile. I didn't even bother to go on any of the rides, having ridden on all of the interesting-looking ones last year. Still, it beats a day in the office; that's for sure.

Anyway, the occasion presented another useful opportunity to get to grips with our new camera, prior to going on holiday in August. As usual, the photos have been placed in the gallery.

Sarah's out of town, visiting her parents in Providence for the weekend, before flying to Toronto for a couple of days' work.

That left me at a loose end, so I went for a couple of coffees with Geoff and dug out a couple of great British DVDs, namely The Firm (no, not that one; the great BBC film with Gary Oldman) and Mike Leigh's irrepressible protaganist, Johnny, in Naked.

Incidentally, it's a mystery to me why Naked isn't available in either the UK or US on DVD. I had to buy a region 4 copy from a shop in Australia a year or so ago. Another masterpiece not yet on DVD is Willy Russell's brilliantly observed Shirley Valentine. I wish the studio would get its act together and commit this tale of domestic heroism to the digital medium. Oh well; I digress.

Anyway, apart from watching those films with Geoff, I also headed up to my once home of San Francisco again on Saturday to take some shots of the Golden Gate Bridge and, especially, to try out my new wide-angle lens. As usual, a new album of photos is the result. Unfortunately, the wide-angle lens can't take filters, so it's impossible to block out haze and achieve better colour saturisation through the use of a polariser, but the results are quite nice, nonetheless.

I've finally finished wading through the A2's 180 page manual and can finally start reading O'Reilly's Digital Photography Pocket Guide by Derrick Story. That thing is small enough that I can cram it into the camera bag and refer to it while on holiday, which is one of the reasons I bought it.

One other book I have to read in fairly short order is Elio Pelzers' Dutch Faerøer guidebook. Since The Lonely Planet published the 5th edition of their book on Iceland , they've dropped the coverage of the Faroe Islands (and Greenland, for that matter), leaving very little in print about those tiny, remote islands in the North Atlantic. We still have our copy of the 4th edition, which has decent coverage of the Faroes, but I wanted another perspective and a Dutch book will be good for that. Apart from that, there are a couple of German language guidebooks to the Faroes, but my German isn't really good enough to elicit the full benefit from those.

Plenty to do and no sodding time. Business as usual, in other words.

I've thus far neglected to mention that Sarah recently bought a Canon S500 5 megapixel point-and-shoot camera.

We found that we weren't taking our big camera with us when we knew in advance that it would be cumbersome to have. Koninginnedag in Amsterdam was a good example of that. As a result, we didn't take any photos, so it seemed justifiable to get a second, smaller camera, that we can be reasonably sure of feeling comfortable enough with to take it with us whenever there might be the slightest chance that we would want to take pictures.

It's a great little camera, although I haven't learned how to use it yet. Sarah's taken it to Providence with her and I've been busy learning my way around our new A2.

I've been farting around, looking for another programming project to sink some time into. I haven't felt like doing any programming for a couple of months now, and I needed something to get my teeth into enough that it would draw me back in and make me excited to play with my computer once more.

More and more, I find myself losing interest in computers, not just professionally, but to a lesser degree, personally, too. I hope that's just a symptom of feeling jaded and burnt out. I'd hate to permanently lose interest in a hobby I've had for most of my life, but we all get older and some of us even get a little wiser in the process, so maybe that's the direction I'm heading in. I don't think so, though; I think this is just a temporary malaise.

Anyway, I released version 0.8.3 of Ruby/Amazon a few days ago, but that was hardly a major event. It's already the most complete high-level language interface to Amazon's Web Services, so this release was just to add support for HTTP proxy servers. Some poor unfortunates still have to use those, I suppose.

Now back to my story. With Sarah's company (well, her employer's company, to be precise) having gone public last week, I fished around on RAA for a library to help me write a stock price grabber. To my surprise, there wasn't yet anything available.

Well, it didn't take me long to hack up a few lines of code to grab the current price and plonk it in the sidebar on our front page, as well as e-mail a copy to Sarah at work when the integer dollar price changes.

That set me thinking, though. E-mail is all well and good, but I wanted some kind of scrolling applet on my desktop. Unfortunately, ruby-gnome2 doesn't seem to support the GNOME panel yet, so that was out as a possibility. Oh well, I thought, there must be a GKrellM plug-in out there and, sure enough, I quickly found what I was looking for: GkrellStock.

Upon untarring the archive, it quickly became apparent that this software would need Perl's Finance::Quote., which I vaguely remembered once having read a little about. Anyway, once I'd acquired that, I was up and running with GkrellStock.

Finally, I'm getting to the point of the story. With Sarah's company already floated on the stock market and mine destined to do the same at some point in the coming months, the need for a Ruby library to handle one's financial networking is greater than ever. And thus was begun the effort to port Finance::Quote to Ruby.

After a few hours of hacking, I have implemented about 15% of what Finance::Quote can do, but even this is enough to have GkrellStock now work via Ruby/Finance or whatever it ends up being called.

I don't normally port things, as it's too much like reinventing the wheel and thus usually strikes me as a poor investment of my time. However, since the Ruby world is so lacking in this area, it seemed appropriate to put some time into the project. Depending on how much time I can spend on it this week, I should have something I feel comfortable having the hoi polloi gawk at pretty soon.

It really is quite nice to be hacking again.