breakfast first

Stitching the world together (Or: After a tough day of C++ at the office, it's nice to come home to some Python)

Software is getting really fun these days: more people than ever are writing software and publishing it on the web, and with good search engines, more people than ever are able to find the bits of code they need. This is leading to endless possibilities and endless customization.

Let me give you an example: the other night, exhausted from trying to track down a weird bug in a large C++ system, I decided to switch to something else to relax. I have a gmail account, but I dislike that I am unable to forward or pop-fetch mail to my hiptop. I thought it would be fun to have a little app that would IM me when I get new mail at my gmail address, sending me the subject line and author of the message. Just a goofy little thing.

I felt like writing it in Python, so I searched for "python gmail" and boom! I instantly found out about libgmail, where someone's already done the hard work of writing a screenscraper for gmail. In order to send the IM messages, I break out Jamie Turner's handy PyTOC module -- no need to sweat how AOL's protocol works. About one hour and 80 lines of python later, I have a nice little app that does just what I want. Incredible. Remember how hard programming used to be before we started gaining momentum?

Despite some concerns that increasing complexity is hurting hobbyist programmers, I think today's environment is very welcoming. People have big blocks to play with now, and great languages to help glue them together. For the most part, you no longer have to worry about the grotty bits -- someone else has taken care of them for you. (Or, if not, just check back in a few days and they probably will have.) I think coding like this -- writing little scripts to make your life easier -- is today's equivalent to home repair. There should be a Time-Life series on Scripting for Home Improvement. There'd be quite an audience, I think.

Tabby Stallion

Tabby Stallion
Originally uploaded by michaelm.

Is this the face of the new Ferrari logo?

Miles is getting stronger and getting back into his familiar habits, which involves such things as attacking a fly on the outside of the apartment window.

Does this coffee taste funny to you?

Yesterday, a co-worker who's a big coffee drinker and who just returned from trip to Africa offered me some freshly brewed coffee made from beans he brought back from Uganda. It was pretty tasty, and while we were drinking it, he explained how it came from a small farm on the side of Mt. Elgon.

Hmm. Mt. Elgon, Mt. Elgon. Why did I know that name? The it hit me: that's where scientists believe the Ebola virus may have started. Right. Well. Coffee break over.

BART on top

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system has been named the "number one transit system in the US for 2004" by the American Public Transportation Association. While I pass on my congratulations to BART, I had to laugh when I read this line in their press release:

“I’m ecstatic!” said BART’s General Manager, Thomas E. Margro. “It’s the equivalent to competing at the Olympics and winning the gold medal!”

Heh. Well, No, not really. You're really just competing against the, what, two dozen or so? other major transit systems in the US. Perhaps it would be a little more on the mark to liken it to winning the World Series...I think it's fair to say that if we were in competition with the other countries' transist systems, we'd get whooped.

Nullpunkt

For the past few years, my morning commute has taken me past some industrial-type buildings near the corner of 3rd and Stillman which have odd plastic signs affixed in random locations. These plastic signs have something which looks vaguely barcode-ish on them, with the word Nullpunkt at the bottom. The signs were interesting enough to warrant investigation, but throw in a beautiful sounding word like Nullpunkt and I'm hooked.

So, I searched around a bit. Nullpunkt, it turns out, is the German term for absolute zero. (Nice!) But search as I might, I couldn't find anything about these signs on the buildings. What do they mean? Any guesses?

(Sorry for the crappy photo; I was in a bit of a rush. Three years of the same commute and I still don't have the timing down.)

We can rebuild him. Better. Stronger. Faster.

Miles is back at home again, after his outpatient procedure yesterday. Here's a quick update Jennifer mailed out to a few people this morning:

...

He's home boppin' around. The procedures (endoscopy and colonoscopy) went fine. Upper intestine looks fine. Colon doesn't, but we already knew that. They took biopsies and will have those results on thursday.

The fluid from his chest and abdomen came back normal. No FIP. They say that the fluid could have come from inflammed cells that were reacting to some infection. There is just a little fluid so his body will probably just re-absorbe it.

Best case is that Miles had a reaction to his regular food, his body got upset, we switch is diet now and the symptoms never return.

Worst case is that he has cancer or bad inflammatory bowel disease.

They think it's probably somewhere in the middle of that. Maybe IBD that requires us to switch his diet many times throughout his life, and take meds.

Once they get the results they will be able to recommend the next steps. But for now Miles is on a diet of boiled turkey and broth. And he's eating it without us having to give him the appetite stimulant! (And I was so looking forward to putting a pill down his throat!)

Yay for Miles! Thanks for helping us and miles through this!

We're so happy he's getting better. More later.

Schoolin'

Hey y’all, trust your kids. They know what they’re doing. Keep the spark alive and they will love to learn for their entire lives.

I don't know much (read: anything) about raising kids, let alone educating them, but I have say that it's been pretty interesting and exciting to read co-worker Chris' experiences with homeschooling. It seems like they've got some neat stuff going on over there.

SFPL going about it from the wrong direction

Today I received an email message from the SFPL letting me know that I book I have checked out is overdue by ten days.

My first thought was: why did they wait ten days? This isn't like a paper notice. There's no cost associated with sending it, so there's no advantage to delaying. Why wasn't email sent out immediately after closing time on the day it was due?

My second thougth was: since a goal of libraries is to have as many items available in the library at any time, and since overdue materials is a rampant problem in America's public libraries, why not send a friendly reminder notice to me a week before the book is due? I would have really appreciated it, and they would have had the materials back on time.

I'm certainly no expert on the topic, but I'm constantly distressed at the feature gap between the web software that libraries use and sites such as Amazon. Library software is lacking both in the small details (such as with reminder mail, as described above), and in bigger things, such as fostering community (why not let patrons review books? Who are the top 100 reviewers in your community?).

Basically what I'm getting at is that no one has their public library set as their homepage, and that's a shame.

Brautigan everywhere

There seems to be a sudden little surge in Richard Brautigan's popularity. First, I randomly named this blog as a reference to a Brautigan book. On Sunday, I read that there's a new book out on Brautigan. And today, I read on librarian.net about the Library of Unwritten Books, similar to the library described in Brautigan's The Abortion.

It's uncanny.

Quick update on the patient

First off: thank you, everyone, for your good thoughts and supportive comments. Miles and Jennifer and I appreciate it more than you can imagine.

Just a quick post tonight, as I'm exhausted. I didn't get much sleep last night, am coming down with a cold, and have had a busy day working at home and tending to Miles.

Miles is doing okay, although the pressing issue at the moment is that he isn't drinking water. I chalked it up to stress when he didn't have any water yesterday after coming home, but when he didn't have any this morning, I got very concerned. I tried everything I could think of to encourage him to drink, but he wouldn't budge. (I now know that that saying about leading a horse to water goes twice as much for a stubborn cat.) So, fearing he would dehydrate, I took to forcing a few drops of water in him, via an eye dropper, every half-hour to hour. He hates me deeply for doing that, but it had to be done, and I feel better for having done it. (Actually, as I wrote this, it appears that Miles went into the kitchen and had a little bit of water from his bowl. Score!)

Despite the hydration issue, we think Miles is getting better being at home. He's been getting a tremendous amount of rest, not to mention love and attention. The big sweet moment came last night when he hopped up on the bed in the middle of the night, curled up between Jennifer and I, and stayed there with us until we woke up. He looked so much stronger and happier in the morning.

Unfortunately he has to go back to the SFVS in the morning for his colonoscopy, which will be preceded by a couple of enemas. Seriously. (If he didn't like my feeding him water through an eye dropper, I can't imagine how he's going to react to it from, ah, the other end of the spectrum, if you will.) We're concerned that he will be (re-)traumatized by that procedure, but we're anxious to hear what the biospy will reveal.