I was reading recently about a program called Diaspora. It touts itself to be to Facebook what Kazaa was to Napster. In other words, instead of all your Facebook posts and pictures sitting on a centralized sever it is distributed. There is no central controlling body to restrict usage or gather data and sell it to the highest bidder. Complete privacy, if you want it. Finally, a real social network.

I do see one down side to the way Diaspora is setup. Let me begin with this analogy: in many ways Facebook is like King George the III of England and the users like the 13 colonies. The king sends out an edict that must be followed without consulting the users. He changes things on a whim to suit his fancy and bring more money into his coffers. Diaspora is thus analogous to the colonies declaring independence from king facebook. They started the Articles of Confederation which was a loose banding together of strong states. In this analogy the inidividual pods are like the different states that communicate and pass information but are otherwise autonomous... having their own currencies, laws and a central governance with no teeth to enforce compliance. 

Diaspora is a step in the right direction, just as the Articles of  Confederation were for the colonies. However, Diaspora, or something else, will evolve and become slightly more federated (only slightly). This change and evolution should be very open. What are your thoughts? 

If you would like to join the Diaspora movement, contact me and I will send you an invite to my pod at diaspora.hstuff.net. 

Some nerdy details: 

Diaspora is installable on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. I installed it on a headless computer running a minimalistic install of Debian. The installation instructions I followed were not clear. It is my intent, given enough time, to improve those. I also installed an ssl certificate because Diaspora enforces encryption. Quite a relief from the early days of un encrypted logging-in on facebook. I also attempted to install and use this with a Apache2 setup as reverse proxy. That failed and I decided to use NginX instead which worked easily. I also had to setup DNS to point to my little Debian server. I still need to get my diaspora to connect to facebook, twitter and Cubbi.es (the Diaspora version of Pinterest). 

I have read several articles and heard much discussion the last few days about sugar. It appears that some people want to control sugar as a "sbustance" similar to alcohol, tobacco and trans-fats. My biggest question is why?

I understand that we should eat less sugar. Studies show that consumption of large quantities of sugar tends to lead to an increase in body mass (aka fat and obesity which both lead to diabetes), tooth decay and a whole host of issues (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar#Health_effects). However, what is "large quantities"? It depends on age, diet, physical condition and more importantly genetics.

So, the science says it is bad. What do we do about it? Force people to choose the way we think is best for them? Anyone remember the 18th Amendment? That is the one in which manufacture, sales, transportation. import, and export of alcohol, aka intoxicating liquors, were out-lawed. Some people thought alcohol was bad and were determined to force others to their opinion. They stated that alcohol consumed in large quantities leads to bad results in health and possibly effect others. Any deniers there? Probably not. So let's ban it again! (heavy dose of sarcasm here). Notice how when something is banned, demand goes up, prices go up and a black market appears as if out of nowhere.

Did the 18th Amendment work? How many historians, or anyone else for that matter, think it worked? I believe that answer is nearly zero. Let's not repeat that with sugar.

Other than making sugar illegal, many suggest another method that they think will deter the masses from using sugar: taxation. Has that ever worked? It has been done with many things, including tobacco, and usually is unsuccessful. Let's examine the taxation of tobacco. Do you think that an extra $1 per pack (or however much the tax actually is) will cause some teenager to think something like: that is just too much money for a packet of ciagarttes, maybe I should save that dollar for something else. Does anyone think it stops smoking? No, it just costs more for those that choose to participate and pay for it. It really does not change their behavior.

What will change their behavior is a proper example from parents who show they care and talking about choices and consequences with children.

So, if congress does add a tax to sugar will it be only cane sugar? will it include sugar from beets? from carrots? Will it include the concentrated apple, pear and grape juices (really sugar water) that get added to drinks and can still be labeled as 100% juice? Will it include corn syrup? honey? Real maple syrup? Agave? Where will it stop? If glucose is banned then there will be an instant market for fructose. Then if fructose is banned something else will rise?

Making sugar illegal will not work and taxation will lead to a plethora of unintented consequences and not work anyway. What to do? How about a couple first steps. 1) Get rid of the subsidies given to farmers, large producers and especially corn growers. How about tossing out All subsidies? That will allow companies and growers to proudce really what is best. It might also be similar to a taxation but take less from my pocket. 2) Talk about sugar... think anti-smoking commercials but with sugar. Those might work, maybe.

Let's take these first two steps prior to the drastic measure of taxing sugar.

I have decided to make a list of a few things that just chap my hide. This is not instigated by anything other than the opportunity this blog gives me to rant.

First and foremost is being late. I do not use the word "hate" very often and this is one case in which I will use the word. It doesn't matter what the event is, it really bothers me to be late. I am not bothered by others being late, they answer to themselves not to me. I suppose that most do not realize that arriving late shows a high level of disrespect to all involved. I hate when I am late. I learned long ago that in order to be on time it takes proper preparation. For example, to be able to arrive anywhere with my family at 8 am, my wife and I have to do many things the night before like getting clothes out for the children and get up early that morning. We noted that getting up early also meant we needed to ensure that we get the necesary amount of sleep too. I have heard others marvel at how my wife and I are able to arrive on time (even early) to events with all the children. It is not easy, taking proper discipline and work, but once in the habit of being on time it becomes easier. It is a choice.

Second, on my list of strong dislikes, is waste. I wrote a long blog post on this sometime ago and will not bore you with a repeat. It is sufficient to write that I strongly do not like to see materials, space, energy, money or time wasted. A fast example is several years ago when the CEO's of GM and Chrysler wanted bailouts from the government, congress, in its infinite stupidity, demanded that they arrive not having used their corporate jets. The CEO's have many things to accomplish and their time is valuable. The use of corporate jets actually saves them time and thus saves the company money. For a company near bankruptcy, all aspects of spending must be reconsidered, but to spend 10+ hours driving from Detroit to DC instead of taking a 1 hr plane ride is rediculous in terms of wasted man hours, wasted money, wasted fuel and pure stupid grand-standing on the part of congress.

Third is bad parking. I am bothered by those who are selfish or incompetent enough to not park considerately and accurately. I feel that if you are going to learn to drive you had better learn to park. It is very inconsiderate to park so that others may not park adjacent to you. That said, I usually park in the back of any parking lot because the extra distance to the store will do me good, I don't have to worry so much about someone "dooring" my vehicle, and I refuse to drive around wasting time and gas (see I do not like waste) looking for the perfect, close parking-spot.

Fourth, there are certain phrases which, for several reasons, bother me. The phrase "... but yeah ...", for me, is the worst and it grates in my ears. I actually prefer hours of fingernails scratching on a chalk board to one use of "but yeah". It is a stupid phrase, often used to change a conversional subject, that should never be used. A few other phrases that bother me are: Where are you at? Where are you going to? May I come with? I am bothered by these because they are just wrong grammatically but also because these phrases waste an extra syllable. Another phrase I have often heard is "you guys" used when talking to a group. In fact, I have heard it used to address a group of females. Is that just not wrong?

Fifth, people not taking responsibility for their own actions. Instead of saying "that is my fault" I often hear "well, so-and-so did 'x' so I did 'y'". So what if someone pushed you, you don't push them back... ok, if you decide that is what you are going to do (right or wrong) at least own up to it. Accept the fact that it was a decision you made. Worse for me is when people litter, that combines waste and a lack of responsibilty. I find myself picking up trash everywhere I go... I must be rubbing off a little as I have even seen my children, at our church, picking up papers, etc left behind by others... I just wish I could get them to do this at home too.

I suppose that most of my pet peeves are not shared by many others, as is evident in the world around me. I will live to the best I can and attempt to gently remind those around me at the appropriate moment. I am sure there are things that I do that greatly annoy others... please let me know so I may improve. Perhaps by the "airing of grievances" herein the world will become a better place.

This morning aboard an Atlas V rocket, the Curious rover successfully launched and is now on its way to Mars. It will take nearly 9 months to get there. It was a great day for many at LANL and will be more so when it successfull lands.

Cheers to those that made it, especially the ChemCam instrument!

I wrote an article about the new martian rover and it was accepted for publication on ksl.com

To me math is beautiful. I have heard some say that takes the beauty away from the natural world around us. I disagree with that sentiment and agree with Dr. Feynman who said that understanding only makes the world more beautiful.

Math was invented as a method to describe what goes on around us. Ok, first it was probably invented to represent the counting of something like sheep or eggs. But are those not things around us? That was simple addition and subtraction, which when down repeatadly leads to multiplication. Then to division. That leads to fractions, rationals and irrational, etc.

I am always a little taken a back when I hear someone say something like "I am not good at math." That is a load of... something I shouldn't say. I figure that if I am not good at something, it is because I did not try hard or long enough. Sure there are cases where I probably can not achieve some certain goal, but those are extremely few in comparison to those that I will not achieve because of self imposed limitations. I wonder if that person had a teacher or parent that said the same thing and then when addition was a little difficult for them they emulated what they were already told, instead of repeatedly trying.

To continue, I find several specific math functions to be very beautiful. First, the Fourier Series and subsequent transform. Fourier developed the series when trying to understand heat transfer in a metal plate. Math was used to describe how the heat moved but there were only solutions to simple cases of the equations. Fourier found that by combining a bunch of cases he could solve more complex ones. Cool. His discovery has led to many amazing others. For example, coherent light passing through a transparent object will produce a fourier transform of the object in the focal plane. I often carry with me a clear card that looks like there are a bunch squares and dots on it. When a laser pointer is shined through it there are many different images, like one of Einstein.

Second, Euler's identity. This simple identity combines natural logarithms, pi, complex numbers (unfortunately often called imaginary numbers), and trigonometric functions (sin, cos) into one simple statement. I had a professor years ago, Dr. Todd Moon, who called it the "death bed identity" saying that any good electrical engineer will quote this to family and friends moments before death. This was somewhat tongue-in-cheek but emphasing how important it is to electrical engineers and science in general.

I had a flat tire yesterday. Normally flat tires are not good but this was good on several accounts.

1. I needed 2 new tires anyway and it was one of those that was flat.
2. A new tax went into effect today, 01-Oct-2011, that raises the price by 8 to 9%.

What a new tax? A new tax on someone making less than $250k per year?!! I thought that was not possible. I was promised it wouldn't happen, promised almost like it was promised "read my lips. No new taxes." This is not the first new tax to hit. What about the cigarrette tax (not that I pay that), the tarifs on rubber, oil, etc? Do these and others not effect consumers?

What other new taxes have you read about?

Some years ago, I had a friend and classmate named Anthony, who had a very special talent. He could speak backwards. If you gave him any word, he could nearly instantly say it backwards. He could also say it backwards in most any type of accent you wanted. Most often he would use a Scandanavian type accent. It was quite a gas to listen to him. One day I asked how he had taught himself to speak backwards. He has an interesting comment that has often returned to my mind.

He responded to my question with a question. He asked "What do you think about as you walk to classes? what do you think about in the shower? while riding the bus?" Then he add that he used those times to think of words and train his mind.

His question really struck me. On what do I focus? What has the most of my attention?

I have been teaching a doctrine class for my church and one Sunday a student asked "How do you know the scriptures so well? I thought you had to be old to be a scriptorian?" I do not consider myself a scriptorian and his comment struck me as a compliment I did not deserve. Thus I did not know how to respond. As I have thought about it and in light of my above comments, "How often do you ponder over the scriptures? Do you read them? Do you memorize some of the verses that mean most to you?"

Do you ever just sit still and listen? Or do you always have something in your ear or before your eyes? too much music? too much computer time surfing for news or trolling through facebook? I think too often we want to be distracted instead of focusing on what is important, that inside us and family. It seems to me that many people want to be distracted as if we are afraid of our own thoughts. Thus we have contrived around us things so that we are always busy but not really accomplishing anything.

How do you use your moments? Do you purposely have moments when you are simply still, thinking, pondering the great mysteries of your mind?

I like things the way I like them. I won't apologize for my tastes and make no excuse for them either. I like GNU/Linux, I like satellites and space exploration, I like walking in snow barefoot, and I like 24-hr clocks. I don't want to have to figure out, or tell someone, if it is AM or PM when I can just know that 14 means 2 hours past noon. It just makes more sense. It is similar to writing dates. Some people write dates as month/day/year others write day/month/year. So if I write 05/03/11 is that March 5th, May 3rd, 1911 or 2011? Often that can be determined by context, but sometimes that context is missing. So I write dates as 05/Mar/2011. No confusion for anyone as to what I mean.

I have searched for a good 24-hr desktop clock gadget. However, I have not found any that are just the way I like. I did find an Opera browser extension that is a 24-hr analog clock and it has noon being straight up. I had not previously thought of a 24hr analog clock. But that made sense. I used it for a short time, but it was not satisfying. I started digging into making my own desktop gadget but I did not want to spend hours digging around and coding.

Then a thought struck me: Just copy and paste code from another gadget, make changes to the code to suit me and make an appropriate graphic. That proved to be amazingly easy. Since, I am forced to use MS/Windows at work, at least I can use version 7, I made a copy of the folder for the default clock gadget that comes with the OS. I first renamed the folder and went on a snipe hunt. Well, at first it felt like a snipe hunt. I dug around into the various folders and files. Then I found the correct java script file to change. I made simple changes to how the angle of the hour hand was determined. In another file, I found where the name of the gadget is declared and changed it. I then modified the chronometer graphic, erasing the middle part and putting red numbers, only even, around the face, with 12 straight up.

I think I would prefer to have solar-noon straight up but that would require a calculation that depends on my latitude, time-zone and day of year as well as shifting the numbers. Also, there would be no consistent number at the top. So, I opted for ease of reading with 12 at the top. While, it seems ok to me to edit the clock widget for my personal use, I hesitate to post my changes as I do not know what copyrights are in place on it.

I have been using the Opera web browser for over a year. It has many features that I like in a browser. If I recall correctly, it was the first browser to start using tabs, grouping tabs, a minimal bar, private browsing and speed dial. In other words, it has started trends that other browsers have followed. 

I used to exclusively the Firefox browser but switched to Opera due to speed and memory leaks. Firefox uses more memory and if it is open continuously it leaks memory, hogging as much as the OS will allow it. For someone that likes to run a lean system, using as little resources as possible, this is very vexing. I tried Google's Chrome browser for a short time but it just doesn't work the way I want. Use Internet Explorer? Hmmm, I never even gave that a thought until just now. 

So of all the browsers I have tested, I do believe that Opera is the fastest. That may be appearances because Opera displays items as they are downloaded instead of waiting for either the entire page or until a majority of the page is ready. Which is how Firefox used to function, I am unsure if it is still the same or if it has yet again copied Opera. So, when I want that extra umph in my browser I turn it up to 11, Opera 11 that is.

There is another reason that I do not like Firefox and Chrome. They are constantly pushing out updates. I know there is a need for security updates and understand pushing those out quickly to users. I am refering to other types of updates, style changes, etc. I used to think it was cool to get the latest update and would daily check to see if there were any change to the browser. However, I have changed and changed the way I perceive things. To be ever receiving updates gets old and very tiresome. I want a stable product, one I don't have to change my extensions or add-ons because they are not up-to-date yet with the versions that feels like it changed last week and then again just yesterday. Another reason for kicking it up a notch to Opera 11. 

This leads me to a slightly different topic. That of Ubuntu. The Ubuntu team has an aggressive, fast release cycle. Every 6 months they have a new version. In between there is a large number of updates. This is fine for those that want near-bleeding edge and are hungry for something to do. I have other things that are more important than to be updating my computer so often. I need an OS that works and works for a long time without my interference. 

I have never been a fan of Ubuntu, for a sundry of reasons, but many people are and in my opinion those are mostly GNU/Linux newbies. That is ok, it gives them a good looking example of the power and abilities of GNU/Linux. However, as they have to update so often and are forced to use Unity, I think many will tire and fall away, back to what they knew before, without ever tasting some of the other flavors or distributions of GNU/Linux. To me, that is a shame.