Monthly Archives: August 2005

Geek Stuff

Lessons Learned

I think I am in the process of learning a lesson with Web Gallery. Rather than putting the entire trip into one gallery, I should have divided it up into St Andrews-tourist, St Andrews-Golf, London, Worldcon, and Scotland-non-Worldcon. The time it takes to update the entire Gallery when I make changes to just a bit is very long. I think it is examining every single page whether it has new content or not.

I think the next lesson I learn will be that I can’t split an existing gallery in 5-6 smaller ones. I will look into that when the latest changes have finished publishing.

General, Politics

Teaching of Creationism Is Endorsed in New Survey

Teaching of Creationism Is Endorsed in New Survey – New York Times

And we should be teaching Astrology in school because so many Americans read their daily horoscopes in the paper (or online).

What are these people thinking? Science is not based on a belief system. You don’t teach some scientific theory because you believe it to be true. You teach it because you are able to construct a logical thesis based on empirical evidence that has been tested and re-tested and reviewed by the community to reach the conclusions that are reached.

K-12 is not a proving ground for teaching hypotheses. Theories should be taught in K-12, not hypotheses. There is a difference between the two and if you don’t know what it is, look it up.

Why don’t we make π = 3? That will certainly simplify a lot of calculations.

Reviews

Master Mosquiton OVA

AnimeNfo.Com : Anime : Master Mosquiton OVA

I was lucky enough to get both disks of this OVA back-to-back. It is a quirky story about a young girl, searching for immortality, who resurrects a vampire as her slave.

Then she uses the vampire, and his lackeys, to search for the O-Part (Philosopher’s Stone) that will grant her immortality. She doesn’t want to use the vampire’s method for immortality.

She and the gang have many interesting adventures finding the O-Part and, when she has it in hand, she finds that the human race will be destroyed if she doesn’t part with it.

Such a dilemma; to keep the O-part and have youth and beauty forever but lose whatever admiring audience she would have had, or keep the audience and lose the immortality. Decisions, decisions.

The vampire, Mosquiton, is an interesting character. A docile slave most of the time, happy to be cleaning and cooking, he becomes a vicious monster who forgets his slavery when he sucks on the blood of his master. Evidently, the only way to get him off this blood high is to stake him and then resurrect him one more time.

I enjoyed the show quite a bit. A lot of comedy in it; sort of like Lupin crossed with Hellsing. And the ending is decidely weird. (Did I mention they ended up on the Moon in the 1920s)

I will give this a 7 out of ten.

Reviews

The Bushido Blade (1981)

The Bushido Blade (1981)

The background in this movie is that Perry is in Japan trying to get a treaty signed with the Shogun before the Russians show up. The Shogun is going to give the President a gift of a sword, but the sword is stolen by an anti-treaty faction and the Shogun will lose face and not sign the treaty if the sword is not recovered.

The Shogun’s commander sends off an agent to get the sword back and several American sailors follow to assist, very much against the orders that forbid foreigners from travelling in Japan.

Much fighting, heads removed, arms removed, samurai vs rapier fighting; the sword is eventually recovered after much loss and tribulation and it is returned to the signing ceremony. This means the Shogun Commander doesn’t have to commit seppuku to preserve the Shogun’s face and Perry is happy.

This was a joint US-Japanese production and had a good cast, this was Richard Boone’s last role (as Perry). Toshiro Mifune did well as the Shogun’s Commander. Sonny Chiba was the Prince tasked to recover the sword. And I thought Frank Converse did a good job as the American Captain. It had a lot of POTENTIAL.

It just wasn’t very-well written or directed. Three Americans wandering around the Japanese countryside don’t have a whole lot of trouble (some, but not a lot) getting through to their destination. And they keep finding Japanese who speak English. (I suppose you had to do that for the story-line. They didn’t use subtitles.) Interesting scenarios didn’t quite gel into a whole. I will give it a 5 out of 10.

Geek Stuff

Hackers Attack Via Chinese Web Sites

Hackers Attack Via Chinese Web Sites

I really have to wonder who is in charge. Why is the DoD internet access accepting any traffic from a Chinese site, hacker or legit, or a Russian site or a German site or a Nigerian site. It is public knowledge where the adddresses are registered and assigned. .

We know, from the IP address and the address registry, where the message is coming. If there is any sort of question about the access request, it should be denied or ignored.

There is nothing that says a server has to respond to every query it receives and it is perfectly fine for the server to reject requests that are problematic. They could even set up a white list of legitimate servers that won’t be rejected.

There are a lot of options other than letting the hackers in the front door.

Geek Stuff, General, Reviews, travel

Web Gallery

As some may have seen, I have put photos from my recent Scottish Trip on the web using Web Gallery Mate. I have been exploring the various features for creating the Gallery, organizing channels of common subject matter, and trying to provide cryptic descriptive commentary on the individual pictures.

I came back with almost 1000 photos in 3 1/2 weeks. I really need to get a digital camera.

Suffice it to say, I have not finished scanning in all the pictures I took and I am not likely to enter them all into the Gallery and am even less likely to comment on all that are entered. But I hope that a bunch of pictures of the flowers in a Garden don’t need individual commentary, especially since I don’t know what they all are.

One feature I have found is that if you click on a photo in a channel (Like the St Andrews Gardens) the picture opens up in a web page and there are buttons for advancing to the next or previous picture. There is also an up button and if you click on that, it starts a slide show of all the pictures in that channel. Neat. And you can set the time that each picture is displayed.

I still need to work on arranging pictures within a channel to have a flow.

Now I need to go back to my previous travel commentary and link bits to pictures as reference.

General, Reviews, travel

Post-Worldcon Thursday

Thursday, I wanted to go see Venus Rising. It was at the Burrell Collection, in the Glasgow suburbs. To get there I needed to take a bus. The problem was to find out where to catch the bus. So, I decided to go to the central bus Station, Buchanan. To do this I caught a bus on Argyle St and told the bus driver I wanted to go to Buchanan.

Since I wasn’t familiar with the street layout it took me a while to realize that I had traveled farther than I thought appropriate and asked the bus driver where Buchanan was. Turns out I should have gotten off many blocks back, so I got off and walked back. I actually had a downtown Glasgow street map with me, so I had an idea where I was going. After I found the TARDIS, I got there. And got into the wrong information line, the one that wasn’t moving. So I left the line for lunch, got caught unawares by an Asian Bagpipe Band and returned, this time in the right line.

I found out that I had to go to the Central station to catch one of three buses that would take me to the Burrell Collection. Eventually, I found the stop and this time I asked the driver to tell me where to get off. And so we wandered through the Streets of Glasgow looking for the Burrell Collection, not seeing any wooden houses along the way. I think I may have nodded off because a lady was prodding me saying the driver was at my stop.

I alighted from the bus, crossed a busy street and entered Pollok Country Park. It was a shady tree-lined lane that faded into the distance. I started walking down the lane. And walking and walking. After thinking I was about back to the SECC, I saw a sign to the collection and it was just around the corner.

Quite an impressive museum. I got in on one of the guided tours and learned that Burrell liked to collect things. He had a collection of Grecian artifacts, a collection of Roman artifacts, a collection of medieval doorways, a collection of Chinese pottery, a collection of tapestries, a collection of armor, a collection of Whistler, a collection of Renaissance art, a collection of stained glass windows, etc. The man just liked to collect things.

He was a contemporary of Hearst and was often competing for the same artifacts as Hearst. Since Burrell wouldn’t pay more than what he thought was a fair price, Hearst often won the bidding wars. Burrell picked up Hearst’s pieces pretty cheap after Hearst had to liquidate his collections.

Eventually, he willed his collections to Glasgow if they built the right display for them. And the building is magnificent in its own way. The glass walls are right up against the woods on one side. The main floor had most of the collections in rooms with very high ceilings, so high that the second floor balconies overlook the displays. The second floor is where the paintings were collected. It was impressive to look down on the tapestries and the furniture and the other large art works below and get another perspective of them.

Finally, at the end of the tour, we ended up in the “Venus Rising” display. “Venus Rising” is by Titian and is the picture of Venus coming from the sea and wringing her hair. They had collected several other art works from other artists, like Picasso and Degas, that followed a similar theme. Together the pieces were touring the Scottish Museums and they were at the Burrell at this time. A very small, but very impressive show. I thank Ann for mentioning it.

I left the Burrell and thought to look in on the other part of the park, the Pollok House. Unfortunately, it was nearing closing time by the time I got there, I missed the last murder and so decided to walk back to the bus. I discovered at this point that there was a courtesy bus that ran between the front gate, the Collection and the House but it had stopped by this time. I did wander briefly into the Pollok House Gardens and they were incredible. Such structure and organization, such variety; I really wished I had gotten there earlier and had the chance to explore in more detail.

I walked back, past the Highland cattle, down the tree shaded lane and got on a double-decker bus back into the city. For Dinner I went to a nice Thai restaurant around the corner from my lodgings and then went across the street to a bar that had live music coming in as part of the Bagpipe Festival. I thought it was a strange time to have a bagpipe festival, with the Tattoo going on in Edinburgh, but they had it anyway. The music at the pub was non-bagpipe acoustic music.

Then it was off to bed to prepare for the trip home.

fandom, General, golf, science fiction, travel

Post-Worldcon Wednesday

I realized that I still had a day left on my 4-day rail pass and I thought that today I would just ride trains. That was a pretty low energy thing to do. So, I got on at the SECC stop and headed down to Central Station.

At Central I saw that there was a train leaving for Ayr in a few minutes so I went and hopped onto that train. I had been checking some bits out and found that the train to Ayr passed by the Royal Troon and Prestwick golf courses.

It was a pleasant ride with some beautiful scenery. I passed a dog and pony show going on in the Glasgow suburbs. It went by so fast, I didn’t have time for a picture. Past Glasgow, the Irish Sea was not too far from the train tracks and a number of golf courses unfolded in the area between the tracks and the sea. They looked so beautiful and the weather was so pleasant. I wanted to turn around and get my clubs. But, I wasn’t really up for it physically.

So I continued on to Ayr and oohed and aahed at Royal Troon and Prestwick. The trip to Ayr took about an hour and I figured to wander around town for a while and catch a train or two later back to Glasgow. Ayr had some interesting walking sites to visit and a very busy High Street (for a Wednesday Morning, I thought)

I did my walking bit and went back to the train station, boarded the train back to Glasgow and sat back and relaxed. The train wasn’t leaving for a while. Now, in all my travels by train that day, from the SECC to Ayr, no one had come by to look at my ticket. (If they do catch you on the train without a valid ticket, there is a big fine to pay, but I still hadn’t noted the date on my ticket since I was waiting for a conductor with a pen) Eventually, when we passed by Prestwick, the conductor came by and filled in my ticket. I tried to capture a shot of the Dog andPony show on the way back, but I think it was over by then. (I got a picture of the area but the horses were gone. See the Travelling section.)

I was starting to feel better and thought about coming back with the clubs, but I decided to go on to Aberdeen. The train to Edinburgh was about to leave the station as I arrived back from Ayr so I ran over to that train (Remember; Edinburgh trains at Central are a rare species) figuring to catch a train at Waverly to Dundee and Aberdeen.

Alas, it didn’t quite work out that way. I found out that I had just missed the Aberdeen train and that it would be a while before the next one. And then I would only have a short time (20minutes) in Aberdeen before catching the last train back. That didn’t seem to be a good idea and the Dundee connection/timing wasn’t much better, so I decided to stay in Edinburgh.

I had been to the Castle and the Park the last time I was in Edinburgh, 10 years before, so I went in the other direction, looking for the End of the World (or World’s End). I found it on the Royal Mile, went in and had a pint. Then started walking downhill from there. I was snapping pictures of interesting signs and places.

One of the noticeable aspects of Scotland is that the cities and towns are basically grey and dreary. It’s the stone they build everything with. I don’t think I saw a wooden house in any proper city area. There may have been some in the suburbs. But everything was pretty dreary.

So there are bright patches of color that appear everywhere: flowers in windows, doors painted in bright colors, more flowers hanging on hooks or in flower beds. It is noticeable just for the splash of color. This was true in St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Ayr. And visible from the train as we passed the towns.

As I was snapping away, going downhill, I came across a Free Fringe Venue, The Canons’ Gait. They were offering free comedy in the basement bar and I went on into see the show. Turns out it was shows. Every hour or so, a different act would show up and perform. They were funny when I could catch the references. For me it was about 75% of the time.

After a dinner break there was an evening show that brought in 5 performers from around the fringe for a sampling show. I showed up early and saw there was an easy chair up by the stage. I went for the easy chair. I had a feeling I would be setting myself up with that chair so close to the stage and sure enough the MC established my presence and the fact that I was the only American in the crowd. Fortunately, only a couple of the comics had American-related humor and it was all pretty funny.

By the time that show was over it was time to head on back to Glasgow so I wandered around looking for the train station. I found it and decided to wait for a Glasgow Central train. I made the mistake of not checking carefully and found out, not too much later, that it was local that stopped at every stop along the way. By the time I got to Glasgow, the train station was locked up and the last train to SECC was long gone. So I walked on home.

fandom, General, science fiction, travel

Post-Worldcon Tuesday

Ann trundled off to the airport to catch her flight.

I wasn’t feeling much better and decided to keep a low energy day. I eventually got moving and headed over to the Science Center, on the other side of the Clyde from the SECC and Moat House. I popped in on the SECC and saw the last remnants of the Teardown crew shutting up the con.

The Science center had a lot of neat toys to play with, demonstrating: human kinetics, optical illusions, electro-magnetics, the power of air, motion and time. There was some discussion of space exploration and what is going on in the field. Over all, a great place to spend the afternoon. I didn’t visit the planetarium as it wasn’t open.(I think)

And they had an IMAX theater showing “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and I went to see it.

Very Good movie. I thought Deep Roy as the Oompa-Lumpas was fantastic. A bit darker than the ‘Willie Wonka’ movie. I thought the opening was a bit like “Batman.” I liked how they extended the story line about Willie Wonka and his dysfunctional family. I suppose I shall have to read the book and find out what really happened.

After the movie I found the Glasgow Tower. I had been passing this tower all week on the other side of the river and wondered what is was. Turns out it is the tallest free standing tower in Scotland , 400 feet. And it can rotate 360 degrees on a 65 cm ball bearing, which is why it always looked subtly different every time saw it.

I was inside while it was rotated to face into the wind. It is shaped like an airfoil so they like to move it in increments to put the least stress on the tower. But they could move it in complete revolutions if they wanted to.

I took the ride to the top and got a bird’s eye view of the surrounding city. They also included an historical retrospective of Glasgow over the past several centuries. I thought it was a bit tedious, myself. Glasgow helped conquer germs and promoted clean water, as well as build a lot of ships and engines and pollute the environment.

From here it was back to CairnCross and a nearby Moroccan restaurant for dinner. I ran across a few fans as I passed by the Moat House but nothing was planned.

I ordered a lamb dish at the Moroccan restaurant and have now decided that I don’t really care for couscous. It reminds me too much of grits or something similar. But the meat was tasty.