Checksum Arcanius

I recently bought the DVD of Primer, probably the most thought-provoking movie I have ever watched in the Sci-Fi genre, and a worty recipient of the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury award in 2004. I have already seen it twice – first, at the Seattle International Film Festival last year, and then at a Seattle screening several months later. The first time, I made it through about the first third of the movie before becoming completely lost. Though lost, the rest was still fascinating. The second time, I fared better, making it through the second third of the movie before I was overtaken. Last night, the third time through, and aided by PowerDVD’s ability to rewind and replay important conversations or plot developments, I for the first time felt that I understood most of the movie. Certainly, I will need a few more tries at it before I really figure out the subtleties of the Primer universe, but I finally understood (I think) the idea behind the “failsafe machine,” and who the narrator really was – important details like this that had eluded me before. My next project in this regard is to watch the movie with the director’s commentary to learn what I can from that. Then maybe the cast commentary, though I’m doubtful if that will be helpful. Then maybe, I will finally get it. Or maybe not, and thats what makes it so much fun.

With the cancellation of my English class Tuesday, I found myself in a cafe on Capitol Hill with Dan at a SeattleWireless Hack Night. Not much hacking was going on that night, but after Dan and I got our SIFF choices figured out, Matt Westervelt seemed to be in the political discussion mood, and as the secretary of the Libertarian Party of King County, who was I to pass up such an opportunity? I come from an anti-government-power point of view, and Matt was coming from more of an anti-corporate-power point of view. The discussion was good, even tempered, and thought-provoking. In the end, I still think that most corporations, even global mega-conglomerates, have very little power outside of their capture of government regulation and manipulations of an over-reaching political system. Nevertheless, upon reflection, I think that the fundamental point is this: concentrations of power are dangerous, whether they be corporate or political. That two thinkers with different fundamental presumptions and world views can come to more or less the same conclusion on this topic is a testament to the importance of that fact. So I will state it again:

Concentrations of power are dangerous, whether they be corporate or political.

That last post was number 300. Sure, there are a few holes along the way, from incomplete and/or deleted posts, but its just like Firefox turning 50, where I am sure there were some repeat downloads in there (heck, I am responsible for a few repeats myself).

I celebrated the occasion by turning power off to sf2, the server responsible for SilverFir.net, off twice without warning. Actually, that had more to do with a 15-amp circuit breaker, lots of power supplies in my room, and a strange same-circuit connection to a certain socket in the laundry-room-turned-kitchen-during-remodel, where the Microwave sent the whole kit and kaboodle over the edge.

Nevertheless, its back up and seems to be healthy, and is now connected to a UPS that I picked up from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. Long story. Regardless, it power loss should be less common now.

Recent events

85/100 on Circuits test… Not exactly what I would have hoped for, but better than I was expecting after I screwed up the op-amps. I’ve gotta kick it into a higher gear here soon, if I want to pull out of the mid-B rut that I’ve gotten myself into in the class.

Started building an ROV with Dan Marsh and the TRC. For more, see Dan’s post about it.

Collecting parts for a future SRS Robo-Magellan entry. Recently picked up a GPS reciever module (thanks to Dan for the tip). The module requires an active antenna, so I went looking for a good one, and settled on the Mighty Mouse II, a high gain, low power active antenna that rocks my socks. An especially big shout out to Tri-M Systems for working with me to help get the unit from Canada to the TRC quickly and efficiently. Go buy their stuff, yo!

Saw Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy twice in two days. Once was plenty, but a combination of circumstance and commitment led me to watching it a second time. Suffice it to say that it’s not one of those movies that gets better the second time through. I didn’t hate it the first time, though, and the second time, though not anywhere near wonderful, was not bad, and the company (Shai and Beth) was good too.

Installed a 9-in-4 card reader in my desktop computer. The unit was recieved from Dan along with a wired USB optical mouse in exchange for a Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse Explorer that wasn’t well-suited for gaming due to miniscule but noticable start-up lag times, and wasn’t well suited for a laptop due to its battery requirements. I think the trade was mutually beneficial. Everyone shoudl trade more, its good for everyone involved (but if I went too much further down this line of thought, I’d have to add this to the political category as well).

Began helping Erik set up his new dedicated server. Debian Linux is a good distro. It should go back to #1, yo. Silverfir.net, and perhaps TitanRobotics.net, will host some of their websites on the new server as well. The server is from ServerPronto, and its a good price for a dedicated server with the specs it boasts. We’ll see how it holds up once Erik’s proxy servers get going.

Played Ultimate Frisbee at the UW’s intramural field 1 on Friday with the team of Bobby, Jake, Joe, and others. We lost by a point to an evenly matched team, which seems to be the story of my ultimate life. It was good fun, however. Afterwards, we hung out at the UW until seeing Hitchhiker’s for the first time.

Went to a doctor Thursday morning. I have low blood pressure. Nothing too serious, though, apparently. I can eat more salt. Is this a good thing?

Talked to Scott about the upcoming bike trip.

When I blog, my life generally seems to be going better. While it may seem that this phenomenon should be viewed as an effect, I believe there is a strong case to say that is also a cause. When I blog, I get to reflect on recent events, write about them, and generally release. Since I am a rarely emotional person, this is one of the few outlets I have for the stresses and strains of everyday life. Indeed, for me, blogging is therapeutic. The publicity of this forum encourages me to persist in its upkeep, but is not the reason the forum exists. I enjoy the comments readers post, but they are not necessary to the purpose of this site. In short, this is an immensely selfish endeavor, though I am also glad for any pleasure of knowledge others recieve from reading it.

There is a very nifty little utility for *nix that I started using again recently. So that I don’t have to relearn it each time, I thought I would write about it. That way, I’ll be more likely to remember, and if I forget, I’ll have myself a handy little reference here at Checksum Arcanius. A wonderful little side effect of all of this is that you get to learn about GNU Screen.

GNU screen is a great utility for those of us whose entire *nix existance is via SSH. Lets say you have a program that you want to persist between sessions of SSH, but its not a daemon and you want full access to the user interface, so detaching it via the & command line operator isn’t a good solution. What do you do? You use Screen. I have a program that fits this description exactly. Naim, an ncurses-based AIM and ICQ client. After installing, to start a Screen session, simply type “screen”. You will be presented with a new command prompt, and apparently nothing changed. But in reality, now you are in screen, and your life just got better. Now start the program you want to persist between SSH sessions. For me, I type “naim”, and Naim loads. I chat a little here and there, then I decide its time to change computers, or reboot, or whatever. But I want to stay online. So I hit “Ctrl-a” (signalling a command to Screen) then “d” for detach. I go back to the original command line. I then exit, or do whatever else I want. Fast forward to my next log in. I SSH back into the machine, and I want to resume where I left off. So I type “screen -r”, and voila, Naim – pristine and just as it was before – appears before my eyes. No one even has to know I was gone. How wonderful is that? It is even possible to have multiple screens running, and switch between them, but I’m not that advanced yet. But hopefully this little tidbit hasa whetted your appitite to try out the wonderful little utility known as Screen.