Category: Daily Journal

Winter has most assuredly arrived. I took a halftime opportunity to clear the driveway when we hit around 3″ of snowfall. We’re projected for 7-8 overall by the end of this storm, so I’ll be back out there later this evening. Winter was late, it was not absent.

Inputs

1: Caught up on some of the insanity of our political system via the latest ep of Pablo Torre Finds Out, in which we learn about Ron DeSantis having aimed his petty, vengeful eye on the New College of Florida, where he threw out the members of the board of trustees, replaced them with right-wing sycophants, and destroyed the institution’s mission out of spite. Because it’s PTFO, the eye through which we see this effort is the lens of sport, where the new president of the university created a mission for the admissions department to replace their historically academically minded student body with as many athletes they could possibly jam into the school, which had previously had zero sports programs on campus.

Ron DeSantis is a small man, in both body and spirit, and while some see him as some alternative to the nightmare, he is merely a different shade of asshole. Florida is worse off for him, and America would be worse off with him in wider power.

2: Bit of a different video than the previous, wherein someone went through the leaked source code for Grand Theft Auto V and found the most amusing of the comments left in the code base at launch. It’s gratifying to know I’m not the only one commenting my code with this level of honesty.

3: DARPA is building a prototype of an airplane with no externally moving control surfaces (no mechanical ailerons, elevators, flaps, etc), the X-65. This harkens back to the bit from a week ago in the Journal, about the mankind’s pursuit of flight and the Wright Brothers’ development of their flyer. One of their early prototypes didn’t use any flaps or moving controls, but instead altered directions by bending the fuselage through the weight of the rolling pilot pulling on control ropes and twisting the airframe into a new shape to turn. The DARPA project will be a bit more advanced, “using jets of air from a pressurized source to shape the flow of air over the aircraft surface, with AFC effectors on several surfaces to control the plane’s roll, pitch, and yaw.” I’m fascinated by the approach, if quite curious about a number of factors inherent to the design¹What is the process for holding this pressurized air and delivering it to the surfaces? How is it regenerated during flight? If it isn’t, uh, what happens when it runs out? What do the nominal values for the airframe look like? Is it naturally a lifting body (and what does that mean for takeoffs and landings) or naturally not (and, then, same question) and so on and so on., and will keep an eye out for more information in the future post-testing.

Projects In Progress

Some more educational time and tinkering today, with the falling snow as a backdrop for staying indoors and staring at the laptop screen.

Notes:

• 1
  What is the process for holding this pressurized air and delivering it to the surfaces? How is it regenerated during flight? If it isn’t, uh, what happens when it runs out? What do the nominal values for the airframe look like? Is it naturally a lifting body (and what does that mean for takeoffs and landings) or naturally not (and, then, same question) and so on and so on.

The NFL regular season has come to a close, the college football season has reached its pinnacle, and some time tonight, the first real snow of the Winter is bearing down on my home, with a projected 8″ or so to fall over the next day and change. It’s been a weird one, but it finally feels like the season has arrived, cold and dark and lingering at the ends of things.

This time of year, it’s easy to see why many cultures did not label these days into months, merely allow them to coalesce, to freeze and harden into one long season between the days worth marking, where time stands still in the air, in the creek and crack, in the huddle for warmth, for life, awaiting to bloom again into some day beyond vision, but bound in expectation. Dreamed of, in the dancing flicker of the briefest of days.

Inputs

1: Watched the final Sunday of the NFL regular season, which was a spectacle of teams desperate to win and make the playoffs, teams desperate to get through one final game without serious injury and resting any player too valuable to see the field, players desperate to make incentive bonuses for things like sacks, yards, receptions, starts, and etc, and fanbases desperate for their head coaches to no longer be employed. Lot goin’ on!

My Bucs snuck their way into a division title for a third straight year, which used to be a seeming impossibility in the NFC South, and this with the consummate journeyman Baker Mayfield at the tiller of the pirate ship.¹I still think Progressive is massively missing out by not shooting new commercials with him living in Raymond James Stadium like they did with him in Cleveland. I’m not at all expecting the team to make it out of the first round, with the high-powered Eagles on their way down to Tampa next weekend, but it is gratifying to see a team not lay down when they had every right to throw in the towel after the post-Super Bowl era ground into mediocrity. Instead, a 9-8 Buccaneers get some commemorative hats and t-shirts and a chance to surprise. Fire the cannons!

2: Dug into the deep history nerdiness with the latest from A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, on the evolution of the Roman sword throughout history. The swords of Rome were a pivot from the Grecian focus on spears and hoplite/phalanx tactics to an army using their side armament as their main weapon of battle.

Bret Devereaux does his typically great job, summarizing the various historical work of dozens of scholars including his own, to provide an overview of the shift in the form, and the influence of desired function on that form, as Romans encountered peoples of what is now eastern France, copied those designs, and evolved the design based on the foes they, themselves, were facing.

I wouldn’t call it the best on-ramp to Bret’s work, but it is a good example of both the depth of his scholarship and the way by which he shares that scholarship with an interested, non-academic populace. If you are looking for a good on-ramp, his various series on the historical accuracy of various pop cultural series make a great read and an informative one.

3: Posted up to watch Michigan and Washington face off for the last championship before the NCAA turns professional, forces a full bracket upon its conclusion, and heralds an official reckoning in a space once reserved for weighted opinions and barrels of ink to decide a championship.

Accompanied the event with another dose of bean dip. In case you’d like to try for yourself:

• 1 can of evaporated (NOT sweetened, condensed) milk (12oz)
• 1/2 lb white American cheese (Probably easiest to find in prepackaged slices). American cheese contains an ingredient that causes cheese to melt into a dippable liquid rather than a gritty suspension. I think technically you could get away with something else and calcium citrate or whatever, but I’m not here to instruct on gastronomy, just passing along the recipe for my dip.
• 1/2 lb pepper jack (or Monterey jack or whatever, I’m not your mother)
• 2-3 diced jalepenos
• 1 can refried beans
• Some spices. I roll with salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder, coriander, onion powder, garlic powder. I don’t go real hard with any of them, it’s more of a spice to taste situation.

Melt the cheeses and milk on medium-low or so, stirring constantly (to prevent any burning against the pot bottom), then mix in the jalepenos, then the refried beans, then the spices. Don’t stick it on the stove and forget about it, I’m not coming over to scrape the bottom of your pots clean.

Projects In Progress

Webapp: stood up a test backend in Vapor to poke around at, mostly because I’m A) curious and B) have more recent experience with Swift than any other programming language, so I figure I should see what it has to offer. Overall, I don’t need it to do a lot. I need to be able to manage users, access levels, and an ability to generate specific accounts, then use the settings from those accounts to programmatically stand up webpages with similar frameworks and semi-unique text, graphics, and colors.

Of course, to accomplish this, I’m not remotely confident in how best to approach the problem, and am feeling my way through it like a blind man who’s heard the suggestion of where the doorways might be, and that there are probably tables and chairs to watch out for. It’s a stumble, and I’m not envying my shins, but I’m taking steps in a direction I believe to be forward.

Notes:

• 1
  I still think Progressive is massively missing out by not shooting new commercials with him living in Raymond James Stadium like they did with him in Cleveland.

Well look at that, we’ve reached the end of the first week of the new year. How’d it go? Did you allow yourself the space to reset? To admit the new? To permit the old to pass on from you? To set aside what no longer serves you and to bring upon you that which does?

It’s ok, I didn’t do great at that either. But the year is young, and we continue, and every day is an opportunity. Forgive yourself. Love yourself. Care enough for yourself to try again tomorrow, and each day to come. There is no destination, merely a direction and time.

Love y’all, talk to you next week.

Inputs

1: I mean, who didn’t watch Katt Williams go the hell off on the state of everything, past, present, and future?

This year of our lord 2024 got off on absolute fire, and I can only see it continuing right through the big ball dropping a year from now. May we all keep our receipts and speak our truths as they need to be spoken. I don’t know that I could have that gumption, but I admire those that can, and do, and speak their facts when they must needs be spoken.

2: Spent today reading a ton in a class on classroom management. Some of it echoes my experiences in school, and it’s remarkable the examples I can still remember that were the opposite of the stated advice and how those progressed.

Additionally, much of the advice for teachers is the same sort of advice I’ve given and taught to managers. Engaging without coercion or emotion, setting clear expectations that are reinforced through gaining agreement and timely repetition, acting with patience and kindness and empathy. It turns out people, regardless of age, are people, and react the same ways to the same stimuli.

This is not an endorsement of treating adults like children, more one of considering treating children a little more like adults, in respecting their autonomy and not infantilizing them just because they’re not far removed from infancy.

3: This story from 404 Media, on the Polish hacking trio who found DRM in Polish trains that was intentionally making them non-functional when, for instance, GPS found them in independent repair yards, or found them immobile for more that 21 days, or (for some weird reason) on December 21st. More locally, we’ve seen stories about John Deere bricking tractors when they’re found to be repaired with third-party equipment or by non-John Deere technicians, locking farmers into more expensive proprietary repair options on what is already equipment that costs thousands and thousands of dollars to own.

DRM has been a menace since the dawn of digital media and networked technology. It enforces unethical control schemes on the ownership of purchased products and locks users into relationships far beyond a purchasing agreement, all for their detriment and the company’s continued benefit. That we continue to allow such agreements, as well as those that remove outright ownership and turn it into a complicated licensing scheme, is an ongoing point of shame among our legal establishment and corporate community. One I don’t expect to change any time soon absent significant statutory force.

Projects In Progress

Spent most of today in a self-paced class. It’s been a while since I’ve done much structured learning. Bit of an adventure so far, mostly with the quality of my long-form notetaking.