May 2012
2 posts
2 tags
It was the Maryland Science Center
This morning, ChaseKBH asked me about the bugs at the center. “Not the Kennedy Center, but the other center.” At this point, I thought if there are only two, I am obviously not taking him to enough centers. This after he used his play phone to call the Kennedy Center to page his stuffed bear in the audience the day before.
6 tags
Kick Starting a Baby
Before ChaseKBH was born, I was reading an article in the New York Times Magazine about Freeman Dyson and when I relayed part to Nina, we discovered ChaseKBH would kick every time I said “Freeman Dyson.” He kicked if she said his name. And this worked for a few months until he was born.
With BeaABH, we discovered a similar kickphrase. Every time I mentioned the Bank of England,...
July 2011
2 posts
2 tags
The most important thing to learn in statistics is there are no yes/no answers. Only maybes, to some degree.
4 tags
A RESTful interface for MD5 hashes
Or not quite. I had a need to generate MD5 hashes inside a Google Spreadsheet, but Google does not include an MD5 function (and neither does OpenOffice.org). Google does, however, support a function to get XML data and process it with Xpath. So assuming someone had created an MD5 generator on the web that was accessible via XML, I set to work. It turns out, nobody has ever needed this before. ...
March 2011
7 posts
2 tags
The MacOS X open(1) Command
MacOS X provides a commnad line tool to open applications and files. MacOS X applications are actually collections of files residing within one directory with a name ending in .app. I usually use open at the command line to start most applications, leaving the Dock clear of applications not running:
howardjp@thermopylae:~$ open /Applications/Safari.app
is enough to start Safari and if the...
2 tags
NYT Paywall Plans
John Gruber:
If you want to pay the New York Times to read the news using both their iPhone and
iPad apps, in theory, you should be their ideal customer — you’re willing to pay, and you’re looking forward, technology-wise. But you’ll save money by getting several pounds of paper that you don’t want delivered to your doorstep every week.
Put a vacation stop on the order and donate the...
3 tags
Is this really an excuse to use an interrobang‽
ChaseKBH: Moon...BOOM!
Me: Moon boom‽ What are you, some kind of Bond villain‽
1 tag
3 tags
pbcopy and pbpaste
The Unix command line has historically interacted poorly with the numerous graphical interfaces that have been stacked upon it. One key area lacking support is the clipboard. MacOS X brings two utilities to close that gap, pbcopy and pbpaste. These commands together provide complete access to the MacOS X clipboard (which Apple calls the pasteboard, explaining the names of these two commands).
...
Sick Day for ChaseKBH: Lunch Time
Me: Lunch!
ChaseKBH: Yeah!
Me: With lemon!
ChaseKBH: Yeah!
Me: And pepper!
ChaseKBH: Yeah!
Me: And garlic!
ChaseKBH: Yeah!
Me: And pasta!
ChaseKBH: Yeah!
Me: And shrimp!
ChaseKBH: No, no, no!
1 tag
Math Prof Clobbers Mascot →
According to a witness quoted on the Web sites of The Minnesota Daily and Chicago Breaking Sports, Douglas P. Dokken, a math professor at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minn., was watching a gymnastics competition when Goldy tapped him on the shoulder and mussed his hair. Mr. Dokken, who got his Ph.D. at Minnesota, apparently tried to ignore the attention, but the oversized rodent...
February 2011
2 posts
4 tags
OPM DC Operating Status via Twitter →
A few months ago, I created a Twitter to automatically announce the DC operating status maintained by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). This status announces whether or not the Federal government is open or restricted during an emergency. It is most often used to announce snow-related closings and some non-governmental employers rely on this for notifying their employees of...
4 tags
“[T]unnels are not photogenic; they strike no heroic silhouette against the sky,...”
– Thomas J. Campanella, The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolutions and What it Means for the World, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 77.
January 2011
1 post
5 tags
CALUG Talk on Systems Management with Git
If you find yourself in the Columbia, MD area looking for something to do from 6:30-9pm (January 12th) join the Columbia Area Linux Users Group for a great talk from James P. Howard II and Peter M. Van Buren. They will be presenting their talk “Using DVCS Frameworks for Homogeneous Systems Management” to us.
December 2010
1 post
OpenPGP Bot on Twitter
openpgpblog:
For reasons I cannot entirely justify, I created a new Twitter account, @OpenPGPBot, that automatically retweets anything posted involving PGP, GnuPGP, or OpenPGP. Please follow if it’s your thing.
November 2010
1 post
2 tags
Don't Irritate the Talent
I get something like 7-12 contacts from recruiters every week and about half of those are cold calls direct to my cell phone. I spend a lot of time responding to job inquiries. I welcome the opportunity to discuss a new option, but most recruiters seem to go out of their way to turn me off to their services. Here’s some advice:
If you found my profile on Monster, CareerBuilder, or some other...
October 2010
2 posts
5 tags
Culture and Transportation
Tonight, Dave Bittner hosted “Conversation on Art and Culture in Downtown Columbia” for the Columbia Cultural Plan Advisory Committee. The event was a large-scale coordinated focus group to ask what cultural resources Columbians need and want.
A prevailing theme that came out of each discussion was the need for good transportation to and from the cultural attractions. Seniors were...
4 tags
Irresponsible Fearmongering
There’s been some irresponsible fearmongering on the opinion pages of the FT where Stephen Lange Ranzini wrote:
According to credible news reports, the large blackout in 2003 that
shut down the north east and midwest of the US as far as Michigan
was caused by a cyber hack.
In response, I’ve written the following to the editor of the FT:
Sir, it is astounding the FT...
June 2010
4 posts
2 tags
FreeGrep Now Standard in Minix
I received an email today saying FreeGrep is now standard in Minix 3!
2 tags
FreeGrep v1.1
Proving no good deed goes unpunished, I left a small bug in FreeGrep v1.0. It has been fixed and updated to 1.1 and also submitted for update in the FreeBSD Ports Tree.
4 tags
FreeGrep Ported to Minix and New Release
This morning, GitHub user gautambt ported FreeGrep to Minix 3. While the build system leaves something to be desired, I remain resolute in my desire to never learn Autoconf. I have pulled gautambt’s changes into the master branch on GitHub.
In related news, I figured that after 12 years, it was time to let this thing graduate. So I cut a new release and have blessed it as version 1.0. ...
3 tags
New FTP Site →
I have set up a small FTP site for numerous small programs I either wrote or was once responsible for. Or still am.
May 2010
2 posts
6 tags
Waterfall Charts in R
It is often hard to wrap your head around the finances of organizations and the unusual accounting rules of public organizations make that even more difficult. When I read The McKinsey Way several years ago, I saw the value in using waterfall charts to analyze and understand the finances of public organizations. So I created functions for plotting waterfall charts using both traditional and grid...
3 tags
Minimal: Simplify: Tips for a minimal wallet →
This post will be short since there’s only one way to simplify your wallet: Get a smaller wallet.
Here you have some samples:
Eagle Creek Slim Wallet (my fav, it’s the one I use)
Slim Slimmy
Ultra Thin Card case
Once you have a smaller wallet, then:
Bring
Your picture ID
One…
April 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Shell Script for Remember the Milk
A couple of weeks ago, the Remember the Milk blog posted about adding tasks at the command line. A simple way to handle task generation, but a bit too complex for even your average Unix hacker. This script makes it easy and gives you an option to add a note! Just set RTMADDR and PROG to be your Remember the Milk email address and your local script name,...
4 tags
Review of the CA's Business Plan
The CA’s Financial Advisory Committee has completed it’s requested review of the CA’s proposed business plan.
Columbia Association - Review of the Business Plan
March 2010
2 posts
4 tags
Review of the Columbia Association's Fiscal...
Review of the Columbia Association’s Fiscal Targets
2 tags
Bad Math from Wow Containers
I just saw an advertisement for something called Wow Containers which allows the tops and bottoms of containers to be interchangeable with each other. So far, this seems sensible. Then the commercial says, “with four different sizes, the possibilities are endless.” And by endless, they mean sixteen. You can see the commercial at the link above.
February 2010
1 post
5 tags
Working with Mediawiki
Working with Mediawiki
Above are the slides/handout from a short course I prepared in 2008 called “Working with Mediawiki.” The slides give a very brief overview of Mediawiki then gives an overview of the Mediawiki syntax.
January 2010
5 posts
7 tags
PWCrypt is Now at Bitbucket
As part of my plan to rescue data from old CVS repositories, PWCrypt is now available at Bitbucket. PWCrypt provides command line access to the Unix crypt library function.
This program and an accompanying article were written in response to a problem I had in 1999 with Netscape Enterprise Server. After taking over administration of a Windows NT-based Netscape server, I discovered I did not...
3 tags
Policy Entrepreneurship at the Dorr Foundation
In 2008, I gave this presentation to the University of Baltimore course on nonprofit management about how the Dorr Foundation’s research led to the outside lines on highways in the United States.
2 tags
Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous’s ass « PEG on... →
chrisbusse:
mirza:
The Short answer: Design.
I also think Tumblr is a more fluid experience — not sure I can describe it beyond that, but it just feels so easy. That might relate back to “Design” though.
It’s more fluid, but it’s more than that. Compare Tumblr to Wordpress or Blogger to really understand it.
1 tag
Dennis Lane's 1,000th Blog Post →
I want to say congratulations to Mr. Lane on his 1000th post. He may be ambivalent, but he is Howard County’s most consistent blogger and you have to admire that.
3 tags
Privatizing BWI →
Dennis Lane blogs about the possible privatization of BWI airport and suggests this doesn’t make sense since the airport generates positive revenue for the State of Maryland. This isn’t quite true.
The Maryland Aviation Commission reports revenue and expenses for FY2008 and FY2007 on their website. Generally, airport revenue and expenses are attributed to the Transportation Trust...
December 2009
3 posts
6 tags
Why I am howardjp
A few weeks ago, someone asked on Facebook why my username is howardjp. Off to the left on this blog, you will see links to my accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub, and Twitter. All of them use the username “howardjp.” Also, my Google account is “howardjp.” And this is on my Mac:
howardjp@thermopylae:~$ whoami howardjp howardjp@thermopylae:~$
And here is my personal...
7 tags
Source Code for LX, a Link Shortener
Last August, I began work on a link shortening service as a me-too kind of project. In my case, I wanted to provide custom domains, so that, for instance, The Washington Post could be wp.ly. However, I had been displeased in the user interface I had created and had not taken it live.
On Monday, the jig was up when both Google and Facebook pushed their own link shorteners into the arena. ...
6 tags
More Old Code at GitHub
I have recovered from an old Iomega Zip disk a few more programs I wrote in the 1997-1998 time frame which may be of some interest:
daemon Daemon was originally written for FreeBSD to use the 4.4BSD library function, daemon(3) to launch a command after disassociating itself from the controlling TTY. I originally saw such an application on M-Net which ran BSD/OS 3.1 at the time. The source was...
1 tag
My Geek Code
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCM/M/SS d++ s:+ a C++++$ UBLS*++++$ P--- L+$ E$ W+++@ N++ o+++ K w++$ O M++ V PS+++ PE+++ Y+$ PGP+++$ t+++ !5 !X !R tv b++++ DI++ D++ G+ e+++$>++++ h---- r+++ y++++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
November 2009
2 posts
7 tags
FreeGrep is now at GitHub
I have been learning to use Git, the distributed version control system. I am more than a bit familiar with both CVS and Subversion, and finding Git to be interesting and capable of some incredible feats of source management. But when working with new tools, it is often easier to find non-trivial examples upon which to experiment. This brings us to FreeGrep.
Back in July of 1999, I was between...
October 2009
3 posts
1 tag
Two Parables of a Twenty Dollar Bill
There are two important stories about a twenty dollar bill worth telling. The first is best told by Bardach:
Two friends are walking down the street when one stops to pick something up. “What about that—a twenty-dollar bill!” he says. “Couldn’t be,” says the economist. “If it were, somebody would have picked it up already.”
Source: Eugene Bardach,...
2 tags
Financial Advisory Committee Meeting Tonight
The Financial Advisory Committee will meet tonight at the Columbia Association’s maintenance facility just off Snowden River Parkway.
An Inaugural Post →
openpgpblog:
This is a new blog dedicated to OpenPGP and related topics. OpenPGP, itself, is a standard for encrypting and signing digital data. Some of the related issues might include identity management, X.509, and even social media.
I started this because so much of the material surrounding OpenPGP is so poorly documented. While several books exist, they do not provide much insight into...
September 2009
1 post
4 tags
The Financial Advisory Committee has Recommenced
Last night, the Columbia Association’s Financial Advisory Committee held its first meeting of the term and we introduced three new members. Those members have a diverse background and strenghen our expertise in financial analysis.
This year, the Financial Advisory Committee will be reviewing two key questions for the Columbia Association’s Board of Directors. The first is recommend...
August 2009
3 posts
3 tags
The Canterbury Twitter →
Well, I have now completely tweeted The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. Actually, it wrapped itself up last week. Who has a suggestion on what may be tweeted next?
2 tags
2 tags
How Chase Got His Name
Nina and I discussed Chase’s name for months. I wanted to name him Alexander, for Alexander Hamilton, who was the first Secretary of the Treasury. Nina wanted to name him Marshall, for John Marshall, John Marshall Harlan, John Marshall Harlan II, and Thurgood Marshall. This led to a several week stalemate.
One day, Nina called me and suggested Chase in honor of Samuel Chase and Salmon P....
July 2009
4 posts
4 tags
2 tags
Parlez-vous anglais?
While playing Catchphrase with Nina and Caitie...
Nina: You go there to get money when visiting a different country.
Me: Bureau de change.
Nina: Right, but in English.
Me: I don't know what it is in English!
2 tags
The MTA and Underprovision of Services
As everyone who reads my Twitter knows, I ride the Maryland Transit Administration’s 995 page back and forth from Columbia to DC four days a week. This morning, the bus left Brokenland Park and Ride at capacity…and four people waiting for the next bus. This is pretty good since over the past two weeks, we’ve left behind between eight and 21! And this is a week with many on...
3 tags
The Palin Resignation
I watched Donna Brazile on CNN Friday talk about how Palin’s resignation is the best thing she can do to prepare for a 2012 presidential campaign. This is, of course, completely false. But Brazile has to say it. Every Democrat within 500 miles of the Washington Monument gives an extra prayer for Palin every night. They know she is so stupid, Obama can beat her senseless with one diploma...