The Real Cambridge is quite a lot different from the US Cambridge. There are vast stretches of green grass everywhere. People drive little brightly-coloured Volkswagons on the wrong side of the street, and in some places one can be walking down the middle of the street and not realize that vehicle traffic can go there too until a car creeps up behind you, trying to get through. Everywhere that’s not explicitly marked “no cycles” (the colleges, historic important buildings, etc.) features dozens of locked up, often step over-framed commuter bikes, decorated with panniers and front baskets. I still find it vaguely nerve-wracking being in a British vehicle, since I’m always expecting cars traveling in the opposite direction to come wheeling towards me. But I have yet to step off the curb and almost get hit by a double-decker bus because I looked in the wrong direction before starting across. The Cam River is frankly quite puny. Walking alongside it you can witness such events as crew boats nearly crashing into tour boats, and apparently a sort of crew racing called “knocking” is often used because of the river’s narrowness. It’s also not very deep, as can be proven by the periodic punt hires along its shores. And here punting is not to procrastinate (very much an MIT-ism) but to propel a punt , which is a flat-bottomed boat with square ends, by pushing a pole against the bottom of the river. It’s difficult to go six hours without being offered a cup of tea, especially if one is visiting many different people. And I have no idea how people can manage to get drunk off of beer, because a pint is quite enough to fill my stomach and leave no room left for more. So much liquid! And the prices of everything here are just about the same as in the US–except in pounds sterling, not dollars. Which means things really cost twice as much. But since the only things I really need to buy are food, drink, and miscellaneous (like anti-death-by-hay-fever-histamine), things will work out alright. Things have been awesome so far, and the local free software-Debian-Ubuntu-GNOME crowd has made me feel right at home. Maybe someday I will actually swap Cambridges for a while. I’ve gotten to see a bit of Cambridge University here too. Since Hanna’s (really awesome) dad is a fellow of King’s College, we got to go in and look around even though it’s exam season and the general public isn’t allowed in — there’s always a person in funny academic robes standing at the gate and shooing away tourists. Right through the gates there is a large, pristine mowed lawn. It’s in such a condition because no one is allowed to walk on it — unless they’re a fellow of the college. Flaunt that. Her dad also supervises the Cambridge end of CME, so we crashed an end-of-the-year garden party for that this past afternoon. And Saturday it’s off to Scotland, which should be just as awesome! And with more people and more Debian! I’m excited.

Via Jason, my brilliant former Constitutional Law professor Wendy Parmet weighs in on the XDR-TB scare. Unlike most coverage, Professor Parmet brings out the big picture of how the incident fits into a larger flawed public health policy:

…It is trite but true that in America we admire individual self-sufficiency and rugged individualism. Not only do we admire this taking care of number 1 attitude, but public health has encouraged it. Over the last several decades, public health has emphasized the role that individuals can and should play in determining their own health. Indeed, every day of week, we are bombarded with messages about how we can do this or that to take care of ourselves. Sometimes the message extends to what we can do for our families. Seldom are we told what or how we can do for unnamed others. Even infectious disease policies perpetuate this myth of self-control. We are told to vaccinate our children to protect them. We are told to help ourselves by getting a flu shot. And the federal government provides us with information about how we should prepare to help ourselves and our family in the event of an influenza pandemic. This privatization of infectious disease control is even evident in the U.S. approach to quarantine. During the SARS epidemic, governments in Canada and in Asia quickly realized that quarantines would not be effective without income protection. So laws were passed to assure that people would receive compensation while under quarantine. In the United States, in contrast, despite all the efforts that have been made at public health preparedness and public health law modernization, income replacement remains off the table (the Family and Medical Leave Act only guarantees unpaid leaves for some ill employees). Perhaps even more astonishingly, in its proposed quarantine regulations, the CDC failed to ensure that it would provide all necessary health care to those it quarantined. …

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Now that we’ve settled into our new apartment in Dublin, the ADSL has been connected and I’m back on the net! Obviously I’ve had Internet access at work during this time, but there has been so much new information to take in that I haven’t really had time to do any Debian or WLUG work. I’m still waiting for the shipping company to deliver my computers, so it will be another week or two before I have a development environment that can build and test package. Once that’s setup again I have updates queued for the following:

• PHPwiki - Upgrade to 1.3.13p1
• libtrace - Upgrade to 3.0.2

Unfortunately I’m not going to make it to Debconf this year, despite being the closest geographically that I’ve ever been.

Are you having trouble with your health insurance? Are they stalling on paying a bill? Denying a claim? Not telling you what the heck is going on?? Well you can and should take action to eliminate some of the mystery and move forward, and possibly win fight against the health insurance company. Thanks to my unpleasant ordeals with BCBS of NJ, I have compiled some handy resources and tips to get you started. Good luck and I welcome any other tips that you think should be here. Please email them to me at biella(at)gmail(dot)com Can’t get a straight answer when dealing with health insurance representatives on the phone? Are different representatives providing different and contradictory information? Does talking to the representatives leave you with a pounding headache? Then the following may be helpful: 1. Ideally you should tape record all conversations. If this is not possible, get the name or employee number of the person you are talking to and write down what they told you along with the time and date. If they have agreed to something, make sure they send it to you in writing. This sort of documentation may come in handy later when you are trying to contest or prove something. Is your insurance company flip flopping on a claim? For example telling you that the claim is still being “reviewed” but sending you statements that indicate it has not been paid and never will be? What action can you take to inch things forward? The following may help: 1. Most states have a Department of Banking and Insurance and they are there to help you. Many (perhaps all) provide a service for filing a complaint against your health insurance company and other insurance and banking companies too. When I used the service in NJ , I got assigned an investigator and their service was prompt and helpful. It was my experience that even though they were not able to resolve my issue, the insurance company started to make firm decision on many claims and this alone has been helpful. Before this, it was impossible to get a clear answer from them as to the state of all sorts of claims. They said “NO,” & you think they should say “YES, YES, YES, YES!!!!” In other words, appealing a denial: 1. This site has some great information on how to avoid a denial and what you can do to fight one. 2. Included on their site is the Health Insurance Laws and Benefits Tool which will provide specific information about your rights in different states. For example, you will want to know if there is an external or independent grievance system to appeal your plan’s decisions. In the case of NJ, which is the state I am fighting, the tool provided the following helpful information:

Does New Jersey require an external or independent grievance system to appeal your health plan’s unfavorable decisions? Yes, for all health plans.

On what grounds can you file your external grievance?
Investigational treatment appeal, medical necessity. What is the status of the external grievance panel’s decision?
Binding. External grievance systems allow you to take a dispute with your health plan to a doctor or review board unaffiliated with your health plan. Thus, both you and your health plan receive an impartial ruling on its decision to deny coverage of services or treatment. Additionally, you can file a complaint against your health insurer with your state’s department of insurance.

Additional Helpful Information and Resources 1. The message boards on lawyers.com are a great place to hit for information. I have found folks there helpful.
2. You many want to blog about your experience as you may get an unexpected response directly from your insurance company. I think there are pro’s and cons to blogging about your experience but it does provide a public face to your ordeal and allows you to chronicle exactly what has transpired.
3. If your cases is particularly shocking, do not hesitate to hit the local media.
4. If your claim has been denied by an external review panel, you may not have much luck suing but if there is no external review panel, you can and should also try Small Claims Court or other legal action. Further, even if your claim was denied by an external review board, you may have other options for suing, for example, due to their bad faith handling of a claim. And on that note, here is a great legal resource covering the topic.

As J r me announced, the Avivo driver for newer ATI chips is now available. Unfortunately we've all been very busy, so it's taken literally months longer than we'd hoped. But we have a driver that, while having no acceleration, is able to set modes on VGA, DVI, and laptop panels: all it really lacks is TV out support, and support for the complete set of models. Pretty cool stuff. Any help we can get is appreciated, so if you've done X or driver development, or are interested in same, please get in touch via xorg@lists.freedesktop.org. It's completely FLOSS, licensed under the GPL.

Part of the reason I've been so busy is trying to arrange the X Developers' Summit in Cambridge, UK, around the 10th of September. But more on that later.

Could you exactly say how big your hard disk has to be at least when the vendor claims it’s 500 Gigabytes big? Do you know how many bytes a file has when the filemanager says 2 Megabytes? Do you know what your DSL-provider actually means with 2 Megabit per second? Experienced users surely can since they know the meaning of “Kilobyte” depends on the context. Sometimes it’s 1000 bytes, sometimes it’s 1024. Non technical users will tend to assume that a 1 Kilobyte is 1000 bytes (which is correct, since k is the SI prefix for kilo) while users with technical background will tend to assume (depending on the context of course) it’s 1024. There is a solution for this ambiguity, but unfortunately it doesn’t come for free: First, it sounds really stupid (kibi-what?) and second it will add an extra character (kB -> kiB) and we all know how stuffed our 80 column terminals already are nowadays. If you have better arguments against the binary prefix notation please, join the discussion. Personally I’d find it very cool if we could use SI prefixes where we mean n * 10^3 and binary prefixes where we mean n * 2^10 in Debian consistently.

Note: This entry has been edited a couple of times (and might be edited in the future) to remove errors. Thanks to Benja Fallenstein for critique. My previous post about recursion drew some comments. This is a topic that frequently confuses me, and there is a lot of confusion (some of it mine) in the blog post and its comments. On reflection, it seems prudent to examine what recursion really is. Consider the following recursive definition: 0 is an expression; if T is an expression, then sT is an expression; nothing is an expression that doesn’t have one of these two forms. Now, it is clear that 0 is an expression. It is equally clear that sssssK is not an expression. In some applications, it makes sense to consider infinite expressions like “…ssssss0“; that is, an infinite number of ss before the final 0, and in others it doesn’t. Is that infinite utterance and expression? It does have one of the forms given in the definitions, so it is not forbidden from being an expression, but neither is there anything in the definition requiring that it is. It is helpful to do this a bit more formally. Let us translate the self-referential definition into a set equation: The set of expressions is the set E that satisfies the equation

E = 0 ∪ se e ∈ E

But this definition is bogus! There are more than one set E that satisfies the equation, as remarked above, and thus there is no “the set E”! We need to fix the definition in a way that makes the set E unique. The key question is, do we want to regard the infinite utterance discussed above as an expression. It is simplest to just say “the set of expressions is the smallest set E that …” if we want it to not be an expression, and if we want it to be an expression we should say “the set of expressions is the largest set E that …” Let us make the following definitions:

Consider the set equation S = … S …, in which the set S is alone on the left-hand side and occurs at least once on the right-hand side. This equation is a recursive definition of the smallest set S satisfying this equation, and a corecursive definition of the largest set S satisfying this equation.

Thus, a definition like

E = 0 ∪ se e ∈ E

is not recursive because of its form; it is self-referential. By itself, it is an ambiguous and thus bogus definition. We use the words “recursive” and “corecursive” to indicate the intended method of disambiguation. A rather nice example of this can be seen in the treatment of algebraic data types in strict (ML-style) and nonstrict (Haskell-style) functional programming languages. Consider the declaration (using Haskell syntax)

data IntList = Nil   Cons Int IntList

This can be read as a set equation as follows:

IntList = Nil ∪ Cons n x n ∈ Int ∧ x ∈ IntList

Now, as a recursive definition, it is restricted to finite lists as found in ML, but as a corecursive definition, it also allows infinite lists as found in Haskell. (It unfortunately fails to address the question of bottom-terminated lists, which also can be found in Haskell.) As it happens, the technique is not limited to set definitions; but to generalise it, we need to discuss a bit what we mean by the terms “smallest” and “largest”. In a set context, a set is smaller than another set if it is the other’s subset. Notice how this makes the ordering partial, that is, there are sets that are not comparable (for example 1 and 2 ; neither is smaller than the other, but neither are they equal). A collection of sets does not necessarily have a “smallest” set (that is, one of the sets that is a subset of all the others). However, we can always find the lowest upper bound (”lub” or “join”) of a collection of sets as the union of the sets, and the greatest lower bound (”glb” or “meet”) as the intersection of the sets, and if the lub or glb is itself a member of the collection, it is the smallest or largest set of the collection. Haskellists will find things instantly familiar when I say that the smallest element of a mathematical universe (if it exists) is called bottom and is denoted by ⊥; somewhat less familiar will be that the greatest element (if it exists) is called top and is denoted by ⊤. A partial function is any function that needs not be defined everywhere. For example, f(x) = 1/x is a partial function on the reals (it is not defined for x = 0). We can form a partial ordering of (partial) functions having the same domain and codomain by specifying that f is smaller than g if f(x) = g(x) for all such x that f(x) is defined. Sometimes it will make sense to specify that f is smaller than g if f(x) is smaller than g(x) for all such x that f(x) is defined. Now, it happens that all collections of functions have a lub; and in particular, the partial function that is defined nowhere is the smallest function (the bottom function). Now, with this definition of “ordering” of functions we can apply the definitions of recursion and corecursion to functions. For example, consider f(x) = f(x) + 1. The bottom function (defined nowhere) qualifies, since undefined + 1 is undefined; thus it is the smallest solution to the equation and thus this equation is a recursive definition of bottom. However, consider f(x) = if x = 0 then 1 else x*f(x-1): any solution to this equation must have f(0) = 1 and thus the bottom function is disqualified. In fact, the smallest solution is the factorial function, and thus the equation is a recursive definition of factorial. In the comments to my previous entry, I was asked whether the Haskell definition “ones = 1 : ones” is recursive. Of course, the question in itself is nonsensical; whether it is a recursive definition or something else (such as corecursive) depends on what the programmer intends. I will interpret this question as whether the equation is a recursive definition of the intended result, the infinite list of all ones. First, observe that we can order Haskell lists (including the special “undefined” list) partially as follows: l1 is smaller than l2 if l1 is undefined, if they both are empty lists or if a) the first element of l1 is smaller than the first element of l2 and b) the tail (the list with the first element removed) of l1 is smaller than the tail of l2. The undefined list does not qualify as a solution for “ones = 1 : ones”. No finite list qualifies either. The infinite list of all ones does qualify, and it is the only solution; hence, the equation is a recursive definition of the infinite list of all ones; it is also a corecursive definition of the same list. Finally, let us consider the question that started it all: what should we make of the definition “recursion: see recursion”. First, note that a equation x = x admits all elements of the universe as a solution; hence, the proper reading of “recursion: see recursion” as a definition is that it is ambiguous and hence bad. It is a recursive definition of the bottom element of the universe (whatever that might be for a dictionary), and a corecursive definition of the top element of the universe (whatever that might be). In any case, it does not define recursion (unless of course, the concept of recursion is the smallest or the largest concept in the universe of concepts).

Update: Debian, and other stuff writes about A solution for a better spell checker in firefox : a better editor Joey Hess commented:

"I'm suprised that noone has mentioned how to get a text area to fit the whole width of the browser window, no matter what width it's set to (I prefer approximatly 60 characters wide sometimes, and nearly 120 other times..): Just put width: 100% in a stylesheet for the textarea. Unfortunately I don't know a good way to dynamically scale a textarea vertically."

That's container-width, which is not window-width for my site, but I'll give it a go.

Some time ago I added links to FoneWiki.org to Gammu phone database to show more information about phones. The main reason for that was information about K750i phone, which I wanted to buy in that time. Unfortunately as time goes on, this page seems to be almost the only one with interesting content on this wiki. Most of other pages are only templates or links to buy cheap v1agra or some other similar spam. It's a pity that this server is gone, because I think such wiki is a good idea.

A few weeks ago, I posted an account of my trials and tribulations with Blue Cross Blue Shield Horizon of New Jersey. Well now it is high time for an update, an update I think readers of this blog will be interested in because it tells a fascinating story about the Internet, blogging, and perhaps new uses of Google Alerts. My goal in writing the post was to inform readers of their options when faced with problems caused by their health insurance company. Well, I had no idea a response would arrive from Blue Cross Blue Shield, and so quickly. For within 2 hours of posting my blog entry, the Public Relations Director of Blue Cross Blue Shield of NJ wrote me an email, which basically said that he came across my blog posting and was offering his assistance. Needles to say, I was shocked. After months of getting some of the worst customer service I have ever received (when on the phone with Blue Cross, I always felt like I was talking to smarmy collection agency reps), I get an email from upper-level management, offering his assistance. At first, I thought some of my geek readers were playing a practical joke on me. While it seemed plausible that Blue Cross monitors links to their site, and probably do so with Google Alerts, I had a harder time believing that the Director of Public Relations would fire off an email to me, directly. Naturally, following the arrival of his message in my inbox, a small glimmer of hope flickered, especially after he had someone from the Appeals Department contact me. And this small intervention had a large noticeable effect: decent and transparent customer service became a reality, for the very first time. Instead of interactions that were opaque and frustrating, I finally had ones that were crystal clear and intelligible. According to the main Blue Cross Blue Shield Web Site, they pride themselves on Blue Distinction:

Blue DistinctionSM is the Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies’ nationwide program that will create an unprecedented level of transparency with two goals: engaging consumers to enable more informed healthcare decisions and collaborating with providers to improve quality outcomes and affordability.

The contrast of my service before and after having the Public Relations director contact me speaks volumes to the actual nature of Blue Distinction as it pertains to BCBS of NJ. For most of my interactions with Blue Cross Blue Shield, I encountered an unprecedented level of opaqueness and frustration until there was intervention from high-above. I actually appreciated the service I received and saw it as a laudable move. Unfortunately, the outcome has been far from my liking. I recently got word they are not paying up for any of the dermatological services. So perhaps the fact that a PR person contacted me was significant because in the end, it has panned out as a typical PR move: all gloss and lacking substance. What now? I am moving to an internal BCBS appeal process and if that does not work, I will move on to small claims court in NYC and perhaps a more organized web campaign. In the mean time I have basically have decided to blog about the process so look out for future updates!

I've cursed myself quite a bit during the last two or three weeks, because there probably are no good excuses for not attending DebConf this year, it's just that I didn't plan it at all. Sorry to everyone who expected me there, and thanks to those who have insisted me lately to book tickets, and even planned my arrival by sea. :) Unfortunately, last minute plans won't work this time, as my new job doesn't permit. I hope you all have a great time, and unlike me, will POP THE TRUNK, all week. Oil delivery will resume... maybe in Argentina? Or Birmingham, why not!

I asked: Should we try to stop them, or just post that "Nixforce look like an unscrupulous load of swines trying to trade on Debian Developer names without permission" all over their site? Paul wrote:

"They are violating Google's Adsense policies by inviting people to click on their ads on their front page ("If you dont want to enter, at least go to one of our Advertisers below"). You could, at the very least, have this line of their income terminated by reporting them here "

Works for me. It said they'll respond within 24 hours. Brandon Holtsclaw suggested:

"Or set something to look for the referer pulling the feed and redirect just that nixforce domain to a 404 or some nasty pr0n feed :) just a thought."

I would, but I think most things will fail to pull if I send a 40x and I can't think how to do a redirect or proxy neatly without messing with RewriteRule or similar - nixforce aren't worth messing with RewriteRules. I also suspect they're pulling from Planet Debian, rather than my web host, so if I made a mistake, I'd be very unpopular. Also: Russell Coker and Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho

Just over two days ago I sent a DMCA take-down request to nixforce.com for copying my content in violation of the non-commercial license that I offer, I have not had a response from them and they have kept mirroring my site. I have just sent a DMCA take-down to tierzero.net which appears to be their ISP. The email address listed in the whois record for that ISP bounces as does the postmaster address. It seems that I’m not the only person with this problem, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho is also having problems with them. Any suggestions on how to deal with them would be appreciated. One possibility that I will eventually persue is to file a DMCA request with Google, this can result in their Google Adwords account being terminated.

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In response to my comment and post about the cost of driving to work there was a comment on the blog post I responded to suggesting that a small car is better value for money than a hybrid car. The claim was made regarding a Nissan Pulsar, but to investigate this I decided to compare the Prius with the Corolla Hatchback, as far as I can tell the Corolla Hatchback is the nearest non-hybrid car to the Prius that Toyota sells (being similar in size, weight, and performance). Comparing cars of different make adds extra variables into the equation. Unfortunately the Toyota web site fails to provide specifications for the Prius and only provides a PDF file with minimal information on the Corolla, but it is enough for some minimal calculations. A car company run by intelligent people would publish the specs on all their vehicles and provide a search form to compare selected models. The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation has a good search method that allows easy comparison and ranking of items in their database (here is an example). It would be good if Toyota would permit us to compare models in their car range in a similar manner. According to the Toyota web site the Prius uses 4.4L/100Km when driving in the city and the manual transmission version of the Corolla Hatchback uses 7.4L/100Km (7.7 for the auto). For the average 16,000Km that an average Prius owner drives that would save 480L of petrol which would save about $700 at current petrol prices. The Corolla Ascent Hatchback (the cheapest of all Corollas) is $21,000 while the cheapest Prius is $37,400. If you compare the Prius with the cheapest Corolla then it’s a $16,400 price difference. If you save $700 per annum then it won’t cover the interest on a $16,400 loan or match the interest rates earned by a bank term-deposit if the $16,400 was invested. So it seems apparent that at current petrol prices (NB petrol prices are expected to increase) and with average Prius driving patterns a Prius will not be more economical than a cheap Corolla. Currently the Commonwealth Bank of Australia offers 6.05% interest on term deposits of between $10,000 and $25,000. This means that $700 per annum would be the interest on a term deposit of $11,500. If we compare the Corolla Ultima Sedan at $32,000 with the Prius at $37,400 the difference in price is less than $11,500 - but the cars have incomparable sets of luxury and safety features. The Prius i-tech appears to have a super-set of the luxury and safety features of the Corolla Ultima Sedan but at $46,900 is again going to cost more for the average Prius driver. The Prius is a very quiet car to drive, there is almost no engine noise (when driving at speeds where the Petrol engine is operating there is usually more noise from other vehicles) and no gear changes (handy if passengers are consuming hot or sticky drinks). It has a good set of safety and luxury features and is also a prestige car (no-one will say “oh wow, you’ve got a Corolla”). If you assign a dollar value to these features then a Prius may be the most economical car that meets your requirements! Finally, let’s keep in mind the fact that petrol prices are steadily increasing. If you save $700 by driving a Prius this year then you may save $1000 next year. There is also the option of converting a Prius to a plug-in hybrid which will be a useful option if petrol prices hit $10/L! Also the amount of money saved will depend on the use of the car. If you are running a courier or taxi business then a Prius will probably be a lot more economical than a Corolla due to the greater distances travelled and the travel in the slow city traffic that the Prius was designed for. PS All prices are in Australian dollars and concern products on offer in Australia, I would like to see comments from other people who perform the same calculations for their countries.

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I arrived yesterday in Edinburgh for debcamp and debconf 7 after aprox. 14 hours and 3 flights from Brazil to Scotland (Rio->Guarulhos, Guarulhos->London, London->Edinburgh). The city looks really cool with a lot of interesting places to visit and the weather is ok for me until now. We're now in the main talks room, that's is a sort of hacklab at this moment too.

Unfortunately TAM and British Airways (they call each other partners) don't give me my baggage yet, at least I've my laptop and my friend Felipe (faw) to help me with essential stuff. Hopefully this problem will be sorted out really soon, so I can concentrate on real Debian related work.

See you!

It's been a topsy-turvy week, but I'm finally getting my head above water again here at our new home. A lot has happened, which I'll try to capture here, but I'm not sure I can get it all. On Tuesday, Maj, Amita June and I spent the morning in Central Park in New York City. It was a beautiful day -- the rains had cleared overnight, and it was warm and crisp everywhere. We went to the big playground near Columbus Circle, which had about 1000 kids from 2 to 14 running in every direction, and a huge water spray fountain which meant that most of those kids were soaking wet. We went and grabbed lunch at the Whole Foods Market on the circle itself, and ate it out on the grass. AJ and Maj went back to the hotel for a nap, and I got a haircut for the awards ceremony that night. Then I had coffee with Tim Wu, creator of the concept of net neutrality and a writer for Slate. We had a great talk about net neutrality, the future of Wikitravel (Tim wrote a critical piece in Slate in April), and new projects we're both working on. It was really pretty fun. Unfortunately, I took too long talking to Tim, and not enough time buying myself a pair of pants for the awards ceremony. So by the time we were done, I was in a huge hurry. I ran down to the Old Navy on W 34th, picked a pair of black khakis off the shelf, and jammed in a cab to get back to our hotel room in time. Maj was done up to the nines, so I jumped in the shower, shaved, threw on my sport jacket and slacks, cut off all the tags with nail clippers, and ran out the door. The event itself was pretty incredible, and I don't want to flood this blog post with all of my comments and recollections. So I'll add a more detailed report later today. tags: newyorkcity maj amitajune travel wikitravel timwu wholefoods webbyawards webbies

Drive time Suffice it to say that we were out really, really late. We got up at 6AM the next morning to make our 8AM train back to Montreal, and it was clear to everyone (even Amita June) that if we tried to make this train it would be one of the worst days of our life. But there's only one train from NYC to Montreal per day, so we'd have to stay in town another night, and then have the same problem the next morning. So Maj canceled our Amtrak train tickets -- which were 100% refundable, even a couple of hours before the train leaves. Bravo, Amtrak! Then I got to work trying to rent us a car to drive home. It turns out that it's hard to get a rental car for a one-way trip from New York to Montreal. I tried Budget and Avis and National, and none of them would let me rent one-way into Canada. Annoyingly, none of their Web sites gave straight error messages on the subject -- I got "no cars available" or "unable to find your destination" (!) -- and I had to call the 1-800 numbers for each one in turn. I finally got a car from Hertz, on-line, and there was even a little note in my confirmation email to the effect of "ONE WAY TRAVEL CONFIRMED". I guess there's a reason that some companies get to be number one -- the more flexible you are, the more grateful your customers are going to be. I, for one, am planning to use Hertz in the future. I picked up the car at the W 55th Hertz office, and it took me 45 minutes to get back to our hotel at 7th and W 47th. The garage at Hertz goes onto W 54th, which is a "Thru Street" -- no turns allowed until you're halfway across town. And, it was bumper-to-bumper, of course. I finally gave up and made an illegal turn, and was promptly pulled over by a motorcycle cop. D'oh! Luckily, he let me off with a warning. Our trip out of New York was uneventful, but pleasant. It was a beautiful day, and the Catskills and Hudson Valley are a beautiful place to drive in the early summer. Deep, cool woods and bright green fields -- they're lush and fertile-looking. We stopped in Lake George for an early-afternoon dinner, and then had a pretty sunset drive through the Adirondacks up to the border. We got in late -- 10:30PM -- but it was overall a pretty good trip. And nice to have left at 2PM rather than 6AM. tags: rentalcar amtrak newyorkcity hertz

MANA Yesterday Mark, Allegra, No ma and Anoushka stopped back through Montreal as they wended their way home to Lausanne?. We had a nice lunch at Zyng and then took a walk down av Mont-Royal, where a pedestrian fair is going on this week. They got off yesterday evening, which makes the last of our RoCoCoCamp visitors to leave. tags: mark allegra no ma anoushka

Pecha Kucha Montreal I'm very interested to hear via Boris and James that we'll be having a Pecha Kucha night here in Montreal. It's going to be on 14 Jun 2007 at 20:20h (8:20PM) at the SAT. Pecha Kucha is an unconference for designers (not necessarily Web designers). I think it sounds like a really interesting event, and I hope to go. tags: pecha kucha unconference montreal

Good news: the OpenTaal Dutch word list (and spell checker) has gotten official approval from the TaalUnie, official authority on the Dutch language, which means that it's considered to be "just as correct" as the Green Booklet. The list is released under the LGPL licence. I've only contributed a bit to the project so far, but the next step will of course be to get it into Debian. The project originated to create a free update of the exising 1996 word list, according to the new spelling rules. Now that this is "finished", next projects are a grammar checker and thesaurus.

I have to say "Yes" to the BBC. People say things about redheads they would think twice before saying about any other discriminated group.

A friend recommended me Steve Miller and Sharon Lee’s Liaden books. The first question, reading order, was not very easy to find an answer to. I went with publication order within the Agent of Change sequence – Agent of Change, Conflict of Honors, Carpe Diem, Plan B, and I Dare. In retrospect it would have been better to start with Conflict of Honors followed by Agent of Change, as this corresponds to story chronology, and AoC and CD have the same protagonists while CoH doesn’t. The story speed between Plan B and I Dare was too fast to break the sequence, but it might have made the latter book fuller if I had read the first batch of prequels Local Custom and Scout’s Progress before it. The second prequel sequence Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon works well at any point in the series, as does the third (single-book) prequel sequence Balance of Trade. I’m still reading Fledgling and the first short story collection. Confusing? I thought so, but it definitely is worth the investment. Instead of all the usual superlatives, I’ll say something unique to this series: These books changed my perspective in that I now cannot read (in any fiction) about a character bowing without asking in my head “in which mode, dammit!?”. (Update on 8th June: The friend referred to above, after reading this section, said (I paraphrase): “In the peculiar mode of humans, of course”.) The Liaden books are romances in a (very good) science-fictional setting. With two exceptions, each book creates at least one new lifetime romantic pairing, and they’re in my opinion convincing romances. One of the exceptions deepens one of the earlier relationships, so there is no lack of romance there. The only place I know where one can get all the novels reliably is Webscriptions, as e-books. Some of the paper books seem to be hard to find, and the recent closing down of the main publisher Meisha Merlin cannot help there. * * * The promotional material for The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle includes a quote by Robert Heinlein: Possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read. It is hard for me to disagree with that statement (including the qualifier, in all honesty), having recently read this book. Mote is a complex first-contact story, set in Pournelle’s alternate history (originally future history) universe. It begins in the year 3017. The recently created Second Empire of Man gets a visit from the aliens, leading to a counter-visit by humans to the aliens’ star system. The aliens seem friendly, but are they? What could they possibly be hiding? In retrospect, the Moties remind me (in style, not in detail) of Orson Scott Card’s Piggies (Speaker for the Dead and sequels); I would be surprised if Card had not read this book before writing his. The sequel, The Gripping Hand is not the masterpiece that Mote is, but I had no trouble enjoying it. The solution to the Motie problem has held for decades, but it won’t hold forever, and it might actually be breaking down now. The mission: save both humans and Moties from an eventual assured mutual destruction. * * * I actually started reading Pournelle’s alternate/future history from the cronological beginning. This is another series where reading order becomes a complicated matter, as many of the books tell parallel subthreads of the story; and it becomes even more complicated by the fact that there is an omnibus edition in which the story is told in chronological order, this having been accomplished by breaking the books down into chunks and then arranging the chunks in chronological order. My reading order went as follows: West of Honor, The Mercenary, Prince of Mercenaries, Go Tell the Spartans and Prince of Sparta. This is a good reading order; my only problem with it is that the protagonist of West of Honor fails to appear in most of the other books. The following is not in my opinion a real spoiler, even though it reveals certain key events of the series. The premise is that sometime between the 1970’s and the early decades of the 21st Century the United States and the Soviet Union form a union, called the CoDominium, which dominates the international politics of the Earth for most of the 21st Century. In early 21st Century, faster-than-light travel is discovered, and the CoDominium starts to colonise other star systems, first with voluntary colonists and then with convicts and involuntary colonists. The series takes place in the final decades of CoDominium, and focuses on the actions of one John Christian Falkenberg (though he is not the protagonist of all the books), first as an officer in the CoDominium (extraterrestrial) military, and then as the Colonel of a mercenary outfit, Falkenberg’s Legion. The Legion is at the center of events that eventually (after the events described in these books) leads to the creation of the first Empire of Man. The books are entertaining military science fiction, solid, enjoyable journeyman pieces.

The killer feature in Opera, compared to Firefox and other Mozilla products, is the ability to restore the content of all tabs at every browsing session; not just after experiencing a crash, but in a systematic way, whenever starting the application. I have finally found a Firefox plug-in that does that: Session Manager. Why isn't this a standard feature in Epiphany and Firefox? Epiphany vs Firefox compatibility issues Meanwhile, I have encountered yet another essential site (online booking for my favorite airline - this time) that blocks Epiphany but allows Firefox. Yes, I know that their webmaster is to blame for resorting to browser-agent filtering. No, I don't expect anyone at customer service to understand and to rouse their javascripting minion into fixing it. Unfortunately, it also means that I still cannot switch to Epiphany. Even though Firefox and xulrunner are essentially the same codebase, the different browser-agent is enough to make Epiphany unsuitable for everyday use. As I recall, Rosbeh and several others reported this as being one of two reasons for shipping Firefox as their default browser, the other being a question of brand recognition: Firefox had the full-page ad in the New York Times and is multi-platform, while Epiphany is virtually unknown and GNOME-specific. This must be fixed.