Search Results: "mira"

27 February 2021

Petter Reinholdtsen: Updated Valutakrambod, now also with information from NBX

I have neglected the Valutakrambod library for a while, but decided this weekend to give it a face lift. I fixed a few minor glitches in several of the service drivers, where the API had changed since I last looked at the code. I also added support for fetching the order book from the newcomer Norwegian Bitcoin Exchange. I alsod decided to migrate the project from github to gitlab in the process. If you want a python library for talking to various currency exchanges, check out code for valutakrambod. This is what the output from 'bin/btc-rates-curses -c' looked like a few minutes ago: 
           Name Pair           Bid         Ask Spread Ftcd    Age   Freq
       Bitfinex BTCEUR  39229.0000  39246.0000   0.0%   44     44    nan
        Bitmynt BTCEUR  39071.0000  41048.9000   4.8%   43     74    nan
         Bitpay BTCEUR  39326.7000         nan   nan%   39    nan    nan
       Bitstamp BTCEUR  39398.7900  39417.3200   0.0%    0      0      1
           Bl3p BTCEUR  39158.7800  39581.9000   1.1%    0    nan      3
       Coinbase BTCEUR  39197.3100  39621.9300   1.1%   38    nan    nan
         Kraken+BTCEUR  39432.9000  39433.0000   0.0%    0      0      0
        Paymium BTCEUR  39437.2100  39499.9300   0.2%    0   2264    nan
        Bitmynt BTCNOK 409750.9600 420516.8500   2.6%   43     74    nan
         Bitpay BTCNOK 410332.4000         nan   nan%   39    nan    nan
       Coinbase BTCNOK 408675.7300 412813.7900   1.0%   38    nan    nan
        MiraiEx BTCNOK 412174.1800 418396.1500   1.5%   34    nan    nan
            NBX BTCNOK 405835.9000 408921.4300   0.8%   33    nan    nan
       Bitfinex BTCUSD  47341.0000  47355.0000   0.0%   44     53    nan
         Bitpay BTCUSD  47388.5100         nan   nan%   39    nan    nan
       Coinbase BTCUSD  47153.6500  47651.3700   1.0%   37    nan    nan
         Gemini BTCUSD  47416.0900  47439.0500   0.0%   36    336    nan
         Hitbtc BTCUSD  47429.9900  47386.7400  -0.1%    0      0      0
         Kraken+BTCUSD  47401.7000  47401.8000   0.0%    0      0      0
  Exchangerates EURNOK     10.4012     10.4012   0.0%   38  76236    nan
     Norgesbank EURNOK     10.4012     10.4012   0.0%   31  76236    nan
       Bitstamp EURUSD      1.2030      1.2045   0.1%    2      2      1
  Exchangerates EURUSD      1.2121      1.2121   0.0%   38  76236    nan
     Norgesbank USDNOK      8.5811      8.5811   0.0%   31  76236    nan
Yes, I notice the negative spread on Hitbtc. Either I fail to understand their Websocket API or they are sending bogus data. I've seen the same with Kraken, and suspect there is something wrong with the data they send. As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address 15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

22 February 2021

Charles Plessy: Containers

I was using a container for a bioinformatics tool released two weeks ago, but my shell script wrapping the tools could not run because the container was built around an old version of Debian (Jessie) that was released in 2015. I was asked to use a container for bioinformatics, based on conda, and found one that distributes coreutils, but it did not include a real version of sed. I try Debian's docker image. No luck; it does not contain ps, which my workflow manager needs. But fortunately I eventually figured out that Ubuntu's Docker image contains coreutils, sed and ps together! In the world of containers, this sounds like a little miracle.

26 December 2020

Russ Allbery: Review: The Biggest Bluff

Review: The Biggest Bluff, by Maria Konnikova
Publisher: Penguin Press
Copyright: 2020
ISBN: 0-525-52263-8
Format: Kindle
Pages: 335
After a particularly unlucky year for her family, Maria Konnikova was reading about the balance between luck and control in life and discovered, to her surprise, that John von Neumann, one of the foundational thinkers of computer science, was fascinated by poker. He found most card games boring because they relied on luck. Poker, however, he thought was the perfect balance between luck and skill: enough skill to make its effect undeniable, but enough luck that one could not control the game fully regardless of skill. Konnikova decided on a research project: spend one year learning No Limit Texas Hold'em from one of the best poker players in the world, with a goal of competing in the World Series of Poker. She had studied the description-experience gap during her doctoral research in psychology and wanted to see if the experience of randomness in poker would teach her something the description of the randomness of life could not. Before starting this project, she didn't know the basic rules and had never watched a game. Erik Seidel agreed to mentor her, and The Biggest Bluff is her account of that experience. This book is simultaneously frustrating and fascinating in ways that I don't think can be untangled without making it a far different book. Fitting, I suppose, for a book about how our brains entangle luck and skill. First, if you're looking for a book about poker play, this is not one. Konnikova rarely talks about specific hands or tournaments in more detail than her overall trajectory. That was a disappointment. In the few places she does describe some of her betting decisions, analysis of the other players, and tournament strategy, her accounts are engrossing and suspenseful. I would have happily read a book chronicling her poker tournaments and the decisions she made, but this is not that book. What The Biggest Bluff is instead is a psychological and philosophical examination of the process of learning poker. Konnikova uses her experiences as launching points into philosophical digressions. Even the lessons that have limited surface utility outside of poker, such as learning to suppress body language to avoid giving away information, turn into digressions about interpersonal dynamics and personality types. There are interesting tidbits here, but I've read a lot of popular psychology and was more interested in the poker. My frequent reading experience was impatiently waiting for Konnikova to finish lecturing and get back to her narrative. What Konnikova does do though, at a level that I haven't seen before before in a book of this type, is be brutally honest about her mistakes and her learning process. And I do mean brutally: The book opens with her throwing up in a casino bathroom. (This is not a fun book to read if you don't like reading about stress reactions and medical problems. There aren't many of them, but they're... memorable.) Konnikova knows and can explain the psychological state she's trying to reach, but still finds it hard to do in the moment. Correctly reacting to probabilities, cutting losses, and neither being too over-confident or too scared is very hard. Most books of this type elide over the repeated failures in a sort of training montage, which makes the process look easier than it feels. Konnikova tries to realistically show the setbacks and failures, and I think succeeds. That relentless introspection and critical honesty is the best part of this book, but I think it's also behind the stream of consciousness digressions about psychology and philosophy. It's a true portrayal of how Konnikova makes sense of the world. A more polished and streamlined book about the poker would have been more dramatically engrossing, but it might have lost the deep examination of how she combines poker with her knowledge of psychology to change her thinking. The one place where I think that self-reflection may fall a bit short, which I want to mention because I thought it was a missed opportunity, is around knowledge of hand probabilities. Konnikova makes a point, early in the book, of not approaching poker through the memorization and mathematics route and instead trying to find a play style that focuses on analyzing the other players and controlling her own emotions. This is a good hook, but by the end of the book it's not entirely true. The point that I think she was trying to make is that her edge against other poker players at her same level comes more from psychology than from calculation of precise odds in rare situations. This is true. But by the time she reaches high levels of play, she is using statistical simulators, practice tools, and intensive study just like any professional poker player. There is a minimum level of pure knowledge and memorization required that cannot be avoided. It's clear from the few things she says about this that those tools became more interesting to her as she became better at poker, and I wish she would have dug more into why and how that happened. How much of her newfound ability to make decisions and stick to a plan comes from emotional changes, and how much from that background store of confident knowledge? Or maybe those are different ways of looking at the same change? I did appreciate Konnikova's explicit acknowledgment at the end of the book that poker did not, in the end, provide some deep insight into the balance of luck and skill in real life. Learning poker instead gave Konnikova more personal ability to make a plan for the things that she can control and let go of the things she can't. I'm glad that worked for her, but since reading this book I have noticed former poker players who think life is more knowable than it is. Poker combines random chance with psychological play against other people, but it does so in a way and to an extent that is quantifiable. You can make the correct play and still lose a hand, but you can also know when this has happened. When you're used to analyzing the world through that frame and real life fails to provide that certainty, it's tempting to impose it anyway and insist your simplified models are more accurate because they're more comprehensible. But poker is a game, not a model; being more predictable and more constrained than real life is part of what makes it fun. The skill that Konnikova learned from it has a potential downside that she doesn't talk about. I'm not sure how to sum up this book. Konnikova's internal analysis and honesty is truly admirable and illuminating, but it left me wanting to read a different book that was more focused on poker narration. I know there are lots of those books out there, but I doubt they would be written with Konnikova's self-awareness and lack of ego. However, they would probably also lack the moments that made me cringe or that were deeply uncomfortable to read. My feelings are mixed. But if you want popular psychology wrapped around a deeply honest account of the process of learning poker, I suspect this book is one of a kind. Rating: 7 out of 10

21 December 2020

Russ Allbery: Review: Behind the Throne

Review: Behind the Throne, by K.B. Wagers
Series: Indranan War #1
Publisher: Orbit
Copyright: August 2016
ISBN: 0-316-30859-5
Format: Kindle
Pages: 416
Hail is a gunrunner, an outlaw and criminal, someone who knows how to survive violence and navigate by personal loyalty. That world knows her as Cressen Stone. What her colleagues don't know is that she's also an Imperial Princess. Hailimi Mercedes Jaya Bristol left that world twenty years earlier in secret pursuit of her father's killer and had no intention of returning. But her sisters are dead, her mother's health is failing, and two Imperial Trackers have been sent to bring her back to her rightful position as heir. I'm going to warn up-front that the first half of this novel was rough to the point of being unreadable. Wagers tries much too hard to establish Hail as a reluctant heroine torn between her dislike of royal protocols and her grief and anger at the death of her sisters. The result is excessively melodramatic and, to be frank, badly written. There are a lot of passages like this:
His words slammed into me, burning like the ten thousand volts of a Solarian Conglomerate police Taser.
(no, there's no significance to the Solarian Conglomerate here), or, just three paragraphs later:
The air rushed out of my lungs. Added grief for a niece I'd never known. One more log on the pyre set to burn my freedom to ashes. The hope I'd had of getting out of this mess was lost in that instant, and I couldn't do anything but stare at Emmory in abject shock.
Given how much air rushes out of Hail's lungs and how often she's struck down with guilt or grief, it's hard to believe she doesn't have brain damage. Worse, Hail spends a great deal of the first third of the book whining, which given that the book is written in first person gets old very quickly. Every emotion is overwritten and overstressed as Hail rails against obvious narrative inescapability. It's blatantly telegraphed from the first few pages that Hail is going to drop into the imperial palace like a profane invasion force and shake everything up, but the reader has to endure far too long of Hail being dramatically self-pitying about the plot. I almost gave up on this book in irritation (and probably should have). And then it sort of grew on me, because the other thing Wagers is doing (also not subtly) is a story trope for which I have a particular weakness: The fish out of water who nonetheless turns out to be the person everyone needs because she's systematically and deliberately kind and thoughtful while not taking any shit. Hail left Pashati young and inexperienced, with a strained relationship with her mother and a habit of letting her temper interfere with her ability to negotiate palace politics. She still has the temper, but age, experience, and confidence mean that she's decisive and confident in a way she never was before. The second half of this book is about Hail building her power base and winning loyalty by being loyal and decent. It's still not great writing, but there's something there I enjoyed reading. Wagers's setting is intriguing, although it makes me a bit nervous. The Indranan Empire was settled by colonists of primarily Indian background. The court trappings, mythology, and gods referenced in Behind the Throne are Hindu-derived, and I suspect (although didn't confirm) that the funeral arrangements are as well. Formal wear (and casual wear) for women is a sari. There's a direct reference to the goddess Lakshimi (not Lakshmi, which Wikipedia seems to indicate is the correct spelling, although transliteration is always an adventure). I was happy to see this, since there are more than enough SF novels out there that seem to assume only western countries go into space. But I'm never sure whether the author did enough research or has enough personal knowledge to pull off the references correctly, and I personally wouldn't know the difference. The Indranan Empire is also matriarchal, and here Wagers goes for an inversion of sexism that puts men in roughly the position women were in the 1970s. They can, in theory, do most jobs, but there are many things they're expected not to do, there are some explicit gender lines in power structures, and the role of men in society is a point of political conflict. It's skillfully injected as social background, with a believable pattern of societal prejudice that doesn't necessarily apply to specific men in specific situations. I liked that Wagers did this without giving the Empire itself any feminine-coded characteristics. All admirals are women because the characters believe women are obviously better military leaders, not because of some claptrap about nurturing or caring or some other female-coded reason from our society. That said, this gender role inversion didn't feel that significant to the story. The obvious "sexism is bad, see what it would be like if men were subject to it" message ran parallel to the main plot and never felt that insightful to me. I'm therefore not sure it was successful or worth the injection of sexism into the reading experience, although it certainly is different from the normal fare of space empires. I can't recommend Behind the Throne because a lot of it just isn't very good. But I still kind of want to because I sincerely enjoyed the last third of the book, despite some lingering melodrama. Watching Hail succeed by being a decent, trustworthy, loyal, and intelligent person is satisfying, once she finally stops whining. The destination is probably not worth the journey, but now that I've finished the first book, I'm tempted to grab the second. Followed by After the Crown. Rating: 6 out of 10

29 September 2020

Mike Gabriel: UBports: Packaging of Lomiri Operating Environment for Debian (part 03)

Before and during FOSDEM 2020, I agreed with the people (developers, supporters, managers) of the UBports Foundation to package the Unity8 Operating Environment for Debian. Since 27th Feb 2020, Unity8 has now become Lomiri. Recent Uploads to Debian related to Lomiri Over the past 4 months I worked on the following bits and pieces regarding Lomiri in Debian: The next two big projects / packages ahead are lomiri-ui-toolkit and qtmir. Credits Many big thanks go to Marius and Dalton for their work on the UBports project and being always available for questions, feedback, etc. Thanks to Ratchanan Srirattanamet for providing some of his time for debugging some non-thread safe unit tests (currently unsure, what package we actually looked at...). Thanks for Florian Leeber for being my point of contact for topcis regarding my cooperation with the UBports Foundation. Previous Posts about my Debian UBports Team Efforts

31 August 2020

Jacob Adams: Command Line 101

How to Work in a Text-Only Environment.

What is this thing? When you first open a command-line (note that I use the terms command-line and shell interchangably here, they re basically the same, but command-line is the more general term, and shell is the name for the program that executes commands for you) you ll see something like this: thisfolder This line is called a command prompt and it tells you four pieces of information:
  1. jaadams: The username of the user that is currently running this shell.
  2. bg7: The name of the computer that this shell is running on, important for when you start accessing shells on remote machines.
  3. /tmp/thisfolder: The folder or directory that your shell is currently running in. Like a file explorer (like Window s Explorer or Mac s Finder) a shell always has a working directory, from which all relative paths (see sidenote below) are resolved.
When you first opened a shell, however, you might notice that is looks more like this: home This is a shorthand notation that the shell uses to make this output shorter when possible. ~ stands for your home directory, usually /home/<username>. Like C:\Users\<username>\ on Windows or /Users/<username> on Mac, this directory is where all your files should go by default. Thus a command prompt like this: downloads actually tells you that you are currently in the /home/jaadams/Downloads directory.

Sidenote: The Unix Filesystem and Relative Paths folders on Linux and other Unix-derived systems like MacOS are usually called directories. These directories are represented by paths, strings that indicate where the directory is on the filesystem. The one unusual part is the so-called root directory . All files are stored in this folder or directories under it. Its path is just / and there are no directories above it. For example, the directory called home typically contains all user directories. This is stored in the root directory, and each users specific data is stored in a directory named after that user under home. Thus, the home directory of the user jacob is typically /home/jacob, the directory jacob under the home directory stored in the root directory /. If you re interested in more details about what goes in what directory, man hier has the basics and the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard governs the layout of the filesystem on most Linux distributions. You don t always have to use the full path, however. If the path does not begin with a /, it is assumed that the path actually begins with the path of the current directory. So if you use a path like my/folders/here, and you re in the /home/jacob directory, the path will be treated like /home/jacob/my/folders/here. Each folder also contains the symbolic links .. and .. Symbolic links are a very powerful kind of file that is actually a reference to another file. .. always represents the parent directory of the current directory, so /home/jacob/.. links to /home/. . always links to the current directory, so /home/jacob/. links to /home/jacob.

Running commands To run a command from the command prompt, you type its name and then usually some arguments to tell it what to do. For example, the echo command displays the text passed as arguments. 
jacob@lovelace/home/jacob$ echo hello world
hello world
Arguments to commands are space-separated, so in the previous example hello is the first argument and world is the second. If you need an argument to contain spaces, you ll want to put quotes around it, echo "like so". Certain arguments are called flags , or options (options if they take another argument, flags otherwise) usually prefixed with a hyphen, and they change the way a program operates. For example, the ls command outputs the contents of a directory passed as an argument, but if you add -l before the directory, it will give you more details on the files in that directory. 
jacob@lovelace/tmp/test$ ls /tmp/test
1  2  3  4  5  6
jacob@lovelace/tmp/test$ ls -l /tmp/test
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 jacob jacob 0 Aug 26 22:06 1
-rw-r--r-- 1 jacob jacob 0 Aug 26 22:06 2
-rw-r--r-- 1 jacob jacob 0 Aug 26 22:06 3
-rw-r--r-- 1 jacob jacob 0 Aug 26 22:06 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 jacob jacob 0 Aug 26 22:06 5
-rw-r--r-- 1 jacob jacob 0 Aug 26 22:06 6
jacob@lovelace/tmp/test$
Most commands take different flags to change their behavior in various ways.

File Management
  • cd <path>: Change the current directory of the running shell to <path>.
  • ls <path>: Output the contents of <path>. If no path is passed, it prints the contents of the current directory.
  • touch <filename>: create an new empty file called <filename>. Used on an existing file, it updates the file s last accessed and modified times. Most text editors can also create a new file for you, which is probably more useful.
  • mkdir <directory>: Create a new folder/directory at path <directory>.
  • mv <src> <dest>: Move a file or directory at path <src> to <dest>.
  • cp <src> <dest>: Copy a file or directory at path <src> to <dest>.
  • rm <file>: Remove a file at path <file>.
  • zip -r <zipfile> <contents...>: Create a zip file <zipfile> with contents <contents>. <contents> can be multiple arguments, and you ll usually want to use the -r argument when including directories in your zipfile, as otherwise only the directory will be included and not the files and directories within it.

Searching
  • grep <thing> <file>: Look for the string <thing> in <file>. If no <file> is passed it searches standard input.
  • find <path> -name <name>: Find a file or directory called <name> somwhere under <path>. This command is actually very powerful, but also very complex. For example you can delete all files in a directory older than 30 days with: 
    find -mtime +30 -exec rm  \;
  • locate <name>: A much easier to use command to find a file with a given name, but it is not usually installed by default.

Outputting Files
  • cat <files...>: Output (concatenate) all the files passed as arguments.
  • head <file>: Output the beginning of <file>
  • tail <file>: Output the end of <file>

How to Find the Right Command All commands (at least on sane Linux distributions like Debian or Ubuntu) are documented with a manual page, in man section 1 (for more information on manual sections, run man intro). This can be accessed using man <command> You can search for the right command using the -k flag, as in man -k <search>. You can also view manual pages in your browser, on sites like https://manpages.debian.org or https://linux.die.net/man. This is not always helpful, however, because some command s descriptions are not particularly useful, and also there are a lot of manual pages, which can make searching for a specific one difficult. For example, finding the right command to search inside text files is quite difficult via man (it s grep). When you can t find what you need with man I recommend falling back to searching the Internet. There are lots of bad Linux tutorials out there, but here are some reputable sources I recommend:
  • https://www.cyberciti.biz: nixCraft has excellent tutorials on all things Linux
  • Hosting providers like Digital Ocean or Linode: Good intro documentation, but can sometimes be outdated
  • https://tldp.org: The Linux Documentation project is great, but it can also be a little outdated sometimes.
  • https://stackoverflow.com: Oftentimes has great answers, but quality varies wildly since anyone can answer.
These are certainly not the only options but they re the sources I would recommend when available.

How to Read a Manual Page Manual pages consist of a series of sections, each with a specific purpose. Instead of attempting to write my own description here, I m going to borrow the excellent one from The Linux Documentation Project
The NAME section is the only required section. Man pages without a name section are as useful as refrigerators at the north pole. This section also has a standardized format consisting of a comma-separated list of program or function names, followed by a dash, followed by a short (usually one line) description of the functionality the program (or function, or file) is supposed to provide. By means of makewhatis(8), the name sections make it into the whatis database files. Makewhatis is the reason the name section must exist, and why it must adhere to the format I described. (Formatting explanation cut for brevity) The SYNOPSIS section is intended to give a short overview on available program options. For functions this sections lists corresponding include files and the prototype so the programmer knows the type and number of arguments as well as the return type. The DESCRIPTION section eloquently explains why your sequence of 0s and 1s is worth anything at all. Here s where you write down all your knowledge. This is the Hall Of Fame. Win other programmers and users admiration by making this section the source of reliable and detailed information. Explain what the arguments are for, the file format, what algorithms do the dirty jobs. The OPTIONS section gives a description of how each option affects program behaviour. You knew that, didn t you? The FILES section lists files the program or function uses. For example, it lists configuration files, startup files, and files the program directly operates on. (Cut details about installing files) The ENVIRONMENT section lists all environment variables that affect your program or function and tells how, of course. Most commonly the variables will hold pathnames, filenames or default options. The DIAGNOSTICS section should give an overview of the most common error messages from your program and how to cope with them. There s no need to explain system error error messages (from perror(3)) or fatal signals (from psignal(3)) as they can appear during execution of any program. The BUGS section should ideally be non-existent. If you re brave, you can describe here the limitations, known inconveniences and features that others may regard as misfeatures. If you re not so brave, rename it the TO DO section ;-) The AUTHOR section is nice to have in case there are gross errors in the documentation or program behaviour (Bzzt!) and you want to mail a bug report. The SEE ALSO section is a list of related man pages in alphabetical order. Conventionally, it is the last section.

Remote Access One of the more powerful uses of the shell is through ssh, the secure shell. This allows you to remotely connect to another computer and run a shell on that machine: 
user@host:~$ ssh other@example.com
other@example:~$
The prompt changes to reflect the change in user and host, as you can see in the example above. This allows you to work in a shell on that machine as if it was right in front of you.

Moving Files Between Machines There are several ways you can move files between machines over ssh. The first and easiest is scp, which works much like the cp command except that paths can also take a user@host argument to move files across computers. For example, if you wanted to move a file test.txt to your home directory on another machine, the command would look like: 
scp test.txt other@example.com:
(The home directory is the default path) Otherwise you can move files by reversing the order of the arguments and put a path after the colon to move files from another directory on the remote host. For example, if you wanted to fetch the file /etc/issue.net from example.com: 
scp other@example.com:/etc/issue.net .
Another option is the sftp command, which gives you a very simple shell-like interface in which you can cd and ls, before either puting files onto the local machine or geting files off of it. The final and most powerful option is rsync which syncs the contents of one directory to another, and doesn t copy files that haven t changed. It s powerful and complex, however, so I recommend reading the USAGE section of its man page.

Long-Running Commands The one problem with ssh is that it will stop any command running in your shell when you disconnect. If you want to leave something on and come back later then this can be a problem. This is where terminal multiplexers come in. tmux and screen both allow you to run a shell in a safe environment where it will continue even if you disconnect from it. You do this by running the command without any arguments, i.e. just tmux or just screen. In tmux you can disconnect from the current session by pressing Ctrl+b then d, and reattach with the tmux attach command. screen works similarly, but with Ctrl+a instead of b and screen -r to reattach.

Command Inputs and Outputs Arguments are not the only way to pass input to a command. They can also take input from what s called standard input , which the shell usually connects to your keyboard. Output can go to two places, standard output and standard error, both of which are directed to the screen by default.

Redirecting I/O Note that I said above that standard input/output/error are only usually connected to the keyboard and the terminal? This is because you can redirect them to other places with the shell operators <, > and the very powerful .

File redirects The operators < and > redirect the input and output of a command to a file. For example, if you wanted a file called list.txt that contained a list of all the files in a directory /this/one/here you could use: 
ls /this/one/here > list.txt

Pipelines The pipe character, , allows you to direct the output of one command into the input of another. This can be very powerful. For example, the following pipeline lists the contents of the current directory searches for the string test , then counts the number of results. (wc -l counts the number of lines in its input) 
ls   grep test   wc -l
For a better, but even more contrived example, say you have a file myfile, with a bunch of lines of potentially duplicated and unsorted data 
test
test
1234
4567
1234
You can sort it and output only the unique lines with sort and uniq: 
$ uniq < myfile   sort
1234
1234
4567
test

Save Yourself Some Typing: Globs and Tab-Completion Sometimes you don t want to type out the whole filename when writing out a command. The shell can help you here by autocompleting when you press the tab key. If you have a whole bunch of files with the same suffix, you can refer to them when writing arguments as *.suffix. This also works with prefixes, prefix*, and in fact you can put a * anywhere, *middle*. The shell will expand that * into all the files in that directory that match your criteria (ending with a specific suffix, starting with a specific prefix, and so on) and pass each file as a separate argument to the command. For example, if I have a series of files called 1.txt, 2.txt, and so on up to 9, each containing just the number for which it s named, I could use cat to output all of them like so: 
jacob@lovelace/tmp/numbers$ ls
1.txt  2.txt  3.txt  4.txt  5.txt  6.txt  7.txt  8.txt	9.txt
jacob@lovelace/tmp/numbers$ cat *.txt
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Also the ~ shorthand mentioned above that refers to your home directory can be used when passing a path as an argument to a command.

Ifs and For loops The files in the above example were generated with the following shell commands: 
for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
do
echo $i > $i.txt
done
But I ll have to save variables, conditionals and loops for another day because this is already too long. Needless to say the shell is a full programming language, although a very ugly and dangerous one.

20 July 2020

Shirish Agarwal: Hearing loss, pandemic, lockdown

Sorry for not being on blog for sometime, the last few months have been brutal. While I am externally ok, because of the lockdown I sensed major hearing loss. First, I thought it may be a hallucination or something but as it persisted for days, I got myself checked and found out that I got 80% hearing loss in my right ear. How and why I don t know. Is this NIHL or some other kind of hearing loss is yet to be ascertained. I do live what is and used to be one of the busiest roads in the city, now for last few months not so much. On top of it, you have various other noises.

Tinnitus I also experienced Tinnitus which again I perceived to be a hallucination but found it s not. I have no clue if my eiplepsy has anything to do with hearing loss or both are different. I did discover that while today we know that something like Tinnitus exists, just 10-15 years back, people might mistake it for madness. In a way it is madness because you are constantly hearing sound, music etc. 24 7 , that is enough to drive anybody mad. During this brief period, did learn what an Otoscope is . I did get audiometry tests done but need to get at least a second or if possible also a third opinion but those will have to wait as the audio clinics are about 8-10 kms. away. In the open-close-open-close environment just makes it impossible to figure out the time, date and get it done. After that is done then probably get a hearing device, probably a Siemens Signia hearing aid. The hearing aids are damn expensive, almost 50k per piece and they probably have a lifetime of about 5-6 years, so it s a bit of a expensive proposition. I also need a second or/and third opinion on the audiometry profile so I know things are correct. All of these things are gonna take time.

Pandemic Situation in India and Testing Coincidentally, was talking to couple of people about this. It is sad to see that we have the third highest number of covid cases at 1/10th the tests we are doing vis-a-vis U.S.A. According to statistical site ourworldindata , we seem to be testing 0.22 per thousand people compared to 2.28 people per thousand done by United States. Sadly it doesn t give the breakup of the tests, from what I read the PCR tests are better than the antibody tests, a primer shares the difference between the two tests. IIRC, the antibody tests are far cheaper than the swab tests but swab tests are far more accurate as it looks for the virus s genetic material (RNA) . Anyways coming to the numbers, U.S. has a population of roughly 35 crores taking a little bit liberty from numbers given at popclock . India meanwhile has 135 crore or almost four times the population of U.S. and the amount of testing done is 1/10th as shared above. Just goes to share where the GOI priorities lie . We are running out of beds, ventilators and whatever else there is. Whatever resources are there are being used for covid patients and they are being charged a bomb. I have couple of hospitals near my place and the cost of a bed in an isolation ward is upward of INR 100k and if you need a ventilator then add another 50k . And in moment of rarity, the differences between charges of private and public are zero. Meaning there is immense profiteering happening it seems in the medical world. Heck, even the Govt. is on the act where they are charging 18% GST on sanitizers. If this is not looting then I dunno what is.
Example of Medical Bills people have to pay.

China, Nepal & Diplomacy While everybody today knows how China has intruded and captured quite a part of Ladakh, this wasn t the case when they started in April. That time Ajai Shukla had shared this with the top defence personnel but nothing came of it. Then on May 30th he broke/shared the news with the rest of the world and was immediately branded anti-national, person on Chinese payroll and what not. This is when he and Pravin Sawnhey of Force Magazine had both been warning of the same from last year itself. Pravin, has a youtube channel and had been warning India against Chinese intentions from 2015 and even before that. He had warned repeatedly that our obsession with the Pakistan border meant that we were taking eyes of the border with China which spans almost 2300 odd kms. going all the way to Arunachal Pradesh. A good map which shows the conflict can be found at dw.com which I am sharing/reproducing below
India-China Border Areas Copyright DW.com 2020
Note:- I am sharing a neutral party s rendering of the border disputes or somebody who doesn t have much at stake as the two countries have so that things could be looked at little objectively. The Prime Minister on the other hand, made the comment which made galvanising a made-up word into verb . It means to go without coming in. In fact, several news sites shared the statement told by the Prime Minister and the majority of people were shocked. In fact, there had been reports that he gave the current CDS, General Rawat, a person of his own choosing, a peace of his mind. But what lead to this confrontation in the first place ? I think many pieces are part of that puzzle, one of the pieces are surely the cutting of defense budget for the last 6 years, Even this year, if you look at the budget slashes done in the earlier part of the year when he shared how HAL had to raise loans from the market to pay salaries of its own people. Later he shared how the Govt. was planning to slash the defence budget. Interestingly, he had also shared some of the reasons which reaffirm that it is the only the Govt. which can solve some of the issues/conundrum

First, it must recognize that our firms competing for global orders are up against rivals that are being supported by their home governments with tax and export incentives and infrastructure that almost invariably surpasses India s. Our government must provide its aerospace firms with a level playing field, if not a competitive advantage. The greatest deterrent to growth our companies face is the high cost of capital and lack of access to funds. In several cases, Indian MSMEs have had to turn down offers to build components and assemblies for global OEM supply chains simply because the cost of capital to create the shop floor and train the personnel was too high. This resulted in a loss of business and a missed opportunity for creating jobs and skills. To overcome this, the government could create a sector specific A&D Fund to provide low cost capital quickly to enable our MSMEs to grab fleeting business opportunities. Ajai Shukla, blogpost 13th March 2020 . And then reporting on 11th May 2020 itself, CDS Gen. Rawat himself commented on saving the budget, they were in poor taste but still he shared what he thought about it. So, at the end of it one part of the story. The other part of the story probably lies in India s relations with its neighbors and lack of numbers in diplomats and diplomacy. So let me cover both the things one by one .

Diplomats, lack of numbers and hence the hands we are dealth with When Mr. Modi started his first term, he used the term Maximum Governance, Minimum Government but sadly cut those places where it indeed needs more people, one of which is diplomacy. A slightly dated 2012 article/opinion shared writes that India needs to engage with the rest of the world and do with higher number. Cut to 2020 and the numbers more or less remain the same . What Mr. Modi tried to do is instead of using diplomats, he tried to use his charm and hugopolicy for lack of a better term. 6 years later, here we are. After 200 trips abroad, not a single trade agreement to show what he done. I could go on but both time and energy are not on my side hence now switching to Nepal

Nepal, once friend, now enemy ? Nepal had been a friend of India for 70 odd years, what changed in the last few years that it changed from friend to enemy ? There had been two incidents in recent memory that changed the status quo. The first is the 2015 Nepal blockade . Now one could argue it either way but the truth is that Nepal understood that it is heavily dependent on India hence as any sovereign country would do in its interest it also started courting China for imports so there is some balance. The second one though is one of our own making. On December 16, 2014 RBI allowed Nepali citizens to have cash upto INR 25,000/- . Then in 2016 when demonetization was announced, they said that people could exchange only upto INR 4,500/- which was far below the limit shared above. And btw, before people start blaming just RBI for the decision, FEMA decisions are taken jointly by the finance ministry (FE) as well as ministry of external affairs (MEA) . So without them knowing the decision could not have been taken when announcing it. The result of lowering of demonetization is what made Nepal move more into Chinese hands and this has been shared by number of people in numerous articles in different websites. The wire interview with the vice-chairman of Niti Ayog is pretty interesting. The argument that Nepal show give an estimate of how much old money is there falls flat when in demonetization itself, it was thought of that around 30-40% was black money and would not be returned but by RBI s own admissions all 99.3% of the money was returned. Perhaps they should have consulted Prof. Arun Kumar of JNU who has extensively written and studied the topic before doing that fool-hardy step. It is the reason that since then, an economy which was searing at 9% has been contracting ever since, I could give a dozen articles stating that, but for the moment, just one will suffice. The slowing economy and the sharp divisions between people based on either outlook, religion or whatever also encouraged China to attack us. This year is not good for India. The only thing I hope Indians and people all over do is just maintain physical distances, masks and somehow survive till middle of next year without getting infected when probably most of the vaccine candidates have been trialed, results are in and we have a ready vaccine. I do hope that at least for once, ICMR shares data even after the vaccine is approved, whichever vaccine. Till later.

26 June 2020

Chris Lamb: On the pleasure of hating

People love to tell you that they "don't watch sports" but the story of Lance Armstrong provides a fascinating lens through which to observe our culture at large. For example, even granting all that he did and all the context in which he did it, why do sports cheats act like a lightning rod for such an instinctive hatred? After all, the sheer level of distaste directed at people such as Lance eludes countless other criminals in our society, many of whom have taken a lot more with far fewer scruples. The question is not one of logic or rationality, but of proportionality. In some ways it should be unsurprising. In all areas of life, we instinctively prefer binary judgements to moral ambiguities and the sports cheat is a clich of moral bankruptcy cheating at something so seemingly trivial as a sport actually makes it more, not less, offensive to us. But we then find ourselves strangely enthralled by them, drawn together in admiration of their outlaw-like tenacity, placing them strangely close to criminal folk heroes. Clearly, sport is not as unimportant as we like to claim it is. In Lance's case in particular though, there is undeniably a Shakespearean quality to the story and we are forced to let go of our strict ideas of right and wrong and appreciate all the nuance.

There is a lot of this nuance in Marina Zenovich's new documentary. In fact, there's a lot of everything. At just under four hours, ESPN's Lance combines the duration of a Tour de France stage with the depth of the peloton an endurance event compared to the bite-sized hagiography of Michael Jordan's The Last Dance. Even for those who follow Armstrong's story like a mini-sport in itself, Lance reveals new sides to this man for all seasons. For me, not only was this captured in his clumsy approximations at being a father figure but also in him being asked something I had not read in countless tell-all books: did his earlier experiments in drug-taking contribute to his cancer? But even in 2020 there are questions that remain unanswered. By needlessly returning to the sport in 2009, did Lance subconsciously want to get caught? Why does he not admit he confessed to Betsy Andreu back in 1999 but will happily apologise to her today for slurring her publicly on this very point? And why does he remain so vindictive towards former-teammate Floyd Landis? In all of Armstrong's evasions and masterful control of the narrative, there is the gnawing feeling that we don't even know what questions we should be even asking. As ever, the questions are more interesting than the answers.

Lance also reminded me of how professional cycling's obsession with national identity. Although I was intuitively aware of it to some degree, I had not fully grasped how much this kind of stereotyping runs through the veins of the sport itself, just like the drugs themselves. Journalist Daniel Friebe first offers us the portrait of:
Spaniards tend to be modest, very humble. Very unpretentious. And the Italians are loud, vain and outrageous showmen.
Former directeur sportif Johan Bruyneel then asserts that "Belgians are hard workers... they are ambitious to a certain point, but not overly ambitious", and cyclist J rg Jaksche concludes with:
The Germans are very organised and very structured. And then the French, now I have to be very careful because I am German, but the French are slightly superior.
This kind of lazy caricature is nothing new, especially for those brought up on a solid diet of Tintin and Asterix, but although all these examples are seemingly harmless, why does the underlying idea of ascribing moral, social or political significance to genetic lineage remain so durable in today's age of anti-racism? To be sure, culture is not quite the same thing as race, but being judged by the character of one's ancestors rather than the actions of an individual is, at its core, one of the many conflations at the heart of racism. There is certainly a large amount of cognitive dissonance at work, especially when Friebe elaborates:
East German athletes were like incredible robotic figures, fallen off a production line somewhere behind the Iron Curtain...
... but then bermensch Jan Ullrich is immediately described as "emotional" and "struggled to live the life of a professional cyclist 365 days a year". We see the habit to stereotype is so ingrained that even in the face of this obvious contradiction, Friebe unironically excuses Ullrich's failure to live up his German roots due to him actually being "Mediterranean".

I mention all this as I am known within my circles for remarking on these national characters, even collecting stereotypical examples of Italians 'being Italian' and the French 'being French' at times. Contrary to evidence, I don't believe in this kind of innate quality but what I do suspect is that people generally behave how they think they ought to behave, perhaps out of sheer imitation or the simple pleasure of conformity. As the novelist Will Self put it:
It's quite a complicated collective imposture, people pretending to be British and people pretending to be French, and then they get really angry with each other over what they're pretending to be.
The really remarkable thing about this tendency is that even if we consciously notice it there is no seemingly no escape even I could not smirk when I considered that a brash Texan winning the Tour de France actually combines two of America's cherished obsessions: winning... and annoying the French.

10 May 2020

Russ Allbery: Review: Golden Gates

Review: Golden Gates, by Conor Dougherty
Publisher: Penguin
Copyright: 2020
ISBN: 0-525-56022-X
Format: Kindle
Pages: 249
This review, for reasons that will hopefully become clear later, starts with a personal digression. I have been interested in political theory my entire life. That sounds like something admirable, or at least neutral. It's not. "Interested" means that I have opinions that are generally stronger than my depth of knowledge warrants. "Interested" means that I like thinking about and casting judgment on how politics should be done without doing the work of politics myself. And "political theory" is different than politics in important ways, not the least of which is that political actions have rarely been a direct danger to me or my family. I have the luxury of arguing about politics as a theory. In short, I'm at high risk of being one of those people who has an opinion about everything and shares it on Twitter. I'm still in the process (to be honest, near the beginning of the process) of making something useful out of that interest. I've had some success when I become enough a part of a community that I can do some of the political work, understand the arguments at a level deeper than theory, and have to deal with the consequences of my own opinions. But those communities have been on-line and relatively low stakes. For the big political problems, the ones that involve governments and taxes and laws, those that decide who gets medical treatment and income support and who doesn't, to ever improve, more people like me need to learn enough about the practical details that we can do the real work of fixing them, rather than only making our native (and generally privileged) communities better for ourselves. I haven't found my path helping with that work yet. But I do have a concrete, challenging, local political question that makes me coldly furious: housing policy. Hence this book. Golden Gates is about housing policy in the notoriously underbuilt and therefore incredibly expensive San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. I wanted to deepen that emotional reaction to the failures of housing policy with facts and analysis. Golden Gates does provide some of that. But this also turns out to be a book about the translation of political theory into practice, about the messiness and conflict that results, and about the difficult process of measuring success. It's also a book about how substantial agreement on the basics of necessary political change can still founder on the shoals of prioritization, tribalism, and people who are interested in political theory. In short, it's a book about the difficulty of changing the world instead of arguing about how to change it. This is not a direct analysis of housing policy, although Dougherty provides the basics as background. Rather, it's the story of the political fight over housing told primarily through two lenses: Sonja Trauss, founder of BARF (the Bay Area Renters' Federation); and a Redwood City apartment complex, the people who fought its rent increases, and the nun who eventually purchased it. Around that framework, Dougherty writes about the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the history of California's Proposition 13, a fight over a development in Lafayette, the logistics challenge of constructing sufficient housing even when approved, and the political career of Scott Wiener, the hated opponent of every city fighting for the continued ability to arbitrarily veto any new housing. One of the things Golden Gates helped clarify for me is that there are three core interest groups that have to be part of any discussion of Bay Area housing: homeowners who want to limit or eliminate local change, renters who are vulnerable to gentrification and redevelopment, and the people who want to live in that area and can't (which includes people who want to move there, but more sympathetically includes all the people who work there but can't afford to live locally, such as teachers, day care workers, food service workers, and, well, just about anyone who doesn't work in tech). (As with any political classification, statements about collectives may not apply to individuals; there are numerous people who appear to fall into one group but who vote in alignment with another.) Dougherty makes it clear that housing policy is intractable in part because the policies that most clearly help one of those three groups hurt the other two. As advertised by the subtitle, Dougherty's focus is on the fight for more housing. Those who already own homes whose values have been inflated by artificial scarcity, or who want to preserve such stratified living conditions as low-density, large-lot single-family dwellings within short mass-transit commute of one of the densest cities in the United States, don't get a lot of sympathy or focus here except as opponents. I understand this choice; I also don't have much sympathy. But I do wish that Dougherty had spent more time discussing the unsustainable promise that California has implicitly made to homeowners: housing may be impossibly expensive, but if you can manage to reach that pinnacle of financial success, the ongoing value of your home is guaranteed. He does mention this in passing, but I don't think he puts enough emphasis on the impact that a single huge, illiquid investment that is heavily encouraged by government policy has on people's attitude towards anything that jeopardizes that investment. The bulk of this book focuses on the two factions trying to make housing cheaper: Sonja Trauss and others who are pushing for construction of more housing, and tenant groups trying to manage the price of existing housing for those who have to rent. The tragedy of Bay Area housing is that even the faintest connection of housing to the economic principle of supply and demand implies that the long-term goals of those two groups align. Building more housing will decrease the cost of housing, at least if you build enough of it over a long enough period of time. But in the short term, particularly given the amount of Bay Area land pre-emptively excluded from housing by environmental protection and the actions of the existing homeowners, building more housing usually means tearing down cheap lower-density housing and replacing it with expensive higher-density housing. And that destroys people's lives. I'll admit my natural sympathy is with Trauss on pure economic grounds. There simply aren't enough places to live in the Bay Area, and the number of people in the area will not decrease. To the marginal extent that growth even slows, that's another tale of misery involving "super commutes" of over 90 minutes each way. But the most affecting part of this book was the detailed look at what redevelopment looks like for the people who thought they had housing, and how it disrupts and destroys existing communities. It's impossible to read those stories and not be moved. But it's equally impossible to not be moved by the stories of people who live in their cars during the week, going home only on weekends because they have to live too far away from their jobs to commute. This is exactly the kind of politics that I lose when I take a superficial interest in political theory. Even when I feel confident in a guiding principle, the hard part of real-world politics is bringing real people with you in the implementation and mitigating the damage that any choice of implementation will cause. There are a lot of details, and those details matter. Without the right balance between addressing a long-term deficit and providing short-term protection and relief, an attempt to alleviate unsustainable long-term misery creates more short-term misery for those least able to afford it. And while I personally may have less sympathy for the relatively well-off who have clawed their way into their own mortgage, being cavalier with their goals and their financial needs is both poor ethics and poor politics. Mobilizing political opponents who have resources and vote locally isn't a winning strategy. Dougherty is a reporter, not a housing or public policy expert, so Golden Gates poses problems and tells stories rather than describes solutions. This book didn't lead me to a brilliant plan for fixing the Bay Area housing crunch, or hand me a roadmap for how to get effectively involved in local politics. What it did do is tell stories about what political approaches have worked, how they've worked, what change they've created, and the limitations of that change. Solving political problems is work. That work requires understanding people and balancing concerns, which in turn requires a lot of empathy, a lot of communication, and sometimes finding a way to make unlikely allies. I'm not sure how broad the appeal of this book will be outside of those who live in the region. Some aspects of the fight for housing generalize, but the Bay Area (and I suspect every region) has properties specific to it or to the state of California. It has also reached an extreme of housing shortage that is rivaled in the United States only by New York City, which changes the nature of the solutions. But if you want to seriously engage with Bay Area housing policy, knowing the background explained here is nearly mandatory. There are some flaws I wish Dougherty would have talked more about traffic and transit policy, although I realize that could be another book but this is an important story told well. If this somewhat narrow topic is within your interests, highly recommended. Rating: 8 out of 10

5 November 2017

Russ Allbery: Review: Sweep in Peace

Review: Sweep in Peace, by Ilona Andrews
Series: Innkeeper Chronicles #2
Publisher: NYLA
Copyright: 2015
ISBN: 1-943772-32-0
Format: Kindle
Pages: 302
This is the sequel to Clean Sweep. You could pick up the background as you go along, but the character relationships benefit from reading the series in order. Dina's inn is doing a bit better, but it still desperately needs guests. That means she's not really in a position to say no when an Arbitrator shows up at her door and asks her to host a peace summit. Lucky for the Arbitrator, since every other inn on Earth did say no. Nexus has been the site of a viciously bloody conflict between the vampires, the Hope-Crushing Horde, and the Merchants of Baha-char for years. All sides have despaired of finding any form of peace. The vampires and the Horde have both deeply entrenched themselves in a cycle of revenge. The Merchants have the most strategic position and an apparently unstoppable warrior. The situation is hopeless; by far the most likely outcome will be open warfare inside the inn, which would destroy its rating and probably Dina's future as an innkeeper. Dina will need all of her power and caution just to stop that; peace seems beyond any possibility, but thankfully isn't her problem. Maybe the Arbitrator can work some miracle if she can just keep everyone alive. And well fed. Which is another problem. She has enough emergency money for the food, but somehow cook for forty people from four different species while keeping them all from killing each other? Not a chance. She's going to have to hire someone somehow, someone good, even though she can't afford to pay. Sweep in Peace takes this series farther out of urban fantasy territory and farther into science fiction, and also ups the stakes (and the quality of the plot) a notch. We get three moderately interesting alien species with only slight trappings of fantasy, a wonderful alien chef who seems destined to become a regular in the series, and a legitimately tricky political situation. The politics and motives aren't going to win any awards for deep and subtle characterization, but that isn't what the book is going for. It's trying to throw enough challenges at Dina to let her best characteristics shine, and it does that rather well. The inn continues to be wonderful, although I hope it becomes more of a character in its own right as the series continues. Dina's reshaping of it for guests, and her skill at figuring out the rooms her guests would enjoy, is my favorite part of these books. She cares about making rooms match the personality of her guests, and I love books that give the character a profession that matters to them even if it's unrelated to the plot. I do wish Andrews would find a few other ways for Dina to use her powers for combat beyond tentacles and burying people in floors, but that's mostly a quibble. You should still not expect great literature. I guessed the big plot twist several chapters before it happened, and the resolution is, well, not how these sorts of political situations resolve in the real world. But there is not a stupid love affair, there are several interesting characters, and one of the recurring characters gets pretty solid and somewhat unusual characterization. And despite taking the plot in a more serious direction, Sweep in Peace retains its generally lighthearted tone and firm conviction in Dina's ability to handle just about anything. Also, the chef is wonderful. One note: Partway into the book, I started getting that "oh, this is a crossover" feeling (well-honed by years of reading comic books). As near as I can tell from a bit of research, Andrews pulled in some of their characters from the Edge series. This was a bit awkward, in the "who are these people and why do they seem to have more backstory than any of the other supporting characters" cross-over sort of way, but the characters that were pulled in were rather intriguing. I might have to go read the Edge books now. Anyway, if you liked Clean Sweep, this is better in pretty much every way. Recommended. Followed by One Fell Sweep. Rating: 8 out of 10

1 September 2017

Russ Allbery: Review: Regeneration

Review: Regeneration, by Julie E. Czerneda
Series: Species Imperative #3
Publisher: DAW
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0-7564-0345-6
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 543
This is the third book of the Species Imperative trilogy, and this is the type of trilogy that's telling a single story in three books. You don't want to read this out of order, and I'll have to be cautious about aspects of the plot to not spoil the earlier books. Mac is still recovering from the effects of the first two books of the series, but she's primarily worried about a deeply injured friend. Worse, that friend is struggling to explain or process what's happened, and the gaps in her memory and her very ability to explain may point at frightening, lingering risks to humanity. As much as she wants to, Mac can't give her friend all of her focus, since she's also integral to the team trying to understand the broader implications of the events of Migration. Worse, some of the non-human species have their own contrary interpretations that, if acted on, Mac believes would be desperately risky for humanity and all the other species reachable through the transects. That set of competing priorities and motivations eventually sort themselves out into a tense and rewarding multi-species story, but they get off to an awkward start. The first 150 pages of Regeneration are long on worry, uncertainty, dread, and cryptic conversations, and short on enjoyable reading. Czerneda's recaps of the previous books are appreciated, but they weren't very smoothly integrated into the story. (I renew my occasional request for series authors to include a simple plot summary of the previous books as a prefix, without trying to weave it into the fiction.) I was looking forward to this book after the excellent previous volumes, but struggled to get into the story. That does change. It takes a bit too long, with a bit too much nameless dread, a bit too much of an irritating subplot between Fourteen and Oversight that I didn't think added anything to the book, and not enough of Mac barreling forward doing sensible things. But once Mac gets back into space, with a destination and a job and a collection of suspicious (or arrogant) humans and almost-incomprehensible aliens to juggle, Czerneda hits her stride. Czerneda doesn't entirely avoid Planet of the Hats problems with her aliens, but I think she does better than most of science fiction. Alien species in this series do tend to be a bit all of a type, and Mac does figure them out by drawing conclusions from biology, but those conclusions are unobvious and based on Mac's mix of biological and human social intuition. They refreshingly aren't as simple as biology completely shaping culture. (Czerneda's touch is more subtle than James White's Sector General, for example.) And Mac has a practical, determined, and selfless approach that's deeply likable and admirable. It's fun as a reader to watch her win people over by just being competent, thoughtful, observant, and unrelentingly ethical. But the best part of this book, by far, are the Sinzi. They first appeared in the second book, Migration, and seemed to follow the common SF trope of a wise elder alien race that can bring some order to the universe and that humanity can learn from. They, or more precisely the one Sinzi who appeared in Migration, was very good at that role. But Czerneda had something far more interesting planned, and in Regeneration they become truly alien in their own right, with their own nearly incomprehensible way of viewing the universe. There are so many ways that this twist can go wrong, and Czerneda avoids all of them. She doesn't undermine their gravitas, nor does she elevate them to the level of Arisians or other semi-angelic wise mentors of other series. Czerneda makes them different in profound ways that are both advantage and disadvantage, pulls that difference into the plot as a complicating element, and has Mac stumble yet again into a role that is accidentally far more influential than she intends. Mac is the perfect character to do that to: she has just the right mix of embarrassment, ethics, seat-of-the-pants blunt negotiation skills, and a strong moral compass. Given a lever and a place to stand, one can believe that Mac can move the world, and the Sinzi are an absolutely fascinating lever. There are also three separate, highly differentiated Sinzi in this story, with different goals, life experience, personalities, and levels of gravitas. Czerneda's aliens are good in general, but her focus is usually more on biology than individual differentiation. The Sinzi here combine the best of both types of character building. I think the ending of Regeneration didn't entirely work. After all the intense effort the characters put into understanding the complexity of the universe over the course of the series, the denouement has a mopping-up feel and a moral clarity that felt a bit too easy. But the climax has everything I was hoping for, there's a lot more of Mac being Mac, and I loved every moment of the Sinzi twist. Now I want a whole new series exploring the implications of the Sinzi's view of the universe on the whole history of galactic politics that sat underneath this story. But I'll settle for moments of revelation that sent shivers down my spine. This is a bit of an uneven book that falls short of its potential, but I'll remember it for a long time. Add it on to a deeply rewarding series, and I will recommend the whole package unreservedly. The Species Imperative is excellent science fiction that should be better-known than it is. I still think the romance subplot was unfortunate, and occasionally the aliens get too cartoony (Fourteen, in particular, goes a bit too far in that direction), but Czerneda never lingers too long on those elements. And the whole work is some of the best writing about working scientific research and small-group politics that I've read. Highly recommended, but read the whole series in order. Rating: 9 out of 10

13 August 2017

Enrico Zini: Consensually doing things together?

On 2017-08-06 I have a talk at DebConf17 in Montreal titled "Consensually doing things together?" (video). Here are the talk notes. Abstract At DebConf Heidelberg I talked about how Free Software has a lot to do about consensually doing things together. Is that always true, at least in Debian? I d like to explore what motivates one to start a project and what motivates one to keep maintaining it. What are the energy levels required to manage bits of Debian as the project keeps growing. How easy it is to say no. Whether we have roles in Debian that require irreplaceable heroes to keep them going. What could be done to make life easier for heroes, easy enough that mere mortals can help, or take their place. Unhappy is the community that needs heroes, and unhappy is the community that needs martyrs. I d like to try and make sure that now, or in the very near future, Debian is not such an unhappy community. Consensually doing things together I gave a talk in Heidelberg. Valhalla made stickers Debian France distributed many of them. There's one on my laptop. Which reminds me of what we ought to be doing. Of what we have a chance to do, if we play our cards right. I'm going to talk about relationships. Consensual relationships. Relationships in short. Nonconsensual relationships are usually called abuse. I like to see Debian as a relationship between multiple people. And I'd like it to be a consensual one. I'd like it not to be abuse. Consent From wikpedia:
In Canada "consent means the voluntary agreement of the complainant to engage in sexual activity" without abuse or exploitation of "trust, power or authority", coercion or threats.[7] Consent can also be revoked at any moment.[8] There are 3 pillars often included in the description of sexual consent, or "the way we let others know what we're up for, be it a good-night kiss or the moments leading up to sex." They are:
  • Knowing exactly what and how much I'm agreeing to
  • Expressing my intent to participate
  • Deciding freely and voluntarily to participate[20]
Saying "I've decided I won't do laundry anymore" when the other partner is tired, or busy doing things. Is different than saying "I've decided I won't do laundry anymore" when the other partner has a chance to say "why? tell me more" and take part in negotiation. Resources: Relationships Debian is the Universal Operating System. Debian is made and maintained by people. The long term health of debian is a consequence of the long term health of the relationship between Debian contributors. Debian doesn't need to be technically perfect, it needs to be socially healthy. Technical problems can be fixed by a healty community. graph showing relationship between avoidance, accomodation, compromise, competition, collaboration The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument: source png. Motivations Quick poll: What are your motivations to be in a relationship? Which of those motivations are healthy/unhealthy? "Galadriel" (noun, by Francesca Ciceri): a task you have to do otherwise Sauron takes over Middle Earth See: http://blog.zouish.org/nonupdd/#/22/1 What motivates me to start a project or pick one up? What motivates me to keep maintaning a project? What motivates you? What's an example of a sustainable motivation? Is it really all consensual in Debian? Energy Energy that thing which is measured in spoons. The metaphore comes from people suffering with chronic health issues:
"Spoons" are a visual representation used as a unit of measure used to quantify how much energy a person has throughout a given day. Each activity requires a given number of spoons, which will only be replaced as the person "recharges" through rest. A person who runs out of spoons has no choice but to rest until their spoons are replenished.
For example, in Debian, I could spend: What is one person capable of doing? Have reasonable expectations, on others: Have reasonable expectations, on yourself: Debian is a shared responsibility When spoons are limited, what takes more energy tends not to get done As the project grows, project-wide tasks become harder Are they still humanly achievable? I don't want Debian to have positions that require hero-types to fill them Dictatorship of who has more spoons: Perfectionism You are in a relationship that is just perfect. All your friends look up to you. You give people relationship advice. You are safe in knowing that You Are Doing It Right. Then one day you have an argument in public. You don't just have to deal with the argument, but also with your reputation and self-perception shattering. One things I hate about Debian: consistent technical excellence. I don't want to be required to always be right. One of my favourite moments in the history of Debian is the openssl bug Debian doesn't need to be technically perfect, it needs to be socially healthy, technical problems can be fixed. I want to remove perfectionism from Debian: if we discover we've been wrong all the time in something important, it's not the end of Debian, it's the beginning of an improved Debian. Too good to be true There comes a point in most people's dating experience where one learns that when some things feel too good to be true, they might indeed be. There are people who cannot say no: There are people who cannot take a no: Note the diversity statement: it's not a problem to have one of those (and many other) tendencies, as long as one manages to keep interacting constructively with the rest of the community Also, it is important to be aware of these patterns, to be able to compensate for one's own tendencies. What happens when an avoidant person meets a narcissistic person, and they are both unaware of the risks? Resources: Note: there are problems with the way these resources are framed: Red flag / green flag http://pervocracy.blogspot.ca/2012/07/green-flags.html Ask for examples of red/green flags in Debian. Green flags: Red flags: Apologies / Dealing with issues I don't see the usefulness of apologies that are about accepting blame, or making a person stop complaining. I see apologies as opportunities to understand the problem I caused, help fix it, and possibly find ways of avoiding causing that problem again in the future. A Better Way to Say Sorry lists a 4 step process, which is basically what we do when in bug reports already: 1, Try to understand and reproduce the exact problem the person had. 2. Try to find the cause of the issue. 3. Try to find a solution for the issue. 4. Verify with the reporter that the solution does indeed fix the issue. This is just to say
My software ate
the files
that where in
your home directory and which
you were probably
needing
for work Forgive me
it was so quick to write
without tests
and it worked so well for me
(inspired by a 1934 poem by William Carlos Williams) Don't be afraid to fail Don't be afraid to fail or drop the ball. I think that anything that has a label attached of "if you don't do it, nobody will", shouldn't fall on anybody's shoulders and should be shared no matter what. Shared or dropped. Share the responsibility for a healthy relationship Don't expect that the more experienced mates will take care of everything. In a project with active people counted by the thousand, it's unlikely that harassment isn't happening. Is anyone writing anti-harassment? Do we have stats? Is having an email address and a CoC giving us a false sense of security?
When you get involved in a new community, such as Debian, find out early where, if that happens, you can find support, understanding, and help to make it stop. If you cannot find any, or if the only thing you can find is people who say "it never happens here", consider whether you really want to be in that community.
(from http://www.enricozini.org/blog/2016/debian/you-ll-thank-me-later/)
There are some nice people in the world. I mean nice people, the sort I couldn t describe myself as. People who are friends with everyone, who are somehow never involved in any argument, who seem content to spend their time drawing pictures of bumblebees on flowers that make everyone happy. Those people are great to have around. You want to hold onto them as much as you can. But people only have so much tolerance for jerkiness, and really nice people often have less tolerance than the rest of us. The trouble with not ejecting a jerk whether their shenanigans are deliberate or incidental is that you allow the average jerkiness of the community to rise slightly. The higher it goes, the more likely it is that those really nice people will come around less often, or stop coming around at all. That, in turn, makes the average jerkiness rise even more, which teaches the original jerk that their behavior is acceptable and makes your community more appealing to other jerks. Meanwhile, more people at the nice end of the scale are drifting away.
(from https://eev.ee/blog/2016/07/22/on-a-technicality/) Give people freedom If someone tries something in Debian, try to acknowledge and accept their work. You can give feedback on what they are doing, and try not to stand in their way, unless what they are doing is actually hurting you. In that case, try to collaborate, so that you all can get what you need. It's ok if you don't like everything that they are doing. I personally don't care if people tell me I'm good when I do something, I perceive it a bit like "good boy" or "good dog". I rather prefer if people show an interest, say "that looks useful" or "how does it work?" or "what do you need to deploy this?" Acknowledge that I've done something. I don't care if it's especially liked, give me the freedom to keep doing it. Don't give me rewards, give me space and dignity. Rather than feeding my ego, feed by freedom, and feed my possibility to create.

5 July 2017

Yakking: Open your minds, and your data (formats)

Whether I am writing my own program, or chosing between existing solutions, one aspect of the decision making process which always weighs heavily on my mind is that of the input and output data formats. I have been spending a lot of my work days recently working on converting data from a proprietary tool's export format into another tool's input format. This has involved a lot of XML diving, a lot more swearing, and a non-trivial amount of pain. This drove home to me once more that the format of input and output of data is such a critical part of software tooling that it must weigh as heavily as, or perhaps even more heavily than, the software's functionality. As Tannenbaum tells us, the great thing about standards is that there's so many of them to choose from. XKCD tells us, how that comes about. Data formats are many and varied, and suffer from specifications as vague as "plain text" to things as complex as the structure of data stored in custom database formats. If you find yourself writing software which requires a brand new data format then, while I might caution you to examine carefully if it really does need a new format, you should ensure that you document the format carefully and precisely. Ideally give your format specification to a third party and get them to implement a reader and writer for your format, so that they can check that you've not missed anything. Tests and normative implementations can help prop up such an endeavour admirably. Be sceptical of data formats which have "implementation specific" areas, or "vendor specific extension" space because this is where everyone will put the most important and useful data. Do not put such beasts into your format design. If you worry that you've made your design too limiting, deal with that after you have implemented your use-cases for the data format. Don't be afraid to version the format and extend later; but always ensure that a given version of the data format is well understood; and document what it means to be presented with data in a format version you do not normally process. Phew.
Given all that, I exhort you to consider carefully how your projects manage their input and output data, and for these things to be uppermost when you are choosing between different solutions to a problem at hand. Your homework is, as you may have grown to anticipate at this time, to look at your existing projects and check that their input and output data formats are well documented if appropriate.

25 March 2017

Russ Allbery: Spring haul

Work has been hellishly busy lately, so that's pretty much all I've been doing. The major project I'm working on should be basically done in the next couple of weeks, though (fingers crossed), so maybe I'll be able to surface a bit more after that. In the meantime, I'm still acquiring books I don't have time to read, since that's my life. In this case, two great Humble Book Bundles were too good of a bargain to pass up. There are a bunch of books in here that I already own in paperback (and hence showed up in previous haul posts), but I'm running low on shelf room, so some of those paper copies may go to the used bookstore to make more space. Kelley Armstrong Lost Souls (sff)
Clive Barker Tortured Souls (horror)
Jim Butcher Working for Bigfoot (sff collection)
Octavia E. Butler Parable of the Sower (sff)
Octavia E. Butler Parable of the Talents (sff)
Octavia E. Butler Unexpected Stories (sff collection)
Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed (sff)
Jacqueline Carey One Hundred Ablutions (sff)
Richard Chizmar A Long December (sff collection)
Jo Clayton Skeen's Leap (sff)
Kate Elliot Jaran (sff)
Harlan Ellison Can & Can'tankerous (sff collection)
Diana Pharoh Francis Path of Fate (sff)
Mira Grant Final Girls (sff)
Elizabeth Hand Black Light (sff)
Elizabeth Hand Saffron & Brimstone (sff collection)
Elizabeth Hand Wylding Hall (sff)
Kevin Hearne The Purloined Poodle (sff)
Nalo Hopkinson Skin Folk (sff)
Katherine Kurtz Camber of Culdi (sff)
Katherine Kurtz Lammas Night (sff)
Joe R. Lansdale Fender Lizards (mainstream)
Robert McCammon The Border (sff)
Robin McKinley Beauty (sff)
Robin McKinley The Hero and the Crown (sff)
Robin McKinley Sunshine (sff)
Tim Powers Down and Out in Purgatory (sff)
Cherie Priest Jacaranda (sff)
Alastair Reynolds Deep Navigation (sff collection)
Pamela Sargent The Shore of Women (sff)
John Scalzi Miniatures (sff collection)
Lewis Shiner Glimpses (sff)
Angie Thomas The Hate U Give (mainstream)
Catherynne M. Valente The Bread We Eat in Dreams (sff collection)
Connie Willis The Winds of Marble Arch (sff collection)
M.K. Wren Sword of the Lamb (sff)
M.K. Wren Shadow of the Swan (sff)
M.K. Wren House of the Wolf (sff)
Jane Yolen Sister Light, Sister Dark (sff)

21 February 2017

Shirish Agarwal: The Indian elections hungama

a person showing s(he) showing s(he) Before I start, I would like to point out #855549 . This is a normal/wishlist bug I have filed against apt, the command-line package manager. I sincerely believe having a history command to know what packages were installed, which were upgraded, which were purged should be easily accessible, easily understood and if the output looks pretty, so much the better. Of particular interest to me is having a list of new packages I have installed in last couple of years after jessie became the stable release. It probably would make for some interesting reading. I dunno how much efforts would be to code something like that, but if it works, it would be the greatest. Apt would have finally arrived. Not that it s a bad tool, it s just that it would then make for a heck of a useful tool. Coming back to the topic on hand, Now for the last couple of weeks we don t have water or rather pressure of water. Water crisis has been hitting Pune every year since 2014 with no end in sight. This has been reported in newspapers addendum but it seems it has been felling on deaf ears. The end result of it is that I have to bring buckets of water from around 50 odd metres. It s not a big thing, it s not like some women in some villages in Rajasthan who have to walk in between 200 metres to 5 odd kilometres to get potable water or Darfur, Western Sudan where women are often kidnapped and sold as sexual slaves when they get to fetch water. The situation in Darfur has been shown quite vividly in Darfur is Dying . It is possible that I may have mentioned about Darfur before. While unfortunately the game is in flash as a web resource, the most disturbing part is that the game is extremely depressing, there is a no-win scenario. So knowing and seeing both those scenarios, I can t complain about 50 metres. BUT .but when you extrapolate the same data over some more or less 3.3-3.4 million citizens, 3.1 million during 2011 census with a conservative 2.3-2.4 percent population growth rate according to scroll.in. Fortunately or unfortunately, Pune Municipal Corporation elections were held today. Fortunately or unfortunately, this time all the political parties bought majorly unknown faces in these elections. For e.g. I belong to ward 14 which is spread over quite a bit of area and has around 10k of registered voters. Now the unfortunate part of having new faces in elections, you don t know anything about them. Apart from the affidavits filed, the only thing I come to know is whether there are criminal cases filed against them and what they have shown as their wealth. While I am and should be thankful to ADR which actually is the force behind having the collated data made public. There is a lot of untold story about political push-back by all the major national and regional political parties even when this bit of news were to be made public. It took major part of a decade for such information to come into public domain. But for my purpose of getting clean air and water supply 24 7 to each household seems a very distant dream. I tried to connect with the corporators about a week before the contest and almost all of the lower party functionaries hid behind their political parties manifestos stating they would do the best without any viable plan. For those not knowing, India has been blessed with 6 odd national parties and about 36 odd regional parties and every election some 20-25 new parties try their luck every time. The problem is we, the public, don t trust them or their manifestos. First of all the political parties themselves engage in mud-slinging as to who s copying whom with the manifesto.Even if a political party wins the elections, there is no *real* pressure for them to follow their own manifesto. This has been going for many a year. OF course, we the citizens are to also blame as most citizens for one reason or other chose to remain aloof of the process. I scanned/leafed through all the manifestos and all of them have the vague-wording we will make Pune tanker-free without any implementation details. While I was unable to meet the soon-to-be-Corporators, I did manage to meet a few of the assistants but all the meetings were entirely fruitless. Diagram of Rain Water Harvesting I asked why can t the city follow the Chennai model. Chennai, not so long ago was at the same place where Pune is, especially in relation to water. What happened next, in 2001 has been beautifully chronicled in Hindustan Times . What has not been shared in that story is that the idea was actually fielded by one of Chennai Mayor s assistants, an IAS Officer, I have forgotten her name, Thankfully, her advise/idea was taken to heart by the political establishment and they drove RWH. Saying why we can t do something similar in Pune, I heard all kinds of excuses. The worst and most used being Marathas can never unite which I think is pure bullshit. For people unfamiliar to the term, Marathas was a warrior clan in Shivaji s army. Shivaji, the king of Marathas were/are an expert tactician and master of guerilla warfare. It is due to the valor of Marathas, that we still have the Maratha Light Infantry a proud member of the Indian army. Why I said bullshit was the composition of people living in Maharashtra has changed over the decades. While at one time both the Brahmins and the Marathas had considerable political and population numbers, that has changed drastically. Maharashtra and more pointedly, Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur have become immigrant centres. Why just a decade back, Shiv Sena, an ultra right-wing political party used to play the Maratha card at each and every election and heckle people coming from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, this has been documented as the 2008 immigrants attacks and 9 years later we see Shiv Sena trying to field its candidates in Uttar Pradesh. So, obviously they cannot use the same tactics which they could at one point of time. One more reason I call it bullshit, is it s a very lame excuse. When the Prime Minister of the country calls for demonetization which affects 1.25 billion people, people die, people stand in queues and is largely peaceful, I do not see people resisting if they bring a good scheme. I almost forgot, as an added sweetener, the Chennai municipality said that if you do RWH and show photos and certificates of the job, you won t have to pay as much property tax as otherwise you would, that also boosted people s participation. And that is not the only solution, one more solution has been outlined in Aaj Bhi Khade hain talaab written by just-deceased Gandhian environmental activist Anupam Mishra. His Book can be downloaded for free at India Water Portal . Unfortunately, the said book doesn t have a good English translation till date. Interestingly, all of his content is licensed under public domain (CC-0) so people can continue to enjoy and learn from his life-work. Another lesson or understanding could be taken from Israel, the father of the modern micro-drip irrigation for crops. One of the things on my bucket lists is to visit Israel and if possible learn how they went from a water-deficient country to a water-surplus one. India labor Which brings me to my second conundrum, most of the people believe that it s the Government s job to provide jobs to its people. India has been experiencing jobless growth for around a decade now, since the 2008 meltdown. While India was lucky to escape that, most of its trading partners weren t hence it slowed down International trade which slowed down creation of new enterprises etc. Laws such as the Bankruptcy law and the upcoming Goods and Services Tax . As everybody else, am a bit excited and a bit apprehensive about how the actual implementation will take place. null Even International businesses has been found wanting. The latest example has been Uber and Ola. There have been protests against the two cab/taxi aggregators operating in India. For the millions of jobless students coming out of schools and Universities, there aren t simply enough jobs for them, nor are most (okay 50%) of them qualified for the jobs, these 50 percent are also untrainable, so what to do ? In reality, this is what keeps me awake at night. India is sitting on this ticking bomb-shell. It is really, a miracle that the youths have not rebelled yet. While all the conditions, proposals and counter-proposals have been shared before, I wanted/needed to highlight it. While the issue seems to be local, I would assert that they are all glocal in nature. The questions we are facing, I m sure both developing and to some extent even developed countries have probably been affected by it. I look forward to know what I can learn from them. Update 23/02/17 I had wanted to share about Debian s Voting system a bit, but that got derailed. Hence in order not to do, I ll just point towards 2015 platforms where 3 people vied for DPL post. I *think* I shared about DPL voting process earlier but if not, would do in detail in some future blog post.
Filed under: Miscellenous Tagged: #Anupam Mishra, #Bankruptcy law, #Chennai model, #clean air, #clean water, #elections, #GST, #immigrant, #immigrants, #Maratha, #Maratha Light Infantry, #migration, #national parties, #Political party manifesto, #regional parties, #ride-sharing, #water availability, Rain Water Harvesting

20 February 2017

Russ Allbery: Haul via parents

My parents were cleaning out a bunch of books they didn't want, so I grabbed some of the ones that looked interesting. A rather wide variety of random stuff. Also, a few more snap purchases on the Kindle even though I've not been actually finishing books recently. (I do have two finished and waiting for me to write reviews, at least.) Who knows when, if ever, I'll read these. Mark Ames Going Postal (nonfiction)
Catherine Asaro The Misted Cliffs (sff)
Ambrose Bierce The Complete Short Stores of Ambrose Bierce (collection)
E. William Brown Perilous Waif (sff)
Joseph Campbell A Hero with a Thousand Faces (nonfiction)
Jacqueline Carey Miranda and Caliban (sff)
Noam Chomsky 9-11 (nonfiction)
Noam Chomsky The Common Good (nonfiction)
Robert X. Cringely Accidental Empires (nonfiction)
Neil Gaiman American Gods (sff)
Neil Gaiman Norse Mythology (sff)
Stephen Gillet World Building (nonfiction)
Donald Harstad Eleven Days (mystery)
Donald Harstad Known Dead (mystery)
Donald Harstad The Big Thaw (mystery)
James Hilton Lost Horizon (mainstream)
Spencer Johnson The Precious Present (nonfiction)
Michael Lerner The Politics of Meaning (nonfiction)
C.S. Lewis The Joyful Christian (nonfiction)
Grigori Medredev The Truth about Chernobyl (nonfiction)
Tom Nadeu Seven Lean Years (nonfiction)
Barak Obama The Audacity of Hope (nonfiction)
Ed Regis Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition (nonfiction)
Fred Saberhagen Berserker: Blue Death (sff)
Al Sarrantonio (ed.) Redshift (sff anthology)
John Scalzi Fuzzy Nation (sff)
John Scalzi The End of All Things (sff)
Kristine Smith Rules of Conflict (sff)
Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience and Other Essays (nonfiction)
Alan W. Watts The Book (nonfiction)
Peter Whybrow A Mood Apart (nonfiction) I've already read (and reviewed) American Gods, but didn't own a copy of it, and that seemed like a good book to have a copy of. The Carey and Brown were snap purchases, and I picked up a couple more Scalzi books in a recent sale.

14 January 2017

Russ Allbery: Review: Enchanters' End Game

Review: Enchanters' End Game, by David Eddings
Series: The Belgariad #5
Publisher: Del Rey
Copyright: December 1984
Printing: February 1990
ISBN: 0-345-33871-5
Format: Mass market
Pages: 372
And, finally, the conclusion towards which everything has been heading, and the events for which Castle of Wizardry was the preparation. (This is therefore obviously not the place to start with this series.) Does it live up to all the foreshadowing and provide a satisfactory conclusion? I'd say mostly. The theology is a bit thin, but Eddings does a solid job of bringing all the plot threads together and giving each of the large cast a moment to shine. Enchanters' End Game (I have always been weirdly annoyed by that clunky apostrophe) starts with more of Garion and Belgarath, and, similar to the end of Castle of Wizardry, this feels like them rolling on the random encounter table. There is a fairly important bit with Nadraks at the start, but the remaining detour to the north is a mostly unrelated bit of world-building. Before this re-read, I didn't remember how extensive the Nadrak parts of this story were; in retrospect, I realize a lot of what I was remembering is in the Mallorean instead. I'll therefore save my commentary on Nadrak gender roles for an eventual Mallorean re-read, since there's quite a lot to dig through and much of it is based on information not available here. After this section, though, the story leaves Garion, Belgarath, and Silk for nearly the entire book, returning to them only for the climax. Most of this book is about Ce'Nedra, the queens and kings of the west, and what they're doing while Garion and his small party are carrying the Ring into Mordor er, you know what I mean. And this long section is surprisingly good. We first get to see the various queens of the west doing extremely well managing the kingdoms while the kings are away (see my previous note about how Eddings does examine his stereotypes), albeit partly by mercilessly exploiting the sexism of their societies. The story then picks up with Ce'Nedra and company, including all of the rest of Garion's band, being their snarky and varied selves. There are some fairly satisfying set pieces, some battle tactics, some magical tactics, and a good bit of snarking and interplay between characters who feel like old friends by this point (mostly because of Eddings's simple, broad-strokes characterization). And Ce'Nedra is surprisingly good here. I would say that she's grown up after the events of the last book, but sadly she reverts to being awful in the aftermath. But for the main section of the book, partly because she's busy with other things, she's a reasonable character who experiences some actual consequences and some real remorse from one bad decision she makes. She's even admirable in how she handles events leading up to the climax of the book. Eddings does a good job showing every character in their best light, putting quite a lot of suspense (and some dramatic rescues) into this final volume, and providing a final battle that's moderately interesting. I'm not sure I entirely bought the theological ramifications of the conclusion (the bits with Polgara do not support thinking about too deeply), but the voice in Garion's head continues to be one of the better characters of the series. And Errand is a delight. After the climax, the aftermath sadly returns to Eddings's weird war between the sexes presentation of all gender relationships in this series, and it left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. (There is absolutely no way that some of these relationships would survive in reality.) Eddings portrays nearly every woman as a manipulative schemer, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil, and there is just so much gender stereotyping throughout this book for both women and men. You can tell he's trying with the queens, but women are still only allowed to be successful at politics and war within a very specific frame. Even Polgara gets a bit of the gender stereotyping, although she remains mostly an exception (and one aspect of the ending is much better than it could have been). Ah well. One does not (or at least probably should not) read this series without being aware that it has some flaws. But it has a strange charm as well, mostly from its irreverence. The dry wise-cracking of these characters rings more true to me than the epic seriousness of a lot of fantasy. This is how people behave under stress, and this is how quirky people who know each other extremely well interact. It also keeps one turning the pages quite effectively. I stayed up for several late nights finishing it, and was never tempted to put it down and stop reading. This is not great literature, but it's still fun. It wouldn't sustain regular re-reading for me, but a re-read after twenty years or so was pretty much exactly the experience I was hoping for: an unchallenging, optimistic story with amusing characters and a guaranteed happy ending. There's a place for that. Followed, in a series sense, by the Mallorean, the first book of which is The Guardians of the West. But this is a strictly optional continuation; the Belgariad comes to a definite end here. Rating: 7 out of 10

3 January 2017

Russ Allbery: Review: Castle of Wizardry

Review: Castle of Wizardry, by David Eddings
Series: The Belgariad #4
Publisher: Del Rey
Copyright: May 1984
Printing: September 1991
ISBN: 0-345-33570-8
Format: Mass market
Pages: 373
Castle of Wizardry is the fourth book of the Belgariad and very much the middle of the story. Despite coming after an intermediate climax, this isn't the sort of series you can start in the middle. The problem with intermediate climaxes in a long series is that the next book can be a bit of a let-down as the characters do the necessary regrouping and reorienting and determine next steps. I think that hurts Castle of Wizardry quite a lot. The best bits are at the beginning, as the party escapes the consequences of Magician's Gambit, collects one more party member, shows us a lot more of Errand (who is always delightful), and confounds Relg's life and world view considerably. (Although there's a good bit of authorial fiat in the last.) This builds into a major story event, which would normally help avoid the let-down after the climax, but it's the major story event that is so frequently and obviously foreshadowed that you'd have to be as dumb as, well, Garion to not know what's coming. That gives a certain "yes, yes, we know already" tone to proceedings that robs it of its ability to rebuild tension. That said, the appeal of this series continues to be in the small details. While the first major event of this book goes pretty much as expected (including Ce'Nedra's reaction, which is just as irritating as you might be expecting), my favorite part was the endless, bubbly enthusiasm of the incredibly powerful artifact that features heavily. Usually epic fantasy will treat such world-breaking objects with seriousness and awe, as treasures to be admired and sacred (or terrifying) great works. See, for instance, the ur-example of Tolkien's rings, both the One Ring and the elven rings of power. Eddings manages a mix of awe and bemusement that doesn't undermine their power but that adds a delightful human element. This series pulls off treating a powerful magical artifact like an over-enthusiastic puppy without making it feel any less dangerous. It's a very neat, and I think underappreciated, trick to pull off. Another part of this book I liked, if a more stock one, is Garion's reactions after the big story event. This isn't the first book to portray basic decency and thoughtfulness as a major feature in people from humble backgrounds elevated to great power, but I always enjoy seeing that. Garion stops whining (mostly) and starts acting like a decent, level-headed person who doesn't assume he has the right to arrange other people's lives, and is rewarded for it. Real life is often not that fair or ethical, but that's why one reads wish-fulfillment fantasy like this: for a world in which being a good person is rewarded. However, Eddings does have some structural issues here. The narrative arc of this book, as a stand-alone entity, is odd. Its most dramatic event is in the middle, and then has a long traveling section that's, by comparison, much less exciting. The events of that section feel more like random encounters than a coherent part of the story, and are preceded by the most utterly ridiculous temper tantrums. I think the tantrums were meant to be pure humor, but my reaction was primarily eye-rolling. I have a hard time reconciling a screaming fit and breaking furniture with the long life experience and thoughtful planning of the character in question. And then there is the Ce'Nedra section that closes this book, and Ce'Nedra in this book more generally. To be fair, Castle of Wizardry is clearly intended to be Ce'Nedra's moment to grow as a person and stop being a childish brat. This does happen somewhat, and there are moments in the last section of the book where she does admirable things. But I couldn't quite believe in the mechanism, and it doesn't help that it's one of the most ham-handed bits of pre-ordained success in a book that has a tendency towards them. That undermines the real attempts Eddings makes to ground that success in Ce'Nedra's actual skills. Also undermining this is that those skills are manipulating people shamelessly, which Eddings seems to think is charming and attractive and I... don't. But the real problem is that I flatly disbelieve in Ce'Nedra as a character, or, given the apparent existence of such a creature, the level of tolerance that other characters show her. If I'd been Polgara, within fifteen minutes of meeting her I would have been seriously debating whether the destruction of the world might be a small price to pay for the satisfaction of dumping her down the nearest well. And not only is she awful by herself but Garion also descends to the same level whenever he's around her, until both of them are behaving like blithering idiots. I suspect part of my issue is that, to the extent that she is realistic at all, Ce'Nedra is the sort of intensely high-drama person who I have some amount of life experience with, and that life experience says "do not let this person anywhere near your life." Red flags all over everything. Garion needs to nope the hell out, because this will not end well. (Except, of course, it will, because it's that sort of series and the power of the author is strong.) I want female characters with real agency in my fantasy, and I want a female protagonist who is doing things of equal importance as the male protagonist (not that Eddings attempts to go that far). But Ce'Nedra reads like a fictional character written by someone who had never met a woman, but has extensively studied female supporting characters in books about junior-high social cliques and then tried to reconcile that research with the stereotype of women as manipulative seductresses. Yes, this series is full of stereotypes and characters painted in broad strokes, but Ce'Nedra is several tiers below every other supporting character in the book in both believability and in my desire to read about her. It's not that Eddings doesn't know how to write women at all. Polgara still falls into a few stereotyped categories, but she's sensible, opinionated, and has clear agency throughout the story. Taiba is delightful, if minor here. Poledra is absolutely wonderful whenever she appears. Some of the queens are obviously practical and sensible. And this book features a surprisingly good resolution to the subplot around Barak's wife, although the mechanism is a bit eye-rollingly cliched. Ce'Nedra's character is unusual for the series and almost certainly a deliberate authorial choice, and this book is supposed to be her coming of age. But I am baffled by that choice, and there's very little about it that I enjoyed reading. One more minor complaint: Silk gets a "tragic secret" in this book, and I really wish he hadn't. More time with Silk is always a feature, and I still love the character, but his oddities were already adequately explained by both his innate character and his way of dealing with a particularly awkward court situation. (One that ties into Eddings's habit of using some bad relationship stereotypes, but that's a rant for another day.) I think this additional tragic secret was gratuitous and really unnecessary, not to mention weirdly implausible and oddly cruel towards the other character involved. I was hoping that Magician's Gambit had turned a corner for the series, but Castle of Wizardry, despite having some neat moments, has some serious flaws. One more book to go, in which we learn that some of the eastern races have redeeming qualities! Followed by Enchanter's End Game. Rating: 6 out of 10

18 December 2016

Iustin Pop: Printer fun

Had some printer fun this week. It was fun in the sense that failure modes are interesting, not that there was much joy in the process. My current document printer is an HP that I bought back in early 2008; soon 9 years old, that is. When I got the printer I was quite happy: it supports Postscript, it supports memory extension (which allowed me to go from the built-in 64MB to a whopping 320MB), it is networked and has automatic duplex. Not good for much more than document printing, but that it did well. I didn't print a lot on it (averaged it was well below the recommended monthly limit), which might explain the total trouble-free operation, but I did change the toner cartridges a couple of times. The current cartridges were running low for a while, but I didn't need to change them yet. As I printed a user manual at the beginning of the week (~300+ pages in total), I ran out of the black half-way through. Bought a new cartridge, installed it, and the first strange thing was that it still showed Black empty - please replace . I powered the printer off and turned it on again (the miracle cure for all IT-related things), and things seemed OK, so I restarted printing. However, this time, the printer was going through 20-30 pages, and then was getting stuck in "Printing document" with green led blinking. Waited for 20 minutes, nothing. So cancel the job (from the printer), restart printing, all fine. The next day I wanted to print a single page, and didn't manage to. Checked that the PDF is normal, checked an older PDF which I printed successfully before, nothing worked. Changed drivers, unseated & re-seated the extra memory, changed operating systems, nothing. Not even the built-in printer diagnostic pages were printing. The internet was all over with "HP formatter issues"; apparently some HP printers had "green" (i.e. low-quality) soldering, and were failing after a while. But people were complaining about 1-2-4 years, not 9 that my printer worked, and it was very suspicious that all troubles started after my cartridge replacement. Or, more likely, due to the recent sudden increase in printing. Given that formatter board fixes (bake in the oven for N minutes at a specific temperature to reflow the soldering) are temporary and that you can't find replacement parts for this printer, I started looking for a new printer. To my surprise (and dismay at the waste that capitalism produces), a new printer from a higher class was cheaper than replacing all 4 cartridges in my printer. So I had a 90% full black cartridge that I couldn't reuse, but I'd get a new printer for not much more. Interestingly, in 9 years, the development was: I was however happy that one can still get OS-independent (Postscript), networked printers that are small enough for home use and don't (necessarily) come with WiFi. However, one thing still bothered me: did I have such problems because the printer died of overwork at old age, or was it related to the cartridge change? So I start searching again, and I find a post on a forum (oh Google, why did you remove "forum search" and replaced it with "language level"?) that details a hidden procedure to format the internal storage of the printer, exactly for my printer model, exactly for my symptoms. Huh, I will lose page count, but this is worth a try So I do press the required keys, I see the printer booting and saying "erasing ", then asking for language, which makes me happy because it seems the forum post was correct in one regard. I confirm English, the printer reboots once more, and then when it comes up it warns me: "Yellow cartridge is a non-HP original, please confirm". I get confused, and re-seat all cartridges, to no avail. Yellow is non-HP. Sigh, maybe that cartridge had something that confused the printer? When I visit its web page however, all cartridges except the newly installed black one are marked as Non-HP; this only means that I can't see their remaining toner level, but otherwise the printer is restored back to life. I take the opportunity to also perform a firmware upgrade (only five years newer firmware, but still quite old), but this doesn't solve the Non-HP message. The printer works now, and I'm left wondering: was this all a DRM-related failure, something like new cartridge chip which had some new code that confused the printer so bad it needed reformatting, at which point the old cartridge code is no longer supported (for whatever reason)? Was it just a fluke, unrelated to DRM? Was the problem that I powered off the printer soon after replacing the cartridge, while it was still doing something (e.g. preparing to do a calibration after the change)? And another, more practical question: I have 3 cartridges to replace still; they were at 10% before this entire saga, and I'm not able to see their level anymore, but they'll get down to empty soon. The black cartridge in the printer is already at 77%, which is surprising as I didn't print that much. So should I replace the cartridges on what is a possibly fully functional, but also possibly a dying printer? Or buy a new one for slightly more, throwing out possibly good hardware? Even though I understand the business reason behind it, I hate the whole concept of "the printer is free, you pay for the ink". Though in my case "free" didn't mean bad, as a lifetime of 9 years is good enough for a printer.

7 December 2016

Shirish Agarwal: Day trip in Cape Town, part 2

Debconf16 logo The post continues from the last post shared. Let me get some interesting tit-bits not related to the day-trip out-of-the-way first I don t know whether we had full access to see all parts of fuller hall or not. Couple of days I was wondering around Fuller Hall, specifically next to where clothes were pressed. Came to know of the laundry service pretty late but still was useful. Umm next to where the ladies/gentleman pressed our clothes, there is a stairway which goes down. In fact even on the opposite side there is a stairway which goes down. I dunno if other people explored them or not. The jail inside and under UCT I was surprised and shocked to see bars in each room as well as connecting walkways etc. I felt a bit sad, confused and curious and went on to find more places like that. After a while I came up to the ground-level and enquired with some of the ladies therein. I was shocked to know that UCT some years ago (they were not specific) was a jail for people. I couldn t imagine that a place which has so much warmth (in people, not climate) could be evil in a sense. I was not able to get much information out of them about the nature of jail it was, maybe it is a dark past that nobody wants to open up, dunno. There were also two *important* aspects of UCT which Bernelle either forgot, didn t share or I just came to know via the Wikipedia page then but nothing else. 1. MeerKAT Apparently quite a bit of the technology was built-in UCT itself. This would have been interesting for geeks and wanna-be geeks like me 2. The OpenContent Initiative by UCT This would have been also something worth exploring. One more interesting thing which I saw was the French council in Cape Town from outside The French Council in cape town from outside I would urge to look at the picture in the gallery as the picture I shared doesn t really show all the details. For e.g. the typical large french windows which are the hall-mark of French architecture doesn t show its glory but if you look at 1306 2322 original picture instead of the 202 360 reproduction you will see that. You will also the insignia of the French Imperial Eagle whose history I came to know only after I looked it up on the Wikipedia page on that day. It seemed fascinating and probably would have the same pride as the State Emblem of India has for Indians with the four Asiatic Lions standing in a circle protecting each other. I also like the palm tree and the way the French Council seemed little and yet had character around all the big buildings. What also was interesting that there wasn t any scare/fear-build and we could take photos from outside unlike what I had seen and experienced in Doha, Qatar as far as photography near Western Embassies/Councils were concerned. One of the very eye-opening moments for me was also while I was researching flights from India to South Africa. While perhaps unconsciously I might have known that Middle East is close to India, in reality, it was only during the search I became aware that most places in Middle East by flight are only an hour or two away. This was shocking as there is virtually no mention of one of our neighbours when they are source of large-scale remittances every year. I mean this should have been in our history and geography books but most do not dwell on the subject. It was only during and after that I could understand Mr. Modi s interactions and trade policies with the Middle East. Another interesting bit was seeing a bar in a Sprinbok bus spingbok atlas bar in bus While admittedly it is not the best picture of the bar, I was surprised to find a bar at the back of a bus. By bar I mean a machine which can serve anything from juices to alcoholic drinks depending upon what is stocked. What was also interesting in the same bus is that the bus also had a middle entrance-and-exit. The middle door in springbok atlas This is something I hadn t seen in most Indian buses. Some of the Volvo buses have but it is rarely used (only except emergencies) . An exhaustive showcase of local buses can be seen here . I find the hand-drawn/cad depictions of all the buses by Amit Pense near to the T. Axe which can be used to break windows Emergency exit window This is also something which I have not observed in Indian inter-city buses (axe to break the window in case of accident and breakable glass which doesn t hurt anyone I presume), whether they are State-Transport or the high-end Volvo s . Either it s part of South African Roads Regulations or something that Springbok buses do for their customers. All of these queries about the different facets I wanted to ask the bus-driver and the attendant/controller but in the excitement of seeing, recording new things couldn t ask In fact one of the more interesting things I looked at and could look day and night is the variety of vehicles on display in Cape Town. In hindsight, I should have bought a couple of 128 GB MMC cards for my mobile rather than the 64 GB one. It was just plain inadequate to capture all that was new and interesting. Auditorum chair truck seen near Auditorium This truck I had seen about some 100 metres near the Auditorium on Upper Campus. The truck s design, paint was something I had never seen before. It is/was similar to casket trucks seen in movies but the way it was painted and everything made it special. What was interesting is to see the gamut of different vehicles. For instance, there were no bicycles that I saw in most places. There were mostly Japanese/Italian bikes and all sorts of trucks. If I had known before, I would definitely have bought an SD specifically to take snaps of all the different types of trucks, cars etc. that I saw therein. The adage/phrase I should stop in any one place and the whole world will pass me by seemed true on quite a few South African Roads. While the roads were on par or a shade better than India, many of those were wide roads. Seeing those, I was left imagining how the Autobahn in Germany and other high-speed Expressways would look n feel. India has also been doing that with the Pune-Mumbai Expressway and projects like Yamuna Expressway and now the extension Agra Lucknow Expressway but doing this all over India would take probably a decade or more. We have been doing it since a decade and a half. NHDP and PMGSY are two projects which are still ongoing to better the roads. We have been having issues as to should we have toll or no toll issues but that is a discussion for some other time. One of the more interesting sights I saw was the high-arched gothic-styled church from outside. This is near Longstreet as well. high arch gothic-styled church I have seen something similar in Goa, Pondicherry but not such high-arches. I did try couple of times to gain entry but one time it was closed, the other time some repairing/construction work was going on or something. I would loved to see it from inside and hopefully they would have had an organ (music) as well. I could imagine to some extent the sort of music that would have come out. Now that Goa has come in the conversation I can t help but state that Seafood enthusiasts/lover/aficionado, or/and Pescatarianism would have a ball of a time in Goa. Goa is on the Konkan coast and while I m eggie, ones who enjoy seafood really have a ball of a time in Goa. Fouthama s Festival which happens in February is particularly attractive as Goan homes are thrown open for people to come and sample their food, exchange recipes and alike. This happens around 2 weeks before the Goan Carnival and is very much a part of the mish-mashed Konkani-Bengali-Parsi-Portugese culture. I better stop here about the Goa otherwise I ll get into reminiscing mode. To put the story and event back on track from where we left of (no fiction hereon), Nicholas was in constant communication with base, i.e. UCT as well as another group who was hiking from UCT to Table Mountain. We waited for the other group to join us till 13:00 hrs. We came to know that they were lost and were trying to come up and hence would take more time. As Bernelle was with them, who was a local and she had two dogs who knew the hills quite well, it was decided to go ahead without them. We came down the same cable-car and then ventured on towards Houtbay. Houtbay has it all, a fisherman s wharf, actual boats with tough-mean looking men with tattoos working on boats puffing cigars/pipes, gaggle of sea-gulls, the whole scene. Sharing a few pictures of the way in-between. the view en-route to Houtbay western style car paint and repair shop Tajmahal Indian Restaurant, Houtbay I just now had a quick look at the restaurant and it seems they had options for veggies too. Unfortunately, the rating leaves a bit to be desired but then dunno as Indian flavoring is something that takes time to get used too. Zomato doesn t give any idea of from when a restaurant is in business and has too few reviews so not easy to know how the experience would have been. Chinese noodles and small houses Notice the pattern, the pattern of small houses I saw all the way till Houtbay and back. I do vaguely remember starting a discussion about it on the bus but don t really remember. I have seen (on TV) cities like Miami, Dubai or/and Hong Kong who have big buildings on the beach but both in Konkan as well as Houtbay there were small buildings. I guess a combination of zoning regulations, feel of community, fear of being flooded all play into beaches being the way they are. Also, this probably is good as less stress on the environment. Miamiboyz from Wikimedia Commons The above picture is taken from Wikipedia from the article Miami Beach, Florida for comparison. Audi rare car to be seen in India The Audi rare car to be seen in India. This car has been associated with Ravi Shastri when he won it in 1985. I was young but still get goosebumps remembering those days. first-glance-Houtbay-and-pier First glance of Houtbay beach and pier. Notice how clean and white the beach is. Wharf-Grill-Restaurant-from-side-and-Hop-on-Hop-off-bus You can see the wharf grill restaurant in the distance (side-view), see the back of the hop on and hop off bus (a concept which was unknown to me till then). Once I came back and explored on the web came to know this concept is prevalent in many a touristy places around the world. Umm also By sheer happenchance also captured a beautiful looking Indian female . So many things happening all at once In Hindi, we would call this picture virodabhas or contradiction . this is in afternoon, around 1430 hrs. You have the sun, the clouds, the Mountains, the x number of boats, the pier, the houses, the cars, the shops. It was all crazy and beautiful at the same time. The Biggest Contradiction is seeing the Mountain, the beach and the Sea in the same Picture. Baffled the mind. Konkan though is a bit similar there as well. You have all the three things in some places but that s a different experience altogether as ours is a more tropical weather although is one of the most romantic places in the rains. We were supposed to go on a short cruise to seal/dolphin island but as we were late (as had been waiting for the other group) didn t go and instead just loitered there. Fake-real lookout bar-restaurant IIRC the lookout bar is situated just next to Houtbay Search and Rescue. Although was curious if the Lookout tower was used in case of disappearance. lost people, boats etc. Seal in action Seal jumping over water, what a miracle ! One of the boats on which we possibly could have been on. It looked like the boat we could have been on. I clicked as I especially liked the name Calypso and Calypso . I shared the two links as the mythologies, interpretation differ a bit between Greek and Hollywood culture Debian folks and the area around Can see few Debian folks in the foreground, next to the Pole and the area around. Also can see a bit of the area around. Alone boy trying to surf I don t know anything about water sports and after sometime he came out. I was left wondering though, how safe he was in that water. While he was close to the pier and he was just paddling, there weren t big waves still felt a bit of concern. Mr. Seal - the actor and his handler While the act was not to the level we see in the movies, still for the time I hung around, I saw him showing attitude for his younger audiences, eating out of their hands, making funny sounds. Btw he farted a few times, whether that was a put-on or not can t really say but produced a few guffaws from his audience. A family feeding Mr. Seal I dunno why the birds came down for. Mr. Seal was being fed oily small fish parts, dunno if the oil was secreted by the fish themselves or whatever, it just looked oily from distance. Bird-Man-Bird Bird taking necessary sun bath typical equipment on a boat to catch fish-lot of nets boats-nets-and-ropes People working on disentangling a net There wasn t much activity on the time we went. It probably would have been different on sunrise and would be on sunset. The only activity I saw was on this boat where they were busy fixing and disentangling the lines. I came up with 5-15 different ideas for a story but rejected them as a. Probably all of them have been tried. People have been fishing since the beginning of time and modern fishing probably 200 odd years or so. I have read accounts of fishing companies in early 1800s onwards, so probably all must have been tried. b. More dangerous one, if there is a unique idea, then it becomes more dangerous as writing is an all-consuming process. Writing a blog post (bad or good) takes lots of time. I constantly read, re-read, try and improvise till I can or my patience loses out. In book you simply can t have such luxuries. hout-bay-search-and-rescue-no-parking-zone No parking/tow zone in/near the Houtbay search and rescue. Probably to take out emergency vehicles once something untoward happens. hout-bay-sea-rescue-with-stats Saved 54 lives, boats towed 154 Salut! Houtbay sea rescue. The different springbok atlas bus that we were on kraal-kraft The only small criticism is for Houtbay there wasn t a single public toilet. We had to ask favor at kraal kraft to use their toilets and there could have been accidents, it wasn t lighted well and water was spilled around. Road sign telling that we are near to UCT For us, because we were late we missed both the boat-cruise as well as some street shops selling trinkets. Other than that it was all well. We should have stayed till sunset, I am sure the view would have been breath-taking but we hadn t booked the bus till evening. Back at UCT Overall it was an interesting day as we had explored part of Table Mountain, seen the somewhat outrageously priced trinkets there as well as explored Houtbay sea-side as well.
Filed under: Miscellenous Tagged: #Audi, #Cape Town, #Cruises, #Debconf16, #French Council, #Geography, #Houtbay Sea Rescue, #Jail, #Middle East, #Springbok Atlas, #Vehicles

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