wjsullivan.net

eHarmony is finally allowing same-sex matches -- on a separate site that they are opening -- as settlement of a suit with one Eric McKinley.

It's not possible that the AP reporter didn't know what they were doing here:

McKinley called the settlement ''fabulous'' and said he was happy with the outcome. He's considering signing up for the new site once it launches.

I thought it was interesting to hear First Lady Laura Bush use "conservative" in this way on Meet the Press this past Sunday.

Kabul is in much better shape, I think, than it has been. Violence is down there, in the city. But, in certain parts of Afghanistan, because there are still so many very conservative people, women themselves are afraid.

I just received The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen as a gift (yay). It's 871 pages. I opened to a random page, looking to see if there might be a poem saying something about the idea of significance. The poem I opened to was "The Dilemma of the Occasion Is", on page 787.

My initial thought after not really reading the poem was that it had nothing to do with what I was looking for. So I decided I should check the Internet instead, and searched for "philip whalen significance poetry". Please don't mock my search terms; I wasn't actually trying to find anything. This search predictably led me to the empty mirror books page about Whalen, where I clicked on the link for Mark Other Place. I scrolled down the page a couple screens without actually reading anything. When I did stop to look, I was staring at the opening lines of "The Dilemma of the Occasion Is".

On reading it now, I think maybe it does have something to do with what I was looking for:

Too many shoes
Those are not the ones.

Today I wrote my first Wikipedia article, about MimicCreme, the nut-based vegan cream substitute. I haven't actually tried the stuff, but Mako pointed it out to me, and it seemed only natural (pun intended) that I write the article since I also sometimes edit the Cool Whip article. Note, however, that you cannot whip MimicCream (yet).

My favorite edit to the Cool Whip article so far has been this one, to remove:

In some countries Cool Whip will be know as '' Rat Whites'' because it is fluffy like the inside of the rat.In oldtimes in these fourign countries they really made Cool Whip with fresh rat whites, that is where they got the original name '' Rat Whites''.But no worry Rat Whites are no longer used in the making of Cool Whip. Or is it? We will never find out what is really in the recipe.

I should probably follow that with a [sic], or a [sick].

Six minutes after first saving the MimicCreme article, it was tagged for speedy deletion — despite the fact that it had an "under construction" tag at the top. This was especially amusing given that I had spent my commute this morning reading from Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, and was somewhat inspired by this quote about the beginnings of Wikipedia:

The original asphalt article read, in full, "Asphalt is a material used for road coverings." The article was created in March 2001, at the dawn of Wikipedia, by a user named Cdani, as little more than a placeholder saying, "We should have an article on asphalt here." (118)

Things change, I guess. MimicCreme's no asphalt and my name isn't Cdani, but MimicCreme certainly is something weird that someone might want to look up, and it fits in several existing categories. However, I should also remember this quote from a few pages later:

The people most enamored of describing Wikipedia as the product of a free-form hive mind don't understand how Wikipedia actually works. It is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation. (139)

So I guess this is the start of the argument, about the significance or insignificance of MimicCreme in the universe, and whether Kosher should be capitalized in this context.

"Howard could imagine someone doing what he did, but better."

Rules:

• Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
• Turn to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence
• Post that sentence along with these instructions
• Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Tonight I tried a Pineapple-Mango Bahama Rice Burger. They are vegan. They are also the most disgusting thing I've put in my mouth in a very long time. If you contemplate the rancid citrus flavor of the worst fruitcake you've ever had, warm and with some ketchup on it, having a texture like the oatmeal you left sit out since yesterday, you'll have a reasonable approximation of my dinner.

Outside of the whole vegan thing, I'm really not a picky eater. These things are seriously offensive. Maybe the other flavors are better, and I like the idea of a burger that's not soy, but I think I'll, um, resist the urge to find out. Elsewhere on the 'Net, people seem to be reviewing these things positively. I cannot explain that.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Currently I have Debian installed on my SD card, and Qtextended 4.4.2 on the flash. This is just a quick summary of what I've been working on lately.

Random Debian thoughts on my mind:

• The Debian install by default includes the experimental repository in /etc/apt/sources.list. I took that out. Maybe I shouldn't, but so far I haven't seen any negative consequences.
• I downgraded the bluez package to what was in unstable. After downgrading bluez, I have hidd back again, and can pair with my FrogPad with hidd --search. I also had to add a stanza for a keyboard to xorg.conf since the default config does not have one. Pairing was not working at all with the "new" way bluez handles input devices.
• Bluetooth doesn't turn on at boot, so I have to do that manually. I just made a shell script for now, using the commands from the wiki.
• I'm using aux.sh script to do right-clicking. Thanks to lindi in #openmoko-debian. Another way to do this is to use dgym's fr-toolbar, which I was using but stopped while I was experimenting with xrandr and screen rotation — fr-toolbar doesn't work very well with the rotated screen.
• I was experimenting with xfce but couldn't get xfcewm to stop opening windows larger than my screen (yes, I tried setting workspace margins). So I installed Fluxbox and switched to using that for the window manager. It's okay but I will probably switch to something else, like awesome.
• I've been playing chess with Xboard + GNU Chess, playing solitaire with the ace-of-penguins games, doing GPS with TangoGPS, and accessing wifi networks using Wifi Radar. I have not really been using it as a phone. I had it in a broken state from hacking on things and for the time being have put my SIM card back in my Nokia E61 — but I set up the FreeRunner to tether over bluetooth to the Nokia so that I can surf using Midori on the FR via my T-Mobile GPRS even with the SIM in the Nokia.
• I fixed my boot issues, which I think were caused by the Debian configure-uboot.sh script that was supposed to allow me to boot straight into Debian. For an embarrassingly long time I've been booting from the boot menu, because if I tried to just boot straightaway it would freeze. These instructions worked fine to restore it.
• But then I had to restore the partition table on the SD card — I guess there is a problem with suspend/resume that messes up the table. The phone went into suspend while I was using Qtextended and there went the neighborhood. Recovery isn't too bad though, I just booted into Qtextended and did "SD_PART1_FS=vfat ./install.sh partition" with the Debian install script. No data loss (though I did do a full backup before booting into Qtextended).

With Qtextended 4.4.2:

• I just installed this today to test it out. It has a web browser now (webkit), which seems quite nice except for the fact that I can't enter passwords. The keyboard just refuses to appear when focus is on a password form field.
• GPRS works just fine, using the previous instructions I wrote for myself for earlier versions of Qtopia.
• I imported my contacts with "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/Trolltech/Qtopia/lib /opt/Trolltech/Qtopia/bin/addressbook /home/root/addressbook.vcf". I'm happy to see that the contacts database now has a browse-by-letter system. Browsing the contacts in earlier versions was a serious pain.
• There have definitely been improvements in the predictive keyboard. It's still maddening sometimes, but my main complaint — that there were way too many times when I was forced to delete an entire word I was typing when I really only needed to delete the most recent character typed — seems to have been addressed. I will say that the keyboard is also much more pleasant to use with the stylus, especially when holding on the letters to type words not in the dictionary.
• Unfortunately it does not seem to be receiving calls well at all. Substantially worse in fact. I get an ear-piercing screech, and multiple calls registered when there is only one.
• Screen rotation is new and seems to be working okay. There is some mild distortion in the status bar and artifacts left around the screen while using the predictive keyboard, but it basically works. It's not automatic via the accelerometer though; the user has to select it from the Settings menu. I'd show you some screenshots but I haven't figured out how to do that yet as the old screenshot app seems to be missing.

On a happy dorky note, I finally found and bought a pen today that has a stylus in it as well. So I can stop carrying around the atrocity that ships with the FreeRunner. Coincidentally it's the same kind of pen I've been using for years — the Papermate PhD.

From the things I shouldn't admit to department: This caused me to miss a flight over the weekend. An important one. My Nokia E61 served by T-Mobile displayed the wrong time. The wrong time was also visible on a nearby Holiday Inn billboard clock.

Look, Newman, I told you to let this thing go.

Previously.

Here's the story behind the 6:27pm Red Line alert you might have received tonight. Except not really, because I have no idea what happened. All I know is that about 5 seconds after I got off the Braintree train at Downtown Crossing, the train started to pull away at an unusually high speed and lots of people were yelling STOP.

I looked back at the train — and the doors were still open.

They were definitely still open on the last car and I'm pretty sure they were open on other cars as well. People had been still trying to get on the train when it jerked away. It went over a third of the way down the platform before it stopped again. Probably almost halfway.

I hung around for a minute, but I was trying to catch a bus and no one seemed to be hurt, so I left. I'm looking forward to the explanation for this one. I mean what, foot slipped off the brake?

That was on the way back from Central after returning the first disc of Pushing Daisies — awesome show. On the way there from work, I saw a kid squeeze through the gate behind someone else without paying. This is a common occurrence but for some reason tonight it struck a nerve. I think the next kid I see do that is going to hear about it. Yes, getting crotchety, I know.

I'll be at the Students for Free Culture conference in Berkeley this weekend, October 11-12. On the second day I'll be leading a session focused on DefectiveByDesign and Digital Restrictions Management. The idea for the day is to do something hands-on rather than just talk at people, so I'm not sure exactly what we'll do — I'm thinking possibly coordinating to produce some new audio/video/text materials about DRM, or maybe writing a statement that environmental groups who recently came out against DRM could sign on to similar to what we did with the Free Software Free Society statement against Vista, or surely there must be something we can do in response to this call for input about possible DMCA exemptions. Still brainstorming.

You should come! I didn't think I was going to be able to make it, but things worked out and Wednesday airfare specials did not disappoint. I'll be in Berkeley from Friday till Monday.

I received the following email this morning to confirm my request to transfer money from checking to savings:

Dear William,

Customer Number: XXXXXXXXXX

Your request to transfer money from your linked account to an ING DIRECT account on Tuesday, September 30, 2008 was received. Your confirmation number is 0.

Visit ingdirect.com and go to the My Accounts tab to get more details.

I haven't had a confirmation number that low since I had a reservation at the Hotel Carter (don't do it). Now is not the time to be playing games with my belief in the integrity of the financial system.

rhiannonstone gave me the letter K.

In no particular order, my ten favorite K things:

1. Knowledge — Too much might break up the rhyme.
2. Kindergarten — Everything I needed to know, etc.
3. Kundera, Milan — Unbearable Lightness of Being, life changing.
4. Kisses — Some are better than others.
5. Kale — I eat it, a lot. With blackeyed peas, crushed red pepper, and cider vinegar.
6. Kramer — You just blew my mind.
7. Kindness — I try.
8. Kleenex — A teachable moment for why our common vocabulary shouldn't be proprietary.
9. Knuth, Donald — LaTeX.
10. Kill 'Em All — The amazingest of albums, but awful politics.

What did I forget? Or, want a letter? Leave a comment.

I have a GPRS connection over T-Mobile basically working on my FreeRunner using the Qtopia software. It isn't yet working for dialing over bluetooth though, to use the phone as a modem for my laptop. I hope to figure that part out soon.

Things are a little erratic — sometimes I have to try an extra time or two before it will connect to the network.

First, go to Main > Settings > Internet. From the menu icon, select New and then GPRS.

Then do the Account settings. Account name is whatever you want. The APN should be internet2.voicestream.com. I leave "Startup mode" on "When needed", but this does not yet seem to have the desired effect of connecting on demand when sending an e-mail or what not. Username and Password should be blank.

In Network Settings, I have "Timeout" unchecked, and "Auto name server" checked. Maybe I shouldn't have "Timeout" unchecked. I don't really know.

Under Advanced, I have "Auto Routing" checked, and Hardware checked under "Flow ctrl". "Wait time" is set to 15s.

Now, ssh into the device. A patch is needed to /opt/Qtopia/bin/ppp-network to get these settings right when going through the GUI, but until then, here's what I did. I removed /etc/ppp/resolv.conf and symlinked it to /var/run/ppp/resolv.conf, which is the file that actually seems to get updated on ppp connect.

A patch is also needed to do the right thing with the /etc/ppp/chap-secrets file. With the file the way it is by default, the device will attempt to authenticate even though the ppp options file tells it not to. This results in no connection. So, I added a line to tell it to stop trying. This is what my file now looks like:

# Secrets for authentication using CHAP                                        
# client        server        secret    IP addresses                     
*                *        ""                        * 

Other files of interest on the device include:

• /home/root/Applications/Network/chat: This is the chatscript created by the GUI. I imagine that fiddling with this might make starting the connection more reliable.
• Various /etc/ppp/peers/dialup* files are created by the GUI, and those contain the ppp settings.

We've been working on this video for a few months now, and it's really exciting to have it finally published. Those of you who usually ignore my posts about software should take five minutes and watch this video, it's a nice explanation in a soothing accent of what it is that I'm on about all the time.

Palin's parents, according to Meet the Press, have a bumper sticker on their car that says, "Vegetarian: Old Indian word for 'bad hunter'". Hah.

Qtopia on FreeRunner
Originally uploaded by johnsu01

After doing an opkg upgrade on my FreeRunner yesterday, it quit booting. It would go through part of the boot process and then freeze on a blank screen with just a flashing cursor in the upper left-hand corner.

It seemed to be stuck at the S98qpe start stage. logread -f showed a looping mess of errors, notably:

Aug 28 17:59:59 om-gta02 user.notice Qtopia: 
qpe: symbol lookup error: qpe: undefined symbol: _ZN17QBluetoothAddress7invalidE

The binary upgrade script here fixed the problem. Use the "Qtopia update for Neo" script, but ignore the "Needs to be run from /opt/Nokia/Qtopia" instruction. It's actually designed to be run from your USB host machine, not the Neo at all. If you have changed the IP address of your Neo from the default, you'll need to fix that in this script as well. Read it before you run it.

I saw that Jim Goar listed his ten favorite books of poetry. When I read his, I wanted to read my own.

There are different kinds of favorite. These are favorites in the sense that they made other favorites possible for me. They are the ten books I think of right now that each changed the way I thought about poetry. Half of them are the books that convinced me I wanted to go study poetry more.

In no particular order:

1. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
2. Lunch Poems, Frank O'Hara
3. Poems for the Millennium, Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris
4. Best Loved Poems of the American People, Hazel Felleman and Edward Frank Allen
5. Houseboat Days, John Ashbery
6. Collected Poems, Sylvia Plath
7. Outlying Districts, Anselm Hollo
8. Four Year Old Girl, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge
9. Collected Poems 1947-1980, Allen Ginsberg
10. Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau

I have a feeling I'll be writing more about each of these books soon. But I probably won't be writing much about Best Loved Poems of the American People because part of me is a little embarrassed that it's on this list but also because it's the one on the list that I don't have on my bookshelf right now. I remember reading "The Vagabonds" by John Towsend Trowbridge in it. I also remember reading Ogden Nash and Robert Frost in it, but searching the book on Amazon appears to make a liar out of me. I guess I must have first encountered those two somewhere else. It's also the first book I remember reading poems aloud from.

Runners-up that would probably be on this list if I asked me on a different day are:

• The Promises of Glass, Michael Palmer
• The Descent of Alette, Alice Notley
• The Sonnets, Ted Berrigan
• Selected Poems and Four Plays, W.B. Yeats
• Sleeping with the Dictionary, Harryette Mullen

Wow.

I'm sad I'll be out of town for this year's Big Lebowski Bowling Party Extravaganza.