Two excerpts

July 11th, 2011

I liken sociopathic charm to the animal charisma of other mammals who are predators. We watch the large cats, for example, and are fascinated with their movements, their independence and their power. But the direct gaze of a leopard, should one happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, is inescapable and tetanizing, and the fascinating charm of the predator is often the last thing prey ever experiences.

Enhancing the animal charisma of sociopaths, there is our own mild affinity for danger. Conventional wisdom has it that dangerous people are attractive, and when we are drawn to sociopaths, we tend to prove out this cliche. Sociopaths are dangerous in many ways. One of the most conspicuous is their preference for risky situations and choices, and their ability to convince others to take risks along with them…Our normal affinity for the occasional thrill can make the risk-taking sociopath seem all the more charming — at first. Initially, it can be exciting to be invited into the risky scheme, so be associated with the person who is making choices outside of our ordinary boundaries.

–The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout PhD, p 88-89

His angel’s face was only a few inches from mine. I might have — should have — flinched away from his unexpected closeness, but I was unable to move. His golden eyes mesmerized me.

“I’m the world’s best predator, aren’t I? Everything about me invites you in — my voice, my face, even my smell. As if I need any of that!…As if you could outrun me…As if you could fight me off…”

Face ashen, eyes wide, I sat like a bird locked in the eyes of a snake.

–Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, p262-264

Edward Cullen from The Twilight Saga as portrayed by Robert Pattenson

Not available for comment.

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Magic gender

July 8th, 2011

A recent Manboobz post mentioned in passing something called Magyck the Gendering (the specific page has mysteriously disappered). Fascinated, I went to google it. Although I found no such reference, Google did supply me with this interesting gem:

Magic Gender is Male

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“Veganism for the rest of us”

July 3rd, 2011

I stumbled across a blog post entitled Veganism For The Rest Of Us and I have to say it rubbed me wrong. Comments are turned off, or I would have posted my thoughts there. They seem to be addressing non-vegans who are considering taking the leap, assuring them that it’s easy to be vegan and there are plenty of delicious foods. I was with it till the following paragraph:

We don’t like vegetables, either. And we don’t live without cheese…When we go to see a baseball game, we gobble up hot dogs, fries, and sodas. After a movie, we stop and have a pizza with extra cheese…In fact, our diet resembles the menu you find at most diners, with one crucial difference: the ingredients we use to make these foods do not come from animals. They look the same, and, in most cases, taste just the same.

Emphasis added because that is a glaring non-truth right there. I will be celebrating 12 years vegan in November, and I am very happy. I have never regretted going vegan, but it was a lifestyle change, one that sometimes it required a little planning. When a person sells veganism as easy and unobtrusive, they’re lying. When I went vegan, knowing it was going to be difficult helped me be prepared for those moments that were going to be exceptionally hard. I believe that if I had expected it to be a breeze, I never would have made it through the first month. Once I was through the initial difficult transition, I’ve pretty much coasted. And I continue to planned ahead.

So, to a potential/new vegan who may be reading this, I would like to issue you the following corrections of the quoted paragraph:

You do live without cheese. There are some excellent vegan cheese substitutes. At first the substitution will be glaring, but eventually most of us can’t tell the difference anymore. In the mean time, try to appreciate it as its own food, not a sad substitute.

Maybe you will eat hot dogs at a ballgame, but not because you had a hankering and waved down the seller, it’ll be because you thought ahead and brought your own, which you took the time to prepare at home before the game.

Sure you can have a nice extra cheese pizza after a movie, provided there’s a place that sells vegan pizza locally. Most places that offer vegan pizza make it vegan by removing cheese, so if you want “cheese”, you’re going to have to call around before you go to the movie. Hopefully it’s still open when your movie gets out.

You will arrive at events to find the “vegan” entree contains eggs, the garden salad has cheese, and the tea has honey. Take it in stride, new vegan. It’s a hassle, but your life will go on, and thanks to your relatively minor sacrifice, so will the life of that cow, pig or sheep you’re not eating.

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Empty storefront in Portland

May 31st, 2011

Sins
Until recently, this establishment sold bathroom fixtures. I guess they’ve moved on to more lucrative pursuits.

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Improved improved GPS removal

October 22nd, 2010

I updated my jpeg geotag-removal script to recurse subdirectories. With that came the requirement to filter out irelevant files (not jpeg, no EXIF information). Below is the new script. I hope you find it useful:
#!/bin/bash
# Will remove non-essential EXIF from a jpeg while retaining Date/Time value.
# Use it to remove GPS information from pictures I want to put on the internet.
 
# Created Wed Aug 11 18:43:03 PDT 2010
 
# For handling spaces. See:
# http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/handling-filenames-with-spaces-in-bash.html
SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")
 
for img in $@; do
 
    file_type=`file -b $img`
    file_type=${file_type:0:15}
 
    if [ -d "$img" ]; then
        echo "$img" is a directory - recursing
    $0 "$img/*"
 
    elif [ $file_type == "JPEG image data" ]; then
        # Grab the original date/time
        DT=`jhead "$img"|grep 'Date/Time'`
 
        # If the date information started out
        # blank, trying to tack it back on
        # will result in an error
        if [ "$DT" == '' ]; then
            continue;
        else
 
            # Current format: " Date/Time : yyyy:mm:dd hh:mm:ss"
            # jhead requires: yyyy:mm:dd-hh:mm:ss
            DT=${DT:15:25}-${DT:25}
 
            # Strip non-essential information
            jhead -purejpg "$img"
 
            # Put the date/time back
            jhead -mkexif -ts$DT "$img"
 
        fi
    else
        echo "$img" is not a JPG - ignoring $file_type
    fi
done

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Hacking Tracks to accept shorter usernames

October 18th, 2010

I’m looking at Tracks/Shuffle to manage to-do lists on my phone/computer. I’m scouring the tubes for one that doesn’t involve me handing my data off to someone else. I like Shuffle because it can synch to any Tracks server you specify, and since Tracks is free software, it’s easy to install on any server.

In an effort to be able to use my usual login (kj), I H@X0R-H@X0R-H@X0R-ed the code to lower the minimum login from 3 to 2 characters. It’s not rocket science, but I hope it’ll save somebody else a bit of grepping:

In app/models/user.rb, line 115, change

validates_length_of :login, :within => 3..80

to

validates_length_of :login, :within => 2..80

In spec./models/user_spec.rb, line 81, change

it_should_validate_length_of :login, :within => 3..80

to

it_should_validate_length_of :login, :within => 2..80

If you’re feeling really ambitious, you could even change the error messages to be accurate. In test/unit/user_test.rb,. line 87:

assert_error_on u, :login, “is too short (minimum is 3 characters)”

to

assert_error_on u, :login, “is too short (minimum is 2 characters)”

Again in test/unit/user_test.rb,. this time on line 107:

assert_errors_on u, :login, ["can't be blank", "is too short (minimum is 3 characters)"]

to

assert_errors_on u, :login, ["can't be blank", "is too short (minimum is 2 characters)"]

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Improved GPS removal

August 13th, 2010

I recently posted about a way to remove the GPS information from pictures. I wrote a script that will retain the Date/Time information. It requires jhead.
#!/bin/bash
# Will remove non-essential EXIF from a jpeg
# while retaining Date/Time value. I use it to
# remove GPS information from pictures I
# want to put on the internet.
 
# Created Wed Aug 11 18:43:03 PDT 2010
 
# For handling spaces. See:
# http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/handling-filenames-with-spaces-in-bash.html
SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")
 
for img in $@; do
    echo Working on "$img"
 
    # Grab the original date/time
    DT=`jhead "$img"|grep 'Date/Time'`
 
    # Current format: " Date/Time : yyyy:mm:dd hh:mm:ss"
    # jhead requires: yyyy:mm:dd-hh:mm:ss
    DT=${DT:15:25}-${DT:25}
 
    # Strip non-essential information
    jhead -purejpg "$img"
 
    # Put the date/time back
    jhead -mkexif -ts$DT "$img"
done

It accepts image files as arguments. You can pass as many or as few as you feel like. If you’re interested in keeping other non-essential exif data, you might want to look into the jhead argument “-te”.

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Removing GPS data from an image

August 11th, 2010

I constantly forget how to remove the geotags from my pictures before I put them on the internet. Here’s an imperfect way to do so:
jhead -purejpg /path/to/image.jpg
Source

This will get rid of timestamps and other ancillary information that you may want to keep attached to the image. It seems like it would be pretty simple to write a script that uses jhead with no arguments to grab the Date/Time field, then run it again with -purejpg to remove all extraneous data, then run it a third time with the appropriate arguments to re-set the Date/Time field.

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Intermittent server outages

August 7th, 2010

I noticed while I was in Portland last week that the server was down. When I got home, I discovered that the UPS was off. I pushed the button and turned it back on.

A day or two later, it was off again. I eventually figured out what it was:

Likes to sit on the UPS The newest family member. Likes to swat at Penny

The causes of the outages

Penny likes to sit atop the UPS. The newest member of our family likes to swat at Penny. Apparently, sometimes she hits the UPS power button instead.

I taped some cardboard over the button. I do not anticipate any further outages.

Penny investigates the addition, no doubt contemplating how to H@X0R her way around it.

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Technology as explained by my mother: The Internet

July 7th, 2010

I was lamenting to my mother the difficulty in explaining technical answers to people who have limited experience with technology. She sighed sympathetically and said something along the lines of, “It’s very difficult for people who are used to dealing with a physical object to understand this thing fluttering all around us, breaking all the laws of physics.”
“Wait, where did you think the Internet is?”
She made a fluttering motion with her hands, “All around us. Like God.”

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