The Blag Switch

Blogging’s been light.  Blame work and thesis.

Also: Tropic Thunder wasn’t all that great.  It had its moments, but overall it could have been better.  Honestly, it would have been a LOT better without Jack Black or Tom Cruise.

So Tropic Thunder was kind of moderate fail, but here’s some epic win:  You know that NanoSail-D project that was lost on board the SpaceX Falcon?  There’s a spare!  That’s brilliant news, since I’m just geek enough to think that alternate space propulsion systems is one of the most important projects going at the moment.  And considering that projects like NanoSail are the leading edge of that project, it’s good to hear that the whole thing wasn’t lost.  As Paul Gilster quotes from the movie Contact: “Why build one when you can build two for twice the price?”

So yeah, basically corporate-sector Astronautics and solar sails FTW!

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to crash: turns out the 8:30am meeting I had to go to last week is going to be a weekly thing…

Looks like Earth-like planets may be the extreme exception to the rule after all, if new simulations of star system formation are to be believed.

I know that science is all about rational progress and embracing the best theory available to fit observed evidence, but man, I’m really hoping the Rare Earth Hypothesis is wrong.  Both because aliens are cool and because if we can’t SOME day get off this rock to another habitable world, then our species is well-screwed.

On the plus side, the Tau Zero Foundation finally has their website up and it’s a swanky one.  (Also: a .aero TLD?  Who knew?  I certainly didn’t…)  So, you know, if we ever do find any places in the galaxy interesting enough for an up-close visit, there are some smart people already laying the groundwork for getting us there.

The past few days have been kind of depressing, with both the passing of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the loss of the SpaceX Falcon booster.  Being both a huge fan of Solzhenitsyn’s work (A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for the win!) and a huge space-flight fanboy, I was quite saddened to hear about both losses.

On the plus side, my friends Trevor and Molly got married in a beautiful ceremony in sunny Helena, Montana over the weekend.  I wish them much happiness in their new life together.

So for part of my working day I’m tied to an ancient, under-powered laptop which isn’t THAT much more powerful than the handheld devices I develop for.  This poor old machine is decrepit enough that running WinAmp and a basic development environment at the same time is a MAJOR CHORE.  (Enough so that WinAmp, a DevEnv and Firefox at the same time is right out of the question.)  So out of curiosity, I consulted Google for a lightweight Windows audio player so that I can play CDs and still do my job effective.

It turned up foobar2000.  If you’re in need of such a program, I highly recommend it.  Small, free (as in beer), extensible, and in its basic configuration uses up next to know resources.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to cut code, consult firefox, AND listen to CDs, all at the same time…

In a word? Brilliant. Joss Whedon’s a friggin’ genius. All three acts are still free for another 55 minutes (which is just long enough to watch them all), so if you haven’t seen it, go watch.

Doesn’t “Starting Samba Daemons” sound like the beginning of a GREAT party?

So I’d been having some problems with a Linux install I’ve been working on. No matter what I tried, Ubuntu refused to recognize or use my network connection. Well, it turns out that the onboard ethernet connection on my server’s motherboard is dead. So, of course, I do what any self-respecting geek would do: I go right to my spare parts box, dig down and eventually dredge out the PCI network card that I’ve been saving for just such an occasion.

Now this card has been sitting in that box, with a bunch of other junk thrown on top of it for years. I really shouldn’t work. But apparently it does. My years and years of hoarding techno-junk have paid off! All those years of getting more and more boxes of assorted junk (need an old PS/2 trackball mouse? I can hook you up!) have finally been justified.

This gives me all the excuse I need to keep holding on to that old ISA soundcard. Just, uh, in case I need to listen to tunes on a machine from the late 80s…

Okay, so I absolutely hate Magic Code. That is, to say, code that either fixes or breaks a project, module, etc. with no real reason. For instance:

//fLog is a FILE opened elsewhere using a call to fopen

if(fLog)

{

    DoStuff();

}

else

{

    printf("%i\n",GetLastError());

} The code above is a somewhat redacted version something I was working on the other day. As it’s displayed there, DoStuff() will execute. This means that fLog opened fine. If, on the other hand, I comment out the printf statement in the else case, DoStuff() fails to execute, because fLog doesn’t open. In short: commenting out a debugging printf in an else case causes the call to fopen to fail. Why? I have NO IDEA. As a result the following line now mars my code:

printf("%i\n", GetLastError());  //Magic code

And I it drives me insane. The module’s working. It’s been unit tested and it works perfectly every time. Unless I remove one little printf statement. A printf statement which never fires. A printf which falls in an else block after the line which it “fixes”. A printf which shouldn’t have, nay, CAN’T have any effect whatsoever on the line in question. And yet if I remove said printf, the call to fopen fails and the whole module breaks. Inexplicable. Infuriating. Magic code.

You agonize for a good half hour over what to name your new wireless network.

An Engineer’s Guide to Cats:

(Hat-tip to Science After Sunclipse)