Blackcap Blog

Published at 12:49 on 10 June 2015

Despite how Tacoma has had a successful, municipally-owned cable TV and Internet utility for years, Seattle’s idea on doing anything vaguely similar is a big no-can-do. It’s basically the same attitude that made Seattle about forty years late to the game when it comes to building a rail mass transit system.

Of course, any time a billionaire wants pet projects for that entire neighborhood which he owns, or a taxpayer-funded sports stadium for his team, the City of Seattle sits ready and eager to bark on command. Same if it’s a freeway project, even if it uses a risky, unproven technology and it’s a road which would normally be the state government’s responsibility, anyhow.

Because, well, priorities. Duh.

This is another one of those days where I get to feel smug and satisfied about living outside the Seattle City Limits.

Published at 09:22 on 20 May 2015

There’s not much out there on how to do it, and what’s there is either flat-out incorrect (fails to produce a binary that’s actually useful for anything, because it can’t directly display data on the Mac) or needlessly painful (involves things like MacPorts which end up needlessly bloating your computer by building most of the open source Linux universe first).

1. Download and install the latest version of AquaTerm, available here.
2. Download the most recent production version of the source for Gnuplot, available here.
3. Type the following commands to build and install Gnuplot:

   ./configure --with-readline=builtin --with-aquaterm
   make
   sudo make install
   

Note the two options to configure. The built-in readline library in many MacOS releases is buggy and makes things crash, and the configure script is too stupid to automatically realize that Aqua Term is present. The hard part about building Gnuplot on the Mac is building a binary that’s actually useful; the configure script will by default merrily create a configuration which will crash on loading or cannot actually directly display anything on the Mac screen.

At least, this worked for me. I’d be interested in hearing whether or not it works for you.

Published at 08:28 on 11 May 2015

Much worse, in fact.

The reason is not nuclear contamination, but chemical contamination. Specifically, PCB’s. Yes, they are banned. But the ban started only in 1979. Indian Point dates back to the early 1960s. So it’s entirely possible that the transformer that caught fire contained PCB’s. One that caught fire there in 2011 did, in fact.

If so, there is now a major environmental contamination event in progress. Worryingly, there is no mention in the Establishment media that the transformer in question did not contain PCB’s. That makes me suspect that news that it did is being hushed up.

It’s the only reason I can think of for not bringing up the subject of PCB’s in the news about this event. If it was known that the transformer was in fact PCB free, it would be in the interest of plant’s operator (and its regulators) to make this fact well-known. Omitting such information only becomes in the Establishment’s interest if PCB’s are in fact present.

It’s much like the subject of asbestos (known to be widely-used at the time the World Trade Center twin towers were constructed) was conspicuously absent from news accounts at the time the 9/11 attacks happened.

No, this doesn’t prove anything, but it certainly raises valid suspicions.

Published at 07:35 on 3 May 2015

NPR just aired a piece on Saudi Arabia which goes beyond the territory of mere brown-nosing and might more properly be described as brown-tounging. It once again replicates the tradition of the Establishment media approving of tyranny so long as the tyranny happens to be pro-US-empire.

It was a discussion of the succession to the Saudi throne. First, they spoke in approving tones of how the first in line to the throne has extensive experience in the Ministry of the Interior. Imagine if Cuba announced such a successor; stories would be chock full of the ominous implications such a move held for the future of more openness in society (and rightly so). But not here. Instead, there’s praise for the Ministry of the Interior’s work on fighting terrorism.

And then they discuss how “popular” the second-in-line to the throne is, citing as evidence how billboards have popped up all over Riyadh with his image on them. Well, whoop-de-doo. There’s billboards all over Pyongyang with Kim Jong-Un’s image on them. Does this in any way prove he’s immensely popular with those whom he rules?

Keep all this in mind if Hillary Clinton wins the election and starts to amp up efforts to undermine the tottering government in Venezuela, and NPR fawns in approval because the government there is “authoritarian”. Which, of course, it is, but it is also far less repressive than the absolute monarchy they aired an approving story of today.

Published at 21:08 on 6 April 2015

It took a day’s exploring to find Kitsap Forest not long after moving to the west side of the Sound. The location is not publicized, because it’s a sensitive area and hasn’t been developed with visitors in mind, but it is public land and visitors are allowed.

The past winter I while studying my public lands quadrangle map of the area, I realized it probably would be possible to get there from the opposite direction that I found. So last February, I set out to do just that.

The results were less successful than my attempt from the other direction. I spent most of a day wandering around old logging roads, turning back after one dead end after another. Eventually I found the most promising old logging road of the day, but couldn’t fully investigate it because doing so would have meant completing my hike in darkness (and I had no light with me). So I made a note to return someday.

Well “someday” ended up being yesterday. This time I brought my knobby-tired bike, so I didn’t have to walk so much. Unfortunately, the promising old road gets very overgrown quite quickly, and it peters out before it reaches any interesting areas. Technically, it does reach the preserve, but at that point it’s not the old-growth forest yet; it’s just a buffer area of regrowing clear cuts.

After a lot of pretty intense bushwhacking, I realized that a) it was going to be very hard for me to follow my exact trail back, and b) if my GPS batteries died, I’d be pretty screwed (i.e. lost). And I still was in old clear cut territory. I had been chasing large trees, but they were all the occasional older tree the loggers had left behind to provide seeds to revegetate the area.

So I turned around; better safe than sorry. I did indeed promptly lose my trail, but it was of little matter because it was easy to home in on the waypoint I had entered at the end of the old road.

After downloading my GPS track and putting it in both a GIS database I have of Kitsap County and in Google Maps, it became clear that I had actually been only about 150 feet from the start of the old growth where I turned around. So if I had persevered for ten minutes or so more, I would have found what I sought.

But it is of little matter. Even with that knowledge, it’s so much more difficult coming from that direction. The first way I found has old roads going straight to the old growth. It’s a bit of a confusing maze, and I only found the correct way after eliminating virtually all other possibilities, but now that I know it, it’s a snap to get there. No bushwhacking involved.

So I don’t think I’ll be revisiting the more challenging approach any time soon.

Published at 23:13 on 29 March 2015

It was definitely more expensive than my first choice, and even then it was still a little rough around the edges (I had to keep entering and reentering my name and address, despite there being account parameters for both).

It just wasn’t mind-blowingly bad, like TaxAct. And I didn’t have to wade through pages and pages of mind-numbing bureaucratese to figure out what to do with the tiny amount of LLC loss I have each year.

I shall see if the 18-page return it generated turned out to be correct or not. (I never got it right the times I tried.) If so, the $75 or so I paid will have turned out to be money well spent (because that’s still cheaper than hiring a professional tax preparer to figure it all out).

Published at 19:08 on 29 March 2015

It purports to be a site that lets one file an income tax return electronically for significantly less than Turbo Tax does. But it’s too good to be true.

They offer two options: download and use their software, or do all the work in a Web browser. Naturally I chose the former one; a real user-mode program is much preferred to fragile and clunky Javascript (and all complex Javascript-based web sites are fragile and clunky).

Suddenly, without ever asking me what kind of computer I have, it’s downloading… a Microsoft Windows .EXE file. I have a Mac. Naturally, there was no system requirements information for their software listed prior to this point.

I abort the download and go to the home page to try and use their Web interface. This causes me to be automatically logged out. It asks me to log on again, this time using a long user-unfriendly number instead of my username.

I log on and end up at an account settings page. There is no option for filing via the web. There is a “TaxAct” link at the top of the page. I click on it. I end up back at their home page. I am also auto-logged-out again.

I try several more times. I do notice somewhere an option to log on via a screen that’s not as obviously-located as the main one. This one asks for my username. (Why on earth can’t the clowns that coded their site code a consistent log-on screen?) But I end up at the same useless account settings page.

From what I’ve concluded, once a user makes the fateful decision to choose one method, this unbelievably lame excuse for a service cannot change you to another method. I suppose I could open a service ticket and have that done behind the scenes.

But, why bother? If their software design is that awful, their Web-based service doubtless has some of the flimsiest, clunkiest, most fragile Javascript imaginable on it… in spades. Experience has taught me that you can judge a book by its covers when it comes to software: bad design in one place in a company’s code is an almost certain indicator of pervasive bad design.

Forget it. I’m either going to use Turbo Tax or pay someone else to do my taxes (and given how spendy Turbo Tax is, it’s not immediately clear that it makes economic sense for me to use it).

Published at 15:11 on 19 March 2015

Every so often an Establishment politician says something so staggeringly moronic that it’s crystal clear to me that, as much as I might differ from the stereotype of what a radical is, I am a radical and not a liberal.

And this is one of those times.

I mean, really now. In a class society where the tiny elite dominates political discourse via campaign contributions and mass media control, where the real political struggle is for candidates to pander to the elite and compete with each other to raise money to spend, the problem is supposed to be, get this, that there’s not a law forcing people to vote?

Yeah, right.

So the political system isn’t as thoroughly a rotten joke in Australia, which has mandatory voting. So what? Australia also has a history of far better level of class consciousness than the USA. It’s part of the legacy of being a penal colony, where the throwaways of Britain’s emerging capitalist economy were discarded to.

That, and not any petty exercise in authoritarianism for those who abstain from voting, is the salient difference.

One might as well point to the fact that the deck chairs on the Titanic were all jumbled together at the lower end of a listing deck as evidence that the problem with that ship lay in its arrangement of deck chairs, and not any iceberg damage below the water line. After all, ships whose deck chairs remain more neatly arranged don’t list and sink. QED, baby.

Published at 11:51 on 11 March 2015

This is all you need to know to be sure of the statement in the title above.

“Up to” is sales-speak for “no more than”. So the thing has a maximum up time of 18 hours, tops.

100 years ago, the standard “up time” for a mechanical pocket watch was 30 hours. And that’s a conservative 30 hours; many last more like 36. I know, I use a 100-year-old pocket watch. And when a mechanical watch runs down, it takes well under a minute to rewind it.

In contrast, the Apple Watch — which runs for about half as long as my pocket watch — doubtless takes hours to recharge. It has to. It runs on a rechargeable battery, and batteries don’t instantly recharge.

So the Apple Watch not only limited in its functionality, it’s unforgiving and domineering as well. It basically says: You will remember to charge me before you go to bed (and not at any other time), human, or I will punish you by refusing to work the next day. Obey my whim or suffer the consequences.

It is precisely such finicky design that makes me dislike so many applications of high technology. It’s a mystery to me how anyone can be so seduced by consumerism as to want such poorly-designed yet expensive crap in their lives.

Published at 09:47 on 10 March 2015

In this story.

Before I go on, let’s make one thing perfectly clear: Yes, the human rights situation in Venezuela sucks (and I’ve not been shy about admitting it here). The government is getting increasingly authoritarian there, and anytime opposition leaders are routinely jailed it’s outright creepy.

But, Venezuela is hardly the only place where the human rights situation sucks. Let’s compare two other petro-states.

First, Malaysia. It’s probably the closest situation to Venezuela of the two I’m comparing, because like Venezuela it’s (in theory) a democracy. It’s also a place where opposition leaders get jailed (and sometimes tortured). Venezuela has been dominated by the Chávistas since 1999. Malaysia has been dominated by its ruling coalition (without interruption) since 1957.

Second, Saudi Arabia. Here there’s not even the pretense of democracy. It’s a flat-out absolute monarchy. Remember all the hand-wringing about the evils of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and how they were thoughtlessly demolishing their country’s historic legacy and had a tyrannical “Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue” enforcing the strictest possible interpretation of Islamic law with an iron fist? Well, Saudi Arabia has both those attributes: Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

And please, cut the crap about Venezuela being a security risk to the USA. What’s happening there isn’t nice, but it’s also internal nastiness and not an external security threat. It bears pointing out that this is in distinct contrast to Saudi Arabia, which has proven itself to be a breeding ground for terrorists.

It’s not a surprise Venezuela is coming up again in US Establishment politics. First, the regime there is looking increasingly shaky. Second, there’s presently an oil glut (which is in fact a big part of why the regime is losing its popularity). That means that if worse comes to worst, the ruling class won’t be provoking a big oil shortage if the US loses access to Venezuela’s oil as the spat escalates. In fact, I’m sort of surprised that it’s taken this long for the ruling class to bring the issue up again.

But please, get real. The issue isn’t human rights (as much as the US ruling elite might assert it is). It’s merely that someone other than who the ruling elite desires is in power there. Just look at what’s happened in Honduras since the US ruling class installed a regime there if you have any doubts about that.