Much like Sinistar, I live.

It’s been a long six months since I last posted. I left a job and moved. I started back at college. I got a new job. now I feel the need to post at least once or twice just to keep my hand in.

As I predicted, we’re headed for a government where a single political party controls two off the three wings of government. Barack Obama and the legislative Democrats have an awful lot of power on their hands. Let’s hope they use it wisely.

Uncharacteristically I do feel at least a little hope that things will get better. The press has been more vigilant about certain things over the last year, so I feel that if Obama and crew start to backslide on privacy and freedom issues that it will get brought to light. After the Rebulicans managed to get themselves tossed out on their ear over a number of scandals I have some hope the Democrats will try to avoid doing the same thing too quickly. I’m hoping the Blagojevich thing isn’t going to translate to the national stage. I did end up voting for Obama, so help me, mostly because I felt a McCain presidency would have been disastrous.

Anyhow, I hope to be able to post on a semi-regular basis at least for the next month or so. School is over until the start of the Spring semester, so I’ve got some time on my hands. I hope to get a post done soon, though unless someone asks otherwise I’m skipping the bailout as a topic. Enough’s been said by all sides on that already.

A shameless plug for a friend

It can’t all be serious around here, or I’m going to get really depressed. Thankfully, there’s nothing I like better than a good movie. And if it’s a zombie comedy movie, all the better.

Working Stiffs is the latest entry from New Hampshire based filmmakers at Peace Productions.It happens to star a friend of mine, Mariel Powers. We go way back.

Working stiffs is a movie that explores why we’ll welcome the coming zombie apocalypse. It’s a weird sort of cross between “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Office” that starts with the lead character suffering a psychotic break.

It’s not as well put together as your average Hollywood blockbuster, but it’s precisely the kind of home-built labor of love that’s coming out of the independent film business. Shot for a budget that likely wouldn’t fill the buffet table on a more traditional set, it’s the kind of movie I think that will revolutionize film over the next few years.

“Experts” and old media

This Is the source of maybe the most asinine statement I’ve ever heard made by a so-called security “expert”. I won’t harp on it too much, but the explanation for why the Chinese have a competitive advantage in hacking is downright silly. IPv4 and IPv6 have nothing to do with it (at about 4:20 in, if you’re playing along).

It does illustrate the point that I’m about to make though. For all the hemming and hawing about how blogs, podcasts, and other “new media” are inaccurate and do not have the resources to properly fact check, traditional media gets it wrong too.

I’m not really bashing NPR here. I listen to NPR every day, and I consider them a reliable source for most news. The problem with it, like all media, is that i have to trust that the people they bring on as experts really know what they’re talking about.

Stephen Spoonamore here clearly doesn’t. He states that IPv6 is “powerful software” capable of carrying “4 times the code” that IPv4 does, and that’s just plain wrong. IPv4 and IPv6 are simple addressing structures. They are not in and of themselves capable of carrying anything. Instead they provide a structure to help data packets get where they’re going.

My point here is that Mr. Spoonamore really should know what he’s talking about, and he clearly doesn’t. The show (The Diane Rehm show) is a nationally syndicated show. It airs all across the country on various NPR stations, on a century old technology that is definitely considered old media. It’s a good show. I get a lot of good info from it. And in this case it’s very, very wrong.

Should I stop listening to the show? I don’t think so. I’ve heard a lot of interesting stories on the show that have a great deal of factual basis behind them. I consider it a gernally well-thought-out program that usually gets it right, and does a lot to educate it’s audience. This even is to my eyes an anomaly.

Where am I going with all this? You shouldn’t ever get all your news in one place. Leaving aside the biases of the various media outlets (NPR ranges from moderate to very liberal depeding on who’s on the air) they can always make simple mistakes. People like Mr. Spoonamore and to a greater extent Jack Thompson get invited into the media not because of any particulat bias, but because they ostensibly know something about the topic they are asked to speak on.

Does “new media” (blogs, podcasts, etc.) get it wrong too? Absolutely. Are they still worth reading? You bet. Should we distrust everything we hear and half of what we read, like my grandfather told me? Probably, but becoming a cynic doesn’t really make you any more impervious to bias.

If you want to avoid disinformation, there’s really only one way to go. Think like an investigator. Wherever possible get a corroborating story from somewhere else. Surf media aggregator sites like Yahoo Buzz, Digg, and Fark. Read the comments on stories that interest you to see how others are reacting. If there are rebuttals, check them out too. Listen to different news stations on your way to work. Download news podcasts from multiple sources and listen to them while on the subway. Any of these will make you more informed.

It’s going to take time. Maybe more than you have. I know it’s comfortable getting your news from the same reliable channel all the time. WIth the upcoming election however it is more and more important that you be informed, so that you can make informed choices about how you go about your life.

Moving (With links)

I’m moving this week, while finishing up my final week of employment. Consequently I’m afraid I may not be able to blog much, as I have a lot to do before beginning my new life as a full-time student (for computer science, of course).

I do want to share a few links though. It’s stuff I’ve found lately that I’ve found useful or interesting.

Let’s start with a new tool I’ve started using:
http://www.flock.com
Flock is basically a customized version of Firefox that integrates social networks such as Digg, Twitter, and Facebook. It integrates with several of the services I’ve started using lately, including this blog. I even wrote this post from its built-in blog editor, which seems pretty slick. I don’t know if I’ll use it to replace the browser I’m using now, but the direct integration of things I use on the web is nice.

http://www.opera.com
Opera, the browser I’m using now. I started using Opera in version 8 after they removed the ads from the free version. I’ve been using it ever since. They’ve just released version 9.5, which gets a few cosmetic upgrades and seems a bit more stable than before. It supports most of the features I’m interested in, such as tabbed browsing and RSS feeds. It doesn’t integrate as well as Flock does to the services I use, but it’s able to handle massive numbers of open tabs at once and it’s been pretty bomb proof for me (with the exception of 9.27, which was fairly unstable). I reccommend it to anyone who doesn’t need the integration with social networks. I’ve found it to be more stable than Firefox, and of course MUCH safer than IE.

http://www.twit.tv
I listen to a lot of podcasts, and one of the main sources I get them from is here. TWiT is a podcast network founded and run by Leo Laporte, who was one of the prime movers at TechTV (back before it was swallowed by G4). TWiT has a number of diverse (but predominantly tech oriented) podcasts that range from news discussion to a show about food. It’s great listening for those who are interested.

http://www.uchannel.org
Princeton University’s Uchannel podcast network, which podcasts the audio from dozens of educational events from around the world. I won’t lie; some of these are astoundingly boring, but there are some real gems for those who are interested in what’s going on around the world. I previously linked to one of their podcasts in my post The Future of the Internet (and how to stop it)

There are lots more links that I want to share, but I think I’ll save them for the time being. I am, after all, going to need update material for later on. Enjoy what I’ve posted, and feel free to share links of your own.

This is inexcusable.

Salon’s Article about the FISA “compromise” pretty much sums up what I’m thinking at the moment. That an overwhelmingly Democratic congress can’t seem to hold it’s ground against a president who has been a lame duck for almost two years now is astonishing to me.

Why retroactive immunity is a bad thing doesn’t take much intelligence to understand. If companies are allowed to break the law simply because the government asks them to it opens the door for unchecked government power. You can read the full text of the bill here.

Words cannot express how angry I am about this. This will absolutely affect my voting this November. I will be closely reviewing voting results for this bill, and I will vote accordingly. I will be sure to let my family and friends know about the voting as well.

Online gaming and the Real Money Trade

I play Final Fantasy XI online from time to time. One of the biggest challenges facing the game is keeping up with the “Real Money Trade” (or RMT), where in-game currency is exchanged for real-world money. It took me a while to understand why this was a problem in game, but as it turns out it may have an even more important impact in the real world.

The impact the RMT has on an in-game economy is fairly profound. They can contribute heavily to inflation within the game, making it more difficult to acquire things in-game for those who choose not to use their services. Since they generally work in large networks of players they can dominate areas and prevent other players from obtaining high value items from some monsters, decreasing the value of play

This article outlines some even more serious effects that the RMT can have. In this case QQ, the Chinese online community has managed to spawn a whole underworld economy based on the in-community currency that they sell to allow people access to various games and activities within their service. Use of the QQ Coin as an actual currency has become widespread for the sales of pornographic services and gambling, both of which are heavily restricted by the Chinese government. Things have gotten so out of hand that the government has stepped in with legislation targeted directly at QQ and their online service.

Final Fantasy’s issues aren’t nearly so widespread. This is largely because Square Enix and PlayOnline, the companies involved with maintaining the service for the game, have gone to great lengths to limit the RMT as much as they can. They go to lengths such as the mass removal of accounts, placing monsters in areas frequented by automated “bot” programs used for obtaining items in game, and in-game managers to prevent the monopolizing of areas that might otherwise be lucrative. They do not under any circumstances want their virtual currency to be linked with an actual cash value.

Other governments than the Chinese have started to notice the value of in-game currencies. Even the US government has taken an interest in taxing MMORPG revenue before. They have a strong interest in being able to track and tax financial activity across borders, and if in-game currency has real-world value they’ll want to keep track of it.

What interests me about the whole thing is the future of online currency in general. Non-governmental monetary systems already exist online. Gold-backed digital currencies such as eGold and Liberty Reserve can be used for online exchanges of wealth already. If in game items have any real value then an in-game currency such as FFXI’s Gil or Second Life’s Linden Dollars could be considered to be backed by the property you can purchase with it. It’s not a big jump from there to have an in-game currency then become a truly international currency outside the direct control of a government.

An embarrassment of riches

The Boston Celtics win their 17th NBA Championship, and I couldn’t be happier.

I live in New Hampshire. I grew up a fan on Boston sports because they are the closer teams, and because my father is a fan of Boston sports. I have now experienced as a fan 6 professional sports championships since 2001. This is mind blowing for me.

Things were MUCH different in the 90s. The Celtics were in the post-Bird/McHale/Parrish years and seemed unable to get their act together. The Pats went through one of the worst stretches in their history, followed by the triumph at the arrival of Bill Parcells and the agony of his move to the Jets. The Red Sox just couldn’t get over the hump and beat the Yankees. The Bruins died.

Somehow everything changed for us as New England sports fans. On February 3rd, 2002 the Pats shocked the “Greatest Show on Turf” St. Louis Rams to win Super Bowl XXXVI. Then they won two back to back in 2004 and 2005, and became the team to beat in the NFL. The Red Sox lost a heartbreaking ALCS to the rival New York Yankees in 2003, but then put together a genuinely likable team of “idiots” to win their first world series in 86 years in 2004. Amazingly they did it again last year.

Now this. Somehow in the space of only a few years Boston has gone from the city that couldn’t win anything to Championship City, USA. What was unfathomable 10 years ago is now reality. I hope I never learn to take these sorts of things for granted. I know this can’t continue forever.

It sure feels good right now though.

I am probably unduly excited about this

But this looks very promising. It honestly looks too good to be true. Cellulosic ethanol looked for a while like it would be the holy grail of biofuels, but if this article is correct then this is so much better that it’s almost unthinkable.

What’s so unthinkable? The big problem with ethanol is the amount of energy that can be stored with it. It just isn’t as good at storing energy as straight up petroleum. This LS9 technology promises a product that is essentially crude oil, which should give a similar amount of energy by volume to traditional gasoline.

I will admit that part of me is still skeptical. Frankly this seems like too-easy a solution. LS9 claims to be able to use things that everyone agrees are waste materiel’s to create a carbon-negative solution to something that contributes a great deal to the energy crisis. Even if it does work, there is also the issue of making the process safe and studying the impact of these bacteria getting out of the system into the wild.

Still, even with these caveats (and of course assuming that the technology is legitimate) I think this takes us a significant step that much closer to a reasonable solution to the energy problems. I just won’t bank on it being a sole solution.

Fun with Project Gutenberg

Just a short post today, inspired by TCM’s airing of the 1950 version of the movie “King Solomon’s Mines”. The movie is based on a book written by H. Rider Haggard in 1885. The movie isn’t bad, but it isn’t fantastic. The book however is one of the most influential stories written in the English language.

King Solomon’s Mines is the first of what would be known as the “Lost Worlds” genre, eventually entered by such luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The Lost World), and Rudyard Kipling (The Man Who Would be King). It inspired many of the pulp adventure stories of the 20s and 30s (such as Doc Savage), and ultimately became a big influence on the Indiana Jones series of movies.

The plot is set in colonial Africa in the late 19th century. The book’s story follows the adventures of a group led by Alain Quartermain to discover the fate of the brother of Sir Henry Curtis, who has hired Quartermain to lead the expedition. What follows is a tale of adventure in the African interior centered around the perils of what was at the time a mostly unexplored region.

A lot of people know Quartermain’s character mainly from Alan Moore’s graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in which he plays no small part. Some might know him from the movie of the same name. Though Moore’s graphic novel has I believe the closer portrayal of the two, neither the movie nor the novel really get Quartermain’s character quite right. Though no less than six movies have been made of King Solomon’s Mines (including the 1986 “Alan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold”, which attempted to cash in on “Raiders of the Lost Ark”s popularity) none of them I feel has really done the book justice.

Because H. Rider Haggard’s books are so old, most are in the public domain. They can now be found at Project Gutenberg. Happy reading.

What I’m doing on my summer vacation (part deux)

Another double-header today, this time the Redhook and Portsmouth breweries in Portsmouth NH. Both were good, and an exercise in contrasts. The Redhook brewery is a moderately large commercial brewery. The Portsmouth Brewing Company is a small brewpub known for excellent craft beers. Both were good stops.

Redhook’s facility is large, modern and set up for fairly sizable tours by the public. Even mid-day on a Thursday our group consisted of approximately a dozen people, some from as far away as Pennsylvania. I didn’t get a shot of it, but there were maps of the region, country, and of the world on the wall that visitors could stick pushpins in to indicate where they were from. Though there was a large concentration of pins on the New England map, the rest of the country was well represented.

Redhook’s process starts much the same as everyone else’s. Their lauter and mash tuns, have the benefit of being in a room designed for tours to view. I took some (terrible) photos of them.

The prerun tank at Redhook

The Lauter tun at Redhook

Their other equipment is less photogenic then the initial stages of the brew, but it’s no less impressive. The fermentation tanks are very much like I’ve seen elsewhere. The storage tanks are considerably larger that I’ve seen elsewhere. A particularly interesting bit of information that I’ve come across is that neither Redhook or Harpoon pasteurize their beers. Instead they rely on filtering their beers through diatomaceous earth filters. Since beer is alcoholic and the hops are a natural antibiotic this means they stay healthy even without the heat treatment performed by other breweries.

The fermentation tanks at Redhook

The storage tanks at Redhook

The bottle line was something I actually found interesting a Redhook. Their bottle line is highly automated, requiring only a few people to load the line with bottles and inspect them for quality control. Even the boxing and preparation for shipping is taken care of automatically. If I ever manage to start my own brewery some day, I’d hope to have a system this efficient.

The bottling line at Redhook

There were two wall hangings of particular note. The first was a poster similar to the banner I posted from Sam Adams outlining the steps of the brewing process. I provide it here for comparison:

The Redhook brewing process

The other wall hanging was one I photographed on a whim regarding writing. I thought it appropriate given where the photos I took would eventually end up.

A plaque about writing at the Redhook brewery

The Portsmouth brewing company is a bit more difficult to get to. It is located in downtown Portsmouth. Rather than being a large commercial brewery it is a small brew pub. It’s facilities are in the building, and are MUCH smaller. Here are some photos taken with my camera phone (I accidentally left my better camera in the car).

Most of the brewing equipment visible from the dining room at the Portsmouth Brewing Company.

The fermentation tanks at the Portsmouth Brewing Company.

Where Redhook is a large brewer who ships their brews all across the country, the Portsmouth Brewing Company sells most of their brews from the storefront. They are available in 22 oz bottles as well as in drafts at the bar or in the restaurant.

I took the opportunity to have a few of their brews (a Wheat Wine, a Weizenheimer, a Scotch Ale, and their Black Cat Stout) in a small sampler. Both the beers and the food were excellent. Through sharing with a friend I was also able to sample their hefeweizen and their most popular offering, the Old Brown Dog ale.

Sadly they did not offer a tour, so I was limited to taking the pictures that I did. Their beer and food were both excellent. I plan to return soon, since their world-renowned “Kate the Great” Imperial Stout should be ready for consumption soon. I am given to understand is is so popular that there is a limit of two 22 oz bottles per customer, and that it still sells out inside a day. I quite look forward to giving it a try.

We had intended to make one more stop on the beer tour, but brewery tours are getting a bit stale. We may still make it down to the Wachusett Brewing Company down in Gardner Massachusetts, but that will have to be another post. I have only so much time left on my vacation, and I intend to enjoy it to the fullest.

Some links:
Redhook’s website
The Portsmouth Brewing Company