Focusing the Mind

At my place of work 2006 started with three Unix sysadmins. It appears it's going to end with one, namely me. Today was my third day solo.

A lack of options, the saying goes, focuses the mind admirably. In my situation, that means I've been scripting like mad to make sure I get information in a timely way and don't overlook anything. And the last few days I've been coming home and writing even more code, but of a more complicated nature. Normally this would make me cranky, to be doing work programming in the evening, but since this particular project is intended only for me, I get to choose my language. I've been reacquainting myself with Common Lisp. I had forgotten how fun programming could be —

;;; Insert timed data point, returning the previous value (useful for
;;; some statistical models).
(defmethod update ((dh ts-datahistory) val &key timestamp)
  (let ((ts (if (null timestamp) (get-universal-time) timestamp)))
    (multiple-value-bind (idx daytype) (bin-index dh ts)
      (macrolet ((ref-and-set (accessor)
                   `(prog1
                     (,accessor dh idx)
                     (setf (,accessor dh idx) val))))
        (if (eq daytype 'weekday)
            (ref-and-set weekday-history-ref)
            (ref-and-set weekend-history-ref))))))

I don't know how many of my readers will understand that, but it just fills me with joy to use such a tool. Lexically scoped macros!

Next up, quality time with North & Hillard's Greek Prose Composition...

Crowded Voting

Since my polling place is only slightly out of my way to work, I vote on my way in. I got there just as they were letting people vote, and already there was quite a line. The poll workers seemed cheery, but the polling official already looked a bit harassed. He may be in for a tough day.

Double Dipping the Surplus Value

I have been thinking recently, as I often have cause to do, on the wretched state of software. This has lead me to an economic analysis of the software industry, not something I'd normally indulge in, but now that I have the vocabulary for what was annoying me, perhaps I can dwell on some other matter.

"Surplus value" is a technical term, associated with Marx but by no means discovered by him, describing how capital accumulation takes place. Horribly simplified, surplus value is the difference between the selling price of something and the labor cost, with the idea being that it's mostly unpaid labor that makes value for a business (i.e., people aren't really paid for the full value of their work). As I said, this simplification is gross, but it's the basic idea, no great surprise nor particularly radical.

Whatever you feel is the correct relationship between labor and the pay for that labor, it seems to me that software companies who produce crappy software (that is, most of them) rely on not one but two sources of surplus value, first from their own employees, second from the poor shlubs who buy their software and then have to hire even more IT staff. How much of that expensive software companies are convinced buy would get any use if there weren't an army of acolytes running around tending to it?

What percent of the average IT budget (training and salaries) is devoted to necessary infrastructure and what percent to dealing with software that doesn't quite work as advertized?

An Eye on Alzheimer's

Now this is just cool: Optics Tests For Early Alzheimer's Diagnosis Make Significant Advances. It turns out that Alzheimer's isn't just a brain disease, but a systemic one. The same amyloid protein that clogs up the brains of Alzheimer's victims also collect at the edge of the lens of the eye. They already did a Phase I human trial, so it may be that in the not too distant future it will be possible to catch, and verify the diagnosis of, Alzheimer's earlier in the course of the disease.

This comes by way of ScienceDaily, which everyone should have in their syndication list (feed).

Quotable Euripides

I've been reading Medea recently. As I read (slowly), I keep coming across tidbits that recommend themselves for memorization. My pocket Moleskine now has quite a few lines from the play, and I use that to memorize from while on the bus. It turns out books of quotations were popular even in ancient times, and quotations from plays, especially Euripides and Menander, seem to have been especially popular.

Last week, during a review, I noticed a few lines of anapests that I decided I should be able to recite:

(Τρ).
δεινὰ τυράννων λήματα καί πως—
ὀλίγ’ ἀρχόμενοι, πολλὰ κρατοῦντες —     120
χαλεπῶς ὀργὰς μεταβάλλουσιν.

(Nurse:)
The wants of despots are terrible and —
since they are ruled little and command much —
only (πως) with difficulty do they change their impulses.

Suddenly it's completely current.

Ode to Stalin

Since reading the AKWN article about the Astronautilia — a modern, sci-fi poem by Czech author Jan Křesadlo in Homeric Greek — I've been trying to find a copy. No luck so far. But in searching for it I found an article from this year about Křesadlo which has a small image of "Óda na Stalina" - an "Ode to Stalin" I presume. [Article] [Image]

The image is a bit small, so it's sometimes hard to be clear on some of the letters, though the basic tone is pretty clear:

Στᾶλιν, ἄναξ, ἄγαμαί σε. σὺ λευκολίθῳ ἐνὶ Κρέμλῳ
ἑζόμενος κρατέεις πάντας Ῥώσσας Τατάρους τε...

Stalin, lord, I revere you. You rule all Russia (?) and the
Tatars while sitting in the white-stoned Kremlin...

The image ends with the line “Πάντες δειδίοτες (sic) κινέουσι ποδάς τε πυγήν τε,” "everyone afraid moves (their) feet and butt." There doesn't seem to be punctuation at the end of that line, so it may be there's more after that.

I don't know when Křesadlo wrote this. The language of this ode is filled with Epic morphology and phrasing, λευκολίθῳ ἐνὶ Κρέμλῳ, but it also contains a number of eccentricities in accenting and scansion, which, with the subject matter, make me suspect this is an early work. If anyone can read Czech, I'd love to know if the article makes mention of when this fragment was composed.

Recipes of my Father

Yesterday my dad called, and we started off our chat in the usual way — he griped about the sorry state of the Red Socks, the even sorrier state of farming on the east coast (he's in rural New York), and, sorriest of all, the state of politics. He has worked all his life on farms in some capacity, and in these coversations I sometimes learn many interesting bits of wisdom based, often, on the cow. When it's raining hard, "it's like a cow pissing on a flat rock." Once, when discussing politics, he said "the more you kick shit, the more it stinks," something most of us would do well to remember.

Of course I talk to him when I'm planning some bit of house repair I've never done before, but yesterday I asked how he felt about clam chowder. He paused, and then said gravely, "I love clam chowder." I found out his preferred version: no tomato! But then he offered a soup recipe of such audacity that I feel I have to share it.

Oyster Soup

1 pint oysters (he usually gets his fresh)
1 stick butter
1 1/2 pint half-n-half

Simmer oysters gently, and not too long. Serve.

I'm a little scared to make this. Certainly I'm not going to make it until I plenty of guests around. It seems like it'd be rich enough to serve a dozen.