Daniel Von Fange

Theory of Constraints.

I am reading the excellent book Death March (Amazon). I just came across the diagram of the theory of constraints. ( Identify the systems constraints > Find a way to exploit the system's constraints > Subordinate all other activities to the exploitation of the system's constraints. )

Wow. That exactly describes the building phase of most Real Time Strategy games. I remember my first game of Total Annihilation. My friend who was introducing me too the game was my ally. I had managed to build about four tanks and a ship, so I sent my ship over to find the enemy. As soon as my ship neared the enemy continent, they sky became dark. My friend flew something like eighty advanced aircraft right over my ship and turned the enemy into rubble in less than a minute. He knew what the constraints were, and was exploiting them. I had no clue what the constraints were.

It's amazing how naturally we find out what is the primary thing holding us back in a game, and yet don't think of applying the same search and exploit procedure to life and business.

Bowling.

A friend and I went out tonight for some bowling. I'd never experienced the rolling of a ball into pins before. Alternating between experimenting and trying my best, I was at least having fun. I was recollecting things that I have heard about target shooting, and trying to apply them. Halfway through the last game, I actually got the hang of it, and my scores abruptly turned upwards. I managed to beat my more experienced friend - though he had a bad game that time.

All the equipment in the building was from the eights. I felt I should be writing COBAL or assembler.

What did I apply?

• Consistency - I put my feet in the exact same place for every starting shot.
• Coolness - Never got mad when I missed, just calmly regarded it as an opportunity to learn what not to do.

What did learn?

• Matched my pace to the swing of the ball - I tried to swing the ball to my footsteps and messed up horribly every time.
• Set the ball gently on the lane - As opposed to throwing it up and hearing it smack.
• Don't try to aim when releasing the ball - At that point it is too late; You have already swung the ball and set it on it's path.
• Smoothness.

After playing, tonight I find myself doing everything smoothly. Even the tapping of keys on my keyboard.

(Now are you bored? I promise I'll get back to talking about scripting/Macy/Unixy things soon. )

Merry Christmas.

Have a Merry Christmas!

It's 6:43m here. I was planning to sleep in, but the dogs thought they saw Santa outside the window. I was unceremoniously awaken. Now that they have calmed down, perhaps I can get back to sleep.

Refers up.

Although Reinvented beat me to it, I've now installed Refer.

The best part about it? An RSS feed of my refers that is not mentioned on the help page. Now I don't have to do the classic maniacal refreshing of the refer page - it all comes to me.

Sadly the RSS feed was not up to spec, and choked in NetNewsWire. The RSS .92/2.0 specs state "the description contains the text (entity-encoded HTML is allowed)". The refer RSS feed was not escaping the HTML. A quick addition of htmlspecialchars() fixed this.

display.php Line 132:
tag(
	htmlspecialchars(
		tag(tag('Where: ','em').$page,'p').
		tag(tag('From: ','em').$refer,'p').
		tag(tag('Who: ','em').$host,'p')
	),
'description'),'</item>';

I also created a robots.txt file to keep Google from seeing the refer info. No sense in letting slimy refer spammers get Google Juice.

Preemptive troll satire.

Trolls are usually predictable. For a given topic, there is are predicable angles that trolls use as bait. What if on an online news site with lots of people commenting and large population of trolls, someone quickly posted satires of the anticipated troll angles. Might take some of the sting out of them...

(Maybe. Maybe it's a bad idea. However, this Idea of dubious value came to me while reading the comments of a ScrappleFace satire piece)

Hamas Charter.

I mentally grasped the core of Roman warfare when I read Julius Caesar's own writings, unfiltered and undistorted by others.

I'd never read the Hamas' founding Charter until tonight. It's an amazing document. I now know the raw, unfiltered core of one side of the "Middle East Problem".

I had always thought that people who said that the long term plan was for the eradication of Israel were just pronouncing that based on their guesses based on terrorist actions. I wrong.

"Hammas is a social organization, dedicated to helping Palestinians." I've heard it before. Here is little selection from the end of the charter.

Article Thirty-One: [To?] The Members of Other Religions The Hamas is a Humane Movement:

Hamas is a humane movement, which cares for human rights and is committed to the tolerance inherent in Islam as regards attitudes towards other religions. It is only hostile to those who are hostile towards it, or stand in its way in order to disturb its moves or to frustrate its efforts... ... Islam accords his rights to everyone who has rights.

So who stands in the way of Hamas? And what are it's efforts directed towards?

In the first paragraph of the charter:

...Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors...

On the concept of Waqf:

No Arab country nor the aggregate of all Arab countries, and no Arab King or President nor all of them in the aggregate, have that right, nor has that right any organization or the aggregate of all organizations, be they Palestinian or Arab, because Palestine is an Islamic Waqf throughout all generations and to the Day of Resurrection. Who can presume to speak for all Islamic Generations to the Day of Resurrection? This is the status [of the land] in Islamic Shari'a, and it is similar to all lands conquered by Islam by force, and made thereby Waqf lands upon their conquest, for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection.

So any land once owned by Muslims, must be Muslim controlled forever. (The whole land of Israel is considered to be a Islamic Waqf. What happens to people that are on land once owned by Muslims?

...Nothing is loftier or deeper in Nationalism than waging Jihad against the enemy and confronting him when he sets foot on the land of the Muslims...

There could never be peace with Israel because Israelis must be killed when found in the land of Israel. Then, the next section of the charter is entitled "Peaceful Solutions, [Peace] Initiatives and International Conferences".

Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement... ... There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.

Ouch!

In Article Fifteen: The Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is an Individual Obligation

We must imprint on the minds of generations of Muslims that the Palestinian problem is a religious one, to be dealt with on this premise... ....I swear by that who holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad! I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill

In Article Sixteen:

We must accord the Islamic [young] generations in our area, an Islamic education based on the implementation of religious precepts, on the conscientious study of the Book of Allah; on the Study of the Prophetic Tradition, on the study of Islamic history and heritage from its reliable sources, under the guidance of experts and scientists, and on singling out the paths which constitute for the Muslims sound concepts of thinking and faith. It is also necessary to study conscientiously the enemy and its material and human potential; to detect its weak and strong spots, and to recognize the powers that support it and stand by it. At the same time, we must be aware of current events, follow the news and study the analyses and commentaries on it, together with drawing plans for the present and the future and examining every phenomenon, so that every Muslim, fighting Jihad, could live out his era aware of his objective, his goals, his way and the things happening round him...

Yow! These guys are no idiots. This is not the ranting of insane person, but a cold blooded, cool headed plan for eventually driving/killing Jews out of Israel.

In article Seventeen: The Role of Muslim Women

The Muslim women have a no lesser role than that of men in the war of liberation; they manufacture men and play a great role in guiding and educating the [new] generation. The enemies have understood that role, therefore they realize that if they can guide and educate [the Muslim women] in a way that would distance them from Islam, they would have won that war. Therefore, you can see them making consistent efforts [in that direction] by way of publicity and movies, curricula of education and culture... ...Those Zionist organizations control vast material resources, which enable them to fulfill their mission amidst societies, with a view of implementing Zionist goals and sowing the concepts that can be of use to the enemy... ... When Islam will retake possession of [the means to] guide the life [of the Muslims], it will wipe out those organizations which are the enemy of humanity and Islam.

They are smart. They are watching their "root" that will ensure the fighting keeps going from generation to generation.

Side note, Hitler took the long view too. From Mien Kamph:

The young boy or girl who is of German nationality and is a subject of the German State is bound to complete the period of school education which is obligatory for every German. Thereby he submits to the system of training which will make him conscious of his race and a member of the folk-community.

Then astounding irony found in Article Twenty:

...The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone...

"Nazism of the Jews"!?!

Hamas is taking a long term view on killing Jews:

Social solidarity consists of extending help to all the needy, both materially and morally, or assisting in the execution of certain actions. It is incumbent upon the members of the Hamas to look after the interests of the masses the way they would look after their own interests. They must spare no effort in the implementation and maintenance of those interests, and they must avoid playing with anything that might effect the future generations or cause damage to their society. For the masses are of them and for them, their strength is [ultimately] theirs and their future is theirs. The members of Hamas must share with the people its joys and sorrows, and adopt the demands of the people and anything likely to fulfill its interests and theirs. When this spirit reigns, congeniality will deepen, cooperation and compassion will prevail, unity will firm up, and the ranks will be strengthened in the confrontation with the enemy.

They know the importance of a base of operations... They learned from Mao, who said:

Because guerrilla warfare basically derives from the masses and is supported by them, it can neither exist nor flourish if it separates itself from their sympathies and co-operation.

In Article Twenty-Eight:

...Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims.

That line pretty much sums up their view.

So what did I learn. Hamas is a blood thirsty organization, dedicated to eliminating Israel. They are not stupid. In fact they are exceptionally clever. They are waging a long term, multi spectral war against Israel, and have every intention of winning. And peace with Israel is not something they would accept.

{I may edit this post later, since it's late right now, and I may have muddled some of what I wrote. }

Science.

When I heard that the bombs planted to kill Musharraf of Pakistan went off 30 seconds after the motorcade crossed the bridge, I was perplexed. What kind of idiots would do that? Now we know it was a handy bomb jammer.

Space Ship One made it's first powered flight. It's also interesting that the money backing for SS1 has come from a co-founder of Microsoft. I wonder if some people will change their opinions on the project as result. I'm cheering them.

(Sadly, Scaled Composites (maker of SS1) has a website that is horribly clunky.)

Forbidden Politics.

I keep most political related stuff out of my blog, just because. But I read my backlog of political feeds today and found some fun posts.

Why the blogosphere leans right. The Blogosphere is all over the dadgumed place, though I suppose their are more right leaning political blogs then left leaning ones.

Less than a week after the announcement of Saddam's capture, Muammar Gaddafi, dictator of Libya and sponsor of terrorism, said Libya would give up banned WMD's. I'm reminded of a "old" Cox and Forkum cartoon. And of course, scrappleface has some fun.

Best Quotes of 2003 was a bit funny. Peter Arnett was especially so. The war quotes were good as well. If anyone has a list of similar staggering things from the right, let me know.

2003 Dishonest Reporting "Award" - I'm always amazed at the double sets of values the media and the left has for Israel.

Finally, on a lighter note: An Israeli Joke and a Soviet Joke

Rulers.

A site listing the rulers of the nations of the world. I'm sure this site will come in handy one day. (Link via Interconnected)

Widescreen NetNewsWire.

I am really liking Widescreened NetNewsWire. Good suggestion, Jonathan Rentzsch.

Flags.

The lunchroom at work has flags from many nations hanging from the wooden rafters overhead. Two of the flags have always caught my eye. One with a machete on it, and another with an AK-47.

I dug around a little and found out their respective countries. The rifle crossed over a grim reaper sickle belongs to Mozambique.

The machete flag is Angola. The "Official Web Site of the Republic of Angola" describes the flag and proudly says, " The cog wheel, the machete and the star are yellow, symbolizing the country's wealth." The Iraqi information minister must have been taken a worldwide tour helping communist nations develop the textual content of their websites.

Refer.

I think I'm going to install Textism's elegant Refer tool.

Paris on a Segway.

If I ever go to tour Paris, I want to do it on a Segway. Fortunately, there is a company doing just that - Paris Segway Tours. Only 70 Euros for 4-5 guided hours. (Oh. It looks like the site is powered by the "Big Medium" CMS system. Totally random bit of trivia.)

Flying saucer.

There is an article on Wired News about Russian flying saucer technology being used by the US Navy. Visiting the Russian company's official website, EKIP Aviation Concern, is quite interesting.

Apparently one of the biggest benefits of flying saucer tech is the more spherical body shape is much more efficient that the long cylinders used in current airplanes. By it's nature, a sphere shape of the same weight as a cylinder can hold more stuff, and be stronger than a cylinder. Thus it apparently is with UFOs as well.

Yakuza.

A huge mafia of criminals who openly setup headquarters with their logo out by the street, who tattoo themselves in society in which a tattoo is only on criminals, arm themselves in a society in which civilians are not permitted to own guns, and are infallibly polite when extracting extortions. The Yakuza just seem so... so odd.

Caught up.

I spent today catching up reading new posts on blogs that took place during my month-with-a-down-computer. The amount of good material I've read today is staggering. It's amazing that once, not too long ago, I did not have this hugh wealth of relevant information coming in.

The King of Internet, and a mystery..

My dad's cousin, Paul Von Fange sends out a newsletter with the latest updates on the Von Fange family genealogy, and with stories from our past. To my surprise I found myself mentioned in this one (December of 2003).

So which Von Fanges are populating the Internet? I found 23 Tom Von Fanges, due to his furniture business site on the Internet. I (Paul) pulled in 33 references due to the family web site. My dad Erich, because of the publication and information on his pre-history books, comes in at 163 references. But the king of the family Internet users has to be my little cousin, once removed, Daniel Von Fange who garners an incredible 3,150 hits. That young man is up to something!

And, somehow, he found my webserver's home page and looking at it from a historical and genealogical point of view, was mystified.

Here's an interesting graphic from a site about which I know nothing: http://wallace.vonfange.net/index. What you see is the only page at this web site and we have no Wallace Von Fange in our records. The page reads, "An official server of the Von Fange Empire." If anyone can reveal the location of this kingdom or anything about the site, let me know.

LUFS-Python.

LUFS is a way giving the filesystem an interface to your code. There are loads of good ideas that this enables. (via Allen Green)

The coolest web tech.

A few days ago, I was pondering on what capability I want added most to computing. The answer was pervasive syncing. I have a laptop Mac, and a desktop Mac. Other than my email (which is IMAP) things do not sync across them. If I add a calendar even on one, it SHOULD show up on the other. It bugs me to no end. I just found Adam Bosworths's blog. He is right on with several of his discussions, especially the one about modifying information offline. I really look forward to the day when operating offline is not impossible.

Nicecast.

I just spotted Nicecast, an easy to use audio broadcast application. Something like this could make huge waves.

Posting links so I can find them later.

Cleaning out my tabs...

• KM, what have we delivered. - a fast overview of the stuff KM has done, and how well it has worked.
• Woody - A way of doing forms in Cocoon.
• SkEdit - cute HTML editor for OS X. I need to try it one of these days.
• Strange Attractors - Jeff Nichols discovers a hidden talent.
• Photo taken at Anti-Terror demonstration in Iraq - This photo changed my perception of the situation in Iraq. One, it looks like Flordia. Two, the people standing around with guns at the demonstration are there not two fight the people, but to defend the people and their freedoms. Three, the people with guns are Iraqi. There is hope in Iraq.
• SSL rant - I hate SSL certificates. Here's a yet another good rant against them.

Anti-bayesian Liberian Spam trick.

"Compliment of the day sir,
With full trust and understanding I come to you for help and joint venture if my proposal will be worthwhile. The whole World is completely aware of the recent outbreak of war in Liberia,although normalcy are returning to some locations around the country. i am General Henry Malawik,The Former Chief of Defence Staff in Liberiacurrently on political exile.I am 58years old."

Notice the smashing of key spamish words into another word to make an unique token? Intentional or not?

Stunning Photo.

Sam Javanrouh has taken a stunning city sunset photo. It's one you can just look and look and look at.

Great quotes.

"If you think your too small to make a difference on the planet, then you have not been with a mesquito in your bed at night." --South African unknown author (via 347.com.

"The young men know the rules. The old men know the exceptions" (Via 347 as well)

"In the beginners mind are many possibilities, but in the masters mind are few." (Read it somewhere. It is indeed true.)

SodaRacing.

I've always wanted to experiment with AI optimization of robotic creatures. The SodaRace challenge looks like a fun way to play with optimizations and genetic algorithms. (via Jonn Robb)

It's back..

November 5th my PowerMac G4 died spectacularly. I walked through tech support with Apple who diagnosed it as having hardware problems and sent me off to take it to Comp USA. Today, 33 days later, I have a working desktop computer again. Nevermore will I take a Mac to Comp USA.

Wednesday, after hanging up with Apple. I call CompUSA
Me (On phone): ... It dies on boot to a grey prohibitory sign. It won't even boot off of the system restore disks, or the panther or jaguar install CDs ... The hard drive is fine, I can boot the computer up as a firewire hard drive...
CompUSA: ...Okay bring it in...
Me: Do you need me to bring the CD's that came with the computer, and the panther CD's?
CompUSA: No, just bring the machine itself. Don't bring the CD's or the monitor.

I make the 30 minute drive to CompUSA and drop it off, again explaining every detail of what it is doing, and what we have done so far to try to get it working. Friday night, voicemail:

CompUSA: I have seen this problem once before. You almost certainly have a broken hard drive. We can't work on your computer without the CD's. You should have brought in the CD's. Frankly I am surprised you did not do a system restore before you brought it in. You should have done a system restore.

Now I am filled with confidence. I bring the CD's in Sunday afternoon. Then wait for them to call back saying it is fixed. Friday or Saturday, I give up waiting.

Me: I calling to check on the status of my PowerMac. Service number blaa blaa.
CompUSA: Let me check...... We need you to bring in the CD's so that we can fix the system...
Me: I brought in the CDs last Sunday.
CompUSA: Let me go look...... Oh, you did.

So I wait, and wait, and wait some more. Two or three weeks later while out of town, I get a voicemail:

CompUSA: We found the problem, it's bad motherboard. But we can't find proof that this computer has AppleCare, so a repair would be out of warrantee. The cost for the new motherboard is $650 plus a $99 dollar labor charge.

I return a few days later from out of town. I call apple to make sure it is under warrentee.

Me: CompUSA says my computer is not under warrantee. Is it?
Apple: ...It's covered under AppleCare until blaa blaa 2004. They should fix it.

I call CompUSA:

Me: .... It is under AppleCare, I just talked to apple...
CompUSA: ... we can't find that it is under applecare... Do you want to pay for repairs?

I call Apple

Me: ...CompUSA won't listen to me... What can I do?
Apple: I will create a case number with all your warrantee and serial number information. They can look that up.

I call CompUSA

Me: ... Just look up case number blaaa blaaa blaaa ...
CompUSA: No. I told you we can't see that this computer is covered under applecare. To get it repaired you will need to pay for the repairs, or bring in your original proof of purchase.

I don't have my original proof of purchase anymore, it having vanished to who knows where. Next day (I think) I make the 30 minute drive to CompUSA.

Me: I'm Daniel Von Fange.
CompUSA.(Air gets frigid) Oh. The one with the powermac.
Me: Yeah, that's me.
CompUSA: (looooong pause and icy stare.)
CompUSA: ... $650 for the motherboard .... or bring original proof of purchase and maybe we can we can do something....
Me: I don't have my proof of purchase. Call Apple. They know it is under warrantee. I've talked to them several times.
CompUSA: I told you before. ... pay for repairs.... or original proof of purchase.
Me: Can I have my computer back then?
CompUSA: I'll go get it.

So they gave me the computer back. And it had ugly white stickers on it, that will take a lot of work to peal the residue of off so that my PowerMac case looks beautiful again.

I took the computer to a different store in Charlotte, The Computer Room. It's only a fifty minute drive to get there. The Computer Room took care of me. I at last have a working computer.

----

In the interest of full disclosure, I found out that the AppleCare registration for my computer is off by a digit of my computer's serial number. Data entry problem somewhere, I guess. The computer room gracefully handled this, CompUSA did not. Nor did CompUSA ever seem to hear a word I said the entire time.

Working on the Taping Line for Operation Chirstmass Child.

My brother and I joined a group from church to volunteer at the Charlotte processing center of Operation Christmas Child. As we drove up we saw cars everywhere. There had to be more than 300 cars in the parking lot and parked along the road leading to the center. Hundreds of people were working inside the warehouse. Considering that it was the first night there for at least half of the people in the building, the smoothness with which everything went was amazing. They had a good system for quickly training the volunteers.

I worked on the taping line. Just fun, I pretended to manage it and made sure that the boxes flowed smoothly. I would guess that I touched more that 1,200 shoeboxs in the two hours I was working. Just for posterity's sake, for anyone who happens to working on the taping line in the future, here is what I learned.

• Keep the middle space clear of boxes. When passing boxes down the line to be taped, push them into the space between adjacent tape machines, keeping the center clear. When someone is done taping a box they can set it down in the center, and slide it straight down to the packers.
• Don't drop the shoebox horizontally down past the cuter when you have wrapped the tape around it. If you do, the tape will spring back and tangle up. Drop it down at a little bit of an angle, and the tape stays laid out, ready for the next box.
• The front two people taping need to keep their eyes open and pass untaped boxes down to the others if needed.

Working there was a blast. I'll want to do it again.