TekEmpire.net

As things stand, this is how I expect people to follow my life (if they are so inclined):

• Browser: http://www.tekempire.net/
• RSS: http://feeds.tekempire.net/tekempire
• ATOM: http://feeds.tekempire.net/tekempire
• E-Mail: http://www.tekempire.net/feeds/email

These all have the same content, so take your pick.  If you follow me on another site, that’s fine too, I don’t plan on eliminating them in the near future. Just be aware, the above are the primary sources.

Fujio-sensei tells her regular Japanese students that they should study at least two hours a day. However, since this is a summer class and every day is equivalent to one week of regular class, Fujio-sensei suggests we study at least six hours a day.

Yesterday, I got home as early as I could so I could take my grandmother, Joane, to a breast cancer center (henceforth BCC) to discuss treatment options. Her friend, Carolyn, wanted to go along to help out, but her van was having A/C trouble. The plan was to drop off Carolyn’s van at the shop and then take Joane’s car to town. I, of course, was the chauffer. As Carolyn walked to the building to hand the gentlemen her keys, she had another fall. Plans changed a little and we took her to the VA on our way to the BCC. The new plan was to pick her up on the way back. A few hours passed before we returned to the VA (“cancer treatment options” is not a discussion you want to rush), but they still were not done doing tests, so Joane and I went home.

Sometime in there, my brother, Eric, called me to inform me that he found $200 I accidentally left in a suitcase. Happy birthday brother!

It was a little early for dinner but for some reason I was quite hungry by the time I got home, so I ate early. Which was convenient since the time I normally eat dinner, as I was preparing to study, I got a phone call from Carolyn telling me to pick her up. Of course when I got there, I had to wait another hour or so while they waited on results for a test. So I finally got home and ready to study around 8:30pm, an hour and a half before I normally go to bed. There is a fine line between too little sleep and too little studying. If you get it wrong, you will not know the material. Fortunately I had spent some time trying to learn Japanese on my own a few years ago, however, I think we have now moved beyond where I left off.

http://blog.tekempire.net/

If any of you have been following my internet musings over the years, you’ll know I’ve had the domain name for a while and don’t really use it (on the public facing side). I’m not actually hosting the blog myself. I’m using posterous. The service reposts content to facebook, twitter, and blogger. So if you don’t update your bookmarks, it won’t matter, you can still read all my new posts. Assuming, of course, I write new posts.

All A’s again last semester (strangely). Start summer Japanese course on Monday. Got a Roku player a few weeks ago to watch Netflix videos instantly on the television. Grandmother enjoys it. Will be getting a new router to deal with an issue the cable company has. Decided on a camera to want, Canon SD1400. If anyone buys this for me, it will not be appreciated. Still learning to budget. Grandmother likes suggested insulated water bottle, uses it frequently. Expensive screen to be installed in carport this month. Discovered A/C duct was losing significant amounts of air outside. Neighbor, retired from company that installed A/C, fixed same day. Photo organization re-automated. Still not enough pictures taken to justify organizational system. Fire department removed snake from premises. Turned out to be harmless Bull snake. Visited Kitt Peak with friend from China. Stopped at border patrol checkpoint on return. Formed opinion on new immigration law, do not like. Got sick for two days. Good excuse to catch up on much-needed rest. Need new excuse. Want free epub books to read, preferably good ones. Search for “free epub books to read” does not return good ones. Determined to improve native language skills. Regained interest in quantum entanglement. Discovered service allowing e-mail to snail-mail conversion (for a fee). Sent post cards. Went to Mount Lemmon with friends. Attempted intellectual conversation. Learned not friends. Went to mall with friends. Attempted intellectual conversation. Rediscovered not friends. Internet is friend, discussed quantum entanglement. Some other stuff you might have an interest in also occurred, but not recollected currently.

Today the ACM club at U of A had a picnic. We invited all computer science majors, not just ACM members. Someone brought a football. Several of us, myself included, played football. You read that correctly, CS majors played football at a picnic. I also stubbed my finger trying to catch the ball, but that’s not nearly as interesting as the premise.

I moved back Friday. The apartment did not save enough time to justify the expense.

I am obsessive about the organization of the files on my computer. Apple does not understand my organizational system, and I do not understand theirs. On the operating system drive, I leave the files how OSX put them. On my removable media, Apple should leave things as I put them. So I wrote two files to allow me to “umount” properly.

To make this work by just typing “umount /Volume/<VolumeName>”, I added “export PATH=~/bin:${PATH}” to my “~/.profile” and put the following files in “~/bin”.

If you read this far and do not know what I am referring to, you probably should stop reading here and find something else to do. Otherwise, let me know if you have any problems with this technique, or a better solution.

--- Begin ~/bin/umount ---
#!/bin/sh
# File: umount
# Author: Brian Lindsay
# Purpose: umount a volume from OSX (calling uncruft first).
# Usage: umount /Volume/

uncruft "${@}"
diskutil unmount "${@}"
--- End ~/bin/umount ---

--- Begin ~/bin/uncruft ---
#!/bin/sh
# File: uncruft
# Author: Brian Lindsay
# Purpose: Remove OSX cruft from a filesystem volume.
# Usage: uncruft /Volume/

# MCP
main(){
	clean "${@}"
}

# All known sources of cruft in OSX
osxcruft(){
	#Files
	#echo "._AppleDouble"
	echo "._*"
	echo ".DS_Store"
	echo ".VolumeIcon.icns"
	#Folders
	echo ".fseventsd"
	echo ".Spotlight-V100"
	echo ".TemporaryItems"
	echo ".Trashes"
}

# Forcibly remove cruft
clean(){
	cd "${@}"
	osxcruft | while read cruft; do
		rm -rf ${cruft}
	done
}

# Run program.
main "${@}"
--- End ~/bin/uncruft ---

Recently I have been spending a lot of time thinking about getting clean water to underprivileged people. This is probably due to the fact that I now live in a desert. Nevertheless, it seems important, so it stays on my mind.

If you could only do one thing to help prevent the spread of disease, it should be to supply clean water, because nothing else has such a dramatic impact. Perhaps more importantly, however, is that a steady supply of clean water permits the irrigation of crops, which creates a stable food supply. You know what happens when your village no longer spends all its time worrying about its next meal and surviving the next outbreak? Industry. Well, not immediately, but it permits the possibility.

So the important part of the idea. How do you get freshwater to the desert with no streams or aquifers? On a much smaller scale, the Romans had some plumbing that did not require power. Aqueducts. We could use something like that to transport water for the highest places in Africa to all of the smallest villages. The initial expense would be enormous, but if you build it with local materials, you would not have to maintain it. As a passive system, it would require very little maintenance anyway.

The really hard part is getting the freshwater to the highest points in Africa to begin with. I like the idea of selling sea salt from the Atlantic ocean to the developed world, and pumping the distilled water uphill. I have no idea how much salt would need to be sold, nor at what price to make this possible, but I have heard little discussion about it, so I thought I would start the conversation. Anyone interested in a business venture?