Lies, Damned Lies, and Sean

I fixed the lawn tractor's radiator

This afternoon I replaced the radiator on our Honda 4518 lawn tractor.  It had spontaneously sprung a leak in the last few weeks.  We tried fixing it using a leak-sealing liquid that is poured into the radiator, but the hole was too large.  I ordered a new radiator, which came to $211, at a local equipment dealer that handles Hondas.  I also replaced the rubber hose to the overflow container, which had cracked.  

A consequence of the radiator hole was that the engine block became very hot when I was mowing the lawn — so hot that a plastic timing belt cover melted.  I ordered a new cover for $76, and I need to install it, which will be a pain, as a drive shaft goes from the engine through the plastic cover to the hydraulic transmission.  

News for Iraqis

I noticed Spirit of America the other day and I was heartened by it's intention to counter the heavy anti-US bias in the Arab news media.  In particular, Al-Jazeera often distorts reality in their reporting, and these distortions fan the flames of US-hatred, which in turn results in attacks on coalition soldiers and contractors in Iraq.  They probably sell more advertizing by making news stories sensational, such as "US soldiers slaughter women and children" when the reality may be "Insurgents fired at US soldiers from behind women and children, and US soldiers defended themselves, accidentally killing some innocent civilians."  The NBC Nightly News this evening discussed Al-Jazeera's bias and some of the steps taken to deal with it.  A group of our people is paid to sit around and watch it continuously; they take note of any discrepencies between Al-Jazeera's version and the military's version.  They create something they call "The Matrix," which is a big table of what Al-Jazeera said, what actually happened, and what kind of distortion it was.  Then they try to deal with it, but I don't think they are very effective yet, partly because they need more unbiased tv stations, which is where spiritofamerica comes in.  They accept cash or equipment donations for setting up TV stations in Iraq.  I think this is a worthy cause which could go a long way towards reducing deaths, injurries, and expenses suffered by the coalition.  If I had any money, I might give them some.

Network Time Protocol

This morning I noticed that the clock on the linux computer was off by five minutes.  I had not adjusted it in months, and I suppose it simply drifted that much.  To prevent the problem from recurring, I installed a Network Time Protocol Daemon, which periodically queries remote computers for the time.  They are known as "stratum 2" machines, and they are synchronized with "stratum 1" machines, which are synced to GPS satellites, atomic clocks, etc.  The NTP daemon is able to measure the systematic drift in the clock and compensate for it; some temperature-dependent drift may still occur.  The period of polling other computers is initially about 64 seconds and gradually increases to about 1024 seconds (or whatever you set it to).  I understand the accuracy associated with using NTP is around 50ms.

I saw a beaver today

I happened to be outside in the backyard eating apple tree blossoms petals today; I wandered over by the brook, where I heard the crows were acting up.  Then I noticed a young beaver, perhaps two years old, sitting on the opposite bank.  I have never seen one around here before, and I thought it was a domesticated pet at first, but it was larger than a cat and it moved like a beaver.  Also, the flat tail was a dead giveaway.  It scampered across our neighbor's lawn after it saw me.  I don't think it will build a lodge or dam, due to the lack of small trees for food and construction.  It was probably just passing through.

Photos of gardens

I have created another photojournal; so far, it shows the vegetable garden I planted and helped maintain at Noelle's and the stone path I recently installed in my parents' yard.  Again, my Nikon Coolpix 3500 was used.

Photos of bedroom hydroponic watering system 2004

Using my new script, I created a photojournal of my hydroponic watering system today.  It is available for your viewing pleasure.  I used my Nikon Coolpix 3500 digital camera to take the photos.

Photojournal script

I was working on a script that aids in creating photojournal webpages.  I imagine there are plenty out there already, but I was in the mood to write it, and I learned a thing or two.  It is simple and allows a list of image filenames (one per line) to be passed to it as input.  Thumbnails are made from these image files if necessary.  There are some limitations on the filenames:  they cannot be of the form <H1> or <H2> ... <H9> and they cannot start with a pound sign (#).  The pound sign indicates that the line is a comment.  The <H?> means that it is a heading, so by following the <H?> by a tab and then a string, you can create an html heading of the desired level.  The image filenames may be also followed by a tab and a string, which will be used to describe the thumbnails.  The size of the thumbnails may be specified by using another tab character followed by a string, such as "20%" or "x100" or "200x300!".   See the convert command for details.  Additionally, the images are titled with their filename, size  in KB, resolution, and date of creation.

#!/bin/awk -f

# makethumbs
# Copyright (c) 2004 Sean Eron Anderson

# Take images filenames input and create thumbnails and output html to show them.
# Stdout will be a HTML table with the thumbnails and links to the full images.
# Each input line will have the image filename followed by an optional
# description, followed by an optional thumbnail size.

# Lines that start with # are comments
# Lines that start with <H followed by a digit 1-9 followed by > are headings, so
# So:
# <H2>\tExample Title 

# Simple example:  Go to a directory with images and type:
# ls -1 [^_]*.JPG | makethumbs >index.html

BEGIN {
  FS = "\t";
  intable = 0;
  }

/<[Hh][1-9]>\t(.*)/ {
  if (intable) {
    print "</table>";
    }
  match($1, /<(.*)>/, a);
  printf("<%s>%s</%s>\n\n", a[1], $2, a[1]);
  if (intable) {
    print "<table>"
    }
  }

!/^<[Hh][1-9]>\t/ && !/^[#]/ && /.+/ {
  if (!intable) {
    printf("<table>\n");
    intable = 1;
    }
  size = ($3 == "") ? "x100" : $3;
  resizecmd = "test _" $1 " -nt " $1 " || convert -size " size " " $1 " -resize x100 +profile '*' _" $1;
  system(resizecmd);

  geomcmd = "identify -size 1x1 -verbose "$1" | grep 'Base geom' | sed 's/  Base geometry: //'";
  geomcmd | getline geom;

  sizecmd = "identify -size 1x1 -verbose "$1" | grep 'Filesize' | sed 's/  Filesize: //'";
  sizecmd | getline size;

  datecmd = "date -r " $1;
  datecmd | getline date;

  info = $1 "  " size "  " geom "  " date;
  printf("  <tr>\n    <td><a href='%s'><img src='_%s' alt='' title='%s'></a></td>\n", 
    $1, $1, info);
  printf("    <td>%s</td>\n  </tr>\n", $2);
  }

END {
  if (intable) {
    printf("</table>\n");
    }
  }

Stevia

I recently read about Stevia, which is a non-caloric herb that is 150-400 times sweeter than sugar.  It has been used for centuries by South American natives.  There appears no toxicity problems with it, unlike aspartame (Nutrasweet) and saccharine, and its saftey is more proven than sucralose (Splenda) or even tagatose (Naturlose).  

So why is it used in Japan, Germany, Chile, Brazil, etc, but not the good ole USA?  Apparently, just as Nutrasweet became available, the FDA banned its import to the US, and to this day does not permit it as an ingredient, only as a dietary suppliment.  The popular comspiracy theory is that Nutrasweet, which is owned by Monsanto, basically bought-off the FDA.  (We clearly need a more transparent and accountable FDA, as their justification for its ban seems very week.)

Some related newsgroup posts:
* FDA orders destruction of cook books mentioning "stevia"
* Re: Stevia v Aspartame (Was: Re: ANECDOTAL REPORT: Adverse Reaction to Stevia alternative herbal sweetner