Last week I bought a used Hobie 16. Yesterday I was able to take it out for the first time. I always heard they were fun, but I had no idea just how fun it would be.
My friend kentos and I got one hull out of the water. The only shame was that we weren't ready for it so it started coming out too far. As the other hull started dipping below the water I had to quickly let out the main sheet to keep us from tipping. It was awesome.
I think I'll be sailing as much as possible until the end of the season. As long as I can find a friend to handle the jib I'll be in good shape.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Saturday, July 14, 2007
My political resignation
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This morning I left the Democratic state convention at 10:12. I have decided to discontinue my official affiliation with the democratic party; something I already had to do a few years ago with the republican party.
There are many reasons for this. The first of which is that I believe that no group of politically driven people will accomplish anything if others in their group do not care enough about the rule of law to try to enforce it. It seems the only people concerned with impeachment are the citizens who are farthest from it.
Secondly, I believe that both parties are anti competitive in nature. In the state of Utah, for most elections, a candidate either has to have a long list of signatures or the nomination of one of the established parties in order to be listed on the ballot. It is my opinion that any person wishing to be considered by the public should be allowed to run. This would include multiple people from each party. At which point conventions would be where a candidate runs for the endorsement not nomination of a party. Conceivably, a candidate could receive the endorsement of two or more parties (yes, there could be more than two).
I love freedom, I wish to always be free. When I participate in any political organization it makes me feel sad. It's almost as if people are sacrificing their personal initiative for the will of the group. We all join groups and subgroups. Why? Is it because we don't want to be alone in what we believe? In what we value? Perhaps there's some benefit to being alone. If you are alone you may be better able to act independently of what others think of you.
I do not support government welfare, a big issue in the democratic party. By making that statement some would assume that I do not believe in christian charity. On the contrary I do not support it because of my belief in christian charity. Charity is only charity when an individual decides to give. It is because it was that individual's choice. The choice is taken away, and thus the charity destroyed, when a government taxes from one and gives to another against the will of the taxed. This also destroys the benefit of the relationships that can be formed when individuals help each other through acts of charity.
Our political process is highly broken. Candidates seem to win more by advertising budget than by what they plan on doing once they get into office.
There are many problems. So many that I'm not prepared to discuss a tenth of the ones I have ever noted. Suffice it to say that there is sufficient group-think in both of our parties that until there is a change in the minds and attitudes of the people in our country we will continue to get farther from the freedom we could enjoy. Our country does not suffer so much from oppression of government, though it is rising, as it does from blindness of mind.
And thus I resign from my active involvement in political parties.
Shaun Kruger
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This morning I left the Democratic state convention at 10:12. I have decided to discontinue my official affiliation with the democratic party; something I already had to do a few years ago with the republican party.
There are many reasons for this. The first of which is that I believe that no group of politically driven people will accomplish anything if others in their group do not care enough about the rule of law to try to enforce it. It seems the only people concerned with impeachment are the citizens who are farthest from it.
Secondly, I believe that both parties are anti competitive in nature. In the state of Utah, for most elections, a candidate either has to have a long list of signatures or the nomination of one of the established parties in order to be listed on the ballot. It is my opinion that any person wishing to be considered by the public should be allowed to run. This would include multiple people from each party. At which point conventions would be where a candidate runs for the endorsement not nomination of a party. Conceivably, a candidate could receive the endorsement of two or more parties (yes, there could be more than two).
I love freedom, I wish to always be free. When I participate in any political organization it makes me feel sad. It's almost as if people are sacrificing their personal initiative for the will of the group. We all join groups and subgroups. Why? Is it because we don't want to be alone in what we believe? In what we value? Perhaps there's some benefit to being alone. If you are alone you may be better able to act independently of what others think of you.
I do not support government welfare, a big issue in the democratic party. By making that statement some would assume that I do not believe in christian charity. On the contrary I do not support it because of my belief in christian charity. Charity is only charity when an individual decides to give. It is because it was that individual's choice. The choice is taken away, and thus the charity destroyed, when a government taxes from one and gives to another against the will of the taxed. This also destroys the benefit of the relationships that can be formed when individuals help each other through acts of charity.
Our political process is highly broken. Candidates seem to win more by advertising budget than by what they plan on doing once they get into office.
There are many problems. So many that I'm not prepared to discuss a tenth of the ones I have ever noted. Suffice it to say that there is sufficient group-think in both of our parties that until there is a change in the minds and attitudes of the people in our country we will continue to get farther from the freedom we could enjoy. Our country does not suffer so much from oppression of government, though it is rising, as it does from blindness of mind.
And thus I resign from my active involvement in political parties.
Shaun Kruger
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Thursday, May 10, 2007
Debian gets feisty
A couple of weeks ago I upgraded my Debian box to Ubuntu feisty. The upgrade went ok, though today I found that my machine was having some issues and needed to be restarted. This is all fine and good except that I learned that the root filesystem is selected differently in feisty than it is in Debian.
Feisty wants to mount by UUID and my old upgraded Debian system wanted none of it. It had a kernel panic.
The fix?
I changed /etc/grub/grub.conf from root=UUID={...} to root=/dev/sda5.
I can't say I'm surprised. I've been a Debian user for coming up on 9 years. If I wasn't so comfortable with it I probably wouldn't have attempted the upgrade just because I know something is likely to go wrong when converting between distributions that just happen to use the same package manager.
Lets remember that this upgraded from a kernel I compiled myself with lilo as my boot loader. Ubuntu installed its own kernel and it uses grub unless you really have an opinion on the matter.
All told it was only a 15 minute fix and that's how I learned a valuable lesson.
Shaun
Feisty wants to mount by UUID and my old upgraded Debian system wanted none of it. It had a kernel panic.
The fix?
I changed /etc/grub/grub.conf from root=UUID={...} to root=/dev/sda5.
I can't say I'm surprised. I've been a Debian user for coming up on 9 years. If I wasn't so comfortable with it I probably wouldn't have attempted the upgrade just because I know something is likely to go wrong when converting between distributions that just happen to use the same package manager.
Lets remember that this upgraded from a kernel I compiled myself with lilo as my boot loader. Ubuntu installed its own kernel and it uses grub unless you really have an opinion on the matter.
All told it was only a 15 minute fix and that's how I learned a valuable lesson.
Shaun
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Programming Erlang
Last night I pre-ordered my copy of Programming Erlang: Software for a concurrent world.
After having read the example chapters I think this is going to be a really good book on the subject. Granted, by the time it gets here I may not really need it, but it will still be nice to have.
One of my favorite things about buying books like this is that I can get a better view of what the author thinks is really important about the language. Instead of a language reference where everything is given equal time. (because that's what you need in a reference) You get a view of some of the best practices around using certain parts of the language.
Languages have syntax, libraries, and idioms. You don't get the idioms from the library reference. You also don't get them from the language reference, it's too busy describing the syntax.
I like what I've seen, and I'm excited to get my copy when it ships later this summer.
After having read the example chapters I think this is going to be a really good book on the subject. Granted, by the time it gets here I may not really need it, but it will still be nice to have.
One of my favorite things about buying books like this is that I can get a better view of what the author thinks is really important about the language. Instead of a language reference where everything is given equal time. (because that's what you need in a reference) You get a view of some of the best practices around using certain parts of the language.
Languages have syntax, libraries, and idioms. You don't get the idioms from the library reference. You also don't get them from the language reference, it's too busy describing the syntax.
I like what I've seen, and I'm excited to get my copy when it ships later this summer.
More erlang awesomenes
This weekend I started playing with erlang again, and erlang started impressing me again.
I just declared a lexically scoped anonymous function and sent it to a different node. I then executed it on that node and it worked as expected.
For those who are not familiar, an anonymous function is a function that exists, but that is not associated with a function name in a global table of functions. It only exists by a variable reference that can and will go away at some point.
Lexical scoping is when you use a variable in an anonymous function that exists in the current scope where the function is created. That is the only copy of the variable that will be used in the execution of the anonymous function, even in the case that another variable of the same name is seen near the anonymous function later.
Creating the lexically scoped anonymous function and sending it to the other host:
Receiving the anonymous function into the variable Fn and executing it using map and executing it directly:
Remember: these are on two different machines executing in a clustered erlang environment.
Is this not awesome?
I just declared a lexically scoped anonymous function and sent it to a different node. I then executed it on that node and it worked as expected.
For those who are not familiar, an anonymous function is a function that exists, but that is not associated with a function name in a global table of functions. It only exists by a variable reference that can and will go away at some point.
Lexical scoping is when you use a variable in an anonymous function that exists in the current scope where the function is created. That is the only copy of the variable that will be used in the execution of the anonymous function, even in the case that another variable of the same name is seen near the anonymous function later.
Creating the lexically scoped anonymous function and sending it to the other host:
(nomad@nomad)43> Var = 4.
4
(nomad@nomad)44> Fn = fun(X) -> Var * X end.
#Fun
(nomad@nomad)45> global:send(slim_proc,Fn).
<4792.72.0>
Receiving the anonymous function into the variable Fn and executing it using map and executing it directly:
(slim@slim)28> receive Fn -> Fn end.
#Fun
(slim@slim)29> L = [1,3,4].
[1,3,4]
(slim@slim)30> lists:map(Fn,L).
[4,12,16]
(slim@slim)31> Fn(3).
12
Remember: these are on two different machines executing in a clustered erlang environment.
Is this not awesome?
Saturday, May 05, 2007
If you die in Canada you die in real life!
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