Personal – Page 23 – Spinor Info

Tax time in Gormenghast

Books, Computers, Intellectual Property, Personal No Responses »

Feb 202012

I just finished doing our taxes. It’s not very complicated (I keep good books) but it still took a few hours. I feel drained… and not just in the wallet. Groan.

Speaking of Groans, I am re-reading the story about the 77th Earl of Groan, Mervyn Peake’s incredible trilogy about the mysterious castle of Gormenghast and its inhabitants. I became aware of this book some 10-odd years ago when the Canadian cable network Space showed the eponymous BBC miniseries; I had no idea what I was watching, but I got hooked by its atmosphere. Later, I bought the book and read it, and what a read it is! Now I decided to read it again, taking my time this time, enjoying every sentence, every turn of phrase. After spending hours with tax software, retiring to my bed with Gormenghast will be quite the relief.

The tax software I use is GenuTax. It is decent, perhaps not the best, but it has an advantage other tax packages lack: it does not require Activation nor does it incorporate other Draconian DRM technology. This is why I switched to this software many years ago. I am disgusted by software companies that treat us all like would-be criminals. Unfortunately, GenuTax is not doing well; their business model is a losing one (lifetime free upgrades) and I worry that they won’t be around much longer, which will be a pity.

Goodbye, Malév

Aviation, Hungary, Personal No Responses »

Feb 032012

Hungary’s flagship airline is no more: after 66 years of operations, Malév unceremoniously stopped flying after two of its airplanes were grounded in Tel Aviv by a demand for advance payment for fuel and services.

Though the news is not unexpected (Malév has been in deep trouble ever since it was ordered to repay several hundred million dollars worth of state subsidies that were deemed illegal by the European Union), I am still saddened. My first ever professional contract in 1979 (yes, I was still in high school) was to write code to simulate the take-off of Malév-owned TU-134 aircraft at Budapest’s Ferihegy airport under various adverse conditions, calculating the maximum safe take-off weight. I also have other memories, such as nearly missing a Malév flight in Bucharest in 1983, as in Ceausescu’s capital by that time, fuel was scarce, public transport was unreliable, and taxicabs fueled by natural gas were not accepting passengers to the airport due to the chronic fuel shortage and rationing. (I hitchhiked and caught my flight with only seconds to spare.) Ferihegy Airport without Malév is just not the same.

Loaner cat

Cats, Personal No Responses »

Feb 012012

Once again, we have a feline visitor in our house: Poppy, the cat of a friend of ours, has been spending the past two weeks here while her owner is out of town. Poppy is a 20th century cat, but she is in good health and as playful as ever. I am looking forward to many more of her visits in the years to come.

Wikipedia’s disingenuous blackout decision

Intellectual Property, Internet, Personal, Society No Responses »

Jan 172012

I just wrote a comment, registering my objection to Wikipedia’s decision to protest a proposed US legislation with a total blackout of its English-language site.

In a letter titled “Summary and conclusion”, those behind this decision state that “over 1800 Wikipedians […] is by far the largest level of participation […], which illustrates the level of concern”. I was one of the 1800+. But, my concern was not about SOPA (I am concerned about it, but that’s another matter) but about the proposed radical action and its possible negative consequences for Wikipedia.

I also pointed out that given the way the vote was organized, it is clear that the decision was not a result of a majority (50%+) vote. It was merely the option (one out of many) picked by the most vocal minority. Taking such radical action without a clear majority mandate is a badly misguided step, to say the least.

There were also calls to make the blackout more thorough: block attempts to view cached versions of Wikipedia pages on Google, or attempts to bypass the JavaScript code that redirects the user to the blackout page. This is childish and vindictive, and also kind of pointless: the stated goal (raising awareness of the proposed legislation and its negative consequences) is easily accomplished without such thoroughness.

Lastly, I pointed out that with the legislation effectively dead (in the unlikely event that both houses of Congress pass the legislation, the White House all but promised a veto) proceeding with the blackout makes little sense. It is as if we threatened nuclear war, our opponent backed down, and then we went ahead and nuked the hell out of them anyway, just for good measure.

Internet, Personal No Responses »

Dec 212011

I just added a WordPress plugin that will tweet all my blog posts.

CMS

Internet, Personal No Responses »

Nov 292011

I finally completed the task of moving my personal Web site to a content management system (Joomla!). It turned out to be a much bigger task than I anticipated; a lot of stuff accumulated on my site over the years, and some of it, like my Seas of Mars Java applet, is interactive content and it was a bit of a struggle to make these pages compatible with the CMS code. Still, I’m glad it’s done… my site is my way of introducing myself to the world, and it looks like I’ll be in need of doing some introducing, as some of my long-term clients are slowly leaving the picture.

Wasn’t the BIOS after all

Computers, Personal No Responses »

Nov 202011

Last May, when I tried to upgrade a motherboard that had trouble recovering from hibernation under Windows 7, I ran into an unpleasant problem: after the BIOS upgrade, the system refused to boot. No BIOS screen, nothing. I do have a test card that shows POST (BIOS diagnostic) codes during boot, but even with its help, I could not revive the board; clearly, its BIOS was busted.

Or perhaps not. Today, I looked at that motherboard again: Same symptoms. But then, for no particular reason that I can remember, I decided to remove memory modules from this board and reinsert them in different slots. Much to my astonishment, the board came back to life!

My guess is that either this was an unfortunate coincidence (a bad contact occurring just as I was rebooting after the BIOS flash) or, much more likely, the new BIOS did not like the particular combination of memory slots that I was using (I picked the two slots farthest from the CPU to minimize heating.)

Whatever the reason, the board now works fine. So what am I to do with it? I really don’t need it anymore (this is a board with a single-core CPU and I now have several dual-core boards either in test machines or as spares). Perhaps I should put it up on eBay while it is still worth something?

Perimeter

Personal, Physics No Responses »

Nov 072011

This is the Perimeter Institute, the picture taken from the spectacularly large balcony of my PI-issued apartment.

Yes, I am in Waterloo again.

Does Facebook still hate me?

Internet, Personal No Responses »

Oct 302011

Once again I am noticing that Facebook fails to pick up my blog entries. If I reset the link, it collects all recent posts (and displays the last one twice, for some reason, on my “Wall”) but then it stops collecting them again. Weird. Of course it’s probably nothing personal, just an uncorrected bug in Facebook’s RSS harvesting code.

Reinstall

Computers, Personal No Responses »

Oct 142011

I’m reinstalling Windows 7 on my main computer. I am doing an Upgrade (upgrading Windows 7 with itself) to avoid having to reinstall everything else. This is kind of a last resort solution, to deal with a problem that defeated all my previous attempts to fix, including some machine code level debugging. I hope the reinstall will do the trick. I’ll know in a few hours.

Does Facebook hate my blog?

Internet, Personal No Responses »

Oct 142011

Recently, Facebook stopped importing entries from my blog again. I can set up the import, Facebook imports all fresh entries (and for some reason, shows the most recent one in duplicate) but then it never imports anything again. I don’t think it’s anything wrong on my end, but it sure is annoying.

Time machines and mandarin oranges

Astronomy, Personal, Physics No Responses »

Sep 252011

Maybe I’ve been watching too much Doctor Who lately.

Many of my friends asked me about the faster-than-light neutrino announcement from CERN. I must say I am skeptical. One reason why I am skeptical is that no faster-than-light effect was observed in the case of supernova 1987A, which exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud some 170,000 light years from here. Had there been such an effect of the magnitude supposedly observed at CERN, neutrinos from this supernova would have arrived years before visible light, but that was not the case. Yes, there are ways to explain away this (the neutrinos in question have rather different energy levels) but these explanations are not necessarily very convincing.

Another reason, however, is that faster-than-light neutrinos would be eminently usable in a technological sense; if it is possible to emit and observe them, it is almost trivial to build a machine that sends a signal in a closed timelike loop, effectively allowing us to send information from the future to the present. In other words, future me should be able to send present me a signal, preferably with the blueprints for the time machine of course (why do all that hard work if I can get the blueprints from future me for free?) So, I said, if faster-than-light neutrinos exist, then future me should contact present me in three…, two…, one…, now! Hmmm… no contact. No faster-than-light neutrinos, then.

But that’s when I suddenly remembered an uncanny occurrence that happened to me just hours earlier, yesterday morning. We ran out of bread, and we were also out of the little mandarin or clementine oranges that I like to have with my breakfast. So I took a walk, visiting our favorite Portuguese bakery on Nelson street, with a detour to the nearby Loblaws supermarket. On my way, I walked across a small parking lot, where I suddenly spotted something: a mandarin orange on the ground. I picked it up… it seemed fresh and completely undamaged. Precisely what I was going out for. Was it just a coincidence? Or perhaps future me was trying to send a subtle signal to present me about the feasibility of time machines?

If it’s the latter, maybe future me watched too much Doctor Who, too. Next time, just send those blueprints.

I am ba-ack!

Personal No Responses »

Sep 222011

I’m back from a week-long trip to Hungary. We had our 30-year high school reunion last Saturday; it was very enjoyable. All in all, everything went well, so well in fact that it leaves me worried; am I missing something?

Pioneer Doppler

Personal, Physics, Space 2 Responses »

Aug 192011

Our paper on the temporal behavior of the anomalous acceleration of Pioneer 10 and 11 is now published online by Physical Review Letters, and it is an Editor’s Suggestion, featured in Physical Review Focus.

Is MOG/STVG an effective gravity theory?

Personal, Physics No Responses »

Aug 122011

I am reading a very interesting paper by Mishra and Singh. In it, they claim that simply accounting for the gravitational quadrupole moment in a matter-filled universe would naturally produce the same gravitational equations of motion that we have been investigating with John Moffat these past few years. If true, this work would imply that that our Scalar-Tensor-Vector Gravity (STVG) is in fact an effective theory (which is not necessarily surprising). Its vector and scalar degrees of freedom may arise as a result of an averaging process. The fact that they not only recover the STVG acceleration law but the correct numerical value of at least one of the STVG constants, too, suggests that this may be more than a mere coincidence. Needless to say, I am intrigued.

Down

Internet, Personal No Responses »

Aug 012011

First the first time in seven years (!), my main Internet connection is down, and will likely stay down until at least Tuesday. This being a long weekend, no telco technician is available until then, and they determined that the fault is likely a partial short in the physical circuit. Bloody hell.

Now I am scrambling to reroute everything to a backup server, provided courtesy of a good friend of mine. I asked him to only move around on tiptoes until Tuesday, and I am begging Murphy not to strike again until then…

Human memory

Personal, Weather and Climate 1 Response »

Jul 222011

Human memory is far from perfect.

During the winter of 1988-1989, I was renting a small office on Ottawa’s Bank Street with my business partner John. We spent many a late night working on a difficult project, and it was one cold winter. I distinctly remember one night when the temperature dipped to −36 degrees Centigrade, and I not only had a hard time starting my car (only to rush back to the building to warm up and then run out to the car again after a few minutes in the hope that it would have warmed up a little by then) but its engine never reached its normal operating temperature during the 10 km drive home.

Except that it never happened. The -36°C, that is. The coldest historical temperature I can find for that winter is −27.2°C, which occurred in early March 1989; earlier, in January, it went down to −27.0°C one night.

I also distinctly remember that the first winter my wife spent here in Ottawa, she was renting a stall on the Byward Market and that on Christmas Eve day, the temperature never climbed above −24°C.

Again, never happened. On December 24, 1992, the high temperature was +2.7°C. Perhaps a year later, then? Yes, that was a cold Christmas Eve day, but not near that cold; the high temperature was -10.0°C.

Then there is that very cold winter in Budapest that I recall. It was brutal; my old Lada’s engine half froze. Eventually I managed to get it running without overheating, and then I spent half the night looking for a gas station that was selling antifreeze. Eventually I found one, way outside of Budapest. I do recall hearing on the radio that the temperature was -29°C. It wasn’t… according to the historical weather records that I can locate, the coldest night was on February 12, 1985, with a temperature of −24°C. Brutally cold by Budapest standards to be sure, but still 5 degrees warmer than what I remember.

At least I do know for a fact that today, the temperature reached +36°C. I think I owe an extra prayer of thanks to the gods of air conditioning.

Squeak

Cats, Health, Personal No Responses »

Jul 192011

I found out that I am less squeamish than I thought.

I went out for a walk this morning, and in the middle of a sidewalk, I suddenly spotted a mouse. First I thought it was a small furry mouse toy, as it looked like a perfect little mouse, completely motionless. But then I realized it was the real thing, probably dead… but no, wait, it was still kicking. When I touched it with the toe of my shoe, it squeaked loudly and tried to crawl away… but even though I was trying to steer it towards the grass with my shoe, it didn’t get very far. I think it was badly injured, probably a broken leg or something. Eventually, fears of hantavirus and whatnot notwithstanding, I just grabbed it by the tail (loud squeaks followed) and threw it in the grass.

I mean, what was I supposed to do, step on the poor thing? Yes, I know, too much empathy is bad for your health, but apart from their size, mice are not that different from other mammals… they have hearts, lungs, a sizable brain, and the ability to feel fear and pain. In all likelihood, this poor critter has since been found by a cat, but at least it’s not expiring in the middle of a sidewalk half crushed to death when someone steps on it.

Yes, I avoided touching my face afterwards and washed my hands as soon as I got back home.

Pioneer Doppler

Personal, Space 1 Response »

Jul 142011

Our paper on the analysis of extended Pioneer 10 and 11 Doppler data was just accepted by Physical Review Letters.

In it, we report that a data set roughly twice in size the data set that was analyzed previously continues to support the notion that a small anomalous acceleration is affecting both spacecraft. However, there is no reason to believe that the acceleration is in the direction of the Sun or that it is constant; on the contrary, the data seem to favor (albeit weakly) an Earth-directed, temporally decaying acceleration model.

Heat, emitted anisotropically, remains the prime suspect. The observed decrease in the acceleration appears more rapid than the rate of decay of the radioactive fuel on board. This is explained once we consider that much of the thermal acceleration would be due to electrically produced heat, and the amount of electricity available on board decreases much more rapidly. (The reason is that as the plutonium fuel cools, the thermocouples used to generate electricity become less efficient; the thermocouples also age.)

We also looked at some early data, taken when Pioneer 11 was cruising between Jupiter and Saturn. The possibility that the anomalous acceleration only began after Pioneer 10 and 11 passed the orbit of Saturn was much discussed in the literature. While we cannot exclude such an onset, its presence cannot be confirmed either (the early data is just too short in duration for a definitive conclusion). In any case, the shape of the onset curve very strongly suggests that it is, in fact, a modeling artifact: it is precisely what one would see if the Pioneer spacecraft’s solar pressure model was miscalibrated, which is a very likely possibility.

In the past few years, we also constructed a detailed thermal model of the Pioneer spacecraft, using recovered documentation and telemetry. We are busy preparing another report in which the results of this effort will be discussed.

Server upgrade

Computers, Personal No Responses »

Jul 072011

This morning my main server greeted me with an unexpected and unpleasant surprise: it no longer recognized its video card. This problem has happened before (removing and reinserting the video card fixed it) but this time around, I decided that rather than investing the time into fixing the old server, I should finally complete the setup of my new server, which has been in a half-finished state for months.

Well, to make a long story short, I am now writing this using the brand spanking new server, and just about everything works… but it was a pretty much non-stop 15 hours and I am tired like a horse. A few more hours to go tomorrow, fixing things like temperature sensor drivers or the UPS software.

Groan.

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