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.

Testing (and complaining), please ignore

Computers No Responses »

Feb 192012

Software updates are driving me nuts. One of these days, I’ll try to keep a log of just how much time I spend doing Windows updates, Linux updates, Flash updates, Acrobat updates, Java updates, other software updates… or in this case, updating the Facebook plugin of the blogging software I use, WordPress. The purpose of this post, then, is not just to complain but also verify that the updated plugin still works as advertised. Crossing fingers…

Eurozone

Economy, Hungary No Responses »

Feb 192012

I was watching CNN’s Fareed Zakaria today, who expressed his opinion that the Eurozone crisis is over: that Greece may still default, but by and large, as a result of the activities of the European Central Bank, the Euro itself is now stable and its long-term survival is assured. I hope Zakaria is correct… indeed, this may be the best-case scenario, with a stronger Euro emerging from this crisis. One hopeful sign supporting this optimistic scenario has been the drop in the 10-year rates of Spanish and Italian government bonds; from a peak near 7% (exceeding 7% briefly in the case of Italy) the rates are back down to a more manageable 5.5%.

I wish I could say the same thing about Hungary. Unfortunately, the interest rate on 10 year bonds there is still well in excess of 8%. True, 8% is less than the 10% this rate was at just less than two months ago, or the astonishingly high rate over 12% back in 2009, but it is still very high, limiting the Hungarian government’s ability to deal with the crisis. The fact that many Hungarians (individuals, businesses, even municipalities) have accumulated large debts in foreign denominations (mainly in Swiss francs) also complicates things. Normally during this crisis, having a national currency should have worked to the government’s advantage; not with these excessive foreign currency debts.

My opinion about the abilities of Mr. Orban and his administration to deal with these challenges is less than flattering, but I have to admit that the challenges may test the abilities of even the best prepared government.

Stellar arithmetic

Astronomy, Physics No Responses »

Feb 162012

I always find these numbers astonishing.

The solar constant, the amount of energy received by a 1 square meter surface at 1 astronomical unit (AU) from the Sun is roughly s = 1.37 kW/m². Given that 1 AU is approximately 150 million kilometers, or r = 1.5 × 10¹¹ m, the surface area of a 1 AU sphere surrounding the Sun would be A = 4πr² = 2.8 × 10²³ m². Multiplied by the solar constant, we get P = sA = 3.9 × 10²⁶ W, or the energy E = sA = 3.9 × 10²⁶ J every second. Using Einstein’s infamous mass-energy formula E = mc², where c = 3 × 10⁸ m/s, we can easily calculate how much mass is converted into energy: m = E/c² = 4.3 × 10⁹ kg. Close to four and a half million tons.

The dominant fusion process in the Sun is the proton-proton chain reaction, in which approximately 0.7% of the total mass of hydrogen is converted into energy. Thus 4.3 million tons of pure energy is equivalent to over 600 millon tons of hydrogen fuel burned every second. (For comparison, the largest ever nuclear device, the Soviet Tsar Bomba, burned no more than a few hundred kilograms of hydrogen to produce a 50 megaton explosion.)

Fortunately, there is plenty where that came from. The total mass of the Sun is 2 × 10³⁰ kg, so if the Sun was made entirely of hydrogen, it could burn for 100 billion years before running out of fuel. Now the Sun is not made entirely of hydrogen, and the fusion reaction slows down and eventually stops long before all the hydrogen is consumed, but we still have a few billion years of useful life left in our middle-aged star. A much bigger (pun intended) problem is that as our Sun ages, it will grow in size; in a mere billion years, the Earth may well become uninhabitable as a result, with the oceans boiling away. I wonder if it’s too early to start worrying about it just yet.

Ontario’s budget

Canada, Economy, Politics No Responses »

Feb 162012

Ontario is in trouble. According to economist Don Drummond’s devastating report, only drastic measures can reverse the trend of ballooning deficits. So something must be cut. But what? And who will do the cutting?

Normally, this would be the time when I’d be expressing a desperate wish for a Conservative government to replace the Liberals ASAP. Unfortunately, I don’t trust Ontario Conservatives. Chances are that rather than cutting, they’d continue with business as usual, perhaps even spending some more on populist programs that happen to suit their ideological agenda (like Harper’s federal government did, with its tough-on-crime legislation at a time of falling crime rates.) Paradoxically, by commissioning the Drummond report, the Liberals indicated that they may be the best candidates to fix the mess that we are in, even though they may very well have caused it in the first place.

Still, it will be an interesting spectacle with the governing Liberal minority introducing an austerity budget in the provincial legislature. Will the Conservatives vote against an austerity bill just to bring down the government?

Swiss tidiness in space

Space No Responses »

Feb 162012

Other countries have launched satellites to observe the Earth; observe the Sun; observe the stars; perform physical, chemical, or biological experiments in space; or even for military purposes. But here is a first: trust a Swiss team to propose a microsatellite specifically designed to capture orbital junk and drag it back to the atmosphere to burn it up.

Radical extremist child pornographer

Canada, Politics 1 Response »

Feb 152012

Stephen Harper’s government thinks that anyone who opposes Bill C-11, the proposed copyright legislation that includes Draconian provisions on digital locks, is a “radical extremist”. I guess I must be a radical extremist, then, having just signed an online petition:

Stephen Harper’s government also thinks that people who oppose their new proposals for warrantless surveillance are siding with child pornographers. Since I oppose warrantless surveillance, I guess that makes me one:

Of course these contemptuous portrayals of people who opposed this government’s divine agenda reveal only one thing: that although they call themselves “conservatives”, they are anything but. They are the radical right-wing looney house.

Can we have a real conservative party please? I am so tired of voting Liberal.

CNN-led coup d’etat in Hungary

Hungary, Politics 1 Response »

Feb 112012

According to Hungarian media reports, denied by some members of the ruling Fidesz party, but confusingly, confirmed even by some pro-government newspapers, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, told his supporters at a party meeting that there was an international conspiracy attempt, led by CNN (!), to carry out a coup d’etat against his government.

If these reports are true, they prompt me to ask three questions.

First, to Mr. Orban: My good man, have you gone stark raving mad?

Second, to the leadership of Fidesz: Why do you allow yourselves to be led by a person who has obviously gone stark raving mad?

To supporters of Mr. Orban and his party who actually believe his cockamamie conspiracy theories: have you all gone stark raving mad?

Well, perhaps the reports are false after all. As a matter of fact, I’d certainly like to believe that they are false. But they ring true. In recent months, Hungary’s government dismissed all Western criticisms as mere results of an organized liberal or socialist conspiracy by “enemies of Hungary” in the country and abroad. Support for Mr. Orban within his party is unwavering; indeed, support for Mr. Orban seems to have been the central program theme of this party for the past two decades. And Mr. Orban’s supporters recently held a pro-government rally, holding up signs protesting attempts to turn Hungary into a “colony of Europe”.

Colony? No way. Insane asylum of Europe, perhaps.

Diamond Jubilee

Canada, History No Responses »

Feb 062012

The reign of Queen Elizabeth II began on February 6, 1952, following the death of King George VI.

As a loyalist royalist (or is that a royalist loyalist?) Canadian, I think this day is worth celebrating. Besides, I happen to like the old gal anyway. May she be around in good health for many more years to come.

Sunday 1AM

Computers No Responses »

Feb 052012

I am not usually up this late, but I’ve been working a lot tonight. So it’s 1AM and I am still sitting in front of my computer. That’s when it happened… an occurrence that looked eerily like something I’ve seen recently, when my expensive video card died. The system became excessively busy, the mouse pointer froze, and eventually, the Aero glass interface was shut down, for no apparent reason. Oh no… was my computer about to kill another pricey graphics card? But then, in a few minutes, everything was back to normal, with no sign of trouble in the Event Viewer. The only relevant entry was one indicating that the Aero user interface was shut down by a request from the Windows System Assessment Tool. But why? Then, this sentence on Wikipedia caught my eye: “In addition to tests requested by the user, WinSAT is scheduled to automatically run every week. The default schedule is 1am on Sundays”.

Live and learn.

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.

Gotta love Rogers

Canada, Internet No Responses »

Jan 302012

Rogers is supposed to be one of Canada’s leading telecommunication companies. I guess bigger does not necessarily mean better.

Back in August, I upgraded my cable Internet service to a small business package. This itself turned into a comedy of errors: to effect the upgrade, I had to order separately the small business service on the one hand, and cancel my residential service on the other. Sure enough, Rogers managed to cancel the freshly ordered small business service instead, and I spent an hour and a half (!) on the phone with them before it got sorted out. But, I digress.

Presently, I’ve been trying to access this small business account online. Ever since my residential service was canceled, when I logged on to Rogers.com, I saw my wireless and cable TV accounts, but not the Internet account. Cool, I have the option to add a new account, and I certainly have all necessary information. So let’s give it a try. I did so last week… and the service still isn’t shown in the interface. But just today, I received a postal (!) letter from Rogers, confirming that I registered this account.

There is also the option to view small business services on Rogers.com. There, I can again try to add my account. But it isn’t happening… instead, I get an error indicating that the service is unavailable.

OK, let’s try to call Rogers. The letter they sent had an 877-number, which I tried to call, only to get an automated message telling me that they now have online chat support and for all other inquiries, I should call their main number… click, dial tone. There is another number, for small business support… but when I call it, all the announcements are in French, with no option to choose English.

OK, let’s try live chat. The link, helpfully, is right there on the main page of Rogers.com. Click on it and… 404 error, page not found.

Oh really. Come on guys, I don’t necessarily expect perfection, but this is downright amateurish.

Harper’s bold plans

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Jan 272012

I never know what to think of our esteemed prime minister, Mr. Harper.

Every so often he comes across as eloquent, competent, knowledgeable and trustworthy. But just when I am ready to start trusting him…

There is of course his planned copyright bill, with its Draconian DRM provisions, which he seems determined to ram through Parliament despite opposition by many (who, incidentally, were dismissed as “radical extremists” by Harper’s Industry Minister).

Then there is Harper’s much disputed crime bill, introducing tougher sentences and such in an era of declining crime rates. Why? Is this a policy based on fact or ideology?

And now, we hear, Harper may want to fix our old age security pension system. Which presumes that the system is currently broken. But is it, really? An article today in The Globe and Mail suggests otherwise: in Canada, Old Age Security consumes only 2.41% of our GDP (compare this with places like Italy, where the figure is closer to 14%) and even in 20 years, this figure is expected to reach only 3.14%.

Mr. Harper has several more years at the helm, even if he is not re-elected. I sure hope that he will be more inclined in the future to push aside ideology and base his governing instead on facts and reality.

Newt on the Moon

Politics, Space No Responses »

Jan 272012

Normally, I would get tremendously excited to hear about a serious proposal to establish a permanent lunar colony. (Where do I sign up?)

Unfortunately, when Newt Gingrich floated this idea while campaigning in Florida, I did not feel excited at all. That is because I have very little doubt that this was simply an exercise in transparent political opportunism. Mr. Gingrich is hoping to gain some votes in the Space Coast, but I suspect that even residents there, whose livelihood for a long time has depended on a healthy space program, will see through his blatant pandering.

NASA’s week of mourning

Space No Responses »

Jan 262012

NASA’s week of mourning begins tomorrow. The three deadly accidents in NASA’s history all happened in late January/early February. Apollo 1 caught fire 45 years ago on January 27, 1967, killing Grissom, White and Chaffee. Challenger exploded 26 years ago, on January 28, 1986, killing all seven on board. And Columbia broke up during reentry on February 1, 2003, just nine years ago, killing another seven people. Why these accidents all happened during the same calendar week remains a mystery.

Discontinuous time

Astronomy, Physics, Society, Space No Responses »

Jan 242012

When I write about things like precision orbit determination, I often have to discuss the difference between ephemeris time (ET) and coordinated universal time (UTC). ET is a “clean” time scale: it is essentially the time coordinate of an inertial coordinate frame that is attached to the barycenter of the solar system. On the other hand, UTC is “messy”: it is the time kept by noninertial clocks sitting here on the surface of the Earth. But the fact that terrestrial clocks sit inside the Earth’s gravity well and are subject to acceleration is only part of the picture. There are also those blasted leap seconds. It is because of leap seconds that terrestrial atomic time (TAI) and UTC differ.

Leap seconds arise because we insist on using an inherently wobbly planet as our time standard. The Earth wobbles, sometimes unpredictably (for instance, after a major earthquake) and we mess with our clocks. Quite pointlessly, as a matter of fact. And now, we missed another chance to get rid of this abomination: the International Telecommunication Union failed to achieve consensus, and any decision is postponed until 2015.

For the curious, an approximate formula to convert between TAI and ET is given by ET – TAI = 32.184 + 1.657×10^–3 sin E, where E = M + 0.01671 sin M, M = 6.239996 + 1.99096871×10^–7 t and t is the time in seconds since J2000 (that is, noon, January 1, 2000, TAI). To convert TAI to UTC, additional leap seconds must be added: 10 seconds for all dates prior to 1972, and then additional leap seconds depending on the date. Most inelegant.

Speaking of leap this and that, I think it’s also high time to get rid of daylight savings time. Its benefits are dubious at best, and I find the practice unnecessarily disruptive.

Rad Decision

Environment, Physics, Technology No Responses »

Jan 222012

A couple of weeks ago, somewhere I saw a blog comment that mentioned a book, Rad Decision, written by nuclear engineer James Aach.

Back in the late 1970s, when I got my hands on The Prometheus Crisis by Scortia and Robinson, I just couldn’t put the damn thing down; I read through the night and I finished the book by the morning. So naturally, I couldn’t resist the temptation to buy the last in-stock copy of Aach’s book on Amazon.ca.

And I am glad I did. My concerns that it would be a trashy, amateurishly written novel quickly dissipated. Indeed, in a sense it is a lot better than The Prometheus Crisis: the crisis in Aach’s book is far less dramatic, but the story is believable, the characters perhaps more credible.

My only concern: while this book teaches a lot about nuclear power (and why we should not fear it), its likely audience already knows. Those who would benefit the most from reading it, well, won’t.

The route of Costa Concordia

Transportation No Responses »

Jan 182012

Courtesy of Lloyd’s List (a maritime publication that I don’t think I ever heard of previously) we now know the route of the ill-fated cruise ship Costa Concordia, and also that at least on one previous occasion, it followed a nearly identical route. One speculation is that the captain may have been using a low-resolution British naval chart (and thus when he asserted that the rock his ship ran into was not on the chart, he may have been telling the truth). This chart should never have been used for coastal navigation; indeed, a ship the size of the Costa Concordia (as large as a supercarrier) had no business being that near a rocky shore in the first place.

Blackouts and blackouts

Computer Security, Intellectual Property, Internet, Politics No Responses »

Jan 182012

Here is Google’s way of protesting proposed copyright legislation: black out the company logo and direct users who click on it to a protest page.

And then here is Wikipedia’s form of protest: black out the entire site. Never mind that the people you are most likely to hurt are your friends, and the people who are the least affected are your opponents. Why not be vindictive about it, if you can?

Indeed, while you are at it, why not black out Wikipedia even for non-US users, just for good measure, despite the fact that there is very little they can do that would affect the decisions of the US Congress.

Fortunately, the blackout is easily circumvented.

Nonetheless, doing what Google did would have been just as effective, and far less harmful both to Wikipedia’s reputation and to users who rely on its services every day. Unfortunately, radical activism prevailed over common sense: the difference between public protest and sabotage was forgotten. This is what dooms revolutions: they may be started by idealists and poets but ultimately, it is characters like Boris Pasternak’s Strelnikov in Doctor Zhivago, who set the tone.

Older Entries Newer Entries