Author: H Walker Jones, Esq

A professional programmer with a sordid past involving sysadmin, tech support, and cooking.

Jury Duty

I was called for jury duty today. I’ve never served on a jury before and, stroke of luck, I still haven’t – the required number of jury seats were filled before my number was called. I’m still exempt from serving for another three years, though!

It’s a shame, really – after I saw the case I was actually looking forward to being on the jury (just a little).  It would have been a same day trial.  I’ve never seen a trial before, and I briefly considered staying and watching as a member of the community, but I was hungry and it was almost lunch time and I wanted to eat with Megh if I could (which I did).

I was surprised by the friendliness of the court staff.  One would think that stepping newbies through the system two or three days per week would make them tired of the same stupid routine, but everyone we (the prospective jurors) interacted with was friendly and courteous.  They behaved professionally  — even with the one guy who was apparently stoned for jury duty.  He was interviewed but ultimately not placed in the jury.

The Best Wedding Invitation in Ages

My second cousin, once removed (I think) is getting married.  I couldn’t be happier for the couple, but when I saw the invitation my jaw just about dropped.  I wish we could go – if the invitation is any guide, it’s going to be an excellent party.  With bacon!

I mean, just look at the excellent style!
I mean, just look at the excellent style!

Transferring Large Files

Linux has an impressive tool set, if you know how to use it.  The  philosophy of using simple tools that do one job (but do it well) with the ability to chain commands together using pipes creates a powerful system.

Everyone has to transfer large files across the network on occasion.  scp is an easy choice most of the time, but if you’re working with small or old machines the CPU will be a bottleneck due to encryption.

There are several alternatives to scp, if you don’t need encryption.  These aren’t safe on the open internet but should be acceptable on private networks.  TFTP and rsync come to mind, but they have their limitations.

  • tftp is generally limited to 4 gig files
  • rsync either requires setting up an rsync service, or piping through ssh

My new personal favorite is netcat-as-a-server.  It’s a little more complicated to set up than scp or ftp but wins for overall simplicity and speed of transfer.

netcat doesn’t provide much output, so we’ll put it together with pv (pipeviewer) to tattle on bytes read and written.

First, on the sending machine (the machine with the file), we’ll set up netcat to listen on port 4200, and pv will give us progress updates:
pv -pet really.big.file | nc -q 1 -l -p 4200

  • pv -p prints a progress bar, -e displays ETA, -t enables the elapsed time
  • nc -q 1 quits 1 second after EOF, -l 4200 listens on port 4200

Without the -q switch, the sender will have to be killed with control-c or similar.

On the receiver (the machine that wants the file) netcat will read all bytes until the sender disconnects:
nc file.server.net 4200 | pv -b > really.big.file

  • nc will stream all bytes from file.server.net, port 4200
  • -b turns on the byte counter

Once the file is done transferring, both sides will shut down.

STEM Night 2014

Our school system sponsored a ‘Family STEM Night’.  Being nerds, of course we went.  Two hours of playing with stuff!

20140501 owl pellet
Dissecting an owl pellet

The coolest table was all about dissecting owl pellets.  I helped Beta uncover a vole (we think it was a vole – it could have been a small rat, the jaws are pretty similar).

There were also tables with:

  • magnets and electricity, with little motors and big batteries you could play with
  • growing plants (with a seed and a cup of dirt)
  • making goo (not sure about the science aspect, and it was sponsored by Pfizer so it’s even more dubious, but it was fun)
  • making a levitating “train” with magnets and a fixed track
  • making structures using toothpicks and marshmallows
  • blowing up peeps and boiling cold water with a vacuum and a bell jar (my second favorite, I should have taken a pic)
  • robots, with a large mobile robot, a roomba, and a small r/c vehicle for the kids to try (with a video feed in the controller, woo!)
  • using strobe lights, with a stream of green-colored water dripping in time with the strobe (so the drips appeared to be stationary)
Strobe light on continuous liquid drips
Thanks to the strobe light, the picture documents what we saw – stationary drops of water

One dark spot: a table that was supposed to be about archaeology but it was muddled, including this dubious definition:

Archeological Dig

Next Generation Science Standard:

3-LS4-1. Use fossils to describe types of organisms and their environments that existed long ago and compare those to living organisms and their environments.  Recognize that most kinds of plants and animals that once lived on Earth are no longer found anywhere.

Archeological Dig Next Generation Science Standard: 3-LS4-1. Use fossils to describe types of organisms and their environments that existed long ago and compare those to living organisms and their environments. Recognize that most kinds of plants and animals that once lived on Earth are no longer found anywhere.
Bad science at the STEM Fair. Can you see what’s wrong with this definition?

Well, the kids had fun and didn’t notice the mistakes.  Alpha and Beta both left talking about going into biology – which makes me happy.  And I guess the fair achieved it’s aims.

Oh, and there was a hovercraft.  It was not full of eels.

Birthday Party, Part Deux (this time, with lasers)

Alpha’s choice of birthday party was laser tag at MVP.  (Last year we celebrated her birthday with mini-golf at the same place.)  So with a small group of her friends and a couple of adults, we tromped in and had a great time!

I rocked the scores.  Admittedly, there were more kids than adults (myself, Sam, and another adult not attached to our party) and a bunch of kids (again, not all attached to our party) but I really did wipe the other team out twice – two for two. Sam was a not-too-close second.)

I think we need to assemble some more adults and have another laser tag party there some time.  It’s like paintball without the bruises.

Afterwards: pizza and cake and video games, of course. Gifts were exchanged, some of which Alpha was really excited to see.

Alpha is currently off for a sleepover at Rho’s house.  (Like other greek letter-named people in this blog, that is not her real name – though I could imagine someone naming their child Rho so I feel like I should note that occasionally).  After all the trouble Alpha had in adjusting to the move, I never thought that we would be exchanging kids with another family so regularly as we have with Alpha and Rho.

Just an aside: I was chatting with Rho’s mother during the party, and it turns out that Alpha and Rho were rating boys at the last sleepover.  <sigh>

Beta’s Karate Promotion

Beta with belt, excited by promotion
Beta forgets that belts go around the waist, not head

Beta child has hit her first big karate milestone: graduating from a white belt to orange.

Not much story for this one, just some photos that I snuck in when I wasn’t too busy watching.

The newly-promoted students demonstrated their kata – the forms that they learn in class.  The higher-level students (quite a few adults, older than me) looked choreographed in their moves – exact and synchronized.

I stayed for the entire ceremony, simply thinking that it would be polite, and found the higher-degree demonstrations to be fascinating.  The nunchacku was especially cool – Beta thought so too.

Beta child after promotion
Beta lined up with the other recently-promoted kids from her class, and very obviously excited

Chicken Parmesan

Chicken Parmesan is the ultimate insult.  You beat a piece of chicken to a pulp, then dip it into the guts of it’s unborn young before roasting it.  Alpha as fuck.

deCordova Museum

The kids are on April break, I took the week off to be with them, and Meghan is at work.  It’s a great time to do something out of the ordinary, especially since it’s a bright sunny day.

I know – something educational!  Something cultural!  Art!

I brought my little heathens to the deCordova Museum‘s sculpture park.  (The main museum is closed while they prepare for the summer exhibits.)  It’s a huge outdoor exhibit, so they can run around and get some fresh air while taking in some mind-broadening experiences.

When I take the girls to art museums I coax them to pose like the artistic subjects (when possible – modern art gets a little hard).  It makes them focus on the art at hand as well as learn to use their bodies, but best of all they think it’s fun.

Kids posing with sculpture
Alpha and Beta posing with some modern art

This was our first time there, but I think we’re going to get a membership now.  I had to drag the kids away and bribe them with lunch at a restaurant.

Percy Jackson And The Drunken Bacchanal

I have a new drinking game for listening to Percy Jackson.  We’ve been listening to the book series (as read by Jessie Bernstein) when we take car trips together.
I now cringe every time I hear some combination of ‘my’, ‘dear’, and ‘boy’, or hear a totally inappropriate (non-serious) verbal response to an emotional situation.  Sometimes the enunciation of some words is downright pedantic and rather awkward.
If I weren’t driving I would take shots to make it more tolerable (and certainly get plastered in the process).