The Googlespace

Yesterday, while talking with my office mate, we coined a new term: Googlespace. (To be fair, we didn't invent it, but reinvented it.)

In this particular case, I was looking for the package required to run ruby from a command line, and was having a horrible time searching for it. I didn't know what it was called, and using the words "command" and "line" with any programming language will have a suite of hits that lock onto a specific target about as well as a shotgun blast. Knowing that my office mate was using this tool already, I asked him to tell me what it was called, telling him that I was lost in Googlespace. This term seemed to please him, as it did me.

Spaces have a rather rigorous mathematical definition, such as vector spaces, or returning to an old post, eigenspaces. So surely there must be some sort of encapsulating space for the seemingly infinite Googlespace.

I was a little surprised, when I Googled Googlespace to find hits that had nothing to do with my version whatsoever. As you scroll down the page, there's something about a giant earwig. Near the bottom of the first page, there were a couple of hits that were closer to our idea of Googlespace. The definition by the urban dictionary was somewhat poorly defined, as it has more do with the space you take up in Google rather than the vastness of Googlespace (i.e. it's a definition of the subset within Googlespace that describes you).

But still, I like the concept of Googlespace. Maybe one day, when I have absolutely nothing better to do I will pursue this. However, I truly hope that day never comes.

Comfort In Those Words

Before getting to those comforting words, I must tell a story.

But first, I must tell you about SETI.

There's a program run out of UC Berkeley called the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. Basically, the project listens to the universe, hoping to hear something from another life-form, like a radio transmission. Now, as you can imagine, the universe is kind of a big place, so it takes a lot of time, energy, and computer power to listen to it all. To help with this gargantuan project, SETI elicits help from whomever is willing to help them. They developed a program, called SETI@home, that you can download and run on your home computer.

Here's how SETI@home works. When your computer is idle it will spend its time and energy searching for new life in the universe. Every couple of days, your computer will report into SETI and let it know where it didn't find anything. The report includes an ID for the computer as well as its IP address.

Okay, now the story:

Meet James Melin, a software developer in Minnesota. He and his wife have seven home computers. Since it is hard to keep seven home computers occupied at once, James installed SETI@home on them. Sadly, a couple of months ago, his wife's laptop was stolen. The police had no leads, but Mr. Melin was determined to do what he could to get it back. Knowing the SETI ID for the computer, he went to the database where computers send their reports back to SETI. He found his computer ID, found the IP address, and gave that info to the police. The police then got a subpoena and were able to get the actual mailing address from the internet service provider. With that information, they recovered the laptop.

So, what are the comforting words?

Well when being interviewed after the whole ordeal was over, here's what his wife had to say about the love of her life:

I always knew a geek would make a great husband....He's a genius - my hero!

Best Calculator Ever

This one goes out to all you Linux/UNIX/Mac users out there. (I know there's gotta be at least one of you....) Today, I found the coolest command-line calculator ever. It's a Perl script that goes and queries the Google Calculator. Here it is in action.

Fan Mail

Sent to me by the U.S. Department of Commerce:

ATTENTION

Greetings billfish anglers! Please complete the attached Billfish Angler Survey for 2006 and return as soon as possible. The results will be summarized for the next issue of the Billfish Newsletter which is currently being compiled.

[yada yada yada this is how you fill out a form butthead yada yada yada]

Thank you for your support.

Smooth seas and good fishing,

Jane Doe, Fisheries Biologist
John Doe, Computer Specialist

The most curious thing about this document? I've never gone billfishing.

The next-most curious thing? I got the Pacific-Indian Ocean Survey, and I live on the Atlantic.

Meme

Okay, I'm going to be honest, here. I don't really understand these Meme things. But Sween seems to like them and had the grace of "tagging" me with this one. I don't really know what these things are...as best I can tell it's an excuse to write stuff. Which I guess kind of fits into the whole blog thing. But still, I've been dreading the day when I'd be asked to do one of these things. I will, however, at least honour the request of whomever sent it my way by doing my best to respond.

I guess if I'm to do this right, I better do some research. It turns out that the term Meme (pronounced "meem") is "a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another". The term was invented by the acclaimed science writer Richard Dawkins who has written books including The Selfish Gene and Unweaving the Rainbow. It's an interesting idea, and I think I've heard it talked about in seminars about different pods of whales exhibiting different cultural behaviour.

The general idea is that memes are things like paintbrushes or catchy jingles or new ways of making tires...basically the social/technological equivalent to genes. I'm not sure if the meat of this document counts as cultural information about me that will be passed on, thereby making the world a different place.

Okay, I'm done dragging my feet. Let's get this over with.

6 things that you probably didn't know about me, but won't change your life now that you do

I was once given a wooden eggplant as a gift during a courtship. It worked.

I have only had one concussion in my life. In happened while playing pool. It did not involve a ball flying off the table, as people usually expect. Rather, it involved a ceiling fan and a pool cue. It basically happened like this: four of us were playing pool. We had invented a never-ending game that we dubbed "doubles pool". It requires four players, two teams, and two tables. If you're playing solids, your partner is playing stripes on the other table. Every time you sink a ball, it goes onto the other table. The goal is to clear all the balls of your table and sink the 8-ball but in order to do that, your opponent on the other table must be unable to sink one of fifteen balls on the other table, hence a never-ending game.

Anyway, my opponent and I were waiting for a round on the other table to finish, when I got smacked on the head and fell to the ground. I tried to get up and couldn't. It took me three tries before I successfully climbed back up to onto my feet. After trying to figure out what happened, I theorized that my friend's pool cue got into a ceiling fan, flew down and hit me in the head, and bounced back up. All that happened without my friend noticing. It happened without anybody noticing! My friend thought he almost lost a grip on his cue but there was no way it could have hit me on the head like that. Nobody at the table believed me until my friend checked the end of his cue and saw a 2 mm dent in its side that wasn't there before.

Nothing annoys me like a pen that doesn't have a cap. Not even a cap that doesn't have a pen. After years of training, I've learned not to let this govern my life, in fact I've learned to ignore it most of the time, but it's been difficult.

On a related note, I have four sharpened pencils on my desk so that if I'm scribbling something in the heat of the moment and my pencil gets too dull, I don't have to take the time to sharpen it right away.

I recently thanked somebody for giving me an excuse to read an applied mathematics textbook.

I love olives, except for canned olives. Canned olives are to me what garlic is to a vampire. I absolutely loath them. If I was given the choice of eating one cup of canned olives or one cup of dry flour, I'd pick the flour.

I have never met another oceanographer that gets nearly as seasick as me. I am fine on small boats, but on ships I suffer near-constant nausea. Everyone else seems to get over seasickness after a couple of days (if they get sick at all). I was once at sea for three weeks and didn't get over being sick. When I wasn't working, I was lying in my bed. When I was working, I was dry-heaving. Drinking liquid on an empty stomach would make me throw up, so to stay hydrated, I ate fruit between meals. Until we ran out of fruit. Then it was cucumbers. Then carrots. Then lettuce. Then olives. Canned Olives.

Despite this weakness, I still love being at sea.

Happy New Year!

One way to spell relief

As some of you may know, the house where Allie and I live was put up for sale some time ago. We were given this information by our landlady about 1 day before the sign went up and about 1 month after resigning the lease. She had kicked out the tenants below when their lease expired but kept us on without telling us to make the property more sell-able. The thing that had us most worried was that the lease we signed is set to expire the day before our wedding. Suddenly we thought that maybe we were going to end up married but without a home.

Well, last week the house sold. And yesterday we met our new landlord and were invited to his housewarming. We totally lucked out. He doesn't want us to leave, he doesn't want to raise the rent, and he wants to do some much-needed improvements to the house.

In addition to being a nice guy that sounds like he'll be conscientious of the folks living upstairs, his brother is married to somebody I played ultimate with in Vancouver! His brother and sister-in-law weren't at the housewarming, because they're in Kauai for the winter (poor suckers). But his mother is flying to Kauai today and is all excited that we know her other son. So we basically went from being complete strangers to practically friends of the family in, oh, I'd say about 5 minutes.

Phew.

In Memory

Jeremiah was a fellow oceanographer, a fellow ultimate player, and a friend. Shortly after I left Hawaii, he married a former resident of my home there. The soon-to-be newlyweds gave me one of the most beautiful leis I'd ever seen on my last night on the islands before moving back to Canada.

A few years ago, Jeremiah left oceanography to become a science teacher at a local high school. He thrived in that role.

Earlier this week, however, he lost his life suddenly while on a field trip. From the sounds of things, he just jumped into the water on a free-dive, and that was it. He didn't resurface. By the time rescuers could get to him, it was too late.

That is the tragic news that greeted me this morning when I checked my email.

I am a little stunned today. And a little saddened. When I first got the news of his death, I didn't know what had happened but I had a feeling the ocean was involved. He was a child of the islands, and had a connection with the ocean. If there is any solace in the story of his death, it is that he was sharing his passion for the ocean environment with his students at the time.

I was not only a friend of his, but also of his wife and his father, both of whom also played ultimate. On more than one occasion, we hung out on the ultimate field when the night's games were over and the lights had gone out, sharing beers and sharing stories.

Today, my thoughts are with his wife and his young daughter. He was a positive influence in so many lives, and will be dearly missed by many.

calls for sanctions?

On the anniversary of Rafik Hariri's assasination, and just after the bus bombings in Lebanon, the March 14 Coalition wants to impose sanctions on Syria?? This is nuts.

Ice Ice Baby

Another cool shot from NASA's Earth Observatory:


The image has 6MB worth of detail so you can really zoom in! This is a shot of the Sea of Okhotsk (which is between Siberia and Kamchatka for all the Risk players in the room). Cold arctic outbreaks, like those that put the Canadian prairies in deep freeze from time to time, cause intense cooling sessions over this sea. When the ice - which must be almost 100% pure fresh water for it to keep its crystalline form - removes fresh water from the sea, the enhanced saltiness of the water left behind is actually enough to cause that water to sink. This heavy water will sink to the bottom of the sea, and then cascade down into the deep ocean, like a slow motion water-fall. (Interestingly the same thing happens in the Mediterranean Sea because evaporation removes water but leaves salt behind.)

A neat feature of the image is that you don't really see clouds until the wind (which is blowing offshore) gets past the ice and starts blowing over the water.

Let that flame burn

Since we cannot let sween be without his lovey wife, and as it only seems right that he can have his cake (meaning his wife) and eat it (meaning his cake) too, I bring him (and you)

FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE CAKE

This recipe was given to me by my sister and copied out almost verbatim here. So, without further ado...

have all ingredients at room temperature before starting

preheat oven to 325F

grease an 8" round cake pan (NOT a springform it will leak) and line with a wax or parchment paper circle on the bottom. (pan should be deep-ish 1 1/2 to 2" deep)

In a large heatproof bowl, combine:

1 lb. semi or bittersweet chocolate (the cake will only be as good as the chocolate so don't use bakers chocolate or chips - I used one of those big gold bars of president's choice bittersweet - it's 1 lb, yummy, and is only about 5 bucks)

10 tbsp (1 1/4 sticks) butter, cut up

Set the bowl in a large skillet of barely simmering water and stir often until the chocolate and butter are warm, melted and smooth. (I hate doing it this way (although it's the proper way) and I think the boiling water risks getting a drop of water in the chocolate which, FYI, is what makes it 'seize up' when it gets all dry and thick and grainy, if you have ever experienced that - it's a chemistry thing you can read up if you want. The idea is it has to melt very slowly and not get above a certain temperature, so if you just melt the chocolate and butter in a heavy saucepan with the heat on very low and stirring often, you will be fine)

Remove melted chocolate from heat and whisk in:

5 large egg yolks

Set aside. In another large bowl, beat on medium speed (or whisk if you're feeling up to it) until soft peaks form:

5 large egg whites

1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

Gradually add, while beating:

1 tbsp sugar

Beat until the peaks are stiff but not dry. Use a rubber spatula to fold 1/4 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, then fold in the remaining whites. Keep folding gently until there are no more streaks of egg whites. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Set pan in a large shallow baking dish or roasting pan (you can get a disposable one if you ain't got) set the dish in the oven, and pour enough boiling water into it to reach halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake for exactly 30 minutes; the top of the cake will have a thin crust and the interior will still be gooey. Set the cake pan on a rack to cool completely, then refrigerate still in the pan until chilled or overnight (remember it tastes better the next day). To unmold, dip the cake pan in a pan of boiling water or hold over a stove element just till the cake can be inverted onto a plate (you may want to run thin knife around the cake to help detach it from the pan). Peel of the paper. The recipe says flip it over again, but I think the bottom makes a nicer top cause it's smooth. Make a doiley, etc. and sprinkle icing sugar through a sieve just before serving (if any 'sweat' has formed on the cake as it warms up, just press a paper towel to absorb it before sprinkling the sugar).

Serve with coulis and whipped cream.

COULIS:

Put in a blender or food processor:

1 pint strawberries or raspberries (or 12 oz frozen dry-packed berries, thawed)

3 tbsp sugar

1 - 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Puree until smooth then strain through a fine meshed sieve with a spoon. Taste and add in more sugar or lemon if needed. Can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

This title is perfect apart from its imperfections

My supervisor is someone who labours over coming up with good titles for things. Papers, theses, email subjects, you name it. He always wants to get the point across as accurately as possible in as few words as possible. And he's taught me to follow that model to some extent, though admitedly I don't labour over titles of posts here all that much. Anyway, coming up with good titles can be quite the art and at times it can become an obsession. It is in this context that this headline is either terrible or amazing:

SAR Interview

About a week ago, I mentioned a crazy Search and Rescue story. At the time, an interview from CBC radio was unavailable. Well, now it is.

And also, as more of an update, a letter from the rescued man.

Flubber-gusted, Arrrrrrr

So, I don't have a lot of sea-going experience, but I've got enough to see this as going too far.


Some activist group was chasing down a Japanese whaling vessel in the Southern Ocean (i.e. between Antarctica and Africa/South America), which -- despite the calm seas in this picture -- is notorious for having some of the roughest seas in the world. From the sounds of things, these activists on board their ship The Robert Hunter got in the way of a whaling ship and got rammed by it, as was later reported from another one of their ships The Farley Mowat.

Now, based purely on the names of their ships, it's hard to take this activist group (the Sea Shepherds) seriously. Their actions make it even harder. As the photo above suggests, these people think of themselves somewhat as pirates, arrrrr. They tried to jam the whaling ship's propeller with ropes. They were harassing the whaling ship so much that it sent out a distress call. And they were reckless enough with their own lives and those of the sailors on board the whaling ship, that they forced two collisions, one of which left a gash in their hull! Apparently, they also temporarily lost a couple of their members who were in a small raft. Luckily for those in the raft, they were found.

Now, while Japanese "scientific whaling" operations may be suspicious, there is a limit as to what should be done to stop them. The adventure of almost getting killed while acting like a stupid-ass pirate (arrrrr) in one of the most treacherous oceans might get your adrenaline going, but I must say these people are idiots. Now don't get me wrong, I wouldn't exactly call myself an advocate of whaling or a believer of the science Japan uses to suggest commercial whaling should be brought back into full practice. In fact, I think they need to be stopped. Whether you agree with the law or not, these whalers were acting within international law, so don't think you're being some hero by hating the player.

You want to go change the world? Great! Be my guest. Go lobby, generate attention through civil disobedience, do your thing. But try not to get yourself killed in the process. And maybe while you're at it, try not to threaten the safety of other people's lives, either. What would have happened if somebody was actually killed here?

In parting, I'll just close with a shot of the "R/V" Farley Mowat (that stands for "Research Vessel"...riiiiight) with a Pirate Flag! Arrrr!



Gotta love the Canadian flag and the pirate flag! Um, excuse me, Arrrrr, eh? Oh, you don't like pirates, sorry.

That's random

Why is it that when I find this site funny it happens to be mirroring the most unusual events in my life, like the challenge involved in getting a computer to give you a truly random number. Which is why today's xkcd comic is so fitting:


What makes this even weirder is that this is C code. I almost never program in C. But I happen to be for my random number application.

Really, this shouldn't be that funny. Today, however, it is.

you are here...

In response to themikestand's request about our whereabouts in this post...

That yellow dot on the Atlantic coast is approximately Halifax (my version of here). North is to the right in the picture. West is to the top of the picture.

The yellow dot near the horizon is where I do my field work.

The red dot is the Bay of Fundy.

The green dot is Cape Breton. (Those white parallel clouds are internal waves that formed as wind blows over the highlands.)

Are you happy? Only if you are...

This is Benj:
Behind him at the Car Museum in L.A. is his favourite car, Herbie.

Benj and I have had a special friendship for as long as I've known. He is five years my elder, but when we met (I think I was about 4) we hit it off and became instant best friends.

Benj was handed mental and physical disabilities at birth, which is the first thing anyone will notice when they see him. However, he also has an amazing charisma and infectious love for life. This charisma made him a local celebrity on our street where we grew up as next-door neighbours. Everyone knew him, and everyone took care of him. He could walk out his front door in downtown Toronto at 8 p.m., and his family knew he would be fine. When I first met him we were of comprable "mental age". We would have fun riding our Big Wheels together or stomping on ants on the sidewalk.

As we grew up, however, this changed. At some point I became aware of what was happening...I was growing up faster than him. This was hard to take, and for a few years our friendshp suffered. But with time, I learned to accept this change in our friendship. It went from having a best friend to having a younger cousin or a younger brother. One of his most common questions to me was "Are you happy?" to which my truthful reply was "Only if you are". He became someone I would always want to take care of and always want to have fun with. Suddenly I realized that our relationship haddened actually changed...everything was always about having fun.

His house became a haven for me where I could escape the stresses of everyday adolescence, be it due to school or family or girls or anything else. No matter what was happening, we just continued to fly kites, catch frogs at the pond, watch Herbie movies, or play Hungry Hippos. Throughout my adolescence, we stayed great friends. I wrote essays about our friendship during highschool, and two television documentaries talked about our friendship. In the first one I was 5 and didn't have much to say, but in the second I was 15 and got interviewed extensively. That one ends with me saying something to the effect of:

Sometimes I wonder what will happen. I won't live here forever. What if I move or I go to university and move to another city? [pause] I know we'll stay friends forever.

Two years after the filming, I moved halfway across town. Then I left Toronto to study the in Montreal and Vancouver. Somewhere during that time Benj and his mom moved to L.A. where is two sisters were already living. As I predicted at the awkward age of 15, we've kept in touch. In the two visits I've made to California since he moved there, I've spent a couple of days visiting him. I have asked him to be in my wedding party, and he has accepted and is excited about it.

This week I discovered a something new about Benj. There has been a book published about him. There is something very special about this book. It is written by his mother. Benj's mother is a clinical psychologist that specializes in children with disabilities. So in a sense, he is very lucky to be have been born to her. She knows how to help Benjamin live a full life.

Benj's mother has encouraged his interests and helped his development always. Whether it was getting a dog or a turtle, or learning to play the harp (the Harp!!), or joining the local bowling league, or playing hockey, or finding temp work, she has made it happen. Thanks in no small part to her, Benj is a hard worker, an accomplished athlete, and a musician. He lives a very full life, and is one of the most sincerely happy people you could ever hope to meet.

As I told his mother in a recent letter to her, I am very excited about this book. It is both a personal and a professional description of his development, and will give me a deeper insight into one of the most important people in my life. And in addition, just thinking about reading this book is reminding me of everything our friendship has meant over the years.

Apple webpage evolution

A Flickr member who goes by the name of Kernel Panic and is clear a Mac-phile has made an effort to document the evolution of the apple.com homepage over the years. I don't know if this is a complete list, but it's impressive all the same.

Some are neat, some are less neat. But this is the oddest one of the collection (when the Mac page was hacked in 1997)...


Then there's the arrogant ones...


And the whole "think different" campaign...


And of course, their commeration of cultural legends...


And this one taught me that I'm older than Apple, though only just slightly.

Rescue on Mount Seymour, BC

Last week on CBC Radio's Sounds Like Canada, I heard an interview with Tim Jones (See February 1st - I have asked CBC if they will be making that interview available but have not yet heard back. I will post a link to the interview if it becomes available).

The interview gives a first person recount of a somewhat remarkable rescue by North Shore Rescue in Vancouver, which actually got them a lot of press. I was so taken by the story, I wanted to find other recounts of it. I found one on the team blog. (A SAR team with a blog? And one of the busiest teams in the country, too?? Maybe we should do that...)

I'm not going to cut and paste from the story because the whole thing is just amazing. As a teaser, it involves 1000' falls, helicopter rescues, collapsing shelters in poor weather, and searchers surviving avalanches. Our team has an expression, "the harder you train, the luckier you get". Though the narrator of this story is a little modest, it is clear that this team didn't just get lucky on this one.

I thought of joining North Shore Rescue many years ago when I lived in Vancouver, but after reading their site I realized I wasn't their ideal candidate since I had no mountaineering experience. This story confirms that thought.

52 weeks ago today

Fifty-two weeks ago (plus or minus a couple of hours), I was sitting on a big flat rock on the side of Long Lake, just outside Halifax. I wasn't alone. With me was my lady friend, Allie.

The weeks leading up to that point by the lake had been rather hectic. I had been preparing for a departmental seminar and a conference, and Allie was studying hard for an exam. But we managed to sneak off on a nice warm February afternoon to go for a hike. It was a beautiful walk through the woods with a light mist blowing through the trees. Normally I would not remember these sorts of details a week after the fact, let alone a year, but this hike was going to be a special one. Unbeknown to Allie, I had a ring zipped away in my pocket, and today I was going to stop worrying about her finding it in my sock drawer.

As we walked along the trail through the woods, I was looking for nice spots with scenic views. Noticing one particular spot, I decided we'd have to visit it on the way back. So after walking by a waterfall, and balancing across some fallen trees, all the while hearing the drips of melting snow on a warm day, we stopped at this sun-warmed rock looking over the lake to have a little chat.

Allie, being Allie, was in the mood to talk, which was good. Today she had chosen the topic, How lonely and miserable my life would be if I had never met her. I'm not kidding. What could be better?

Apparently in all of Halifax, she had determined it would have been absolutely impossible for me to ever find anyone as good for me as her.

"Um, yeah, about that," I sheepishly interjected upon deaf ears.

In fact, it sure was a good thing I went to Montreal when I did, and a good thing that I happened to meet her when I did, otherwise who knows what would have become of her and then I would never have met her and I'd be doomed to a love life of failure worthy of its own ongoing saga on some cartoon TV-series^*.

At this point I had the ring in my hand - clutched very tightly because I was not dropping this thing into the lake - but the conversation was starting to drift a little past where the time seemed right.

So I waited for a good time, and I tried to steer the conversation back...

... and I waited ...

... and I waited some more ....

and then Allie said, "Well, we better get back to the car before it gets dark." And with that she shuffled off the rock, turned her back to the lake, and started walking back up to the trail.

Quickly, and with mountain goat grace I might add, I managed to scramble to a nearby gravel shoreline. It was there that I mustered all of my intellectual ability to compose the most incredibly suave statement that would both woo her and delay her return to the trail. "Hold on a second."

And I walked up to her.

And I looked at her.

And she looked at me.

And I paused.

And I asked myself why I didn't rehearse this out-loud at least once.

And I took a deep breath.

And before I could say anything her eyes got really big -- I mean saucer big.

"What?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing," she said bashfully.

"No, what is it?"

"Um, I thought you were - well this is going to sound silly - I thought you were going to get on one knee."

And then, with my whole poorly-scripted plan quashed, I just went with the flow and got on one knee. And I said some garble and probably stuttered. And I offered her the ring. And she accepted it.

^{* To be fair to Allie, I may have embellished this part only slightly.}