Calliope Sounds

Dip 'n Spin

I have been playing with "dip" again to quickly apply shading to my minis. The Army Painter Dark Tone is, essentially, a black stain. The results are too black for my liking: everyone looks like they just emerged from a coal mine. Not wanting to spend another $30 on the Strong Tone I picked up a small can of Minwax Polyshade Antique Walnut. This I like much better. It might also be that for dark age Welsh it is just seems more appropriate. That is, the minis look grubby. There are many tutorials on how to apply these products so I won't go into that here. Instead, I just want to put another plug in for using soda bottle caps and necks.

When using stains you have to remove the excess. Most folks don't actually dip the mini in the stain but instead dab the stain on with a sacrificial brush. Then, as the stain pools, using the same brush to remove the excess. Well, I wanted to try dipping and so I needed a means of removing the excessive excess stain this leaves on the mini. Flicking was not in the cards. Instead, I hot glued a soda bottle neck to a stick, attached the stick to a drill, screwed the bottle cap attached mini on, and gave it a spin!

It does work. However, either my drill does not spin fast enough or I need a more random motion as too much stain remains. And so you need to go back to the mini with a brush and remove the remaining excess. All in all, the dabbing method is the most effective.

For related postings see wargames.

English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

I am clearly the last person to ask about English language usage, but I am very interested in its edge cases. I subscribe to the http://english.stackexchange.com/ weekly newsletter and find it fascinating. My guess is, you would too.

Want a simple, synchronized shared scrapbook

I have all these local, really high tech hardware, software, & networks on my desk and the only easy way for me to copy a URL from iPhone to Mac and vis versa is via a text message (I use Skype to SMS). All I want is a simple, synchronized shared scrapbook for text and images between all my devices. Can someone please make this happen?

Update: A friend suggested Pushbullet. It looks to be a useful service, but I really don't want another account just for this small need. From reading between the lines, Pushbullet looks to do nothing more than coordinate a Google Drive document (or folder of documents). Which I can also do with a URL bookmark. Which I did. This seems to work well.

SAGA Links

The "Wednesday Gamers" will be playing SAGA starting next week. (Even if our minis are only primed!). To help prepare the gamers I collected this list of SAGA links.

Rules: http://www.grippingbeast.com/shop.php?CatID=2396
Meeples & Miniatures's Review: http://meeples.wordpress.com/reviews/rules-reviews/dark-age-medieval/saga/
SAGA First Look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tPtJP2VnVY
The Tapestry (dedicated to SAGA): http://www.sagatapestry.com/
Battle Boards for Dummies: http://www.sagatapestry.com/2012/06/battle-boards-for-dummies.html
Board Game Geek's SAGA page: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/101865/saga
How to play SAGA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo1XBwZ4Zb4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I7h9z21gbA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlb3ARoReLI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX9bQVXllDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I7h9z21gbA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BoBAah7Wak
SAGA Dark Age Skirmish Game Tournament Report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I77pc4m4XpY

If you have any good links please do add them in the comments.

Podcasts I listen to on a regular basis

Long Now Foundation's Seminars
Really great set of 1-1:30 hour lectures on many topics but mostly about long term thinking and experiences.
http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast/

Science for the People
Topical science interviews
http://www.scienceforthepeople.ca/

The British History Podcast
Great presentation of UK history from the beginning
http://thebritishhistorypodcast.com/

The D6 Generation
Boardgames and more.
http://www.thed6generation.com/

Meeples & Miniatures
Military, fantasy, and science fiction miniature wargames
http://meeples.wordpress.com/

The Memory Palace
Forgotten people doing big and small things
http://thememorypalace.us/

Sawbones
History of medicine
http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/sawbones

You are not so smart
The qualities of thinking and our flaws
http://youarenotsosmart.com/

Futility Closet
Trivia and oddities from the past
http://www.futilitycloset.com/

"There are, too, elves in Mirkwood!"

When walking Milo yesterday he and I passed several boys (16 ish) playing tennis. They were your usual generic white suburban kids talking tough to one up each other. We continued our walk. On the way back we pass them again and overheard one retelling a recent conversation:

Him: There are, too, elves in Mirkwood!

Other: No there arn't. Only Rivendale has elves.

Him: Well, of course Rivendale has Elves you dumb ass. We are discussing Mirkwood!

Luckily, they did not see me and Milo grinning.

Bruce Sterling at Webstock '13

We live in the time of "dark euphoria." "The Web had users. The Stacks have livestock." Other deep insights. And, if you are at all concerned about where LOLcats are taking us then keep listening after the 25 min mark.

Webstock '13: Bruce Sterling - What a feeling! from Webstock on Vimeo.

Update: A old friend says that what is being said are less deep insights and more genre's tropes. His presentation of these ideas was new to me, however.

A system for mounting my miniatures

I finally have a comfortable system for mounting my miniatures while painting them. I have tried mounting with sticky gums, but this leave a residue and/or can be a bugger to get off. I have tried glueing with PVA, but adhesion is too weak and ended with models flying off into the grass as I spray primed them. I have tried using hot glue, but adhesion is too strong and ended with several broken legs while detaching the models.

In the end I settled on using 3M's 1/2" Double Sided Mounting Tape Squares and soda bottle caps. The squares are right sized, precut, many (90 per pack), cheap, and hold the model firmly.

Here are my current steps to mounting and priming.

Awesome worktable

This portable worktable and instructions on building it are awesome. I don't need it, but want to build it anyway.

More at Maker Station.

Installing Java 6 on OS X Mavericks, again.

I needed to have Java 1.6 run on OS X 1.9, Mavericks. I had written about this before in Installing Java 6 on OS X Mavericks, but I was not confident with the solution. Today I decided to install Apple's Java 1.6 and see what happened. Would I have have to rebuild my whole machine? No. Nothing bad happened and so far so good. So, to install Java 1.6 do the following:

Download and install Java 1.6 from http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1572 and install.

Set Java 1.6 as your default using

/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6

For more information on java_home see superuser.com.
I need to use NetBeans 7.3.1 (newer versions require Java 1.7) which is downloaded from https://netbeans.org/downloads/7.3.1.

To ensure that NetBeans runs using Java 1.6 edit the configuration file

/Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 7.3.1.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.conf

-- which is actually a bash script! -- and define the netbeans_jdkhome environment variable

netbeans_jdkhome=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6)

And that is it. You now have Java 6 and Java 7 on your Mac. If you want Java 1.6 to be the default for you always then add the following to your rc script

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6)

15,000 unorganized photos

I have some 15,000 photos that are unorganized. In part, this is because of the rapid changes in both camera and computers used. Thankfully, they are backed up. So, a second step is organizing them is to group them by year and month. I don't think I need day, but that might change. Most of the photos have encoded within them the date and time they were taken. To organize them I just need this data and a means to associate them. The following Perl script does this by using the Image::MetaData::JPEG module, dated directories, and symbolic links.

Usage:

find ~/Dropbox -type f \( -iname '*.jpeg' -o -iname '*.jpg' \) \
| perl organize.pl ./PICTURES 2>/dev/null >./PICTURES.sh

Once the PICTURES.sh script has been made it can be run using

bash -xe PICTURES.sh 2>&1 >PICTURES.log

The Perl script organize.pl is

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Image::MetaData::JPEG;

my $root = shift @ARGV;
die "root is not a directory" unless defined $root && -d $root;

my $count = 10000;

my %mkdirs = ();

while ( my $file = <> ) {
  chomp $file;

  my $dir = "unusable";

  my $image = new Image::MetaData::JPEG($file);
  if ( defined $image ) {
    my $metadata = $image->get_Exif_data('IMAGE_DATA', 'TEXTUAL');
    if ( exists  $metadata->{DateTimeOriginal} && $metadata->{DateTimeOriginal}->[0] =~ /^(\d\d\d\d):(\d\d)/ ) {
      $dir = "$1/$2";            
    }
    else {
      $dir = "undated";
    }
  }

  unless ( exists $mkdirs{$dir} ) {
    print "mkdir -p $root/$dir\n";
    $mkdirs{$dir} = 1;
  }

  my $efile = $file; $efile =~ s/([^a-zA-Z0-9_\.\/])/\\$1/g;
  print "ln -s $efile $root/$dir/$count.jpg\n";

  $count += 1;
}

And why is this the second step? Because removing duplicates is the first.

Update: I did use this to organize my photographs held in DropBox. I replaced the symbolic link command with a move command. DropBox just moved the files and not, as I was worried about, re-upload the whole collection. Thank you DropBox engineering.

Watching calligraphic theater and paint dry

Watching 1) calligraphic theater and 2) paint dry.

Street typography from Tom Williams on Vimeo.

Letter to the Editor: The current pilot project does not address the 1:1 issues

This week's South County Independent newspaper has an article on the school district's 1:1 initiative. Unfortunately, there is a gross misrepresentation of my thinking on the matter and one statement that is attributed to me might get me lynched by the teachers! Here is my response.

Letter to the Editor:

We should expect our high school students to have the means of engaging with their work, their peers, their teachers, and their administration at all times. It is significant that the school district is moving forward to supporting this. Where I am at odds with the school district is with the pilot's actual focus, the speed and approach of the process, and its entanglement with PARCC testing.

Let us first make clear what "one-to-one" (1:1) means. It is one device per student that is available all day and every day inside and outside of school. Preparing our students for college or career is to prepare them for continuous engagement and interaction. Working as needed, when needed, with current and relevant materials, with the appropriate people, and all without regard to location or time zone.

The current pilot project does not address the 1:1 issues. What the pilot does is to repeat the work done by hundreds of other school districts across the country and that is to provide laptops to teachers for student use for specific classroom instruction. In short, the laptops are lab equipment. $98,000 of lab equipment and one instructor (FTE).

The school district is heading quickly down the wrong road. The only public meeting on this was in November 2013 when BYOD ("bring your own device") plan was, rightly, abandoned and 1:1 became the new plan. Four months later the "devices", "professional development", and "finance" committees were created to plan the work. The teachers and students have yet to be involved in the planning and yet we expect everything needing to change to be ready by August 2014.

We don't need to rush. I suggest that there first needs to be a plan as to how the freshmen teachers (as a whole) will use 1:1. Let us use the 2014 summer and the 2014 fall to figure this out. Use a portion of the pilot's allocated money to contract for the help and buy some equipment and services to learn with. And please let us have the students engaged in this work too. Only then let us work out the specific devices, professional development, and finances needed in the 2014 winter and 2015 spring. Have everything in place for the 2015 fall.

Yours truly,
Andrew Gilmartin
...

James Burke and transitioning from a world designed to mitigate scarcity to one of controlling abundance

James Burke's TV series Connections made a significant impression on me when I was a teenager and has continued into my adulthood. My worldview of our past, present, and future situations is premised on it being brought about by a very long line of related and, and this is really important, seemingly unrelated changes. This is obvious to historians but not so to a 15 year old and, unfortunately, not so for far too many of my contemporaries -- especially here in the USA. This week I was happy to come across a recent interview with Burke at You are not so smart podcast. In the interview Burke discusses his current project of envisioning the transition of a world designed to mitigate scarcity to one of controlling abundance. Well worth a listen.

What if by the fall of 2015 the high school had a high bandwidth & low latency cell data service?

What if by the fall of 2015 South Kingstown, RI and the high school (in particular) had a high bandwidth & low latency cell data service? No matter where a student was in town he or she would have access to the school's and the world's resources? If this were so, would we want to invest in a campus wide wifi? Or would we instead provide 1:1 devices with a cellular modem and pay a monthly service fee to a carrier?

PARCC and the image of the assembly line worker.

When you visit the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers website and the first image you see is

When I see this image I think "assembly line worker." And I then wonder and worry about how much PARCC really understands "readiness for college and careers"?

Asked to continue to be involved with 1:1

I have been asked to continue to be involved with the South Kingstown School District's one-to-one initiative (1:1). I am not sure how to do that now. I kind of burned all my bridges on the way out. And I continue to believe we are also going about it in a rush and so the whole endeavor needs to be replanned.

I really think that there first needs to be a plan as to how the freshmen teachers will use 1:1. Let's take the 2014 summer and the 2014 fall to figure this out. Use a portion of the allocated money to contract for help and buy some equipment and services to learn with. And have the students engaged in this work too. Only then work out the specific devices and finances needed in the 2014 winter and 2015 spring. Have everything in place for the 2015 fall.

With regard to PARCC testing needs, buy as many cheap Chromebooks as needed and consider it a sunk cost. See New Device Costs per Year.

I see no need to rush 1:1 and no need to tie it to PARCC testing today.

What to do?

Prime with white and wash with black

I was watching 12 Different Ways to Prime Your Wargaming Miniatures for inspiration -- aka the continuation of my procrastination and my life generally getting in the way of my hobby -- and so tried a few of the painter's suggestions. The one I really liked was to prime with white and then wash with black.

I only washed where there was a transition and the larger areas that were intended to be dark. I also washed with acrylic and not oil paint. I think it worked well. And WAY better than Army Painter's expensive "dip".

If you find the knight's sword send me a note.

Testing for the presence of a value

Back to some geek content... How often have you seen code like the following?

if ( foo.getBar() != null ) { /* use the value */ }

The code is testing if the foo object has a bar value. This usage seems innocuous, but it is not. It both hinders readability and refactoring. Let's address readability first.
The test is asking that the user of the class infer the presence of a value. However, it does not test for a value, but, instead, for the absence of a value, the none value. For readability, don't make the user guess what is happening but, instead, make what is happening explicit. Now, on to refactoring.

The none value test actually exposes an internal implementation of the class to the user of the class. What if a refactoring requires that the internal implementation of the none value change? A common change, for example, is for a null to be replaced with a sentinel value [1]. Should this happen then all uses of the class will have to be changed because the none value test is ineffective. Moreover, the ineffective test will not break the running code, but instead send execution down the then conditional path. Let's hope that no life or treasure is affected.

When you have all the use code under your control then the change is manageable. You will end up with an excessively sized patch that will dwarf the purposeful change. When the use code is not under your control then a ramification is that the simple, internal change is now a global external change. So what is to be done?

To improved readability and facilitate refactoring simply include an explicit test for bar.

if ( foo.hasBar() ) { /* use the value * }

The purpose of the test is clear and use does not expose an internal value.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_value

The pilot does not address any significant issues raised by one-to-one

Well, I resigned from the South Kingstown school district's Technology Professional Development and Curriculum subcommittee after only two meetings. I am unsure if this was a good idea, but I am sure that I do not want to be associated with the subcommittee's outcome. The work ahead is little more than a backfilling of work that should have been completed before the one-to-one (device per high school student) pilot project was scheduled.

The pilot, as presented so far, and as I surmise from the already decided upon pilot factors -- the device choice, specialized staff, budgeting, and the need to finance PARCC testing -- does not prepare the SK school district for one-to-one in the 2015/2016 school year.

The pilot does not address any significant issues raised by one-to-one. The pilot will put laptops in the classroom on carts -- colloquially known as COWs, computers on wheels. Existing models and ramifications of doing this are readily available and well understood. There is 20 years of documented and reviewed research and practice. (I did this kind of work in the mid 1980s.) If you want something more contemporary then travel just up route 138 to the Green School and ask about their experiences.

Computers in the classroom does not differ from bunsen burners in the classroom. That is, they are both lab equipment that will be used to support subject specific lessons. One-to-one is about augmenting one's thinking and communication and has almost nothing to do with the tool itself. That is, while I might advocate for tablets and someone else for laptops, in the end either device will serve the same end. (I would like to address costs but that would take away from my focus of this email.) Has your intellectual life been vitally affected by a bunsen burner?

Here is a thought experiment. Some years ago you worked exclusively with a desktop computer. Today you work exclusively with a laptop. Some years ago content access was limited to in-house only. Today, not only is that not the case, but there is the expectation of equal access from anywhere. With these changes, how has your work life changed? Can you imagine working as you once did -- at a specific desktop and only when in the office?

For students learning is their work. They must have the same experience as you do today with your ever present device and the access to software tools and content it affords. That is one-to-one. That is what SK school district needs to pilot.