Wikipedia Vandalism

Let's think for a moment about Diane Arbus. One of the premier photographers of the middle of the twentieth century, her photographs of "others:" insane, marginalized, different opened up an entirely new way of looking at photography and how we view photography as art.

Talented, yes. But let's face it, when you're getting pictures of your new-born baby, she's second from the bottom of the list. (The very bottom of the list remains reserved for Joel-Peter Witkin, examples here, here, and here) Unless of course, you're Gloria Vanderbilt, looking for a picture of your new-born son.



And so, Diane Arbus. Baby Photographer. Of course, the son ends up being a little famous himself. I really, really, really want to edit his wikipedia entry to have that photograph of him as the main picture. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the copyrights on the Arbus piece keep me from doing it. But maybe someone isn't quite as ethical as me.

Random Thoughts: Visas and RaVis

1. Visas

I'm applying for a visa to the Russian Federation. One of the questions they ask on the visa application is to list all of the countries you've visited in the past 10 years and the years you visited them. This is a non-trivial question for me.

2. RaVis

This is a textbook example of everything that's wrong with open source software. And probably a perfect example of Conway's Law. It's mainly developed by the UN (yes, that UN). I have an import line like this:

import org.un.cava.birdeye.ravis.graphLayout.visual.edgeRenderers.BaseEdgeRenderer

Yeah. Right.

3. RaVis, Part II

Because this took me literally all morning to figure out. Here's how you add nodes to an existing RaVis graph:

// I'm using XML-formatted objects, as per the example code.
var o : XML = new XML("");

// What none of the postings tell you is that you need to
// create the new node on the vgraph (view), not the model
// graph. The vgraph will automatically create the model
// nodes for you.

var n1 : IVisualNode = vgraph.createNode(null, o);

// I'm using an existing node as the second part of the link
var n2 : IVisualNode = graph.nodeByStringId("1").vnode;

// Then, again in the view, link the two nodes together.
// The vgraph will create the edge in the model for you
var ive : IVisualEdge = vgraph.linkNodes(n1, n2);

// If you have MXML edgeLabelRenderers, you'll need to add
// data to the model and view Edge object. (Oddly, the model
// linkNodes takes an object parameter. But the view does not.)
o = new XML("")
ive.data = ive.edge.data = o;

// With this code, you don't have to do something like
// vgraph.graph = graph or a vgraph.draw. It just happens

Hopefully this will help someone else...

Frequent Flying

One thing I've noticed is that when I've been at one of the high levels of frequent flyer is milage inflation. Basically, if you sneeze on a flight, management will send you 1,000 extra miles.

For instance, I took a recent trip to the Raleigh-Durham area. My routing had me flying 5145 "real" miles (including the 500 mile minimum). But, I ended up getting 22,631 miles for the trip. Or roughly four time more miles than I flew. The bulk of this was a 10,000 mile "loyalty" reward, but there was still 6,486 miles in various "Class" and "Elite" bonuses.

All this is a further reminder that I've never, ever, EVER been able to use frequent flyer miles on myself.

Society For Undergrounding

This falls into the "Morally Acceptable Business Plan" bucket.

The Society for Undergrounding is a non-profit organization with the purpose of promoting tourism and photography around the world. We give grants to areas of natural beauty, historical importance, or unique views for the purpose of burying overhead wires that would otherwise make tourist snapshots significantly less pretty, or require a good deal of Photoshopping to remove.

We primarily work on the basis of voluntary donations from tourists and photographers, as well as donations from photography industry. We also can serve as an escrow-type agency for a region that might want to undertake an undergrounding operation, but want a neutral party to help negotiate with utilities and mediate between potential competitors.

Regional grants are, of course, done for that particular region. Otherwise, we accept proposals from anyone, and evaluate the opportunity based on the cost of the undergrounding, the expected number of pictures.

[ugh. I just checked, and "undergroundingsociety.org" is available. This means that I probably a) have to buy it, and b) put up a plausible website there.]

The Results.

248. (301 times)

I mean: Troy? Ferndale? Royal Oak? Not really Change I Can Believe In.

On to come up with another way to find a new area code.

My Google Voice Invite

I got my Google Voice invite about 2 weeks ago. Every night, I search, and hope that an area code that I want is now available (In order, 212 (New York City); 907 (Alaska, preferably Wasilla); and 867 (Yukon Territory)). So far, I've had no luck in getting a number in any of those three fine locations.

But, last night I had an idea for how to pick a new area code. Texts From Last Night provides the answer. Simply scrape all of the area codes from the texts, and find out which one is most common. And I have my new area code.

Somehow, I think I have to refine my curl and regex skills so that I can do this drunk and stoned to make it "proper."

One less daily habit

Every day for the past seven years -- almost to the day -- I've taken two pills. Yesterday was the first day I didn't do it. And last night, I took only one pill*. As a habit, it slowly evolved: originally, it was at 11:00am; then when I moved to Seattle, it moved to 8:00am. It varied where I took it, some months I would always do it at home before I left for work, other times, it would be an excuse to get my morning diet Coke. (I may have moved to Seattle, but parts of me are still in the South.) And yesterday and today, nothing. I had to keep reminding myself that this was the plan, and it was ok.

I only missed one dose over the seven years. Which means I was 99.98% compliant. I think it would take a few thousand more years before I could get to six sigma quality. Other random facts is that this is about 3.321kg (yes, kilograms) of drugs. And cost my various insurances around $112K. This of course prompts the question: what's cheaper, cocaine or my drugs? Luckily, we have the internet, which gives us an answer: at wholesale prices, cocaine, but at street prices, my drugs.

--

*: Actually, it was two pills. There's a weird two-week washout regime to get the last of the old drugs out of my system and get the new drugs up to effectiveness as fast as possible. But that doesn't make for a good story. Even worse, the wash-out over-emphasizes the "bad" drugs.