python

I started reading up on python today. I tweaked some code for a script to do automatic updates to MediaWiki articles . It takes an argument of the article name and reads in wikitext from a file, then POSTs it to the article. I'm using the SimpleUpdate extension to handle adding the POSTs to the database. Works quite nicely.

Now I'm going to write a PHP script to generate an HTML form, take the input and insert the fields into some simple wikitext which will call a MediaWiki template that I'll create with some nice layout. This will be the basis for creating forms that can be submitted to generate MediaWiki articles, for users who don't want or need to be exposed to full wikitext. I searched for something to do this for a while, and it may exist but I'll be darned if I can find it.

If you know of a more standard way, let me know, but otherwise this crude hack will serve me well. If I can make it a little more elegant I may even share it with the world. And thus MediaWikiForms shall be born! HAHAHAHAHAH!!!

Or not.

A Volunteer's View of Katrina Relief

This is why we need more libertarian socialism in this country. If everyone in this story had the same attitude as the author, it would have been a vastly better situation for the victims who sought relief in Dallas. If everyone involved in the relief efforts had the same attitude, we wouldn't have seen Geraldo pleading for the government to let people walk out of the disaster area to get help.

And George fucking Bush wouldn't be allowed to run a god damned fast food restaurant.

what's new

I haven't been adjusting my lifestyle much (big surprise). Need to exercise more, eat less, eat better, sleep more regularly.

Speaking of which...

Why didn't Sith beat Spidey?

So Revenge of the Sith came out last Thursday. It shattered the previous record for an opening day with over $50m. It set new records on its second, third and fourth days at the box office. It made over $108m in its four-day opening weekend.

So why the hell didn't it beat Spider-Man 2's opening weekend?

Turns out it was because ROTS opened on a Thursday but its "opening weekend" numbers only included the first Friday, Saturday and Sunday it was in theaters.

Ah well. Now we really need to sink the Titanic.

update: turns out the original Star Wars whups Titanic when adjusted for inflation and based on estimated number of tickets sold. But Gone with the Wind is the king on both of those charts. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn - Star Wars is still the best. movie. ever.

saving private robin

We saved a baby robin that was stuck in the wheel well of my wife's car, sitting on top of the tire. The parents were flying around nervously, but fortunately they didn't attack us when my wife picked up the baby and moved it to safety. I think my wife would move mountains to save any animal, especially a baby. She's great :-)

grillin

Grilled some dogs for dinner. Yum.

his dignity, desires Yoda not

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

greasemonkey

If this is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Change the freaking channel!

If you don't like Howard Stern, don't listen to him!

The problem, of course, is that people *do* want to listen to him, and that disturbs a small but vocal minority who don't want us to have a truly open marketplace of ideas. These are the mostly the same people who hate the Internet, and so I am generally in favor of anything they oppose, as a matter of principle :-)

Some things I did today

Read Kevin Smith's blog.

Ordered a "give me your lunch money" t-shirt from GeekCulture as a Mother's Day present for my wife. She rules :-)

Posted to the blog. Yawn :->

Dropping 100 pounds? Yow.

Dropping 100 pounds is what came up when I clicked "next blog" on my blog. Not sure if that's just a coincidence or if Blogger is just that way. But to clarify, this is not a weight loss blog. Actually I'm more interested in the physics of it than anything else. Figuring out how many calories per pound of body weight and such. I did some calculations on the distance I could exert a certain force over, starting from how much force is needed to overcome the gravitational pull of the earth against my mass, and how many calories (and thus kilocalories) are needed to do it. It's pretty cool: if I converted a pound of fat into pure energy instantly and exerted it downwards as pure kinetic energy, I could leap tall buildings in a single bound! Practically flying.

calorie counting

OK, so I weigh about 234 pounds. I'd like to lose some weight.

According to this calorie calculator I have a Body Mass Index of about 33.6 and I need 2993 kcal (kilocalories, which are inaccurately called calories in everyday dietary terms) every day just to live. I had to punch in some other data about myself to get those numbers but I'm not going to post it here. I'm sure if you're clever enough you can guess :-)

A BMI of 33.6 is towards the lower end of obesity. I'd like to have a BMI of around 29, which means I need to lose about 30 pounds. That's still towards the upper end of overweight, but there is some evidence that overweight people may live longer, and I think around 200 pounds is a good long-term weight goal anyway. I'll take it slowly and see how sustainable and reasonable it is, especially with my sedentary geek lifestyle.

The point is to be healthy, not skinny. The way I (and most peoople, especially men) carry weight around my belly just isn't good for long term health. Plus there is also evidence that obesity may increase the risk of dementia. Needless to say, I'm not interested in being a test case for that.

OK, so let's say I want to lose about 1 pound each month. Let's do the math.

There are about 9 calories (really kilocalories) per gram of fat, which means a pound of fat contains about 4082 calories in pure math. But the dietary wisdom seems to be that it's more like 3500 calories per pound, so either there are other factors to be considered or 9 calories per gram is a rounded-up number (probably more the latter than the former, if I had to guess).

So let's assume 3500 is the correct number. That comes out to about 115 calories per day in an average month.

Like I said, I'm doing this for better health, so I think getting more exercise is more important than eating less. That said, I am trying to eat healthier food and reduce portions to more reasonable levels. I just don't believe in "dieting" or using fake substitutes. It's just silly, and potentially dangerous in the long run.

Which brings me to exercise. It seems that I can pretty easily burn at least 115 calories a day just by walking and climbing stairs for at least half an hour every day. Of course that has to be on top of my average daily activities, since I'm not losing weight right now as far as I can tell. I'm also not gaining in cardiovascular fitness - if anything I'm losing it. But if I work up to it gradually I know I can do this.

There's plenty of room to walk around at work. There's even a big walking track in one of the buildings. And there are stairs that I can take instead of using the elevators to go everywhere.

I should also be stretching more often. I had a cervical radiculopathy not long ago which kept me from being as active as I would've liked to be. Which isn't saying much, but still, now that I'm doing better there's no excuse not to try to be more physically fit. It'll keep my energy levels up even when I'm just sitting at the computer, so I can be more alert and functional.

OK, so while I recognize that I'm probably talking to no one right now, if anyone is actually out there, go ahead and let me know what you think.

I believe I'm pretty good at doing research, and I have a fairly broad store of knowledge built up, and I'm a decent writer. My wife is an incredible writer and a genius in her own right. So if you have any topics you'd like me to look up and write about, spark my interest and I'll do it. That's sort of the point of this blog, after all: to act as an outlet for my (pseudo?) intellectual rants.

first post!

OK, here it is. I'm officially the last geek on earth with a blog.

Regarding the name: I believe the universe is fundamentally made up of information. In one frame of reference which I'll call "mine", there are four basic facets or aspects of information which appear to exist:

1. Space - everything seems to have a position in three "dimensions"
2. Time - events seem to occur in a linear framework
3. Matter - some things appear to have mass and volume (substance)
4. Energy - things seem to change position and interact with each other causing changes

And then, of course, there's... well... UNIX. Yes, UNIX. I'm a UNIX systems administrator for a large corporation in the St. Louis, MO, USA area.

OK, that's about it for now. More later.