Just checking in...

For those few people who actually follow this blog - I'm still here, and I intend to start posting more regularly again.

Command Line Argument Processing

This is another in my series of "simple programming techniques I don't want to keep reinventing."

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(int argc, char**argv)
{
  opterr = 0; /* disable auto error reporting */
  char opt = 0;
  /* These copies are needed because optind and optarg aren't
     necessarily visible to debuggers, and you often want them. */
  int myoptind = 1;
  char* myoptarg = 0;

  int a = 0;
  const char* b = 0;

  while (((char) -1) != (opt = (char) getopt(argc, argv, "ab:"))){
    myoptind = optind;
    myoptarg = optarg;

    switch(opt){

    case 'a':
      a = 1;
      break;

    case 'b':
      b = myoptarg;
      break;

    default:
      {
        char erropt = optopt;
        fprintf(stdout, "unrecognized option '%c'\n", erropt);
      }
      break;
    }
  }

  if (myoptind < argc){
    fprintf(stdout, "unused arguments:");
    while (myoptind < argc){
      fprintf(stdout, " %s", argv[myoptind++]);
    }
    fprintf(stdout, "\n");
  }

  fprintf(stdout, "a: %d\nb: %s\n", a, b);
  fflush(stdout);
  return 0;
}

Thinking about gun violence in America

Embed from Getty Images

This week's edition of On The Media focused -- once again -- on gun violence.

The whole show is worth listening to, but the last segment really got my attention. It's entitled, "Stopping gun violence without new laws", and it describes a program for addressing urban gun violence - a massively unreported part of the problem. OTM refers to it as CeaseFire, but it changed its name in 2012 to Cure Violence. Cure Violence treats gun violence as a public health problem, and takes a very data-driven approach to solving it. What's really great, though, is that Cure Violence offers a way to do something about guns that the NRA not only can't stop but isn't even opposed to.

They have gotten my support, and I urge you to support them, too.

Tiny Desk Concerts

Today's Doonesbury at the Washington Post led me to NPR's Tiny Desk Concert series. Nifty! The one that hooked me is this one:

Scott Atran, again

In the aftermath of the November 13, 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, anthropologist Scott Atran has an article in the Guardian discussing how ISIs operates, how and why "the West" fails to understand the true nature of the threat posed by ISIS, and why this misunderstanding is so lethal.

I've written about Atran before; his 2011 interview with Krista Tippett is still timely.

Atran's Guardian piece led me to his comments at the U.N. in April 2015, which contains policy recommendations for Western governments. Those, in turn led me to the website of Peace Direct, an organization I intend to find out more about. A quick read suggests they are on the right track, but then the picture on this page about their work in Pakistan sort of screams "cultural insensitivity"...

People

Today's New York Times Magazine has an extended interview with Marilynne Robinson, an author I must confess I've never read. Parts of the interview are just brilliant:

This notion (fact?) that we are all mutually incomprehensible is at the core of the conflict, and resultant suffering, that pervades our lovely world.

"Apathy works like forgiveness"

A review in this week's NYTimes book review prompted me to re-read "Goodbye, Columbus." It's better than I remembered, and I'm just finishing "Eli, the Fanatic."

Roth is better than "Portnoy's Complaint." This book proves it.

Installing Ubuntu via the Internet using a small USB stick

I needed to install Ubuntu on a new computer that had no operating system on it, and my older, available Windows system does not have a reliable DVD burner. Further, the only USB stick I could find in the house is small - 512MB. No problem, I thought - I used to do network installs of Linux all the time. How hard could it be?

WOW - really hard! These days there seems to be an assumption that everyone is able to download a 2GB iso and burn it to either a DVD or a largish USB stick.

Eventually, though,  I found what I needed:

• A "mini ISO" for Ubuntu. This is a very small bootable image with just enough bits to be able to run a network install, and...
• The "LinuxLive" USB creator (aka "lili"), which creates a bootable image of an ISO on a USB stick.

Once I had these, all I had to do was run lili, "burn" the mini ISO to the USB stick, and boot the sucker. I was now in what felt like a late-1990s-era text-mode Linux installer. Hooray!

Honk! 2013

This afternoon Katy and I walked out to Davis Square to take in some of this year's Honk Festival.

A summer at Pinewoods

We've been going to Pinewoods Camp off and on for years, but this summer we've been there more than we have for a long time:

• the second spring work weekend
• Owen and Alison's wedding
• July 4th CDS session
• CDS Labor Day session
• and just now, the fall work weekend

We had great weather for this work weekend - cool but sunny, with a breeze to help us cool off from heavy lifting. We put docks up on the bank for winter storage, closed cabins, moved a mountain of mulch, and dug new holes for two of the camp outhouses. Here we are preparing to move the second to its new home, a few feet to the right:

Posted with Blogsy

Thanks for the dances, Helene

Helene Cornelius, a long-time Boston English Country dance teacher (and dancer!), died early last month after a fall. I danced with her just a week before she died. The Globe recently published a very nicely-done memorial article, which mentions Pinewoods camp, where Owen's wedding just took place.

Thank you for all the dances, Helene.

Owen and Alison have wed

This past Saturday Owen and Alison were married at Pinewoods. After a wet start on Friday the weather turned beautiful, and the weekend was about as perfect as it could be. Pictures here:

Alison & Owen's wedding

Hi Tech?

This is what the lobby of our office building looks like every time it rains:

Nice work, Equity Office..

Dancing at Waterfire with the Ladies of the Rolling Pin

My Morris team (well, a fraction thereof...) danced in Providence last night at Waterfire, at the invitation of the Ladies of the Rolling Pin. Several other teams were there, too, including a partial side from Newtowne; we teamed up to dance about a half a dozen dances.

After the dancing I wandered around for a while, taking in the sights and people.

Downtown Providence is quite lovely at night.

There are a few more pictures, and a video clip of the lighting of the Waterfire lamps, in this album:

Waterfire w/LORP, August 2012

Can you spare 3 minutes...

...to debunk the myth of "You didn't build that!"?

The Romney campaign has been flogging the notion that Socialist President Obama said to business owners, "You didn't build that [business]!" In fact, in context, the "that" in the sentence is clearly referring to"roads and bridges." Obama was talking about all the infrastructure that enables business to thrive.

But don't take my word for it. Take a look at the entire, unedited video of Obama's speech in Roanoke Virginia on July 13th that set off this little firestorm. If you don't want to watch it all, just grab the pointer and drag into 32:30. Then watch the next 3 minutes.

If you want to find reasons to prefer Romney over Obama, at least do so with a little integrity.

The rest of the speech is pretty damn inspiring, too, in this viewer's opinion.

A note: I received an anonymous comment that I will not publish, even though I don't find any of the content particularly objectionable. I don't blog anonymously, and I hold commenters to the same standard.

My love-hate relationship with Amazon

This morning I read in the Times that Jeff Bezos has pledged $2.5M in support of same-sex marriage in Washington State. I wanted to let Amazon know that I'm happy about this support by its CEO, so I clicked on over to amazon.com to find their "contact us" link.

Without success.

Unless I'm just hopelessly blind this morning, Amazon doesn't seem to have a mechanism for receiving general feedback.

And so goes the ongoing saga of my relationship with Amazon. for example: I'm a long-time Kindle user; I own every model of the Kindle so far, except the DX. Obviously I like reading on the Kindle. It's great to be able to carry a whole library with me in a small, light-weight package that can go a week without recharging, and my eyes appreciate the ability to change font sizes to accommodate changing reading conditions. Being able to sample a book before buying has made me a more adventurous reader.

But -- the DRM periodically drives me crazy. Subscriptions are especially painful. I was delighted when the New York Times Kindle Edition finally became good enough that we could cancel our paper subscription to the Times; I hated putting out pounds of paper each week in the recycling. But I can only have the Times delivered to one of my Kindles - making it impossible for Katy and I to share the Sunday Times. We can sort of work around this by using the digital access that comes with a Kindle subscription to read the Times on an iPad, but it's not the same.

Then there is Amazon's stance on sales tax. It's just utterly bogus to claim at this point in the history of the Internet that requiring online retailers to collect and pay state sales taxes is "too onerous" or would "suppress online sales." Many online retailers manage this without any problems; surely Amazon could as well. Yet Amazon continues to lobby against this.

Ah, well. Thanks, Jeff, for the good; can you try to do something about the bad?

Boston Dining Cards, 2011-2012

I gave Katy a deck of Boston Dining Cards for her 50th birthday today. As an added bonus, I created a map with showing all the restaurants.


View Boston Dining Cards 2011-2012 in a larger map

And now we are Qlikies

Today Expressor Software, the little data integration software company I work for, was acquired by Qliktech, makers of the Qlikview Business Discovery Platform. This is very good development for us; Expressor Studio complements Qlikview very nicely, and since Qliktech is a rapidly growing, publicly traded company,we're going to have a lot more development horsepower to move our product forward.

Expressor has come along way since I joined almost three years ago. We introduced a completely new UI in late 2010, along with a mostly-new data movement engine (the piece I work on), and each of the subsequent releases has added major new functionality.

But beyond the software, we've also become a highly productive engineering team. We've been introducing a new release every 3 months or so for the past 18 months. Without the close coordination we have among our UI, repository, engine and QA teams, we never could have done this without sacrificing product quality -- but we've kept the quality up, and even managed significant internal improvements that helped performance and stability while we did this. This is a great group of people to work with, and even though we've been working our butts off, I've really enjoyed the work.

Next week we're all going to Qliktech's office in Lund, Sweden, for an introduction to our engineering counterparts - and to celebrate midsummer. It's not technically a vacation - but it sure is a nice break from our usual routine. It's a pretty amazing way of welcoming us into the company. Katy is coming with me, and we'll be spending a few days on either end of the trip exploring Copenhagen.

Qliktech, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. (roll credits)

The end of the line for the Juxtacomm patent?

It looks like the U.S. Patent Office has issued a final, please-get-out-of-my-face rejection of essentially all of the claims of the infamous '662 patent, which the Canadian patent trolls software firm Teilhard Technologies has been using to shake down litigate against software vendors, including IBM, Oracle, Informatica and many others.

See my earlier posting about the USPTO's ruling on the '662 patent to find out how access the decision from the USPTO web site, or just follow these links to my copies:

• Reexamination - final rejection of claims
• Reexamination - reject of finality petition denied

According to Pacer, the current round of litigation is winding down, with dismissals already issued or pending for many of the defendants. At last.

SmileTrain - a protection racket

For literally years now, I've been getting mailings about every 2 weeks from SmileTrain, a charity that helps children born with a cleft lip or palate get the repair surgery they need to lead relatively normal lives. A worthy cause, yes? I suppose - but their fundraising strategy amounts to a protection racket. I quote:

"Make one gift now and we'll never ask for another donation again."

 Right. According to a report by CharityWatch, this is a lie. Further, in 2009 SmileTrain had an overhead rate of about 30%, while claiming that "100% of your donation goes to program - 0% goes to overhead." Part of that overhead was the $678,058 that President and Co-Founder Brian Mullaney received in compensation.

 I hate to see scumbags making money off unfortunate children.

Loud and Close

Katy and I just got home from seeing "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." Wow. Fantastic acting all the way around, and absolutely riveting. It'll be a while before I calm down enough to be able to sleep.

See it.

Where did the jobs go?

Today's New York Times has a long article (How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work) that offers a discouraging picture for job growth in the U.S. The problem isn't labor costs per se; rather, it's that the entire manufacturing supply chain has shifted from the U.S. to Asia. - a change initially caused by labor costs, but now self-perpetuating.

One former high-ranking Apple executive said that the focus on Asia “came down to two things.” Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point.”

The glass used in the iPhone's display provides a great example, As Corning's CFO observed:

“Our customers are in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China. We could make the glass here, and then ship it by boat, but that takes 35 days. Or, we could ship it by air, but that’s 10 times as expensive. So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas.”

This isn't a change that can be undone overnight.

 But besides the supply chain issue, there's labor flexibility. That innocent-looking comment that factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” really means that workers can be hired - and fired - on short notice. The jobs may pay well, by local standards, but there is no job security. Large portions of business risk are outsourced to employees.

Job security is an issue labor unions fought hard for in the first half of the 20th century, with considerable success.  It's hard to argue that job insecurity is a good thing for workers and the communities they live in, but this is exactly what U.S. manufacturers - and Republican politicians - are asking for when they want an easing of labor regulations and oppose unionization.

So what's the solution? Over time, I have to believe that Asia's workers will insist on better conditions, there will be greater balance between regions in terms of labor rules, and manufacturing will gradually redistribute closer to the point of consumption. But that will take decades.

I don't know how to solve this problem. But I do know that any politician - Left or Right - who promises a short-term solution is pedaling snake oil.

Rick Santorum is Google-bombed...

...and it made this week's issue of The New Yorker. The short article Bombs Away is a cautionary tale regarding importance of managing search results (to the extent that that's possible...). Warning: the top Google hit for Santorum is Not Suitable for Work.

My mother is gone

Dancing with Mom in early 2009

Mom died just shy of three weeks ago. I can't really write about this yet, but here is a copy of the obituary we placed in the Lancaster paper.

Jean L. Myers, 84, of Elizabethtown died Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at the Masonic Village Health Care Center, after a brief illness. She was the loving companion of the late Dr. Zeb Bell, the widow of Dr. Carl Myers, and the former wife of Jerry Callen.

Jean was born in Nanty Glo, PA and grew up in nearby Roaring Spring, the daughter of the late Clarence and Ethel (Lape) Lauer. She received her R.N. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 and began a lifelong nursing career. Newlyweds Jean and Jerry settled in Jerry's hometown of Windber, PA, where Jean combined mothering her three children with nursing at the Windber hospital and serving as school nurse at the high school. The family moved to Satellite Beach, FL in 1968, where Jean first worked as a nurse for Melbourne Hospital, and later for Dr. Frederick Remark in his private practice. After she and Jerry parted in 1986, Jean moved to McMurray, PA, near Pittsburgh, where she married Carl Myers and worked at McMurray Hills Manor. When Carl became ill, Jean cared for him at home until his death in 1992. Her subsequent deep friendship with Zeb Bell lasted until Zeb's death in 2002.

Jean moved to the Masonic Village in Elizabethtown in 2008. In addition to her nursing career, Jean was an active, lifelong Lutheran. She taught Sunday school in Windber and played piano for the choir. Most recently, she attended Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in McMurray and Trinity Lutheran Church in Mount Joy. She was also a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, Chartiers Chapter, #97, of Canonsburg.

Jean leaves behind two daughters and a son: Jean A. Ulmer, the wife of Robert Ulmer, of Elizabethtown; Cyndi L. Callen of Bethel Park, PA; and Jerry L. Callen, husband of Katy Petersen, of Cambridge, MA. She remained close to her brother, Jerry Lauer, and his wife, Anne, of Orlando, FL. Visits with her six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren brought her great joy.

Relatives and friends are invited to attend a celebration of Jean's life at the John S. Sell Memorial Chapel at Masonic Village on Friday, December 9, at 10:30 AM. There will be a time of visitation with the family from 9:30 AM until the time of the service. Another celebration is planned for next spring in McMurray, PA.

Contributions in Jean's memory may be sent to either the Bleiler Caring Cottage at Masonic Village, 1 Masonic Drive, Elizabethtown PA 17022 or Trinity Lutheran Church, 47 W. Main St., Mount Joy, PA 17552.

Halloween

I like Halloween. It's a low-pressure, high-fun holiday. This year it wound up being spread out over several days, which made it even nicer.

RuthAnne dressed up for work on Saturday as a contruction worker...



...and again on Monday as a (pretty urban-looking) cowhand.



As usual, we carved pumpkins. The three really nice ones are Katy's handywork; the moon and stars is mine.








We had a lot of trick-or-treaters (as usual), including our dancing buddies Melissa and Robert, and their son, Ethan, who came in for for a chat.

Sailing Vineyard Sound

Katy and I spent last Wednesday through Saturday sailing her father's 30' Morgan sailboat from its home in Waquoit Bay to Cuttyhunk, Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. It was my first real sailing trip (I'd done one small overnight many years earlier) and, it turns out, the first time Katy has done a multi-day cruise as the "responsible adult" onboard. We had generally excellent weather; it was sunny all four days. Wednesday had extremely high winds that were, frankly, a little scary, but in general the sailing was great.

Pictures are available in this Picasa album.

Sailing, October 2011

I managed to break the 5th metatarsal bone in my right foot on the first day, as we set out to explore Cuttyhunk. I found I could stand and walk a little with the foot bandaged and shoved into a hiking boot (ouch...), so we decided not to abort the trip and, in fact, extended by a night. When we got to Oak Bluffs and Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard I was able to get around on rented bicycles, so even our sightseeing was only slightly curtailed. I did, however, have to spend most of my sailing time at the wheel; moving around on the boat, especially on rocking seas, was not practical.

We used a mixture of paper charts and GPS for navigation. The charts were good for trip planning and "the big picture", while the GPS excelled at helping us stay on course and navigate through the often-narrow channels (surrounded by shoals and, in many cases, submerged rocks...) of the Elizabeth Islands. It would be very easy to become GPS-dependent.

I had more fun that I actually expected to; I thought that much of the sailing would be boring, and it was anything but that. I'm eager to do more - next spring, once the weather warms up and my foot has healed.