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Community

This story begins with a little bit of mystery.

Well, initially I was just involved with another one of my web design projects.  I had previously built a dashboard of sorts–a web page that had embedded widgets.  I would open the page with my Raspberry Pi, and plug it into the TV.  Then I could just switch inputs and see the displayed info–weather and news–on my main TV.

The problem with this method is that I could never figure out a way to automatically open the browser upon boot and enter kiosk mode.  Usually this wasn’t a problem, but whenever the Pi got unplugged, I had to hunt down a mouse and keyboard so I could relaunch the browser.  The Pi’s browser also had a habit of timing out, so I’d have to refresh it manually, which again meant hunting down a mouse/keyboard.  Eventually, the novelty of the project wore off and the irritations outweighed the benefit, so I moved the Pi to the basement where it sits idle–serving only the purpose of being a low-risk device with which to practice remote shell Linux commands from the command line terminal.

Then I realized that since the Xbox has a native browser, perhaps I could revive the dashboard project to simply run on the Xbox.  I dug up the URL from where I had buried it, and launched the site.

The news feed wasn’t working, and the embedded calendar was redundant as I had a setup already running that in the basement.  So the dash would need a redesign after all.

I settled on 3 panes: my embedded NOAA radar, a weather forecast widget, and a news feed.  The first 2 I already had working, and some CSS got them positioned right.  But for the life of me, I could not find a reliable news feed that allowed iframe embedding.  The former method I had been using was a free Google service, which they had since deprecated.  Everyone wants you to sign up for things now.  Apparently something as minor as general news is no longer considered a free service.  Pity.  After failing to find a replacement, I abandoned the news feed idea.

I needed something else to fill the space, and I concluded that I would just complete the weather theme and find a free webcam.  I began with local news stations, but as with their Doppler radars and news feeds, nothing was intuitive, embeddable, or truly free.  Does everything have to be a source of revenue?  There was a time when the Internet was considered a free medium.

Further searches revealed a local webcam.  It was good resolution, too, and a genuine live-feed (something that rarely exists anymore).  Plus, the hosting server didn’t have any lockouts on iframe embedding.  Some more CSS and I had the webcam feed on my dashboard.

It could have ended there, but I grew curious.  Who would host a publicly-available webcam?  I began poking around the hosting domain.

The website’s design was pretty basic by modern standards–no HTML5, no adaptive content, no CSS styling.  It was a refreshing throwback to the Internet of the 90s.  The site itself was a resource on radio: HAM, scanners, AM PSA; and where to learn about them and buy equipment.  I tuned in to 1660 AM–the listed station, and heard a local broadcast of a High School sports event.

Further intrigued by this grass-roots site, I did a WHOIS search on the domain, and found to my surprise that the site’s registrant’s information wasn’t blocked.  The address of his office was public, and as it turned out, just a mile north of my house.  The webcam couldn’t have been much more local than that.

Something about the site inspired me.  Maybe it was guilt at having access to free information and a webcam, or a desire to give back.  Maybe I just wanted to see if I could help someone, or simply needed an excuse for another project.  Who knows?  Whatever the reason, I spent a couple evenings coding a new front page for the site.  I modernized it and organized the information so it was easier to navigate.  I assigned this redesign it’s own subdomain and hosted it on my server.  Then, I sent the owner an email.

I told him I liked the information on the site and the webcam, and offered the redesign code freely were he interested.  I told him that it was nice to see such a site, obviously self-hosted, and offering a public service.

The email was a Yahoo! domain, and as I was a random stranger reaching out from the internet, I didn’t expect to receive any response.  But to my surprise, hours later, he answered.

He explained in great detail the site’s content–the public radio station for citizens to make announcements and what he uses to transmit local high school games.  He confirmed the webcam is for public use, and that the local Channel 2 news uses it sometimes in their weather reports.  He explained that his maintenance of the business he’s mostly retired from, but keeps it running for extra revenue for his hobbies.  Consequently, he wasn’t interested in help with the web design, but he thanked me for offering.

I confess, I had always found HAM hobbyists to be weirdos, but this man was surprisingly normal, giving off a vibe of being an older man with hobbies that overlapped a personal business.  We should all be so lucky.

I thanked him for the information and told him this was an interesting experience as a segue into another world of communications technology for me.  It reminded me that while a technology inevitably becomes commercialized, and the large companies garner the most attention, niche groups and hobbyists remain, using the technology for its original purpose, free from the capitalistic motivations of shareholders.  It remains as evidence that intellectuals still pursue knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and offer free benefits to the population as a whole in the process.

–Simon

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Tori

Whippets: one of the goofiest breeds of dogs.  Their dopey intellect combined with their lanky builds, incredible speed, laziness, and absolute demand that they snuggle and not sleep on the floor–gives them such a darned endearing personality.  It’s so endearing, that rarely can you find a whippet owner who only has one.

So it was that we acquired Tori–the whippet addendum.  Liz thought that Faye needed a whippet sister, but in reality I think that was just a response to this universal need to collect them.  After extensive searching, she found a vet who breeds, shows, and rescues whippets.  One of these rescues, Tori, was so nervous and scared that she was ill-suited for showing.  She sat around the vet’s office for a time, until she was sold to us.

Always a mama’s dog

When we picked her up, Tori was wearing a green handkerchief.  She was terrified of the change, and especially afraid of men–a fear which never fully dissipated.  She took cookies from Liz but not me.  We bought her her own cage, but she refused to used it–preferring to accompany Faye.  She quickly adapted to nights on the bed, however, but bit me once in fear when I came to join late one night.

That’s the dopey whippet look

She never outgrew her wariness of people, but time made her less cautious, and while it was a rare moment to see her play like a dog should, she would still bark when she wanted something, give paw incessantly when she was feeling especially whippety, and took cookies from anyone who offered.  She was a regal whippet, and never reduced herself to fighting with the rabble.  When Faye overstepped her boundaries, Tori would either push her aside, or growl; and that was enough.  The rest of the time she spent sitting in her chair in the bedroom–her throne–far from the noise and chaos of the world.

One of the few men she took a liking to was my dad

Yet she had her less-endearing peculiarities.  I never figured out why she loved bread so much, but she would steal it out of the trash and off the counter, making a giant mess of crumbs in the process.  And she stole bones.  In fact, she had a predilection for systematically removing every item from the trash, irrespective of its classification as food, and arranging the debris on the carpet.  But ultimately, she found her niche in the family.

Like all whippets, she loved the sun

Then she started losing weight.  Until this point, she had had her share of medical problems.  She had tumors, arthritis, and nerve pain; but she was strong and rarely complained about her ailments, and until now she had fought through them.  But her weight loss accelerated, so upon the vet’s recommendation, we started feeding her soft dog chow.  She scarfed that stinky stuff down and it helped for a time, but a couple weeks ago, she stopped eating this too, and began showing more overt signs of digestive problems.

One of her last lucid moments, before she stopped responding

She leaked blood, stopped moving, and became completely emaciated within days.  Suspecting the worst, we made a vet trip.  The diagnosis pointed to a ruptured ulcer, and lacking practical treatment options, we proceeded with euthanasia.  With all the stoicism I could conjure, I watched as the vet injected Tori, and within seconds, she stopped breathing.  The receptionist handed us tissues.  My composure failed.

I spent the day digging her grave.  I buried her with a can of that stinky chow and some cookies.  Liz adorned the site with daffodil and crocus bulbs.

Bye, Tori

I want my dog back, but I’d rather she didn’t hurt anymore.  I hope she has the comfiest chair and stinkiest chow, wherever she is.  I miss you, Tori.

–Simon

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Battlefield 3 (Part 1)

The newest Xbox Games with Gold freebie I grabbed was Battlefield 3.  Aside from the most recent Battlefield 1 (which is so numbered as to designate its setting: World War I, rather than its chronology in the game series.  Beats me), I had never played a Battlefield game before.  At the height of my gaming, I was a Call of Duty guy.  Even then, however, I just didn’t have the time to play both.  But I vaguely knew about the rival franchise because whenever someone complained about Call of Duty, which was often, the criticism always preceded the threat that they were going to switch over to Battlefield (which they never did of course).  So Battlefield was kind of like Canada after every election or major partisan issue here in the States.

Anyway, I had some time on my hands since I was procrastinating mowing the lawn, and I thought I would buy the last Fallout 4 expansion: Nukaworld.  But they still wanted $20 for it, so I said screw that.  Instead, I checked the freebies, hence Battlefield 3.  I booted the game and poured some vodka.

[SPOILERS]

The game begins with the standard calibration.  First, adjust the slider brightness until the image is just barely visible.  Oh ho game!  Not you too!  Nay, I adjusted the slider until the image was comfortably visible.  My eyes certainly aren’t getting any younger.

The story begins with immediate violence and no explanation as to why.  I mean, it’s a shooter, so presumably I’d be shooting people, but I generally like to know why.  The abruptness also confused me into thinking I was watching an extended cutscene, but as it turns out it was just setting the stage for my immediate need of using said violence.  I watched as my character jumped off a bridge and onto a moving train, breaks in the back window and beats some guy until he stops moving, then grabs his pistol.  I also notice that my left wrist has a pair of handcuffs dangling off them.  Hmm…mystery.

It’s quickly obvious that this is an intro designed to teach the game mechanics.  By this point, game controls have become pretty standard.  The only irritation with this game was that crouching was controlled with the right thumbstick–something I found unintuitive.  Also, the sensitivity was pretty high, so I had to turn that down a bit.

I shoot a few guys with my pistol and they drop pretty quick, which is surprising considering that they appear to be wearing body armor.  I’m prompted to pick up an AK-47 (ahh, the standard game terrorist weapon), which I then subsequently wield against the next enemy with all the finesse of a teenager trying to take the bra off his first girlfriend.  Apparently, the sensitivity needed more tweaking.

At one point there was a shotgun wedged in a door, I guess to hold it shut.  The game instructed me to pick it up, which I did, excited at the prospect of a more effective weapon.  But this only served to trigger an instance.  I get into a brawl and the guy disarms me, but I shove him out the window and pick up an AK-47 again, which I then immediately swap out for an AK-74.  You’d think that it’d be wiser to equip a unit with the same caliber small arms, but what do I know?  In short, I shoot a bunch of guys, go through a door, get disarmed and thrown onto the floor.  Soeth ends the level.

The game starts a new cutscene, introduced by an ominous “a certain amount of time proceeding these events…” and then a shot of my character handcuffed and being interrogated.  Ah!  We’re Quentin Tarantinoing this.  Okay, I can roll with that.  Unraveling a mystery.

There’s a lot of back and forth about why I did what I did, and me suggesting that I did what I did because I needed to do what I did.  Fascinating.  Then, we flashback to a time preceding that.  Apparently we’re Mementoing events too.

Why am I killing people (aside from this being a shooter)?  Why am I being court-martialed?  And will I ever figure out the ideal sensitivity setting?  Tune in next time…

–Simon

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A Lubbock County Almanac (January 10, 1995)

I’m home from school I brought home a Book called Experiments.

It is 3:40 PM (centrill time) and now I will call J.T.

— — — —

I called, no one was there, so I left a message on their answering maching: “Hi, J.T. This is Simon.  I’m asking if you can come over.”

It’s a beautiful day outside.  The temperature is in the 70s.

Perfect day,

I’m going out to play!

— — — —

It’s now 6:43 and I am going to Boyscouts.  Craig is over our house.  I don’t have much time so By!

–Simon

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Impatience

A small rectangular patch of earth resides against the front porch.  And because the plot is small, receives direct sunlight, and sits under the eave, it is dry and barren.  Yet its location by the front door necessitates that it be considered for landscaping purposes.  But what to do?

Liz made a number of attempts, including columbines and bleeding hearts, but to our surprise, it was the impatiens that claimed the niche.  And I, generally opposed to pesticides, have no reservations about using synthetic fertilizers.  Thus was a season of promoting these plants’ over-indulgence.

The nutritional needs of an ornamental plant is so much simpler than a child’s.

–Simon