::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

Shooting my new Ruger 10/22

News, Guns ·Saturday September 26, 2009 @ 17:29 EDT (link)

On Friday we got the license (tag) renewal for Honey's car; the Department of Licensing tried to sneak a $5 donation to state parks by us by making it the default (requiring subtracting $5 from the total to not donate). It's a cause I might donate to, when government stops stealing from me for all their other redistributionist projects. But trying to sneak it in: not cool, and almost fraudulent.

I finished cleaning the Mosin Nagant and reassembled it (disassembly, cleaning 1 2).

I took my new (wood stock, blued) Ruger 10/22 out to SVRC for the first time on Saturday; I shot it in the pistol pit (which allows .22s), and had the pit to myself although there were a few people in the rifle bay. It was a lot of fun.

Books finished: House of Cards.

Fremont Oktoberfest

News ·Sunday September 20, 2009 @ 19:06 EDT (link)

Oktoberfest! In Fremont, Seattle, to be precise. We went with Jim, formerly of Microsoft. We picked him up at his place (and paid for the tickets he'd picked up for us) and drove over to Fremont and (parallel) parked in a side street. We got to his place a little before 1400 and got home about 1830 (we sat for a while to make sure I was good to drive).


Moving, ammo, Meghan's visit

News, Guns ·Saturday September 19, 2009 @ 22:48 EDT (link)

From 1000-1500 we helped Amani (PM at work) and her husband Thomas move from Redmond to their first house, in Bothell, repaying the toh (obligation—sorry, Wheel of Time in-joke) owed from them helping us a month ago. Jodie and her husband Nick, and Angus and Kate (fellow Waterloo graduates) were also there helping.

We got there at 1005, and started loading a (16'?) U-Haul truck; we were worried about getting everything on, but we also loaded up several cars too and managed to get it all in one trip. The house is at the end of a cul-de-sac much like ours, but without the short road going off to the side. They got pizza afterward from Canadian-American pizza; the tandoori pizza was quite good although very hot. We got back to our place at 1500.

I went to the Monroe WAC gun show later on (1600-1700) and bought a box (440 rounds) of Russian 7.62x54R and 500 rounds of .22 (the size difference of the boxes is humorous). I looked at scopes, but the selection was poor and they all looked like scary off-brand knockoffs and with my limited experience I can't tell what's good, so I'll wait for another sale at a local place and most likely get a Bushell Banner 3-9x40.

I took apart my Mosin Nagant bolt; the Cosmoline gets everywhere and has to be cleaned out completely. I took the firing pin out via the method of using the connector bar as wrench as shown in these instructions.

Meghan got here at 1800 and we got KFC (instead of pizza as originally planned); she insisted on paying since we had last time. She was here until 2245 and then had to go to work (testing cell phone sites). We played some Guitar Hero, watched the last episode of House from last season, talked a lot (well, Honey and Meghan did most of the talking).

Books finished: The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution.

The state of the eBook

Technical, Media ·Friday September 18, 2009 @ 00:26 EDT (link)

Electronic, or digital book readers are regrettably still in the "stone knives and bearskins" state, and the industry really isn't helping.

What I want is a fairly general purpose device, which means open. The iRex iLiad might fit this description, but it won't read the most common DRM'd books. I want to be able to make full use of it, limited only by the technology, not by the vendor: so if it's physically possible to use it as, for example, a code editor, or to run an open source chess game, or to browse the web using my wireless router, I want to be able to do that. Many of the current devices are too locked down to allow that: complete and utter fail by design, although it's at least possible to "jailbreak" the Kindle.

I also want to be able to obtain eBook versions of the books I own (I don't mind giving up the physical books if necessary). The idea of paying $9.99 per book (the going rate for many Kindle books) for books I already own is insane. It doesn't cost that much for the publisher to make an electronic version available (not for books produced in the last 20 years, anyway), and if, as they claim (most vocally for DVDs and software), I have a "license" for the material, and don't own it, I should be able to buy a copy in a different format for no more than the cost of moving the bits.

While eBooks at $9.99 are touted as cheaper than the paper version, that's still not good enough. Since they don't need all of their paper book presses or delivery channels, the cost should be much lower: pretty much just the cost of operating download severs (almost insignificant when amortized), royalties, and the publisher's share of development costs and profit.

I would like to retain the right of first sale (let the state and its rules actually be of some use for once). DRM in practice only serves to restrict legitimate users (others just pirate the software or item anyway, or obtain it from someone else that has done so). It should be possible to use it to transfer a book from (to start) one Kindle (or Sony Reader) owner to another, later between eBook readers regardless of device.

The top three devices seem to be the Kindle (2 or DX), Sony Reader (PRS-600 or upcoming PRS-2121), or iRex iLiad (the Books Edition looks interesting), although there are plenty of also-rans. They all seem to be satisfactory in terms of readability (they use eInk and claim to be readable in direct sunlight blah blah blah), battery life (days, especially with wireless off), ergonomics, and speed (page turning). So it's not the hardware that's holding back the future—and to be fair it's probably less Amazon or Sony than the content owners.

Amazon's most common format, MobiPocket, has fortunately been cracked (there are some Python scripts floating around that can strip DRM, and there are other scripts that can add it so regular text can be read on the Kindle). That's a good first step, but then they built the better mousetrap: the "Topaz" (.AZW1) format, which apparently is a fairly lousy reading format anyway (used to store low-quality scans) but also a crack hasn't been publicized yet. Give it time: users can get root access to the Kindle, and the decryption software and key are both on the device. Many of us don't want to pay for content that we risk losing access to, or can't shift to another device. Many books can be found online, e.g. on BitTorrent sites, and I have no problem getting books I already own from there. I wish formatting was more consistent, and I hope HTML emerges as the format of choice (easiest to re-flow), and that HTML versions stop with the idiocy of putting <br> tags where the line would end in the book (nobody cares how the book was formatted, except for some scientific works).

I'd also like for libraries to have more eBooks; King County has a pretty good selection, with most books are available in MobiPocket or PDF. I'm not sure that they can actually be read with current eBook readers (I think Sony's can read secure PDF, and Amazon's MobiPocket, but the DRM might only work for PCs).

Duly last is price. Some online studies have shown that critical mass will be reached when the reader price is less than $100. $469 is pretty high for the Kindle DX, and even $299 for the Kindle 2 is fairly steep. But if they did everything I wanted above, I'd buy at current prices.

So while I have been looking at eBook readers as a way to cut down on clutter, they're not yet ready for prime time, and still I wait.


Let's look at it from the other side, and imagine what a great eBook reader experience would be. I'm going to hold my nose about the DRM a bit—I'm morally opposed but let's pretend it can do what it purports to do (stop theft) but still let users do whatever they could do with a paper book with an eBook that they've bought.

In this world, I'm connected to my home wireless network with my eBook web browser (I'm paying for the connection and bandwidth, just as if I was using my laptop) and typing this journal entry on it. In fact, I'm using a version of the open source Firefox browser that I downloaded and installed onto the device.

I've traded in all of my reasonably new books for eBook versions, in some format that can easily be re-flowed to different page sizes so that if I get a larger (or smaller) display in future (or want to zoom in or out), my books will still look good. I've managed to find copies of my old books that are out of copyright online, perhaps at Project Gutenberg (or even scanned and OCR'd them myself), and sold or gave away the physical versions. I only have one bookshelf (the rest were sold when the books went) which has a few sentimental or reference books in it only.

My local library has nearly everything available in electronic form. I can either download eBooks directly to my reader with the wireless browser, or download them with the correct DRM stamp to my PC and transfer them later, and they just work (perhaps with some initial PC setup).

Books generally cost about $5, except older ones are frequently available for much less or even for free. When I'm done with an eBook, I can sell it on eBay or Craigslist for whatever I can get for it.

My current University of Washington PMP Master's course textbook is available electronically, so I also keep it on my reader. I can easily take notes inline, or even work on projects and flip back and forth between my composition windows and several sections of several references.

I can connect a USB cable and backup all of my books, so that in the unhappy event of my reader being lost or stolen, I still have all my books. In fact, books I've bought online are (at my option) recorded with the retailers, so I can re-download them if I need to (but I can expunge the records if I feel paranoid).

I can set up a small perl program on my computer to automatically download and install various blogs or news sites' content to the reader overnight—free sites, or sites to which I already pay for access. I can use its text to speech capabilities to have it read me items of interest on the drive to work, then when I get there I can connect it to the wireless network at work in case I want to do some online reading or browsing over lunch.

There will come a day when all this is possible, and I look forward to that day. And I might not wait for everything to happen: perhaps when I'm happy enough with the state of the world I'll buy a reader and contribute to making things better myself.

Nikon film scanner, .22 and Russian rifles

News, Photography, Guns ·Thursday September 17, 2009 @ 22:32 EDT (link)

I picked up my Mosin Nagant (1927) from West Coast Armory in Issaquah on the morning of the 11th. It took a little longer than expected, in part because having just moved the address on my driver's license needed updating, so I went to get it updated at the nearby Department of Licensing (they updated it for my vehicle registration and gave me a receipt; no charge, and surprisingly no wait and a very fast transaction). It's covered in the rust preventative Cosmoline (old firearms are often dipped in the stuff and then sealed in crates), so I need to disassemble and clean it (and after shooting corrosive ammo, which is the most common surplus).

I met JF at 1100 at the Starbucks on 140th off Bel-Red Road today to test and buy a Nikon Coolscan V ED (LS-50) and light table ($500, via Craigslist). I installed and tested it on my laptop. It seems slow, but that was expected. I hope I'll be able to scan negatives at work while waiting on builds etc. I have approximately 9000 negatives in three binders (that's counting pages and multiplying by 25, but some rolls may have been 36 exposures). Even though I don't intend to keep everything, that's still a lot of scanning and I may have ScanCafé do some.

I drove out to Cabela's in Lacey (way down off I-5 exit 111) after work. They had the Ruger 10/22 wood stock/blued barrel for $199 as advertised, but not the Remington 870 Express Tactical for $299 (advertised in the same flyer). Didn't buy anything else (not even .22 LR ammo); their prices aren't that great (although their store is amazing in terms of size and scope). I'll get some .22LR ammo at the gun show this weekend, and maybe a scope (Bushnell 3-9x40?) and some 7.62x54R.

DVDs finished: Coupling: The Complete 4th Season.

Back before the dawn of time

News, Media ·Sunday September 13, 2009 @ 15:10 EDT (link)

I am about to extend the range of this journal backward to 1997, from the current beginning of November 11, 2000, by means of some written journals that I kept during school (undergrad, of course; BMath at the University of Waterloo, which I started in 1996). This is part of a push to get more things into digital form and travel lighter, which will reduce space required, increase convenience of access, and make moving easier, if it comes to that. Books and notebooks are heavy and bulky. I'm also considering getting a Kindle (DX) (wish they were easier to find used!), and I'm getting a (used) negative scanner on Thursday (Nikon Coolscan V) so I can get rid of some of my old albums when I move them into digital form. That will also spark a return to work on my photo editing/tagging system.

We were up until about 0600 this morning, so understandably we got up quite late too. We're almost finished watching the British series Coupling, which Tim and Katt introduced to us a little while ago. It's a beautiful day, though, so I wish we'd planned to spend more of this weekend outdoors.

Hope for the Wii guitar

News, Technical ·Sunday September 13, 2009 @ 03:59 EDT (link)

I discovered a fix for the faulty Wii Guitar Hero World Tour guitar that I was sold: this article about fixing a broken strum bar (site has another about tightening it) mentions that the problem (extra strums when not touching the bar) could also be an oversensitive touch strip, which can be disabled in the options. This seems to fix the problem; Honey wasn't using the touch strip anyway, although it seems a limitation that might be a problem in future (also I read something about not being able to disable it in group play). It seems the strip can be sensitive to light and shadow (and hence movement). Still doesn't mean I wasn't sold a faulty guitar, with no way to get it repaired under warranty (no box or manual).

Books finished: The Politically Incorrect Guide To Islam and the Crusades.

DVDs finished: Ghost Rider.

First field test of portable shooting frame

News, Guns ·Thursday September 10, 2009 @ 21:46 EDT (link)

I went shooting at SVRC today and Tuesday, using just the Glock (34). Groups are a little left of where I'm aiming, so I need to figure out what I'm doing wrong or (less likely) fix the sights.


When I went today, I was mainly going to test the portable shooting lane; the test went well, but it takes longer than I'd like to set it up (maybe 10 minutes, a bit long during a cease-fire) but I have some ideas to shorten it. Fortunately, I had the place to myself today.

I only needed one of the stands; I tied the other end of the rope to an overhead beam in the covered shooting area. I also shot the thread (used to move the target back and forth); I knew it was hanging down, but figured it was highly unlikely that I'd hit it. But it can be gotten out of the way with some minor design tweaks. It was a good first field test; gives me some ideas on what to change. The binder clips tend to come unglued from the metal hangers, too; I may try again to drill through them and screw them to the hangers. But overall the fundamentals are good.


Excuse the pictures—the light was running low, should have increased the ISO-equivalent or used a tripod.

One worry is that I or another shooter (even someone shooting extremely wildly from another lane) might shoot the frame, but it's cheap ABS pipe and can be patched with duct tape. The diagonal bar in the frame did very well to stabilize it, and I never had need to weigh down the frame.

Planned improvements: Still a work in progress, but it was great to see it working live for the first time. Suggestions for improvement are of course welcome.

DVDs finished: Coupling: The Complete 3rd Season.

Webmail, timely defenses, dishonorable sellers

News, Technical, Political, Work, Guns, School ·Wednesday September 9, 2009 @ 19:19 EDT (link)

Great (libertarian) article about homeschooling, emphasizing how well homeschooled children do, and how the state hates letting them out of their indoctrinating clutches.

Someone finally came to pick up the side tables/cabinets (from our old bed) that we were giving away via Craigslist (and the MS Free Stuff list); after several people missed appointments to pick them up, a guy named Don that was moving from Boise, ID came to get them in his truck on Monday.

I've installed Horde and its web mail client, IMP, an IMAP client. Wasn't too difficult; I used the Gentoo packages (I hope version 5 stabilizes soon and is available since the UI looks much improved). I use IMAP for authentication, and PostgreSQL as the database for preferences. This will allow me to decommission my oldest machine, running Gentoo and KDE, which Honey used for mail (kmail) and wasn't being used for much else (I've used mutt for a while). I looked at the various web mail systems and found that most of the good ones unfortunately run on PHP. So I had to reinstall PHP, which is sad but perhaps they've worked out most of the security issues by now. Many other clients either don't support IMAP, or are insufferably ugly, or unmaintained. Horde is setup only for SSL (https).

As a University of Washington graduate student I get a lot of emails with the subject "[UW Safety] Timely Warning Notification of Criminal Incident - Seattle Campus":
Timely Warning Notification of a Criminal Incident 09/02/09 Attempted Robbery - Seattle Campus

…

Prevention tips for incidents such as this:
One thing they should add to the list as a last but important resort: arm yourself. Criminals don't like it when their victims can shoot back.

I will not be going to the company meeting tomorrow; I was too disappointed by the last ones (long, boring, and cold up in the nosebleed seats, although apparently we had better seats this time).

Finally, two thumbs down for Mario Kosmiskas of Bellevue, who sold me a Wii Guitar Hero package (drums, guitar, two games) (via Microsoft's Sell/Buy alerts list) with a broken guitar: the strum bar sticks. He refused to do anything about it; I'd've been fine if he'd just taken the guitar back and refunded me the money. It doesn't seem advisable to buy from him.

DVDs finished: Broken Arrow.

MythTV and Comcast

News, Technical, Media ·Saturday September 5, 2009 @ 18:23 EDT (link)

Adapting MythTV to Comcast wasn't terrible; the hardest thing was having to control the set-top box that's now required. First, I had to go to Schedules Direct and update our cable package, and remove the channels we don't really get or never want to see or record from (e.g., Spanish channels), run mythtv-setup (and remove the second tuner, until we get a second set-top box), and run mythfilldatabase --refresh-all to update the program database.

The second part was more difficult: controlling the set-top box. Fortunately the Windows Media Center remote comes with a couple of IR blasters (little red lights that look like LEDs that connect to the remote receiver via long wires), so I checked the model of the set-top box (Motorola DCT700) and found a couple of lirc remote configurations to add to /etc/lircd.conf: two here (a primary and a raw one that fixes the zero problem), and a post about it. Also some information about using the MCE IR blaster from the MythTV wiki (near the end of the page).

Once that was setup, I still had a problem: I could use irsend to change channels (send both digits and the OK button using the raw codes; I eventually added the Exit button to dismiss the channel info, since MythTV has its own), and it worked fine from the computer in the other room (ssh) but not so well when using the remote (which runs the channel change script). Turns out the universal remote was interfering with the set-top box, so I blocked it in so it wouldn't see arrant pulses and all was well.

Books finished: Robert E. Lee and the Road of Honor, Robert E. Lee: Duty and Honor, Team of Rivals.

DVDs finished: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Season 5, Coupling: The Complete 2nd Season.

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