dubious.biz(ness)

• 14 hours, 1 reinstall and countless drivers later, finally got wine and compiz to work together! #
• 96% accuracy, 10% false negatives on the first run on my scene recognition! Very good results! #

I finally decided to bite the bullet and install Ubuntu on my Lenovo Thinkpad R60. I desperately want to have the following things working together:

• Compiz Fusion, the hip new “compositing window manager”. It makes linux pretty. This plus good fonts (i.e. UnDotum) equals a usable desktop.
• Sleeping. Turns out that sleeping, (suspend and resume) is pretty difficult. In fact power management in general is hard and is usually implemented by the manufacturers with drivers. This could, of course, be why windows sucks a lot and OSes like Mac are much more efficient (only have to support 1 power management system).
• iTunes. I’m sorry but I just can’t leave iTunes behind. It’s fantastic and nothing in the open source world comes close. To use this I need wine, which allows windows programs to run on Linux. Of course iTunes is a fussy windows program that uses a lot of special stuff so it needs to be caressed gently in to working even on the simplest interfaces.

What I had to do to get this all to work:

1. Install Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) from a CD.
2. To get suspend and restart to work WITH “fglrx”, ATI’s proprietary driver, you have to upgrade your kernel to “Hardy”, the alpha release. Reasons for this are documented in the ubuntu bugs pages. To do this you need to:
3. Update /etc/apt/sources.list to include “deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy main restricted universe”
4. Install the new kernel and modules: “sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install linux-image-2.6.24-12-generic linux-restricted-modules-2.6.24-12-generic linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-12-generic”
5. Delete the hardy lines from /etc/apt/sources.list and apt-get update (don’t upgrade the whole system, hardy is definitely unstable, I had to reinstall after attempting a dist-upgrade
6. Reboot
7. Follow the instructions for a manual install of fglrx found at the unofficial fglrx wiki.
8. After this, you should be able to reboot and have fglrx drivers working. You should be able to run “fglrxinfo” and see “Open GL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.”. This is good. If you see “MESA”, you should try “fglrxinfo -display :0″ and see if you get ATI. If so, you have Xgl installed and should REMOVE it.
9. Remove Xgl: sudo apt-get remove xserver-xgl. This is critical to get Wine to run well, as it requires direct rendering, which Xgl obfuscates. You can easily run compiz WITH fglrx and WITHOUT xgl. Ignore any remaining forum posts or other net crap that say you can’t!
10. Reboot.
11. Try to turn on “extra effects” in System->Preferences->Appearance.
12. If it works, you are now running compiz! If you have “Advanced Desktop Effects Settings” in preferences, go and screw around. If not, install “compizconfig-settings-manager” (and also “compiz-fusion-plugins-extra” and “compiz-fusion-plugins-main”). Play with compiz!!!
13. To get iTunes, install wine: “sudo apt-get install wine” and then follow these instructions. You can install iTunes 7.6 (the latest version) instead of 7.3.
14. I would recommend setting a virtual desktop space in winecfg. It makes iTunes a bit more sensible.
15. Now, just to check to make sure, try to suspend your laptop but closing the lid and chosing suspend. If this stuff doesn’t work check out the ACPI settings on cchtml.

That’s it! If it still isn’t working and you actually read this tutorial, feel free to ask questions. I’m very happy as long as I don’t get tempted to mess with stuff again…

• The love affair is over. I attempted to get iTunes working on Linux and broke it, I am now in ubuntu hardy with loads of probs. Reinstall… #
• another hard day of reconfiguring linux… the real problem is the temptation to apt-get upgrade once everything is working #

• holy crap Bear Sterns goes to JPMorgan. When it rains it pours… May I don’t want the US economy to tank that badly. #
• Ok, so the market is bad, but why is Google down 40% in 3 months when they are beating estimates? What in fundamentals suggests 40% drop? #
• Not that I’m complaining because my option strike will benefit, so long as the market realizes it’s being stupid after I start #

• @kevinrose I’ve gotten really in to building free climbing. Check this out book out of 1930’s climbers in cam:http://tinyurl.com/2lpgd2 #
• slept for 13 hours, now back to wavelets #
• Pics of the new Google office in Zurich. Not sure if this is dotcom crazy but either way I can’t wait http://tinyurl.com/34rwlx #
• The swiss franc is worth more than the dollar!!! Awesome!!! Tank US economy TANK!!! #

• Fantastic day on the Thames. Unlike last year the water sun was shining birds were singing. Result wasn’t amazing but ok #
• Some art I did is in Sceen Magazine, a beautiful German tech-art zine: http://sceen.org/, new issue just arrived. #

Since most people access the majority of the internet via Google it’s pretty damned difficult to determine what’s going on when you’re not getting the result that you want. For many of these queries, it could easily be that your lingo just isn’t jiving with the words in the documents you want. For others, it’s the fact that there are so many results and your keywords were so ambiguous that there isn’t an easy way to determine the right ranking (this often happens when most data is poorly linked, i.e. academic papers or very well linked, i.e. Britney Spears). Lastly it could actually be that the Internet doesn’t have what you’re looking for. Since you’re using a tool, Google, to find it, you could easily miss it because Google is missing it OR because it simply isn’t there.

A few examples:

• “eating soap causes diarrhea”: This is one that I have had several debates on. I believe that not properly rinsing your dishes after you wash them leads to diarrhea. Most people I have spoken to other than my father don’t. Some people don’t even properly rinse in my communal kitchen, the major reason this bothers me. An attendant belief is that eating burnt marshmallows when camping is a cure for diarrhea caused by said soap ingestion. It does not actually appear that either of these is true, but the trouble is simply that nowhere is there a statement of either “eating soap causes diarrhea” or “eating soap does not cause diarrhea”. I would expect the former in various health articles prevalent on the net and the latter as one of the mythbusting sites also prevalent.
• “gabor filter implementation c”: This is one that I’m currently trying to find. It’s extremely technical and well-researched, however it appears that the uniqueness of the words “gabor filter” combined with the commonness of the words “implementation c” cause lots of results for gabor filter without lots of results for implementation, particularly not one with an explanation of what’s going on. This is much more frustrating because I know exactly what I want to find but I’m being forced to describe it in a semantically weak language, the language of search keywords. The fact that several well-respected sites serve as clearinghouses for academic papers (something that I’m not particularly interested in) on the topic of gabor wavelet filters means that there is a lot of information in the first 20 hits about academic papers but very little after that. This appears to be a lack of expressiveness in the search keyword system.
• “compiz best configuration”: I want to know the best configuration for compiz, a Linux program, written as a cohesive blog post or guide. What I get is a ton of forums where people are discussing compiz at great length. I really don’t care what they say because even if they have a comprehensive guide somewhere on the forum it’s in the middle of many useless posts and tons of ads. I want a writer at a magazine or a blogger or compiz themselves to tell me what they think a good configuration for the product is.

This could be caused by a lot of things: first of all a search monoculture where succeeding relies largely on Google means people optimise for one output. Having two equal competitors means that you can’t optimise for both, and that the two competitors can change their ranking without having a huge row over how they have just screwed over a lot of websites (under the grounds that they are in direct competition and improving results to compete). Also the lack of expressiveness in the search query system is abysmal but Google and other search engines have done everything they can to increase the inferences they make from your 25 or so characters. And of course the actual ranking system is very good but not perfect.

Above all, I’d really love a confidence rating in the existence of the answer, even if the search engine doesn’t explicitly tell me its confidence in each result, it could at least say that given your keywords and the corpus, it’s unlikely that this query will return ANYTHING useful.

Does anyone else get massively frustrated when they can’t find the info they’re looking for in 2008? Any suggestions for improving information retrieval? (if so maybe you should sell them to me)

I’ve been feeling like I need to redo most of the site, which includes removing Spooky from the site and making the home page my blog. The problem is that I am both too cheap to mess with the template to do something that’s a bit more current (the site looks very old) and also too busy to do it myself. I really feel frustrated because more than two years ago I wanted to use some funky patterns I saw in wallpaper in Versailles Palace, but now using these sorts of Louis XIV and Louis XV are way too popular and nearly passe. So now I need new inspiration.

Also, I haven’t got much about the real work I’m doing. For example, it would be very easy to go through this whole site without knowing my name (which happens to be Kenny Stoltz). This is really an out of date idea as people can no longer manage to separate an online and offline identity, but it’s something that I’ve held over from when I was a kid and hacking around and wanted to keep those things separate. Since I’m 25, almost 26 now, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to hide under a rock. You also probably don’t have any idea that I’ve done a number of projects, I am cycling from London to Sarajevo, that I am captain of the boat club, my resume, etc.

I recognise the use of profiles like Facebook that are intelligent enough to generate updates but they still don’t tend to be good at long form, short form, or remaining current and pertinent (in short they aren’t really that good at anything). Myspace, being slightly dumber, tends to be even worse as whole sections of the page are neglected. I think ultimately the best way for someone who spends most of their time online to manage their public identity is still to use a blog/website.

So I need to redo the website and I need a new design. Anyone want to volunteer?

So I took the job in Zurich. That means I’m paid in the local currency, the Swiss Franc. After I made this call, or maybe during the making of this call, the US went in to recession and the US economic weakness has made it the least desirable to hold of all currencies. Hence the dollar has dropped precipitously against all currencies against, perhaps, the pound. That includes the Franc. In fact the Franc is unique in that it has strong links to gold (though it is not actually gold-backed) because so many Swiss banks hold loads of gold in their vaults. It is, like Switzerland itself, considered a safe haven and a neutral party. It is far more stable in foreign exchanges than other currencies (i.e. holds the same value over time) but has been appreciating considerably against the dollar.

In fact it is now approaching 1:1 with the dollar, and heading for the flip. That would mean that the a Swiss Franc would be worth more than a US Dollar, something that hasn’t happened, well, ever (in fact in the 50’s the rate was 4.373CHF to a dollar). What this means for you, fair reader, is damned near nothing. What it means for me is that the currency market may actually work in my favor for once, after 3 years of being brutalized by it. I don’t even flinch when paying $5 for a ham sandwich, $4 for a beer, $9 for a gallon of gas, and $2 for a cup of coffee. Not a starbucks cup of coffee (those cost $3.90) but a plain old black cup of joe.

But now I am facing the prospect of earning more in Switzerland than I would have earned in the US just because of the exchange rate (so long as I work out everything in dollars). Of course this doesn’t really do anything for me, because all the prices for ham sandwiches are still denominated in francs so I won’t actually be able to purchase any more or less than I would have, but at least the currency market won’t be screwing me.