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Messing with .ics

Preparing OS X master disk images for student/staff/faculty Macs for the upcoming school year, decided it would be cool to give them some starter RSS and iCal subscriptions. I wrote an RSS generator for our events database quite a while ago, and realized it wouldn’t be too hard to modify the same PHP script to also spit out .ics with the same data. Used Apple’s Developer Connection page on writing to the .ics format and filled in a few blanks with the IETF’s documentation.

Hit a roadblock when iCal refused to subscribe my initial feed attempts, then realized they’re very serious about .ics having CRLF line endings. Tweaked that and it worked neatly.

Mac users click here for instant subscription. Other .ics users can subscribe manually via http://journalism.berkeley.edu/events/jschool_events.ics . (Note you currently have to go back to May to see any content; that will change as the next event cycle begins in September).

Music: Arturo Sandoval :: Sureña
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Flammable Ice

Looks like the next big energy growth industry is in extracting methane hydrates from oceanic deposits. “Scientists reckon there could be more valuable carbon fuel stored in the vast methane hydrate deposits scattered under the world’s seabed and Arctic permafrost than in all of the known reserves of coal, oil and gas put together.” That is, if you don’t mind the slight downsides:

“There are legitimate concerns that attempts to tap into these reserves could cause very widespread destabilisation of the seabed and damage to ecosystems,” he said. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, he said, and any released during production would make global warming worse.

Humans, please leave this stuff in the ocean. Fuels that increase global warming should not even be under consideration right now. Bushco, if you want to ban a science, leave stem cell research alone and ban extraction of methane hydrates instead.

Music: The Mountain Goats :: Song For Dennis Brown
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LBJ Invented the Internet

Move over Al Gore – Lyndon B Johnson assumes the rightful mantle as Inventor of the Internet. In 1967, LBJ gave a speech accompanying the signing of the Public Broadcasting Act:

I believe the time has come to stake another claim in the name of all the people, stake a claim based upon the combined resources of communications. I believe the time has come to enlist the computer and the satellite, as well as television and radio, and to enlist them in the cause of education….

So I think we must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge-not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and of storing information that the individual can rise. Think of the lives that this would change:

  • the student in a small college could tap the resources of a great university….
  • the country doctor getting help from a distant laboratory or a teaching hospital;
  • a scholar in Atlanta might draw instantly on a library in New York;
  • a famous teacher could reach with ideas and inspirations into some far-off classroom, so that no child need be neglected. Eventually, I think this electronic knowledge bank could be as valuable as the Federal Reserve Bank.

And such a system could involve other nations, too–it could involve them in a partnership to share knowledge and to thus enrich all mankind.

A wild and visionary idea? Not at all. Yesterday’s strangest dreams are today’s headlines and change is getting swifter every moment.

I have already asked my advisers to begin to explore the possibility of a network for knowledge–and then to draw up a suggested blueprint for it.

Via Buzzmachine and elsewhere. Thanks baald.

Music: Michael Nyman :: Synchronising
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Remodel Status #2

Hextile Took off work Friday to finish spackling/sanding (lather, rinse, repeat) the walls to baby-hiney perfection. Finished masking and priming, applied two coats of Rainwashed Mmmmm… creamy marine! (Compare to destructo image. Note, this bathroom is very difficult to photograph — hard to get a decent angle or lighting. Looks much better IRL!)

Dad arrived Saturday with tile saw, trowels, sponges. Intended to lay tile Saturday and grout Sunday, but took all day to measure and cut. Nooks and crannies are killers. Hex tile comes in 12″ x 18″ sheets, tiles bound lightly together with small rubber dots. Big areas easy, but spaces around tub, corners, heating register, etc. tedious. Tile saw too small for our sheet size, lots of jimmying to make things work. Once layed in, marked hexes for removal where accent tiles would go, then moved all to living room floor in exact layout. Removed marked hexes to make way for accent tiles.

Sunday started early arranging and cutting coving. Getting the corner cuts right super tricky (not mitered, just nicked corners off at 45 degrees, still very hard to get right, but think we nailed it). Started smearing mortar by early afternoon. One row at a time, replicating yesterday’s arrangement: smear even, comb, pound in with beater block, lay in accent tiles, last-minute adjustment cuts (no amount of planning accounts for the ragged reality of real life). Idea is to get angle of notched trowel just right so that no mortar oozes up between cracks but you still get 95% coverage on tile backs; took some practice. Dropped in the accents, dug extra mortar out with penny nail, sponged excess out to perfection. Finished up by 6:30, fried, back sore, knees cramped, but the results are gorgeous so far. In a couple of days, will be able to grout the gaps, install coving, and apply sealant. After weeks in stasis, it’s all starting to come together.

Closed my eyes on the couch and head filled with visions of oozing mortar, hex webs falling apart in my hands.

Music: Philipps Frazier :: Come Ethiopians
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Kill ‘Em All

From Think Progress (no comment, this speaks for itself):

The United States is holding more than 500 foreign detainees at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These men have been deprived of basic legal and civil rights, and reports of abuse, torture and grotesque mistreatment are rampant. Many, if not most, of the detainees have been there nearly four years, yet in all that time, only four have been accused of any crime. And even then, military prosecutors recently charged the military trials against those four have been rigged.

So what would Fox’s Bill O’Reilly do to fix the problem? Kill ‘em all:
O’REILLY: I don’t give them any protection. I don’t feel sorry for them. In fact, I probably would have ordered their execution if I had the power. (Listen to O’Reilly here.)

Music: Black Cat Orchestra :: Chase
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Likable Liar

The majority of Americans now see Bush as dishonest. But 2/3 of respondents also describe him as “strong and likable.” So according to the Venn Diagram, somewhere out there is a sizable group of people who find our president a likable liar. How patriotic.

Music: Stereolab :: Contronatura
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Supatamp

Playing “Switched-Off Bach” a while ago (interesting history on the releases of Switched-On and -Off in 1968) when a melancholy passage comes in. Miles looks at me and says, “Daddy, this music makes me sad.” Walked into his room and pulled the blankets over his head. Later pegged a less-than-upbeat Toots and the Maytals track as also being “sad.” Can now identify four or five genres. When asked, usually says his favorite kind of music is “weggae.” This evening, driving home listening to Breakfast in America, M pipes up from the back seat. “Daddy, this music isn’t sad like that weggae song, this music is happy!” Typically unable to help myself from supplying info he isn’t ready to process, I pounce on the opportunity to tell him all about Supertramp. “Now I know a lot of kinds of music. Cwassico, Chazz, Blues Clues, Weggae, and Supatamp!” Decided not to go into the messy terrain of subgenres like Ork. Maybe when he turns three.

Music: Pete Brown & his Battered Ornaments :: Then I must go
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Solar Grove

Kyocera installed an array of 25 “solar trees” in their parking lot, letting employees park in their shade. Cars stay cool, and the mini-plant generates enough power yearly to save an estimated 338,905 pounds of carbon dioxide (which would otherwise be spewed into the air by conventional power generation).

Cheap plastic solar is not nearly as efficient as traditional solar, but it destroys the price barrier for small private projects like this.

Music: Tom Waits :: Drunk On The Moon
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Bottled Water: The Hoax

Watched a great Penn & Teller “Bullshit!” episode a few months ago on the bottled water industry, which confirmed what many of us already suspected: Bottled water is not more pure than tap water, nor more healthy, and the bottled water industry is environmentally nasty. Not to mention the fact that most people can’t tell bottled water from tap water in a blind taste test (in the episode, they crafted some fancy “high end” water labels and affixed them to empty plastic bottles, which they then proceeded to fill with water from a rubber garden hose in the back alley; the footage of diners at a fancy restaurant being invited to comment on the taste of the “gourmet” waters was priceless). Loved the close-up of the Dasani bottle label, which proclaims proudly “Source: Milwaukee municipal water supply.”

Because Penn and Teller cuss so much (well, Penn does), and because their shows often seem skewed or riddled with personal agenda checkpoints, I sometimes find their credibility dubious. So it’s nice to find an op-ed in the New York Times coming to exactly the same conclusions.

Nor is there any health or nutritional benefit to drinking bottled water over tap water. In one study, published in The Archives of Family Medicine, researchers compared bottled water with tap water from Cleveland, and found that nearly a quarter of the samples of bottled water had significantly higher levels of bacteria. The scientists concluded that “use of bottled water on the assumption of purity can be misguided.”

Oh, and there’s the small matter of highway robbery:

Ounce for ounce, it costs more than gasoline, even at today’s high gasoline prices; depending on the brand, it costs 250 to 10,000 times more than tap water.

Bottled water is the ultimate consumer suckerpunch, yet remains phenomenally popular. Do people simply not know it’s a consummate waste, or do they know and buy it anyway? The whole phenomenon is beyond me.

Music: Mike Watt :: Maggot Brain