I decided to update these for this election, and here's the result:
Just in case you didn't get the full picture, here is the same data plotted on a common scale:
So, whereas 10 years ago, we had a total of ~$58 million on the election, the
overwhelming amount of in support, this time, we had ~$662 million, an 11 fold increase!
The Cal-Access Campaign Finance Activity: Propositions & Ballot Measures source I used last time was still there, but there are way more propositions this time (12 vs 5), and the money details are broken out by committee, with some propositions have a dozen committees. Another wrinkle is that website has protected by some fancy scraping protection. I could browse it just fine in Firefox, even with Javascript turned off, but couldn't download it using wget, curl, or python, even after setting up all of the same headers, not just the User-Agent one. I would just get something like this:
The only catch is that this source was last updated two weeks ago, so it's not
the freshest data. Also, last time I had data for both contributions and for
money spent, but this summed page only has contribution totals, not spending
totals (the spending figures are still there)
But I figured it's good enough to get the big picture.
Also, here's the python code used to generate these plots (largely reused from
last time, so don't expect it to be pretty).
# Create contributions bar charts of committees supporting and opposing# various propositions on the California Ballot for November 2020# created by Paul Ivanov (https://pirsquared.org)# figure(0) - Contributions by Proposition (as subplots)# figure(2) - Contributions on a common scaleimportnumpyasnpfrommatplotlibimportpyplotaspltimportlocale# fun times! without this next line, I got a# ValueError: Currency formatting is not possible using the 'C' locale.locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL,'en_US.UTF-8')elec="Nov2020"election="November 2020 Election"# This part was done by hand by collecting data from CalAccess:# https://www.sos.ca.gov/campaign-lobbying/cal-access-resources/measure-contributions/# proposition: (yes, no) cont={'14':(12810328,250),'15':(56320926,60905901),'16':(19926905,1172614),'17':(1363887,0),'18':(835064,0),'19':(37794775,45050),'20':(4829677,20471086),'21':(40184953,59379159),'22':(188937777,15896808),'23':(6917438,104405156),'24':(5907002,48368),'25':(13446871,10181122)}defcurrency(x,pos):"""The two args are the value and tick position"""ifx==0:return"$0"ifx<1e3:return'$%f'%(x)elifx<1e6:return'$%1.0fK'%(x*1e-3)return'$%1.0fM'%(x*1e-6)frommatplotlib.tickerimportFuncFormatterformatter=FuncFormatter(currency)yes,no=range(2)c=[(6.,.5,0),'blue']# color for yes/no stancec=['red','blue']# color for yes/no stancec=[(1.,.5,0),'blue']# color for yes/no stancea=[.9,.9]# alpha for yes/no stancea=[.6,.5]# alpha for yes/no stancet=['Yes','No ']# text for yes/no stanceraised,spent=range(2)title=["Contributed to","Spent on"]# reuse code by injecting title specificsfield=['Contributions','Expenditures']footer="""Total %s 1/1/2020-10/14/2020 (1/1/2020-10/16/2020 for Prop 15)Data from http://www.sos.ca.gov/campaign-lobbying/cal-access-resources/measure-contributions/2020-ballot-measure-contribution-totals cc-by Paul Ivanov (https://pirsquared.org)"""# will inject field[col] in all plotscolor=np.array((.9,.9,.54))*.9# spine/ticklabel colorcolor=np.array((.52,.32,.12))# spine/ticklabel colorcolor=np.array((.82,.42,.12))# spine/ticklabel colorcolor="gray"color=np.array((85.,107,47))/255# darkolivegreenplt.rcParams['savefig.dpi']=200deffixup_subplot(ax,color):""" Tufte-fy the axis labels - use different color than data"""spines=list(ax.spines.values())# liberate the data! hide right and top spines[ax.spines[s].set_visible(False)forsin["top","right"]]ax.yaxis.tick_left()# don't tick on the right# there's gotta be a better way to set all of these colors, but I don't# know that way, I only know the hard way[s.set_color(color)forsinspines][s.set_color(color)forsinax.yaxis.get_ticklines()][s.set_visible(False)forsinax.xaxis.get_ticklines()][(s.set_color(color),s.set_size(8))forsinax.xaxis.get_ticklabels()][(s.set_color(color),s.set_size(8))forsinax.yaxis.get_ticklabels()]ax.yaxis.grid(which='major',linestyle='-',color=color,alpha=.3)adjust_dict={'bottom':0.052,'hspace':0.646815834767644,'left':0.13732508948909858,'right':0.92971038073543777,'top':0.94082616179001742,'wspace':0.084337349397590383}# subplots for each proposition (Fig 0 and Fig 1)col=0f=plt.figure(col);f.clf();f.dpi=100;fori,pinenumerate(cont):ax=plt.subplot(len(cont),1,i+1)ax.clear()#p = i+14 #prop numberforstancein[yes,no]:plt.bar(stance,cont[p][stance],color=c[stance],linewidth=0,align='center',width=.1,alpha=a[stance])lbl=locale.currency(round(cont[p][stance]),symbol=True,grouping=True)lbl=lbl[:-3]# drop the cents, since we've roundedax.text(stance,cont[p][stance],lbl,ha='center',size=8)ax.set_xlim(-.3,1.3)ax.xaxis.set_ticks([0,1])ax.xaxis.set_ticklabels(["Yes on %s"%p,"No on %s"%p])# put a big (but faded) "Proposition X" in the center of this subplotcommon=dict(alpha=.1,color='k',ha='center',va='center',transform=ax.transAxes)ax.text(0.5,.9,"Proposition",size=8,weight=600,**common)ax.text(0.5,.50,"%s"%p,size=50,weight=300,**common)ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(formatter)# plugin our currency labelerax.yaxis.get_major_locator()._nbins=5# put fewer tickmarks/labelsfixup_subplot(ax,color)adjust_dict.update(left=0.13732508948909858,right=0.92971038073543777)f.subplots_adjust(**adjust_dict)# Figure title, subtitleextra_args=dict(family='serif',ha='center',va='top',transform=f.transFigure)f.text(.5,.99,"Money %s CA Propositions"%title[col],size=12,**extra_args)f.text(.5,.975,election,size=9,**extra_args)#footerextra_args.update(va='bottom',size=6,ma='center')f.text(.5,0.0,footer%field[col],**extra_args)f.set_figheight(20.);f.set_figwidth(5);f.canvas.draw()f.savefig('CA-Props-%s-%s-Subplots.png'%(elec,field[col]))# all props on one figure (Fig 2 and Fig 3)f=plt.figure(col+2);f.clf()adjust_dict.update(left=0.045,right=.98,top=.91,bottom=.12)f.subplots_adjust(**adjust_dict)f.set_figheight(6.)f.set_figwidth(16)extra_args=dict(family='serif',ha='center',va='top',transform=f.transFigure)f.text(.5,.99,"Money %s CA Propositions"%title[col],size=12,**extra_args)f.text(.5,.96,election,size=9,**extra_args)footer=footer.replace("/\n","/")#.replace("\nc", "c")#footer = footer.replace("\n", "") + "\n"extra_args.update(ha='center',va='bottom',size=6,ma='center')#f.text(adjust_dict['left'],0.0,footer%field[col], **extra_args)f.text(.5,0.0,footer%field[col],**extra_args)ax=plt.subplot(111)forstancein[yes,no]:abscissa=np.arange(0+stance*.30,len(cont),1)total=sum([x[stance]forxincont.values()])lbl=locale.currency(round(total),True,True)lbl=lbl[:-3]# drop the cents, since we've roundedlbl=t[stance]+" Total "+lbl.rjust(12)plt.bar(abscissa,[cont[p][stance]forpincont],width=.1,color=c[stance],alpha=a[stance],align='center',linewidth=0,label=lbl)fori,pinenumerate(cont):lbl=locale.currency(round(cont[p][stance]),symbol=True,grouping=True)lbl=lbl[:-3]# drop the cents, since we've rounded#ha = 'center' if i != 2 else "right" # tweek by hand to make numbers show upax.text(abscissa[i],cont[p][stance],lbl,ha="center",size=8,rotation=00)ax.set_xlim(xmin=-.3)ax.xaxis.set_ticks(np.arange(.15,len(cont),1))ax.xaxis.set_ticklabels(["Prop %s"%pforpincont])fixup_subplot(ax,color)# plt.legend(prop=dict(family='monospace',size=9)) # this makes legend tied# to the subplot, tie it to the figure, insteadhandles,labels=ax.get_legend_handles_labels()l=plt.figlegend(handles,labels,loc='upper right',prop=dict(family='monospace',size=9))l.get_frame().set_visible(False)ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(formatter)# plugin our currency labelerf.canvas.draw()f.savefig('CA-Props-%s-%s.png'%(elec,field[col]))plt.show()
I was chatting with Anthony Scopatz last week, and one of the things we covered
was how it'd be cool to have a subcommand launcher, kind of like git, where
the subcommands were swappable. If you're not familiar, git automatically
calls out to git-something (note the dash) whenever you run
$gitsomething
and something is not one of the builtin git commands. For me, ~/bin is in my PATH, so
$gitlost
git:'lost'isnotagitcommand.See'git --help'.
$echo"echo how rude!">~/bin/git-lost;chmod+x~/bin/git-lost
$gitlost
howrude!
And so what Anthony was talking about was having two commands that are supposed
to do the same thing, and being able to switch between them. For example: maybe
we have git-away and git-gone and both
of them perform a similar function, and we wish call our preferred one when we run git lost.
One way to do this would be to copy or symlink our chosen version as git-lost,
and replace that file whenever we wanted to switch between git-away and
git-gone. Another would be to rename both as git-lost and store them in
different folders, adjusting our PATH variable so the preferred version of
git-lost would get called.
Now with git itself, you can do this by making a git alias. Here are some of
my frequently used aliases from my ~/.gitconfig:
[alias]diffw=diff --word-diff=color --ignore-cr-at-eolroot=rev-parse --show-toplevellgo=loglazy=commit -a -m.
git diffw will highlight only parts of the line that were added and removed,
instead of whole lines
git root prints the top-most directory of the current
git repository
git lgo is a typo for git log (I also have several versions
of checkout typos)
git lazy is for those frequent times when having to think of a commit message
is too onerous.
So we would add lost=away to our alias block to have git lost call
git-away and change that alias to lost=gone when we wanted to have
git lost call git-gone, instead.
I wondered what a simple, generic version of such capability might look like
and wrote a short shell script and then a README file that's ten times longer
than the script itself to explain it. :)
By default, aliases are stored in the .aka file of the current working
directory. Optionally, the location of that file can be modified by setting the
AKA_FILE environment variable. Tested on Debian, OpenBSD, and OpenWRT, aka
uses portable shell syntax and should work everywhere that has a typical /bin/sh
Now you can aka doit to your heart's content inside each of those folders, and
have that execute the appropriate build commands for the type of project it is.
aka is a tiny portable shell script that gets executed via /bin/sh, sources
AKA_FILE and evals the positional parameters, thus applying aliases and
whatever other shell script shenanigans stored in AKA_FILE.
For example, this means that you can put something like
alias my='AKA_FILE=~/.my_aliases aka'
in your shell's startup files, and thereafter use the my command as an aka
invocation that always sources ~/.my_aliases file in your home directory,
regardless of where you run it.
Notes
Initial prototype uses aliases, which may not work for programs that depend on
establishing their behavior based on the argv[0] name they were called by
(busybox, for example).
If you want to create aliases that include quotes, multiple commands, output
redirection, or job control, you either have to escape the special characters
like > and & with backslashes when creating the alias, or edit .aka file
to add them directly in there:
In the example above, if we don't put a backslash in front of the semicolon, we
will be terminating our aka alias for double_date with just one call do date,
and calling the second date command immediately.
And finally, aka stores the aliases using single quotes, so if you have
commands where you need to preserve single quotes, you should edit the .aka
file by hand to change the alias definition to use double quotes.
Related Projects
https://direnv.net:
"direnv is an extension for your shell. It augments existing shells with a new
feature that can load and unload environment variables depending on the current
directory." The direnv website has links to a half dozen similar projects.
Debian's update-alternatives
Debian's alternatives system is similar: it lets you switch out raw XX
command for all users, which is why you have to run update-alternatives as
root. With aka, you're defining the aka XX commands and they only apply on a
per-folder basis (or per AKA_FILE environment variable, if set).
2020-10-28: added notes about multiple commands, redirection, and quotes
Source code
Standard ~40 line aka with comments and usage printing:
#!/bin/sh# aka, written by Paul Ivanov: https://git.sr.ht/~pi/akaif[$#-eq0];thenset---h# print usage on 0 argumentsfiif[$#-ge1];thencase$1in-h|--help|-help|-H)echo"Usage: aka alias show stored aliases"echo" aka alias NAME CMD... store an alias for CMD"echo" aka NAME [...] run CMD, optionally with more arguments"exit0;;esacfialiasFile=${AKA_FILE:-./.aka}# Is this an alias creation? If so, we should have at least 3 arguments,# such as:## $ aka alias pager more# \ \ \ \# $0 $1 $2 $3#if[$#-ge3]&&[$1=alias];then# cmd='pager'cmd=$2# make 'more' the new $1shift2# remove previous aliases for 'pager'[-e"$aliasFile"]&&grep-v"alias $cmd=""$aliasFile">"$aliasFile"~
echo"alias $cmd='$*'">>"$aliasFile"~&&mv"$aliasFile"~"$aliasFile"exit0fi# Load up aliases...[-e"$aliasFile"]&&."$aliasFile"# ...and execute commandeval$*
Tiny ~10 line aka without comments:
#!/bin/sh# aka, written by Paul Ivanov: https://git.sr.ht/~pi/akaaliasFile=${AKA_FILE:-./.aka}if[$#-ge3]&&[$1=alias];thencmd=$2shift2[-e"$aliasFile"]&&grep-v"alias $cmd=""$aliasFile">"$aliasFile"~
echo"alias $cmd='$*'">>"$aliasFile"~&&mv"$aliasFile"~"$aliasFile"exit0fi[-e"$aliasFile"]&&."$aliasFile"eval$*
This is the first post of what I'm calling a Lazy
River of Curious Content.
This is a way to review stuff that I've been doing, dealing with, or find
interesting during the week recently (This was
originally written two weeks ago, May 3rd, my shoddy internet connectivity kept
me from posting it.). I'm loosely following the format that Justin Sherrill
uses with great effect over at
https://dragonflydigest.com
"While I had read the NixOS pamphlets, and listened politely when the
faithful came knocking on my door at inconvenient times, I had never walked
the path of functional Linux enlightenment myself"
Reading through that made me file away a todo of writing up how I use
propellor (and why). But those todo
sometimes just pile up for a while...
Owning up to still getting it wrong
sometimes. Over
on The Unix Historical Society list, there was a thread about the origin and
meaning of Plan 9 from Bell Labs. Venerable computing deity Ken Thompson sends a
private message to aforementioned computing demi-god Rob Pike, Rob forwards the
admonishment back to the list.
I started playing with Krita a few weeks ago, using a
tablet input device. I found out about Krita and felt empowered to try it thanks
to this excellent explanatory video tutorial by David
Revoy. Again,
recurring theme of humility and gentle nature of creative high-output
individuals. Thank you, David!
I showed Matthias and Camille my first tracing using Krita, and Matthias made me
aware of Grease Pencil - a way to do animations in Blender, and Camille sent me
an awesome and sweet comic book she made about their cat.
Matthias showed me that there's a way in Git now to have git blame ignore
stylistic commit changes - see ipython
PR#12091 for how to set it
up, and #12277 where we start
using it. This was a pet-peeve of mine back when Nelle started to apply
semi-automated PEP-8 formatting to parts of the matplotlib
codebase - that it was making it more difficult to use git blame to track down
when lines were changed functionally, and why.
And then, while we were chatting about a custom LaTeX completer PR that he has
open, he arrived at "wouldn't it be cool to throw and exception with the
table-flip emoji in your code?" ... and a short while later, he made that work:
I've also tried out Mupen64Plus - a
Nintendo 64 emulator (which I found out about via OpenBSD ports list). I found
some ROMs that fell off the back of a truck, but without a proper controller,
it's kind of difficult to play (I tried with an SNES-like USB controller, no
dice). So now I've ordered a USB N64-like controller.
Looks like we can't inline audio for your browser. That's cool, just find the
direct file links below.
paul's habitual errant ramblings (on Fr)idays
pheridays: 3
2020-04-10: A week ago, I recorded a 5 minute audio segment of some stuff I've
been thinking about, but when I started to write it up I stumbled into and kept
dropping down a deep technostalgic hole.
The recording is just shy of five minutes long, you can also download it in
different formats, depending on your needs, if the audio tag above doesn't suit
you:
Jitsi - "Multi-platform open-source video conferencing"
OpenFire - "real time
collaboration (RTC) server licensed under the Open Source Apache License."
Extensible XMPP server, with plugins, like a Jitsi-based video meeeting one
claled OpenFire Meetings.
Though this is the fourth installment, the last time I recorded and posted a
rambling was back almost 8 years ago! In fact, it was
2012-08-03, so 7 years and 8 months, to the day.
Having control of your infrastructure is a longtime thread for me.
For starters - there's the bicycle. That's been my primary and preferred mode
of transportation for 30 years. As a kid, I was empowered by the sense of
freedom, independence, and self-sufficiency that came with a bike. All these
years later, I'm still a fan. You can see just how happy I am on a bike at the
top of this interview
,
thanks to a sweet photo that was taken by Robert Sexton right by the Golden Gate
Bridge at the end of the Lucas Valley Populaire in 2015.
Those of you who knew me back in college might remember how at UC Davis I ran my
own "pirate" internet radio station
- KPVL - with the cheeky tagline of "More broadcasters than listeners". (I say
"pirate" because it has not relation to the actual KPVL radio station). But
there are earlier remnants and traces of my efforts to exercise control and
build my own reality.
I think it was in 1999 that my brother Mike and I started using Redhat (6), then
Mandrake Linux 6.5, dual booting on a computer at home and I separately around
the same time I got myself an sdf.org account. Though I wasn't sophisticated
enough to have a constant internet connection in high school, I was lucky enough
to get an account on Robert Chin's laya.com server. The url was - p.laya.com -
it's long gone, but luckily, Archive.org has a copy from 2001.
Wow. I just took a look and so much came flooding back.
Here's the thing: April is an anniversary of sorts for me. Back in 1999, it
marks my first time breaking anonymity and pseudonimity and using my real name
on the internet. I've written about this before under the title of Publisher's
block ten years ago - just about half way
between now and then. This time, though, let me inline the piece I
linked to as proof
of the deliberate nature of my lack of anonymity.
An account of my life at 15, as I live it.
traces of my awareness of the world, I can look back at later
My first attempt at a memoir
My goal is to capture my many thoughts emotions, behaviors, incidents, and
acquaintances
and to arrive only at an exponential number of those,
hoping yet being afraid that it might be zero
making everything about me: one
I'm glad I can now reflect on the kind of kid I was, thanks to the amazing folks
who had the foresight to start archiving all of the web for The Way Back Machine.
I used that p.laya.com page as a todo list and notes for myself using a hipster
combination of the default file index listing with a FOOTER.html. It was
captured in 2001, I was in 17, but some of this was
written when I was 15 or 16 (I found contents from November 2000), I make
mention to my then freeshell.org account (it's now been ivanov@ since 2012). I
link to the source code of a MUD -
ftp://ftp.game.org/pub/mud/diku/merc/rom/tartarus/tartarus.tgz - which is a
broken link now, but I found a mirror over here:
which is amazing, because just a week or two ago, I was hanging out with
fellow SciPy 2020 program co-chairs Madicken Munk
and Gil Forsyth over video chat after one of
our meetings and I was happily reporting about how one of the
positive things to come out of the shelter in place for me is that "I've fixed
my mutt configuration and started using it again!" - but they both heard
"mutt" as "MUD" and got very excited by that prospect. So much so that we
all agreed that we'll have to follow up and actually follow through to build a
MUD. And I brought up how at some point in high school I was mildly active in a
pair of MUDs, and wanted to make my own, but never got around to it.
The last link I left for myself on there points to
pinkmonkey.com - a homeschooling resource - which is
probably handy for the parents with little ones these days.
Here's the most concrete infrastructure project I can find from then: I
collected bookmarks from my friends to share them. The "service" lived at
http://p.laya.com/bookmarks - and predates del.icio.us and pinboard. I
bet I "advertised" it in my AIM profile.
If you're curious, there's a link to the archive.org copy near the end of this
post, but I had this urge to show it to you much closer to its original glory.
Let me set the scene: It's Friday in April, the year is 2020, I'm running
Windows 10 on my work laptop in poorly connected home in California, where a
pandemic has most of the state's residents staying put at home for the several
weeks already, and I decided to make a screenshot using the tool du jour of
yesteryear
Netscape Navigator!
The timestamp on my bookmark website says I last updated it on: Thu Aug 30
20:14:14 PDT 2001
OldVersion.com tells me that the
latest release for Windows that Netscape 4.79 was released in November of that
year, and the closest antecedent version available is 4.72 (from February 2000).
I downloaded it and tried fiddling around with the compatibility settings, but
without any luck.
Then I tried 4.79, and nope, that didn't work, either. So then I tried Netscape
6.01 - release February 2001.
I happened to have Chrome running at the time because in Firefox I have
1500 tabs open -- fifteen hundred and seven! ;) -- whereas in Chrome it's
under 500, so I was trying to tread lightly. How do I know these numbers? For
Chrome I found an extension that allows me to copy into the clipboard all open
tabs' urls as plain text. It helpfully announces how many such tabs were copied.
In Firefox one of the webextension examples gives you a counter.
Do you remember the web without tabs? Time was, you wanted to visit another
webpage, you got two option: you navigate away from whatever you're looking at
now, or you hit Ctrl-N to make an new window. I think most people used one or a
few windows. But you were not gonna be crazy and open more than a dozen windows.
I would have, and probably tried but I couldn't. And session saving across
crashes or clean exits? Forget it! That what your history and bookmarks are for,
grasshopper.
But let's get back to the task at hand: this was the lower right of my screen...
and I decide to start taking screenshots of this journey, click it, and let
Windows 10 apply the compatibility settings, and then I'm faced with
the most improbable error message:
:)
WAT?!
I didn't think Chrome had any ancestry shared with the Mosaic super-tree, but
whatever - you can't exactly argue with software from 2001, and I have an
important screenshot to take...
So now I've quit Chrome, just in case, and going to retry....
no dice....
Damn, what could it be...I've got the Bloomberg Terminal open, I know portions
of it are built on Chromium browser technology (had to look it up if this was
officially stated somewhere - it
is).
Ok, so maybe that's what causing the false positive? I close that, and...
...
I hardly have anything open anymore ...is it VLC?
...
nope... Ok, what's left still open... Snipping tool I'm using to capture this
epic adventure, a few WSL Debian console windows... the voice recorder
that started this post... Task manager and Sysinternals' Process
Explorer
- where I was checking if perhaps somehow the failed attempt at running what was
probably a 16 bit version of Navigator 4.72 was still lingering somewhere...
SumatraPDF, Windows Terminal (Preview), gVim, and ...
Zotero?!?
BINGO!!!!!!!!!
Oh right - I guess Zotero uses XUL technology. I didn't really think much about
it, but Zotero did start off life as a Firefox extension, and the standalone version
came out later, makes sense that it would have grabbed a browser when it struck
out on its own.
At this point I had already sent Madicken, who works at NCSA where Mosaic, the
progenitor of Netscape hails from, the first two images... So I wanted to play
with fire a bit....
Now that I've closed Zotero - can I have Firefox 74 open while installing Netscape
6.01?
Rats! same error...
how about Chrome again?
oh yeah! Sweet. The world makes sense again.
Back to the setup.exe...
I scroll through the EULA - and randomly stop on this section:
By the way - here's a good idea I came across a few months ago: throw EULAs (End
User License Agreements) into some publicly indexed version control repo (I saw
folks using gists for just that sort of thing: here's the Netscape 6.01
EULA.txt)
Let the folks at Redmond host it.
Fine. I click next...
Interesting - there's a "Read Me" button... I do as I'm told, so I click it.
Yeah, I'm sure Yahoo! engineers are jumping right on that.
How did a Netscape site ended up redirecting to Yahoo...
oh right, so AOL bought Netscape (1999), merged with Time Warner in 2001, was
spun out again in 2009, after some rough times, and then purchased by Verizon in
2015. In the meantime, Yahoo acquired Geocities (1999) and shut it down in 2009
(yes, I'm still mad! All I remember was that it had some crispy banners,
one of which was a scan of a sweet pencil lettering I made of my nick at the time -
"ShadowKnight"). No one really cares what happened to Yahoo in the interim,
aside from some massive data breaches, until finally, Verizon bought Yahoo in
2017 and merged AOL and Yahoo into one division.
And indeed we can see what it looked like
originally.
This site has seen so many redirects over the years - it'd be a fun exercise to
go through all of the indexed versions of this kind of site to see how people
tried to preserve links. For example, I found out in 2010 it 301s ("Temporary
redirect") to http://www.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/ns6/relnotes/6.0.html which
then 302s ("Permanent redirect") to
http://www.propeller.com/eng/mozilla/ns6/relnotes/6.0.html - which was indexed
but happens to be a 404 ("Page not found") error page, at least in 2008.
But this wasn't what we came here for, so this yak can roam free among the
hills, the valleys, and the caverns of our minds.
... for now...
Where were we?
Oh right, we have to choose an install option. Back in the day I might have
clicked "recommended" here, but we're not back in the day, and who wants to play
life on easy mode? Let's go custom to see what the options are (I am a
control freak, after all)
and immediately get another pop up:
Whoa, let's pause here for a moment.
I am digging such a consent model. The installer is establishing trust: it
will not try to do anything behind my back and without my permission. I'm sure
it will never abuse that trust. As a 2001 user, I sure am glad that folks
involved with computing have such a well-develop sense of ethics. In 2001, the
Future is bright. Computing will be filled with transparency. Consumer software
and services will be built by folks with a strong moral compass. These are
people with principles. With the dot-com bubble burst, we've swiftly
inoculated tech from sleazy opportunists. It won't fall victim to the excesses
and greed rivaling Wall Street in the 80s...
Which reminds me - how is it that this brilliant video only has 277 thousand
views? Here's a excerpt:
Your users won't always understand just how much economic sense it makes to
sell them out. And you don't want to alienate them, that would drive down
their value.
By the way - the embed code I used above uses the youtube-nocookie.com domain -
which is still from the folks at Goolag, but does what it says on the tin and
doesn't issue cookies. Also, did you know there used to be a way to disable
those annoying related video links from popping up at the end of the video? It's
true. You used to be able to just append a rel=0 query parameter to not show
related videos. But the corporate
overlord bean counters didn't like that. They had to make sure that kids would
get glued to the site by feeding them progressively conspiratorial garbage
content. So that watching any video would nearly guarantee to pull them into the
black hole cesspool of maximally "engaging" "content". What was that quote about
users again? Ah yes:
Your users won't always understand just how much economic sense it makes to
sell them out. And you don't want to alienate them, that would drive down
their value.
Ok, so, in fairness, rel=0 query parameter still does something. It limits
the suggested videos to the channel they are from. That's good. But what
happens if we follow one of those links? First, we end up on the full youtube
site, so that means the cookies are back. Hurray for surveillance capitalism!
Also, the recommendations on the right are curated specifically for us, and not
limited to the channel the previous video was one. Goodbye, rel=0!
So I have to install Navigator, but I can unselect Mail, Instant Messenger, and
Spell Checker... I don't need mail, but whatever, let's just go with the
defaults.
Oh, look at all this wonderful bundled crapware. Just in case you had any doubts.
That last one made me throw up a little in my mouth.
I opt for just the classic skin - and it tells me that the total download size
will be 9959 K.
I thought about censoring this next screenshot, but 15 year old me wouldn't have
like that... What's in the shot is in the shot..
Alright, and when the installation finished here's what we're greeted with:
Did software in 2001 try to phone home? "activation.netscape.com could not be
found." sure seems so.
Yes, No, Cancel?
What if I cancel?
Alright, let's go for broke and get that retro look...
Remember all those redirects? Well the browser froze when I got overzealous,
clicked on "Interact" at the bottom there and chose to open chat... And on the
next load, it crashed... And again...
It just kept crashing...
In case anyone else gets stuck on the same issue ;) I got around this by using
the Profile Manager, where I had the option to start the browser in Work
Offline mode. Then I turn the "Work Online" option on after the browser loaded
(which you can do by plugging together that cute outlet pair on the bottom
left).
I do some ego surfing and go to my own site first.
http://pirsquared.org
I got too fancy with my unicode... But hey, this is totally functional.
I made this Loading gif via a screen capture tool and then it finally clicked that not
only did I not use Netscape 6 - I remember most everyone's experience was to
stick to the 4.x series, because it was so much more usable and not bloated with
nonsense, etc, etc.
Alright, but at least I got 6 to run on Windows 10 and that works...When it
doesn't crash, anyway... But I did get a error about youtube-nocookie.com...
(some of the time, at least)...
And then I
realized that I can't go to any site that has https... Because...
you know, the protocol that provides that 's' has changed over the years, and
our 2001 browser could do SSL 2 or 3 or TLS 1.0... But my website uses TLS
1.3...
I couldn't run to duckduckgo, either, since it redirects plain http to
the https endpoint and that also runs TLS 1.3... I couldn't even go to
archive.org to view my old site directly on the way back machine, because
archive.org run TLS 1.2 at the moment.
It's difficult to find any place that still runs such outdated standards...
I tried to search for just a TLS 1.0 test server - but didn't find anything
suitable... But then I happen to flip through the recent changelog for Firefox:
Cool - so now we know if we want to find TLS 1.0 and 1.1 website, we should
turn to the government of... damn a specific country wasn't specified...
But wait a minute... Firefox 74.0 came out on March
How did Mozilla release an update to a version of Firefox that was in the hands
of a bunch of users without... umn...what's the word I'm looking for here...you
know, that thing no one seems to think is a thing anymore... user consent?
How Mozilla released an update without user consent
This is the way consent ends
This is the way consent ends
This is the way consent ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
I'm late to the party - this has been going on for about three years - with
what I now recall was caused a bit of a splash back in 2017 (Drew DeVault
covers in "Firefox is on a slippery
slope").
But I didn't know the extent of it. Who has the time to pay attention to the way
in which all the software they use changes in anti-social ways.
Anyway, if you don't want the fine folks at Firefox to change your preferences
out from under you, I think you go to about:config and switch the app.normandy.enabled setting to false. And if you're interested in specifics
of how you've been a guinea pig: about:studies will tell you. And you can go
to about:preferences#privacy to disable them.
But I digress...
Let's wrap this up...
At this point, I used my 2020 browser to grab historical snapshot of my old
bookmarks site, stripping off the tastefully annotated Way Back Machine user
interface insertions, and serve it locally over http via python -m
http.server, making sure to change the URL bar to make a historically accurate
re-enactment. And now that you know how I got here, you can fully appreciate the
effort that went into this next screenshot:
So much so, that I couldn't resist making a video a scroll through :
The ongoing crisis has been a circuit breaker to our usual patterns.
I am taking advantage of this affordance to experiment with and establish
channels of communications that are not controlled by others.
My poem about a rainy 200k was published in the Fall 2019 issue of American Randonneur (a quarterly magazine published by Randonneurs USA)
I've been doing samizdat poetry for as long as I've had a web presence (since 1999), but I am now officially a published poet! (I am deliberately not counting the embarrasing hackjob that was published in a youth anthology when I was in 8th grade.)
You can find "Uvas Gold 200" on page 26 - either directly on this skeuomorphic leafing viewer or the PDF, but I'm republishing both the exposition blurb and the poem below. If you prefer to listen, I recorded a reading of it that you can download in different flavors:
a local audio only, a local video, or the embeded video version below.
Uvas Gold 200k starts and ends in Fremont, CA and was
held on Saturday, December 1st, 2018. The ride frontloads
the climbing by going nearly half-way up Mount Hamilton,
the tallest peak in the San Francisco Bay Area, and then
leads down south as far as Gilroy, "Garlic Capital of the
World." Our RBA, Rob Hawks, sent this note the evening
before the ride: "While we once had 75 riders signed up,
we are now down to 59 even though a number of new names
have been added since this was sent out on Monday." It
had been a foul weather week, and by the time we were
ready to start in rain at a balmy 48 degrees Fahrenheit,
there were fewer than thirty people who would brave the
cold wetness. The rain was at its worst the first half of
the ride, so my memories are skewed toward that portion,
with the poem content reflecting that. Call it Inverted
Randonesia, the second half of the ride was just spent
processing how I made it through the beginning of the day
and how epic it was.
Weaving upstream the icy slush
Mount Ham – no cheese
Rough grind of gears and teeth
Steam locomotive breath
The paceline I abandon
Time stretched – warm pizza dough
Intent, attention rising
I take a pull
Thick spray across my rhythmic fogging glasses
Our feet make Revolutions, Randonneur!
With pavement gliding under top tube
It's all the same to you
Mile-marker Marxist
Unbound by thermal fear
"Fair-weather cyclist" you are not
A dreamy cold wet blanket smoky charcoal skyscape
High pitched frying sizzle
Tire fully splashing
The tug of war of winds where we're the rope
Off camber turn, soprano yodeling disc brakes yards ahead
Refreshing wafting garlic wake up – dreamy ride continues
Alert again in the slow slither through Coyote Creek
K-Hound chasing, headwind facing
Camaraderie, half-way in Gilroy supermarket shack
Then on the road again, occasional "Car back!"
December, Northern California, Reign of Rain
It's been six years since my first ride with The San Francisco
Randonneurs and four years since my first
200k. I've ridden 18 rides that are at least that
distance since then (3x 300k, 2x 400k, 1x
600k), completing my first Super Randonneur Series (2-, 3-, 4-, and 600k in one
year) last year after not riding much the year before that. And this weekend I
had my first DNF result on the Fort Bragg
600k. I Did Not Finish.
The best response to my choice of abandoning the ride to enjoy the campground
came from Peter Curley, who said "That was a very mature decision." A clear
departure from typical randonneuring stubbornness and refusal to give up, I
celebrated my decision to quit as a victory when I arrived at the campground and
made my announcement to the volunteers. I think I was so energetic about it that
they did not believe me. I was being kind to myself, to my body, and at peace
with the decision by the time I rolled in.
I ride for myself. I ride because it feels good. I ride to challenge my body, to
be alone: just my thoughts, my legs, and the road. This weekend, my legs felt
strong. Stronger than they did a year ago when I finished the ride. But my
objective was different. Paris-Brest-Paris is a
1200 kilometer ride across France which must be completed in under 90 hours that
runs once every four years. I have been telling anyone who would listen once
they found out about my cycling proclivity about how it is my intent to ride PBP
this year for the last two years. That was still my intent this year, and it
was my intent during much of the 600k.
But I was not willing to do so at any cost. Thoughts have been lingering about
whether these distances are worth it for me since the 2018 Hopland 400k, where I
threw up at the last control and struggled to the finish. Nausea again caught me
just outside of this same campground in the outbound direction on the Fort Bragg
600k ride last year. This year on Hopland, though riding stronger overall and
conserving my strength, I joined a fantastically energetic group and rode too
hard before that last control and threw up there again. Though getting much more
sleep and feeling fresher at the end, I finished within minutes of my time the
previous year (24 hours).
I rode mostly alone on this ride. After letting go of the lead pack on the
Camino Alto climb, only a pair of Santa Cruz Randonneurs' jerseys passed me
between there and Point Reyes Station. I rolled out of Point Reyes on my own,
gaining the only company I had for this ride by catching up to and following a
pair of riders on the climbs on Point Reyes-Petaluma road. My legs felt good, I
was not pushing too hard, just a sustained and seemingly sustainable effort. I
made it to Healdsburg at half past noon. Six and a half hours to cover 88 miles.
Perhaps I ate too much here, opting for both a small chicken noodle soup, and
some sushi, whereas I usually eat just the soup. Still making progress to
Cloverdale, I briefly chatted with a Texan who was visiting and exploring the
local routes, crossed and then rode along the cycling leg of an Iron Man event
that was going in the opposite direction.
I was starting to be affected by the heat. It wasn't that warm, but I needed to
stop at a brand name coffee place in Cloverdale, and had a fizzy water with just
a tad bit of juice to regain composure for the climb up 128. The climb rolled
along nicely, I shifted down and just kept pedaling at a steady pace and easy
effort. But I wasn't eating anymore. By the time I got to Yorkville, I needed
another break, and luckily Michael had just stopped at the Yorkville Market, so
I decided to stop, too. I got another carbonated beverage, a cherry cola this
time, and in what might have been another mistake - honey-mustard flavored
pretzel pieces. When I first started riding brevets, salted peanut-butter-filled
pretzel pieces were a staple go-to in my basket - I'd just reach down to grab a
few every couple of minutes. I thought about reaching for the simpler salted
pretzel sticks this time, because I never have trouble consuming simple salted
unflavored bread products, but the lizard brain sabotaged the rational
sensibilities and swayed the scales in favor of the honey-mustard, which also
had some sugar. As a little glimpse into my somewhat delirious state, I thought
I had seen four to six cats in the shop. When I asked the proprietor, it turns
out there were only two. She wished me a good ride, to be careful on highway 1,
and asked if I thought I could make it to the camp before dark. I expressed
serious doubts about that, but it turns out I was wrong.
I got to Boonville, another dozen miles out, and took another break, the
nausea kicking in again. The next five miles I started to get cold, the sun not
yet setting but the cold ocean headwind was starting to take its toll. I
stopped to get dressed, and deliberately cycled past the campground without
stopping there for another rest though I probably could have used it. And then
something clicked in my head. A had been trying to fit a great deal many things
in life but cycling had begun dwarfing all my other joys and pursuits this year.
My reward for finishing the 600k would have been to train more, probably ride
the NorCal Brevet week in June, to get ready for
PBP and ride that in August. Instead of PBP, I'll be taking a break.
Randonneuring can be addictive. You keep putting goals out and keep
accomplishing them, so you set higher, more challenging goals. Rinse and repeat.
This year, cycling has started to become a kind of rat race for me. Yes, I still
enjoy cycling, very much, but it has started to grind me down. I lost sight of
why I enjoy this sport so much to begin with.
I decided to stop. I decided to exert and reaffirm control over what I value in
life. The campground was by far the biggest highlight of my 2018 finish on this
ride. I was the very last rider into the overnight control, rolling in half-past
3am or so. I sat myself down on one of the folding chairs in front of the
fire pit, was fed without having to get up, and drifted off in that same spot
around 4am. Two hours later, before I could open my eyes, my olfactory system
was cannonballed into a perfect aroma pool of fresh coffee and bacon. "This is
AMAZING!" That campground served as my magical site of rejuvenation after just
two hours of sleep. My spirits lifted, though I did hang out longer than most at
breakfast that year, in no rush to head out, taking in the gurgling creek, the
majestic towering redwoods all around, inhaling and ingesting the sights and
sounds and smells all around.
So less than 12 hours and 145 miles into the ride, and a few miles past the
Indian Creek Campground that was the planned overnight, I decided to turn around
and go directly there. It was about 40 miles to the Safeway in Fort
Bragg, 42 miles back. I could have done it. I could have taken a break, even
after I got to the campground. There was plenty of time left on the clock.
I could have finished the ride. The weather was great, and I had plenty of
clothes to keep me warm, something I learned to appreciate on this ride the year
before, confusing being cold with being exhausted, and quickly regaining my legs
after finally throwing a jacket on. I could have finished the ride, but I also
needed to get off the treadmill, the hamster wheel that was starting to grind
away at a sense of balance in life. I've been spending more and more time on the
bike recently, and not because I was so thoroughly enjoying it. It had become
almost a job. Not a particularly unpleasant one, I like riding bikes, but the
compulsory nature of it did not sit well with me. I rode in the rain to work. I
rode in the hotel gym morning before and again at night after while traveling
for a conference the week before. I was just biking too much. Too many other
parts of my life were getting squeezed out to make room for the PBP effort. I
still want to ride PBP, but letting go of this year's attempt is what I need to
focus on other important aspects of life.
So after I had a beer and regained composure, I switched modes. Chatting with
the volunteers during much of the night. Then as the riders started to come in,
we'd offer them food, refilling plates when they were done and still hungry,
insisting they can stay seated. Reed, a fellow campground DNFer, and I kept
mentioning how we were earning our keep. Conversation flowed, lots of chuckling,
story telling, sharing of experiences. I'll treasure these hours I spent in camp
instead of on the bike. Chuck graciously offered me a tent and a sleeping bag
and I was in bed a quarter to 11pm, fed and off the bike for 5 hours by then. It
would probably have taken me again until 3am had I continued to Fort Bragg. I
got 7 hours of sleep, instead of 2. It was a DNF, but it was also a DHF - I
Did Have Fun. :)
The campground volunteers were rock solid! Eric and Arthur the big goofball
dog, Grace and Rick, the two co-owners of Bo the smaller goofball dog, Aaron,
Sourav, Chuck, Robert, Reed. Thank you all for such an memorable experience. It
was a privilege to spend several hours with you. Thank you.
We cleaned up and packed up in the morning after the riders left. Chuck has an
amazing van set up to carry up to 8 (!!) bikes, offered a ride for our bikes.
Sourav offered to deliver our bodies. On the way back, Reed, Sourav and I
discussed just how special and unique the San Francisco
Randonneurs community is. The level of and
attention to detail, the shared sense of purpose, the volunteer involvement.
Thank you Rob Hawks. Thank you to everyone who volunteers to support SFR rides.
Thank you to everyone who rides, you give us plausible deniability: we can't
all be crazy :)
Carrying my bike as I climbed up the long sets of stairs from the BART station
platform this morning, I had a liberating realization. It was the first time in
a long while that I was not internally justifying the effort as "this will help
me on PBP". I was once again doing it for the sole simple reason that this is just
what I do.
I stepped out for a coffee refill and bumped into a large contingent of
Bloomberg folks I'd never met (Princeton office). I guess we have something like
90 people at the conference this year, and I made the usual and true remark about
how I go to conferences to meet the other people who work at our company. Then
after his tutorial concluded, Matthias and I bumped into Tracy
Teal, exchanged some stickers, and
chatted about The Carpentries,
Jupyter, organizing conferences, governance and
sponsorship models, and a bunch of other stuff.
Matthias was a good influence in trying to participate in the swag bag stuffing,
but it turned out we had almost an hour to kill maim (we decided injury's a
better fate than death for that hour). Luckily, we bumped into John
Lam and proceeded to chat away and entertain one
another. The swag bag stuffing was really fun - highly recommend it to everyone!
Smart people performing a task that allows for lots of banter and brief social
interaction turn while there's music and a chance to move around turns out to be
a good way to have time continue flying by. Too many people to name here, but
Scopz was there and we made terrible puns, as
usual.
After the swag bag stuffing party, reconnected with Tracy and we chatted some
more while walking around and picking up swag (mostly socks), joined by Gil
Forsyth who handed me Xonsh
sticker, bumped into Saul Shanabrook. Then
stopped by to say hi to Jess, a friend of Anna
Vu's, whom I only ever see at PyCon), and then
chatted with Scott Sanderson, met Hugo
Bowne-Anderson, and got to briefly greet
Jonathan Helmus.
I walked Matthias to his hotel, then went back to Butcher and the Brewer (again,
Matthias joined me for dinner there the night before), and wrote out the poem
you'll find below. After I wrote it, a bunch of my Bloomberg colleagues showed
up, and I ended up chatting for long time with John
Purviance. In keeping with tradition, though we
work at the same company, I met John by accident at a coffee shop during last
year's Pycon (he works in the New York office, whereas I'm in SF).
One day down, and it's already been a wonderful Pycon.
Pycon 2019
May 2nd, Pycon Cleveland Two, as well
The social wealth observed, created
not jaded, lots to say and listen to
Bring energy and silliness, too
My objective to subjectively inject
a crack and tear decorum fabric
be vulnerable
a buzzing bee
break up the swag bag stuffing monotony
walk the path, switch sides, talk trash
Great folks, give stickers, smiles, rehash
A splash of warmth, a squak, a "BAM!"
A nudge - we jam enjoying this team work
not work at all - a play - a sandbox
roles all clear yet much room left
to improvise
Devise a way to make us laugh
each finds their path
rocking forth and back
swaying fro and too
a rhythm of a train a-moving
Clapping celebration when we're done
"Hey-hey! We're done!" - a dinner earned
and well deserved - many socks collected
New people met and old friends reconnected
Tutorials and opening reception done
and now Pycon 2019's officially begun
Two weeks ago, Project Jupyter had our only planned team
meeting for 2018. There was too much stuff going on for me to write a poem
during the event as I had in previous years
(2016, and
2017), so I ended up reading one of the pieces I
wrote during my evening introvert breaks in Cleveland at PyCon a few weeks
earlier.
Once again, Fernando and Matthias had their gadgets ready to record (thank you both!). The video below was taken by Fernando.
Time suspended
Gellatinous reality - the haze
submerged in murky drops summed
in swamp pond of life
believe and strive, expand the mind
A state sublime, when in your prime you came to
me and we were free to flow and fling our
cares, our dreams, our in-betweens, our
rêves perdues, our residue -- the lime of light
the black of sight -- all these converge and
merge the forks of friction filled with fright
and more -- the float of logs that plunges deep
beyond the fray, beyond the keep -- a leap of faith
the lore of rite, with passage clear, let
fear subside, the wealth of confidence will
rise and iron out wrinkles of doubt
Commit to change and stash your pride
then push your luck, and make amends.
Branch out your thoughts, reset assumptions
then checkout.
The force of pulls t'wards master class
Remote of possibilities. Rehash the past
Patch up the present -- what's the diff?
There's nothing left -- except to glide -- and
soar beyond your frame of mind. try not to pry
cry, freedom, cry.
SciPy 2018, the 17th annual Scientific Computing with Python conference, will be held July 9-15, 2018 in Austin, Texas. The annual SciPy Conference brings together over 700 participants from industry, academia, and government to showcase their latest projects, learn from skilled users and developers, and collaborate on code development. The call for abstracts for SciPy 2018 for talks, posters and tutorials is now open. The deadline for submissions is February 9, 2018.
In addition to the general track, this year will have specialized tracks focused on:
Data Visualization
Reproducibilty and Software Sustainability
Mini Symposia
Astronomy
Biology and Bioinformatics
Data Science
Earth, Ocean and Geo Science
Image Processing
Language Interoperability
Library Science and Digital Humanities
Machine Learning
Materials Science
Political and Social Sciences
There will also be a SciPy Tools Plenary Session each day with 2 to 5 minute updates on tools and libraries.
Tutorials (July 9-10, 2018)
Tutorials should be focused on covering a well-defined topic in a hands-on manner. We are looking for awesome techniques or packages, helping new or advanced Python programmers develop better or faster scientific applications. We encourage submissions to be designed to allow at least 50% of the time for hands-on exercises even if this means the subject matter needs to be limited. Tutorials will be 4 hours in duration. In your tutorial application, you can indicate what prerequisite skills and knowledge will be needed for your tutorial, and the approximate expected level of knowledge of your students (i.e., beginner, intermediate, advanced). Instructors of accepted tutorials will receive a stipend.
and then it finally clicked that not
only did I not use Netscape 6 - I remember most everyone's experience was to
stick to the 4.x series, because it was so much more usable and not bloated with
nonsense, etc, etc.
