One of my very favorites

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;

Portia, in The Merchant of Venice

christmas 2005

The runup to christmas this year has been incredible. Work has always been lots of fun (and it's nice that I can work from home occasionally, so I don't need to be away from sol too much, as I probably would if I weren't able to work from home).

A few days ago we had sushi. That was very, very good. The other night it was nilagang baboy with lots of pechay. Tonight it's going to be, ahh, let me see... vietnamese fresh springrolls, pomelo salad, yangchow rice and other health food after yesterday's lechon, crab, shrimp, potato salad and macaroni salad with white cheese.

The last few month's have been good too because they've seen the launch of C2 lite iced teas and Zesto's One lite iced teas. I like the non-lite stuff too, but the lite I like more since I'm not a sugar person.

There were strawberries from baguio this year, so there's been strawberries dipped in condensed milk and, until i killed the bottle, strawberry daiquiris in Cuervo Especial :-).

All that, plus inexpensive fast internet at home! And good people to work with (well, mostly, there are some duds whose attitude I will need to work to adjust) and fun at work.

I'm very happy for Sol that she's joined a christian church (I might prefer that it be Catholic, but as long as it's not a freako church that is clearly just plain wrogn, I like most non-catholic churches too). It's been very good for Sol. It might be better for her too if I were to join, but I doubt if that's going to happen soon. I have my own spiritual row to hoe (or weed, or plant, or harvest, the metaphors keep pouring out), I think it all works out though. And it'll all work out better as time moves forward.

It's been a great year, and next year will be better. The year after that, maybe in New Zealand, that's going to be even better, and sometime between now and then, probably a baby, God granting.

Torture dehumanizes the torturer too

In 1971, while in Lefortovo prison in Moscow (the central KGB interrogation jail), I went on a hunger strike demanding a defense lawyer of my choice (the KGB wanted its trusted lawyer to be assigned instead). The moment was most inconvenient for my captors because my case was due in court, and they had no time to spare. So, to break me down, they started force-feeding me in a very unusual manner -- through my nostrils. About a dozen guards led me from my cell to the medical unit. There they straitjacketed me, tied me to a bed, and sat on my legs so that I would not jerk. The others held my shoulders and my head while a doctor was pushing the feeding tube into my nostril.

The feeding pipe was thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor out at first; I wheezed like a drowning man -- my lungs felt ready to burst. The doctor also seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept shoving the pipe farther and farther down. Only when it reached my stomach could I resume breathing, carefully. Then she poured some slop through a funnel into the pipe that would choke me if it came back up. They held me down for another half-hour so that the liquid was absorbed by my stomach and could not be vomited back, and then began to pull the pipe out bit by bit. . . . Grrrr. There had just been time for everything to start healing during the night when they came back in the morning and did it all over again, for 10 days, when the guards could stand it no longer. As it happened, it was a Sunday and no bosses were around. They surrounded the doctor: "Hey, listen, let him drink it straight from the bowl, let him sip it. It'll be quicker for you, too, you silly old fool." The doctor was in tears: "Do you think I want to go to jail because of you lot? No, I can't do that. . . . " And so they stood over my body, cursing each other, with bloody bubbles coming out of my nose. On the 12th day, the authorities surrendered; they had run out of time. I had gotten my lawyer, but neither the doctor nor those guards could ever look me in the eye again.

Torture's Long Shadow

But of course George W Bush, and his vice president, are pushing for it. Huh. It's probably impossible for them to dishonor themselves, but they dishonor their country, and those citizens who aren't all hot to torture someone too. Now there's been a compromise, they'll accept Sen McCain's restrictions against torture. But of course it'll still happen, and there won't be too vigorous a fight against it. It's just posturing. George W Bush knows what the effect of pushing for a legal right to torture would do to his presidency. So he'll accept the legal restrictions, and then the armed forces and the security agencies will continue to do it anyway.

Baguio

Sol needed a break and we went to baguio for a weekend. It was a good
trip. On two previous trips I'd given up on baguio as being too crowded
and polluted to be worth the trouble.

It's still that way in the central section (session road down to the
market and surroundings), but it's not bad if you avoid that.

When we arrived we checked out one hotel that was right across from
where the bus first let passengers off (not the station). The hotel
wasn't all that great (smell of mold in the room), so we decided to find
a taxi and look for someplace else.

The taxi driver was very nice, very helpful. Very good english too.
They have good english up here in the mountains, something I found to be
true out in Banaue and Sagada too. He gave us a bunch of options
(including a backpacker type place, we weren't really into that). Our
first try, though, was the Microtel in Baguio. It's affiliated with
Victory Liner, the bus company we used, so there was a substantial
discount if we could show our tickets.

It's a good hotel, seems to be an international chain. Very new, clean,
all rooms have airconditioning (although it's really not needed since
this is Baguio).

We had lunch at the Manor in Camp John Hay. That was pretty good.
Expensive, but good. Sol wanted to plan to stay there on another weekend
trip, but I don't think we'll do that since we were discouraged by the
prices. It's a nice place to visit though. And the surrounding area is
a great place to walk around.

A few hours in the Baguio market are always nice. I love the Baguio
market. The only thing I don't much enjoy about it is the constant
pestering from kids who want to sell sack bags for carrying things, and
who want to carry my bag for me. But they're polite, if persistent, and
I like them, so I just smile at them while telling them that I'm not
interested.

All in all, if we don't go to the regular tourist traps, it's a nice
place to visit and rest. A bit expensive, but fun, and restful. We

--
Gerald Timothy Quimpo bopolissimus@gmail.com bopolissimus.lists@gmail.com
http://bopolissimus.blogspot.com http://monotremetech.blogspot.com
Public Key: "gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 672F4C78"

All men see only in 16 colors. Peach, for example, is a
fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have
no idea what mauve is.

Japanese School Teacher essays

I recently read Memoirs of a Sansei by David Mura. Didn't like it much. I read it for the mind expansion and insights it might lend. There was some of that, but the general whining (liberal, overtones of hippy) of the author was offputting. And the occasional hypocrisy, or honesty, or something. He's taking a vacation in the Philippines, is rushing to Banaue, there is some sort of emotional turmoil and he has some liberal insight about some hitchhiking filipinos whom he passes by, and later he meets a japanese on the same road, picks him up and continues to Banaue, where he has some sort of epiphany about how he was able to connect best with the japanese person outside japan, when he couldn't quite connect that deeply with the japanese on their home ground. Yech. Dreck.

Now comes I am a Japanese School Teacher, essays by . Haven't read through them all, first essay looks OK though. I may enjoy them all.

Slowly.

Camiguin Curfew Stupidity -- the politicians must be stupid

My wife and I went to Cagayan de oro recently to visit my favorite uncle and wedding ninong who is in the hospital and is in a bad way. Since we were in Mindanao already, we went to camiguin to visit the Camiguin Action Team I thought we might get some Camiguin Diving in.

I was surprised to be informed that there is a 10PM curfew imposed. It doesn't make sense and is bad for business. The reason put forth is that it's an anti-prostitution measure. That's a crock of manure since camiguin is a small place. Everyone knows who the prostitutes are, no one prosecutes despite that.

The rumour though, is that the curfew was imposed due to a conflict between the governor and his son, the mayor of Mambajao. The mayor has chosen to finally ditch his wife and live with his mistress. The governor, for some reason, is punishing the whole population of the island (including the bars and restaurants that depend on tourism, and the foreign tourist high season starts this month) for his son's pigheadedness. Par for the course, I suppose. There is far worse that the reigning family has done, they're just keeping true to form.

Torture, American-Style

Torture, American-Style

the CIA has a list of acceptable interrogation methods, including soaking naked prisoners with water in 50-degree rooms and making them stand for 40 hours handcuffed and shackled to an eyebolt in the floor.

"Palestinian hanging," where a prisoner's arms are twisted behind his back and his wrists are chained five feet above the floor.

Waterboarding (in which a prisoner is made to believe he is drowning) and withholding pain medication for bullet wounds

blasting detainees with high-volume "futility music" (the report's phrase) by Metallica and Britney Spears, dressing a detainee in a bra, and making him do dog tricks

In the Bush lexicon, therefore, sexual humiliation, acute sleep deprivation and threats to have a detainee's mother kidnapped and imprisoned are humane.

18- to 20-hour-a-day questioning for 48 out of 54 days, blasting prisoners with strobe lights and ear-splitting rock music, menacing them with snarling dogs, threatening to hurt their mothers, and humiliations such as leading them around on leashes Pfc. Lynndie England-style, stripping them naked in front of women, or holding them down while a female interrogator straddles them and whispers that we've killed their comrades.

Huh. Leader of the free world.

The US government, on torture by its clients

The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that it was "united" with the Iraqi government in deploring the mistreatment of detainees.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top12nov17,0,2672377.story

huh. sounds like milspec U.S. government issued male cow manure to me. And no, I'm not referring to Abu Ghraib, I'm referring to the U.S. Vice President's vigorous, shameless and (so far) successful attempts to give certain U.S. arms the right to torture non-citizens, on their own soil or elsewhere.

"Detainee abuse is not and will not be tolerated by either the Iraqi government or the Multi-National Forces in Iraq," it said.

Which implies that it's the U.S. government that calls the shots in the Iraqi Government. Not particularly surprising in this context since, certainly, the U.S. government *does* call the shots in Iraq, but any competent hypocrite would mask the blatant insensitivity to a sovereign nation's decisions. But then one should not be surprised, amazed or otherwise discombobulated by such hubris.

I would wait for the gods to make U.S. leaders mad, but it seems that has already been accomplished.

refreshing conservatism

I took some quotes for my sig quotes file from an article on the decline in parental guidance in the U.S.. Some quotes though are too juicy even for me, e.g.,

Not that I’m laboring under the illusion that modern girls are all sugar and spice and everything nice. Owing to feminism, which liberated the fairer sex from common-sense, morality, restraint, and chastity, quasi-harlotry now infects much of contemporary womanhood. A lady close to my heart said it best: “Forty years ago you knew who the bad girls were; now you know who the good girls are.” And now we have a whole generation of girls-gone-wild.

Altogether a good article, very useful point. It doesn't address the issues with old-time conservatism though (some repression is a good thing, excessive paternalistic repression is, well, excessive and oppressive). Some sort of middle ground moderated and guided by love (rather than fear and punishment, as of old) is certainly the better way, but I can see that that middle ground would be difficult to maintain. Possibly it takes more goodness and wisdom than is normally available. It's something sort of like the rhythm method a good idea but too difficult for normal persons.

I think they should make them glow in the dark!

Cockeyed has a an article on The Military Applications of Silly String.

I don't know if that's a hoax. It probably isn't. I think they could enhance the product a bit by making it glow in the dark :-). Does mentioning the concept make it unpatentable? Or do I actually have to create some silly string that glows in the dark and then document that somewhere? :-).

tiger

Bad show, Funny wmv

Like my mom (she was scandalized by scenes involving toilets and activities therein) I can't stand Pinoy Big Brother. I'm not as sensitive as my mom, but stupidity bothers me. Hmmm, that link says that Willie Revillame is in there, that might be why it's so shallow then. Although maybe that has to do with Asia Agcaoili too. I wasn't very clear on who Asia Agcaoili was, but a quick google image search on her name reminds me that she's the Sex guru on one or another soft pr0n magazine sold publicly hereabouts. I wasn't going to give her much respect anyway, since she works on the show, but now my already negative impression of the show drops to new lows. huh. morons.

On the other hand, a friend sent me a link to a (no doubt unauthorized) video of the Pinoy Big Brother theme song and that's freaking funny. Hahahah, highly recommended.

The song itself is reasonable. The lyrics are upbeat and although it isn't particularly gripping, the song works well enough. But since it's related to the show, well, I can't like it. Not that it matters though. I'm not anyone's target market for anything.

Testing jet engines with chickens

In an article on studies on $bhow to minimize the impact of airplanes on birds (and vice versa):

Jet engines must now be able to withstand the ingestion of an 8 pound waterfowl without failing (this is tested in the lab by firing a chicken from a cannon at point-blank range).

I just added that to my sig quotes file :-).

It's a funny article, lots of good quotes, although all are a bit morbid, of course.

And its not just birds. Sometimes jet-stream encounters can take a page from the X-Files. "We've had frogs, turtles, snakes. We had a cat once that was struck at some high altitude," said the Smithsonian's Dove. She says birds like hawks and herons will occasionally drop their quarries into oncoming planes. "The other day we had a bird strike. We sent the sample to the DNA lab and it came back as rabbit. How do you explain to the FAA that we had a rabbit strike at 1,800 feet?"

Readings

Disputed English Grammar. Fun read. for english geeks.

and

Monotremes are weird

sol and i were discussing Omnipotence of God (she recently became a Christian) and that link led me to Theodicy, which is very long, interesting, and might be disturbing to someone who believes in Omnipotence (the Omnipotence entry also says that Omnipotence is only mentioned once in the bible, in Revelation, which I did find this morning, so I suppose the jews are not scripturally bound to the concept, although I don't know what their extended analysis of the situation might have led them to recently).

I've read quite a lot more than that today. This happens when I occasionally get demotivated with work. As it happens, today it wasn't ramcar (where the work is massive, but I'm glad to have it, since it's fun) but IPRC (where the work is done and they haven't paid the final installment yet, so I'm not highly motivated to add the features they've requested).

Dynamic DNS in Linux

That title is a bit over the top, of course. I only looked at one solution, and when that worked for me, I stopped looking.

I've got a sort of static IP. My internet provider, Destiny Cable Internet, as of this writing, uses the ISC DHCP Server. That server tries to allocate the same IP to the same requesting MAC if the IP is still available. So the IP is pretty stable. However, there is no promise that the IP will never change, so it's semi-stable.

I thought I'd be OK with just assuming that it was stable, but I changed my mind. It *might* change and when it does, then I'll have to go to everywhere that assumes it's stable and fix it. And then it might change again.

Instead I decided to use a dynamic DNS server. For the client software, I first looked at EZ IP-Update and, since there's a list of dynamic dns servers at that site, I chose DynDNS. Both choices were pretty random, but I'm happy with both of them.

ez-ipupdate took around 20 minutes to set up (there was a minor compile error, something wrong in the ./configure script's deciding how to use errno, so I had to figure that out and fix it, it's a quick and dirty hack though, not good enough to propagate upward, but I may email the ez-ipupdate maintainer so that he can look at his configure configuration) and DynDns took 2 minutes (plus the less than a minute to wait for the email to arrive).

So I've got dynamic dns working now. bopolissimus.homelinux.net

Port forwarding with ssh

I find forwarding ports (and, actually, also reverse forwarding ports) over ssh very useful. I'll probably find it less useful now since I've found OpenVPN so easy to setup and use, but it's still a very useful technique, particularly where I don't have root access.

I always use -v when doing this because -v will tell me if the link is slow or the link is down (while i'm still connecting, less wasted time). It also shows a message everytime a request is forwarded down the ssh tunnel, useful for debugging to make sure I'm doing the right thing.

With the setups below, surfing to http://localhost:8080 will forward requests to the internal or external server specified. Note: by default, port forwarding binds only to 127.0.0.1, so from the box itself you can connect to the forwarded service, but you can't from another box. Use GatewayPorts for exposing the service (warning, think about that, it might open security holes).

1. I'm on my laptop and I want to surf the website on remote.com.ph as if I were physically there. So what I want to do is forward my port 8080 to remote.com.ph:80 (it's an internal website and is inside a firewall, so I can't surf to that site directly from the open internet).

ssh -v -L 8080:localhost:80 remote.com.ph

what that does is, connections on my local port 8080 will be forwarded to remote.com.ph. From there, it will be forwarded to remote.com.ph's localhost:80.

2. Same as #1, I can ssh to remote.com.ph but the web server isn't on remote.com.ph, it's on another internal box inside the firewall, 192.168.80.80:80.

ssh -v -L 8080:192.168.80.80:80 remote.com.ph

What that does is, connections on my local port 8080 will be forwarded to remote.com.ph over the ssh tunnel. Remote.com.ph will then forward them onward to 192.168.80.80:80

3. Same as #2, but I'm trying to surf to some external web site that doesn't let me in if I surf from the Philippines, or if I surf there from the Philippines something bad will happen. For instance, PayPal will block paypal accounts if they're used from IPs that it identifies as being in the Philippines. This has to do with very high fraud rates. But maybe I'm not a fraudster, I just want to use my paypal account, but I can't because I'm physically in the Philippines. If I have ssh access to a host in the USA which paypal won't be suspicious about, I can do port forwarding through that server, e.g.,

ssh -v -L 8080:www.paypal.com:80 my_us_server.com

There is also reverse port forwarding. I do that when the server I need to connect to (usually not for http, but for some internal server) is inside a firewall and I can't get to it directly and the firewall won't port forward to the internal server. In that case, what I do is ssh to the gateway, and from there ssh to the internal server. Then I do reverse port forwarding. What that does is, it will ssh back to *me*, and open a localport on *me* which will be forwarded down that second ssh link back to it. This, of course, only works if the internal server has a route out to the internet, if it doesn't, then some other solution will have to be found.

# first ssh to the gateway
ssh gateway.remote.com.ph

# at the gateway, ssh to the internal box
ssh my-internal

# at my-internal, open the reverse tunnel back to me, i am, client.com.ph

ssh -v -R 8022:localhost:22 client.com.ph

What that does is get my-internal to ssh to client.com.ph (my box, outside the firewall). Once it gets there, it will set up port forwarding so that port 8022 at client.com.ph so that when I (at client.com.ph) connect to port 8022, the request will be forwarded to port 22 at the my-internal computer. I use that much less often than -L, but when -L doesn't work, -R is often a lifesaver.

Comparison of different SQL implementations

Online there's a pretty long (not sure how comprehensive, but informative and useful) Comparison of different SQL Implementations

Haven't read it all yet (busy), but I'll need to get to that within 1-2 days.

Biking Through Tanzania - article

I read the New York Times occasionally, mostly for the culture. The politics there tend to be rather to my left and even where I agree, as in the general opinion of George Bush II, they tend to be more strident and, in the case of Maureen Dowd, hysterical. But there are good articles, often in the culture and travel section, and the financial section too, occasionally.

An example, and the trigger for this post:

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/travel/04tanzania.html?pagewanted=1

and another:

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/travel/04okinawa.html

Destiny Cable Internet SMS Number

To get Destiny Cable Internet to call me (in case of technical
problems),

SMS to 09175771111

MD [account name] [account phone number]

Very convenient since I have a cell phone and cell phone charges being
exorbitant in the Philippines, I'd rather not have to call them.
Besides, I don't know what the tech support number is and I'm too lazy
to look :-).

Windows Solutions

Long ago I saw a list of "Windows Solutions". I had it in my sigs and now I can't find them. Fortunately, I keep my old sig file around even though I don't use it anymore (I haven't seen a tool yet that will modify the gmail sig via cron).

Anyway, here they are, so I don't forget them, hopefully google will cache them and google can find them with "Windows Solution bopolissimus" :

1. Don't use Windows
2. Stop the program and start it again
3. Ctrl-Alt-Del and kill the program in Task Manager
4. Reboot
5. Uninstall the program and reinstall it.
6. Reinstall Windows and Everything else
7. Backup, format the disk, install windows, reinstall everything else, restore your data.

Charles Murray on The Inequality Taboo

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/production/files/murray0905.html