Month: February 2005

Last night before going to bed, I went to turn off my cellphone, and I noticed when I picked it up that it was in “Sleep Mode”.

This means, of course, that the phone is “asleep” – display dimmed, waiting for a call – but it’s certainly from a phone-specific reference. Why doesn’t the phone have a mode for when I’m asleep? I could set it to activate automatically from, say, 10pm to 8am. Failing technology from the phone company to determine which calls were “emergency” and which weren’t, it could be set so two calls from the same number within a minute would be considered “urgent” and the phone would ring – otherwise it would just send the call to voicemail. And I wouldn’t have to remember to turn the phone on and off all the time (sometimes I just turn the volume down, but then I don’t remember to turn it back up.)

And of course it would be too much to ask, for voice commands – pick up the phone and say “phone, sleep” and “phone, wake”. By the way, I never tried Sprint’s voice dialing because it always cost extra – tho I did have a friend who programmed his phone to call different friends depending upon how he said “dude”; but then he forgot which one was “Duuuuude” and which one was “Dude?” but of course not which was “dudedudeDUDE”.

Whenever a computer exploit, or a suspected exploit (say, a windows-based virus) appears, the media and the general public refer to the peretrators as “Hackers”. But within the techno-anarcho-engineering circles, 2600 and the like, the whine comes back “They’re not hackers, they’re Crackers – hackers like us are just intelectually curious, we’re not trying to destroy or steal information.” Crackers are supposedly the ones who get in and break stuff and steal credit card numbers for the fun (or is that “phun”) of it. The original phone hackers at some point were given the name “Phreakers” – possibly subsequent to the coining of “Hacker”. Then there are “Jackers”, named after car- and hi-jackers, who are deliberately trying to commit crimes.

I say, Tomay-to, tomah-to, let’s call the whole thing off. Just accept the fact that everybody thinks that a Hacker has malicious or possibly criminal intent, and coin yourselves a new name. Tweaker won’t do, as it’s identical to “Tweeker” (usually referred to with the adjective f’n as in “f’n tweeker”) – one who consumes methamphetamine. “Tinker” doesn’t exactly sound heterosexual (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

I prefer more elegant appelations. It’s not vandalism, it’s “real estate improvements abatement.” They’re not homeless, they’re “urban campers”. How about “improvised engineers” – or is that too close to Disney’s “Imagineers” – or maybe that’s a good thing? “Freelance technologists”? “System security verification volunteers”? “Authentication bypass specialists”?

The other day one one of the many e-mail lists I’m on, someone accused the group of not being open-minded. As you can imagine, this is a pretty damned open-minded group. Here was my response.

Open minded means whatever someone tells you they’re into, you tell
them it’s marvelous. It means being supportive and encouraging to
people, even if you disagree with them and think they’re vile horrible
monsters. In fact it may even mean changing your opinion of them
instantly, and even possibly indicating you’re interested in what they
are, even if you might have previously believed, erroneously, that it
was sick and wrong. It means standing up for and advocating acceptance
of f’tards. After all, how can you love your enemy if they won’t lie
down? I’m fairly certain open minded is not the same as “Zen Mind” –
but then, someone could probably convince me otherwise if I were truly
open-minded about it. In fact, now that I think about it, perhaps
open-minded equates to brainless. Or at least mindless, egoless, and
even possibly selfless, heartless, toothless, backless, hairless,
spineless, crotchless, dickless, speechless, thoughtless, spiritless,
sexless, bloodless, colorless, stainless.

I returned last night from the (13th Annual!) Boulder City, NV Albatross fly-in. What a great trip.

Drove out from here, because the plane I was supposed to fly, N26132, had a 100-hour inspection that went long. Would have taken me a lot less time to fly – about six hours driving each way versus around 2 1/2 hours flying, I calculated.

Obviously, I like planes, and for some reason I really love floatplanes. I have, so far, only a single hour of flight instruction in floatplanes, about ten years ago in Sausilito. I have no reasonable need for a floatplane (or arguably any plane at all, but that’s another matter!).

But of the floatplanes, the Albatross is certainly my favorite. Okay, well, maybe if I could get a Sikorsky S-38 (link, link) like the one Howard Hughes was shown teaching Katherine Hepburn to fly in Aviator – but they’re apparently nonexistant. In any case, I really like the style of the Albatross. Someday I really do hope to take lessons in one.

Dennis Kuhn is actually living one of my dreams – his company, American Warbirds, ressurects Albatross from the Tucson “boneyard” (which I have pictures of, somewhere!) and brings them back to flying condition. There were eight Albatross on the flight line at various times this weekend, ranging from bare metal to dolled-up, but all flying. Two from the competing surfwear companies, Billabong and Quicksilver – the Quicksliver plane of Bill Da Silva was the one I was lucky enough to ride in out to the picnic.

“With that camera you’ve got, you’ll want to ride up in the nose,” Bill told me. Up in the cockpit, under the dashboard, is a little door to the bow hold, which apparently used to house the radar dome (black, in the above picture), but now is capped by a plexiglass bubble, so (like T.S. Garp the nose-gunner) I got to lie on my belly in the very front of the plane as we flew in a 4-plane formation, over the airport and out over Lake Mead. Down through a slot canyon, only a few hundred feet up, which I heard the pilot say was flying stop-to-stop on the controls as he weaved through, then out over more lake and hills and down to “Big Sandy”, a long beach out at the east end of the lake. After a low fly-over of the beach where several of the pilots had camped out the previous night, we landed on the water and did a fast step-taxi back. Riding in the nose of the plane was truly like being able to fly.

Five or six of the planes ended up out there, along with a Widgeon, a Cessna Stationair (206?), a DeHaviland Beaver, a Super Cub, a pair of Republic Seabees, and two Lake Buckaneers. Note that there’s a difference between a “floatplane” – the Cub, Beaver, and Cessna – that sit up on pontoons, and “flying boats” like the Albatross, Widgeon, and Lake, and I guess the Seabee as well.

An excessive number of pictures are now on my gallery page. I’ve created a best of album as well, in case anyone doesn’t actually want to see all 203 of the pictures I took.