General

Make sure you use this link before it gets sued off the web

Dave Farquhar General

It never occurred to me to type print.google.com into a web browser and see what happens. I’ve known for months that Google was digitizing books but I had no idea the service was out where you could get to it.

Visit and search for something. You’ll be amazed.This is a bonanza for genealogists. If there’s someone reasonably noteworthy you’ve had difficulty connecting to your tree, search for that elusive person. My elusive one is Arthur Briggs Farquhar. I’m a Farquhar (obviously). I also have Briggs blood in me. From what I can tell, A. B. Farquhar was born in Ohio (my grandfather was a Farquhar from Ohio) and he was a Quaker, as were my Farquhars until about three generations ago.

Thanks to Google Print, I’ve found the book American Grit: A Woman’s Letters from the Ohio Frontier. I don’t know just yet if this book will have any answers for me or not. But did I ever find a tantalizing line on page 20:

“When a family named Farquhar bought property near her in Ohio, she wrote home asking if they were related to her or not.”

Could this have been my ancestor Dr. Edward Andrew Farquhar’s family?

I can’t read the whole book on Google Print, but I can read enough to get a pretty good idea whether a book is worth pursuing further. And if a book only has one juicy tidbit about an individual, it finds it.

In 2002, Eric Schmidt said, “The speech I give everyday is: ‘This is what we do. Is what you are doing consistent with that, and does it change the world?'”

In this instance, “change the world” could be the understatement of the century.

But will the courts let it survive?

Well, Episode III could have been worse…

Dave Farquhar General , , , ,

I went and saw Revenge of the Sith tonight. I can say it definitely felt good to see a Star Wars story in the theaters one last time. (This is supposed to be the last time, after all.)

What else can I say? They weren’t the atrocities the first two movies were. Overall I still don’t think it was any better than the originals, but I do think there was a lot of room for improvement. (Don’t worry, there won’t be any spoilers here.)Let’s talk about the good first. First and foremost this is an action movie, which is good, because action is what George Lucas does best. This is a fast-paced movie that doesn’t get bogged down in committees, which is good. If you want committees, you can watch CSPAN and it won’t cost you $8 all the time.

There are plenty of special effects here, but it seemed like Lucas tried to rely on special effects to make up for the shortcomings in the first two movies. There’s less of that in this one. I can’t think of a point in the movie that looked like special effects just for the sake of special effects. In a time when Pixar and Dreamworks SKG each release a movie a year featuring entire computer-generated worlds, that trick doesn’t work anymore, and it’s good that Lucas realized it.

Oh, and what about Jar Jar Binks? He makes a brief appearance, but it’s just a few seconds at most and he doesn’t say anything.

So what’s wrong with it?

Dialogue still isn’t Lucas’ strong point. It’s better this time than sometimes (at least someone asks "What’s the matter with you?" in this one; I remember an earlier movie having a line "What’s troubling you?" which just isn’t the way anyone talks) but the things people say still seem contrived, and at times it seems like the actors and actresses might as well be reading cue cards.

Examples? The most blatant examples surround the character of Anakin Skywalker (played by Hayden Christensen), of course. The movie centers around Christensen’s struggles. And that’s the problem. We don’t get to see him struggle so much. We see him cry, but that seems out of place. I feel safe in saying this, since I think everyone knows what happens to Anakin Skywalker, so I’ll say it: Would Darth Vader cry? No? So why is Anakin Skywalker, the 20something hotshot Jedi, crying? It’s out of character. So what does someone who can’t let his guard down but really wants to cry do? Unfortunately, you won’t find out by watching this movie.

Similarly, Natalie Portman’s talents are wasted on the character of Padme. There is no actress alive better suited to play the prodigy Padme. Padme would have been a lot better with more Natalie Portman pontifications and fewer George Lucas pontifications coming out of her. The relentlessness of Portman’s character from Garden State is missing. And at at least one point in the movie, she breaks Anakin Skywalker’s heart. Portman proved in the movie Closer that she can break a heart like nobody’s business. Had she been allowed to truly break the heart of Hayden Christensen and every male in the audience, it would have been a better movie.

Both Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) get very angry with Anakin Skywalker in this movie. At one point, Jackson says, "If you’re right, you’ve earned my trust." Inappropriate. Where’s the Samuel L. Jackson attitude? The cold stare? "You’ll earn my trust when you’re right!" is a good start. Of course in most movies, Jackson would include a couple of f-bombs and end the sentence with a word that starts with the letter "b." Especially if the person he’s talking to happens to be male. Lucas keeps that kind of language out of Star Wars, but Samuel L. Jackson can say those words with his tone of voice even without the actual words coming out. He should have been allowed to.

Ewan McGregor is similarly handcuffed. At the movie’s darkest hour, McGregor’s words don’t match his actions. McGregor sorely needed to drag back out some of the attitude he showed in Trainspotting.

The writing suffers also. Some of the characters are inconsistent. There are minor characters in the movie who seemed larger than life earlier in the movie, yet they died without a struggle. I understand needing to get on with the story, but had they died fighting, it would have been all the more tragic. And besides, had those stories been told, maybe then there would have been 30 seconds spent on the love story rather than 10 minutes.

Gatermann tells me there were some lame attempts at humor in the movie. I didn’t catch anything that even sounded like an attempt at humor. It’s not like this movie had bad actors in it, so this movie should have had its moments.

Kevin Smith compares the movie to Othello or Hamlet. Well, for some in my generation, I’m sure it is. But this movie isn’t going to be remembered much past my generation. My generation’s children will like it for a while because we dragged them along to go see it. But will it capture their imaginations the way it did ours nearly 30 years ago? No. Will it take a seat next to The Wizard of Oz, or Gone With the Wind? No.

And that’s what’s frustrating. George Lucas came up with a good story. He did his homework. All the elements are there. He studied his mythology and mimicked it well. His psychology seems pretty sound. And his characters, especially the key characters, are all very compelling.

This movie had all of the potential for greatness. Probably not Shakespearean greatness, but it had the potential to be the movie of the decade, and, like Anakin Skywalker, it just didn’t live up to it. It won’t even be the best movie to come out this year.

That observation does more to help me understand how Obi-Wan Kenobi felt than Ewan McGregor’s acting did. And that’s really a shame.

Are computer repair people all amateurs like this BBC reporter says?

Dave Farquhar General

I saw this link on Slashdot to a BBC story that calls all computer technician types “unqualified amateurs.”

I think I resent that.I think I happen to be pretty good. Understand, I got that way by being very bad for a very long time. But I will admit I’ve met a lot of IT people, and very few have impressed me. Most are better at sounding like they know what they’re talking about than they are at actually accomplishing anything. I once worked with someone who had the longest resume I’ve ever seen. He claimed to be a budding Windows NT Server administrator with experience in every application you can think of. I got suspicious when he didn’t know how to use a mouse properly. I got severely torqued off when I wrote a whiteboard full of detailed instructions on how to Ghost a PC, left for an hour, and came back to find he had completed three of them, and two of those incorrectly.

But that’s not everyone.

I’m seldom impressed with in-store technicians too. But I can tell you why. The big-box stores have difficulty keeping their good technicians. Headhunters are constantly scouring those stores in search of talent, and it’s only a matter of time before anyone who’s good leaves for greener pastures–namely, a job with fixed or semi-fixed hours and benefits.

So, no, I don’t let my friends take their computers to those places.

I’ve thought about doing what the BBC author did: Posting a notice somewhere offering computer help to home users. I’ve done a bit of it on the side in years past. But there’s a problem. Generally, too many people call, and too often.

Sometimes people seem to think they’re entitled to free computer help for life because they paid you $40 once. Other times they just keep calling you. My biggest problem with it as a part-time gig is that it’s too easy to get buried in it. I work too many hours as it is to come home to three more hours of part-time work every night.

As a full-time gig it would be more tempting, but the problem there is self employment. Thanks to self employment, the government is likely to take half of your earnings, so in order to make what you make in someone else’s employ, you really need to double the number.

That’s my deterrent. There are too many broken computers out there to do this part time, but are there enough broken computers nearby that I could fix 8 of them in a day, and do that about 260 times a year, so that I could make enough money to make it worth my while?

So that’s why I don’t operate a computer repair business out of my home. If someone bribes me enough, I’ll fix theirs, but I can think of better outlets for my entrepreneurial ability.

Just don’t call me an unqualified amateur.

If you’re concerned you might be talking to a hack in a store, here are some questions you can ask to gauge knowledge.

Seen on Slashdot: PC cases made of Lego

Dave Farquhar General

Yes, it’s the kid in me, but these Lego PCs are really cool.

I especially like the one on the bottom, where he made his own cube-shaped mini-PC out of what appears to be a standard microATX board.His idea of putting the power supply under the motherboard is a novel one. I’d try to give the motherboard a little more cooling than what it gets just from the CPU fan, but it’s a great idea and the result looks good.

I still have mine from when I was a kid. And yes, that has me thinking.

These would be easiest to build with motherboards that have video, network, and sound integrated, so you wouldn’t have to think about PCI slots, but he obviously did several with PCI cards, including a Pentium II-based machine.

I like the idea for a small system that only has a hard drive and single CD/DVD-ROM drive. It would be small because it’s totally custom, and would be a good conversation piece, aside from being functional. No one would have one just like it.

How to get a provisional ballot

Dave Farquhar General ,

Since requests for an absentee ballot had to be in by October 27 and my family emergency happened on October 30, I had to use another method.

I voted using a provisional ballot.There isn’t much information on provisional ballots on the Missouri Secretary of State’s web site. So I’ll relay my experience.

First of all, let me say I like provisional ballots. I hope I’m in the minority on this, but in my young life, I’ve needed them twice. Sure, many times when you’re gone on election day, you know in advance and can get a request for an absentee ballot in. That doesn’t always happen. I didn’t get to vote in 1994 because of a sudden death in the family two days before election day. The same thing happened this year.

In 1994, there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. In 2004, there was.

To vote provisionally, you simply go to the local polling place where you happen to be, and ask an election judge for a provisional ballot. Be prepared for the judge to not know how to handle the situation and to collect all sorts of information about you. He wanted my name, address, last four digits of my social security number, driver’s license number, and date of birth. I showed him my driver’s license as identification. My girlfriend didn’t have hers, but I happened to have some of her mail in my car, including a utility bill. She used that as ID, and the judge accepted that as well, as the secretary of state’s office said he would. He also wanted to know why I wanted to vote using a provisional ballot. He then called the county courthouse, and came back a few minutes later with two provisional ballots.

He said we got there just in time because they only had two left. So get there early.

The second thing to know about provisional ballots is they will only be counted in the case of close elections. Chances are our ballots were never counted.

The third thing to know is that the provisional ballot doesn’t have a lot on it. I was able to vote for president, governor, lt. governor, state senator, the local U.S. representative, and a statewide initiative. I was not able to vote for my representative (as it turned out, he was the candidate who probably needed my vote the most) or anyone in the Missouri senate or house. I probably could have voted for that district’s U.S. representative, but I left that blank. I didn’t feel like I should be voting in another district’s race. I don’t know if the vote would have counted or not.

With the ballot, you have to fill out an envelope that asks for more information, such as when you registered to vote and where, as well as other information that hopefully is known by nobody else other than you. You sign under penalty of perjury. Not knowing the exact date I registered, or whether it was at the Cliff Cave or Tesson Ferry branch of the St. Louis County Library, I wrote down what I could remember.

I definitely see holes in this system but I see holes in the rest of the system as well and don’t see that provisional ballots make them much easier to exploit, provided someone actually checks out the information written on that envelope. In St. Louis County, it’s harder to get a library card than it is to register to vote.

Provisional ballots or no, if someone can go to the library with convincing evidence that I have moved, he can register as me and steal my vote. Likewise, if someone shows up at my polling place and manages to convince an election judge that he is me, he can steal my vote. To me, those are bigger holes in the system than the provisional ballot.

Build better ads with Taguchi

Dave Farquhar General

Ever since I first read about the Taguchi method in Robert X. Cringely’s PBS column a year ago, I’ve been fascinated by it.

Since then I’ve seen a few more references to it on the Web, but frankly I think I need an engineer and a statistician to explain the formula to me.Here’s the theory behind Taguchi: Let’s stay I’m trying to design a high-quality chair. I can make lots of decisions when I design it: the type of wood to use, the brand of sealer to use, and what color to paint it. Now any idiot ought to know that white paint versus green paint should make no difference on the durability of the chair. But if it’s less obvious, how do you figure out what variables matter?

Enter Taguchi. Mathematically you can figure out which variable matters, so you can reduce the number of tests. Let’s say I have 12 different types of wood I can buy locally, 12 brands of sealer, and 144 different paints. If I’m remembering high school algebra correctly, that gives me 20,736 different combinations to test. Taguchi will let me quickly figure out that the type of wood I use is the most important factor, letting me build and test 12 chairs instead of 20,000+.

If you’ve noticed that cars are a lot more reliable today than they were 20 years ago, Taguchi has a lot to do with it. The Japanese learned about Taguchi first, which was why Toyota and Honda came from out of nowhere. I remember when people made fun of Hondas. Nobody does that anymore.

Cringley talked over a year ago about applying Taguchi to advertising. Well, I found a free Taguchi ad comparator. That’s a lot better than the $499 product he was talking about a year ago.

I haven’t had time to test it yet, but if I ever decide to try to sell something on Ebay, I’m going to search for old ads for the same thing and run them through it to see if I can figure out why some listings fetch more bids than others (assuming it isn’t an obvious reason, like the item being in poor condition, having a bad photograph, or being listed in the wrong category).

I\’ll try to check in later this weekend.

Dave Farquhar General , , ,

It’s a long weekend, and it’s going to be a busy one.

In the meantime, for those of you who like old trains, here’s a link: Standard Gauge Blog. Primarily it’s dedicated to the old Lionel 2 1/8-inch “Standard Gauge” (there wasn’t anything standard about it, in reality). But if you want to talk about showstopper trains, the biggest showstoppers were this style.

I like this guy because he acknowledges there’s more to the world than MTH (and MTH isn’t even the center of the universe!), he talks to experts, and once he even showed how these things were/are made. Worth checking out.

What day is it again?

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , , , , , ,

Passing a few minutes before a movie started tonight, my girlfriend and I went into a nearby store to look around. And what did we find?

Christmas stuff.

Am I smoking crack, or is it still August?I probably shouldn’t encourage them, but I bought some stuff. Many of those collectible holiday village sets happen to be sized about right for O scale Lionel trains. Those that aren’t are usually sized about right for HO scale. I doubt it’s an accident. Around 100 years ago, J. Lionel Cowen convinced everyone that a train belonged around the Christmas tree. These days, ceramic villages and figures are more popular than the trains, and the big brands are every bit as overpriced as anything Lionel or MTH have made in the past decade, but they’re still sized so they’ll look right if a Lionel train escapes from the attic and ventures into the neighborhood. New traditions have a better chance of usurping older traditions if they fit in with them first.

These weren’t Lemax or Department 56. They were cheap knockoffs. This particular series of knockoffs pairs up O scale-sized figures with HO scale-sized buildings. Not my thang. I’m anything but a scale bigot but half-sized buildings get on my nerves.

But I bought a few figures. They came four to a package for a dollar. You’re lucky to pay less than $4 per figure at a hobby shop. For my four bucks, I got 16 figures.

Yes, the figures are dressed in heavy coats and there’s snow on the bases they stand on. So I won’t have them on the train layout at the same time as my open-top convertible 1:43-scale cars. But the availability of the figures makes it just as cheap and easy to make winter scenes, just like the 50-cent Homies figures make it cheap and easy to make summertime scenes.

Useless trivia answer: If you’ve ever wondered where 1:43 scale toy cars come from, they come from trains as well. The British decided that O scale should be 1:43, and Hornby decided it would be nice to be able to sell cars with which boys could populate their cities. The cars became popular toys in their own right, and the 1:43 scale was copied by other companies, so 1:43 scale cars lived on long after Hornby stopped selling O scale trains.

End useless trivia.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Useless Christmas merchandising in August. I decided I wanted 16 vaguely O scale figures in winter dress more than I wanted $4.24.

But I passed on the wreaths and the holly. I can’t think of any good use for those in my basement.

Some painting tips for around the house

Dave Farquhar General

My mom and girlfriend and sister spent some time this past week painting my house. I can paint a little, but it’s not something I enjoy as much as they do, and I’m definitely not as fast as they are.

I made a couple of small contributions. It was strictly a case of me applying things I’ve learned from model railroading. So there is some tangible benefit to that time I’ve spent playing with trains after all.

So here’s everything I know. (This is gonna be a short one.)Remove latex paint drips and spills with rubbing alcohol. Latex paint is water-soluble, but alcohol does even better. A rag dipped in alcohol makes quick work of the nasty stuff.

Don’t paint wall plates and registers with latex paint! In a lot of older houses, you’ll run across these things, painted in a misguided attempt to make them match the room color. The result always looks like crap, because latex paint is intended for drywall, which is porous, and plastic and metal aren’t. The result is you get a thick, gloppy mess that peels really easily.

If you want to paint those metal registers or plastic wallplates, paint them with a paint designed for a nonporous surface. Find a can of spray paint whose color is a nice complement to the room color (you probably won’t find an exact match). First, prime it with two superthin coats. Spray a thin coat that just puts a colored haze over the surface and let dry. A few hours later, put on another thin haze. Next, paint with the desired color in the same fashion. About 3-4 of these coats will cover it with a very nice, smooth, durable layer. People who’ve been doing this much longer than me say Krylon is the best brand.

What to do if someone already ruined your register with several thick coats of latex. I had a return vent cover that was covered with about three thick, ugly layers and the texture of a poorly done ceiling. I took it out to the garage, chucked a wire wheel into my drill, and ground off all that paint, all the way down to the metal. For stubborn spots, I used my Dremel rotary tool with a grinding bit chucked into it. I then primed and painted it. The result doesn’t look quite new, but it looks far, far better than it would with any coat of latex paint on it.

For plastic wall plates, it’s not worth the effort. Buy a 25-cent one and paint it the color you want. But saving a vent cover is easy.

Free stuck and painted-over screws with a pair of locking pliers. Lock a pair of pliers (I use the Vise-Grip brand) around a stuck screw as tightly as it will go, and turn. You’ll have to re-lock and turn several times but if you work at it, the screw will come out. To clean off the paint so you can reuse them, you can just carefully chip off the paint–you’re more likely to injure yourself than the screw–or soak in alcohol. I cleaned out two slotted screws by sawing along the painted-over slot with a small razor saw intended for hobby use. After just a little convincing, the paint just lifted out. I guess slotted screws have one advantage–just one–over Phillips screws after all.

For rusted screws, try soaking them overnight in a glass of cola. The phosphoric acid in the cola attacks the rust. You could also try chucking a bit of aluminum foil in your drill or rotary tool and polish it. Aluminum oxidizes much more quickly than iron, so the aluminum rubbing against the rust will de-oxidize the iron and give you a shiny surface again. Drive the screw into a piece of scrap wood and then paint it to keep it from oxidizing again. Then remove the screw and re-use.

Pretentious Pontifications: R. Collins for President

Dave Farquhar General , ,

R. Collins Farquhar IV, Aristocrat and Scientist.

To the directionless American people.

Greeting:

As my most recent endeavor received little appreciation, it is my great delectation to announce my decision to devote my considerable talents to solving the world’s problems.George W. Bush is in the back pocket of large corporations in a time when there are only two corporations, Intel and Microsoft, who are worthy of any trust. John Kerry is in the back pocket of labor unions and other leftist organizations.

Matters such as war and the economy are best left to the aristocracy, and not to amateurs such as these men. And, being an aristocrat, I have adequate means to support myself for eight years, so I can work without the distraction of trying to tread water above the poverty level on a meager $200,000 salary.

Therefore I am running for president.

John Kerry says he will reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil but he does not say how. This is because this is a popular idea to which he has given no thought. Some political consultant told him this is what the rabble wants to hear. As even a simpleton like my brother David knows, the way one reduces dependency on oil flowing in from countries that hate you is by increasing your dependency on oil flowing in from countries that do not. Alaska has oil. Alaska is not even a foreign country. Venezuela has oil. We already buy oil from Venezuela. We should keep doing that. Russia has oil. We have money. We need oil. Russia needs money.

I will not state the rest of the obvious.

Now let us tackle the difficult matter of war. Being of rich Scottish heritage, and being descended from warriors who nearly succeeded in overthrowing the King of England except for a minor technicality of being betrayed by the French, I know a few things about war. I know more than a few things about winning a war.

I suppose only an aristocrat would notice such things, but it is very appropriate that our troops wear green camouflage, for many of them are not battle-tested. This is part of the reason why we are not winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is painfully obvious to my aristocratic eyes that our troops need more seasoning before we send them off to fight in either of those two countries. Therefore, I propose we declare war on France in order to give our troops an opportunity to learn how to fight a war and gain confidence by absolutely trouncing an enemy. This trenchant and sonorous victory would give our troops confidence and rid us of a distraction. While routing the French army would not provide total preparation for facing the much better-trained guerrilla troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, it would certainly give them confidence, and confidence is 90% of everything.

The economy is easy to turn around. The aristocracy needs to spend more of its pin money. And when unemployment increases, the aristocracy needs to take on more manservants.

There remains but one problem, but hear me out, for I am going to turn that problem into a tremendous advantage: My age. The reports are true that I am but 29 years of age, which is well short of the 45-year requirement. However, I am in possession of an evil twin brother, who, incredibly, is also 29 years of age. Our combined age of 58 is well over the legal requirement. The advantage is that my brother, whom some consider more personable than myself, can take to matters that make presidents popular with the populace, such as jogging, drinking coffee at McDonald’s, looking at trains going around Christmas trees, signing books, making appearances at sporting events, dedicating libraries, granting interviews, and other such examples of woolgathering. He obviously will not know what is going on, but that is okay, because it will make this presidency appear peccant and naive, but such are the hallmarks of recent U.S. presidencies. Meanwhile, I can be tending to vade me*censored*presidential affairs, such as having my manservants bathe me, and then I can tend to a grueling 4-hour workday, whose tasks will include turning around the economy, bringing jobs back to the United States, and winning wars.

With an identical twin frolicking about the country acting as an aegis, it will be impossible at all times to know my whereabouts. So my misguided fans who like to give me fan letters soaked in alcohol and set on fire, or give me a 21-gun salute all by themselves, will not only have to get past the Secret Service, they first will have to figure out where I am. The additional Secret Service agents needed to protect two co-presidents will help the economy, offsetting some of the abstruce disadvantages of having such an ignoramus in such a prominent and redoubtable position.

My vice president, of course, will be none other than Jacques Pierre Cousteau Bouilliabaise le Raunche de la Stenche. He will, of course, be my main deipnosophist, and act as a fountain of yeasty jeremiads.

My time has come. My country needs me.

Not only do I appreciate your vote, I deserve it.