The Bemused Kansas Jayhawk Football FAQ

I haven't posted for a while, possibly because I'm in a state of shock. In case you haven't heard, the Jayhawks are 9-0. In Football, no less. (In basketball, a team that doesn't start 9-0 is considered suspect. Anything worse that 7-2 is considered a failed season.)

Since this is a rather unusual situation for us all, I thought I'd put together a small FAQ:

1. Is our RPI good enough to get us into the tournament? Uh, well, ... You see, there isn't a tournament.
2. Huh? No, the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, does not hold football playoffs for NCAA Division I schools. All other divisions, including Division I-AA (don't ask), have a championship tournament, but D-I does not.
3. Then how does the NCAA determine a Division I champion? It doesn't.
4. This is going to sound repetitive, but ... Huh? No, there is no NCAA D-I football champion. There is, however, a Bowl Championship Series, and the winner of the BCS is usually considered the D-I champion.
5. So is KU in the BCS tournament? Uh, there's no tournament. It's only one game.
6. ???? I agree.
7. So who picks the teams in the game? Some writers and some computers.
8. Sigh All right, how are we doing with them? This week, we're fourth, behind Ohio State, LSU, and Oregon.
9. But LSU and Oregon have a loss! Yup, but the writers and the computers think KU is a weaker team.
10. Why's that? Two words: Southeastern Louisiana
11. Oh. OK, what has to happen for us to get into the game? KU has to win out, beating Oklahoma State, Iowa State, and Missouri, and the win the Big XII Championship Game. And the opponent there better be Oklahoma. LSU & Oregon have to lose another game, and it wouldn't hurt if Ohio State loses to Michigan. If all that happens, we'll get into the BCS game.
12. Otherwise the season's over after the Big XII Championship? No, we'll get to go to a bowl game, if we win out. Probably in the Orange Bowl game, if we win out.
13. And that's, oh, a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving? No, it's on January 1.
14. After the BCS Championship game? No, that's not until January 7.
15. What? You mean that the supposed two best teams in the nation have to wait for a month to play each other? Yup.
16. Why? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
17. Oh.
18. So basketball will be in full swing before this BCS game? Yes.
19. Won't people forget about the BCS by then? Strange as it may seem, in many parts of the country football is more popular than basketball. I don't know why, either, but for some reason people care about football.
20. But they still don't have a true National Champion? No.
21. So apparently they don't care all that much. Well ... they do, but it's mostly about professional football.
22. What's that? I wouldn't know. I root for the Washington Redskins.

Best Thing He's Ever Done

I'm Going to Bed Now. Really

One More

I may not be able to stop myself.

Motivate Yourself

Augh! I should be in bed, and instead I'm doing this:

Remember those Star Trek Inspirational Posters? Well, I was downloading a few more tonight for use as wallpaper when it hit me, “gee, Dave, there really ought to be some StarGate Inspirational Posters on the web somewhere.” And, of course, there are.

This led me directly to the Motivator: Creator site, which lets you put in your own pictures and sayings. Neat, huh?

So, in honor of last weekend's NCAA Midnight Madness, and in keeping with the theme of this blog, let me get rid of any illusions you may have about the coming season:

How I Spent Columbus Day (Observed)

Last Monday was a Federal Holiday, and I'd done all the yard work I was going to do over the weekend. So how to spend the day? I know! said my Internal Optimist, Let's rebuild the Windows machine!! It will be fun!!! I should have shot him after the first exclamation point.

Follow: Some months ago I had to reinstall Windows XP on Hal's Evil Twin. Well, I pretty much made a hash of it. It's extremely slow. (I'm a Geek, but I don't claim to be a Competent Geek.) Nevertheless, I don't use Windows, and the complaints from the natives were rather quiet, spouse having consented to read her email on Hal.

Then I read that Penguin Pete was playing around with a Windows machine, just to see how fast he could make it. I also remembered that I'd done a test install of XP on Hal's Other Twin, where, unencumbered by anti-virus protection, it boots up very fast (convenient when I want a quick game of Pinball).

I suspect that my problems come from loading up GooglePack and the Comcast supplied McAfee anti-virus software. Both of these packages add a large number of tasks to the start menu. Well, I mainly put in GooglePack to install Firefox and Thunderbird, and McAfee anti-virus because it was free. Pete, however, turned me on to the Open Disc project, a successor to the Open CD, which includes Firefox, the ClamWin anti-virus scanner, and a whole lot more. Good enough, I think.

So to start we:

• Back up Hal's “Documents and Settings” directory, which contains most user settings, as well as the shared “My Music” and “My Pictures” directories. This is much easier than last time, as I now have a 400 GB external disk. It's also easier to do this from the dual-boot Ubuntu partition I put on the Evil Twin. Just go into root and copy everything over as needed.
• Put a copy of the Network Install version of Windows XP Service Pack 2 on a CD, along with the Updated drivers for the Wacom CTE-430 (Sapphire, aka Graphire3) tablet/wireless mouse that we use for drawing. I downloaded both the newest tested version, 5.03, and the 5.01-9 driver I used last time. I'll try 5.03 first, knowing that I have a backup. (It works fine.)
• Make a copy of the OpenDisc CD
• Get a copy of Going Postal, which I'm re-reading before I get to Making Money, since I've forgotten such important plot points as who Adora Bell Dearheart is, and why she's so interested in Golems. I need a refresher course. (Look it up. I Could Tell You, but then I'd have to Lend You Thirty-Some Books.)
• Make sure the current Windows setup can read the backup data.
• Print out all the steps I took last time — something surprisingly difficult to do from my current Blogger template — to serve as a template.
• Take a deep breath — it's too early for a shot of whiskey.

Oh dear me, here we go again. Note that the times noted below are skewed by the fact that I'm doing other things while this long, long process is going on.

1. 12 noon: Put Dell's SP1 Windows Restore drive into the computer. Boot. Do the “Press Any Key” option. Note that the computer has found the Microsoft Wireless Keyboard, and, presumably, the mouse. Wait a bit for the system to load up.
2. 12:15 pm: Choose the “Fresh Install” option.
3. I'd previously divided Twin's 120 GB disk into two partitions — one NTFS, for Windows, and one FAT32, where files can be easily shared with Linux. Well, now we can also share with NTFS, but let's keep everything as before, and put Windows on the 70$nbsp;GB NTFS partition. Reformat the partition, just to avoid problems.
4. 12:38 pm: Setup starts copying files to the Windows Installation folders.
5. 12:44 pm: Windows doesn't like something on one of the hard drives, probably the one holding Linux. That drive's failure started the first reinstallation. Go ahead with boot. The screen says 39 minutes left.
6. 12:48 pm: Missed the world famous 34 minute installation bug. Chose Regional and Language options, US/East Coast, naturally.
7. Give the computer its name: Hal's Evil Twin.
8. Windows wants to know how to make phone calls. Silly Windows.
9. 1:01 pm: Windows reboots, allegedly improving my screen settings — well, it might, but first we have to install the missing Drivers from the Dell driver list:
   • Audio
   • Mouse
   • Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility
   • Intel 845 G/Gl Integrated Video (Had to do this twice. My mistake, I think.)
   • Broadcom 4401 Integrated NIC Driver
   and reboot.
10. 1:24 pm: Change resolution to 1024x768 and 32 color (was 800x600 after driver installation.)
11. 1:26 pm: Install D-Link wireless driver. Reboot.
12. 1:29 pm: Set up wireless network. Well, try. D-Link's software doesn't seem to want to work. Reboot and try, try, again.
13. 1:36 pm: Wireless card still won't find network. Turn off everything before being tempted to throw it out the window.
14. 2:20 pm: Somewhat calmed down, bring up computer again. Still doesn't work. Get the installation manuals off the CD, which requires I install Adobe Reader 6.0. Yuck.
15. 2:27 pm: Finally. You have to uncheck the box that tells Windows to set up the network, then click OK, then wait for D-Link to get around to pulling up its utility. From there you configure access to a WPA-PSK network.
16. 2:29 pm: Network access established.
17. 2:30 pm: WACOM tablet driver, now. Hopefully this will cause it to come up early in the log-on sequence. Reboot.
18. 2:37 pm: Install Service Pack 2. Turn off network while we're doing this, just in case.
19. 2:50 pm: Finished with SP2. Reboot.
20. 2:53 pm: Turn on automatic updates, set up user accounts. Tell Windows that we have an anti-virus program, and keep the Firewall on.
21. 2:58 pm: Install first round of post-SP2 updates.
22. 2:59 pm: Reboot.
23. 3:00 pm: Get out the OpenDisc CD and install:
    • Firefox
    • Thunderbird
    • ClamWin anti-virus scanner. Since it doesn't do on-the-fly scanning, have it do its work at 1 am every day. Note that it takes a while to update the data files off the web. Also note that it only does a scan when someone is logged on, so remember to “switch user” rather than “log off” if we're not going to shut down the machine.
    • GIMP (graphics manipulation)
    • 7-Zip compression/decompression program.
    • OpenOffice.org version 2.3
    • PDF Creator (Note that OpenOffice can create PDFs out of the box, this is for other programs.)
24. 6:01 pm: No, it didn't take that long. We went out to run errands. As we were shutting down, Windows did another update, and now we have to accept yet another set of updates.
25. 6:04 pm: Reboot
26. 6:06 pm: Have ClamWin do a virus scan, just as a safety measure.
27. 8:50 pm: OK, I took another break, but it took a couple of hours to complete the scan on a more-or-less empty machine.
28. 8:52 pm: Install Microsoft Wireless Keyboard/Mouse software, just in case we need it.
29. 8:57 pm: Install drivers for Canon printer.
30. 9:07 pm: Install drivers for Visioneer 4400 Scanner.
31. 9:11 pm: Reboot
32. 9:15 pm: Install the ancient copy of Photoshop Elements (2.0) that came with the equally ancient scanner.
33. 9:18 pm: Install Nero CD/DVD burning software.
34. 9:25 pm: More XP updates have shown up. Load them up and reboot.
35. 9:31 pm: Load in the ancient copy of Office (97). (Why do we need this if we have OpenOffice.org? Because sometimes even really old real PowerPoint looks better than Oo.o's simulated PowerPoint. Don't like it, but there it is.)
36. 9:47 pm: Odd. Internet Explorer, I assume 6.0, hangs up every time I try to run it. Which means no updates, except by AutoUpdate? Scary.
37. 9:51 pm: OK, a reboot fixes that. Go through the update process, installing the “new” version of Windows update, including that Windows Genuine Advantage thing.
38. 9:59 pm: Install files that the users of this computer need, then quit for the night.

And then I ran out of energy to write anything down anymore. In short, the next evening I:

• Set up the individual user accounts: all with administrative access, of course, since you can't easily run Windows without it — actually I think I did this on Monday, but I've repressed many memories from that day.
• Found all possible updates to Office 97.
• Updated Internet Explorer from dreadful to barely acceptable — uh, I mean from 6 to 7.
• Installed VLC off the OpenDisc to enable movie-watching.
• Killed off Adobe Reader 6.0, installed the newest version (8.1?).
• Installed Java.
• Hey, what do you know? It's Update Tuesday. Download and reboot.
• Killed off start menu and bootup items that seem unnecessary.
• Restored everybody's files.
• Say “Good Night,” Dick. “Good Night, Dick.”

And done. So far, one week out, ClamWin has only claimed to discover two viruses, both of which are Win 97 files, which makes the detection look suspect.

And the system runs much faster. I guess we'll keep it this way for now.

50 Years in the Making

The future began 50 years ago today. I should probably make a long post about what the launching of Sputnik meant — for one thing, it directly led to my becoming a physicist instead of, say, a doctor or engineer (though an engineer might actually have worked in the space program). It also gave a big impetus to the fledgling semiconductor industry, as the US needed light-weight satellites to go on its relatively small rockets. As the Washington Post pointed out, Sputnik also lead to the founding of DARPA, which became ARPA, and, before becoming DARPA again formed something called ARPAnet. Wonder what happened to that?

Anyway, here's NASA's version of the day that changed the world.

The Quote on the L^He^Hf^Ht^H R^H^i^Hg^Hh^Ht^H Top

Is courtesy of Blog U, though I didn't try to fix my template to make it appear above these posts, I just picked the topmost "Add a Page Element" that was already there.

That, and a search for pTerry quotes on the web.

Yeah, I got bored and changed the template.

If you move Blogger's "Page Elements" around enough, you eventually get them where you want them to go.

Ubuntizing Red Hat Liberation Fonts

You've probably heard that Red Hat has released a set of Liberation Fonts, which are metric equivalents of the Microsoft Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman fonts; thus you can use, e.g., Liberation Serif and your OpenOffice.org document should be exactly the same size as a Word document with the Times New Roman font. Note that they don't look exactly like the Microsoft fonts, for that would be copyright infringement, and rightly so.

The fonts aren't available in Ubuntu at the moment, but following a Ubuntu Forums thread, I extracted the relevant part of the installation script. (The rest of the script is supposed to improve font rendering on your screen — my fonts render well enough for my needs, so I'm leaving that alone. YMMV.)

To install the Liberation fonts, save this script as red_hat_lib_install:

#! /bin/bash

## See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=515947&highlight=red+hat+liberation+fonts

## Or http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3123244&postcount=3

## We'll only add Red Hat Liberation Fonts, forget the sub-pixel stuff
##  for now.

## Download the fonts from Red Hat
wget https://www.redhat.com/f/fonts/liberation-fonts-ttf-3.tar.gz

## Extract the package
tar -xvf liberation-fonts-ttf-3.tar.gz

## Copy the fonts to the proper directory
cp -r liberation-fonts-0.2 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/

## Delete temporary files
rm -r liberation-fonts-0.2/ liberation-fonts-ttf-3.tar.gz

## Rebuilt the font cache
fc-cache

and then

sudo ./red_hat_lib_install

Open up an applications such as OpenOffice, and admire the fonts (or not, again, YMMV, but you don't have to use them if you don't like them).

And while you're at it, look at all of these already Debianed fonts. There may be something there you really like — just don't send me your resume in flatline regular.

Blogger Play

This is probably a statement about how much privacy we're willing to surrender in exchange for free web presence.

Or, maybe, it's just interesting:

http://play.blogger.com/

“Real Time” viewing of images uploaded to Blogger.

Welcoming Back an Old Friend

My favorite old calendaring software package is called ical, but it's got nothing to do with Apple. It's an old tcl/tk program, and I've discussed its installation many times before.

For whatever reason, I hadn't been able to run ical under Ubuntu Feisty. Today I decided to try, once again, to do something about it. A bit of Googling found that there's a bugfix version of ical, 2.3.2. I downloaded that, then followed the directions for creating a proper makefile:

$ tar xvf ical-2.3.2.tar.gz
$ cd ical-2.3.2
$ ./configure --with-tclconfig=/usr/lib/tcl8.4 \
--with-tkconfig=/usr/lib/tk8.4 \
--with-tclhdir=/usr/include/tcl8.4 \
--with-tkhdir=/usr/include/tcl8.4
$ make
$ sudo make install

Which puts the program in /usr/local/bin. Of course, you have to have the Tcl and Tk packages and -dev files (headers) installed:

$ dpkg -S /usr/lib/tcl8.4
tcl8.4, tcl8.4-dev: /usr/lib/tcl8.4

$ dpkg -S /usr/lib/tk8.4
tk8.4, tk8.4-dev: /usr/lib/tk8.4

$ dpkg -S /usr/include/tcl8.4
tcl8.4-dev, expect-dev, tk8.4-dev: /usr/include/tcl8.4

So at the very least you'll need tcl8.4, tk8.4, tcl8.4-dev and tk8.4-dev.

And so, once again, I have my favorite calendering program.

Corfu, Greece

For some reason, not all of the pictures are displayed in this entry. I've uploaded the whole post to my personal web pages at
http://home.comcast.net/~mikemehl/corfu/
note that the pictures are significantly bigger there, so it will take longer to download.

Given our switch from Comcast to Verizon, I don't expect that link to stay up very long, so I've tried replacing the pictures in this blog. If they vanish again, I'll put them on my new web page, wherever that may be.

I spent the last week of August on the island of Corfu (Kerkyra), Greece, attending ISMANAM 2007 (which highly amused the immigration lady in London). The meeting was quite good, I learned a fair amount and, as with all good meetings, made contacts with people I'd never met before.

But I don't want to talk about that. I want to show you some of Corfu:

• My hotel, the Louis Corcyra Beach, is a “resort” hotel. The view is quite nice:
  
  
  
  but the rooms aren't what you'd think of as American quality: there's a window air conditioner, the beds are small, and the floor is tile. If you want a resort that has fancy American style hotel rooms, for about the same price (or cheaper), go to Cancun. They did have a reasonable American-style (eggs, ham, bacon, etc.) breakfast included in the price (110 €/night).
• The Louis Corcyra is in Gouvia, which is sort of the Ocean City, Maryland, of the island. That is, lots of bars, lots of tourists running around. This time of year it was mostly Brits, and every bar had a giant TV showing Premier League Soccer. I wish I'd taken pictures of the night-life, but all I have are shots like Thursday Morning, 10 a.m.:
  
  
• Some of the hotels (but not the Louis C) have internet access, at a rate of about 6 €/hour. (1 € ≈ $ 1.40, at least last week). A better deal, after 6 p.m., at least, is to go up to Dassia (about 3 km from Gouvia) and stop at Great Shakes, a British pub serving Indian food prepared by a Welsh chef. They have free Internet access. Well, not exactly free, you're expected to buy something, but for 5 € you can get:
  
  
  
  which you can nurse for an hour or more. Good curries, too.
  
  (Note the abomination on the glass, required by the EU's slavish adherence to the metric system. I love the metric system, but some things are sacred.)
• More interesting was Corfu City itself. I got to spend most of last Friday there, waiting for my plane to take off. Here I stayed at the Cavalieri Hotel, a refurbished 17th century mansion. The room was nicer than the one at the Louis C, cheaper (75 $euro;, with a smaller breakfast buffet), and had a bed that was way too soft, and a really small, two-level, bathtub that almost killed me (and may still, my ribs still hurt from where I fell).
  
  
• Corfu contains several museums. I spent a half-hour (that's all it takes, really) in the Archaeological Museum, which features exhibits from the last 2,600 years. I particularly liked the lion from the 7th century B.C. tomb of Menecrates (the poet, I think):
  
  
  
  and the Gorgon pediment from the temple to Artemis:
• Corfu is dominated by two forts, the Old Fort and the New Fort (duh). The Cavalieri is near the Old Fort,
  
  
  
  which was originally built by the Venetians, who controlled the island in the 15-18th centuries, and modified by just about everyone who since. The fort is on an islet that was artificially separated from the mainland.
  
  
  
  It's a long way up. Take a look at the view coming into the fort,
  
  
  
  and then a view of the cross from the level of the clock tower (but off to one side),
  
  
  
  and then look at how tall the cross itself is:
  
  
  
  Finally, take a look back at the town, from the top of the fort. The Cavalieri is off to the left just behind the park:
  
  
  
  
• For one last shot, let's see if Blogger really can upload movies now:
  
  

Galen Frysinger has much, much, much, more about Corfu, along with just about every other place in the world.

(Pictures taken with a Canon PowerShot A550, downloaded to this computer using gthumb, though digikam also works.)

AL Central, 18 August 2007

When your team is out of the cellar in August for the first time in four years, it's time to celebrate:

Team	W	L	Streak	Pct.	GB
Cleveland	68	54	W3	.557	—
Detroit	67	56	L2	.545	1 ½
Minnestota	61	61	L1	.500	7
Kansas City	55	67	W3	.451	13
Chicago	54	68	L7	.443	14

Since 2004, the KC number in the “GB” column has usually been in the 30's, so being only 13 games back is a considerable improvement.

Holyrood Cats

For reasons that escape me, this blogs pictures of our cats are very popular. In a shameless attempt to get more hits, Linux & Things presents:

The Cats of Holyrood, Kansas

Taken on a recent visit. Note that slight resemblance to our cats. These however, are only about eight months old, though the black one has already had one litter.

The Final Frontier

Haven't posted for a long time, I know. We're doing lots of traveling in August. In the meantime, here's something to hold you over:

This is what it felt like to be a space geek in the '60s.