ATOM von Fugal

CSApprox

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:22:10 -0700

Probably the coolest VIm plugin since netrw, welcome CSApprox! Just put this in your .vim/plugin and away you go with completely transparent and automatic 256 color themes for your terminal vim that look amazingly not unlike the GUI versions of those themes. Just make sure your terminal properly reports 256 colors, and that your vim binary is compiled with gui support (debian flavors do this, but apparently not red hat flavors). If either of these are missing it will give you a little message and delay opening vim, if this is a problem you might want to suppress that output.

I also highly recommend enabling 256 colors via Xresources rather than setting TERM=xterm-256color, this will save headache when sshing in from a less fine terminal or when logging in at the console. A quick google turns up plenty of info on how o set your Xresources with one caveat; if you use uxterm like any sane person would, you need s/Xterm/UXterm/. I’ve also found cases where I need xterm as well, so I simply put all three in there to be safe.


        Xterm*termName: xterm-256color
        UXterm*termName: xterm-256color
        xterm*termName: xterm-256color

1 comment

Mutt Color Theme

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:45:55 -0700

Some time ago, being the no good visual designer I am, I decided to put together a mutt color theme. This was no ordinary theme, I’m talking 256 colors! No, don’t worry, the theme doesn’t use all 256 colors.

Aaron’s post prompted me to put up my theme for consumption, enjoyment, and comment. If you want details on how to make the colors work, follow the link above, he did a good job of that already.

Now, the theme and screenshots.

1 comment

White Spaces: Coming to a Technology Near You

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:01:42 -0700

In a refreshing break from political posts, I’m going to rejoice in the bounty that is white-space airwaves made free and open. With all TV broadcast going digital, there will be many chunks of EM spectrum between digital TV channels. This is known as white-space, or unused digital TV spectrum. The FCC voted 5-0 to make these unused frequencies available in the same sense CB, 802.11 and walkie talkie frequencies are. What does this mean? Why the big fuss? Well, not only does it mean more frequencies available for wireless internet and other uses, it also means longer range for wireless internet and other things. These are the same frequencies that TV signals are broadcast long distances on, remember. It is very exciting. Some call it wifi on steroids. Along those lines, think Digis (or insert wireless provider here) on steroids. Room for more wireless ISPs and at greater range, therefore less base stations, more customers, more competition, and lower costs all around! But it’s not just about wireless providers, or even just internet, my brother wants to build a GPS receiver that transmits the raw data home for actual position calculation, offloading the hard work, making the mobile unit simpler and cheaper. The newly available spectrum means for him more range and less interference. Exciting times!

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Tossed About

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:58:20 -0600

James 1:6

6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

There’s been some talk about something happening in October that will shape the imminent election. For any interested on what these events might be, this is an interesting article. That article is probably pretty strongly conspiratorial to a lot of my readers, but my point isn’t to point out any conspiracies or to lend credence to particular theories.

My objective today is to say “stand firm” and go into this election with much prayer and faith. Regardless of what happens, how accurately it was predicted, or how complicit any parties may be… the point remains that if it does affect the election then it doesn’t matter who was behind it, if anyone. So I beg of you, all of you, have faith and do not waver! I’m not going to presume to tell you who to vote for. However, don’t be tossed about, prayerfully make a decision and then stick too it, whatever happens.

I’m not saying a nuke will detonate, or that I believe we’ll endure some kind of attack. I don’t know even that anything will happen. We might not even realize as subtle winds toss us, so let us be watchful and prayerful, and seek the Lord’s guidance.

As a side note, when you’re studying out your decision, keep in mind that there are more choices than two.

1 comment

Economic Theories

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:09:13 -0600

I’m no economist, but I know some basics and I have been thinking a lot about things since the whole credit crisis and the bailout. Now I’m going to make some predictions. Take them with a grain of salt.

Stocks have been crashing, markets have been freezing, mortgages and loans of all kinds defaulting, all in a interdependent way. Additionally, silver and gold have seen a dramatic drop in price against the dollar, and have really stayed remarkably low for a while now, going on week two. This is the brunt of all my thinking, why in the world, in times of economic trouble, are the traditional securities, gold and silver, so darn low?? Real estate prices are low. Gas prices are low. Stock prices are low. Just about anywhere you look you find more low prices.

The only conclusion I could come to is that indeed it is not the stocks that are crashing or the values of gold and silver going down. What we are really seeing is the value of the DOLLAR going up! Absolutely remarkable IMO. Of course there’s an explanation, it goes back to the interdependencies of the last paragraph. There is a credit crunch, or credit freeze, or credit crisis. Whatever you call it, short answer: people are hoarding money. Nobody wants to let it go, nobody wants to lend it out not knowing if it’ll ever come back. This produces a scarcity of the dollar, and what is scarce and in demand becomes more valuable.

The take home point is that you can look at things from a different point of view. In Newtonian physics you might take a particularly hairy problem, transform it into another frame of reference, and come out with a much easier problem. I’ve followed this financial crisis with intensity, and I’ve spent a lot of brain power trying to wrap my head around it. I understood that housing prices were down because of defaulted mortgages, I understood that businesses were having a hard time getting loans because these credit default swaps permeated the market. What I couldn’t wrap my head around is how it’s so darn far reaching, even to gold and silver, and, well, everything.

This is where I found it useful to change my frame of reference. Instead of asking why everything else is so cheap, instead I ask “why is the dollar so uncharacteristically high valued?”

What we have is an artificially scarce dollar. The dollars are there but nobody is trading them. Normally, this would result in the same thing we are seeing, dollar value goes up, price of everything else goes down, and eventually things play out, people learn who to trust, money flows again, and everything goes back to normal. Arguably, if the crisis is big enough, things might not get to normal, or at least not converge to normal in any orderly fashion. If and when things get back to relatively normal, those who acted when the dollar was artificially valued high will have made a killing.

However, we have an additional variable, a big one, to the tune of near $1 trillion dollars pumped into the system in a very short time period. Dollars are guarded jealously, the government pumps tons of dollars out, those also are hoarded and the value of the dollar remains at this high point. Now, when people finally decide to trade their dollars again, and this they will do, we won’t ONLY go back to the original value of the dollar, but instead the dollars value will go back down PAST its original value. Prices will sky-rocket. Gas will return to $4/gallon AND THEN SOME. Same story with everything else with fluctuating prices. Gold and silver will go back to their pre-crisis points AND THEN SOME, perhaps even stocks will come out way better than they were pre-crisis.

Perhaps if things get really bad, what people might perceive is a horrifying devaluation of dollars, getting the message to get rid of their dollars. This would serve to exacerbate the falling price of the dollar. You go from hoarding to hot potato. We just might yet see hyperinflation in our boastful US of A. Just maybe the Lamanites CAN get into Zarahemla.

My brother points out that $1 trillion is not a very large percentage of the total money supply. However, it is enough to push the dollar below it’s previous trend line, and coupled with peoples interpretations and resulting actions, it could be enough to be devastating.

How long till this all goes down? That I’m not so sure of, nor how fast it will happen. I’ve heard others quoting as long as a 5 year ‘recovery’ period. All in all, the slower the recovery the better off we’ll be. If the recovery happens too fast, watch out for hyperinflation.

The bailout could in fact perform favourably, it might actually serve to broaden the recovery curve I mentioned. Then again it might not, I don’t pretend my analysis is that detailed. As an aside, I’m not opposed to the idea of using money to solve this problem, what I am opposed to is using taxpayer money. And what I think is particularly dangerous is using money in a way that increases the money supply. This easy credit, $1 trillion of “new” debt against the American people, is a huge gamble to make.

Word to the wise, take advantage of the high dollar value right now. Some speculate (in different terms) that the dollar will be at it’s highest mid-winter. But if you want to be safe, buy now. If you have stocks DO NOT SELL THEM.

You might ask, “but if we all go buy right now, won’t that bring on the ‘too fast’ adjustment you were talking about?” That’s a good question, the answer is the more that buy now the better, because I guarantee you that “everybody” is not going to be doing that. The vast majority of people will buy when things get ugly. So the more that buy now, the more that serves to spread the distribution. So not only is it the best thing for you to do, it also serves to help the economy overall.

I don’t claim to be prophetic by any means, but I reserve the right to say “I told you so.” I also reserve the right to be wrong. :)

2 comments

On Gay Rights and Gay Marriage

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:45:54 -0600

The blogosphere is rife with discussion on gay marriage and the LDS Church’s involvement in California. I would like to do my part in the battle for family. I pray this post will have positive effect in that battle, however modest it might be.

First of all, I’ve already said how I feel about group rights. Gays don’t have rights. Human beings have rights. Gays happen to be human beings. Good, we’re on the same page.

That said, this isn’t really about gay rights as much as it is about gay marriage, but it brings me to my first point.

Marriage is not a right.

For all the talk about gay rights you can mostly chalk it up to human rights that need to transcend prejudice. In other words, instead of clamoring for “gay rights” they should instead be insisting that they be afforded the already existing human rights. Gay marriage, on the other hand, is a prime example of a group inventing new rights so they can feel the same as everyone else regardless of their decisions. It’s like a people with dreadlocks inventing a right to lay their heads on your table simply because you don’t mind another person without dreadlocks doing it.

Marriage is fundamental to society.

This is entirely incident to marriage not being a right, but is yet a powerful argument against the thought that marriage should be a right. Marriage is the very institution by which children have parents, both mother and father. It is the core of the fundamental unit of society—family.

Marriage involves more than the couple.

Intimate relations are not just about consenting adults having a good time. There is ever present the possibility of new life. This new life has rights just the same. It has needs, physical, emotional, spiritual.

Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. “Children are an heritage of the Lord” (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God [etc.]

Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.

—The Family: A Proclamation to the World

It is because of this sticky situation that marriage is instituted. The very purpose of marriage is to give children stable homes, to assure where possible that when children are created they have a mother and a father. Once you realize this, you realize that gay marriage isn’t the only thing you ought to be worried about. Fornication, adultery and divorce come to mind. Alas, this post is about gay marriage. Indeed, homosexual relations cannot result in offspring, so the very reasons for instituting marriage don’t even apply to the deviants. Yet they insist they have a right to marry. Again I propose it’s merely about them feeling the same as everyone else, regardless of their personal choices. It’s validation, nothing more.

Government should be involved in marriage.

Many of my libertarian friends throw around the idea that government should step out of marriage completely, leaving it a private and religious matter concerning only those involved. This is one of few places where I diverge from the libertarian camp (though not necessarily libertarian ideals). As stated previously, marriage inherently involves more than the parties involved. It involves family and new life; it involves society as a whole. It is in the interests of everyone involved (and everyone is involved, who among us was not born of a mother and a father?) and we should take every opportunity to encourage marriage over promiscuity and counseling over divorce. We should take every opportunity to afford children the privilege of being born into the marriage relation, and where that’s not possible to be adopted into such (no, I’m not saying single parents should give up their children, though they shouldn’t be discouraged to do so). The government is the vehicle by which the people are governed. Whereas the people deem it in society’s interest to afford children the opportunity to develop under the guidance of bonded mother and father, encouraged to stay together, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, thus is born the state sanctioned institution of marriage.

6 comments

Bye Bye smbfs

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:42:09 -0600

Please, Von, please, next time you set up a samba mount, just use cifs and not smbfs. Save yourself a lot of headache.

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Tricking Darcs, or How to Make a Common Branch

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:06:26 -0700

Imagine you have a repository. At time t₀ someone copies the code from the repository, starts another repository from there, and commences development. You also continue development. At time t you want to pull in the changes the other guy has made.

One approach could be you simply merge other guys code into yours with one big commit calculated from time t₀. Now suppose you want to keep other guy’s history from t₀ on, or even worse, you want to pull only some changes and you want to push some of your changes to other guy.

This is a true story. It all started with CVS. A webapp was developed, cloned and branched. Now there are 4 of them, mostly the same, but subtly different, and each with it’s own CVS repo. Each one at some point in time is identical to another, but the history behind those points in time are different, thanks to copy and commit cloning.

So after converting the CVS to Darcs, I came up with a way of tricking darcs into treating time t₀ in each repository as the same t₀, thus enabling cross-pollination, and here I describe that method.

First you find t₀, and tag liberally. By liberally I mean twice. I’ll explain why later. Of course you put the same two tags on both repos, both at the same point in time. Then you do a darcs opt --checkpoint on each so you can do a partial get on them.

Now you have to decide which repo you’re going to keep, and which one you are bringing in. You probably want to keep the one with past history, and bring in the one that did copy and commit cloning. Do a darcs get --partial on each repo, keeping track of which is what. I like to use a for the destination, and b for the bad repo.

Edit: The below paragraph is a bit confusing. Keep in mind that to make b think it’s a, you just replace b’s guts with those of a, but this only works for the partial at time t₀. So we make a snapshot for reference, and then pull in b’s downstream stuff (because we can’t do this after b thinks it’s a).

Now go into b/_darcs and we’ll play around with these guts to make it think it’s a, but we want it to have it’s future patches first. So we take a snapshot before pulling the other stuff. I just made a temp directory and did cp -r inv* patches temp, these are the three things in the _darcs directory we care about. Here’s where the liberal tagging comes in, the partial at the later tag only depends on the first tag, so that makes your inventory and patches much simpler. Now you’re ready to pull in all the subsequent patches from the cloned branch.

Once that’s done, you go back into b/_darcs, this time you take anything in temp/patches and temp/inventories and remove the corresponding files from patches and inventories. Then you replace those files with the files from a/_darcs/{inventories,patches}. These two steps I accomplish like so:

ls temp/inventories | while read i; do rm inventories/$i; done

ls temp/patches | while read i; do rm patches/$i; done

for f in inventories patches; do cp ../../a/_darcs/$f/* $f; done

One last step remains. Now you edit inventory and replace that very first patch number, the one that’s a tag, with the one that’s in the inventory file from a. Now b effectively has the exact same past history as a, and has all it’s future patches, and now you can share between your repo and other guy’s repo freely.

One might think this is an uncommon situation, but I can’t help but think it’s more common than I think… Hopefully this guide will save others the headache of trying to wrap their minds around the darcs inner guts, as well as save me some headache should I ever encounter this again (which I’m pretty sure I will, in only a few weeks!).

0 comments

Discrimination

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:04:53 -0700

Connor, kudos to you for standing up for liberty. I find it sad that there are those who would so vehemently oppose liberty in any form. As for anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action laws, they are indeed different, and yet the same.

“Redistribution of wealth” is a hot topic these days, perhaps we should coin the term “redistribution of liberty.” It’s an erroneous and an insidious ideal that a group should be made equal, for you can’t make anything equal but the individual. Where a shop owner may refuse credit to a man based entirely on individual merits, how is he to prove his state of mind to the law if that individual happens to be in group $minority protected by the ill-conceived law?

I will reiterate for for clarity’s sake… “Rights can ONLY be protected on an INDIVIDUAL basis.” Note that rights cannot be “granted” except by God, or derived as necessary from those God given rights. To find such words as “minority” or especially enumerated groups in legislation is to find legal and even mandated discrimination. From merriam-webster.com:

3 a: the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually

This discrimination may be spelled out such that it is discrimination in favor of a group, but as all things must be balanced, this discrimination is necessarily in hindrance of another group, specifically anyone not belonging to the favored group. I doubt anyone would be all gung-ho for anti-discrimination legislation in favor of caucasian white males. Such legislation would be immediately labeled as bigotry, so why the double standard?

In fact, to be truly anti-discrimanatory, you must allow everyone the discretion to make decisions on an individual basis on any characteristic he deems relevant. And thus it follows that to be anti group discrimination, you must be pro individual discrimination. Unfortunately, such things as skin color and other traits shared by groups are also perfectly valid as individual traits. Such is life, and we must live with the bad judgments of individuals if we are to value liberty over entitlement.

3 comments

Federalism

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:01:31 -0700

I just finished reading an article on how we have strayed in a very fundamental way. It’s called Federalism: The Great Lost Concept. Here’s an excerpt.

A return to federalism, which is what Dr. Paul offers, is a return to the great experiment our Founders started. As a supporter recently said, we can choose between Candidate A and Candidate B’s plans for our lives, or we can choose Ron Paul’s plan to give us back our lives.

And for those of you who think Ron Paul would recklessly take us to anarchy, another excerpt.

It is possible to streamline operations and return to the states the powers they once held. Dr. Paul is not in favor of immediately abolishing programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security because, while these programs are unconstitutional and ultimately harmful, too many Americans have been made dependent on them for those programs to be immediately ended.

And here’s the link.

0 comments