The local butcher that offered fresh local grass-fed beef is closed.  A little searching reveals that he's planning to re-open in Somerville late summer.  Feh.  So no fresh beef for dinner today.  I guess even charging twice regular prices wasn't enough to cover costs.  I expect the Somerville location to have lower rent and more business.

Email integration went well.  I'm surprised and pleased by how fast it is.  I bulk scanned about 15K old email messages into it.  It processed these at about 150 messages per second, eliminated about 10K of duplicates, and had no apparent problems.  (It's nice of it to deal with duplicates on it's own.  That meant I could just lump everything all together without worrying.) It's still in the millisecond range for random text or tag searches of the resulting 5K email messages.  (This makes using Notes for corporate so much more painful by comparison.)

Links to emails from org-mode work.  So now note taking can reference an email by link and take me there later.  It's based on the database, so I can shuffle around files at will as long as the mail index is preserved.

Shades of XDS.  But aha, the link target in org-mode is a URI.  That means yes, I can extend org-mode to perform XDS Registry/Repository query/retrieve.  Emacs is really the Great Spaghetti Monster.  It's noodly appendages may yet reach XDS. :-)

I've begun experiment with different approach to email.

Why?:

• Aggravation with Lotus Notes.  It sometimes drives me insane.  Email integrated into an operational system had such huge potential.  The armor plated walled garden with hotel california attitude adds to the Notes nightmare.
• Aggravation with Google Mail.  Search integration is great, but please ditch the advertising, growing invasions of privacy, and deteriorating user interface.
• Growing public complaints about issues with "free" email (Dave Winer, and others).  Paid services need a good model to succeed.
• Growing government intrusiveness:
  •  MPAA/Homeland Security have shutdown some dropbox services without any concern for legal users.
  •  US Courts have decided that after six months, email on non-private servers is not protected by the fourth amendment.  No warrant is needed.
• I like to tinker.  This will be interesting and fun.  Yes, the nerd burst forth when I used

         (define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "S"
            ( lambda()
              "mark messages in thread as spam" 
              (interactive)
              (notmuch-show-tag-thread "+spam" "-inbox")))

         And I thought nothing of it.  Of course the emacs kitchen sink took that change and integrated it into the GUI automagically.  It means that when looking at an email message I can type "S" to mark it as spam for later deletion.

• Unlike many SDOs, I believe that the best approach is to experiment widely, understand what works and what doesn't, then standardize cautiously.

What have I done so far?
I'm Using "notmuch" and "emacs" for email reading.  Notmuch provides:

• Per message and thread metadata (by means of tagging)
• Per message and thread text searching
• Incredible speed (when compared with Lotus, Outlook, Gmail).  I've done a search of 2K emails and had the response so fast I couldn't detect a delay between final keystroke and finished results on my screen.  This means below 50ms.
• Intelligent threading (unlike Notes, Outlook, or Gmail)

Where is this going?

• Integration of email with task/schedule management, notes taking, document/reference management, voicemail, etc.  There have been walled garden failures like Notes.  The open experiments like this are making very slow progress, but it is progress.
• Notmuch starts this by adding a metadata concept to email, similar to the metadata concepts ("properties") that org-mode has brought to task/schedule/notes management.  What might happen when the two are better integrated?

more to come when something interesting happens.

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln ...

I get these things because I enjoy tinkering, fixing, and exploring.  What I now know:

• Dell's documentation is dreadful and it's support staff don't know what their products can do.
• The Intel linux driver (written by Intel) has only mediocre documentation.
• Apple doesn't believe in documentation.

The monitor is a Dell U2711.  (It's replacing a 2405, which means the 2405 lasted 6 years.)  The side by side comparison makes it clear that the backlight on the 2405 is much weaker than the 2711.  I thought it was getting dim.  The new one has much better colors, brightness, and contrast.  The uber headache is around pixel timing.  What I've learned by experiment and hints about the U2711.

• The VGA input is limited to 2048x1152 max.
• The DVI needs dual-link and can do 2560x1440
• The DisplayPort input can do 2560x1440
• The HDMI input is limited to 1920x1080

You'd think this would be in a Dell spec somewhere, but it's not.

The display at 2560x1440 is crisp, sharp, and beautiful.  At other resolutions text is a bit fuzzy because it interpolates to the native pixels.  It does a good job.  If I never saw a crisp display for comparison I would stop noticing.  Using it during the day with VGA it was starting to feel normal.

Then I've got the headaches of what do my computers support.  Here the documentation sucks too.  What I've found:

• Agfa Dell laptop has only VGA and HDMI outputs.
• Agfa Dell docking station has DVI single-link, DisplayPort, and VGA
• My Mac laptop has DVI dual-link
• My Windows PC has DVI single-link, VGA, and HDMI
• My Linux PC has DVI dual-link, VGA, and HDMI, but the Intel driver sees just a VGA connection, not the DVI dual-link or HDMI.
• My KVM switch only switches VGA.  (Hey it's old.)

Now I get to figure out what I want to do short term for cabling.  I did one experiment attaching the Dell docking station by both VGA and DisplayPort.  That was a bad idea.  Windows became very seriously confused.  It took me several reboots and video setup customizations to get things working properly again.  For now, I've got the docking station set up with DVI to my 24" and DisplayPort to the 27".  I have to switch monitors by pushing buttons on the 27" when I switch to linux.  The automatic KVM only switches VGA.  But now Windows displays look gorgeous.

Windows PC only exists to do taxes and a few other things that require windows.  Who cares that it's 2048x1152 over VGA.

Linux PC is the interesting one to study.  It's got the DVI dual-link connector and the mobo docs indicate it ought to work.  But the documentation for the driver is silent on how the port selection works.  It's all supposed to be automatic.  But the experiment that I did failed.  The linux driver documentation doesn't help.  It's only comment on DVI dual-link is the indication that support for it is unknown.  Perhaps I play more games this weekend to explore whether I can get it to use dual-link DVI.

First, I tried green gumbo.  This is really good.  The greens are becoming available at reasonable prices in the stores now.  I avoided the fresh dandelion greens, since those are usually too tough and bitter for me.  I went with a mix of collard greens and chard.  This dish really needs to be served over rice, but with the carb laden roux already part of the gumbo I went without the rice. That hurt.  The roux also took a while cooking.  A mix of 1cup peanut oil with 1 cup of white flour took too long. I quit when the roux was just light brown.  That was still enough cooking time to bring out the roux flavor.

The result is marvelous.  I didn't have any file powder, nor did the local stores have any.  I ordered some from Amazon for the next time.

Second, today's experiment is moving toward summer meals: 
  Chickpeas with greens and yogurt

  Ingredients:
  1.5 lb greens (chard in this case, but spinach, etc. should work well.  Just adjust their cooking time.) rough chopped
  1 clove garlic minced
  4 carrots, chopped
  juice of 1 lemon
  handful of mint leaves (about a dozen)
  1 tsp caraway seeds
  can cooked chickpeas
  1 cup plain soft yogurt

1. Boil chard stems in salted water, about 3 minutes
2. Add chard leaves, cook another 5 minutes
3. Drain chard and set aside
4. Saute carrots, caraway seeds, garlic in oil about 4 minutes, stir frequently
5. Add chickpeas and cook about 3 minutes, stir
6. Add chard, mint leaves and cook about 2 minutes, stir
7. Remove from heat.  Stir in juice of 1 lemon
8. Serve with plain yogurt as a sauce.

The mix of flavors works very well.

While looking for file powder I stumbled across the explanation for what happened to root beer.  Before there was today's liquified sugar concoction, there was a beer made from the roots of the sassafras tree.  But, with the food safety emphasis, some spoil sport decided to test the safety of root beer.  It turns out it causes liver damage and cancer.  (So does barley based beer, wheat beer, etc.)  They took real root beer off the market.  The demise of decent flavored root beer was the result of food safety rules.  The survival of regular beer reflects the political realities of food safety laws.  They don't get enforced against really popular foods.

File powder is still allowed.  I guess they couldn't persuade lab rats to eat enough of it to get sick.

The Atlantic coastline on the Amtrak route remains very pretty.  The birds are returning.  I saw osprey setting up their nests, ducks and geese looking around, swans and other birds foraging.  One turkey vulture was sitting on a light pole ostentatiously ignoring a small bird fluttering around it.  It clearly was hoping that the little pest would go away.

I also watch the ongoing construction of replacement bridges.  This time there was dramatic progress on a replacement drawbridge near New London.  It's been gradually growing concrete, pillars, etc. over the past year as they set up the foundation.  The new bridge is going in directly next to the old bridge.  There was more foundation on the trip down.  On the trip up, there was a whole new drawbridge arm sitting in a raised position on one side of the foundation.  Right now it's all fresh painted steel.  There is clearly a lot of work remaining, but it's a highly visible bit of progress.  I checked the schedule and it's not supposed to be finished until 2014.

The train was full both up and down, but I got an upgrade each way.  At the end of return there was a long delay.  We came to a halt a few hundred feet short of the station.  After about 30 minutes we crept forward so that the front door of the front car was on the platform.  They then let people off through that one door.  There was another train also in the station, about 20 feet ahead.

All this delay was the result of a brush fire up the line.  Amtrak status tweets indicated that it took about 2 hours to get the fire out and open the line.

This trip I watched a lot of videos up and down, with some audio podcasts as well.  The books didn't hold my interest.  About 3 GB of backlog was cleared.  MIT, Harvard, and TED like videos.  The LSE does mostly audio.  A laptop on a proper table with AC power lets Amtrak be a proper environment for watching videos.

The meetings were more or less normal.  There was one bit of typical classic geekiness.  The question came up with someone wondering what was the longest DICOM official tag name.  David asked me "you know linux.  wc doesn't do that.  What command would?".  I answered "use awk".  Within 60 seconds we had the answer.

We also had the usual bizarre suggestion.  This time it's a proposal that DICOM objects should be encapsulated into epub format for use in Direct and other email based systems. 

The solar panels on my Prius work.  This warm weather was the first time it's been hot enough for them to trigger.  They do start up the fans and ventilate the car when it's hot and sunny.  It may mark me as an obvious climate denier, but they are a great toy.

I learned about Windows 7 gadgets recently, and they triggered memories of ye olden days, i.e., 1984.

Windows 7 gadgets are a good idea, although fraught with security hazards.  The concept is the integration of AJAX with the window system.  A gadget is a combination of html, CSS, and Javascript that is run as a window on its own, rather than in a browser window.  You download these things, put them in a known directory, and start them automatically or manually.

I got started with a pomodoro timer that is written as an educational example.  I tweaked the layout, added a button, added a function, and used it to learn about gadgets.  It's also a decent pomodoro timer now that I've changed the sounds and added a "cancel" button.

Then I tried one of the more innocuous looking of the samples on the Microsoft site in a VM behind a proxy so that I could see what it did.  It tried to find advertizing!  It was doing other stuff!  Gaaack.  It's now dead and gone.  This brings up the risk from gadgets.  They run as you, the user.  There is no browser sandbox keeping an eye on what they do.  They've got every privilege that you've got.  So you need really complete faith and trust in their implementers.  A perusal of the gadget contents for this one showed that it had been automatically obfuscated, both to reduce its size and probably to interfere with people like me who want to read their code.

The gadget concept is an old concept.  I first ran into it back in 1984, back before Microsoft did windows.  Back when only Lisp Machines and Unix workstations did windows. 

It's closely related to the NeWS windowing system that was invented and pushed by Sun Microsystems.  This failed in the market, with X windows from an MIT consortium becoming the common windowing platform, for various reasons.  I was always disappointed by this, because the concept of having a window system that could run small downloaded helper programs made so much sense when compared with X.  X required every mouse click and keystroke to go all the way back to the host.  NeWS and AJAX move a lot of the interactivity to be local, with a semantically higher level transaction back to the host.

But now, the PC world is catching up with where unix workstations were over 25 years ago.  Who says there is no progress.  It's just a little slow sometimes. :-)

I nearly hit a turkey on Saturday.  I was just driving along when a series of turkeys decided it was time to cross the road.  Instead of the safe method of walking, which causes all the cars to stop, they flew at very low altitude.  You get almost no warning before this huge birds swoops in front of you.

I visited the tail end of the Winter farmer's market.  It's interesting.  They've got it strung all over Russell's garden center among the plants, pots, knick knacks, and whatever.  Unlike summer markets, this one is mostly baked goods, preserved things, and frozen things.  It's still local farms and vendors.  One of them had some very good pickles, for a not outrageous price, and there's a new soft drink company.  It's resurrecting an old local recipe for Root Beer.  It's not too bad, unlike the sweet liquid toothpaste that is sold by the major vendors.  This has a little more bite, no caffeine, and a somewhat different flavor. 

My replacement computer is operational.  All my files are moved over and everything seems to be working properly.  I haven't finished the physical swap, but it's all logically swapped.  The remaining step is lots of cable tidying and a machine swap out.  Old one is still functional and about 6 yrs old, although its USB is becoming flakey.  It will replace the even older computer that handles proxy, etc. 

Reasonably priced spring vegetables are starting to appear.  That's good.  Saturday's dinner:

• Shred meat from some leftover adobo chicken thighs.  (To make adobo chicken thighs: marinate thighs in a mix of 2 parts soy sauce, bay leaves, and 1 part cider vinegar for a few hours, then saute with scallions, lots of garlic, and some mexican oregano.)
• A couple strips of bacon rendered down in a saute pan, add a couple loose packed cups of green chard when bacon is ready, add shredded chicken shortly before chard finishes cooking.  Nice fresh crisp chard is back in the store and acceptably priced.
• Served over 30gms (dry) of mung bean noodles.

I don't measure most things carefully, but now the carbs are measured on the scale just like bread making ingredients.  Adobo chicken, bacon, and chard are about zero carbs, so the noodles bring the meal total up to carb target.  Mung bean noodles are very good at absorbing and complementing the flavors of juices and sauces.  They are also easy to store and extracting small quantities like 30gms is easy.