Cleverly Blogged

An invitation to taste test 42 books per fortnight

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:06:07 MDT

I've created a second blog: 42ndPage.com; if you enjoy books please take a gander...

The 42nd page was chosen for somewhat geeky reasons. The idea of reviewing a stratified sampling of the contents of books was inspired by Donald Knuth's 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated project.

My self-imposed posting schedule is three times daily: 6am, 2pm and 10pm MDT.

I welcome your feedback.

Time to (play? fight?) with TurboTax 2007

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:27:04 MDT

Even though the deadline for filing US Income Taxes is still a week and a day away, I decided to procrstinate no longer and get it taken care of tonight.

On the way home for work I stopped at an office supply store and bought TurboTax Deluxe, which I've used in years past. It's usually been pretty painless, but this year I had to fight with it before I even got started on the actual tax stuff...

Since I did last years taxes I've upgraded to a MacBook Pro and "trickled down" my PowerBook to Shauna. Once I bought the new machine I hooked the two laptops up with a cross over cable and rsync'ed the contents of ~michael/ off of the PowerBook and onto ~michael/PowerBook on the MacBook.

As needed I've had ready access to saved files & data and haven't had any problems with the rsync approach. TurboTax, however, doesn't believe it can open last years return (which I want since it'll speed things up for this year since I won't have to re-enter a lot of information that hasn't changed, etc.)

I went to the TurboTax website, but it wants me to "login" before it'll let me read the search results whose titles seem like they might plausibly be of help. I'm fairly sure I have a login but since I can guarantee it'd be a fairly complex password (and one that I've never used anywhere else) I know it'd take me a while to remember or find it.

So I ask Caleb to let me use his mother's laptop, login, go to Finder and see that it lists last years saved return as being a "Turbo Tax File" in Finder. On the MacBook finder shows it being a "plain text" kind of file. Running the Unix file command on both laptops reports that the file is data.

So I wonder; how does Finder know to associate the file on the PowerBook with TurboTax? And why on the PowerBook does it think it is a text file? The first thing that comes to mind: rscyncing the file wouldn't have preserved the resource fork.

In OS X you can examine the resource fork of a file using standard Unix tools using the filename/rsrc. That is, for my file "2006_Return" I can ls -l 2006_Return/rsrc.

That, however, only showed me that the resource fork was 0-bytes (i.e., empty) on both laptops.

Back to square one. Googling on "kind" (what the Finder column-label calls the file type it displays) is a bit difficult since kind is rather generic and people don't normally talk about a "kind of file" as much as a "file type."

I finally found a very detailed post on the Mac OS X Hints forums that laid out the algorithm Apple uses to associate a given file with a given application in the Finder.

From those clues I did some more searching on file type and creator signature codes and came up with a very helpful Indiana University Information Technology Services knowledge base article entitled "In Mac OS and Mac OS X, what are file types and creators?".

In old (pre-OS X) versions of the Macintosh operating system the file system mainted various pieces of metadata (apparently separate from the resource fork) for every file. Specifically a 4-character "file type" code and a 4-character "creator" code. Most new OS X software doesn't carry on this tradition, apparently, but might TurboTax?

Next question: how to check what the file type and creator codes are? (The Indiana U. KB article had links to some shareware/freeware tools that let you set & see them but I didn't think I should have to download or buy additional software.)

I fired up tclsh trying to remember if, on the Mac, there were any extra file subcomands for dealing with such things. I didn't see any; (file stat $file var, for example, did not have any legacy-Macintosh values in it. I'm pretty sure Tcl on the Mac could have solved it for me, but rather than dig up that arcane knowledge I decided to search and find what installed Unix tools might be up to the task.

I found that there were two helpful utilities available since I'd installed Apple's Developers Tools on both laptops: GetFileInfo and SetFile.

Running /Developer/Tools/GetFileInfo on the PowerBook showed me:

file: "/Path/to/return"
type: "TaxR"
creator: "MIT6"

On the MacBook the type & creator were the empty string. I was able to set these values with:

$ /Developer/Tools/SetFile -t TaxR /Path/to/return
$ /Developer/Tools/SetFile -c MIT6 /Path/to/return

I restarted TurboTax 2007 and this time it saw my 2006 return and so I'm able to start finally...

Perhaps this blog post will be helpful to some future TurboTax Macintosh user who has transfered files from one machine to another...

Feeling Tcl-ish about Google's Summer of Code

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 07:57:05 MDT

The Tcl/Tk community has been accepted as a mentoring organization for Google's Summer of Code 2008 program. Makes me wish I were back in college...

Apropos movie quote

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:59:00 MDT

From Sneakers:

Cosmo: Posit: People think a bank might be financially shaky.

Martin: Consequence: People start to withdraw their money.

Cosmo: Result: Pretty soon it is financially shaky.

Martin: Conclusion: You can make banks fail.

Cosmo: Bzzt. I've already done that. Maybe you've heard about a few? Think bigger.

Martin: Stock market?

Cosmo: Yes.

Martin: Currency market?

Cosmo: Yes.

Martin: Commodities market?

Cosmo: Yes.

Martin: Small countries?

Happy Intercalation Day 2008

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:21:47 MST

Happy Intercalation Day (and happy birthday to my friend rbm!).

I'm taking PTO today to observe leap-day as a private holiday.

After a week of 103-105 degree fevers and a terrible hacking cough for another week I'm finally starting to feel back to my regular self again.

Double em-dash in TeX

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:04:41 MST

Jane Austen uses double em-dashes at times. The naive approach I tried in TeX at first— consisting of two consecutive em-dashes—leaves a small but visible amount of whitespace.

A bit of Googling turned up a 1994 comp.text.tex post from Donald Arseneau (who, in addition to being a TeX-nician is also a Tcl'er!) that gave a satisfactory solution:

\mbox{---\kern-1pt---}\penalty\exhyphenpenalty

LaTeX fonts revisited

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 22:49:21 MST

Since I last fought with LaTeX fonts I've upgraded from a PowerBook to a MacBook Pro. I've been favoring XeTeX lately because of its superior font handling, but it still can't do the kind of character protrusion that the microtype package with pdfLaTeX can.

Following the steps I went through in August of 2005 I tried to recreate the font metrics I needed to use Adobe Minion Pro with pdfLaTeX. I found that with TeX Live 2007 I needed to additionally add a line to the updmap.cfg file:

Map MinionPro.map

After adding the map entry I ran the updmap command and then pdfLaTeX was able to see and properly make use of my installed Minion Pro fonts.

Recessionary fortune cookies

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 21:23:53 MST

My fortune cookie at Cafe Trang tonight read:

You shouldn't overspend at the moment. Frugality is important.

An experiment for Valentine's Day

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 15:53:02 MST

Among all the Marginal Revolution Markets in Everything posts, one that personally intrigued me was #4, personalized romance novels.

For $55.95 a company in Florida will produce a unique book based on various details you provide (name, hair color, favorite car, favorite radio station etc.) and then plug those details into a pre-fabricated story running between 180 and 210 pages.

As Tyler Cowen noted:

Some people actually like this idea:

"It was an addictive read because it makes you the star," said Pete Hart, 34, who received a pre-fan novel called "Vampire Kisses" from his girlfriend. "I was referred to as Pedro in the book, which is my nickname. I found that quite charming."

Another fellow noted:

"It read more like a novel or novelette and less like a typical romance novel," he said. "I enjoyed reading it. Besides, I was in it."

I'm intrigued, since I've made typesetting a hobby, and in part because of the huge profit margins. In my experience producing a single 180-210 page book shouldn't cost more than ~$7, so $55.95 would represent an eight times markup. Not bad...

Of course not being a reader of romance novels (or chick-lit generally) I'm somewhat skeptical of the appeal. But I recognize I'm probably not representative of the demographic and so I shouldn't necessarily consider my own opinion too highly. Better to try an experiment and attempt to quantify the appeal generally.

I am going to prepare a personalized book for my wife for Valentine's. This will provide me with one data point. However a sample size of one (especially when she might be biased to say nice things regardless of what she really thinks) isn't large enough to draw any conclusions from.

As long as I'm going to be creating a personalized book for my wife the marginal effort to create an additional personalized book for someone else is very low. (I'm already going to write a Tcl script to take a list of changes and apply it to the original text; re-running the script with someone elses list of changes would be trivial.)

An invitation to participate in an experiment for Valentine's Day 2008

My inivitation to you, dear reader:

I'm willing to produce a personalized trade-paperback (6"x9") version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for you.

I only ask two things:

That you reimburse me after the fact for the actual cost of having the book produced and shipped. (Payment via PayPal or check; I'm estimating the book itself will probably cost in the $9 - $12 range depending on what size font I end up using.)
That after you've given the book to your significant other and (s)he has had an opportunity to read it you complete a short follow-up survey that I'll send so I can quantify peoples reactions generally.

The characters whose names could be changed to customize the story (links are to character summaries at Wikipedia) include:

Elizabeth Bennet (main heroine)
Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy (main male character)
Mr. Bennet
Mrs. Bennet
Jane Bennet
Lydia Bennet
Charles Bingley
William Collins
George Wickham
Mary Bennet
Kitty Bennet
Charlotte Lucas
Georgiana Darcy
Lady Catherine de Bourgh
Caroline Bingley

This chart from Wikipedia shows the relationships between the aforementioned characters.

Location names that could be changed include: Rosings (Lady Catherine de Bourgh's estate); Netherfield (the estate leased by Mr. Bingley); Meryton (the village near where the Bennet's live); Brighton (where Lydia is invited to go with the militia); and Pemberley (Mr. Darcy's estate).

How to participate

Given that Valnetine's Day is two and a half weeks away, and to allow time for production and shipping, please email me (michael at cleverly dot com) with the following no later than Saturday, February 2nd, 2008:

Your name and mailing address (where to send the book to)
A brief dedication (if any) to include at the beginning
A list of alternate character names (i.e., "Shauna Christensen" instead of "Elizabeth Bennet", etc.)

Please put Pride & Prejudice in the subject line of your email to decrease the chances of your email being inadvertantly miscategorized as spam. If you haven't received an acknowledgement from me within 48-hours please send another message.

I'm willing to ship internationally; however, I doubt time would permit your books arrival prior to February 14th, and the shipping expense would undoubtedly be greater.

Incidentally, if the idea of this experiment offends any die-hard fans of Jane Austen you have my apologies in advance.

Sobering examples of what one person can do

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:22:41 MST

Two quotes I shared (via email) with some friends today:

The first, dealing with L'Affaire Kerviel:

The [30-year old] SocGen rogue trader managed to annihilate an amount of money that surpasses the yearly output of the economy of 112 countries, among them Madagascar, Mozambique, and war-torn Afghanistan, all of which have population sizes larger than 15 million.

And the second dealing with last years cyberattacks on Estonia that, at the time, were thought to be coming from Russia:

The fact that a single angry student was able to impact international relations between two countries is an startling development.

[...]

The fact that a single student was able to trigger such events is particularly ominous when you consider just how many potential flashpoints exist between various countries all over the world.

[...]

The DoS attack against Estonia is an excellent example of how a cyberattack carried out by a 20-year-old student in response to real-life events further exacerbated an existing problem between two nations.

One person replied, "the [Mathematica] code is cool, but it's freaky that one person can affect the economy like that."

Cosmo:	Posit: People think a bank might be financially shaky.
Martin:	Consequence: People start to withdraw their money.
Cosmo:	Result: Pretty soon it is financially shaky.
Martin:	Conclusion: You can make banks fail.
Cosmo:	Bzzt. I've already done that. Maybe you've heard about a few? Think bigger.
Martin:	Stock market?
Cosmo:	Yes.
Martin:	Currency market?
Cosmo:	Yes.
Martin:	Commodities market?
Cosmo:	Yes.
Martin:	Small countries?