Movies seen- w/ Ben, w/Jean

We just saw the 2nd Transformers movie, Ben loved it. Recently we’ve also seen:

Up also in 3D? we all thought it was terrific fun. Perhaps Pixar will made a bad movie, someday, this one isn’t it. Lovely, unexpected depth in the charactrers and story.

Coraline in 3D. What a great movie! For sure wierd, very wonderful. and appealing.

Milk. Wow. “I’m Harvey Milk and I’m hear to recruit you!” boy oh boy can Sean Penn put across a character, and the supporting cast are superb. Directing tight, script crisp and emotionally satsfying. A truely great movie.

“Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day” – Frances McDormand in an overwhemling sweet and happy story. Many adventures, Amy Adams’  astonished, round, eyes and a happy ending that only gets telegraphed at the very end.  Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle) has a meaty and unsympathetic character,  Ciarán Hinds  is a treasure.

Tropic Thunder. Wow again! A surprising comedy-drama. Laughs are deadly well simed.

Night At The Museum II – Battle of the Smithsonian. A sequel which basicly wrote itself – the characters are known, complexity is turned down, slapstick turned up and everyitng is what you’d expect a nd dmore

Now that’s odd… Java really IS different

My friend Harrison sent me a  Java file that was giving him trouble. He wanted to read in an Integer from in a command-line program. He found the method readInt() in the class Console. But it wouldn’t compile:

for ( i = 0; i < 5; i++)
System.out.println(”Array["+ i +"] = “+ array[i]);
String name = null;
int age = 0;
age = Console.readInt(”Enter Age:”);
}
}

PersonTest.java:74: cannot find symbol
symbol  : method readInt(java.lang.String)
location: class java.io.Console
age = console.readInt(”Int Enter Age:”);
^
1 errors

I did a little searching and found suggestions that he was going in the right direction:

   char letter = Console.readChar("Enter a letter: ");
   double d = Console.readDouble("Enter a real number: ");
   int i = Console.readInt("Enter an integer: ");
   String name = Console.readLine("Enter your full name: ");

http://faculty.cs.wwu.edu/martin/Software%20Packages/BreezyGUI/breezyguijavadoc/breezygui/console.html

hahaha! Turns out breezygui.console isn’t the same as console… the base language doesn’t actually have the readInt method, or readChar or readDouble. But apparently C# and or J++ and/or some dialect/library for C++ DO have a Console class with a readInt, readChar and readDouble members…

SO… you have to be VERY careful what the on-line document you’re counting on really says. It might have the method you want but only in a library you don’t have, or in another language completely. Ooof! is this fun or what???

Of course I showed Harrison how to get integer, double and char values he wanted. That’s what friends are for.

So be careful what you read and believe. Including this!

The best and worst plastic kits IMHO.

Which are the best and worst plastic model kits?

So many qualify, but the criteria I might use are worth discussing, even if nobody ought to care what my personal picks are.

What IS a plastic model  kit? A set of parts, injection molded, on runners or “trees”, vacuum formed on a sheet of plastic, cast in resin and attached to  “pour blocks”,  laid-up with resin  and fiberglass cloth backing, perhaps including some cast metal, photo-etched sheet copper,  brass or stainless steel, possibly vinyl or rubber, metal or plastic tubing, rod and sheet, lead or other soft metal foil, soft wire, music wire. Most kits contain waterslide decals, though dry transfers or preformed stencils are also seen.

A good kit can be assembled without having to be re-designed, re-engineered or re-built, by the builder.

So the shapes have to be correct, within the limits of the materials and techniques.

All the parts have to be supplied- what can be seen looking at the model from outside, but including what can be seen inside windows, doors, vents, hatches, etc.

The pieces supplied have to assemble correctly, without having to be modified or re-thought-out

It should suggest an accurate representation of a specific object- real, imaginary, even speculative, but always specific.

It should be consistant with itself- textures, features, thicknesses, transparent parts, blank holes or paint/decal for windows, etc., should all be similar across the whole of the model.

More as I get time to add it.

Completed Java 1, wrote a tidy bit of code:

If I’d turned in one last homework it would have been an “A”. Mia Culpa.  I nailed all the homework I did turn in- 12.5/12.5 for 1-6, but only got #7 ready to compile by the deadline.

Here’s I neat piece of code I wrote and used in a couple of places- give it a string containing a number and it will give you back the number- the base language doesn’t keep this in any obvious place, but perhaps I should check the utility library before claiming to have set them right. :^)
/* Here’s an object that packages the messy job of converting Strings that represent numbers into a double.  Int/float/double/long don’t appear to even offer a polymorphic solution. That I’ve found anyway.
Instantiate with a string,
get back a double

anything else I might want

Ok wise guy, how do you get the base classes text value??
Ah ha! String is final- no extending it! This class can HAVE one but can’t BE one
*/

public class NumericString{  // can’t “extends String” its final

String input;
Double value;
// Constructor

public void NumericString( String inputValue ) {

input = inputValue;

// later we can filter out all but the signed numeric nugget we care about…

if (-1 == input.indexOf(’.')) {   //only numerals, no decimal, its an integer.
value = (double) Integer.parseInt( input )
;
} else {   // there must have been a decimal, its a float/double
value = ((Double.valueOf(input).doubleValue()));
} // if -1 … else…
}

public Double num() {
return value;
}

} // class NumericString

Dr. G. R. Tiller, M.D. Murdered.

In memoriam, Dr. George Richard Tiller, M.D., August 8, 1941- May 31, 2009.

Rest in Peace, Dr. Tiller. If the name isn’t ringing a bell, he was a doctor, in Kansas, who would perform late term abortions. Constantly threatened, shot over a decade ago, he was assassinated as he ushered at his church, on Sunday. A victim of violence which can fairly be called terrorist. Not the first doctor assassinated by anti-abortion activists. FoxNews’s Bill BO’Rielly repeatedly rabble-roused against him in recent years. Why DOES O’Rielly hate our freedom?

If you don’t like abortions, don’t have one.

Want to stop other people from having abortions? Make accurate and complete sex education a priority, and make sure a wide variety of contraception alternatives are readily available. This is proven to work.

Love babies? Help some teenage mother take care of hers. Help her finish high school Help her get the training and experience for a real job that pays more than minimum wage. Do the same for the father. Nothing is better for a child than an educated, self-reliant parent. Two educated and self-reliant parents are even better.

Want to teach only abstenence, allow no abortions and restrict informations and access to contraception?  Sorry, you’re delusional. The data’s in. Whole, *European*, countries, Ireland and Romania, for example, tried it. It doesn’t work. Saudi Arabia has and carries out the death penalty for sex outside of marriage. That doesn’t stop it.

A fo’ real Ah Ha! Moment!! learning Java

Ah ha!!!!

Couldn’t get .replace(), .replaceAll() or .split() to work:

String s = new String(”electric foo bar);

s.replace( ‘e’, ‘E’ ); // char, replace every one, WOULDN’T compile

s.replaceAll( “e”, “E” ); // String – this WOULD compile, did nothing
s.replaceAll( “e”, ” -Eek!- ” ); // ditto
s.replaceAll( ” -Eek!- “, “e” ); // ditto

what was needed was:

s = s.replace( ‘e’, ‘E’ ); // MUST Assign the return string.

The compiler probably took returnAll() because it returns a reference to an array of array references… ok, sure, implict cast to VOID. Next.

Consistancy? We ain’t got no stinkin’ consistancy!

How very human this Java stuff is…

Planning to finish The Wisdom of Bones.

We are going to finish Alan Walker and and Pat Shipmans “The Wisdom of Bones”, a truely wonderful book about Homo Erectus and its place as the “missing link” between ourselves and more apelike ancestors. Walker, with Kamoya Kimou and Richard Leakey, excavated and re-assembled the best H. erectus remains found to date, the “Narioktome Boy” #15000, aka 15K, an adolescent about 1.5 million (!) years old.

With this high quality source material, Walker goes through what can be surmised and concluded, bringing in experts from a variety of fields. Its real science, these are the stories underneath the peer-reviewed papers published since the discovery in the 1980s. Walker builds up to a somewhat startling conclusion, Homo erectus, most likely our direct ancestor, wasn’t fully linguate, leaving no concrete evidence of symbolic thought, and lacking a spinal cord sized for fine control of breath and vocal cords.

Rather than the near human in an ape’s body that is often presumed, Walker concludes that H. erectus ws a near-ape in a human’s body. As big or bigger than ourselves, as strong or stronger, wonderfully adapted to standing and running, a very successful tool maker and hunter. An adolescent with a toddler’s brain.

Makes sense, and Pat Shipman is a glorious writer and anatomist in her own right. They are married. The words are hers, the voice is his. So good books, bad cartoons and not a lot else are our story, while we’re all having and recovering from the flu.

Is 98.6 degree F more precise than it ought to be?

I heard somewhere that the “98.6 degrees F” “normal” human body temperature number isn’t really correct, its a conversion artifact from a European study, in C, not F. Lessee, (98.6 – 32) * 5/9 = 66.6 * 5/9 = 333/9=37.0.

Plausable, not proved.  Further investigation supports skepticism. The 37 (no ‘.’, much less “.0″) is far from categoric. There are real numhers, with variation ranges. 98.6 fits in some of them, but if you don’t measure 98.6 you’re not abnormal.

The British survey team that realized Mt. Everest was the tallest in the world got 29,000′ exactly. They figured nobody would believe it, so they published an official value of 29,002.

See the Wikipedia page on Everest (Chomolungma): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest

my F-104 review/build published!

I hope isn’t too unseemly to mention this, Scott Van Akin at Modelling Madness . com accepted my 1/144 F-104J/G review and built and its up!

http://www.modelingmadness.com/reviews/viet/us/abbott104.htm

Modelling Madness is truely the premier review site on the web and it feels good to give something back after years of reading it for pleasure and reference.

And the next one will be better.

Bill

Walk around Lake Chabot

Looks great, and the access point is clearly indicated. I’ve gotta do this one of these daysPreview

http://www.mapmywalk.com/walk/united-states/ca/oakland/460067151

Before that, however, I have to get our taxes done!