How You've Grown

I should have known
at your age, in a string of days the year is gone
but in that space of time it takes so long

because we can't make up
for the time that we've lost
I must let those memories provide

How You've Grown, Natalie Merchant, 1992

Saturday, 28 April 2007, Lalai and I and many of our friends went to Angeles, Pampanga to attend the dedication of Paul's firstborn child. Paul was a fellow student assistant at the Instrumentation, Robotics, and Control Laboratory of the University of the Philippines, Diliman College of Engineering. This was ten-odd years ago. After UP, Paul joined Mozcom, Inc. and has been there since, only recently moving to Accenture a good year and a half after I myself left Mozcom.

This photo was taken after the happy event, on our way back to Manila.

From Janessa Dedication

(left to right) Arnold and Cris Castro, former colleagues at Mozcom; Mike Blancas, a fellow former SA at the IRC Lab who's also with Mozcom; myself, making a vain effort to slow my expansion by drinking Coke Light; Jambie Dumas, Lalai and my (current) neighbor and former colleague at Mozcom, now at HSBC; and Ken Atanacio, also with us at IRC Lab more than a decade ago.

The Natalie Merchant song I've quoted at the top of this entry seems particularly fitting, to me.

It's been more than a decade since those relatively carefree (and broke!) days at UP; I was asking the guys if back then, when we were just learning Linux and how to use the Internet, whether they could imagine attending the dedication of the child of one of us. I certainly didn't think so.

It's the end of an era.

I sure hope we'll all have another picture like this in ten and twenty years from now.. hopefully with each of us occupying the same approximate volume.

Two On Google

First, Google now really does rule the world:

Google surpasses Microsoft as world's most-visited site

Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 25, 2007

It's official: Google rules the world.

The Mountain View search engine has outstripped Microsoft on two fronts, becoming both the most visited Web site and the most valuable global brand.

The events are major milestones for Google, which has grown into a business juggernaut. Torrid growth and outsized profits have quickly propelled the company past many established blue clip giants while generating a host of complaints that it has become too powerful.

"These are really significant events," said Geoffrey Bowker, executive director of the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Santa Clara University. "At the moment, everything that Google is touching turns to gold."

For the first time, Google has edged ahead of Microsoft as the world's most visited Internet property. Online measurement firm comScore Networks found that Google had just over a million more unique users in March than its arch-rival.

Google had 528 million unique visitors in March, up 5 percent from the previous month, according to comScore. Microsoft had 527 million visitors during the same month, up 3.7 percent.

Popular in the United States, Google is even more of a powerhouse in many European countries.

In a statement, Google said: "Our goal has always been to provide the best online experience for our users. We build products based on user needs and input, which is part of what makes Google unique and results in a great online experience."

Microsoft declined to comment.

Until the latest rankings, Microsoft was the most popular Web property in every month since comScore began tracking global numbers in January 2006. And given the growth trends, Microsoft was undoubtedly No. 1 long before the survey was started, according to Bob Ivins, executive vice president for comScore.

Google inched ahead based on its phenomenal popularity, not only in its core search business but also its e-mail service, online maps and personalized home pages. The recent acquisition of video site YouTube, for $1.65 billion, also has boosted Google's count of unique visitors.

In comparison, Microsoft's growth has been sluggish in recent years. It simply hasn't been adding users fast enough to keep up.

In the latest figures, Google's lead is little more than a statistical hair. But given the company's momentum, Google is likely to widen the gap, at least in the short term, Ivins said.

ComScore's estimates are based on tracking 2 million Internet users across the globe, from home and work (but not from Internet cafes or schools). Only users 15 and older are factored into calculations.

"Unique" visitors are a key measurement in the Internet industry, showing how many individuals visited a particular Web site in a given month. Users are counted only once, even those who may visit a site multiple times during the period.

Unique users, however, isn't the only statistic that matters online. For example, Google still trails in the amount of time global users spend on its properties: an average of 4.6 minutes compared to 12.8 minutes on Microsoft.

Separately, Google was named the most powerful brand in 2007 in an annual survey released Monday by Millward Brown, a British market research company. The company's brand was valued at $66.4 billion, ahead of GE, Microsoft and Coca-Cola.

The study measures the potential earnings of a brand and loyalty. Physical property, such as factories and real estate, weren't included.

In the survey, Google's ranking jumped to the top spot from No. 7 a year ago, based on a 77 percent increase in the value of its brand. Microsoft, which led the survey in 2006, tumbled because of an 11 percent drop in the perceived value of its brand.

Despite Google's current strength, Bowker, from Santa Clara University, emphasized that Google's winning streak isn't guaranteed in the future. He recalled a number of companies that once seemed invincible later faltered, including IBM and General Motors.

Google, in particular, faces a number of risks, ranging from a lawsuit by Viacom over copyright infringement on YouTube to political uproar over censoring search results in China.

"It's an uncertain time," Bowker said. "Just because you pass a milestone and everything is going so swimmingly doesn't mean you can't crash and burn."

And second, Google is offering their enhancements to MySQL back to the community. This can't be good news for Big Larry. On the other hand, MySQL AB has been notorious for their "non-open source" software, they don't normally take contributions from the community at all (I guess Monty is already the best there is... or something).

But this is different, this is Google. But an interesting question - MySQL is "dual licensed," under either the GPL or MySQL AB's proprietary license. Since Google's contributions are pure GPL, I guess that means any "improved MySQL" using the Google enhancements can't be dual-licensed.

That would be an interesting dilemma for Monty and Marten..

April 24, 2007 8:41 PM PDT
Google offers its own changes to MySQL
Posted by Stephen Shankland

Google long has been known to be a user of the open-source MySQL database software, but the search powerhouse this week published its own changes to the project.

"We think MySQL is a fantastic data storage solution, and as our projects push the requirements for the database in certain areas, we've made changes to enhance MySQL itself, mainly in the areas of high availability and manageability," Google software engineer Mark Callaghan said on the company's Google Code blog on Monday.

High availability refers to the idea of keeping computing services working even if the server they're running on fails. Switching a service to a backup machine is called failover, and although the technology is decades old, it's difficult to implement.

The changes haven't been accepted into the mainstream MySQL project, but Google would like them to be, Callaghan said.

"We would love for the some of these changes to be merged with the official MySQL release, but until then we felt strongly that anyone should have access to them, thus we have released the changes with a GPL (General Public License) license for the MySQL community to use and review," he said.

MySQL previously wasn't eager to accept outside contributions, but the company now is trying to encourage more outside participation, Chief Executive Marten Mickos said in an interview Tuesday.

The GPL permits anyone to see, modify and distribute the underlying source code of a software project. Changes must be published as soon as they're distributed, but they need not be if they're just used internally by a programmer, company or organization.

More information is here.

After reading about the enhancements, I must revise my prognostications. Larry doesn't have to worry about this one. The Kool-Aid is true: MySQL has five to ten years more to even match the current capabilities of Oracle 10g R2. And 11g is just around the corner.

I would say even with Google's enhancements, MySQL does not even approach the functionality of Oracle 8i, which is nine years old. MySQL loves to claim (and many open-source fanatics believe) that MySQL has 80% of the functionality of Oracle. It doesn't. It has more like 20% to 30% of the functionality, although that 30% is the portion most often used by developers.

So people who don't know any better (basically, PHP developers who only know how to do SELECT, INSERT, and UPDATE) swallow the Kool-Aid that MySQL has 80% of the functionality, simply because they don't know about the functionality they're missing. And when they use Oracle, they still use the 30% that they know, so they think Oracle is no better than MySQL.

Like these Google HA enhancements. For many people, these changes will be new and exciting (never mind that Oracle has had a superset of them since 9i), and for them that's gonna be enough.

A Garden Variety Bucket

This unwitting bucket, which I purchased for $2 at the nearby Ace Hardware, gave up its existence for Science:



It was the most rigid bucket I could find, alas, it didn't have parallel sides. However, by cutting three inches below the lip, I still got something which was roughly 11 inches in diameter. Still more than enough to prevent vignetting with the usual suspect eyepieces.

Why I didn't think of this method of getting a lightweight, reasonably strong upper tube assembly before, escapes me. It's oh so much more convenient (if a bit ghetto) than hacking away all afternoon on 3/4th-inch plywood with a jigsaw.

Epilogue: after a visit to True Value, I found the exact same five-gallon bucket that Jerry Oltion used in his Trackball Telescope, which is the inspiration for my effort.

One can buy this True Value bucket without the paint, for $10. I didn't feel good paying $10 for a bucket that I would just trash, besides I already had my $2 bucket. So I'll try using the $2 bucket for the time being; and if I'm dissatisfied with it, I'll go for the True Value bucket.

Ball Scope Progress

Work area, Friday night. Lalai attended her boss' birthday party in Ortigas so I was left to my own devices. Necessary tools: jigsaw, drill, lots of ceramic repair epoxy, packaging tape to hold stuff together, notebook computer. Coffee table does double duty as work bench.

After the epoxy on the lip of the ball had dried, I glued in the mirror cell supports. Initially I glued three (soft) wooden blocks 120 degrees apart inside the ball, roughing the inner surface of the ball with a grinding stone on the drill so that the epoxy would grip better.



After the wooden supports were securely glued, I glued three L-shaped metal brackets above them. The L-shaped brackets are glued to the ball with more epoxy, and are also fastened (with more epoxy) to the wooden supports for additional strength.

We don't want a support giving way and the mirror crashing an (admittedly very short distance) to the bottom of the ball.



As usual packaging tape proved useful for holding things together until the epoxy had dried. Epoxy is so useful for this project, as it's gap-filling and plenty strong.

Next item, I've decided to ditch the blasted curved spider. It's so hard to center that thing. Instead I'm using a three-vaned hacksaw spider, with a central wooden hub which also serves as diagonal holder. This is Niels Olof Carlin's design.

I Have Only Got One Ball.. And It's Broken

I cut an 11-inch diameter hole in my acrylic ball using my trusty Black & Decker jigsaw (which I bought with piggy-bank money many years ago).



The ball turned out to be on the brittle side, and it is only 1/8th of an inch thick. This thing will not survive a fall. The good news is, it only took about five minutes of jigsaw work to cut the appropriate hole.



I then used a drill to roughen the lip of the broken ball. Actually the drill's chuck has all these little gear teeth. Since I don't have a proper sanding drum (lost the one for my Dremel) I just ran the little gear teeth along the lip of the ball to roughen it a bit, for my next step..



Fortuitiously, I still had an 11-inch ID, 13-inch OD plywood ring (all nicely coated with wall putty) from one of my prior telescope-making misadventures. In fact, I scribed the line to cut on the acrylic ball by simply putting the plywood ring over the ball and tracing a line with a Sharpie (that's a Pentel Pen to us locals..)

My plan is to fasten the lower truss supports to this plywood ring; the ring also helps strengthen the otherwise brittle ball.

Anyway, I just lined the gap between the plywood ring's inner circumference and the lip of the ball with ceramic repair epoxy, which is white in color. That should be plenty strong enough.

Next problem: how to support the mirror inside the ball.

I Have Only Got One Ball

A very popular ditty during World War II:

Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler is somewhat sim'lar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.

While amusing myself at True Value in Park Square 1 after work today (Lalai had to go to Laguna for work-related stuff, so I had time to spare), I found a large assortment of balls:



These are actually lamp globes of some sort, and are made of acrylic plastic. I've been seeing them in the lighting section of the hardware store for ages, but what really got my attention was how big these balls are.. the ones I saw before were mere 10-inchers, not large enough for my purposes.

Here are a number of large, crystalline balls:



They are advertised as 350mm in diameter, which is 13.8 inches. Nifty! they cost PHP 950 each or about $20. Not a bad price, I've seen the same prices on the Intertubes.

I was going to buy the crystalline ball but there was one display ball which was white, the last one:



If you look closely you'll see it's PHP 780 or about $16 -- a $4 savings! not to mention it looks like it came off a Portaball, unlike the crystalline one which would have to be coated with white paint on the inside.



I was sufficiently happy to get my hands on this ball (hmmm..) that I took extra pictures of it while I was still scooting down the aisle with my prize.

And here's the ball next to its intended contents, my 10" telescope mirror:

Damnable PayPal

A few days ago I got an email notification from PayPal:



Gee thanks! after I went to all that trouble to verify my credit card, even sending them a fax copy of my bill to satisfy their bureaucratic loopholes, they do this??!! and only because, I've never used my credit card to pay for any PayPal purchases, yet.

They just lost my business, damn them.

Weird Engrish and Stuff

I discovered that my company-issue laptop actually does have a Bluetooth radio. So I was able to transfer the photos I took with my Samsung camera phone to the computer, and from then to PicasaWeb.

From Beijing North Star Shopping Center: "Tobaccos & Inebriants"

From China Photos - from phone

And from the grocery section, a really strange TV burger: "Hamburger Choiceness Raw Material Taste-Tempting!"

From China Photos - from phone

And look at the size of that fettucini! the noodles are almost an inch wide!

From China Photos - from phone

Holy Week Holiday

Just drove a total of 437 kilometers, from Manila to Pangasinan and back. About 8 hours going there last Thursday morning, and 5 hours coming back today. Estimated fuel efficiency (haven't refilled the gas tank yet) is 10 km/L. I can't match the record for this car (2.0L gasoline engine) of 12 km/L coming down from Baguio anymore.

Tomorrow it's back to work (even though it's still a local holiday). Things to do.

Bringing the ETX-60 Back to Life

The barndoor mount I constructed some time ago hasn't fared too well; it's very difficult to aim the DSLR, and the floppy drive stepper motor is too weak (at some angles) to move the whole assembly reliably.

After some googling, I determined that it's safe to power the (nominally 9V-powered) Meade ETX-60 telescope from 12V, so I had some use for the gel-cell battery I was using with the barndoor.



Here we can see the telescope, hand controller (with a Motorola MC68HC11 processor), 12V gel cell, and a digital multimeter which I bought for PHP 65 (about $1.50) some years ago.



Following a tip I saw on Weasner's Mighty ETX web site, I coiled the hand controller's cable around the power cable from the battery. This leads to neater cabling, and reduces the probability of tangling as the telescope slews around merrily.



I soldered a power cable to the gel cell's terminals, terminated on the other end with alligator clips. I just clip these to the 9V power terminals of the Meade. A disaster waiting to happen, if the clips get reversed. I think I'll put a diode in the Meade's battery compartment to prevent reverse-polarity connections.



Even while slewing on both axes, the gel cell comfortably powers everything, very minimal voltage drop. I think it's a 4.5-Ah unit; since the Meade draws at maximum 450mA, it should be good for ten hours at most.

My next plan is to built an adjustable latitude wedge, so I can polar-mount the ETX-60, then make a piggyback adapter so the Meade can carry my Canon DSLR. This will solve two problems: tracking and aiming. It will be trivial to command the Meade to point to a desired object, which it will then track while I take a picture with the piggyback-mounted DSLR.



ScopeTronix makes a camera piggyback adapter for the ETX-60 (see above). However it costs $50, so I'll make one of my own from scrap aluminum sheet or something.

I am just a bit concerned because people on the net are saying that the ETX-60 is not beefy enough to carry a DSLR. I think it can carry the Canon, so long as I only use a short and light lens like the EF 50mm f1.8. I doubt I will be able to use the 200mm f4 Pentax-screw mount that I bought for $10.