Beaconkeeper

I had just finished communicating the coordinates of all the navigational beacons in the sector to the new arrival when another call came. The other captain saw the indicator and told me,

"Well, the commstat is hailing us, and that's what we came here for; we'll be in touch!"

I was not surprised, as I knew where I was in the universe of people. Having been about to discuss replacement equipment and the local culture, I was still a tad disappointed.

In the string of video calls that ensued, I knew I stood little chance. Much of what I would of said was ignored as out-of-channel banter, with bits and pieces considered off-topic in-channel noise. Once I saw this, I realized that I was being a pain. Something needed to change.

"Helmsman, what is the current cloaking charge?"

The middle-aged officer glanced at his dials and then eyed me. "Sir, we're at 75%."

That was odd. We'd been charging it for a week and I had told him to keep it at peak readiness.

"Sir, we're at 75% of what you need. I can see that you're plotting the old Malay Turk maneuvre, and we haven't quite got the staying power to do it."

Realizing that he was three moves ahead of me, I ceded his point. "Well, we can at least ameliorate the interstitial jitter. Put us on full electromagnetic silence and engage the cloaking engine."

If you can't help 'em, don't get in their way, I thought. At least he has what he needs for when he gets here.

---

P.s. On a completely unrelated note, 21 days remaining. :)

Double Double

The scientist cackled maniacally as the mixture began to bubble. Lowering his goggles and straightening his stain-splattered lab coat, he donned protective gloves before replacing the containment vessel lid.

He stepped over to the next hotplate. Observing that the matter phase change had commenced, he rapidly adjusted the dials controlling the thermal transfer. Several stirs of the mixture later he gave it one last piercing stare, grunted, and returned to the other vessel. The clear window showed the consistency to be almost right, so he deftly deactivated its heat source and stepped back.

Looking at the complex apparatus chugging along in harmony, he doffed the gloves, smiled, and sat down at the table.

This rice and stir fry were going to be great.

A saying or two I think should be.

For juxtaposition and oddness of imagery:
She survived the disease only by the light of death's candle.
Alternately:
Her sojourn close to death was lit only by Death's flickering candle.

For dissonance with the familiar and my lack of ability to say it:
How much wood would Chuck chuck if Chuck could chuck wood?

:)

Xilinx Design Suite 13.4 on Ubuntu

Oh hai!

You're probably here because you're having some trouble installing the Xilinx ISE Design Suite v13.4 on Ubuntu 11.04. Aren't blog post titles great?

Well, here's the problem I was having after I successfully installed it as root:

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/firefox-11.0 # this was a hack to find the real error
$ source /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/settings32.sh
. /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/EDK/.settings32.sh /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/EDK
. /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/ISE/.settings32.sh /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/ISE
. /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/PlanAhead/.settings32.sh /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/PlanAhead
. /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/SysGen/.settings32.sh /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/SysGen
. /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/common/.settings32.sh /opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/common
$ ise
XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /usr/lib/firefox-11.0/libxpcom.so:
/opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/ISE//lib/lin/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9' not found (required by /usr/lib/firefox-11.0/libxul.so)
Couldn't load XPCOM.
[ errors about not finding library ieee ]

Turns out it ships with libstdc++ v. 6.0.8. Ubuntu 11.04 is currently at v. 6.0.14. To solve this library version conflict, simply put '/opt/Xilinx/13.4/ISE_DS/ISE/lib/lin/libstdc++*' somewhere safe and replace them with symlinks to `/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6` and it should come up just fine!

Fissiles

Sweating inside of his radiation suit, the nuclear workman used tongs to heft the result of an hour's work. The rectangular prism was just over five inches long, while its bulk was a precisely crafted 5.0800 cm by 7.5000 cm. Each surface had, with painstaking effort, been polished to the perfection required of Johansson blocks. This would permit it to be joined to the core of a reactor designed to cover lightyears at a stroke with enough energy left over for far more than survival.

He reflected back. Compressing and shaping the nuclear remnants of the last meltdown seemed a logical step. No other release of the energy would be anything less than fatally catastrophic to the mile-wide ship; still, even this would be highly risky. He got up from his workbench and started walking to the core airlock and waldo controls.

Nobody had realized that shoelaces were a terrible idea on a radiation suit.They had been made that way for decades.

The poor engineer hadn't realized one of those shoelaces was snickering, having quietly freed itself from its bondage in the last hour.

He also hadn't realized that another engineer had neglected his duty and had left open the shielded container containing a number of dangerous fragments from the same event.

So, when he lifted one foot, it tried to move the other. One moment to recall his thoughts to the current scenario, one moment to he was holding a chunk of nuclear material fit for a bomb, and one extra moment to panic. Gravity did the rest.

As he tripped, the tongs slipped and the small, silver shard of devastation started on its ballistic journey. It might have been guided on its journey by some unseen hand to its clean, forceful landing in the open pig.

He curled up into a ball as a blue flash illuminated the room and he knew for sure he was a dead man. It was enough material to go critical and annihilate the entire engine chamber along with anything attached to it, and his imagination could see the atomic terror rending the atoms of the fuel and unleashing an unfathomable quantity of energy into the surrounding world.

Opening his eyes, he blinked.

The engine room certainly wasn't any afterlife he'd heard of, so he knew he wasn't dead.

Adrenaline was still pumping through him as he slowly uncurled, got up and looked around. The active dosimeter he was wearing didn't register much, so he slowly walked over to where he'd seen the slug of polished material land.

The pig was a little melted on the inside, and a few shards of material had fused to the inside. Aside from that, there was nothing.

Cleanup had done itself. After months of tending wreckage and carefully gleaning the dangerous bits, it was almost all gone.

Of its own accord.

He blinked, hoping it wasn't a dream, and then walked to the comm to relate to the captain what had happened.

Heroes

Image by laobc.

When I think of heroes, I often think of famous men, legendary characters, historical backdrops, and sweeping epochs.

This evening I'd like to mention my heroes from today.

Occasionally this is the bus driver who waited an extra minute so I could get on, or the man with the most fantastic moustache I've ever seen. (Eat your heart out, Mario and Luigi!) One of my heroes is certainly Marissa Pielstick, a patient, kind, wonderful, and intelligent woman whose boyfriend I have the pleasure of being.

Tonight it was four people in a truck...with a sofa in the back.

I have been ill for a couple of days; while the weather has been unseasonably warm, a brisk, chill, rainy wind in the face makes the 11-block walk home harder. Don't get me wrong--it's totally worth Marissa's company.

Well, tonight I had my head down and my hand up to keep my hood secure against the wind-driven sprinkles and the northerly gusts. I probably looked like quite the character. Walking past Wendy's, about half-way home, this truck rolls down its window and the driver asks if I'm doing alright and if I want a ride.

It took me a minute to process. I almost walked past.

A ride?

Heck.
Yes.

For the two minutes it took to get home, I had the pleasure of meeting Vanessa, Camille, Austin (our esteemed driver), and Levi. I had crossed their paths during a midnight Wendy's run while they were enjoying a large bag of fried delectables. I didn't learn much more than that about them, as they asked what I'd been up to and they got to hear about Marissa. (Sorry guys.)

They were willing to give me--a complete stranger, and in a crowded truck no less--a ride home.

This makes them my heroes today.

aPod Touch Thingy

Last winter I got a new dumb phone.

I broke the dumb phone.
Last summer I got a smart phone.

I am presently using the dumb phone's predecessor, the hardy (if quirky) Motorola W755. It does what I want for the price I want.

The smart phone was from a friend of mine. It was used. I called Verizon and was informed that it would take an enormously expensive (to me) dataplan in order to use the oldest Droid in existence.

Did you know these things have pretty good Wifi support? Apple does. An iPod Touch is basically all of the computing power and sensory equipment of a smart phone without the "phone" aspect.

I hereby coin the term "aPod Touch" to designate a phoneishnessless Android smartphone. It's actually kinda fun to have a pocket-sized Internet-capable computer handy even when my laptop is out of battery. Instead of Googling certain classes of things, I find apps that are specialized in that field (ElectroDroid comes to mind). It's battery lasts around 36 hours, a lifetime no laptop I know even tries to match.

So when you see that I have a smart phone, "Mr. Richy-Rich" is a misappelation. When you see that I have two phones, realize that the "inferior" one is the better one, and that I'm liking abusing the poor "superior" phone as a poor replacement for a laptop.