The need to do something...

All this reading really has me itching to do something... anything... especially since I'm reading about all of these "proposed frameworks" which never amount to more than mental masturbation...

Makes me wonder how many "breakthroughs" came from academic research and how many came from tinkering and doing...

Unfortunately, right after all this reading - I have to do the opposite and write a dissertation research proposal... But once that's done, I can spend time writing code!

Academia... Ugh!

I've been reading for my comprehensive exams. I won't bore anyone with the details, but in Geography at CU, that means selecting three subtopics of geography developing three extensive reading lists in each. Then reading everything in the list and then being tested over the content. For various reasons, I've been blessed with relatively short reading lists. I have, combined, about 100 journal articles and book sections plus about 20 books. 

The reading lists are designed specifically to give a feel for recent development in each subtopic grounded with the "classics". One of my areas is "Cartographic Generalization". That means (depending on how you ask) the process of creating abstractions geographic phenomena in reality or simply taking a set of such abstractions at one scale (say, 1:24,000) and creating a new set at a smaller scale (say, 1:100,000). Much of what I am reading in this subtopic is Geographers trying to apply squirrely Artificial Intelligence methods to a problem that is uniquely tied to our relation with the world around us. It's almost sad... 

The process has really made me appreciate the continuum of things humans are good at versus things computers are good at. This continuum does not seem to be shifting (i.e., computers aren't taking the place of human) inasmuch as it is becoming better defined (i.e., the computer is becoming a better tool).

On my to-do list: Write a critique of automated generalization drawing from Dreyfus' What Computers Still Can't Do.

Now listen up class...

This past September, I had the great honor of delivering a colloquium presentation to the Math Department at UTC where I got my BS. It was fun to talk about my work in Geography and how it relates to what I learned in Math. But the most fun part was watching my old professors nod off to sleep in the middle of my lecture. I'm not sure if they were really falling asleep or if it was some kind of inside joke...

I was reminded of this by this XKCD strip. I swear I've been in that morning lecture myself!

(damn! greenwich is down again...)

Still Blue...

So I asked the problem to be escalated to "Support Level 2" and I got:

Good day,

The ONLY way to get around this is the Dedicated IP. Which as above is a extra cost. If the service that you are using is blocking the service you will need to resolve the issue with them. We can not work with a Firewall that we have NO control over.

Thanks,

Jon Bryson
BlueHost.com
888.401.4678

No, you cannot work with a firewall that you have no control over - but you CAN work with the people who administer that firewall. In fact, those people have been trying to work with you for four weeks and have received ZERO response.

Bluehost, you're a makin' me blue!

My wife leads workshops throughout the country. It's one her bread and butter means of income. These workshops require a lot of planning and coordination ahead of time. Reliable email has become an absolute requirement for her. So, when I received this email from a friend who manages the web services for one of her collaborators today - I was a little livid:

Well, looks like email to Bluehost is still not working as I just got the email I sent to Asha yesterday bounced back to me.

Just wanted to let you know that Bluehost is on a blacklist at LiquidWeb (possibly elsewhere as well). They/we tried to contact Bluehost for about 4 weeks to get them to take action to fix the problem (a script exploit repository hosted on your server). They did not reply or respond, so that means no one with a server on Liquid Web's network can send email to anyone on your shared server.

If you can open a ticket and have them investigate, they will probably be a lot more responsive since you are a customer. Just say you can't receive any email from abc@cdef.com or zyx@wvut.com and they should be able to sort it out.

Bluehost is reknowned for their usually excellent tech support, so I bopped over to their trouble-ticket system and opened a ticket on the problem. Sure enough, Bluehost got back to me within a couple hours. But the response about knocked me out of my chair:

What you will need to do is purchase a Dedicated IP, so that your website appears unique. You are currently on a shared hosting server, so your domain shares the same IP address as all of the other clients on that same server. So if they block one domain on the server, they will block all of the domains. The only way around that is to purchase a Dedicated IP so that your website uses its own IP and shares it with no other domain.

The cost for a dedicated IP is $30 per year ($2.50/mo prorated to the end of your agreement). If you would like to purchase the dedicated IP, simply login to your domain manager at http://bluehost.com/dm and click on the dedicated IP tab.

Lonny Jepson
Support Level 1
BlueHost.com
888.401.4678

I won't even bother explaining why this is a non-answer. So either Bluehost has just gone entirely to pot or they are using blacklists to sell services. Either answer now has me looking for a new hosting service!

Conferences...

Paul Ramsey has posted his initial comments on the FOSS4G 2010 Conference Hosting proposals. This is a big deal because my name is on the cover of the "North American" bid. Actually, it's Denver, Colorado. I got some immense help from a new friend, Peter Batty. He was able to get GITA on board as conference organizers and call in some bigger names than I had access too for our organizing committee.

Even if we don't get the bid, I look forward to working with Peter in the future. And I look forward to visiting The Netherlands in 2010... That is, if we don't get the bid!

On the Rigors of Science

I'm in the midst of reading for my comprehensive exams. One smaller item on the reading list is Borges' "On the Rigors of Science" or "Of Exactitude in Science". There's a nice video on YouTube featuring Borges, himself, reading in Spanish:



And another:

...In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.

From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda

J. L. Borges, A Universal History of Infamy, Penguin Books, London, 1975.