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Those bubbling thoughts...
Nov. 4th, 2002 07:26 am...the ones that bob up and down like bones in a stew. Those. Yeah. Let me share...
I awoke to a snow-filled landscape and a cloud "ceiling" that extends out and cuts off the tops of the mountains. The extent of the snow is probably such as to not offer much of an obstacle getting out of here, had I elected to drive to Atlanta, but still...
Gathering up some loose business cards of various associates from my desk, I am suddenly struck by the need to run off some business cards of my own for the conference. That immediately led to a thought along the lines of: maybe I should also take along copies of my CV (updated, natch)?
* * * There is a program out there called gpsfetchmap, which automates the process of fetching GPS-usable maps from the expedia and mapblast sites. I tried running it a few times, but all I got out of the program was the message "Please connect to the internet!" (or something similar). Opening the script in vi, I immediately noted the message is bogus, or is intended as a reminder to the user to make sure there is a connection to the outside world.
There is also an ugly set of error messages, the meaning of which I do not understand, nor do they appear (at least, in easily findable form) in my O'Reilly book on bash programming, nor do I find any hits from a Google search whose description hints at an explanation. The errors in question are:
./gpsfetchmap: .: filename argument required
.: usage: . filename
I circumvented the problem by embedding the command-line parameters in the script itself (which allowed me to take out some code that tries to make sure those parameters are okay, which in turn gets rid of those error messages), but the thing would still not work. Looking at the guts of the code, I was struck by how simple the algorithm was (using the start and end latitudes and longitudes, specify the center points of the maps you want to get, incrementing latitude and longitude as you go, as a set of nested loops).
But why wouldn't it work?
Getting down into the nitty gritty, I determined that the program expected the starting latitude and longitude to be less than the ending values of these parameters, which is something that was not intuitively obvious. (Most people, asked to draw a rectangle with their computer mouse, will start doing so with the upper left-hand corner and move the mouse down and to the right.) Once the right combination of values was plugged in, the program started downloading maps like crazy.
It's nice to have those maps, of course, and I had intended to use them with the Linux laptop on the drive to Atlanta, but all that is moot now.
* * * I watched We Were Soldiers last night. The film was better than what I expected. I was particularly moved by the scene where Lt. Col. Moore's wife takes on the responsibility of informing the wives of the loss of their husbands. Gibson's portrayal of Moore was quirky, but eloquent.
I don't know how ready I am to accept the image of the Vietnamese (especially the North Vietnamese) as a bunch of ordinary joes fighting for their country (the film makes an interesting statement as to why men do fight - and it's a statement that a lot of people who've served in the military subscribe to - but time is too short to get into that right now). The scenes showing the North Vietnamese commander, for example, are remarkably free of any appearance by or consultation with a political officer, a position that involves a sort of co-command authority, and a concept that migrated from the Soviet model to other "people's armies." Still, the demographic this film was made for wasn't born by the end of the war in '75, so maybe that point is moot, too.
Daylight (or a semblance thereof) is burning. I've got to go saddle up.
Cheers...
I awoke to a snow-filled landscape and a cloud "ceiling" that extends out and cuts off the tops of the mountains. The extent of the snow is probably such as to not offer much of an obstacle getting out of here, had I elected to drive to Atlanta, but still...
Gathering up some loose business cards of various associates from my desk, I am suddenly struck by the need to run off some business cards of my own for the conference. That immediately led to a thought along the lines of: maybe I should also take along copies of my CV (updated, natch)?
There is also an ugly set of error messages, the meaning of which I do not understand, nor do they appear (at least, in easily findable form) in my O'Reilly book on bash programming, nor do I find any hits from a Google search whose description hints at an explanation. The errors in question are:
./gpsfetchmap: .: filename argument required
.: usage: . filename
I circumvented the problem by embedding the command-line parameters in the script itself (which allowed me to take out some code that tries to make sure those parameters are okay, which in turn gets rid of those error messages), but the thing would still not work. Looking at the guts of the code, I was struck by how simple the algorithm was (using the start and end latitudes and longitudes, specify the center points of the maps you want to get, incrementing latitude and longitude as you go, as a set of nested loops).
But why wouldn't it work?
Getting down into the nitty gritty, I determined that the program expected the starting latitude and longitude to be less than the ending values of these parameters, which is something that was not intuitively obvious. (Most people, asked to draw a rectangle with their computer mouse, will start doing so with the upper left-hand corner and move the mouse down and to the right.) Once the right combination of values was plugged in, the program started downloading maps like crazy.
It's nice to have those maps, of course, and I had intended to use them with the Linux laptop on the drive to Atlanta, but all that is moot now.
I don't know how ready I am to accept the image of the Vietnamese (especially the North Vietnamese) as a bunch of ordinary joes fighting for their country (the film makes an interesting statement as to why men do fight - and it's a statement that a lot of people who've served in the military subscribe to - but time is too short to get into that right now). The scenes showing the North Vietnamese commander, for example, are remarkably free of any appearance by or consultation with a political officer, a position that involves a sort of co-command authority, and a concept that migrated from the Soviet model to other "people's armies." Still, the demographic this film was made for wasn't born by the end of the war in '75, so maybe that point is moot, too.
Daylight (or a semblance thereof) is burning. I've got to go saddle up.
Cheers...
