Jared Jacobs

Turning 100000 on 01-11-10

Palindrome dates of the MM-DD-YY variety don't come around too often. In fact, there are only twenty-four every century: 01-11-10, 01-22-10, ..., 12-11-21, 12-22-21. Today I'm lucky enough to have a birthday on one of them! (The only one I'll ever have, unless I live 100 more years.)

What's more, my age today can also be expressed as a palindrome: 00000100000. If this number looks funny to you it's probably because the representation is binary (computerese) rather than decimal (humanese). What's more, the fact that there's only a single "1" means that the number is a power of 2 (2⁵ = 32 to be precise).

If only I'd have been born at 10:00:01, I bet I'd be flying right now.

The Unseen Peninsula

I just stumbled across a copy of Robert Buelteman's The Unseen Peninsula. I thoroughly enjoyed both the photographs and the quotations. They reminded me how fortunate I am to live on the San Francisco Peninsula and of its rich natural and cultural history.

Crystal Fen

Here are some of my favorite quotes.

...on the west the steep mountain sweeps around in a grand curve, forming a magnificent amphitheatre beside which the [Roman] coliseum is but the toy playhouse of a child.

- Colonel Albert S. Evans, Journalist, 1873

But let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights.

All is divine harmony.

- John Muir, Naturalist, 1916

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

- Albert Einstein, Physicist

Reeds and Water

Check out lightlanguagepublications.com for more of Buelteman's work.

Building SVN 1.6.3 on Mac OS X

I just built Subversion from source on my new Macbook Pro. Didn't find any short instructions on the web for this, so here 'ya go. First get the source code.

$ tar zxvf subversion-1.6.3.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf subversion-deps-1.6.3.tar.gz
$ cd subversion-1.6.3
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/share --mandir=/usr/share/man \
   --with-ssl --enable-swig-bindings=no --without-berkeley-db
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo mv /usr/bin/svn /usr/bin/svn1.4.4
$ sudo ln -s /usr/share/bin/svn /usr/bin/svn
$ svn --version
svn, version 1.6.3 (r38063)
$ cd ..
$ rm -rf subverstion-*

For reference, here are the full, generic build instructions from Tigris.

I Am a Strange Non-Mammalian

A couple of months ago I stopped eating mammals. I'd dabbled in vegetarianism before for health reasons, but this time it's different. Lately I've been getting a lot of questions from friends—usually at a meal, where discussing the topic can be awkward—so I'm writing up my thoughts here. I'm not trying to persuade anyone to think differently or change their behavior. Just explaining myself.

It started while I was reading I Am a Strange Loop, in which Douglas Hofstadter attempts to identify the crux of self, or I-ness. In one part, he notes that the species on Earth form a continuum from little or no consciousness (e.g. an amoeba) up to us humans. Language was a huge step forward for us, but despite that advantage, some other animals are surprisingly close to us. Consider: bonobos, dogs, dolphins, and crows. Many non-human species are clearly capable of experiencing emotions, meaningful relationships, and logical reasoning.

To get to the heart of the matter, we all draw the will-eat/won't-eat line somewhere. For many people it falls along our species boundary. For exocannibalists it falls along the tribe boundary. Sometimes the line subdivides a species, like when a child on a farm names a piglet. She won't eat it, but she won't necessarily pass up a ham sandwich either.

It's easy to look down from our vantage point at the top of the food chain and feel entitled to eat whatever we please. To me, though, abstaining from eating our nearest neighbors on the consciousness continuum is like rooting for the little guy or tipping my hat to the unpopular kid. Pick your favorite metaphor. And it's also about respecting the incredible phenomenon that we call life.

"Are turkeys mammals?" "What about fish?" "Why stop at mammals?" These are some of the questions I've gotten. Answers: "No," "Yum," and "Well, this is the right place for me right now." I don't feel too bad about fish. They don't seem to have much going on between their earholes. Birds are a little less robotic. I rationalize by reminding myself that their ancestors ate mine for millions of years.

Test drives at the Palo Alto Electric Car Rally

Alice and I went to the EAA's 36th annual Electric Car Rally at Palo Alto High School this afternoon. I've been reading about electric cars and bikes for several months. It was exciting to see them up close and to test drive a few.

I was most excited about the CycleCar (above). It has the same battery technology as the Tesla Roadster, so it has awesome acceleration, can go at highways speeds, and can get over 100 miles per charge. It also weighs only 600 lbs. and is affordably priced.

There were also electric scooters...

electric bikes...

whatever this thing is...

a tzero (a 1997 concept car that famously beat a Ferrari and a Porsche Carrera in a drag race)...

a converted 1955 Beck Spyder...

a Myers Motors NmG...

and a few other curiosities like the Smurf-mobile...

I plan to get either a recumbent BetterBike, which I also test-drove today, or a Montague folder real soon now for my 8-mile commute to work (for days when I don't feel like riding my traditional bicycle).

On my wishlist for next year's show: (images from autobloggreen.com)