Desultory Thoughts of a Notorious Propellerhead

Moved

Mon, 19 Jul 2004 09:21:47 GMT

This blog has moved to http://www.onionboy.com. ; There will be no more updates on this site.

Rodger Productions Has A New Home

Wed, 07 Jul 2004 02:14:36 GMT

It's glad news to me to hear that Rodger Productions has a new home. Rodger Productions is going to be working out of the Clawson (Michigan)/Troy (Michigan) Elks club for the time being. I was sort of sad when the Heidelberg Restaurant in Mt. Clemens bit the dust. Rodger Productions had been out there since 1984. I started doing shows with Rodger Productions around 1988 or 1989. Of course, it wasn't called Rodger Productions back then. I have a lot of fond memories of playing in shows out there as well as seeing shows out there.

Breedcentral.com Needs To Learn About How To Foil Spammers

Tue, 06 Jul 2004 01:13:48 GMT

I have a little issue with the person running Breedcentral.com. I've mentioned this to him on the pigeongenetics mailing list but I'm guessing he doesn't actually read the messages posted to the mailing list. I think he just basically mails to the list periodically to promote his website. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I think he's running breedcentral as a "service to the hobby". So, if he reads this...you need to modify your webpage. Having mailto: links is just making it real easy for spammers to harvest e-mail addresses from your webpage.

I would like to put my contact information on his website--I don't mind helping other fanciers with birds when I can and I certainly don't mind helping novices with their questions either. But I refuse to put my contact information on his website only to have it harvested by spammers.

Linux Installation Blues

Tue, 06 Jul 2004 00:46:07 GMT

I've been trying to install Linux on an old PC that I had given to my father-in-law and which I got back from him. Wow, what a chore.

First, almost all Linux distributions assume one has a PC with a BIOS that will allow you to boot from the CD-ROM. No dice in this case. Luckily one of my friends at work really knows his stuff when it comes to Linux and he asked some folks he knows and they came up with a utility to allow one to boot from the floppy but then have it boot from the CD-ROM.

Then there's the issue of the hard drive. I had a 500 MB hard drive in the box. That's way too small for a modern Linux distribution. So I got a much larger hard drive. I think it's 20 GB but I honestly can't remember. At any rate, again, the BIOS can't grok the hard drive geometry.

Ah well, I guess I didn't want to work with Linux as much as I thought I did anyway.

Yahoo Groups Message Search

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 22:18:32 GMT

I am a member of the pigeongenetics mailing list hosted on Yahoo Groups.

Recently another member asked about a color mutation which I felt certain had been discussed in the past on this mailing list. I thought a pointer to previous discussion on the mutant might be helpful as background for the current discussion. And so I tried to search the message archive for the mailing list.

The message archive search function for Yahoo Groups is not a shining example of user-friendliness. I say this because one cannot search the entire message archive in one pass. Instead, one can search a seemingly arbitrary subset of the message archive and if one does not find messages in that set, perversely, one needs to click a link labeled "Next" to search through an older set of messages. It seems a little contrary to what I would expect for that link to be labeled "Next". Of course, it is next in the sense of searching the next oldest set of messages, I suppose.

I tried grabbing the search URL and manually modifying it to see if I could search the entire archive that way. The search URL seems to take this general form:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/<group name>/messagesearch/<message number to search back from>?query=<term to search for>

I noticed there's also a dir parameter on some of the queries but I can't quite figure out what that's about.

I'm guessing that the number of messages searched in one pass is dependent on the length of the original messages because there doesn't seem to be a fixed number grabbed in one chunk. For example, if I specify "190" as the message number to search back from, messages 190 through 32 are searched. That's a range of 158 messages. However, if I specify "175", messages 175 through 1 are searched--a range of 174 messages.

So I started looking for a Web Services API such as the one that Google offers. I did find some reference to an XML-RPC or REST interface for blogs to notify Yahoo that their RSS feed has been updated.

If anyone knows of any documentation covering this query URL syntax, a web services API exposed by Yahoo, or anything else that might help me to easily search the entire message archive for this mailing list, please post something in the comments.

Art Too Bad To Be Ignored

Fri, 28 May 2004 01:32:19 GMT

Somewhere the spirit of Leonard Pinth-Garnell is laughing. Thanks to JP at Good Morning Silicon Valley for the link.

They Have Two Homes Now

Fri, 28 May 2004 01:28:05 GMT

I have a pair of racing homers that I had borrowed from a fellow fancier in Mount Clemens, Michigan. These birds are excellent parents and they had turned out quite a few healthy youngsters in a few months. However, the male seems to think it's okay to have his own personal harem because he regularly mates with a hen besides the one that he's mated to.

I contacted my friend and told him I planned to return the birds. He said fine--just let them go, they'll come home. That's one great thing about homing pigeons.

So last Wednesday I let them go. And they looked like they took off in the general direction of Mount Clemens so I thought nothing further of it. Then on Sunday they reappeared at my loft. They had decided that my loft was now home. Or perhaps the male likes having two wives. At any rate, I was pretty surprised because I thought surely they were back at their old home in Mount Clemens.

So I talked to my buddy last night and he explained to me that in fact the birds had come back to his loft. Apparently they stayed long enough to eat and rest because they were back there on Saturday and gone on Sunday.

I knew that during World War I and World War II fanciers trained pigeons to fly between multiple lofts. I always wanted to try that myself to see if I could do it. I just never knew that the birds would beat me to it.

Grouse Legged Wild Pigeon

Thu, 27 May 2004 01:40:43 GMT

I work in downtown Detroit, Michigan (in the U. S.).  Today I was walking toward my place of business along Michigan Avenue by Cass Avenue when I saw a wild pigeon with grouse legging.  I wish I had a camera with me.  

I couldn't examine him that closely but it was a blue bar and it looked pretty much like wild type other than the presence of grouse legging.  

I always thought that these sorts of mutations must occur naturally but it was still a bit of a surprise to see a wild pigeon with it.

Draconian Measures Against Pigeon Keepers In Chicago

Wed, 19 May 2004 01:58:06 GMT

You know I understand the rights of others not to be imposed upon by pigeon fanciers. Not everyone likes pigeons and that's their right. However, does the city of Chicago really need to resort to such draconian measures to prevent a few pigeon keepers from abusing the privilege?

Doesn't the city of Chicago have public health ordinances under which they can prosecute people who don't properly care for their pigeons?

I know pigeons have a bad reputation. I just wish civic governments wouldn't treat all pigeon keepers and all pigeons as if they were all the same.

Not So Desultory After All

Wed, 19 May 2004 01:51:46 GMT

Hmm...looking at blo.gs, I see that my seemingly original blog title isn't all the original after all. I guess I should have expected a high level of wordsmithing from bloggers.

Considering New Blog Software

Wed, 19 May 2004 01:48:37 GMT

I'm considering changing the blogging software that I use to maintain this blog. The main drawback of Radio Userland is that I can only create and post entries from my home machine. If I run across something cool at work and I'd like to make an entry at lunchtime, I can't do that. This is a bit of a drawback (at least to me, anyway).

If anyone is reading this, please feel free to comment and let me know if you have any experience with other blogging systems.

Of course, I guess I shouldn't gripe too much if no one is reading this. At least I don't get comment spam.