Archive for September, 2013

Random notes: September 24, 2013.

Tuesday, September 24th, 2013

Paul Bergrin is going to spend the rest of his life in prison with no possibility of parole. Unless his conviction is overturned, or his sentence is reduced on appeal. (Previously on WCD.)

According to the HouChron and Nielsen, nobody in the Houston area watched the Astros game against Cleveland on Sunday. (Of course, that game was on opposite the Texans game, the Astros are getting closer to 110 losses this season, and there’s some margin for error in Nielsen’s calculations.)

While I was digging out the Bergrin posts, I stumbled across this old post about Hot Wheels, Legos, and imaginative play. The discussion of Legos, and their emphasis on pre-packaged sets tied to pop culture events, reminded me of something I saw over the weekend: LEGO Lone Ranger sets. I kind of like the Constitution Train Chase but I don’t like it $100 worth (or $81.40 worth, for that matter): I look forward to seeing these sets being blown out at Wal-Mart for $10 or less. (Heck, I might even go $20 for the train.)

Your loser update: week 3, 2013.

Monday, September 23rd, 2013

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Pittsburgh
Jacksonville
Washington
NY Giants
Minnesota
Tampa Bay

Notably absent from this list: Cleveland.

I don’t pay that much attention to sports news during the week. I check FARK’s sports tab, but that’s about it. (Well, and TMQ in season, but I’m not sure I consider that “news”.) So the first I heard about the Richardson trade was a text message from one of my relatives in Cleveland, who was absolutely apoplectic to the point where they planned to sell off their season tickets. They (and I) were convinced that the Browns were tanking the season, again; everyone expected this to be their year, or at least for them to do something decent. Heck, I think folks would be happy with 8-8; that would at least show some improvement. And trading your first round draft pick after just a year? That’s crazy as a soup sandwich.

Or is it? When FARK got around to posting their thread, I read through it. And there are actually some good arguments in the other direction. CavalierEternal’s comment early in the thread specifically made me rethink my position; his argument is that Richardson didn’t do that well last year, is injury prone, shows “major signs of being a bust”, and trading him now while they could still get value for him was the best thing the Browns could have done.

So who’s right? I don’t know, but the Browns won yesterday. Quarterback change? The Richardson trade put the fear of God into the remaining players? Or, conversely, the remaining players are putting in maximum effort, hoping to get traded out of this chicken-(stuff) outfit?

Or are the Browns so inept, they can’t even suck for first pick in the draft correctly?

Answers to Tam (Gratuitous Gun Porn)

Sunday, September 22nd, 2013

Tam posted hers, so I figured I’d respond by posting mine. Though mine’s not quite as pretty, and she’s a better photographer.

model57

My records show I bought this on my birthday in 2006. (I know I was working at The Other Place when I did buy it. I also know Tam was still working at Coal Creek Armory, because I emailed them looking for Safariland .41 Magnum speedloaders, and she responded.)

It was picked up used at McBrides for $417 (including tax). I figured it would make a nice home defense gun; if you can’t stop a rampaging home with six rounds of .41 Magnum, you should at least be able to fight your way to your elephant gun and put a couple of rounds of .460 Weatherby through the bay windows.

(Yes, I will be here all week. Try the veal, and remember to tip your waitress.)

Anyway, I got the gun home, picked up a box of remanufactured .41 Mag at the next gun show, and took it to the range. Can’t have a home defense gun you haven’t shot, can you?

I set up at the bay, took aim, and…

(click)
(click)
(click click click)
(click click click click click click)
(click)

Capstick mode.[1] Sigh. My friend Karl recommended a good gunsmith, and $125 later, I had a gun that would go “Bang!” instead of “Click!”. As I recall, the cylinder timing was a bit off, and my smith said the previous owner had apparently trimmed a spring to make the trigger pull lighter. It probably would have gone “Bang!” with factory .41 Mag ammo, but the remanufactured stuff had harder primers…

Even at $500+ all in, I’m still pretty fond of this gun. If I had to hike in bear country, this would be the sidearm I’d take. It doesn’t have a lot of collector value, thanks to the refinish (the barrel was also cut down from 6″). But, though I can’t prove it, it has the same feeling my pre-Model 10 does: that this was a gun carried and used daily by someone who relied on it, knew exactly what he wanted and why (like Earl Swagger), and made the changes he wanted without worrying about future collectors.

[1] “The most terrifying sound in the world is not the scream of a descending bomb nor the roar of a charging lion, but rather a click when you expected to hear a bang.” –Peter Hathaway Capstick

Art, damn it, art! watch (#40 in a series)

Sunday, September 22nd, 2013

Yesterday was gun show day.

(I didn’t pick up anything, though I did see a couple of nice Savage Model 24s in .22 magnum/20 gauge on one guy’s table. They seemed reasonably priced, though I still couldn’t afford them right now.)

As our party was on the way out, we noticed a bunch of Austin Energy trucks off to one side of the expo center parking lot. That’s not unusual – the expo center is within sight of one of the major power plants – but there were also signs for something called “PowerUP”.

What is “PowerUP”, we wondered? It turns out that “PowerUP” is…

…a performance featuring the employees and machinery of Austin Energy. Performed to an original score by Graham Reynolds and accompanied by a string orchestra led by Austin Symphony Conductor Peter Bay featuring “digital violin” solist Todd Reynolds, PowerUP will showcase 50+ linemen, electrical technicians and Austin Energy employees, bucket trucks, cranes and field trucks, a set of 20 utility poles, and an audience of 6,000+ people!

So I’m still not sure exactly what it is, beyond a performance that apparently involves linemen and bucket trucks. There was a Kickstarter for this project, too. $500 got you a reserved parking space and four reserved seats.

I’m intrigued by the description (and I also get a kick out of “Forklift Danceworks”); I might have gone to this if I hadn’t had other plans last night. (Of course, I would have had to wear my “Forklift Driver Klaus” t-shirt.)

They’re also doing the performance tonight, as well, but according to the Forklift Danceworks web site, they “sold out” both nights of the free performance, and don’t have any additional tickets available. Which sort of renders my gripe that there hasn’t been any publicity (that I’ve seen) for this null and void…

Obit watch: September 20, 2013.

Friday, September 20th, 2013

Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.

–Captain A. G. Lamplugh (pulled from here)

No snark here.

David Riggs’s body has been recovered from a lake in China. Riggs crashed his plane on Tuesday “while performing a stunt in which the wheels of the aircraft grazed the surface to produce a skiing effect”.

An 18-year-old Chinese woman who was working as Riggs’ translator was also killed in the crash.

Why is this noteworthy here? Two reasons:

  1. Ah! Now I know why those planes looked familiar! (Okay, those were L-29s and that’s an L-39. But I’m still pretty sure that’s why.)
  2. And why did I recognize the L-39? Because I’ve written about it, and David Riggs, before.

He twice buzzed the Santa Monica Pier in 2008 and twice lost his aviation license, most recently in November 2012, as a result of an accident in which another plane crashed in the Nevada desert.

Paraphrasing a famous quote, to lose your license once can be regarded as bad luck, to lose it twice smacks of carelessness.

Ellie Rucker.

Friday, September 20th, 2013

Thank you for posting yesterday, Allison and Julie. Again, I am sorry for your loss.

For the record, here’s the obituary from today’s Statesman, which is not behind the paywall.

She also wrote a restaurant recipe column for the food section, a unique column where readers request recipes of items they’ve tried at favorite restaurants around town.

Yes! I miss that column to this day. If the Statesman really wanted me to pay for the paper, bringing back the restaurant recipe column would be a good first step.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Warrior and Family Support Center (WFSC) at Fort Sam Houston, 3138 Rawley E. Chambers, San Antonio, Texas 78219.

I encourage my readers to consider making a donation to WFSC in memory of Ms. Rucker. In keeping with the policy of this blog, I plan to do so myself as soon as this week’s paycheck clears the bank.

“Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.”

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

There’s an interesting post over at the Cryptographic Engineering blog about Duel-EC.

For those not following the story, Dual-EC is a pseudorandom number generator proposed by NIST for international use back in 2006. Just a few months later, Shumow and Ferguson made cryptographic history by pointing out that there might be an NSA backdoor in the algorithm. This possibility — fairly remarkable for an algorithm of this type — looked bad and smelled worse. If true, it spelled almost certain doom for anyone relying on Dual-EC to keep their system safe from spying eyes.

The post itself is pretty wonky, but a couple of scattershot points:

Flaw #1: Dual-EC has no security proof.
Let me spell this out as clearly as I can. In the course of proposing this complex and slow new PRG where the only damn reason you’d ever use the thing is for its security reduction, NIST forgot to provide one. This is like selling someone a Mercedes and forgetting to attach the hood ornament.

Flaw #3: You can guess the original EC point from looking at the output bits.

Flaw #4: If you know a certain property about the Dual_EC parameters, and can recover an output point, you can predict all subsequent outputs of the generator.

This is a huge deal in the case of SSL/TLS, for example. If I use the Dual-EC PRG to generate the “Client Random” nonce transmitted in the beginning of an SSL connection, then the NSA will be able to predict the “Pre-Master” secret that I’m going to generate during the RSA handshake. Given this information the connection is now a cleartext read. This is not good.

Flaw #5: Nobody knows where the recommended parameters came from.

So does all of this amount to a backdoor? Quoth Matthew Green,

including some kind of hypothetical backdoor would be a horrible, horrific idea — one that would almost certainly blow back at us.
You’d think people with common sense would realize this. Unfortunately we can’t count on that anymore.

(Subject line hattip.)

(You know, I’m halfway tempted to start a Kickstarter for a truly random random number generator. Something based off atomic decay, perhaps. What’s stopping me is:

  1. I have no electronics design skills or ability. Of course, I could hire someone, but…
  2. I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t already done this.)

(Edited to add: You could just get your random numbers from here, of course, while you’re waiting for the revolution. Nothing wrong with that plan, is there?)

(Speaking of Big John von Neumann, I just finished Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe, about the early history of computing, with a strong concentration on the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study and von Neumann’s work. It’s an interesting book – I think it serves as a good introductory biography of von Neumann. Dyson wanders a bit into the mystic towards the end, a little bit more than I would have liked, which prevents me from fully endorsing it. But if you liked Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship, you should enjoy this book as well.)

Obit watch: September 19, 2013.

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

Ken Norton, former heavyweight champion of the world and the man who broke Ali’s jaw.

Richard C. Sarafian, film and television director, perhaps most famous for Vanishing Point.

(He also directed the “Living Doll” episode of the original “Twilight Zone”; there’s a funny story in the LAT obit about that, which I won’t spoil here.)

Ellie Rucker has also passed away. This means little to anyone who didn’t live in Austin during the 1980s and early 1990s, but Ms. Rucker was the Statesman “consumer columnist”. This meant, in the pre-Internet/pre-Google days, that she answered questions from readers such as “Where can I find beeswax?”, ran handy household tips, and sometimes even mediated disputes between customers and businesses.

I always liked Ms. Rucker’s column, as did many of my friends. When she retired and was replaced by another writer, we continued to refer to that column as “Not Ellie Rucker”, in her honor.

(You’ll note that I didn’t link to Ms. Rucker’s actual obit. That’s not by choice; of course, the Statesman wants you to pay to read it.)

Noted.

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

10 things you need to know about Trader Joe’s

The story you’re reading is premium content and is available to subscribers on our new premium website, MyStatesman.com. Look for this symbol on statesman.com to denote premium content.

Yes, that’s correct: the Statesman wants you to pay in order to read what is basically an advertisement for Trader Joe’s.

You don’t have to pay to read their article about Trader Joe’s confirming a North Austin (Arboretum) store, though.

(Does anyone other than myself and Mike the Musicologist remember Krispy Kreme, and how the local news media treated the opening of their first store here like it was the second coming of Christ?)

A brief loser interlude.

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

The Astros have reached the 100 loss mark for the third season in a row.

Projections all seem to be hovering around 107 losses this year.

This is intended to enrage you. (#5 in a series)

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

Back in April of 2012, I noted the convictions of five New Orleans police officers on charges stemming from the “Danziger Bridge” incident.

About that:

Citing “grotesque prosecutorial misconduct” on the part of federal lawyers here and in Washington, a judge on Tuesday threw out the 2011 convictions of five former police officers who had been found guilty in a momentous civil rights case of killing two citizens and engaging in an extensive cover-up in the days after Hurricane Katrina.

More from NOLA.com:

In a 129-page order that strongly criticized prosecutors in former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s office, U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt pointed to “unprecedented events and acts” that “has taken the court on a legal odyssey unlike any other.”

And yes, this is a direct result of the anonymous comments scandal that led to Letten’s resignation:

The revelations and other instances of misconduct prompted Engelhardt to call for a criminal probe of former prosecutors Sal Perricone and Jan Mann, neither of whom were directly involved in prosecuting the Danziger Bridge case. Tuesday’s order alluded to additional misconduct uncovered by that probe.
The judge outed a third Justice Department prosecutor as an anonymous poster.

To be clear, I’m not enraged at the judge: I think he made the right decision, especially given the discovery of Karla Dobinski’s activities:

Ms. Dobinski had an important role leading up to trial, as the lawyer in charge of the so-called “taint team,” which among other things ensured that testimony given by police officers under immunity was not later used against them (the failure to do so is what fatally compromised the case in state court).

Ms. Dobinski is the third “anonymous” commenter. (Also: “taint team”. Ken White, call your office, please.)

I’m enraged at Letten, and at his office, for f—ing this one up. It looks like there will be retrials. I hope the defendants get a fair second trial. I also hope that Letten, and the other folks in his office responsible for this mess, face their own criminal trials, and receive appropriate punishment if they are found guilty of criminal acts.

Notes from the blotter.

Tuesday, September 17th, 2013

I have written previously about Glafira Rosales, Knoedler & Company, the fake Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell paintings, and the guy in Queens who actually painted them.

Yesterday, Ms. Rosales pled guilty to “charges of wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion”.

In court, Ms. Rosales, who had been arrested in May, dabbed at her eyes with a tissue after she detailed her role in the fraud and listened to the judge explain that she could owe up to $81 million in restitution and have to forfeit her home in Sands Point, N.Y.; her art collection; and her bank accounts. She also faces a maximum sentence of 99 years in prison, although her recommended sentence under federal sentencing guidelines is likely to be far less.

I particularly like the “although her recommended sentence…” part. Ken White, you are doing some good in the world.

I have also previously written about the case of Robert Middleton, and the attempts to file murder charges against the person who burned him (leading to his death from cancer some years later).

From the HouChron:

After countless stops and starts, prosecutors Monday refiled a murder case against 28-year-old Don Wilburn Collins, who was age 13 when Middleton was set ablaze.
“We have located previously unknown witnesses and developed a considerable amount of new information regarding the heinous attack on Robert Middleton,” said Montgomery County Attorney J.D. Lambright, who last year was elected to his first term and assumed office Jan. 1.

Lambright claims that there’s “more than 50,000 pages” of new information. Further, since Lambright is claiming that the assault against Middleton occurred in conjunction with the alleged sexual assault by Collins, the charge is actually felony murder.

Lambright has filed a new motion in juvenile court, seeking “discretionary transfer” of Collins’ felony murder case to district court, where he will be tried as an adult.

And if you want to bid on any of Jesse Jackson Jr.’s stuff – some of the stuff that he spent campaign funds to buy, and that got him convicted of a crime – go here.

As the auction began Tuesday, one option for eager buyers was a guitar supposedly signed by both Eddie Van Halen and Michael Jackson, which prosecutors said the former congressman spent $4,000 in campaign funds to purchase. But hours later, it was scratched from the auction. The U.S. Marshals Service said it was pulled from the auction because of questions about its authenticity.

Man, this is just compounding the embarrassment. I mean, you use campaign money illegally to buy crap – that’s bad enough. Then it comes out that you’re a Van Halen fan – that’s even worse. Then it comes out that you got taken when you were buying Van Halen memorabilia – how much worse can it get?