The Captain's Journal

Subject:	Projector Fun
Time:	12:15 am.
Mood:	thoughtful.

Dear Lazyweb,

I want to build a better mousetrap when it comes to transferring 8mm film to digital. Without spending $2000 or more on a custom-built telecine, the next best solution I've seen so far that does not involve trying to project 18fps film onto posterboard and using a 30fps camera with my fingers crossed has involved legos, an old dot matrix printer, and a scanner. However, I've done some test scans and my trusty Epson 2480 is just not up to the task.

However, I have conceived of an idea that involves advancing the film frame by frame through the projector and grabbing each frame with an ordinary 4 megapixel camera. This would require two things, from where I sit. One would be to replace the incandescent projector lamp with an ultra-bright LED to avoid melting the film. The other would be a remote control box I could operate by serial port or USB, which would turn a circuit on and off just long enough to make the projector motor advance the film by one frame.

Does anyone have any kind of experience with this sort of homebrew kit electronics that would be willing to offer suggestions?

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Subject:	Scanning...
Time:	11:15 pm.
Mood:	quixotic.

After Babci went into the nursing home last fall, one of the things I resolved to do was to scan her photo albums. This was a culmination of many things including wanting to put them in a digital frame for her but also an attempt to race against the clock -- way back in 1997 when my dad's mom got sick I had thought about trying to scan the pictures she had and do some kind of video interview thing with the grandparents. And one by one I lost them, and my chances were all gone. I'd started scanning Babci's pictures as a lark way back in 2005 but due to various reasons I hadn't followed up on it until 2008. Well, between July and December of 2008 I managed to scan about 700 pictures -- mostly in December. As a result, I was able to prepare a nice digital album culled from what I had scanned that she was able to have in her room.

I'd done a bit more scanning in January and March of 2009, and felt like I was getting close to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoyed seeing and handling all the old pictures, but there does come a point where the number of photographs start to weigh. Except after the funeral we found another box of albums and frames that I had no idea existed. That box has sat in a corner of my mancave since March, untouched until last month.

I've been trying to scan at least some pictures when I have downtime -- usually four at a time on the flatbed, to be carved up and processed later by my custom-written software. This month so far I've put together 44 scans, or about 176 photos. We'll see how long I can keep this up.

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Subject:	In Which I Have No Love For Protesters
Time:	12:15 am.
Mood:	annoyed.

Larissa and I have talked periodically about things that make us irrationally angry. Stuff that we admit bugs us all out of scale, that we have no business being so irritated by, yet as humans here we are experiencing this disproportionate emotion.

Well, today I was on my way to JC Penney's on my lunch hour, and on the sidewalk outside the mall was a pro-life rally. There were maybe 100 people clogging up the sidewalk and repeatedly pushing the buttons on the street corners to slow down traffic at the crosswalks. They had signs like "ABORTION KILLS BABIES" and "ABORTION HURTS WOMEN" and were waving them at passers-by. And at the time, these people made me irrationally angry. On my way back I struggled for a simple way to communicate my displeasure at their demonstration. Obviously this was peaceful and didn't warrant shooting the bird at a crowd of strangers so I settled for giving a thumbs-down as I drove past. This seemed to make a handful of them irrationally angry back at me so I guess in the end we're even.

But the whole experience gave me pause and made me re-examine some of my attitudes toward abortion, so I guess their demonstration served its purpose although not in the direction I'm sure they would have liked. I spent a lot of time this afternoon trying to pick out exactly what didn't sit with me that caused me to feel so angry. Eventually this coalesced around a couple of key things.

For one, the protesters were predominantly male -- by nearly a 2:1 margin. I've had debates with a self-labeled feminist in the past who argues that as I do not possess a uterus I should have absolutely no say in this issue at all. Now, I disagree with that position, but only to a degree: All members of a society have a stake in how we as a community raise our children, and all stakeholders should have some voice in stating how things should be. But I've come to agree that, to coin a phrase, people with penises should not be the ones driving this debate.

For two, the demonstrators were almost all white, and judging from their clothing, also reasonably well off. Certainly there are a constellation of reasons why a woman may not want a pregnancy, but many of them are driven by economics and the lack of ability to provide for a child. I got the distinct impression that the vast majority of the people there could have added a mouth to feed at their table without the use of food stamps.

For three, the stark simplicity of their message offended me somehow, and it wasn't until much later in the day that I finally realized that was what really bugged me more than anything. These people were trying to deliver a message that was both negative in tone and completely devoid of solutions. Simply criminalizing abortion does absolutely nothing to address the reasons why someone would feel an abortion was advantageous. It also does nothing to attempt to persuade that the alternative is better. Granted, there's only so much message you can put on a posterboard, but this parade in front of a shopping mall seemed nothing short of self-serving. Both of us walk home having our own beliefs reinforced, but I feel sure the demonstrators felt like they "made a difference" today by strutting along a sidewalk with a sign.

I will at least not claim to be out to make a difference. Even now I'm really not out to persuade you, gentle reader, as much as I simply want to vent. Because ultimately I saw a bunch of upper-middle class white men express how evil they think abortion is when they will never ever walk in the shoes of a person whose life has not granted them the same bounty of options, and without ever doing anything to facilitate alternatives.

Collect donations to help with adoption placement services. Do things to raise awareness of low-cost pre- and neo-natal care available for people who need it. Volunteer at a crisis center to help young women who are pregnant and scared. Become a foster parent or adopt. I can envision so many ways that sentiment and energy can be funneled into helping to deprecate abortion -- which is the goal, right? -- that is socially positive and results in a community good.

But for Christ's sake -- and I really say that here without taking His name in vain, as there was a guy at least dressed as a member of the clergy among the group -- walking down a sidewalk with a sign saying abortion is bad is not constructive!

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Subject:	Hmm...
Time:	9:05 pm.
Mood:	confused.

So, over the course of my life I've been slowly whittling down my list of "holy grails" that I want to obtain. This list is actually beginning to get short, which is pretty cool.

One of them is to complete my collection of the original 80-issue run of the Transformers comic. I have all but #72, #74, #75, and #80 -- most of them from first printing. I have an Email notification service from the excellent Mile High Comics to let me know when these issues become available. I've been chasing these rather seriously since about November 2006 with no success, but I finally got an Email tonight that all four issues were in stock, ranging from $4.80 to $25.50. So I got the okay from the wife to spend the money, pulled the Rubbermaid storage container from under the bed and double checked the issues I was missing, got the cart set up, and then somehow bumped the "complete order" button before entering my credit card number.

My cart suddenly became empty and upon checking, all four issues went back to unavailable. I was highly annoyed, except I got an Email confirming my order. So maybe I'll get the opportunity to phone in my credit card number and still get the comics. Life's throwing odd curve balls at me lately. We'll see how this one crosses the plate.

UPDATE: I got a separate Email from them allowing me to pay. The back issues are all mine and will be shipped out on the 31st!

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Subject:	GI Joe
Time:	11:30 am.

I loathed the first Transformers movie so much (the first Michael Bay one, I mean. Much as I generally dislike Robert Zemeckis, he would have done better. And while I do loathe the oldschool animated movie in key ways, that's a separate post) that I haven't gone to see the second and won't go out of my way to. So when I saw the released scene from GI Joe months ago, I decided by the end of it that the GI Joe franchise was going to go in the exact same direction as the Transformers franchise: Totally co-opted to the point that it's actually a separate movie loosely based on the same type of theme (ie, "giant robots") that the franchise and character names will be applied to in order to convince people to go see it. Or in a phrase, "pillaging your childhood".

But when one of my coworkers suggested we go to a matinee of GI Joe and have a beer afterward I couldn't say no. And once I got over the shock of seeing the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) playing the bad guy -- talk about worlds colliding -- I found that overall I really liked what I saw. Maybe this is in part that I was much more a casual GI Joe fan compared to Transformers (or Star Trek for that matter) so I was less ready to nitpick, but given my general expectations of a comic book and/or cartoon remake it seemed faithful to me in all the key ways. The characters felt reasonably consistent to what I remember from the source, and maybe that's because GI Joe has much better markers for this. Scarlett and her crossbow is the best example. Or maybe it's that GI Joe did a much better job of being faithful to the markers. Apart from Optimus Prime turning into a truck and being voiced by Peter Cullen the other names and markers are inconsistently applied. Bumblebee is called Bumblebee mostly because he's yellow; when I watched Transformers I if I closed my eyes I really pictured him more as Jazz. And much as the spec sheets differentiated the Autobot and Decepticon weapons, most of the time in the cartoon they were just laser beams that made shit blow up.

Which brings me to the tech. The weapons, bases, and vehicles are awesome. They are fun to look at, fun to watch blow up, and with the exception of the armor suits (which will be toned down for the next movie, I've read) they feel very much like they did in the cartoon. There's a moment early on when the conventional NATO forces are firing regular rounds and missiles at an unidentified aircraft, which turns around and opens up with laser fire and pulse weapons at the conventional forces. For just an instant, it draws your attention to the fact that the GI Joe cartoon almost never used conventional weapons, because the censors though laser fire made the show more fanciful and therefore less likely to make kids pick up real guns. From there the tone is set and it holds for the whole movie. And watch for two key show cliches, when they appear they are delivered with exactly the right touch.

Roger Ebert didn't care for GI Joe (although he does like it better than Transformers 2) but if you read his review, he justifies exactly why Paramount chose not to screen it in advance for mainstream media critics: he dwells on things like why Cobra has no concrete motivation for world conquest and why both organizations have ninjas. These things were put in place years ago by the comic and the cartoon, which of course Ebert has never read or seen even casually as far as I can tell, and I think this holds true for most of the print media critics. What we have is a well-executed live action version of the source material.

The reason for all of this seems to be that the GI Joe production team was willing to run the script back through creator Larry Hama and actually listen to his suggestions for ways to make the franchise closer to the comic books. If anyone important ever reads this, please take note. The difference between rebooting my childhood for an adult and/or modern teen audience and pillaging my childhood for cash is honoring the source material. This is why the GI Joe movie works. This is why Casino Royale worked as a James Bond reboot. I have not heard anyone talk about how they loved Transformers 2 because of Optimus Prime's voice. The only thing I have heard good things about are Megan Fox's tits. But the people I have talked to so far about GI Joe have overall liked the characters and were content with the casting. Mikaela Banes is so obviously there as eye candy and there's the needlessly uncomfortable sexual references in Transformers, whereas both the Baroness and Scarlett are both smokin' hot without lingering cleavage or ass shots. You tell me which film is more "adult".

I realize that much of this is based on contrast between the two Hasbro franchises, but it's telling just how different the two of them turned out on the big screen. It's not perfect and it's not going to win an Oscar. But it's a good summer action flick and worth checking out if you remember GI Joe as a kid. Or if you want to stick with the compare and contrast motif, everything Transformers did wrong, GI Joe did right.

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Subject:	I win!
Time:	4:45 pm.
Mood:	victorious.

Ok, so the brute-force grep didn't work. Well, it did, but what it found was Email saved in some ancient Pine folders rather than the newer messages I was looking for. After that, I was staring at R-Studio's website since I had it open from last night's entry and saw they have a new ext2/ext3 utility which is free. So I tried that this morning. No dice either. I decide I will try and make a copy of the whole frickin' inode with the idea that I'll try some more things later. This led me to The Sleuth Kit and some instructions. This only got me so far, until I tried to use dls as is in the blog, and it wasn't there. So I recompiled from scratch. Still not there. This left me pretty angry since I've now put in about 16 hours trying to accomplish something. So I went out for a reuben and to run some errands. I came back and dug through the documentation and discover that dls has been renamed blkls. Why this is buried in essentially a footnote on the website and is not more visible is beyond me. (I've since updated the Wikipedia page, to hopefully save the next poor sap some time.) But anyway... It took me a few tries to understand exactly what numbers needed to go into the various incantations, but I managed to dump the relevant chunk of the filesystem to a file. A little application of grep and... HEY! Email from 2009!

So the data may not all be there, but a lot of it is, and I can now put the system back together and sort through the block copy at my leisure. Huzzah!

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Subject:	Data Recovery
Time:	8:30 pm.

So, I got a text from Lari yesterday when I got back from (early) lunch stating that Neomail ate her inbox. Work was really busy so I didn't get much chance to give it much thought, and there really wasn't anything I was going to be able to do about it from work anyway. I guess I just sort of assumed that the db files got corrupted and it just isn't seeing the spool anymore. I had something like that happen with Eudora some time back so I sort of left it at that - especially because it seemed at first like only some of the mail was gone; I was also brought up in Linux with the thought that once a file was erased it was gone, so it was either something easy to fix or else it was history. Of course, had I really put on my thinking cap I'd have had her pull the plug on the server to preserve as much of the inodes as possible, but y'know, hindsight.

This morning I did straightforward checking and sure enough, the /var/spool/mail file was just from midday yesterday forward and nothing got copied anywhere that I could tell. So I figured I was done, but I did some googling and found a utility that would undelete ext2 files, and I had an older copy of R-Studio that would read ext2 also, so I thew Suse Linux on a spare 6gb drive and... the program wouldn't compile. So I had to find an RPM. But it didn't find any deleted files, and R-Studio only found very small files that were truly deleted (not overwritten). I was about to call it quits, until I suddenly remembered that when I installed Suse on the machine, I used ext3 instead. Which the ext2 utilities can't play nice with. No wonder e2undel didn't find anything!

I did more googling and found a utility called ext3grep which can recover files from ext3 filesystems. And once again, it wouldn't compile. By this time the only computer hooked up to the cable modem is my laptop, so I download an RPM of it and wind up having to transfer it by floppy to the makeshift Linux box. And that generated an error which indicates there may be a bad block somewhere on the partition -- which would comfortably explain why the file got eaten to begin with, although I suspect my hamfisted use of the e2fs tools may have done something to torch the ext3 journal.

At the end of my rope (and after fighting this for 7 hours now) I found another blog that suggested a brute-force grep of the entire partition for a known token. At least with this being a mail file that's easy since there'll be an Email address every few dozen lines. When I ran a test, I found a lot of garbage, and then suddenly an Email to Lari showed up from 2000. This would seem to indicate I'm on the right track, so I'm going to let it cook for an hour with the grep and see what it comes up with. Given that the system was up for 18 hours after this happened I doubt I can recover 100% of it, but hopefully I can get most of it back...

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Subject:	People are so weird.
Time:	10:15 pm.
Mood:	confused.

In the wake of the Michael Jackson thing a bit of morbid curiosity came over me, given that within an hour of his death MTV was listing him as the most-downloaded artist of the day. So I dropped by the local Coconuts new/used music store just to see what the atmosphere was like, and also thinking if I could pick up Thriller used for under $10 I would. When I got there, the clerk asked if I was looking for anything in particular, and I felt like asking for MJ was crass so I wussed out and said no and just started browsing. As I browsed I realized I hadn't been in a traditional music store in ages, because the (also) traditional 3-tiered shelves felt very old-fashioned.

Anyway, after a few minutes, I heard the clerk talking about Jackson with another woman, so I gravitated to where they were standing among the racks to take a look. I got there just in time to watch as the woman leaned down and swept up every CD and DVD in two of the the three tiers of the rack. Yes, friends, in one swoop she grabbed their entire inventory of Michael Jackson and carried it up to the register, asking if she could bring some of them back if it turned out she already had it at home.

Needless to say I didn't walk out with a copy of Thriller.

Only in America could a poor black boy grow up to be a rich white man.

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