On Egypt

The events happening over in Egypt are certainly dynamic. I've been following The Sandmonkey both on twitter and on his blog. The man has found himself at the centre of things. CNN has also been providing a lot of coverage on this issue as well as events elsewhere in the Middle East. Twitter is actually a  useful tool in keeping up with events.

 Meanwhile closer to home...
Indonesian leaders have a history of making bizarre public statements. Here is another. The Secretary General of the PKS Anis Matta claiming that thousands of his supporters are over in Egypt actively assisting in the overthrow of a soverign government? Imagine for even one moment if a European or American politican said something along those lines a few years back here in Indonesia. The conspiracy mill would be gristed for years to come.

Whats going on in Egypt will eventually be sorted by Egyptians. Given that foreigners have been targeted by the Egyptian police and pro Mubarak demonstrators its astounding that Anis Matta would make such a foolish and potentially inflammatory statement. Indonesians abroad have a tough enough time without having to worry about about being rounded up as foreign agitators.

Update - the police in egypt can read the news...poor guy

The Pack

Its not the easiest life to be a dog in Bali. You start out as a cute little puppy. After a few weeks the cuteness wears off as the skin diseases cause you hair to fall out and your owners reject you. Eventually you find yourself homeless, starving, and pathetically trying to shelter under a shrub during the rainy season. And so it was for 3 little puppies that my gardener happened to notice on his way home the other day. These guys were terrified of people but too weak to run away. Being a kind sort Nengah(my gardener) brought them into our neighborhood and they have since taken up semi-permanent accomodation in my carport. The pups have been accepted by Mallie, the alpha male in the neighborhood as well as Badi, the other dog that hangs out next door.

So for the last week or two I've been learning about kampung dogs. These pups are doing much better after getting stuffed with food from all the generous folks nearby. These guys can eat. I've never seen a dog until now that's able to eat rice until he can't physically get any more down his throat. They are reasonably clever too. It didn't take long to teach them how to take food sitting down and not to try and snap it from my fingers. They are still very traumatized by whatever experience they had earlier and don't really like to be handled, at least not at first. Progress in socializing these guys has been slow. Unfortunately I don't see much future for them if they can't get used to being around people.

Hopefully someone will come around to take 1 or 2 of these little guys in. It would seem a shame to rescue these dogs only to put them down later for lack of an owner.

Addendum: How not to solve your dog problem

On Nested Polynomials

At work we use quartz pressure gauges to measure downhole pressure in a reservoir. The gauges are extremely accurate and employ a clever temperature correction scheme. They are calibrated at a test facility somewhere in the States and sent to us as a kit. The calibrations take the form of nested polynomials, the coefficients of which have to be entered manually into an acquisition system. Apparently computers prefer crunching this form of equation to the regular type. Here is what they look like (more or less).

So just figuring

• 25 Coefficients per internal gauge 
• 3 Internal Gauges
• 4 Coefficients per external gauge
• 29 Coefficients per Internal/External Combination
• 9 Possible configurations means 261 coefficients to enter (manually) into the system.

The possibility of typos is tremendous. Luckily the system allows some test values to be input so as to generate a known output. Its fairly easy to check if you've made a mistake. Still its a lot of typing for the two-fingered. Once all the calibrations are entered then the gauges must be phsically checked (in their various combinations ) just to ensure all the points are entered in the right places. Lots of unscrewing and screwing involved here.

This will take all day...I'm already pooped.

The Prisoner Exchange

Kasiem is a genius.

Imagine being able to pay someone else to do your prison time. Think of the business opportunity. You could even set up an exchanges whereby short term credits in maximum security prisons could be exchanged for longer terms in nicer prisons. Otherwise unemployed people could now find meaningful employment as exchange brokers.The govenment could even generate revenues from licensing aforementioned brokers as well as a service fee levied on each transaction.

Its a win-win as far as I can see.

Alluvial Shite Fans

There is an escarpment outside our office that runs along the coast for several miles in either direction. Along this escarpment there are hundreds of these alluvial (or fluvial-I can never recall) shite fans. These fans are caused by residents on the top of the escarpment simply dumping their trash over the side of the cliff. There it remains until it either gets covered over with sediments - there are whole vehicles buried here - or until it rains and all this refuse floods the lowlands next to the ocean. Somedays it rains so hard that the manhole covers in the lower city get blown off and there is the spectacle of an artesian shite fountain in the middle of the street.

Sorry about the picture quality. My camera has gone AWOL - permanently it seems.