Hey, googlers, here is a challange:
My wife and I are attacted to the idea living within three blocks (walkable, no hillsides or limited access roads) of a village center.
I can describe them, but I am not sure how to search for them. In particular, I need to search for houses for sale within village center areas.
A village center will be a commercial "main street" (not a mall, malls are anathama to village centers) that is compact, say 5 blocks by 2 blocks. It will contain as many as possible of: library, post office, pharamacy, grocery store, coffee shop (not Starbucks -- we are too old for that harsh roast), hardware store (not Lowes or HomeDepot), and restaurants.
The perfect house will be built before 1940 and be within three blocks of one of these village centers.
The search is daunting, mostly because it is not (yet) automated.
What I would like to have is a mapping function that will plot village center areas, the balloon can list the stores in the area, and houses for sale that meet the nearness criterion. The balloon for the house can even include the agent's name and phone number -- what realtor could complain about that?
Then my search for the perfect home could be just a matter of panning around on the map.
Now if the parameters of village center and the distance from one were all customizable, then this would be a universal house finder tool.
Let me know if you have any questions. I'll let you alone now and stop bothering you so you can get to work.
Thanks!
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
The Unix Command Compression & Encryption Algorithm
"Wow, you mean there is such a thing?", you gasp in all-too-late recognition.
"Now wait", say I.
While beginning my company's first use of (good-guy) old SCO unix in 1984, we noticed the extreme-ness of the command names could have been motivated by the desire to minimize typing in the face of 10 characters per second defining the bandwidth of the user interface, e.g. [ w cp dd df ed ex ln ls mt mv ps rm sh su vi, and ac ar as at bc cc ci co dc du ef ex gs id jw ld lp lz m4 nc nl nm od pr sg tr ud ul uz wc. But also there were commands, used just as often, that did not follow that pattern, e.g. grep more kill mail nice sort sync true. And what about basename?
That's where encryption came in. You see, we could tell that the goal was never to obscure reading the command, after all we were all assembly programmers skilled in mnemonics. This was more about obscuring the writing of commands. The cult of the unix power user. We were there, but we had pity on our more, normal, user community and never tried to make them believe that there was any sense behind the alphabet soup, just memorize.
"Now wait", say I.
While beginning my company's first use of (good-guy) old SCO unix in 1984, we noticed the extreme-ness of the command names could have been motivated by the desire to minimize typing in the face of 10 characters per second defining the bandwidth of the user interface, e.g. [ w cp dd df ed ex ln ls mt mv ps rm sh su vi, and ac ar as at bc cc ci co dc du ef ex gs id jw ld lp lz m4 nc nl nm od pr sg tr ud ul uz wc. But also there were commands, used just as often, that did not follow that pattern, e.g. grep more kill mail nice sort sync true. And what about basename?
That's where encryption came in. You see, we could tell that the goal was never to obscure reading the command, after all we were all assembly programmers skilled in mnemonics. This was more about obscuring the writing of commands. The cult of the unix power user. We were there, but we had pity on our more, normal, user community and never tried to make them believe that there was any sense behind the alphabet soup, just memorize.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
What is the Game?
Life in them there hills is not what it used to be. The fabric of the old world order (given the last 6 thousand years of human history) is rotten and about to rend in wholesale tears.
There is a movement that is headed in a new direction, but its motives are suspect. The new globalism and free trade are to some the life raft to save their skins while the vast majority drown or are eaten by the sharks. However, that is only half of the story.
The really important part is the fact that a new world order is forming at the grass roots level, unseen (even to George Bush, Sr, who first proclaimed the New World Order in 1990.) This process is part of the major plan of God for mankind, we generally call it maturity and it is by common understanding a slow process.
When Baha'u'llah announced the Day of God in 1863, He created all things new. An event which occuring as it did in the darkest time around the whole world (even the Queen of England lost her beloved husband) brought with it the turning of mankind to its own process of maturity.
Today one of the issues that confronts the world is our use of stored energy, its collection, and usage. All of our current modes have been around since before 1863. And they all are flawed. And they are all making their flaws felt.
It is time for the intellegence, the smarts, of a newly matured society to get behind the reorganization of ancient knowledge, wisdom, and understanding to create new ways that are not distructive. These new processes will help advance our civilization and the plight of the lowest of mankind.
One small such bubble of creative energy seems to be embodied in the blog of Archimedes Submerbed (http://archimerged.wordpress.com/). Not for the scientifically faint of heart, here is the beginning of an energy source that is over the top, able to take us into the future, using the principle of moderation to make energy available without creating equal and opposite problems for the world.
There is a movement that is headed in a new direction, but its motives are suspect. The new globalism and free trade are to some the life raft to save their skins while the vast majority drown or are eaten by the sharks. However, that is only half of the story.
The really important part is the fact that a new world order is forming at the grass roots level, unseen (even to George Bush, Sr, who first proclaimed the New World Order in 1990.) This process is part of the major plan of God for mankind, we generally call it maturity and it is by common understanding a slow process.
When Baha'u'llah announced the Day of God in 1863, He created all things new. An event which occuring as it did in the darkest time around the whole world (even the Queen of England lost her beloved husband) brought with it the turning of mankind to its own process of maturity.
Today one of the issues that confronts the world is our use of stored energy, its collection, and usage. All of our current modes have been around since before 1863. And they all are flawed. And they are all making their flaws felt.
It is time for the intellegence, the smarts, of a newly matured society to get behind the reorganization of ancient knowledge, wisdom, and understanding to create new ways that are not distructive. These new processes will help advance our civilization and the plight of the lowest of mankind.
One small such bubble of creative energy seems to be embodied in the blog of Archimedes Submerbed (http://archimerged.wordpress.com/). Not for the scientifically faint of heart, here is the beginning of an energy source that is over the top, able to take us into the future, using the principle of moderation to make energy available without creating equal and opposite problems for the world.
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