Flagpole: it begins...

Flagpole: it begins...  In a week or so, I should be taking delivery of a beautiful tapered aluminum flagpole, 35' tall.  Said flagpole needs a sturdy base to sit in, so that winds don't blow the thing over.  The manufacturer recommends a cylinder of concrete 3' in diameter and 4' high.  Concrete is cheap, so I decided to go a tad bigger, just to add some extra stability: I'm going to place that flagpole into a 4' cube of concrete.

So how does one go about getting a 4' cube of concrete?  Well, you start by building a “form” – essentially a mold.  That's what's in the photo at right, shown in the same orientation that it will be used in.  I built that behemoth today, starting with a run to Lowe's to get the materials.  The top and bottom of this form are open.  The bottom will sit on the base of a big hole I'm going to dig tomorrow; the top is open so that the concrete truck can easily fill the form.  It all went together rather easily.  The design is about as simple as can be, and the tolerances aren't tight :)

That form isn't quite finished yet – I still have to add some wires and eye bolts to hold the steel sleeve (that actually holds the flagpole) in place while the concrete is poured.  The top of the sleeve will be in the exact center of the form, and will extend about 3/4" higher than the edges of the form.  When the concrete is poured, I'll be finishing it with a slight slope from the center to the outside, so that water will run off it easily.  The top of the form (and the edge of the concrete) will be at the same level as my yard, so I can mow around it easily.

The form will hold about 62 cubic feet (or 2.3 cubic yards) of concrete, after accounting for the space occupied by the hollow sleeve.  I'll be digging a hole that is substantially larger than that: about 6' x 6' x 4' - which means I'll be excavating about 5.3 cubic yards.  If you're familiar with bulk materials, you'll know that that's a rather large pile of dirt!  I'm very glad I'll have the backhoe to do this with.  If I had to do it by hand, I'm not entirely sure I'd survive the project :)

Communists in Oakland, California...

Communists in Oakland, California...  No big surprise there, and Zombie has the complete rundown on them.  Here's the rub, though: the socialism and communism that Zombie carefully documents here is on display at an event concerning global warming.  That's right: the global warming movement has been almost completely co-opted by the socialists/communists/progressives.

I can't help but marvel at the number of seriously deluded people on display.  Are they really so completely ignorant of recent history as to think there are answers in communism?  Then I remember: these people elected Nancy Pelosi.  Then I have to worry about it...

At over 23k, the current email regexp is getting pretty big...

At over 23k, the current email regexp is getting pretty big... Even experienced programmers skilled in the lore of regular expressions are intimidated by this monstrosity (the first few lines are reproduced below).  If I had ever seen this thing in the first few months I was using regular expressions, I'd probably have run away from them, screaming, never to return.  Just because you can validate email addresses with a regular expression doesn't mean you should...

(((?:(?:(?:(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?(?:\x28(?:(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?(?:(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]|[\x21-\x27\x2A-\x5b\x5d-\x7e])|(?:\x5c(?:\x0a*\x0d*[\x00-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f]\x0a*\x0d*)|(?:\x5c[\x00-\x7f]))))*(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?\x29))*(?:(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?(?:\x28(?:(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?(?:(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]|[\x21-\x27\x2A-\x5b\x5d-\x7e])|(?:\x5c(?:\x0a*\x0d*[\x00-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f]\x0a*\x0d*)|(?:\x5c[\x00-\x7f]))))*(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?\x29)|(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))))?(?:(?:[\x41-\x5a\x61-\x7a]|[\x30-\x39]|[\x21\x23-\x27\x2a\x2b\x2d\x2f\x3d\x3f\x5e\x5f\x60\x7b-\x7e])+(?:\x2e(?:[\x41-\x5a\x61-\x7a]|[\x30-\x39]|[\x21\x23-\x27\x2a\x2b\x2d\x2f\x3d\x3f\x5e\x5f\x60\x7b-\x7e])+)*)(?:(?:(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?(?:\x28(?:(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?(?:(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]|[\x21-\x27\x2A-\x5b\x5d-\x7e])|(?:\x5c(?:\x0a*\x0d*[\x00-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f]\x0a*\x0d*)|(?:\x5c[\x00-\x7f]))))*(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?\x29))*(?:(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?(?:\x28(?:(?:(?:(?:[\x20\x09]*(?:\x0d\x0a))?[\x20\x09]+)|(?:[\x20\x09]+(?:(?:\x0d\x0a)[\x20\x09]+)*))?(?:(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]|[\x2...

You want a computer that acts like a person?

You want a computer that acts like a person?  So do marketers!  From the linked article:

Half the time, I’m cynical/alarmed/wearied that so many people are working so hard to make machines fool humans.

But the other half the time I’m kind of cracked up by the fact that the most avid prosecutors of Alan Turing’s sly and audacious 1950 thought-experiment have been not philosophers or computer scientists or advanced A.I. labs but … marketers. The former folks have foundered for years on the difficulties of understanding the fractal contours of human consciousness. The latter just want you to open up their damn mail. Comprehending the mysteries of human thought and behavior is hard. Emulating it? Not so much! It’s partly why Turing’s test is so unsettling: Man, are we really that easy to copy?

MOM is in orbit around Mars!

MOM is in orbit around Mars!  No, not my CCPOAA mom, but the Mars Orbiter Mission – India's first interplanetary satellite.  They succeeded on their very first try, even though they were on a hurried schedule and a shoestring budget.  If they keep this up, SpaceX and Blue Ocean are going to have some offshore competition!  Here's the official announcement, and a more detailed story...

The death of free speech...

The death of free speech...  Having lived through the university protests of the '60s and '70s, I've long tended to think of the student populations as a key source of fight against censorship and other free speech restrictions.  Before these protests, universities had strict rules about what could and could not be said on campus.  The protests ended that, much to the regret of then-traditional Americans on both the left (war mongers!) and the right (flag burners!).  More liberty-minded folks (including myself) celebrate the accomplishment.

These days, though, the universities have become hotbeds of a new movement toward the suppression of free speech.  Some have dubbed this the “unfree speech movement”, and the moniker is apt.  It's a natural outgrowth of the intersection between multiculturalism and progressivism – the invention of the right not to be offended.  It's leading us down the same crazy path that Europe went down, starting 20 years or so ago.

In today's Wall Street Journal, Sol Stern – whom I remember as a radical in the '60s – has a piece that echoes my own thoughts.  It's interesting hearing what this looks like from one of those students who helped win the fight for free speech nearly 50 years ago...