Spurious sensor data can wreak havoc in an otherwise finely-tuned home automation system. I use temperature data from an Aeotech Multisensor 6 to monitor the environment in our greenhouse. Living in Canada, I cannot rely solely on passive systems to maintain the temperature, particularly at night. So, using the temperature and humidity measurements transmitted back to the controller over Z-wave, I control devices inside the greenhouse that heat and humidify the environment.

In an effort to strip protesters of their legitimacy, Trump and Fox News claim that protesters are simply there because they’re paid by powerful oppositional interests. Never mind that Trump has no evidence for his claim; he has no evidence for practically anything that emerges from his loud mouth. What is more interesting to me is that if money delegitimizes authenticity then presumably we can use this effect to come to additional conclusions.

Someday, when I have time to burn, I’m going to write a Twitter bot that takes all of Trump’s vacuous tweets and translate them into Russian. It’ll look like this:

There’s something ludicrous about the idea of the Trump, who is distractible, impatient, and incurious being able to learn Russian, an incredibly difficult language.

marking time,
eyes glazed, pupils constricted
to the head of a pin
from facing the blue white sterile light
for too long
a zombie tribe
numbering in the millions
if not more
waits.

this throng, agitated
in a subdued anesthetized
way,
crowns one of its own
a clown of sorts
knowing little of the past
less of the present
and practically nothing
of the future.
"why not? it could be worse."

in a strange unreality
a vaudeville show becomes
its own rehearsal,
a dreamish state from which
only an atomic flash
can awaken a person.

On January 1, 2016 we packed up all our earthly goods and headed south to Canada. (Yes, it’s true. When you live in Minnesota, it’s possible to move south to Canada. Look at the map!) Having lived here for a little over a year, here are some thoughts about living here, in no particular order:

1. “Sorry” is more of a greeting than just an apology.
2. Canadians really are polite; but put them behind the wheel of a car and all bets are off.
3. Universal healthcare works. Americans love to go on and on about socialized medicine; but I’m here to tell you: it works.
4. Bumper stickers are rare here.
5. People don’t really talk politics. Well, they talk about U.S. politics.
6. Left turn arrows on traffic lights are rare. It makes for interesting moments when the light changes.
7. The electric utility is called “hydro”, which given the Greek origin of the word makes little sense until you realize that it stands for “hydroelectric.”
8. Youth music is well-supported - both through private and public funding.
9. State-church separation is fuzzier. For example, the Catholic school system is tax-payer funded. But only the Catholic schools. It has something to do with the Canadian Charter (a.k.a Constitution.) It was apparently some sort of historical compromise in the 1800’s.
10. Don’t order iced tea in Canada. It’s way too sweet.
11. As a practical matter, you can’t be elected Prime Minister unless you speak both English and French fluently. This is a really good thing.^[How many languages does Donald Trump speak fluently, for example?]
12. Speaking of politics, campaigns are time-limited to 6 weeks before an election. How cool is that?
13. Poutine sounds horrible, but it’s actually pretty good.

I’ve written previously about extracting and processing mp3 files from web pages. The use case that I described, obtaining Russian word pronunciations for Anki cards is basically the same although I’m now obtaining many of my words from Forvo. However, Forvo doesn’t seem to apply any audio dynamic range processing or normalization to the audio files. While many of the pronunciation mp3’s are excellent as-is, some need post-processing chiefly because the amplitude is too low. However, being lazy by nature, I set out to find a way of improving the audio quality automatically before I insert the mp3 file into my new vocabulary cards.

Xenophobia has deep roots in the U.S. For all of its “global melting pot” rhetoric, the reality has been much more complex. It begins with the maltreatment of the native peoples of America with its attendant extinction of their language and culture. But even as recently as 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that persons from India were not eligible for U.S. citizenship because only “free white persons” were permitted. This case was one of the most egregious in the history of the United States and is a poignant example of how the Supreme Court reflects, rather than transcends, prevailing cultural values. In the United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that an Indian Sikh man could not be granted citizenship because he was not white. Even today, the suspicion with which many English-speaking Americans view Spanish speakers undoubtedly contributes to their xenophobic calls to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

I’ve long suspected that Trump regards the arts as an unnecessary nuisance for losers and suckers. High art for this hollow man is the vacuous reality television that made him famous. Now in his Federal budget, Trump offers proof. He proposes the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This is a man with no soul.

But in the closing lines of her lyric poem “Renascence”, Edna St. Vincent Millay has a warning:

As I’ve written before, I use Anki for Russian language learning. One of the skills to master in learning a foreign language is to quickly speak and recognize numbers. With a little help from macOS, I’ve developed a way of rapidly creating audible content of spoken numbers for my Anki cards.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that as of right now, you’ll have to have Xcode and build the app yourself. Someday, I’ll deal with all the official certificate stuff again (I’ve not developed apps seriously for iOS or macOS for several years now.)