Leftmost Blog

Sometime in January or February, my friends Thomas and Marissa and myself had a brief, not-entirely-serious discussion about making a decent dinner once a week. Toward the end of February, it came up again and we determined to do it for real. The first week, Tom took charge and we made steak au poivre with buttered red potatoes. It was a success and that settled it.

Since February 28th, we have made dinner at least every Friday. A few weeks were exceptions, when Tom or Tom and Marissa were out of town and for Tom's birthday. From February until June, we had an uninterrupted stretch of fifteen weeks. We didn't even break for the week before or after finals. The system was as so: every week, one person would take charge, deciding what we'd make and directing in the kitchen. We rotated so that everyone had their own weeks. The whole thing worked out beautifully.

We all made an attempt to expand our repertoire of recipes and of kitchen skills. We all had a couple weeks where we made something familiar to us but it was usually a recipe the others hadn't used before. Though there were a few times that things went wrong in not-nice ways, not a single week ended in a bona fide disaster. Everything was edible, everything was delicious. And even when things got expensive, the cost was split three ways. I don't think anything ever cost more than $12 a person and when it was that much, there were always copious leftovers. This week, our eighteenth and (for the next nine months) final, was mine. I made pasties at a cost of $12 a person. Each pasty was large enough that no one ate more than one. The recipe claimed to make twelve but the filling portion of the recipe is easily large enough to make another six. There will be leftovers for a while.

For a couple of months, I've been tossing around the idea of compiling all of the recipes we've used and making a small recipe book to give to family and friends (and to use ourselves). I'd like us to talk about our reasons for choosing the recipes we did. And of course, we now have our own notes to add to the recipes. (Make only two thirds the amount of filling the recipe calls for. And feel free to halve it.)

I think the most interesting thing about the adventure has been the reactions I get when I talk about it with others. I think a lot of people are surprised that three twenty-something college students are willing to get together once a week, no matter how tired or busy they are, and sit down to a good dinner they've made themselves. And that we've been so willing to try new things. Before we started, we were much more heavily reliant on eating out or a few recipes without much effort, thought or originality. I think we were hardly alone in that. Now though, we're much more likely to pool our resources and make something nice, even if it isn't complicated.

Going on exchange has proven to be a learning experience even before I've left the country. As mentioned in my last post, I'll be spending nine months in Cork City, Ireland attending University College Cork. For those who don't know me, I'm from Missoula, Montana, a small town in the western United States. Proper preparation to leave the country has required a great deal of care and research. I figure someone else might benefit from my efforts.

I take a prescription medication. It is a controlled substance in both the United States and under a United Nations treaty. However, finding information on the legal status of the drug in Ireland has been very difficult. A great deal of googling turned up nothing on Irish schedules. A call to the Irish consulate in San Francisco yielded a recommendation that I check http://agriculture.ie/, but said department appears to have nothing to do with drugs. A call to the Embassy of Ireland in Washington, D.C. yielded a phone message telling me to email what appears to the email address of a single person working in Customs. I've emailed them and I'm awaiting a response. I suppose the lesson here is to keep calling around and researching until you can get some information. Additionally, I've acquired a letter (on official letterhead) from the prescriber of my medication. I would really rather not run into hassle in Customs.

Dealing with electronics and other electrical appliances has been an experience. In the US, current comes in at 120V with a frequency of 60Hz. In Ireland, it's 230V with a frequency of 50Hz. My research has indicated that it's possible to buy a converter that will deal with the voltage difference but that there's no way to convert frequency. I'm fortunate: all four of the electrical devices I plan on taking with me (a laptop, a cell phone, a digital camera and an electric razor) can accept a range of inputs. All are 100-240V and can accept either 50Hz or 60Hz. This makes my task much easier. I only need an adapter to change the shape of the plugs that I have.

I must admit some laziness. After researching what I would need, I simply went down to my local department store and poked around until I found an adapter set. I purchased the Targus World Power Travel Adapters set. Admittedly, it's compact and looks well-suited to travel. However, the plugs are ungrounded (the earth pin on the UK/Ireland plug is plastic) and thus unsuitable for more sensitive electronics. To my credit, I read the package but it said nothing about this on the outside of the plastic and the plastic earth pin was not visible without opening the package. I'll need to return this and hope the department store is forgiving. Fed up, I hopped online and searched around. I need a grounded plug but not a converter. I eventually settled on the Samsonite grounded United Kingdom plug. It's specific to my purpose and is cheap enough that I can buy a few to plug in more than one of my devices at the same time. Hopefully this will serve me well.

As with most ventures, money is an issue. At one point, I had to wire money to Ireland to pay for housing. The financial institution I've been a member of for some time is very small and local and couldn't deal in foreign currency so I had to start calling the banks. Wells Fargo, despite its size, was unable to do anything in another currency. A smaller regional bank was able to do it just fine, though. The wire transfer went through the Bank of New York and, because it was in another currency, they charged no fee. (The regional bank still charged me, though it was significantly less.) There were two snags with the transfer. The first was that the bank required an address for the beneficiary and none had been provided. Google to the rescue. If you have to do a wire transfer, find this address before you go in. The second was that it was after 2PM and the bank wouldn't send out the transfer until the next day so an exact amount couldn't be fixed on the currency exchange. I didn't leave enough leeway in the amount I put in my account. I had checked the exchange rate online before going in but due to the (relatively) small size of my transfer I wasn't able to get an ideal rate. The transfer was about $100 more expensive than I'd anticipated, with only a couple of dollars attributable to change in rate. Provide a fair bit of wiggle room here so that there are no delays.

Finally, a smaller tip: I briefly had a scare where I couldn't find my passport. In the US, you can show up in person to a passport facility and ask for an expedited passport. It takes two weeks (as opposed to the usual four) but costs a bit extra. If you lose your passport a couple weeks before you're set to go, this may be a lifesaver.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm willing to take responsibility for the amount of time I've spent in college and the number of credits I've ended up with. But the lengths I've had to go to even to appeal my financial aid eligibility border on the ludicrous.

On Saturday of last week, I received a letter saying that I'm no longer eligible for financial aid due to the number of attempted credits I currently have. Enclosed were two forms for appeal, one for a two-semester plan and one for "more than two semesters". The second of these has a strict four-semester cap. Unfortunately, it's not that simple for me.

As I'd bet all of my five readers know, I was recently accepted for a full-year exchange to University College Cork in Ireland. I intend on studying the Irish language and its history there, as part of my long term goal of focusing on Irish (and general Celtic) linguistics. However, the scheduling of linguistics courses is such that I need to be here for three semesters following the exchange at a bare minimum. No amount of summer or wintersession courses can prevent this. I've got a five semester graduation plan and an adamantly four semester form.

On Monday, I went to the financial aid desk and explained my situation. They had me set up an appointment for the next day with someone who sits on the committee that approves or denies applications. To summarize the appointment: I was told that more than likely I would have to drop the exchange to have my appeal go through and that I should be careful with what I submit with the form, since the committee would likely simply toss it if I had "more than a page" explaining my circumstances. And that the form would have to be in by Thursday (today) at noon, though the committee does not meet until next Friday.

I spent a few hours that day and a few more that evening putting together the four semesters I was to put on the form and trying to put together a concise but thorough explanation of my situation. This includes one semester for which I was given a medical withdrawal but whose credits are still counting toward my attempted credit limit. I'm also told that it's likely that I'll wind up with a referral to Disability Services for Students, since I mention that I've been seeing at the health center regarding ADHD. (Fortuitously, I had an appointment scheduled for this morning with said doctor and he said he would have no problem with giving DSS a formal diagnosis if it comes to that.)

The appeal form also requires the signatures of my academic advisor and someone from the registrar's office. I went first to the registrar's office, was given a signature and notes were made that indeed I did require the general ed classes that I wrote down. I was told this all that I would need from them. I went to see the academic advisor and learned that the previous undergrad advisor for the English department had quit and since been replaced. The person I spoke to, to my great surprise, actually seemed to care about whether I would succeed and whether the plan I had was sufficient or not.

When I went in today to submit the form, I was told that the registrar's office had to circle one of APPROVED or DENIED regarding my graduation plan. I went back, spoke to the same person I spoke to yesterday and was told that they were in fact the person I needed to speak to but that they couldn't approve or deny my plan. At this point, someone else in the office suggested we call the person with whom I'd first had an appointment. As they picked up the phone, however, the person from the financial aid desk came in and the person from the registrar's office cleared up their position and my form was taken. I was told that if something is in fact wrong with the form, I'll receive a call in the near future. As I left, the person from financial aid said to me, "Thanks for jumping through the hoops."

This last sentence says a great deal about the process. Had the previous English undergrad advisor not left, the entire process would have resembled a conveyor belt with a series of rubber stamps, varying only slightly in form. It seems to me to be an endurance contest, a measure of just how badly a student wants to bury themselves in debt for the sake of their education.

It doesn't matter that I've only had financial aid for the last three semesters. It doesn't matter that, in those semesters in which I've actually received grades, I've gone from having wildly disparate marks and a 2.2 GPA to being a straight A student (with one A- that I still feel I didn't deserve *bitter*) with a 2.9 GPA. It doesn't matter that I've been accepted to one of the most competitive exchanges offered on campus. It doesn't matter that I just received a scholarship from the Math department for demonstrating my problem-solving abilities. It probably doesn't even matter that I had approval from the university's Medical Services director to withdraw for medical reasons one semester. What matters is that some numbers have gotten too high and I have to submit my 27b stroke 6 and fight an uphill battle to finish my degree.

Earlier today, Barack Obama spoke here in Missoula, Montana. To me, this was pretty exciting. In the time that I've been conscious of such things, Montana hasn't been a particularly important stop on the campaign trail. We don't have much clout in terms of delegates nor in the Electoral College. So having even one presidential candidate stop by is, for me, a big deal. (Hillary Clinton will also speak here tomorrow. Having both candidates come I think demonstrates just how close things are.)

Myself and a couple friends showed up outside the Adams Center on campus at about six in the morning with warm clothing (or approximations thereof), mugs of coffee and hours of Trivial Pursuit under our belts. It was still dark and quite cold but we got there while the line was still pretty short. Friendboss Tom Fite of tomfite.com took a photograph of the line some time later. The buildings in the picture are the equivalent of three or four blocks away from the Adams Center. Missoula turned out in force for this. The people immediately behind us in line drove down from Whitefish, a couple hour drive to arrive there at six. I'm willing to bet the excitement at having Missoula be a real stop on the trail was not contained to myself.

Seating was somewhat disorganized, but we managed to snag some seats that (though fairly high up) weren't too far from Obama's platform. Better, they were real seats (not bleachers) and were padded. After standing in line in the cold, this was very welcome. To the extent that I caught myself nodding off a couple times during the wait. The two hours between seating and speaking went by rather quickly. Shortly before ten, they started sending out the various campaign staffers for their speeches. I didn't find anything particularly notable in any of them.

At around ten, Mayor John Engen came out and gave a brief speech. Unsurprisingly, he seemed pretty thrilled to have Obama here. His speech was pretty amusing, fairly informal despite the circumstances. One reason I think John Engen is a good representative for the sort of town Missoula wants to be. Nowhere else have I seen someone with mid-back dreadlocks wearing formal business dress. Following him, the state head of Students for Barack Obama gave a brief speech and then out came Mr. Obama himself.

I'm not sure I could or would want to give a full play-by-play of the speech but I can certainly give impressions. The first thing I noticed was that the lectern that stood there for everyone else's speech was immediately pulled down and he came up with a microphone. The only notecards he had the entire time were some brief acknowledgements at the very beginning. He spoke for about an hour and the whole time walked around on his platform with only a hand-held microphone. Though I'm sure he's given many similar speeches in many other places, I still liked his lack of notes. It certainly gave the impression that he actually believes what he's saying and that he's speaking to the audience instead of speaking where an audience happens to be. Overall, he seemed very sincere about what he was saying. Sometimes I wondered. At the beginning of the speech he said that the surrounding area was beautiful country and that he'd like to come back and learn how to fly fish. This is the sort of thing I hear at the beginning of every concert that comes through. It'd be great if he meant it but it seems a bit too much like something I've heard too many times before. I'd as soon he leave it off if he doesn't truly mean it.

Obama's discussion of his platform was, I'd say, almost entirely in line with what I'd like to see in a candidate. Not only that, I felt he did a very good job of demonstrating that he knew the sources of problems rather than simply knowing there were problems that needed to be fixed. I would have preferred a few more specifics on plans for fixing said problems but I understand that an hour isn't enough time to give a full, detailed run-down of one's platform and specific plans for addressing it. A few times he did give specifics but a couple of these I thought seemed a bit out of reach. He spoke of a $4000 a year tuition rebate for all students. I think this was tempered by a statement about it being related to community service, but regardless this is a lot of money and it has to come from somewhere. I also wonder how much success he'd have with his desire to cut taxes for everyone making less than $75,000 and eliminate taxes on Social Security for seniors making under $50,000. He certainly has good ideas but I suppose I just worry about making them happen.

Though a friend of mine expressed general disappointment at Obama's unwillingness to tout something more like socialized healthcare, I have to say that I think Obama's plan is fairly realistic and much more likely to see the light of day in the current US political climate. I think it's a step in the right direction and almost certainly a necessary one. I was quite happy with the attention he gave to the educational system and to the fundamental flaws with the current setup. He did talk also about increasing wages for teachers, something I think is especially important here in Montana where we pay teachers less than almost any other state in the nation.

I suppose it's sort of a small criterion in the grand scheme of things, but the final thing that I found particularly impressive was his sense of humor. He joked a bit about his campaign and about himself (to paraphrase, a black man with a funny name and big ears). I think it did a better job than any rhetoric of showing that he's a person as well as a candidate. He's also aware that he's not perfect. Why can't more political candidates figure that out?

As Linux spreads, it is necessary to bring it into line with the current standards for internationalization. Arguably the most important of these is Unicode, the standard which allows for representation of virtually all modern languages in plain text. It is important for Linux to support Unicode well, and the console is a core part of a Linux system.

I've recently been experimenting with implementing Unicode normalization, largely for learning purposes. In testing my code, I came across a problem with discrepancies in display and lower-level handling of UTF-8 sequences containing combining characters, such as <U+1E0C, U+0307>. Sequences would appear as one glyph per character, rather than one glyph per combining sequence. However, backspacing or moving through the text in question would throw off the display of the cursor and the characters. Backspacing through the example above would delete both characters together, but remove only the glyph for U+0307. Seemingly, the shell was handling combining sequences as single characters, but those sequences were being displayed (and treated) as multiple characters.

I filed a bug with bash and it turns out that the problem comes partially from gnome-terminal, the emulator that I use. (Incidentally, the problem is also present in Xfce's terminal emulator.) To handle Unicode with bash properly, it should display the characters as composed sequences. zsh did not have this problem, as it treats each character in a sequence as separate. xterm properly composes the characters and thus has no problems with this particular issue.

This isn't quite the end of the problem, however. Applications usually handle this sequences as separate characters, though they display them as one. Thus, backspacing through the above example would delete first U+0307 and then U+1E0C. This is especially important in certain scripts where a combining sequence can contain three or more individual characters, and deleting full sequences could grow to be quite an inconvenience.

Further, insisting on display of composed sequences could create spacing problems in some scripts, such as Tibetan. With this script, one will often come across characters that, when properly composed, become quite tall. This would mandate that all proper console rendering would need to deal with vertical character spacing in strange and possibly unpredictable ways. Indic scripts or scripts like New Tai Lue, where logical and visual order do not necessarily match, would also have to be handled.

The best option, perhaps, is for community members to gather and discuss the direction of Unicode text on the console. How much support for complex scripts should there be? Will terminals need to be able to do visual reordering for Indic scripts? Will vertical character stacks be supported? Will consoles need to be able to render RTL as well? The terminals we use are relatively simple, and I think many would see this simplicity as a virtue. Full support for Unicode rendering would greatly increase the required complexity, but the current support is mixed and inconsistent at best. I believe it to be imperative that some sort of consensus be reached as to how best to support Unicode and the potential it offers to Linux around the world.