Now that I've finished uploading the pictures from my recent trip to Japan, it's time to start writing the blog entries. The first day was so short that this is sort of a warm-up entry. :)

I arrived at Chūbu Centrair International Airport around 5 p.m. local time on Friday. The group part of the trip wouldn't start until Monday evening in Kyoto, so I had the weekend to myself. Though my flights were uneventful, I was weary from the travel—the queues and security checks, my already-heavy luggage, the lack of private space—so I was glad that I'd reserved a room at the conveniently-located Centrair Hotel. After checking in I enjoyed a hot bath, admired the cleverness of the compact room layout, plugged in to the internets, bemoaned the poor planning that had led me to overstuff my suitcase on a vacation where I knew I'd be acquiring more stuff, and went to sleep, but not before seeing this cute commercial (or maybe it was another one in that series) on the TV:



This entry was originally posted at http://bokunenjin.dreamwidth.org/804.html.

So, the recently-announced DARPA Network Challenge is interesting:

The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States.

It's such a simply-stated problem, but how to tackle it? With a six- to nine-hour window when the balloons will be up, that's not enough time for sufficiently high-resolution satellite photography, is it? So it sounds like it's more a social problem—i.e., how do you organize sufficiently many people to find these ten balloons in a search space of the entire continental U.S.? I'm wondering whether there are coalitions forming or already formed to share the potential winnings among lookers-out.

Update: here's one group I've joined: MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team.

This entry was originally posted at http://bokunenjin.dreamwidth.org/596.html.

This is a test post at/from my Dreamwidth account. Yes, I've joined the bandwagon already populated by the estimable hypatia, puzzlement, and terriko in transitioning to Dreamwidth for my online journaling. I'm crossposting my entries to Livejournal and expect to continue doing so for the indefinite future. This post is a test of that crossposting functionality as well as a check to see how the entries appear in Facebook, where my Livejournal entries appear as posts, and on my web site, where I embed my Livejournal entries. If the transition goes well, I'll look into how to do those latter two things directly from Dreamwidth.

This entry was originally posted at http://bokunenjin.dreamwidth.org/394.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Credit: NASA/JHU APL/CIW

I've been supporting MESSENGER's third flyby of Mercury last week. I've got a description of how it went in a friends-locked entry. The contact-heavy work schedule has scrambled my circadian rhythm from day to day, so that one of the reasons I'm looking forward to my upcoming vacation is because I'll have the opportunity to resume a consistent sleep schedule. Since I've been subjected to a simulated sort of jet lag practically every day for the past few weeks, I don't expected to be fazed at all by the real thing.

Credit: DP

Last week I gave a HacDC Lightning Talk on Kōdō, the Japanese Way of Incense, in which I'm by no means an expert. But I know a little, enough to give a five-minute overview and demo. When I go to Kyoto later this month I'm going to attend a Kōdō demo by a genuine expert, and next month I'll be making kneaded incense (nerikō) at a Tankokai DC workshop. So in the near future I'll know a lot more. Let me know if you're interested in an informal demo of the wood-chip incense that's heated by charcoal in an ash-filled censer; I'm happy to share it. The Lightning Talks event was a great success, with a stimulating variety of topics and speakers.

Credit: Mackenzie

On Saturday I led the DC LinuxChix contingent of a group outing (along with AWC Maryland and GWU Women in Computer Science) to the National Cryptologic Museum. We tagged along with a docent-led tour and learned quite a bit, though we only scratched the surface of the museum's fascinating collection.

Credit: Mackenzie

On Saturday evening I joined seelevarcuzzo and Mackenzie at the Japan-America Society's Otsukimi, a traditional moon-viewing event held in this case at the National Arboretum. It was great fun, with a bento dinner, sake, haiku composition, some slightly-unseasonal-feeling bon odori dancing, and even a little practice of our Japanese. I brought a borrowed telescope and set it up to have a good look at the moon; we were lucky to have a clear sky with only a few thin clouds occasionally floating artistically in front of the moon. I wish the event had lasted longer, as we missed our chance to wander around the Bonsai & Penjing Museum and it felt like we were just getting started as it was announced that it was time to pack up and leave.

Credit: Indy

On Sunday I went climbing at White Rocks, a spur from the temporarily-closed Sugarloaf Mountain. The weather was fantastic. I attempted Sugar & Spice (a 5.2 on the Yosemite Decimal System) and Lucifer (a 5.10/5.11), summiting neither but enjoying the climbs nonetheless. I'd be tempted to buy my own climbing shoes and harness but I'm a little discouraged that the local climbing gym has discontinued their auto belay system that would have allowed me to practice on my own.

And now to prepare for Tankokai DC's Autumn Chakai this weekend and my upcoming Japan trip that starts next week. Ack! I don't quite feel prepared for either.

I got this voicemail this morning on my home line, and it's so garbled I can't make it out. It's from a number I didn't recognize, and if I had to guess, I'd say it's a drunk mis-dial, but I figured I'd give lazyweb a stab at it.

I've had my driver's license since I turned 16 in 1994. I've had my own car since I embarked on an out-of-state co-op gig in 1998-9.

I got a new car—a Honda Fit—in December 2008, and its odometer is going to hit 10,000 miles tonight. Until I got this car, I hadn't had so much as a parking ticket or a ding, at least while I was driving it. In the eight or so months since I've had my new car, I've:

• gotten a red-light citation, via a camera in Howard County
  
• gotten into an accident, though it was not my fault, and fortunately the other driver paid for the repairs to my car
  
• gotten a speeding citation, via a camera in Montgomery County
  
• gotten a parking ticket in DC (I had paid the electronic meter but in my rush missed the sign saying you couldn't park there at the time I was there)
  

I love my car, but perhaps I should be more careful with it.

I've been procrastinating in writing up the rest of my attendance at Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology (SMC-IT) 2009, mostly because there wasn't anything about it that really struck me, besides it being a little disappointing in comparison to the last iteration.

On Day 2, Tuesday, 21 July 2009, Mars Science Laboratory Chief Engineer Robert Manning gave the plenary keynote, "Stealing Success." I thought it was one of the best keynotes of the conference (there was at least one each day). If my fading memory serves, he talked about how difficult it has been for any space agency to land a vehicle on Mars. I hadn't realized just how failure-ridden those endeavors have been. I also hadn't realized how many attempts the Soviets had made. On a related note, I recently watched and enjoyed the Discovery Channel series When We Left Earth via Netflix. I really wish there were a version of that series describing the development of the Soviet space program.

As I had the day before, I spent much of my time on Day 2 in the International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space, attending talks like Multi-Objective Scheduling for Space Science Missions, On-board Plan Modification for Opportunistic Science, and Runtime Goal Selection with Oversubscribed Resources.

That evening I convinced some colleagues to come with me to the first Ignite LA over in Hollywood. The place was packed. We experienced a whirlwind of energetic, oddball and/or fascinating five-minute talks on topics from uranium and DIY unmanned aerial vehicles to humpback whales and optical illusions. It was a fun evening—if only SMC-IT scheduled its talks Ignite-style! Among the better talks was Thomas Edwards' "Getting Physical over IP". Afterward he led us on a walk down Hollywood Boulevard to Gruman's Chinese Theatre, where we checked out the film star footprints. Note to locals: the second Ignite DC is on Thursday, 8 October, and I've already got my ticket.

If you're in the DC metropolitan area or will be on Sunday, October 11, and interested in experiencing a Japanese tea ceremony, let me know. Chado Urasenke Tankokai Washington DC Association, the local tea ceremony interest group, will be holding a tea ceremony event—our Fall Chakai—that day at the Hillwood Museum and Gardens.

A chakai is a relatively informal kind of tea ceremony gathering where usucha (thin tea) and a small sweet are served. At these chakai that the association holds, guests include association members and non-members, and none of the guests has to know anything about tea ceremony in order to attend. Each of the three sessions lasts around 30-40 minutes. I'm tentatively slated to host one of the sessions for our Fall Chakai, but we haven't yet figured out which one, and I can't guarantee that I'd be hosting the session you attend, though I'll be helping in some capacity with all sessions. I'm happy to answer any more questions or explain in more detail what happens in a chakai.

Hello from Pasadena, California, where I'm attending Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology (SMC-IT) 2009. I arrived in the Los Angeles area yesterday, and before getting settled in Pasadena I stopped in LA's Little Tokyo neighborhood to chow down on a pile of zaru soba and a scoop of matcha ice cream (not nearly as good as homemade) and peruse the shops. As I was driving out of the neighborhood I saw a couple of street musicians playing a sanshin, performing what I think was traditional Okinawan folk music, something that has caught my interest lately for reasons I don't understand. Being a little intimidated by driving in LA, though, I didn't stop, regrettably.

Over dinner on Sunset Boulevard I was glad to have a chance to catch up with Dorkbot DC founder Tom and meet his wife and beagles. My plan tomorrow night is to go see him and a bunch of other fascinating geeks speak at the inaugural Ignite LA.

But I did come for a conference. :) Today my favorite talks were in the International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space, which is sort of integrated with SMC-IT this year. It has been the most applicable to mission operations, the area where I work, of the talks so far. Looking at the conference program this year, it's hard not to notice the preponderance of talks on the technology of sponsor Tilera, whose founder characterized the company's vision as "The 'core' is the logic gate of the 21st century."

The demographics of this conference feel a little different than they did in 2006, when I met a bunch of energetic young people working at NASA Ames Research Center. This year I don't see any of them, and the attendees seem older. The proportion of female speakers is almost certainly lower than you'd find at OSCON to our north this week.

As it was three years ago, perhaps my biggest complaint is about the lack of accessible power outlets in the Pasadena Convention Center. The place just underwent a $150 million expansion, but goddess help you if you need 120 Volts of alternating current.

I am not a security professional. But something bothers me about Entrust's "patented grid-based authentication" mechanism as it's used in conjunction with a username/password mechanism. It works like so:

where users carry the card depicted in the upper-right of this diagram with them, ostensibly making it "something you have" in addition to the "something you know" (the user's password). The implication is that this combination of mechanisms provides two-factor authentication. I'm not sure whether Entrust uses that phrase exactly, but they do describe the grid card as a "physical second factor".

A fifty-character grid just doesn't feel to me like "something you have." It's trivially duplicated and transferred to other media, though users are told not to. With some effort you could just commit it to memory. What do you think— is grid-based authentication "something you have" or, as I suspect, is it "something you know"? What distinguishes those categories?

For extra credit, what distinguishes "something you are" (customarily biometric authentication) from "something you have"? The philosophically-minded—or the sadistically minded, I suppose—can go nuts with this. Can you think of a non-biometric "something you are" test?