Social Commentary

America Needs a Better Common Enemy

“From the day we were born, we were all meant for this moment. Today, we will put an American on the moon” – Gene Kranz speaking of July 20, 1969, as seen on Moon Landing: The Day We Put a Man on the Moon, Discovery Channel – March 1, 2010 @ 9pm.

A guy I have come to admire is Gene Kranz, who was the NASA flight director on several Apollo missions, including Apollo 11 (moon landing) and Apollo 13. I’ve been watching him on the History and Discovery Channels giving his accounts of the historic events he had a part in at NASA. Kranz is the epitome of the can-do attitude that allowed the United States to reach the moon first. (I’m not going to argue with anybody about whether or not we actually made it to the moon. I think we did. If you believe otherwise, complain somewhere else.)

Kranz was a fighter pilot during the Korean War prior to joining NASA as Flight Director.  As such, he understood risks. He knew that every mission, even down to the training exercises, could result in the flight crew dying. Kranz wasn’t alone in this knowledge: All the astronauts and everyone at Mission Control knew they had a sizable chance of not making it home…

In spite of this, 400,00 people (the estimated number of people involved in the Apollo missions) pushed forward day-in and day-out to make sure an American set foot on the moon first. It was a matter of pride. The United States, in all its turmoil of the 1960s, came together to rejoice as Neil Armstrong delivered his famous line, “One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”

In addition to thanking the brave souls that braved the dangers and made it happen, I would like to thank the USSR for being the beautiful communist bastards that they were. They were truly an excellent common enemy. The USSR was cunning, had some of the smartest scientists in the world, and wanted to get to the moon as bad as we did. A scientific and engineering exercise was elevated to a contest of philosophies: capitalism vs. communism. Sure some people died, but the overall goal was to prove superiority. (No. I’m not saying the USSR was a good thing. But if you want to have a common enemy, here’s the one you would want.)

Today, America has one of the stupidest common enemies you could ask for: fundamentalist terrorists. It’s impossible for me to describe how much I despise these people without getting too profane, so allow me to articulate my disgust as tactfully as I can. These ignorant knuckle draggers blow stuff up, trying to kill as many people as possible in the process. This is so unimpressive. Humans have been killing one another for as long as there have been humans. You can literally beat somebody to death with a rock. So, these terrorists utilize modern weapons they aren’t even smart enough to invent to reek havoc. (I’m not going to debate that creating weapons is good or bad for anybody to do. Again, take it somewhere else.) Let me be very, very clear: I HATE fundamentalist terrorists SO MUCH!

With a common enemy like that, it’s no wonder this country can’t (or doesn’t want to) do something awesome. I think there are plenty of brilliant young engineers in this country, but what’s missing is the masses cheering them on from behind. How much pride can we get from killing more terrorists. Creating a weapon that kills more terrorists is so uninspiring. The terrorists don’t even care if they die as long as they can take out a bunch of us. The sense of competition is missing. Whether or not we like to admit it, humans crank out better stuff when there’s a competitive edge to whatever we are tying to do.

This is very much a rant against uninspired terrorism, but my point is that we do need an imaginative enemy to defeat. Either that, or a frontal lobotomy. I can’t decide which.

Tech Tips

Handbrake 0.9.4 Encoding Settings that Work with a Blackberry Curve 8310

Through a lot of trial and error, I finally figured out what video encoding settings in Handbrake 0.9.4 produce video that will play on my Blackberry Curve 8310. Here’s the settings I used to produce working video, broken down by options or the tabs in Handbrake:

  • Container
    • MP4 File
  • Picture
    • Width:320
    • Checked Keep Aspect Ratio Box will automatically set properly proportioned Height.
  • Video
    • Video Codec:MPEG-4 (FFmpeg)
    • Two-Pass Encoding box checked (to improve quality)
    • Framerate:24
    • Average Bitrate radio button checked @ 768kpbs
  • Audio
    • Audio Codec: aac (faac)
    • Mixdown: Stereo

Any options I have not listed were left to the default settings. The video produced by this is perfect quality for a screen as small as a Blackberry. I’m not a videophile, though, so your mileage may vary. As far as speed of the encoding, a 44 minute episode of  House ran through a Two-Pass encoding in about 9 minutes on this system.

Mike Bryant for State Representative

Vote Mike Bryant for KY State Representative in the 91st District

I’m super excited to announce that my very good friend Mike Bryant is running for KY State Representative in the 91st District. Mike is a conservative Republican, but most importantly to me, he’s a great guy. I’m going to vote for him because I think he will fight tooth and nail to make things better in Breathitt, Estill, and Lee Counties. I can’t possibly do justice to how awesome Mike really is: You’d really just have to hang out with the guy. That being said, let me try to explain some of the reasons I think Mike is an excellent choice to represent us all.

I met Mike about four years ago at a Kiwanis meeting. He told me he was a software developer and I told him about my CIS background. He, for whatever reason, decided I might know what I was doing as a web developer and asked me if I wanted to do some programming work for him. A week later, I walk into his office, he briefs me on the project, and I was off to the races. And lucky for me, I was good enough, because Mike kept bringing me aboard for more and more projects (which we completed quite successfully I might add). The important thing here is that Mike believed in me and gave me a chance. Mike is willing to give anybody a chance if they are willing to work. He has literally employed six local guys to work with him on projects in the short time I’ve known him! How could you go wrong with a guy like that?

Mike is serious about bringing jobs to the area. He attends regional development meetings frequently. It can’t be said that he hasn’t tried to bring opportunities to the area: I’ve been in the room several times when he’s been on the phone with companies who are looking to relocate to Breathitt County. It’s true that none of them have actually relocated here (because of lack of effort from others involved), but the point is, plain-ol’-private-citizen Mike has been trying to develop the area since I’ve known him. I’ve literally witnessed his attempts myself. As a Representative of District 91, I guarantee that Mike wouldn’t rest until he brought jobs to the area.

Because I know Mike to be a genuine, hard-working person who honestly wants to see Eastern Kentucky prosper, it is without reservation that I hope Mike Bryant becomes the next KY State Representative in District 91.

DSLR/Camera, Recommended Products and Vendors

Canon 270EX Speedlite = Awesome

Today, I purchased a Canon 270EX Speedlite for my Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1I DSLR. The camera itself is great for the price, but the built-in flash results in blown out colors, especially at close range. I bought the 270EX because its rotating head allows for bounce flashing. After playing with it for an hour, I think the 270EX will take my flash photography to a whole new level, as the bounced light provides lighting without the loss of subtle differences in color. I’ve missed several good shots in low light conditions since I got the camera because I have been reluctant to use a flash. I think those days are behind me, now that I have better control over the light.

Thus, it is without reservation that I give the Canon 270EX Speedlite the Jerry Travis guarantee.

Personal Updates

Drungol the Dwarf Finally Gets His Horse

I play World of Warcraft. I’m not addicted or anything, but I find it a welcome escape from reality. My main character is a Dwarf named Drungol. One of the rules of the game is that a Dwarf cannot ride a horse unless he or she is Exalted with the Human city of Stormwind. Without being exalted, Dwarves have to ride rams.I hate riding the rams. The horses sound cooler and look cooler. Today I got incredibly pissed and decided to gain the 3,000 Stormwind reputation I needed to become Exalted with Stormwind…It gives me great pleasure to announce that Drungol finally got his horse!

Personal Updates

Mud Slinging. Oh what Fun!

So, awhile back, I helped my buddy Mike with a website theme for TooKookyForKentucky.com, which is basically an anti-Rand Paul website. Rand (son of Ron Paul) is running for the 2011 KY gubernatorial US Senate in the upcoming 2010 election*. He claims to be a Republican but he seems more libertarian, so Mike, being the good Republican that he is, created the site to call Rand’s bluff. Mike warned me before putting a link to my site at the bottom of the theme that I would eventually be a target of Rand’s party. It took longer than expected, but it finally happened. In response to my post informing everyone that I liked my antique Snoopy book, some guy named Hightower^ had this to say:

What about your own Web-Master, Jerry Travis, who states in his entry of November 25, 2009, “(My vampire obsession goes a long way back, and doesn’t involve a single, boring, pasty-faced Cullen “… interesting, so the guy you used to assist you in your web site design is a admires drinking the blood of human-beings, and is self-admittedly “obsessed” with this? My my, you should be careful who you collaborate with.

That’s gotta be one of the funniest things anybody has ever said about me, especially considering the post was about my love of Snoopy!

This is a great example of context, and what can happen when snippets are taken away from said context. The poor sap probably doesn’t even know what my Cullen reference is talking about. Furthermore, Hightower probably didn’t click on the link for the text “vampire obsession.” It was a post from way back in July 2003, where I talked about how happy I was I got to watch a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer during that summer. He actually believes that because I like vampire stuff that I drink human blood. By that logic, I guess that means he likes to smuggle whiskey because he watches Smokey and the Bandit every other day.

If he’s going to sling mud at me, he’s going to have to do better than that. If Rand is anything like Hightower, he is Too Kooky for Kentucky.

*Correction: When I first posted this, about an hour ago, I mistakenly put that Rand was running for KY Governor in 2011. He is, in fact, running for the US Senate in 2010. Everybody’s probably going to have a field day with that :)
^Correction 2: The comment wasn’t made by Hightower. It was a guy going by the name Lycurgus.
Social Commentary

Trav on Motivation

There are two reasons people do anything:

  1. They want to to it
  2. They are afraid not to do it

The thing that’s wrong with America is that nobody wants to do anything, and nobody is afraid of anything because consequences have been removed.

In education, the kids don’t want to learn and they have nothing to fear if they don’t. In society at large, nobody wants to work, and nobody is afraid of starving to death because of all the social programs we have. So, these two, simple little rules have managed to bring one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known to its knees.

Google

Cool Google Feature Removed

Google has removed the “Show More Text” option from the “Show Options” menu. I just noticed it a day or two ago. Has anyone heard why they removed the option? I thought it was very helpful, because I often do a search and wish I could see a longer preview of the results before I actually commit and decide to follow a result.

By the way, if you’ve been ignoring (or didn’t notice) the “Show Options” link, I think you’re missing out. On your results pages, the “Show Options” link appears here:

Google's "Show Options" button gives a lot of features
Google's "Show Options" button gives access to a lot of features

I challenge you to click on it and check out all the neat new features. Happy browsing.

Personal Updates

Greatest…Book…Ever!

Nope. I’m not talking about Twilight: New Moon. (My vampire obsession goes a long way back, and doesn’t involve a single, boring, pasty-faced Cullen :) Beck got me an original printing of Snoopy: A New Peanuts Book, which was published in 1958! The Owsley County Public Library was cleaning out old books and Beck, knowing that I love all things Charlie Brown picked it up for me. Too bad for them!

Reading the hundred or so simple 4 pane strips, I’m reminded why I love Charles Shulz: He combines frustration with humor in a way that makes life’s problems seem not so bad. For example, how often have we all wanted to be somebody else? Snoopy imitates numerous people and animals in many of the strips, and he always figures out that the grass isn’t actually greener on the other side. What better way to be reminded of the truth of this idiom than in the form of a lovable white beagle!

Web Development/Programming

Diagrams, diagrams, diagrams

I’ve been sitting here for the last couple hours contemplating a program design in my head. (Actually, I’ve been contemplating this design for a month or so, but I really was putting some brain power into it for the last couple hours. Anyway…back to my point…) I have decided to start putting the ideas into some codified form in an effort to start documenting my code and designs better. In trying to figure out which diagrams to draw, I realized that it has been so long since I have done a formal diagram to formal standards that I have actually forgotten a lot of the minor notations. I’ve decided to go with UML, but I have forgotten the rules for using a filled in shape vs. an empty shape, not to mention all the line styles needed to convey relationships…GASP! Looks like tomorrow that I’m going to have to dust off the UML Distilled book laying around here somewhere.

It’s no wonder that I’ve forgotten a lot of these diagramming tools: Many of the clients I work for don’t have a clue what they’re looking at. For the last 4 years, I’ve been relying on text-based use cases because everybody, regardless of technical skill, can communicate with them. Frankly, I’ve gotten use to and comfortable with this format. There are some serious drawbacks to this though, namely the difficulty in seeing interactions between more than a couple modules at once. I seriously need some activity diagrams so I can start writing better test cases. I need to quit being such a Duct Tape Programmer. It’s quick, but it makes maintainability much harder than it has to be.

The best news is that free, open source diagramming tools are exponetially better now than they were just 4 years ago, so as soon as I acquaint myself with some of the formalities, I should be able to have my diagrams cranked out in no time.

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