Teej's Secret Box

This past Saturday, my roommate and I had the opportunity to attend an Arizona Cardinals pre-season football game (against Houston Texans — 20-33 was the result). University of Phoenix Stadium is quite a magnificent stadium, with wide walkways, clean bathrooms, clear line of sights from all seats, overpriced beers, sprawling parking spaces, and terribly-patterned entrance/departure routes.

One thing I observed is the somewhat haphazard pattern for the chairs, alternating between red and gray color — much to the delight of visiting Ohio State University fans this past National Championship match against University of Florida (they lost too.)

The pattern did not make any sense — and no matter how much I squint, I could not detect what they would represent. No Cardinal logo. No Arizona map. Not even a Kokopelli.

A little search, and I had my answer. The roof pattern consists of a Native American symbol representing the sun. On the roof, it represents the sun with its rays extending from the center outward (to the 21 vertical slots in the exterior of the stadium). This pattern is mirrored on the seats. Neat.

By the way, we sat to the upper-right side of the end zone area in that last picture I linked above.

There is a newspaper, almost 62 years old, hanging somewhere in my sister’s and father’s house with the mast, “PEACE,” along with the headline, “WAR IS OVER: JAPS OK TERMS.” It is a very historical document to me, and something I made clear to my father that upon his passing, he is to hand this down to me for safekeeping and display.

And yet, look at how much have changed since then. Japan holds a deep fascination with me on many levels. I do not hold any malice toward them for their actions in the war (although I do recognize the anger China and Korea holds).

Yet there is a continued debate on the use of the Atomic Bombs to this day. To that effect, I would like to offer this interesting essay by Mr. Fussell [Wiki] entitled “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” [PDF document]
This 11-page essay written in 1981 contains certain lessons for us today. We hold a deep hope that we would conduct warfare on our own vaulted moral code, yet certain enemies are willing to conduct warfare based on their skewed moral code.

It is suggested by Mr. Fussell that it took a pair of atom bombs to give strength to the pacifists within Japan’s political spectrum to push for a peaceful (and honorable) end to the war.

For those who may not be aware of Japan’s cultural ways, honor is everything to a Japanese citizen. The interpretation of what is honorable can vary, but it must be constructed in a way to be acceptable to their way of life.

What would it take to adjust the world view for the radicals to cease their suicidal attacks on US interests? Pacifists argue that peace would prevail if we act first. Neo-cons argue that these enemies must be wiped out.

I fear that the only way is to change the moral code of those radicals to allow the pacifists among them to gain strength on our behalf. However, by departing, we give strength not to the pacifists, but to the activists among the radicals that their actions led to our ’surrender.’

It took a bomb of an atomic kind to change Japan. What kind of bomb will it take to change our enemies today?

Greeting from the second row of this 737 stuck at the gate due to a mechanical problem. I have been lucky the past year or so, having planes that are able to go off just about on-time (or slightly late), with no serious issues.

The last time I could recall having a plane with mechanical problems — the A320 plane had a faulty sensor within the left engine that cropped up during the pilot’s checklist, at the point where the first class passengers are already onboard, with the sardine victims not yet packed. It took the mechanics three hours to replace that part, by unscrewing the engine, peeking inside, muttering in their talkies, and poking at the engine with a flashlight. I can understand the need to ensure that the detectors are in working order, as if they do not detect any problems, problems may doom the plane.  That would make for a very bad day.

However, this issue is a bit ridiculous — the mechanical problem is the communication system. No, not the radio tower/pilot system, or the crewmembers system, but specifically the communication between the pilots and the flight attendant.

From what I understand, the pilot can order the attendants around, and the flight attendants can not hurl back insults via the same phone-like device. But wouldn’t that make things better, you would think.

Of course, as with any detectors, if there is an emergency, the pilots may need to be informed of such crisis, such as running out of olives for the martini (and salads) — a grave sin bringing the crew under risk of rioting first class passengers.  A diversion to Greece (or the nearest Wegmans) may be needed, but only if the phone works.

Too bad we do not live in the good old days where flight attendants can just poke their head in the cabin, and ensure the ego remain stroked. Some folks decided one day that they should poke their heads in the cabin too (along with their knives.) A few bumping and grinding later, this affair gave birth to thousands of conspiracy theories created by people with too much time on their hands, and too much ignorance of basic science on their brains.

So we are stuck here, a hour and half past departure, waiting for this little 1970-style phone to be propped up to working order long enough for this airline to replace this 737 with their preferred 320s with faulty sensors. After all, if planes must have problems, it better be a real problem, yes-sir-Bob!

There is a huge industry geared toward the whole concept of making life easier for you.  Yet, they keep trying to extract a price in exchange.  By perseverance, I found out that it is totally unnecessary to do so.

You see, I have a whole bunch of pictures sent to me by a friend, named in such manner:  “Picture-1.jpg”, “Picture-2.jpg”, and so on forth for hundreds of pictures.

The problem with the naming of those files is the program I use to view those pictures.  IrfanView is a fabulous program that allows me to, for example, view, crop, tweak, use as slideshow, and wallpaper all our pictures.

However, by default, the program take a character-by-character interpretation of the file name ordering.  For example, the number “1″ should be followed by “2″ and so on forth to “10″.  But if you interpret it character-by-character, “1″ is followed by “10″ before “2″.

It does not interpret numbers the same way we do.  In order to interpret it in a numeric way, we have to pad the numbers with leading zeros.  Instead of 1, 10, and 100 — we have 001, 010, and 100.  With that in mind, the program now recognize that 002, not 010, comes after 001.

Usually, I would do the re-naming by hand, but it can be a labor-intensive process, and quite a repetitive one at that.  So I set out to find a program to automate the process for me.

Googling for “rename files” yield thousands of links, full of sites pushing their version of this common theme.  One consistent theme is that there are usually money involved.  I downloaded a dozen different programs, in the “donate-ware” and shareware veins, and none does the job I want.  Some would gleefully list the files in its incorrect order, and rename those files to the right order — but with the pictures still out of order.
There was only one program I found that does exactly what I want – by recognizing the numbers already provided, and padding it appropriately.  However, it would rename 10 files, then quit with a message, “If you want us to do more, pay us $19.95 (plus whatever fees we feel like charging you.)”

How Rude.

I was half-considering buying the license once I saw this available feature, but this cripple-ware behavior turned me off to their tool forever.  Note to shareware authors:  Cripple the software, and you will never see my money, period.

I decided that my Google search was not specific enough, and tried “rename file pad numbers”.  That search brought me to a website where this one guy actually got frustrated enough that he went out and wrote a Perl program to do the trick.

Score!

Yes, it is not a pretty program — we have to run it on the command line.  However, it does the trick just right for someone like myself, tired of manually tweaking hundreds of files just because some of our programs can not be bothered to interpret numbers the way we do.

“Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.”