August 2004 Archives

This page just showed up on MSNBC. The poll question just boggles the mind. I bet some news site will happily use these results, no matter what the outcome. "62% of those polled said that Guiliani's speech reassured them in the upcoming election!"

I'm working at my desk int he office for the first time in a while, mostly because I need the open desk space, and need to build pu the new server for CONGO. Since I've been doing most of my work on my laptop, using a desktop machine again has been a little tricky, mostly because I have everything tuned 'just so' on the laptop.

What I wanted was a way to attach my laptop and my desktop screen together. I knew it was possible using X2VNC, but that required VNC on the target machine- something not yet possible with X (or actually, I think it may be working now, but reqiures some fiddling).

Enter X2X a little tool that simply forwards keyboard and mouse motions to a second X server. Now, with the mere command of 'x2x -to 10.0.0.65:0 -west', I can slide my mouse off my primary desktop onto my laptop screen, just to the left of me. X-Selections work, mouse motions are working, yay!

For those who want to try this, there's a hidden trick. If you're running GDM (which most folks do), it is configured to, by default, not allow remote TCP connections to the X server. Edit the file /etc/gdm/gdm.conf, and look for the line 'DisallowTCP=true'. Change that to 'DisallowTCP=false' and restart gdm (cd /etc/init.d; ./gdm restart). After logging in, make sure you have external connections enabled (I used 'xhost +' but that's fairly insecure. man xhost for details on allowing individual remote hosts)

Now all I need is a way to slide a full window from one screen to another. Ahhahahah!

Well it seems to be the season for fairs, so in a show of comraderie with my sister, (and, okay, because it was a beautiful Sunday up in Maine), Zach and I went to the Acton Fair today.

At the MIT Swapfest a couple weeks ago, I chanced upon a GE Weather Station. This little toy has a wireless sensor you mount outside, and a display to sit on the shelf inside that displays inside/outside temperature, humidity, time, high/low temps since last reset, etc etc.

The best part of tihs is that I picked it up at the flea for a mere $9, rather than the $44 I see it online for. It's sort of neat to note that this technology has gotten so common that it shows up in flea markets (new in packaging!) for basically pocket change.

Canadian Member of Parliament Carolyn Parrish had said she hated "damned Americans" and called them bastards in the run-up to the Iraq war. She found a new moniker, idiots, on Wednesday in discussing the planned U.S. missile defense system.

"We are not joining the coalition of the idiots. We are joining the coalition of the wise," the Liberal legislator told a small group of demonstrators.

Full story on Yahoo news

This has been all over Livejournal, but folks in the blogger world should definately check this out.

Tired of your civil rights being trampled? At least let people know there -IS- a constitutional law that bans the types of illegal searches going on nowadays in New York and in Boston.

Pick yourself up a Fourth Amendmend Totebag from HandsOffMyBag.com!

I've been a big fan of classic arcade games for ages - I mean, if you were a kid between 1975 and 1990, IMHO the 'golden era' of video games, how could you not? Starting with simple Pong-like games and graduating up through offerings from Williams, Atari, Sega, et al - there were some true gems in there.

As reported on Slashdot, the XGameStation is "the world's first video game system development kit designed for education. The kit comes with an assembled XGameStation console, a controller, all necessary cables, a CD containing all system software and tools necessary to develop for the system, and of course, an extensive eBook that explains how the system was designed and how it works from the ground up."

Dude. A gaming platform that doesn't require a $20k investment in software and development tools just to write Breakout for it.

Hmmmm.

This evening Cat, Zach and I went to friday night services at a temple in Sudbury. This is the first time I've done shabbat in probably 25 years. We're looking at this temple for Zach to go to Hebrew school, and this was sort of their 'welcoming' evening.

For those who don't know, one of the parts of shabbat services is when the rabbi asks if anyone is sitting shiva or would like to say kaddish. There's a pause where members can call out names of those they are mourning for. I paused a moment, and called out "Robert Shevett". My father, who died over 2 years ago, but for whom i never got around to saying kaddish.

I made my way through the prayer, but it was hard. I had forgotten most of it, but I managed the bows in the right places though I was basically crying the whole time. I think I'll take the time to learn the prayer again by heart, and then do shabbat at least once more for him.

Finally got a few minutes to sit down and watch a little tv... and what should be on, but Aliens... and it got me thinking. This is an 18 year old movie (1986! Can you believe it?) and to me it's still one of the best portrayals of a future military. Equipment, personnel, and everything, it's something I can actually watch and go "Yeah, I could see that." This is as opposed to garbage like Starship Troopers which had me rolling my eyes every 5 minutes with "Oh PLEASE!". (Planetary drop operation - why is every carrier within a few hundred feet of the other? Where, oh, if one drifts off line just a bit, it'll smash into the next ship over... sheesh.)

So, what do you think? Movies that even come close to being believable about a future military. Marines in space, if you will.

Wow, okay, this is going to be a quick snapshot of what's going on right now, just to keep folks in the loop. Sorry for nothing particularly deep and poignant lately, but as you'll see, things are busy...

On the Business front, I have 4 events locked in for the next 3 months, with the first one in Tampa in mid-September. Then off to Reno, NV for Gnomedex, a coolio blogger convention I'll be doing reg services for ("If you blog, please try Gnomedex").

Back to the east coast for a quick break, then off to New Jersey for Ubercon IV - a truly wonderful convention - I heartily recommend folks to put it in their list of regularly attended events. Great gaming, great folks, lotta fun.

After that, to Boston for only a week, then off to Baltimore for a big private event there. Yikes! After that, all I have to do is prep for Arisia, which is in January in Boston. (BTW, I'm actually -running- Arisia's registration this year, not just being a vendor. It's an order of magnitude more work, and I'm psyched, but if anyone wants to help out, I'm not going to refuse :)

Then it's in to next year, and more events, but I'm too pooped to go on about them now.

In the middle of all this, I have a 1 week contracting gig in town this week, which'll be nice for the wallet, but pretty wearing on me.

AND ON TOP OF THAT, we're probably listing the house for sale this week (so Cat and I have been going -nuts- getting the house ready. It's sort of weird - the house is slowly 'not being our house' anymore as we clean and move things out and the like. I guess this is a good thing, but it's sad as well.

And of course, somewhere along there as well, we'll hopefully be moving into a new place.

Not to mention that Cat and others are planning Something [tm] for my birthday, and I dont' have an inkling what. So in the midst of all this chaos, there should be a lot of fun.

I just have to say... AIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I saw this posted over at BKO, and hadn't seen it in my little corner of the web, so thought I'd pass it on...

"In a far cry from the high-minded ideals of humanity and tolerance embodied by the Olympics, the organizers of the Athens games have warned spectators that they could be barred for taking a surreptitious sip of Pepsi or an illicit bite from a Burger King Whopper.

Strict regulations published by Athens 2004 last week dictate that spectators may be refused admission to events if they are carrying food or drinks made by companies that did not see fit to sponsor the games. "

One of the interesting bits of this is the -security guards- have been told to polics this situation.

Full article from the Halifax Herald is here.

Wow, what a great coding session.

I've been continuously frustrated with the look and feel of the web client that goes with CONGO. The client is called "Coconut" (special thanks to Mister Privacy for coming up with that one), and has been slowly expanding into a system that lets you do all the functions that CONGO can do.

The problem? It was UGLY. I mean really ugly. I couldn't use it for advertising, and even though it ran beautifully in text mode for use at events, it just wasn't nice to look at.

I even got a poke in the side from a friend who said "Nice product, nice web site, but what's it look like? There's nothing for folks to see!"

Well gawrshdurnit she was right. So today and this evening I sat down and learned something that I've been avoiding, namely how to set up nice looking webpages using cascading stylesheets. My blog uses them extensively (course, I didn't -write- my blog), and I've edited other folks' code, so I had an idea what it was like, but it was still a challenge.

All you old HTML geeks. Remember learning all the tricks and tweaks to get a table element to line up right? That is -SO- 90's now. Go CSS. This stuff rocks.

I worked out a design, built my new stylesheet, and converted all of the Coconut pages over to use them.

Check them out here, here, here, and here.

I actually feel like I can take these and put them on the business site, and NOT die of embarrassment at how ugly they are.

Go me :)

My mom usually has a list of things for me to do everytime I come over with Zach on Wednesday evenings. Normal honey-do sort of things, all par for the course.

She had told me that she needed to make an appointment with the dealer to get the headlights fixed on her '91 Subaru Legacy wagon. I did the standard Guy thing and said "HEY! Wait! Just a headlight out? No problem! Just get the new bulbs, and I'll put them in."

Now, I can already hear folks going "Noooo! Doom!" - but sure enough, mom had the bulbs (and an earful of lectures from the do-gooders at the parts store... "Don't let him touch the bulbs! They'll explode!" - they apparentloy went on at length about this. I know they're halogen bulbs, guys. Thanks.)

I came over tonight, opened up the hood on the car, undid a little wire clip and the bulb popped out into my hand. Slipped in the new bulb, reattached the wire and clip, and bing! Done! One more on the other side, and voila. All of 7 minutes for the entire process, including time to walk out to the car and unwrap the bulbs.

Last time I did a replacement was on my '88 Bronco II, and it involved disassembling the whole light assembly and putting a whole new fixture in.

Aint' technology grand? :)

Saw this tale of lost freedom referenced all over the place in Livejournal, I'm passing it on. This, my friends, is where we're headed. Not only are you being searched illegally, the 'arbitrary' nature of the searches puts you under the whim of the searcher. If they don't like something you have, not for any 'safety' reason - they just don't like it, they can remove it from you. These laws (at least in boston) can allow that person to have you removed from the premeses or arrested if you disagree.

This person didn't allow it to happen. How many others did?

[edit - btw, as this person did, I've added the ACLU direct number into my phone . I don't want to be caught without some someone to call if I ever get into this situation]

I realize a large portion of the folks who read my blog are actually on Livejournal, reading via the syndicated feed.. That's cool, that's what it's there for. But if you use LJ as your aggregator, you should ABSOLUTELY add the Boing Boing Blog syndicated feed.

Boingboing is one of the best blogs out there - I have it added to my feed list (the rough equivelent of a friends list) in Sage, and it always has something fascinating available.

Tidbits from today's postings:
Bed Saferoom - A bed that folds up into a saferoom, able to stop bullets, etc.
A history of watches - a link to a pictorial review of geek watches through the ages.

Enjoy :)

As folks are well aware, I'm a big fan of Firefox - to the point of being of the belief that there's no reason not to run it, and zillions of reasons to run it.

At any rate, I was noodling around with the privacy settings, looking to clean out my cookies cache, when I noted the... interesting comment in the dialog for the definition of 'Cookies'.

Those guys crack me up :)

Okay, maybe not quite nirvana, but I had a couple hours tonight to continue working on some code I had started yesterday. I've been so bogged down in dull aspects of the business, it was nice to actually -create- some stuff for a while.

Many new functions added to the CONGO appserver and client libraries that'll make things like Coconut (the PHP client class) a heckuva lot more useful.

Yesterday (and I mean Friday with that) - my chosen work environment was the Wendy's near where I picked up my car. Not too bad actually, foundan outlet, put the headphones on (music of choice was Pink Floyd Wish you were Here), and got the basic changes in place.

Tonight I went through my normal library, then settled into Beethoven's 9th symphony. I tell ya, that's one seriously powerful piece o tunage. Hard to NOT focus on the music and get the coding going - but somewhere through the third movement I totally clicked into Flow mode, and cranked out the last couple modules I needed. Committed them back into the repository, and started testing. Twuz great.

Denoument is accomplished with Delerium - Poem, another fantastic piece of music, and great for working - a nice wind down from Ludwig's bit o fun.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty accomplished. Off to bed now.

While Cat and I were driving up to Maine tonight, I heard a story on NPR about this 'new concept' that was sweeping the mid-west.

The idea was 'Freecycling'. The idea was that if you had something you didn't want anymore, you could post it to this list, and if someone wanted it, they'd come and get it. The only rule was that NO money changed hands. It was a free giveaway.

"Waiddasec", sez I. "New concept? What the heck?!?"

The MIT Reuse list has been around for ages; a free forum, limited to MIT affiliated folk, for giving away 'stuff'. Reuse was and still is a great resource for getting rid of -anything-. If you were in Cambridge, and you had something, if you posted it to reuse, it was -gone-. (we once even got rid of an old car this way).

The MIT Reuse list is targeted specifically at MIT-related folks and environs, so another list, called the Greaterboston-Reuse list was created to handle...er.. the greater boston area. The traffic is low, the content is high, and if you want to unload stuff, this is the place to be.

Since we're in the process of cleaning out our house and unloading tons of stuff, this list has been invaluable. The rule of thumb is "Here it is, come and get it. It'll be sitting outside", and, as in Freecycling, 'for sale' or 'for trade' postings are verboten (though some slip through).

I was a little miffed at the whole "This is new!" bent on the NPR story. Here's back atcha, net-folks. Boston's been doin it for a while :)

There's been a lot of noise about Ford finally putting out the first Hybrid SUV, the 'Ford Escape'. I've looked at these, and to me they're sort of toy SUV's. THey have poor towing capacity, poor cargo capacity, and are basically just stretched up small station wagons. What's the win?

Then I noticed that GM has a full size Hybrid pickup. This is going in a great direction - this is a full size V8-based pickup that has an electrical assist / hybrid system within it. It does the same thing the Prius does (shuts down the engine at full stops, uses the electric motor for startups, etc). This also coupled with a full towing package, no reduction in cargo capacity or seating (it has a full extended cab).

One of the coolest things is the electrical system provides a 120v 20amp set of outlets that are available fulltime. If you have a need for onsite power, this is enough juice to run a house in low-use conditions (water pump, lights, etc). On a full tank, in theory it'll run for about 32 hours (and automatically turns itself off before it runs the tank dry, so when you need to go to the store to get more gas, you have a small reserve :)

The mileage still isn't earthshattering. Empty, this truck will do 13-15mpg. With the Hybrid system, they're talking 12% improvement in mileage, which only raises things to 14.5 - 16.8 mpg. Better, and worth it, but until trucks get over 25mpg with the ability to occasionally tow big loads and carry cargo, I'm not going to be doing any handstands.

On the gripping hand, if I continue with my current endeavors, I'm not commuting anywhere (since I work at home or at a nearby office), the only time I need to drive anywhere is to move equipment to a show, or to haul any of the various trailers / boats we do, or to do work on the house. One of the houses we're looking at it < 15 minutes from Zach's school, which is a tolerable drive in the truck on a regular basis. For longer trips up to Maine, we still have the Golf, which gets 42+ MPG.

Or maybe I'm just trying to talk myself into a new toy. Nahhhhh.

Thanks to Nathan for a pointer to this site, but some of these are just outstanding...

Goats.com T-shirts

(this will most likely come as a shock to no one)

Take the quiz: "WHAT RELIGION BESTS SUITS YOU?"

Atheist
You are Godless! You could care less about religion. As far as you're concerned, if you can't see, touch and kick something, it's not real to you. You're day-to-day activities consist of eating, working, sleeping and the occasional Internet or coffee shop debate. Lastly, if anyone chooses to preach at you otherwise, you will either leave or debate them until they finally shut up.

I have great respect for Kuro5hin, a blog that was a blog before blogs were blogs. (?). Anyway... there's a neat tidbit today regarding a non-parents glimpse into the world of children...

You will wake up one day and say to yourself "You know, it's been ten years since I've had sex in my kitchen." And then you'll realize you've got ten more years to go.

The entire article is available here.

When the Bushies were pushing for an all out offensive against Iraq, Senator Byrd, in the congressional debate, kept using the phrase 'Why now?' - to ask the administration why it was so critical that the US attack Iraq immediately.

The answer back from the administration was that Iraq posed an 'immediate threat' to the US with it's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Neither the immediate threat, nor the WMDs were ever found, and in fact, if you ask anyone in the administration now why we went to war and overthrew a foreign power, they will say "To combat terrorism!" or "We had to remove a dangerous dictator from power" - they'll be guaranteed to trot out the phrase "Do you think Iraq would be better off with Saddam still in power?"

I find myself harkening back to Senator Byrd's comments nowadays. Over the last 24-36 hours, Tom Ridge has raised the security alert in the US. The reasoning is that Al Qaeda is purported to be ramping up the threats against US targets.

Why now?

I find it funny that this heightened alert happened mere days after the DNC, when Kerry is in the 'bubble' that follows any convention. This gets more interesting when it turns out that much of the information is not new. It is YEARS old. It has only come to light because of recent interrogations of captured individuals in Pakistan who (so we are told) mentioned things that are in these documents. Note that nothing has changed, it's just that we just captured some folks, and they said the same things that are in these YEARS OLD documents.

Why now?

Quick! MY GOD! Someone rememberd something they wrote 2 years ago! We have to plaster the media with more unidentifiable, non-specific, absolutely WORTHLESS security alerts! Yeah baby!

Why now?

Because it's good politics. Pure and simple. Raising the terror threat alert does nothing to help the US. It doesn't help the military prepare for an attack (they theoretically already know about it). It doesn't help the investigative or intelligence agencies any (they already know about it). It sure as SHIT doesn't help the public (now we know about it, thanks. Now what?). The only reason this is done is politics.

Owait, that's right. The police and civil agencies are supposed to do something too. Do you know they still don't have the money, manpower, or guidance to do ANYTHING? And what exactly are they supposed to do anyway? "We might or might not have an attack on an undisclosed location, somewhere in the US, sometime this year.

Sometime this year.

Golly. And lets tell everyone about this the week after the DNC, when the campaign for the presidency is really getting rolling.

If I'm wrong? Great, I'm wrong. Are my words going to make one whit of difference one way or another? No. Because there is no defense against this kind of threat that is possible in this world, other than assuming everyone is a terrorist. Owait too late.

I have to say, I love my car.

It's a 2003 Volkswagon Golf TDI that now has about 36,000 miles on it. Having a Turbodiesel engine that gets around 43 MPG during the last couple months with skyrocketing fuel prices, this has just been a big win all around. Diesel stayed below $1.80 a gallon.

Anyway, the problem has been moving the bicycles around. Zach and I do a lot of riding, and I wanted a way to haul my Haluzak recumbent as well as Zach's bike around without needing to use the station wagon.

The Brother in law to the rescue! I now have a complete (if someone frankenstein-like) bike rack system that holds both bikes perfectly. We used this to bring the bikes up to Maine this past week, and gosh what a win.

So, this brings my total accoutrements to a new level of geekery in this car. Not only does it carry bikes up on the roof in style, but the internal electronics include GPS, Ham Radio, CB radio, and a pretty decent CD/Stereo system (though yea yea, it's going into the shop this week to fix an antenna problem. OTHER than that!).

Wow, went idle there for a few days, sorry bout that. I've been away up in Maine for the last week, then this weekend went out to see all the excitement going on at Simons Rock College (my sweetie's alma mater).

More fun stuff pending, stay tuned :)

In the meantime, check this masterful posting on Rebecca's blog. The woman is a goddess of the written word.