Author: Dave Shevett

A wandering geek. Toys, shiny things, pursuits and distractions.

Beating the Heat – How I Did It

Sounds more grandiose than it is, really.
We’re going through a heck of a heat wave here on the east coast. The last 2-3 days have been 90+ degrees with high humidity, and it’s showing no signs of really letting up until at least next week.
I don’t react well to heat – I mean, I can deal with it during the day while puttering around, but sleeping? Bad things happen when Mr. Geek doesn’t get his beauty sleep.
With our super efficient buildings, we really don’t need to air condition an entire building just to make it habitable. But I’ve found that even with proper ‘behaviour’ (closing windows during the day, opening at night, using fans if necessary), I still need to cool the space down when I sleep.
Here’s how I set up my bedroom to use the minimal amount of cooling necessary for me to get a good nights sleep.
A few months ago I built a loft in my bedroom so Zach could have a place to sleep when he was over. I found that on super-hot-humid days (like this week), the upper part of the loft got too stuffy, even with the room AC turned on. I was also uncomfortable ‘turning up’ the AC just so my upper space could get cool. “The rest of the room is fine, it’s just this spot. Hmm.”
So last night I moved the room AC under the loft, turned it on LOW, and dangled one of my sheets over the end of the loft. With that loose enclosure, the low-power AC was easily enough to keep the space cool. I flopped on what is normally Zach’s bed, and slept like the dead for almost 8 hours.
I’m able to cool that space down in about a half an hour. I can turn off the AC when I leave, so in the end, I run the AC only about 9 hours a day on lower power. Just enough for me to get a good nights sleep.
Works for me!

An Open Letter to MoveOn.org

To Whom it may concern…
I joined MoveOn during the Bush presidency because I felt it was a strong voice against what I saw as a rabid conservative bias in the government. MoveOn was taking a strong (sometimes too strong) liberal tack against the hawks, and I found this to be an excellent way to express my horror at what was happening in Washington.
Later, MoveOn took some positions I did not necessarily agree with, but, just as some choices by the ACLU are ones I might not support, I chose to remain a member because I felt the mission was still important.
Recently though, I’ve been bothered by MoveOn’s policy of taking political stances and setting up petitions to protest something, without really getting the constituency’s feedback as to whether this is something we, the members of MoveOn, would like to support.
Recently, MoveOn sent a request out asking for it’s members to sign a petition :
> **burning endangered sea turtles alive**
> News has emerged from the Gulf Coast that BP is burning endangered sea turtles alive.
> That’s right. BP is using “controlled burns” to contain the oil spill, and any turtles that are not removed from the area before the fire is lit are literally burned alive.
> With BP already facing so much public outrage, we can step in and stop this from continuing. But we have to speak up right now.
What does this have to do with balancing political change in Washington, where the populace needs a voice to counter right wing ideology? Even your home page states:
> **Stand for Democracy**
> It’s time to rescue our government from corporations and lobbyists. Endorse the blueprint to take back our democracy.
MoveOn is using petitions to be a ‘voice of the people’. Petitions are a poor mechanism for gauging the opinion of the membership. The only answer to a petition is “Yes!” – the other answer is silence.
MoveOn, when you ask your constituents to weigh in on an issue, offer them the opinion to say No.

CONGO Available for Download

Well, I said it and said it, and promised I’d do it, now it’s really here.
You’ve heard me chatter on about CONGO, my Event Management System for running conventions, meetings, and the like – well, now you can download and run it yourself.
Details are available on the CONGO home page. If you’re a fandom or gaming event, and you’re looking for a tried and trued registration system for your con, this is the place to go.
Enjoy!

My First Sailing Rescue

Paraphrasing Elton John… “I saved someone’s dignity today…”
This weekend had me up in Maine lounging about on the dock during some pretty windy weather. We regularly get gusty days across the lake, but this was unusual in that the wind held steady for almost 2 days – probably 15-25mph gusts. Enough to whitecap the lake pretty regularly.
Around midday on Sunday we had gotten the boat settled in at the dock, and were getting ready for a nice quiet afternoon when Cat’s mother pointed out onto the lake “Hey, someone just flipped over.”

Continue reading “My First Sailing Rescue” →

Is it just me?

… but if you see this text on the home page of a vendor, on the internet – where the rest of the site seems… well, useable, but not particularly inspiring… would you reconsider doing business with them?

Born free American! fighting to stay that way. The government earns no money everything it spends is STOLEN from YOU your children and your grandchildren. STOP the madness, STOP the slavery. We the people surround them. Stand up for individual liberty and limited government. Help restore the constitution and honesty to our country. You are not free until the dollar again reads United States Treasury instead of FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE – END the FED!!!
NOT RACIST, NOT VIOLENT – JUST NO LONGER SILENT

I’m all for freedom of expression and political activism. But mixing personal opinions with business and commerce seems like an awful idea. It has personally made it impossible for me to consider doing business with these people (if they feel this much anger at the federal government, how can I trust their business is sound, legal, and not subject to closing down while they owe me a product or a service?)

StarCraft II – Release date of July 27

Well, guess I’ll be booking my PTO early. According to Slashdot :

Blizzard announced today that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the first game in a series of three, will be released on July 27. The game will contain the Terran campaign (29 missions), the full multiplayer experience, and “several challenge-mode mini-games,” with “focused goals designed to ease players into the basics of multiplayer strategies.” It will launch alongside the revamped Battle.net, which we’ve previously discussed. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said, “We’ve been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we’re excited that the time for that is almost here. Thanks to our beta testers, we’re making great progress on the final stages of development, and we’ll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net in just a few months.”

I remember being completely addicted to StarCraft when it first came out. We recently tried getting it running on Zach’s Windows XP setup, but we weren’t successful (Starcraft ran on Windows 95… that was 15 years ago. Sheesh!).
I wonder if we could have a release / lan party. Hmmmm 🙂

iPhone Development Guidelines – Do’s and Don’ts

First, a disclaimer. I am not an iPhone developer. I am what used to be termed a ‘power user’ – gamer, tool user, critic, yes – but I don’t write iCode. (I do develop, just not on the iphone).
Having gotten that out of the way, I’d like to propose a list of Do’s and Don’ts that every iPhone app developer on the planet should adhere to. This is a list from a USERS perspective – things that irk me to no end.
Onward…
* DO : Obey the Mute switch! – How hard can this be? If the mute switch is on, then SHADDUP! There’s a REASON it’s called a mute switch! I don’t know how many games I’ve powered up that leave me scrambling for the volume-down buttons when the mute switch was IN THE MUTE POSITION.
* DO : Incremental saves – again, primarily on the gaming front. That little device in your hand? it’s a TELEPHONE. That means people can call you at any time, and interrupt the application. It doesn’t matter if you’ve spent 3 hours getting Sir Grinsalot to the top of Mount Bigahonkin and you’re about to kill the Great Gizbo of Durn – grandma will STILL call you at that point, interrupting the game. Save!
* DO : Provide status that you’re doing something. Okay, older platforms are slow, so sometimes it takes time for things to load. Provide some animation or indication that something is going on – a load bar would be best (gives an idea how much longer it’ll take), but even a spinner will do.
* DO NOT : assume that just because you’re on an iPhone, the easiest device on the planet to use, you don’t need to provide directions. Apps are NOT self explanatory, and a link to a web page is not enough. “This button does that, this button does that. Got it? Go forth and enjoy.”
* DO NOT : Link out to a web site without informing the user you’re about to do so! Nothing is more painful than tapping on a “view the high scores list” and have that exit the damned app to start Safari. That app may have taken you 4 minutes just to get to that screen. Now you have to do it all again.
* DO : Provide a rotation lock. Some of us like to read or do games while going to sleep, which does not necessarily mean I’ll be in an upright position. Having the app auto-rotate to what it THINKS is the right orientation is irritating when you have no option to disable this.
I’m sure this list will grow, and I’m open to suggestions as to what to add to it. These are things that have come up in my adventures.
What bits have YOU seen that developers seem to miss?

CONGO – Motivation is Good!

I’ve been pretty lax on CONGO lately. Other Life stuff as well as being worn after Arisia has put coding on the back burner.

SystemUIServer

But in the last week or two, several folks have asked for updates and new installations, and my “I should get coding again!” bits have been tingling.
This week I had a great meeting with the Arisia registration head, and she and I hammered out a schedule of updates for the next release. I have about a month to implement a bunch of new features – most of which have been burbling in my head for a while, but it’s time to get them coded and released.
There’s been some nice input from other events (some far away, some local) interested in using CONGO, and my path to general release is pretty well established. Having said that, the current code is pretty solid, with documentation, installation instructions, and support available. Want to run it? Let me know, I love testers.
Anyway – code is being checked in and features are slowly getting done. It feels good.

The Age of the Smartphone

A post by my friend Jim made me think about how much smartphones have changed my personal day to day tasks and interractions. This, coupld with another convo I had with one of my cohousing neighbors before a pingpong match (“Hey, you have an iPhone, right? So, what do you do with it?”) gave grist for this posting…
So, it’s a phone, right? What do you do with it?
I…
* Have my entire contact list, email, phone, picture, address, AIM etc information with me all the time. It’s backed up, organized, and constantly updated.
* Am available to my family and friends whenever they wish to reach me, or I wish to reach them. If I don’t want that, I can mute the the phone.
* Am constantly charmed at getting and sending txt messages to my 11yr old son.
* Always have 20-30 books with me that I’m very comfortable reading, even on the smaller screen. (this has been one of the BIGGEST benefits to going with a modern smartphone)
* Have easy access to my email (both work and home) without requiring magic steps of connecting and signing in to the data network
* Have a hundred or so hours of music that is also synced and backed up.
* Very easy access to the 15 or so calendars that I need to be able to see for my duties as a parent, a business owner, an employee, and a community member.
* Able to respond to meeting invites, requests, or suggestions instantly (I get notified as soon as I’m invited to a meeting at work)
* Have a vast array of games to play – some simplistic, some maddeningly addictive.
* Able to keep track of a variety of ‘life’ programs such as calorie / weight tracking, habit trends, etc.
* Be able to look at, audit, and interract with all my bank accounts, including making payments or sending money to folks.
* Easy access to Wikipedia, the font of all knowledge, anytime, anywhere.
* Have a relatively functional camera with me at all times, and the ability to immediately upload / share / post the pictures where people can see them.
This all in a device roughly the size of a pack of playing cards.
The future is here, folks. And it’s pretty damned cool.

Palm’s Deathspiral Continues

According to [this article on money.cnn.com](http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/19/technology/palm_target_price_zero/index.htm?hpt=T2) :
> Morgan Joseph & Co. analyst Ilya Grozovsky, one of the two analysts to cut its price target on Palm shares to $0, said “Palm is essentially an accelerating death spiral.”
It’s not hard to see where Palm lost out. The [Palm Pre](http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/) is an excellent device. It has wonderful potential, a great form factor, runs Linux. On the feature list, it looks quite good.
It simply appeared two years too late.
Palm’s failures regarding the timeliness of it’s products [has been commented on by me before](https://planet-geek.com/archives/2008/08/iphone-over-pal.html) so I won’t go into them again. But it’s quite obvious by the time they got the Pre out the door, Apple, Rim, Google, and heck even Microsoft had filled up the smartphone market. The market is shaking platforms out and narrowing down the focus – not expanding onto new platforms.
We’ll see if the Pre, and by extension, Palm survives – they’ve weathered bad storms before, but unless the Pre sales level off and hold their own – something I don’t see them doing – I don’t see Palm around in two years.

Addicting iPhone apps : Medieval and Warfare, Inc.

If you’re looking to preserve some of that spare time you have gobs of, perhaps it would be best to skip this post. Because I’m going to talk about two of the most addicting games I’ve come across for the iPhone. The first is just fun, the other is… well, you’ll see.
**Medieval**
This game from Brisk Mobile follows a well know simple ‘castle’ game, as implemented by a thousand flash games on the net. What makes it interesting is the variety of weapons available, the smooth animation, and the delightful artwork. I’ve been playing it pretty much dead on steady for the last 2 months, and have gotten up to level 143 – and it’s *still* challenging. Not sure how they’ve managed it, but they do.
**Warfare Incorporated**
This one has done me in. It’s hard to describe it without using the obvious connection, but… it’s Starcraft for the iPhone.
The game is a recreation of the normal ‘real time strategy’ genre, scaled down and modified to run on the iPhone. You have group unit selects, goals, manufacturing, buildings, and vehicle types. You have upgrades to units and to buildings. But unlike some of the other (rather lame) attempts on the iPhone, Warfare Incorporated has managed to make a decent plotline that, while not particularly riveting, at least keeps the game flow going. With 3 levels of difficulty and about 30 levels for the full game, the single player scenarios are quite engrossing.
To add to the wonder, [Warfare Incorporated](http://www.warfareincorporated.com) allows a form of downloadable content – you can play maps that other players have generated, as well as play against other players in realtime over the net. I personally haven’t explored those options yet, but I look forward to doing my own ZERG RUSH! against other players.
Both Warfare Incorporated and Medieval are available in the iPhone app store.

Paypal is driving me nuts.

Why is Paypal so disorganized?
If you’re a developer, there are something like 6 different sites that are for use by developers. x.com, paypal-community.com, something called custhelp.com (which I was referred to, and sure as hell looks like a phishing site. Or something written by a 12 yr old).
All I want is an answer to why I’m having a problem posting an invoice to their ExpressCheckout, and I’m getting attitude and BS back.
Unbefrigginlievable.

Texas Board of Education – Rewriting History in favor of Political Ideology

The folks over at the Texas freedom Network decided to attend the Texas Board of Education as it debated revisions to the school curriculum regarding political history. What they saw was a board dominated by extreme right wing politics. TFN comments:
> These board members clearly haven’t got a clue how to craft a curriculum document that’s streamlined, coherent and focused. They are far more interested in seeding the standards with whatever ideological pet causes they have. Pity the students and teachers of Texas for the foolishness they must endure.
Some choice bits noted from the meeting:
> The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.
During a debate regarding capitalism and free enterprise, several of the board members object to the term ‘Capitalism’ because it is considered a negative term. One member states, regarding using the word, “I do think words mean things. . . . I see no reason, frankly, to compromise with liberal professors from academia.” When it is pointed out that the person who recommended the terms ‘capitalism’ and ‘free enterprise’ be used is actually a republican professor at Texas A&M, the information is ignored, and the board passes the measure:
> The Texas State Board of Education has stricken from the standards references to “capitalism” and “free market” because the board’s right-wingers think “capitalism” is a negative term. The only permitted term for such an economic system will be “free enterprise.” We wouldn’t believe this if we hadn’t just watched it happen. This is so stupid it makes our head hurt.
It’s this sort of subtle manipulation of curriculum, particularly in public schools, that has the greatest effect on the political positions of children and young adults. If ideology is allowed to triumph over fact (and in many points in this discussion, fact is trumped in favor of personal stance), how can people trust their public schools, and by inference their local governments? I ask that folks pay close attention to their local school boards, and when they see absurdity like this, raise the roof and call it out – that is the only way this sort of ideological undermining of education can be stopped.