Category: Life. Don’t talk to me about life.

Is this what addiction is like?

Yesterday I went out and played volleyball.
Twice.
Once I drove a half hour to play with a lunchtime group out in Westborough. That was good, and got some excellent 3-on-3 on a sand court.
Then, after picking up my son at camp at 6pm, and having dinner with Cat, I wanted to swing by and verify a rumor I had heard about a pickup game that happens Mondays and Wednesdays in Framingham.
Sure enough, I found it, where 13 or so folks were in a casual pickup game. I stopped, Zach hung out in the van while I played a quick game with them, then drove home, arriving a little later than I had wanted to, but feeling nicely worked out.
If I wanted to, I now know of pickup and quasi-league level play 6 days a week, in fact, could even play twice a day, once during lunch and once in the evening.
Maybe I need professional help.

Flickr vs Picasaweb? Sorry Google.

I have a lot of pictures in my photo archive on Flickr. Occasionally some wag comes along and goes “Dude, you should use Picasaweb!, cuz, it’s like, Google!”
Ohhkay. Today I got a link to a friends’ photo album on Picasa, so went to check it out.
Alas, I see more of what Google is getting very good at doing. And that is breaking inherent functionality in environments in favor of the way ‘they’ think things should be done. The rapid AJAX-ification of every function on a webpage is making old tried and trued basics stop working. Sure, it might have some gee-whizzo effect, but Google’s way of doing some link is not like Bob’s way of doing a link and is not like Fred’s way of doing a link. Now we have a world wide web that is fragmenting, rather than sticking with at least a basic access methodology. I shudder to think what this does for accessibility issues.
Case in point. Here is what you cannot do with Picasaweb – this discovered in 15 seconds of browsing the site.
* You cannot middle-click on a photo album picture and open the link in a new tab. In fact, you can’t middle click on anything. If you do, you either get nothing happening, or it just refreshes the page. How unhelpful.
* You cannot right click on an image and view it. If you do, you get “You have chosen to open PBLAH.JPG, which is a GIMP IMAGE. What should Firefox do with this file?” This is wrong. It should view the image as I told it to. Google has deliberately broken their MIME settings to force that dialog.
* Screen refreshes are unintuitive and slow. If you do a search, and click ‘Search Photos’, the screen refreshes, but is blank. Oh, but wait! This is AJAX, it’s still searching! 5 seconds later I have a screenful of pictures. How did I know it was still searching? Apparently I was supposed to mind-read what was going on. The ‘active’ spinner in the browser said things were done.
Dear Google. Stop trying to remake the web in your own image. You’re hurting everyone in the process.

Lo, I am blocked

So I frequently park myself at the local Panera to partake of their free wireless, tasty coffee, and comfy chairs. It’s also convenient that it’s halfway between home and my son’s school.
Yesterday, I stopped by just to get out of the heat. Since I had an hour to kill, I worked up my last blog post, put it together and posted it. So far so good. I traditionally look at the site at it’s base URL (https://planet-geek.com/) just to make sure everything is okay. This time, apparently everything was NOT okay.
Apparently access to my blog has been blocked by the infamous Sonicwall ‘content protection’ system. Nice of them, eh?
Further research into this problem, by following their url, showed that I was not blocked for my abysmal spelling, my poor site layout, or my lack of meaningful content, but that I was simply classified as… pornography.
I had no idea geekitude had slipped so far into the internet’s dark underworld.
Naturally, I immediately put in a request to have it reclassified, and demanded an explanation as to WHY my little corner of geekness has been classified as Pornography. Alas, Sonicwall doesn’t provide such information, you may simply ask for a reclassification, and they might get around to it. In 8-10 days. What do you bet that I won’t hear a thing from them in that timeframe?
If you’d like to grease the wheels against this idiocy, please go to Sonicwalls’ ratings page, look up ‘planet-geek.com’, and request to have it reclassified as an “Information Technology” website.
I still would very much like to hear from Sonicwall, or from anyone else, who has had their site randomly excluded from anyone who uses their product, with no notification and no recourse except for a ‘request for reclassification’, why this occurs and what can be done about it. I’d also recommend that ANYONE who hosts or runs a website to plug their URL into that page and check to see if they’re being blocked.

Enabling Relationships

I have to admit, there are times when having an enabling partner brings unexpected benefits.
In this case, my wife happens to work for Bose as a project manager, and as such as access to their employee discounts and specials. Because of her signing bonus, we have a lovely Bose Lifestyle 48 soundsystem to complement the Big TV. I would never have the money to be able to afford such an extravagant system, but it’s hard to argue with the discount.
Tonight I added some more pieces to the mix. We got some new speaker stands for the satellite speakers, and rewired the MythTV box a bit. The new stands look great!
Next step will be to use the new video switcher on the LS48 to route video and audio all via the Bose box. That’ll require ducking into the nest O wires behind the display. Something I’m really not looking forward to. :-/
One thing I am toying with though is calling up Comcast and upgrading our cable tuner to HDTV. The whole “we’ll stretch 4:3 to fit on an HD form factor” thing is getting wearing. Unfortunately, I’m guessing that Comcast is not providing boxes with enabled Firewire ports, so the usefulness of my MythTV tuner card is dropping daily. Damned corporations.
On the plus side, though, Ben has successfully aquired the HDTV cable for the Gamecube, so we’ll be enjoying true 480p signal shortly from that little puppy. Mmm, SSX3 in full glory.

Omgomgomogmg.

TOTAL geek squee.
Starcraft 2 is official. And it’s not a huge variation from the original game – updated after, what, 8 years, naturally, but same 3 races, new vehicles and ships, new engines, all that, but it’s the same game, redone.
Starcraft was one of the few games that totally sucked me in, and I still occasionally play it, years and years later.
The Wikipedia article on Starcraft II is under heavy editing right now, but the details are there.
I highly recommend watching the full cinematic trailer. It totally rocks.

Just checking in!

It’s nice to know some things remain consistent. Every year or two I re-take the keirsey test to find out what my ‘personality type’ is. It’s been remarkably consistent. Tonight, once again, I scored as an INTP (Introverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiving).
The test I used is here.

Days of Sunshine, Days of Clouds

The Linux environment is such a love-hate world for me. In general, it’s mostly love. All the tools I want, speed, eye candy, toys, productivity, it’s all there.
Then there are the cloudy days. When things that should work, don’t, and I can’t figure out how to make them work.
After a couple sunny weeks, I’ve hit the equivalent of spring showers, and the clouds have rolled in.
First, I’m having all sorts of performance problems with Thunderbird. I suspect this is down to some twitchy DNS problem, but I’ve never seen it before, and others have not seen it as well. Right now I’m in ‘suck it up and deal’ mode, but it’s infuriating waiting 5-6 seconds of total GUI lockup whenever I hit Alt-Enter.
Second, I’m still working on setting up the new replacement machine for my roommate. This is a bellwether project for me – can I replace a windows machine completely with Linux. For the most part, we’re ready to go, except I cannot get the VPN to their Windows server (a PPTP connection) to work properly. I had great hopes for a new KDE tool called KVPNC, but either due to the programs’ newness or traditional complexity of setting up VPNs under Linux, I have had no success. At the moment, this is a showstopper on the project.
And last night, I wanted to edit some recordings I had done with my minidisc recorder at band practice. “No problem!” sez I, “I’ll just use Audacity,” an excellent free multitrack editor. BZZT! Audacity refuses to talk ALSA properly, and I cannot play the tracks I’m editing. I’ve used Audacity many times under Windows, and I thought I had also used it under Linux, but now on startup Audacity is yelling about not being able to access the ALSA device. Various forums have said that is because ALSA has sound device locking issues (which I mentally flag as bogus – wasn’t ALSA’s point to allow multiple applications to access the sound device at the same time? Avoiding the dreaded /dev/dsp lock? Frustrating)
So I have 2 projects held up, and one constant, ongoing annoyance. And, over on the side, my windows machine running quite smoothly, without any of these problems.
I want the sunshine back.

When Blogs Go Bad – The Fall of TheDailyWTF.com

I hate to see a good thing get ruined.
One of my daily joys was waiting until around 1pm when TheDailyWTF would update with a well written story about some workplace / tech related problem that really made the reader go “Wha de FU?” The articles were very well put together, the story behind each posting was interesting and detailed, and it was nice hearing about oddities in the tech sector each day.
Around the middle of last year, the writers added a new feature, the “Code Snippet Of The Day”. A sidebar bit of content where code-specific WTF’s were posted and readers would comment on where the problems were and how they might be fixed. I found the CodeSOD entries somewhat distracting – the writing style was stilted and boring, and would classh with the normal content.
Then, the site changed it’s name.
It was no longer “The Daily WTF” – it was now “Worse Than Failure”. The various reasonings behind this move were shallow and rang hollow. It was simply the next step in a blog owner trying to broaden their content base to be able to provide more diverse content. New posters were brought in, and the article quality dropped precipitously. Instead of one high quality article a day, we had a 3-5 poorly written articles, intermixed with CodeSOD’s.
Now, the final insult.
This week they are running “Classics Week”. Now, I’m all for nostalgia. It’s great going back into the archives and pulling out truly outstanding articles from the past and reminiscing. But the authors on TheDailyWTF are doing no such thing. They are posting classic articles from as recent as nine weeks ago.
Ladies and gentlemen, a classic is something I may have missed in the distant past, or something that stood above all the others and should be brought back. When doing ‘classics’, you don’t just repost recent articles.
I’m sorry, but TheDailyWTF has destroyed itself in the process of trying to expand itself, a process all too common in successful blogs. I bear no antipathy toward Alex Papadimoulis, the owner of TheDailyWTF, but if I were to make one suggestion to him, it would be “Alex, stop. Return to what you were doing well. The new content is not working.”

Look what I found in the woods!

P5010027One of the things I like best about the Geocache caches is that they’re rarely placed in random places without anything interesting around them. Last week I visited a spot in Northboro where a storm in the late 80’s flattened 5+ acres of pine trees with a microburst.

Today’s hike and find involved going 2+ miles into the woods near Nobscot Mountain (it’s not much of a mountain, but it’s a great hike), not far from the famous Wayside Inn. There, buried deep in the woods with no markers or anything, I found… Fords Folly.

According to the geocache site, this structure was built in the 20’s by Henry Ford:

n 1923, Henry Ford stepped in to protect the Wayside Inn as a “splendid example of colonial America.” He purchased nearly 1500 acres surrounding the Inn, built a traditional New England style chapel, a field stone grist mill (rumored to be the “most photographed historic site”) and moved The Redstone School or “Little Red Schoolhouse” (of Mary and her little lamb fame) to its current site. In addition, Ford moved the old Parmenter-Garfield general store from Sudbury center to Marlboro and built “Ford’s Folly” (the 60 ft. dam up on Nobscott Mountain, so named for its refusal to hold water despite years of labor). Obsessed with historic authenticity, all construction and renovations had to be accomplished in “the traditional manner” using only man and oxen power.

Further information is available at Wikipedia about the Wayside and the abandoned dam.

When I saw the entry on the geocaching site, I was certainly NOT expecting to find a huge 30′ dam in the middle of the woods. The entire hike took about 3 hours total, including finding 3 geocaches along the route. gmaps-pedometer has the route, as best as I can map it. It clocked it out at 3.6 miles, but given all the twists and turns of the trail, as well as a couple forays to interesting vistas or other trails, the total hike was probably closer to 5 miles. It certainly ranks up there as one of the more tiring jaunts I’ve done, but the weather was perfect, the trees were all a-whistle with wind, and the bugs haven’t -quite- made it out yet.

Good things aligning.

It’s easy to gripe and moan and stone-kick when doing business travel. While it’s become routine for me, it’s really easy to fall into the “man this sucks. I miss my family” mindset. But this trip, I tried to schedule it carefully, work out what I was trying to accomplish, and stay focused on what needed to be done.

So here I am, on my way home, and generally, things worked out okay…

  • In three days, I got an enormous amount of JEE development and design done. Much code was checked in, it works, and the client is happy.
  • Designs I implemented almost two years ago in this project are coming to fruition. This week was the first time we discussed implementing the first application on the framework I designed. Everyone is excited.
  • Clipper continues to be a faithful companion, despite it’s handicap of running Windows.
  • On the way home, I’m able to stop at one of my favorite food establishments, and partake in a beef burger ritual.
  • Double bonus – said restaurant has an open WAP nearby. Thank you whoever you are.
  • From nowhere, a paying client has contracted with Stonekeep to do a series of large updates to Keystone. Wootie!
  • Mosaic is preparing for the final signoff on the design of our homes this Sunday. This is a huge step – it’s where we tell the architects “Go!” and step back to watch the fun.

All in all, a mighty good week. Now all I have to do is drive home in the rain. Fortunately, that’s what XM is for.

Best Tech Decision in the last 10 years?

I’m beginning to think one of the most brilliant changes to come down the tech pike in the last 10 years is the realization that a USB port provides a nice steady 5 volts at 100ma of power to any device attached to it. The device can even request more current (up to 500ma).

Since just about every computer nowadays includes a USB port, most manufacturers of mobile equipment have made it so their equipment can recharge from an available USB port. For those of us who carry a lot of extraneous gear around, this has eliminated the need to haul a half dozen different power supplies along, and negated the need to invest in bulky and frequently twitchy “universal” power supply solutions.

For my part, here’s a list of gear I regularly carry around..

  • Treo 650 – with a retractible ‘sync / charger’ cable from Treonauts, I have one small cable I can use for hotsyncing and recharging.
  • Jabra BT500 headphone – Jabra thoughtfully provided a very short USB cable (about a foot long) that is perfect for just parking the headphone next to the laptop to recharge.
  • Sony MZ-RH1 MD recorder/player – This has been fantastic – though the recharging isn’t as fast as my Treo, the connector types are identical to my camera cable (and many other devices), so a special cable is not needed.

Because of this, the only ‘power’ supply I need to have with me is the one for my laptop.

All is not peaches and cream, however. My Olympus C-770 camera does not charge off the USB bus, unfortunately, and has resulted in me being stuck with a dead battery on more than one occasion. I chalk this to the relative agedness of the camera, and take heart in knowing that the NEXT camera I get will definitely have USB recharge capability.

Boston and Boston Metro Coffeeshops

As part of my somewhat nomadic working style, I like getting out and about and spending time in local coffeeshops and restaurants. I can do 98% of my business from my laptop, therefore all I need is a comfortable environment, free wireless, and a good supply of coffee.The problem is, trying to actually FIND decent establishments to fill this need can be a real challenge. I’m not talking about Starbucks here – I’d rather support local businesses and encourage free wireless.

So in an effort to help out others with similar pursuits, here’s a list of free wireless coffeeshops and / or businesses that I’ve found comfortable for telecommuting or just ‘out of home’ work.

  • Continental Cafe
    Location / Website: Acton
    Private coffee shop, very comfortable, includes a deli.

  • Diesel Cafe
    Location / Website: Davis Square, Somerville (Warning: annoying flash website with sound :-/ )
    The current mecca point for Somerville / Cambridge area bohemians. Note – Diesel’s wireless is NOT actually free. But it’s a good place nonetheless.

  • Crown Plaza
    Location / Website: Natick, on Rt 9
    In-lobby comfortable seating, and a bar / restaurant along one side. Comfortable for meetings, work, and quietly getting things done.

  • Panera Bread
    Panera has many locations all over Boston, see this page to find one near you. Most have free wireless. I personally use the ones in Natick, Marlborough, and Burlington.

  • Bear Rock Cafe
    Location / Website: Leominster
    I found this place while over visiting my mom’s in Leominster. Interestingly, it was all of 40′ away from a Starbucks, but had free wireless and a full deli, and was doing good business.

  • Cafe Ziba
    Location / Website: Rt 2a in Acton
    I’ve never actually been here, but it was recommended.

  • The Java Room
    Location / Website: Chelmsford
    A nice shop out on 495, comfortable and good coffee.

If you know of others in the area, leave them in comments, and I’ll continue updating the list…

Scrounging

I’m a scrounger.
I can’t help it, I love it. The joy and *squee* ness I have for something I acquire is made all the better if I get it at some amazing discount, or find it under a box of ‘junk’ and get it for a song, or get it via some bizarre wrangling where I end up with the better end of the deal.
Flea markets are the best for this. You can naturally divide flea markets into ‘tech’ events and ‘family’ events. The family ones aren’t as interesting for the piles of tech gear, but you do have the chance of someone unloading a piece of equipment they know nothing about. “Yeah well, grampa had this in his room, we don’t know what it is, it’s in German, you want it? $5.” – I’m sure someone has acquired an Enigma machine that way (I haven’t, but I still hold out hope.)
But the tech flea markets are the best. For me it goes back to my happy days attending the Trenton Computer Festival every spring in New Jersey. This was (and still is) an epic event – we’d plan for it for weeks, load up the trailer / van / car / truck / whatever, and arrive on site at some ungodly hour (usually in the neighborhood of 6:30am). The flea market didn’t open until 10, and in many cases, most of the best deals have already happened between the vendors by the time the general public showed up. It was great to see 4 guys go by hauling a big equipment cabinet “Dude! 2 RL02 drives, and controller!” “Hey, good find!” We’d frequently have radios rigged up “Bob, I found a pile of Unibus controllers in a 4 slot backplane. Need it?” “See if they have an RLV11 in there, okay?” “Right…” It was awe inspiring.
This week has brought up another scrounging opportunity though. In the last few days, I’ve been to 2 fire sales. Computer businesses that are closing out their stores and liquidating their inventory. Sometimes this makes for amazing bargains, but it’s totally the luck of the draw, whether you can spot something before someone else does, and how you time it.
The first one was a visit to the sad remains of Comp USA in Framingham. Probably one of the last of the ‘computer stores’ around (anyone remember places like Computerland?), CompUSA is closing a large number of their stores. This place had that “doom!” feel that many of these stores get as they liquidate. Any pretense of civility by the staff is gone, they just want to be done with it.
Unfortunately, CompUSA’s prices started at the astronomical level (which I’m sure contributed to their downfall), so when they advertise “20% off sale! Everything must go!”, it’s not exactly something you go charging into expecting massive bargains.
Regardless, I did score a few things. Picked up a copy of Black and White 2 and C&C Generals for around $12 each (normally they’re around $40), as well as a few other tidbits. Many of the things I might be interested in were either gone already (like a Nokia 770, or still ridiculously overpriced (ATI Radeon high end cards which RETAIL for $250 ish were marked down a whopping 15%. No thanks). I think they’re still there, still trying to get rid of stuff, I’ll try and stop over there tomorrow and see what’s left.
The other opportunity was a very small computer business in Watertown closing down. This was one of those friendly neighborhood computer stores, owned and operated by one person, that’s been around for years. The fellow had some problems going on, and decided to sell everything in the store for $1 a pound. Now we’re talkin!
Unfortunately, all the mail and notifications I saw said they were going to open at 1pm on Friday. I got there at the crack of 1pm, and probably 80% of the stuff was gone already. I waved hi to a few friends, and picked through what was left. In the end, I found a very nice aluminum hauling cart that was tucked under a table, as well as a box full of power strips, ethernet cables, and other handy tidbits. Total price: $42. Can’t really argue with that.
My next opportunity for scrounging will come when the MIT Swap Fest resumes in a few weeks. That’s always a load of fun, though it’s gotten somewhat uniform (the same vendors with the same things every month). Occasionally there’s gems there, and I go, as always, for the thrill of finding something Neat.

A View of Truth

In Friday’s Swift, James Randi’s weekly column, he cited a remarkablebook by Andrew Keen called “The Cult of the Amateur“.
I’m reproducing the block that Randi mentioned – I believe his selection is excellent and states much of what I feel is at issue in internet commentary, and indeed, the way people perceive ‘truth’ today…

Truth… is being “flattened,” as we create an on-demand, personalized version of the truth, reflecting our own individual myopia. One person’s truth becomes as “true” as anyone else’s. Today’s media is shattering the world into a billion personalized truths, each seemingly equally valid and worthwhile. To quote Richard Edelman, the founder, president and CEO of Edelman PR, the world’s largest privately owned public relations company:
In this era of exploding media technologies there is no truth except the truth you create for yourself.
This undermining of truth is threatening the quality of civil public discourse, encouraging plagiarism and intellectual property theft and stifling creativity. When advertising and public relations are disguised as news, the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred. Instead of more community, knowledge, or culture, all that Web 2.0 really delivers is more dubious content, from anonymous sources, hijacking our time and playing to our gullibility.
Need proof? Let’s look at that army of perjurious penguins – “Al Gore’s Army of Penguins” to be exact. Featured on YouTube, the film, a crude “self-made” satire of Gore’s pro-environment movie An Inconvenient Truth, belittles the seriousness of [his] message by featuring a penguin version of Al Gore preaching to other penguins about global warning.
But [this film] is not just another homemade example of YouTube inanity. Though many of the 120,000 people who viewed this video undoubtedly assumed it was the work of some SUV-driving amateur with an aversion to recycling, in reality, the Wall Street Journal traced the real authorship of this neo-con satire to DCI Group, a conservative Washington, D.C. public relationships and lobbying firm whose clients include ExxonMobil. The video is nothing more than political spin, enabled and perpetuated by the anonymity of Web 2.0, masquerading as independent art. In short, it is a big lie.

Trying to navigate the information overload we have today to try and get ‘reality’ out of the morass is a challenge I personally face every day. Aside from the deep philosophical overtones, I have a firm faith (if that is the proper word) in reality and truth. Superstition and fantasy masquerading as fact has no place in my worldview. To me, spin, misdirection, and deception, like the video mentioned above, are no better.