Entropy
Clark’s Restatement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics:
Chaos Ensues.
Give the Gift of Art
Looking for a unique holiday gift? Give the gift of Art, in the form of a signed photography print. My good friend Sean has opened an eBay store just in time for the season. He already has a number of his prints available, and is adding more daily.
I’m putting Moon over Charlotte on my Christmas list. This is one of my favorite photos of his. When I bought my Epson Photo Stylus 960 last winter, I asked Sean to send me a full res TIFF of this shot, to use testing the printer out. I took a 4×6 print of the picture to show to some of my co-workers. It’s been pinned to my office wall ever since, and continues to draw comments from everyone who sees it. The 12″x8″ enlargement has got to be stunning.
Syncronicity
It’s funny how certain topics seem to show up around the web about the same time I’m thinking about them. Sometimes there’s a common trigger, but alot of times there isn’t. Here’s some of both (and some of neither).
First off, a handy tip I picked up looking at someone else’s del.icio.us bookmarks- if you prefix a tag with an asterisk, it will appear at the top of your list of tags. I use this to maintain several categories that stay at the top of the page, including *toblog, *toread, and *tobuy. Once I’ve blogged/read/bought the item in question, I just remove that tag (or occaisionally the whole bookmark.
Here’s one I forgot to blog: on Oct 10, I *toblog-marked the RadioShark from Griffin Technologies (makers of the ultra cool Powermate and iTrip). It’s essentially a TiVo for radio, allowing you to record live radio and play it back later (perhaps on an iPod). When I saw this, I thought it might help with the problem of finding something good on the radio at a random time of day. Within a day or two, I learned about Podcasting; by Oct 15 I had blogged about it. I don’t even own an iPod (yet), but I rarely listen to the radio anymore. I do have a stack of 20+ CD-Rs in my car, full of already-listened-to podcasts.
Several days ago, I wrote about losing my Bloglines ‘unread’ metadata. I had over 3000 unread items, and I ended up deciding it was probably a good idea to start fresh anyway. The very next day, Jeffrey Veen wrote about conciously making the decision to clean up his unread RSS count in his desktop aggregator. He wrote of “literally hundreds of subscriptions haunting me each day; a bright red counter showing unread posts creeping up into the thousands.”
Dave Winer then commented on Jeffrey’s post on his own blog, delivering the alarming news that “so many people are using RSS the wrong way.” Sorry, I just don’t see it. RSS is a content delivery mechanism. It is optimized for certain uses and usage patterns, but it is at the core a way of delivering information. The right way to use information is what ever way that information is most useful to the consumer. For me, I want to see everything. I may not read it all, but simply filtering everything brings me some degree of awareness of what I skipped.
Having said that, Dave does have a point. His vision of the “right” way to use RSS is not without merit. He wrote:
It’s not like email. Let the river of items flow through your queue, scroll over them with a scroll bar, and don’t let the software tell you you’re falling behind. Your time is what’s valuable, there’s no value to the items you didn’t read. If it’s important it’ll pop up again. RSS is not email. Don’t sort them out into little boxes that you have to go to….
There are probably some feeds I subscribe to which I could apply this model to, and should think about doing so. On the other hand, there are feeds for which I never want to miss any content. Just last weekend (prior to losing my unread counts), I caught up on Tim Bray’s feed- over 200 items dating back over 6 months. I never should have let it go unread so long, but I knew it would take me time to catch up since I like to read everything. The limitations of the Bloglines interface (reading unread items in a feed is all-or-nothing) are also to blame. But I’m glad I did catch up. I learned a lot about many intersting topics, got a recommendation for a book which I’m now reading, and discovered Magnatune.
Security, in many forms, has been on my mind ever since I recently re-read Cryptonomicon. Data security, communications security, and backing up of important data. One of these days, I’m planning to write a series of articles about some of the things I’ve done to get more secure (but not today). One of the things I haven’t yet done is get serious about backing up my Powerbook. I should know better- I’ve been on the wrong end of a horrible crash before, including one that was potentially career-limiting. To say I got religion about backing up work stuff is putting it mildly. At home, I’m not quite so diligent.
So I was pretty interested when I read Mark’s take (at BoingBoing) on an OS X backup solution called SuperDuper. Looks like it could be just the thing, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Jeremy Zawodny wrote about improving his backups across all of his systems. He’s now using SuperDuper for his Mac.
I can perform my backups onto my 120GB external Firewire harddrive, but Jeremy has built a Raid-5 backup cluster on a Linux server (same link as above). This got me to thinking (again) about LaCie’s Bigger Disk, now available in 1.0 and 1.6 Terabyte sizes. They aren’t exactly cheap, but just look at it: You can get 1 TB of storage in a portable, 5 1/4″ 2U form factor on a Firewire 400/800 interface for $999 list (10-15% less if you shop). A terabyte for under kilobuck? Wow.
Thinking of my Firewire Drive and the Bigger Disk then got me thinking about the Linksys NSLU2, a USB2.0-based Network Storage Device. Plugin a USB2.0 Harddrive, turn it on, and it becomes a Samba server on your network. What makes this über-cool is that like its cousin the Linksys WRT54G wireless router, it’s a little Linux box, and much cool hacking is already going on. It’s a shame that it only works with USB2.0 drives and not Firewire. And of course, today’s hack-a-day hack was on how to use the linksys nslu2 as an itunes server.
Jumping back to Neal Stephenson’s Cryptomonicon… I’ve been wanting to read his Baroque Cycle, which expands on Cryptonomicon, but several hundred years in the past. Due to a long standing policy of mine, I won’t start the triology until all three books are published (yes, I’m a Robert Jordan fan). Seems I won’t have to wait any longer. Looks like I missed the early October release of book three.
Which reminds me, I’ve really got to put together my Christmas list.
Speaking of lists, the Markdown original of the post has a list of all of the links. Twenty-eight. Must be a new personal best.
As long as I’m tying everything together (and yet rambling), here’s one of my favorite albums of all time.
Can you see me now? Crap.
Several weeks ago, I got a surprise when trying to use my camcorder, Canon ZR65MC. After turning it on in camera mode, the image through the eyepiece was black, although the timecode and other overlayed information was visible. A quick check of the lens cap revealed that I had not, in fact, forgen to uncork the device. Opening the side-door view screen didn’t help… same problem. Some tinkering revealed that playback still worked. I thought perhaps I had somehow changed a setting, and spent several minutes trying to figure out how to restore the video. By the time I had given up, the event I wanted to capture had already begun.
Although I forgot about this for a couple of weeks, I’ve resumed my search for an answer. I could find nothing in the manual or online support website. Looks like warranty service will be needed. Fortunately, Sherri does a great job of hanging on to receipts, and I tend to keep boxes for exensive items. The camcorder was purchased last year on 11/29, so I’m still (barely) within the year’s warranty. I have to call an 800 number Monday morning to get shipping instructions. Oh, Joy.
Doing a little more digging, I found that I’m not the only one having problems. Seems alot of people with the ZR65MC, as well as the ZR60 and ZR70MC (the other two cameras that were on the market at the same time) have seen the same problem, and generally around the end of the warranty- some before, many after. At least mine happened before. I’ve been trying to see if anyone’s posted about this in Amazon’s review section, but Amazon is slow beyond use (yet again, but that’s another post). This year, Canon has a new crop of camcorders out- the ZR80, ZR85, and ZR90. I have no idea if they suffer the same flaws as their older kin, but if you plan to buy a Canon camcorder, I suggest you hang on to the receipt. I’ll post more here after I’ve talked to Canon.
Update: Canon repaired the camcorder under warranty, and I had it back less than three weeks after shipping it. Read the complete update.
Oops
This is what my folder list looked like yesterday on Bloglines. As you can see, I had a lot of unread items. I’ve been slowly catching up for months, but I’m pretty meticulous about reading things if I’m subscribed (eventually). Probably the collecting bug I’ve got.
Anyway, in case you haven’t used Bloglines, inside those folders are individual feed subscriptions. You can expand the folders to read each subscription individually, or you can click on the folder to read all of the items in all of the feeds in that folder. Guess what happens if you click the top-level folder?
I accidently did just that yesterday. Realizing what I had done as soon as I did it, I panicked, and closed Firefox as quickly as I could, hoping the request wouldn’t go through (I was at work, and our web proxy is a dog). Of course, it did go through, and closing the browser was a big mistake. Bloglines now has a feature that lets you mark all articles currently being viewed from a feed as unread… but only when first viewing them. By the time I’d restarted my browser, it was too late. There are a few ways I could have viewed what I’d lost, but no way to recover the state information for future use. I even had the Powerbook running and tuned into Bloglines at the same time- I put Firefox in the Mac into Offline mode, which let me get the screenshot, and I could have used that to see what feeds I needed to review for lost items. In the end, however, I decided to accept the loss of my unread items gracefully, and start over with a clean Bloglines inbox.
Magnatune
“We’re not evil.” If ever there was a great slogan, that one’s gotta be in the running. It’s the slogan of Magnatune, the open record label.
Magnatune is a record label which sells downloadable music in a number of formats, including actual CDs. All of their music is Create Commons licensed (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike ). You can listen to everything online- every song in its entirety. You can purchase the music by the album, and decide what to pay- from $5 to $18 US, add $4.97 to your chosen price for a physical CD. Choose your price wisely, as the artists recieve 50% of every sale. $8 is the recommended price. Pricing is also available in Euros and Sterling. You can even license the music for commercial use, directly online. Choose your use type, duration, etc., and the price is calculated instantly.
Of course, the music is what really matters. I’ve listened to a number of items from the Classical and Jazz/Blues genres, and I’m very impressed. Other genres include New Age, Metal/Punk, Rock/Pop, and Electronica.
My favorite so far is the album The Depths of a Year by pianist Ehren Starks, with Kate Gurba on cello. I’m always on the lookout for good instrumental music to listen to at work while writing code. The album is described as “piano and cello jazzy new age.” The first track, “The Tale of Room 620″, is just indescribably good. Give it a listen, and look around. You’re bound to find something great. If you do, leave me a comment below with your recommendations. I’ve already got three or four albums I plan to purchase, once I’ve given them a full listen and decided on the purchase price.
November Blogging Challenge
Last month, Dugh issued the October Blogging Challenge, which grew from a week of daily posts to a month of daily posts. This month, I’d like to do something a little different.
As you probably know, today is the official release date of Mozilla Firefox 1.0. Firefox is a free, open source web browser. Not only that, it’s also the best web browser I have ever used, and one of my favorite pieces of software. It is easy to install, simple to use, and yet more powerful than the marketshare leader. It is highly configurable via extensions, yet you could never install a single extension and still have an incredibly useable, powerful browser. It is one of a handful of products which I can say has changed the way I use computers. It is made for all users, not just tech geeks like myself. In the past year, even through several beta versions, I’ve encouraged many people to switch- including my children. If you’ve never used it before, I encourage you to Get Firefox… but that is not the point of this post, or of the Challenge.
Of all of Firefox’s features, the one I want to focus on is the people. Firefox is a product of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization created to support the development of the open source Mozilla platform. Thousands of volunteers have contributed… bug reports, code patches, suggestions, themes, extensions, and even cash. There are many people, none of whom I know, who deserve thanks today. Ben Goodger, Chief Engineer for the Firefox project, touched on this today in his 1.0 release anouncement post on his Firefox Weblog. Ben himself deserves thanks as well, for seeing this project through and delivering a world-class product. On a personal note, he even found time to comment on this site when I complained about the Firefox marketing effort several months ago. No complaints now!
So to Ben Goodger, everyone at the Mozilla Foundation, and everyone who has contributed to the Firefox project - Thank You. You have done a very great service to the community of the web.
The November Blogging Challenge, then, is simple. If there is an open source project, a useful website, or even a blog which has benefited you in some way, blog a “Thank You” this month. Tell everyone about why you like it, and tell those who made it that their work is appreciated. If you have the means, consider supporting your favorite open source project with a donation, if they accept them. Today I donated $50 to the Mozilla Foundation as another way of saying “Thank You,” and “Keep up the good work.”
Update: If you participate in the challenge, leave a comment or trackback ping this post!
Atomic
Tonight I added an Atom feed (0.3) to the site. The link is in the Subscribe boxlet on the right. I’ve also added a feed validation link for this feed in the Made Possible By boxlet.
Why an Atom feed? I’ve always felt Atom to be a promising project. Why now? I’d always planned to add an Atom feed, but I’ve felt no urgency as the spec is continuing to evolve. However, I’ve got some ideas I want to explore for using the Atom publication format and protocol in a project; more on that when I’ve had some time to refine my thoughts (and maybe write some proof-of-concept code). For now, I’m reading up on the current states of the specs, poking around the wiki, and reading some of the mailing list archives.
Adding the feed to Blosxom was straightforward. I installed the atomfeed plugin, which got me 95% of the way there. Since the last update of the atomfeed plugin, the spec has added <atom:modified> as a required child element of <atom:feed>. I was able to implement this by modifying the built-in flavour and using the lastmodified plugin to supply the value. Putting my name in atomfeed’s $default_author config variable was the only other step I had to complete to get the feed to validate. I’ve posted my version of the atomfeed plugin which contains my fix for the <atom:modified> issue, but does require the lastmodified plugin.
A Trip to the Apple Store
After a long, busy weekend, yesterday was a long, busy Saturday. After everything wound down last night, we decided to go get some dinner at the mall. Of course, this was the perfect excuse for me to wander into the new Apple store.
The last time I was at the Apple store, I played with the iPods for a while. I was impressed by the sound quality of the headphones they use to demo the iPods, but I didn’t have time to inquire about them. Last night I learned that they are Bose Triport Headphones, and they cost $199 at the Apple store. No wonder they sound so good. Of course, the going rate everywhere else is $149. As much as I like the Apple store, 33% markup over street price on third-party merchandising is foolish and insulting.
Speaking of expensive, they also had the new 30″ Cinema Display available to play with. All I can say is “WOW”. What an incredible piece of hardware. Just for fun I opened three browser windows. Side-by-side. And they fit. No way I can justify the expense, but wow. Just breathtaking.
Another product I got to see for the first time is the new 20″ iMac G5. It’s a very slick piece of hardware. I’ve been wanting a desktop Mac for a while, and had been thinking about buying a Power Mac G5 after the new year. Given the price of Power Macs and Cinema Displays, I figured I’d use my existing VGA monitor for now, and look at getting a 20″ or 23″ cinema display in a year or so. But given the price/performance of a 20″ iMac, I’m seriously considering getting one of these.
Challenging
October has ended, and so has the October Blogging Challenge. Started by Dugh as a one-week challenge, I foolishly re-challenged him to a full month of blogging. He accepted, as did Uncle Roger. It was… challenging. I missed two days, but I did publish 31 posts… even if some of them were lazy.
It’s been a lot of fun, and good blogging ‘exercise’. We’ve been kicking around some ideas for a new challenge, but we haven’t settled on anything yet. Dugh is soliciting suggestions. I’m going to try to keep blogging at least once a day, but it will be nice to have any pressure to do so!