Fiat Lux

Wii Is Here To Play

I promised Scott a Nintendo Wii for his birthday, but it took a little time to actually track one down and get it here (thank you, eBay!). And yes, I am probably a fool for overpaying on eBay rather than camping a line for one, but I'm too damn old to sit out in the cold all night for a game console.

So far, we've set the console up, gotten it connected to the Internet, downloaded all the upates, and created two Mii avatars. After dinner, we'll creack open the games (it came with Wii Sports, plus we bought Zelda and the Marvel game) and see how we do with those.

Apparently you can add Wii-owning friends to your Address Book and then their avatars will wander across your screen along with your own. If you've got a Wii and want to friend up, leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail and we can exchange numbers. I'd rather not post our console number in public.

Geek Humor

Seen in Flickr today. Apparently it's a gag, not for real.

On the one hand, this type of commercial would be a natural extension to the existing "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" campaign Apple has been running.

On the other hand, would doing so give the Zune too much legitimacy? Probably.

Fun With Google Code Search Tricks

Shelley Powers decided to do something fun with Google Code Search and post the results on her blog: Search the developers' comments for amusing tidbits. No surprise, "Stupid users" is all over the place.

Her favorite is the search for "piece of shit". If you're geeky, it's very funny reading. Lots of bashing on IE and much much more.

Technolust

Oooh. A less expensive Treo. Me want.

At DigitalLife 2006 in New York City Thursday, Palm introduced a new Treo smartphone aimed at average consumers rather than just business customers. The Treo 680 is a quad-band GSM handset that runs Palm OS and comes in a number of different colors.

Palm says it has designed the Treo 680 to reach a wide range of users around the world, and has simplified the device's software to make that goal a reality. "Really what we focused on in the past is the mobile professionals," Palm CEO Ed Colligan said in a press conference.

Although it comes with largely the same feature set as the Treo 650, Palm has updated the 680's phone application to version 3.0, which offers a completely new user interface. Favorites have been simplified and contacts are now integrated directly into the dial software.

In addition, Palm has included a wired car kit, a "My Treo" user guide and knowledge base support system, as well as a new version of the Treo's e-mail software known as VersaMail 3.5. Multimedia, blogging and mapping utilities come with the 680 as well. Google finally released a version of its Maps software for Palm on Thursday.

I'm still reasonably happy with my Razr, though, so I doubt I'll be buying one of these the day the come out. The Razr won't last forever though......

Del.icio.us Followup

I'm liking the centralized repository of bookmarks aspect of del.icio.us; I can bookmark something from school or work and not have to e-mail it to myself at home. That's useful. I've also tried finding interesting stuff from other people's tags, which has been reasonably useful.

I haven't tried uploading my "master" bookmark list, because that would mean having to tag a few hundred links, and that's a lot of work.

At any rate, if you want to take a look:

Better Late Than Never

I finally signed up for del.icio.us today. Just what I needed, more 'net toys.... Still, it should be fun to put it through its paces. if i decide to keep using it, I'll add a network badge to the site.

Web 2.0 and Me

When I was younger, I would sometimes wonder how it was that some older people would seem to get ‘stuck’ on certain points of time. Relatives who would continue to dress as if it were still 30 years ago. Teachers whose music collection consisted of the same groups they had been listening to since high school. I just didn’t get it. Why didn’t they want to change with the times, try news things, and stay with the flow? Wasn’t the new stuff better?

I might understand it a bit more now, because I just don’t get one of the new Web 2.0 technology trends these days: browser-based software. What exactly makes it so much better than the current solutions?

For example, take Meebo. If you haven’t heard of them, Meebo is a company that has created a website which allows you to log into various IM clients - AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc - all on the same web page. More recently, they’ve added a “Meebo Me” web widget that you can put onto any website, and then have live real-time chats with anyone who visits that web page, no additional software required.

At any rate, I just don’t get what is so hot about this. I can see where if you’re traveling or on a public computer it might occasionally be useful to be able to log into an IM client via a web page, but I do not see how having to keep a web page open all day to use an application is so vastly superior to having a chat client installed on your hard drive. And I definitely don’t see the long-term business model, unless their plan is to have their technology acquired by someone like MySpace and cash out fast.

I can, however, see that if there were a way to connect Meebo into Trillian, or Adium, or even some kind of standalone desktop app or widget, then I’d be really loving MeeboMe. And so would many companies. Being able to do real-time chat on your webpage, without forcing your visitor to have to log into anything or install extra software, is a big plus. If Meebo launches something like this, I’ll be a big fan.

But for now, I feel like I am missing something here. Am I getting old and being left behind? Do I just not “get” the Web 2.0 models? Is it just that Meebo’s still in alpha and hasn’t launched its full set of features yet? Or is this a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Choosing and Learning a Photo Editing Application

Apropos of my comments on the last photo I posted, I need to find a good graphics editing application. I already have at least three of them on my hard drive (not including whatever graphics apps came as part of Windows XP or MS Office): Photoshop 7, ImageReady and Picasa. And of those three, none quite meets my needs.

Photoshop, is, of course, the gold standard when it comes to graphics manipulation applications. It can be made to do just about anything, if you know how to do it (and can stand waiting for the program to load -- it takes forever, and I have a pretty good system here). And really, that's the problem. Even after a number of years, I have no clue how to use 80% of what Photoshop has to offer. There are a lot of books and classes out there for Photoshop, so it's not like I can't fill in the gap. And I may end up doing that if I can't find a better alternative. But still, using Photoshop for my personal photo editing feels like I'm using a Formula 1 race car to go buy the groceries. It's nice to have all that power, but I'd really prefer to have a daily driver for just puttering around town.

I also have Adobe's ImageReady program. It's more or less a junior version of Photoshop, with some of the high-powered editing taken out and some new features added to make resizing photos for the Web easier. And you'd think that would be exactly what I was looking for, given my complaints about Photoshop? Well, it is, but it's not. I hate the selection of filters that come in ImageReady. Adobe left all the cutesy filters -- like the ones that will make your image look like a charcoal drawing or a mosaic -- and took out the few Photoshop filters I actually knew how to use and liked using. I can crop and resize photos with ease, but editing them is still a hassle.

Finally, I have Picasa. And I don't like it either. It's reasonably intuitive to use, and does about 90% of what I need it to as far as photo editing goes, but unfortunately it also doubes as a photo management system. I've been keeping photos on my hard drive for a long time. I have a system in place for organizing them, and I really do not need Picasa trying to impose its own methodology onto my system. Even more annoying is the fact that you have to go through a series of steps and export photos into a new folder if you want to actually view the changes you have made to your photos in any application other than Picasa. More than anything else, this is a dealbreaker. It's a huge pain in the butt. If I open a photo for editing, I want to keep the edits! I don't want to have to export the editied photo to a new directory to have an edited version of my original photo. Finally, since Google owns Picasa, the interface is geared towards Gmail and Blogger, with no interface at all for Flickr.

On the OSS side of the house, I tried The Gimp on my Mac at work. Meh. It's powerful but the UI was kind of a pain.

There are probably hundreds of alternative applications out there. Scott has already suggested a couple for me to try, and try them I shall. But I'd like to hear from you, too. What's your favorite photo editor? If it's Photoshop, how did you learn to get the most out of it?

Last-Minute Argh!

I have officially had it with my 3G iPod. Although it works beautifully as a stand-alone MP3 player, I'm sick to death of having to spend 1-2 hours hammering on my PC trying to get the damn FireWire connection to work every time I want to sync it with iTunes.

I'm going to put them both up on eBay when I get home.

Powweb Hosting Woes

So, this spring, Powweb, the company I use for my webhosting was sold. This caused me some concern, because it was announced to customers that as a part of the deal, all the sites hosted on the old web servers would be migrated to some new servers. And oh yea, that would involve an OS switch from FreeBSD to Linux.

I have my preferences for OSes, but I'm hardly a zealot on the subject. FreeBSD and Linux are both perfectly acceptable platforms for web hosting, and I'm not going to get too upset about which one my hosting company uses. However, I also know that switching from one OS to another is bound to cause problems. Things are installed in different places, some modules may not be installed at all, paths change ... in short, it tends to break stuff. I was concerned.

My site is not all that complex. I have a copy of Movable Type and a copy of Gallery up and running, and I have only one plug-in that touches my otherwise vanilla installation -- MT-Blacklist. It's a critical part of my website because it makes managing the trackback and comment spam that are the plague of a blogger really simple.

So of course, Powweb's migration of my site from the old servers to the new ones managed to utterly break MT-Blacklist.

If you're interested, here's the error I get when I try to use MT-Blacklist now:

An error occurred: Out of memory during "large" request for 2147487744 bytes, total sbrk() is 5480448 bytes at ../../lib/Storable.pm (autosplit into ../../lib/auto/Storable/thaw.al) line 366, at /home/users/web/b1970/[username]/htdocs/lib/MT/PluginData.pm line 28

I have done some web-based scripting, but that was a long time ago, and only using Cold Fusion. I can customize the settings on someone else's code, and if I really focused in hard I could probably make some very basic tweaks to an existing script, but troubleshooting something like this, especially on a server where I don't know what's installed on it nor what the paths are, is simply beyond me.

At any rate, I opened a ticket with Powweb Support about this problem, and waited. And waited. Every other day, I would send Support an e-mail asking what was up, and each time I was told, "Please be patient, someone is working on your problem." So I waited. And manually deleted the pings and trackback spam that I kept on getting. After Day 6, I sent a slightly more annoyed e-mail to Support saying that 6 days to fix one script was more than enough, and that moving to a new company was starting to look like a good option. I got a slightly more effusive response, explaining that the issue was being "forwarded to our senior specialist". I started looking at new web hosts, but decided to give Support a chance to do its thing.

Today though, I finally got the much awaited response from their senior specialist. And what was it? "We Googled your problem, and here's a blogger in December 2004 who also had this problem. Try their fix and see if that helps."

Some "Senior Specialist".

Now, I am pissed off. I waited 8 days thinking I was going to get some expert help, and all I got was a Google search? I can do that myself. I was expecting that someone would look at the script, notice what it calls, and then compare it to what is on the new server to see whether the switch from BSD to Linux caused modules to move, be missing, or act differently. That's the kind of thing that I as an end-user can't do.

Yes I know, a real geek would self-host and avoid the problem entirely. I'd rather pay for shared hosting than self-host from the DSL line in my home. Our DSL provider is good, but we do have outages from time to time, and I want the bandwidth, monitoring, uptime & redundancy that you get from a professional host.

In some ways, I'm SOL, and it's my own fault. MT-Blacklist has been integrated into MovableType since version 3.x, and I'm still using the plug-in version with MT 2.6x, so I can't go to the author for support: the response will be, "Upgrade". Which I have not wanted to do, because that would entail re-customizing all of the Movable Type templates in order to get the look and feel of my site back, and I didn't see the point of doing that when everything was working quite nicely the way it was.

With the long weekend coming up, and us not having much in the way of plans, switching web hosts and/or upgrading my Movable Type installation might be a good project to take up. But then the issue becomes -- will I just be trading one set of problems for another?

*mumble grumble grr*

"Linux = Evil" -- A Joke or Not?

Ran across this assessment of Linux as Un-American today:

Unlike Windows, which is a mature commercial product which is normally included with every new computer, Linux is given away. Now it may not sound like much of a problem, after all there is very little profit in merely giving a product away.

This would be certainly true were in not for the Linux project’s seductive Marxist ideology and the effect that it has on ‘Blue-State’ liberals. Indeed, Linux is so pervasive amongst the blue states and many liberal universities that a leading computer expert Steve Balmer [SIC] (from Microsoft) described Linux as cancer.

The American software industry is worth more than $7 Billion; Introducing a foreign product like Linux which is often copied for free could threaten that entire industry. A generation of computer users might get use to accepting foreign software hand-outs rather than paying for a superior American products. If only the danger were just to our economy:

These days computers control everything from TV stations to battleships; Our crucial information and defense infrastructure is built on computer technology. If we allow this cancer into our networks, there is no knowing what the effect might be on our infrastructure, but that is just what liberals are trying to do.

Imagine if the State of the Union address were hacked because the TV station decided to save money by using Linux? Imagine if a stealth-bomber crashed because it’s software was written by anonymous Chinese or European hackers. It would make as much sense as inviting the French to come over and take over the White-House.

And guess what software Osama Bin Laden uses on his laptop?

If you guessed it was Linux you would be 100% right.

Frankly, I can't decide if this is somebody's idea of a joke or if these people are for real, but either way it's amusing enough to be worth a read.

Meet the e-GeForce 6600 GT

Many years ago, the very first gift Scott bought me was a new video card for my woefully underpowered x386 box. This showed up for me today. Ah, geeks in love....

I'm really bad at buying things for myself, especially the more expensive stuff. My current video card is about 2 years old, and I have been puttering along with its limitations because, well, it works, and new cards are expensive. We're doing better these days now that I'm working again, but still, more often than not the "oh, we don't have any money" fears linger and inhibit my buying behavior.

Flashback: Some years ago, I went out one Saturday with my grandmother to shop for kitchen curtains to replace ones that after many years of service and laundering were starting to look a little ratty. We went to several stores, but Grandma ended up not buying any new ones because everything was either too ugly or too expensive. We went home without any because she couldn't bring herself to pay "too much" for new curtains, even though she could well afford them.

Grandma came to this country quite poor and then weathered the Depression, so her frugality is understandable. But here I am, years later, doing much the same thing. Is it learned behavior from my family, a sign of ageing, or or did the years Scott and I spend struggling financially change my behavior in similar ways?

Incremental Change

Although I've owned an iPod for quite some time now, and have bought at least 50 individual iTunes, today was the first time I actually bought an entire album from iTunes. It's one I've been meaning to buy for a while but never got around to it, and decided I'd rather not wait for it to be shipped.

Rock out to Matisyahu, all y'all!

And now I need to remember to burn a copy to CD.

On Vista

I started writing this yesterday but the power outage (now thankfully resolved) sidetracked me.

Recent IM conversation with Scott:

Me: Microsoft announced six different versions for Vista. What a support nightmare that's going to be.
Scott: yep
Me: I'm going to stay the hell away from Vista for at least 12 months after it's releases. You, OTOH, will upgrade to it as soon as you possibly can
Scott: You got it. Probably on my new $4000 dream computer.
Me: *shudders*

I'm the kind of Windows user Microsoft probably hates: I just want my OS to run the applications I choose to install on it, and to stay the hell out of my way the rest of the time. I don't need a high-end desktop searching feature -- I know where my personal data is and how to find what I'm looking for. I don't want fancy 3-D versions of the alt-tab app switcher or funky integrated media capabilities. I have iTunes, an iPod, and a very nice TV and TiVo in my living room for that. I just might end up with the lowest-level version of Vista just so that I don't have to deal with all the add-on crap the other versions will include.

Buying the low-end version of an OS kind of goes against my grain, since I more or less consider myself to be a power user. But in this case, I suspect I'll be much happier without all the bells and whistles.

At any rate, I am quite serious about waiting at least a year post-release to upgrade (I waited a lot longer than that to go from Win2K -> XP). I have no intention of upgrading until the inevitable missed bugs, security issues, and driver problems all get resolved. Let some other schmuck do the sweating and swearing; I am not going to waste my time dealing with Microsoft's mess for them.

Whither Apple and the iPod?

One of the (few) benefits of working in an office that runs the Mac OS is that I've started paying attention to the Apple world beyond that of my iPod. So this morning, I ran across the site Apple Matters via a link from CNet. I read an interesting article about why Microsoft won't be able to successfully take down the iPod (an argument I tend to agree with). It's worth reading, both for the article itself and the thoughtful commentary.

For what it's worth, it seems to me that Apple has decided they are not going to be able to unseat Microsoft in the office, so have decided to focus on 'lifestyle' computing instead. The iPod, building real photo and video manipulation tools into the OS, and a host of other details, all say to me that personal users are the target. And all things considered, that's a smart move.

Whether it's working remains to be seen. My mother told me about two weeks ago that she was thinking about buying an Apple laptop to replace her recently-deceased Windows laptop. When I asked her why, she mentioned the digital camera that she'd recently acquired and said, "Apple is suppsed to be better at that sort of thing."

She ended up buying a Sony Vaio, though.

Something odd at Bloglines today

While checking my RSS feeds this morning, I noticed that Bloglines had switched languages on me. Very odd. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

UPDATE 1:15PM: It's back to normal.

New Online Code: Don't Be Annoying

I can understand abuse, harass, threaten, and so forth, but annoy? If it's really illegal to annoy people on the Internet now, the avalanche of lawsuits is going to be frightening. I can't wait for the test cases on this one:

A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here's the relevant language.

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

At least it's criminal law, not civil. Individuals can't go around suing everyone who leaves a snarky comment on their weblog, they'll have to convince a DA to file charges. However, as News.com points out, "trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring". Especially these days.

Reason #243,945 Why I Hate Spam

Lately it feels like I've been innundated by spam. Every single e-mail account I have has seen an increase in spam, the blog's been getting an upswing in trackback and comment spam ... I can't seem to get away from it. I don't know it it's just a seasonal thing or if the change is permanant. I'm hoping for the former, because if not then I'm going to have to take some steps to get things back to a manageable level again.

One particularly annoying event that happened in the last 48 hours is that some jerk sent me a virus. Although between Thunderbird and Norton, the virus didn't infect my computer, the act of cleaning the virus out of my in-box blew away all the rest of the e-mail in my in-box, including a number of communications from friends that I needed to reply to.

In short, spammers suck.

Tungsten C: Still No Resolution

Well, I broke my Tungsten C some three months ago and I still haven't decided whether to get the damn thing fixed or not. With 2006 fast approaching, I need to finally make a decision, because if I do go back to paper, now is the time to go buy a planner.

Scott found a link to a highly-rated guy on eBay who apparently repairs Palm PDAs for less than what it would cost to send the Tungsten back to PalmOne for a repair. I'm thinking about it.

I'm also thinking that since I survived all semester without a PDA, I probably don't really need one. I miss the games and being able to read e-books a bit, but the ability to do those things is not really worth $75-$125 to me right now. Especially when I can get a perfectly good 2006 Day-Timer for under $25.

Someone with psychology training might point out to me that not making a decision is also a decision, and that's quite true. In essence, by going three months without my PDA, my decision has already been made. I just need to admit it and move on.

Friday iPod Blogging

Looking at this assortment, I'm tempted to call it the "WTF Edition". What a mess. That's what you get when you randomize the entire list though.

Iko Iko - Cyndi Lauper
Wide Open Spaces - Dixie Chicks
Windswept - Bryan Ferry
Carolina On My Mind - James Taylor
Don't Stand So Close To Me '86 - The Police
Shape of My Heart - Backstreet Boys
South Ferry Road - The Hooters
Baby Grand - Billy Joel
A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes - Cinderella
God Save the Queen - The Sex Pistols

No new cat pix today, sorry to say.

'Crackberry' at the Crossroads

Whither the Blackberry?

The maker of the popular BlackBerry e-mail device is facing a critical decision: Pony up a lot of money to settle a long-term patent dispute or inform most of its 3.65 million U.S. subscribers that it may have to shut off service.

I would expect that they'll find some way to stay in business. After all,

The Department of Justice has asked for a 90-day grace period for federal workers if Research in Motion's BlackBerry e-mail service is shut down.

Maybe it won't be RIM, but somebody is going to keep running this business. With demand like that, it's too attractive to just toss in the trashbin.

Friday iTunes Blogging

Haven't done this in a while ... here's my totally random 10 from iTunes today:

I Like It Like That - Tito Puente
Bon Voyage - Vangelis
Hear the Voices - The Manhattan Transfer
The Safety Dance - Men Without Hats
Zanzibar - Billy Joel
With Every Breath I Take - City of Angels (Original Broadway Cast)
Land Of Confusion - Phil Collins
I Guess I'll Miss The Man - Pippin (Original Broadway Cast)
H.M.S. Pinafore - My Gallant Crew, Good Morning - Gilbert & Sullivan
Everyday - Phil Collins

Revisiting the Handheld Issue

So while snaking through the security line on the way home from Miami, my knapsack/laptop case got dropped on the floor somewhat hard. Once I'd booted my laptop and discovered that the laptop was OK I promptly forgot all about the incident. I also forgot that my Tungsten C was in the bag and was not as padded as the laptop.

I powered the T|C up today and discovered this:

Fortunately the T|C can still sync, so if I choose to pay $125 and go without my TC for about 2 weeks I can once again have a functioning T|C. Right now I'm not convinced it's worth it.

However, I'm a bit annoyed by the news that, as rumored, Palm is indeed going to be making a Windows Mobile version of the Treo, and that's affecting my judgement.

My Last Palm PDA?

As the semester has started to pick up steam, my calender has started to fill up with classes and study group meetings, due dates and reminders, as well as regular non-school stuff. Normally I'd be loading all of this into my trusty Tungsten C, but this semester I've been strangely reluctant to do so. In fact, for the first time in about a decade, I found myself yearning for a simple paper calender to write my appointments down in.

Then today, I found out that PalmSource, makers of the PalmOS, has been acquired by a Japanese software company. What exactly that means for people who care about PalmOS-based PDAs is unclear right now, but my guess is it doesn't bode well.

My Tungsten C is a couple of years old now. It's still chugging along quite nicely, but eventually it will need to be replaced. What's going to still be on the market when I go to replace it? And will what's out there meet my needs?

I've pretty effectively reduced my dependence on Microsoft products over the past year. Thunderbird has been working well as my e-mail client, and the Palm Desktop as the PC side of my PIM. In addition, Firefox has replaced Internet Explorer as my browser of choice, and iTunes does a fine job of managing my MP3s, although those apps are not going to be affected by my choice of PDA. If I were to buy a Microsoft-based PDA, I'd have to switch back to Outlook, and I never liked Outlook. I used it because I felt that I had to.

Microsoft's PDA OS has improved significantly from what I saw when I used it back in 2000, but I'm just not very enthusiastic about the idea. Given the choice of getting an MS-based PDA and going back to Outlook, or going to a paper solution, paper looks like a much better choice.

There are other alternatives. By the time my Tungsten finally rolls over and dies, Apple may well have come out with an iPod capable of being an effective PIM as well as a music storage device. Or other new devices may come out that work for me. We'll have to see.

UPDATE: Amid a bunch of self-congratulatory "I told you so's", David Berlind at ZDNet agrees that this is definitely not good news for the PalmOS.

Friday iTunes Blogging

Haven't done this in a while!

Sweet Potato Pie - James Taylor
Only A Dream - Mary Chapin Carpenter
Inside - Sting
Blow Wind Blow - Alison Moyet
Shepherd Moons - Enya
Lohengrin, Prelude - Richard Wagner
Burn Down The Mission - Elton John
Jump (For My Love) - Pointer Sisters
Self Control - Laura Branigan
The Wild Frontier - Bruce Hornsby and the Range

Here's the rules: Open iTunes, randomize your playlist, and write down the first 10 songs that come up.

Whither the Treo?

Russell Beattie has some interesting thoughts about the Treo, and by extension, the PalmOS world. His point that although Silicon Valley loves the Treo, it's statistically nonexistant in the greater universe of portable devices.

It was empirically obvious, most of the people in the room had a Treo, so it must be a really popular platform, right? Wrong. If you've got a Treo you might be a cutting edge technologist, but you're in the backwater of mobility. Trust me. (Actually, don't trust me, just look at the frigin' numbers.)

Now, I will admit that here in the U.S. Palm is doing better that its competitors. The numbers I've seen show that Palm phones actually outnumber both Symbian and Windows Mobile phones here by a double. But honestly, out of 170 million American subscribers, the total smart phone numbers are still ridiculously low, so I wouldn't pay much attention to this. The fact is that Palm is a niche player in a niche market (there are more cell phone subscribers in China - 300m - than there are *people* in the U.S.) as time goes by they will increasingly become less relevant as a platform, not the opposite.

I think he's being a bit too harsh about the potential future of PalmOS and the Treo, but he's not completely wrong either. Given how much PalmSource is struggling to maintain any kind of relevence in the US consumer market, given the declining number of big-name licencees and the declining number of PalmOS devices available in the market, there's signifcant reason to worry about the future if you're a PalmOS aficionado.

And yet -- people are passionate about their Treos for a reason. They're great devices. My Treo 180 died over a year ago and I still miss it. If I could afford a Treo 600, I'd have one. The power of a small, yet dedicated market -- especially when key sections of that market are VCs and other players -- should not be ignored.

Time to Upgrade SiteMeter

Wow. Getting blogrolled by Kevin Drum has done some amazing things to my web traffic. I think I'm wearing out my free SiteMeter account, but I'm not quite ready to shell out $59 for the upgraded account. Time to start researching alternatives.

This is Cool

According to the WaPo:

The Smithsonian Institution is entering the highly competitive world of music downloads by offering the Smithsonian Folkways collection of ethnic and traditional music in an online music store.

...

The Web site, www.smithsonianglobalsound.org, will allow searches by artist, geographic location, language, cultural group or instrument. All of the Folkways archives, including photographs, can be downloaded onto a screen. Also in development are scrolling translations of some of the music for use on a personal computer.

I'm looking forward to checking out their offerings.

Comments Closed

Against my inclinations, I've had to close comments down for all but the most recent posts here at Fiat Lux.

Overnight, my installation of MT-Blacklist stopped working. According to this thread over at Jay Allen's site, the errror I'm getting is caused when a web host upgrades perl without rebuilding the Storable perl module. I have a suupport ticket open at my web host to try to get this fixed, but in the meantime I'm closing down comments to prevent being drowned in crappy comment spam.

Thanks to MT-Close2 for helping to atomate the comment closing process!

Comment Spam Woes

Even with MT-Blacklist, the amount of time I have had to spend dealing with comment spam has been annoying lately, and apparently I am not the only one who's having issues.

I am trying to decide how to manage the problem. SixApart says they are working on a solution but apparently it will involve upgrading my installation of MT and of MT-Blacklist. That's a fair chunk of work on my part because moving off 2.x will entail not only the upgrade but a bunch of hours tweaking templates to put my customizations back in, and I am a little pressed for time these days.

I may try to implement the system Pandagon uses for its comments section, which is a patch that generates a random 6 digit number and requires users to type it in before a comment will be posted.

I can, of course, just turn off commenting entirely, but I really don't want to do that.

Hotspot Noted

Stopped by the Metreon today between work & school, and noticed that they're now offering free WiFi service.

If I had a laptop, this would be really good news.

Stupid Quote of the Day

"Nobody ever knows who built open-source software."

-- Steve Ballmer.

I Love Jay Allen

Finally implemented MT-Blacklist this morning and it was so easy I wonder why I waited so long. Jay Allen rocks! In fact, I think I'll bow before him even more than I bow before Giblets.

Now I need to find a replacement for Outlook 2003, which is annoying the hell out of me. Any suugestions for a good Windows-based PIM/email client?

PC Update

The computer is more or less functional again, although I have been dragging my feet reinstalling software packages. I'm only about halfway through that particular quagmire so far. I am very tired of reinstalling and resetting all the little settings and options and filters to get things the way I like them, but of course until I do get them all set just so, it doesn't feel like I'm using "my" computer.

The only good thing about this whole mess is it has caused me to take a hard look at all the crap I have installed and question exactly how much of it I really need to have on my system. For example, do I really need WinZip AND WinRAR? Multiple FTP clients and HTML editors? Old games that I used to like but haven't played in ages? Bottom line, NO.

More PC Suckiness

As in computers. The hard drive Scott gave me to put into my rebuilt computer rolled over and died tonight. So tomorrow I have to go buy a new hard drive and start the tedious process of reinstalling my whole system AGAIN. 2 more days down the drain.

I think I sucessfully saved my most recent data before the drive completely died, but I won't know for sure until I reinstall. At worst, I lost 2 weeks of work and emails, plus a few odds and ends like the 4 new iTunes I bought last week.

I am so very not happy right now.

IPv6 Finally

Switching to geek mode for a moment:

After years of debate and delay, an IPv6 nameserver is finally live. For years, IPv6 had been held up as the replacement IP space for when the current supply of IP addresses runs out. That was always deemed an impractical solution because of the technical difficulty of adapting existing Internet infrastructure to handle both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses simultaneously. So IPv6 languished.

By repurposing IPv6 for next-generation Internet uses (such as putting IP addresses in appliances and cars), the question has been neatly sidestepped. It's telling that ICANN implemented IPv6 support only for Japan's (.JP) and Korea's (.KR) country codes at first.

I'm looking forward to seeing what new devices or applications come out of this move.

PC Madness Continued

I lost most of this weekend to the ongoing drama of my computer upgrade. On Saturday FedEx delivered not one, but two replacement motherboards. The vendor screwed up again. Now I have to pay to ship yet another piece of hardware I didn't need.

At any rate, I shut down the old PC and started putting the new PC together. After assembling the old and new parts into the new PC case and powering it up, we experienced exactly the same problem with the secondary IDE controller.

Thinking that one busted mobo was bad luck, but two was not likely, Scott did a little more research and found on person reporting that unplugging the cable that powered the two USB ports on the front of their PC case solved the secondary IDE problem. We tried it and poof! Problem gone. It's a little annoying to have plugs that can't be used, but it's not a deal breaker at this point because I only have 3 USB devices, one of which is rarely used, and there are 4 other working USB plugs on the back of the case. And right now I just want a working PC.

That leaves the next problem -- the boot device BSOD we keep getting even though the system is seeing the CD just fine now. Scott fiddles and announces that it must be something relating to the CD drivers. I had trouble following his explanation, frankly. Whatever the problem is, it's way beyond my level of ability to solve. He thinks that we might be able to fix it if we reinstall Windows 2000. Fine by me. Except when we did so, we discovered that my lovely HDs (the ones with about 40GB of programs and data) were the problem, not the CD. For reasons as yet unknown, the new system does not think they're bootable, and Windows 2000 wants to reformat them before it will reinstall. This makes no sense to me because they were working perfectly well on the old setup and if you boot to a floppy, you can then CD to the drives and read them just fine. But they cannot be booted to now.

All along, I've made life more difficult on this upgrade because I did not want to reinstall my system. But now it seems that the one thing I most did not want to do is what I have to do.

To avoid having to reformat the HDs and totally lose my stuff, Scott pulls out a 70 GB hard drive that's currently not in use, puts it into the new case, and starts installing Windows XP onto it. I then spend most of the rest of the weekend bit by bit reinstalling and reconfiguring some 30+ applications and deciding whether to reinstall another 20 or so. Some of them I haven't used in a while but I like to have them just in case.

The only thing that kept me from screaming and throwing things is that I did not lose any data. Between the old HDs, my iPod, the backup CD I burned before starting all this, and my Tungsten C, I have a good copy, if not two copies, of all documents, files, MP3s, photos, fonts, bookmarks, etc.

I'm not quite done yet but the worst is over this Monday morning. My system is more or less looking how I like it and is running noticeably faster; and when I finally reinstalled the game that started this whole mess - City of Heroes - it ran smoothly and looks great. So in that sense I suppose it was all worthwhile. But still, I am not a very happy camper about the whole thing.

Here's the new configuration, if you're curious:
Antec case
Asus P4S800 motherboard
Intel P4 2.8 GHz CPU
2 512MB DIMMs
ATI Radeon 9600SE video
Creative SB sound card (old)
FireWire card
70GB Maxtor drive
Windows XP SP2

Hopefully I won't have to go through this for another couple of years.

10 Things I Hate About Building PCs

I'm sure I'll get a bunch of smarmy comments from the Mac contingent over this, but I'm currently in the middle of a PC upgrade fiasco, and I need to get it off my chest.

I really like the new City of Heroes game, but unfortunately the PC I use, a homebuilt box, does a lousy job of running the game. The graphics card I have (a Radeon All In One) isn't quite powerful enough, but due to the age of the motherboard, I can't upgrade to a better graphics card without also upgrading the motherboard. Which means buying a new case and power supply, because the 4-year-old case won't hold newer motherboards. And at that point you might as well go to 512MB of memory and upgrade the processor. Now you're up to $500 worth of new hardware to run a $50 game.

Scott suggested new hard drive(s) as well but I drew the line there. And I decided that since I have so much free time right now, I was going to be the primary builder of the new box. I'm about 4 times as slow as Scott when it comes to hardware installation, but with him working and me not, it seems unfair to make him do it all.

That all leads us to the point of this post, which is a list of the 10 things I most hate about building your own PC:

1. Despite the huge pile of PC hardware in our office, some of it up to 7 years old, none of it is acually useful
2. There is no easy way to grab onto PCI cards when you're trying to take them out of their slots, resulting in cuts on your fingers
3. Instruction manuals on the one hand omit key pieces of information yet offer pages of useless drivel on the other hand
4. Power supplies, whose huge masses of cables block critical space inside the PC case, don't have enough plugs of the kind that you need and too many if the kind that you don't need
5. I don't get why you need 6 different kinds of screws to put one PC together
6. Operating systems that give a BSOD on boot-up if the CD drive isn't found suck
7. Motherboards with secondary IDE controllers that don't work out of the box or even after you've updated the BIOS also suck
8. Resellers who ship motherboards that have non-functioning secondary IDE controllers suck even more than that
9. Planned Obsolescence in general, for being the root cause of the entire fiasco
10. Having to do it all over again when the (hopefully fully functional) new motherboard gets here some time in the next few days

Friendster: About Face!

This is exactly the kind of action that makes people have no respect for what corporations say: Friendster, which has made much of its 'no fake profiles' policy, is now allowing fake profiles as long as they're sponsored by a paying advertiser.

From its earliest days, many Friendster members introduced fake profiles -- known variously as fakesters, or pretendsters -- into their networks of friends. Often, members posted profiles of their pets and linked to friends' pets. But the service quickly demonstrated it didn't see the humor when it began purging the network of the fakesters.

Yet now, the company sees little irony in cooperating with Anchorman developer DreamWorks in introducing the movie's characters into the Friendster network. In fact, it says the move is indicative of a larger cross-promotional plan the company has undertaken.

"What Friendster is doing with these movie-character profiles is actually a brand-new paradigm in media promotion," Friendster spokeswoman Lisa Kopp said. "We are working directly with a number of production houses and movie studio partners to create film-character profiles, or 'fan' profiles, that allow our users to share their enthusiasm about the film with their friends."

The message I get is that Friendster is tone-deaf to how this looks to their customers. Why is it not OK to put up a profile for a (real) pet bird but OK to have a profile of a fake anchorman for a not very funny summer movie? Oh right, money.

It's been widely reported that all of the 'social networking' companies are having an issue trying to figure out how to make them profitable. This is one way of generating income that doesn't require a full-out pay for content model, and in that sense it's not a bad idea. But the hypocrisy inherent in the process does leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm probably not their target customer anyway. I signed onto Friendster a year or so ago. I was familiar with the "fakesters" on Friendster, even linked as a friend to the Howard Dean profile. As the Wired article mentions, it was a way of establishing community and saying something about myself by my choice of association. But ultimately, I gave up on Friendster and stopped visiting. The site was too static, didn't really allow for much interaction - in short, I found it boring.

I prefer Orkut, which has user-formed community groups and message boards - much more interactive, much more interesting. It's not a major part of my online activities, but unlike Friendster, Orkut is interesting enough for me to keep visiting & contributing to the site. Orkut is also invite-only, which helps keep the trolls out.

Pre-Weekend Fun Link

Here's a fun time-waster for the holiday weekend: a DIY portrait maker.

My portrait came out looking like this:

It's not perfect - they didn't have eye and hair shades that matched my own, and the hairstyle is a dressy one, not my day to day look - but it does give a sense of me.

You've Got Spam!

AOL engineer with his head up his butt sells 92 million AOL screen names to spammers. More info here.

The only good news is at least somebody got caught. Too bad for the customers, whose addresses have probably been sold and resold a whole bunch of times since then.

Ignorant Luddities Strike Again

Or at least they're trying to. Senator Orrin Hatch has introduced a bill to the Senate which is worded in such a way that it would not only make Kazaa illegal, but also TiVo, the CD burner in your computer, and even VCRs and cassette recorders illegal.

News.com reports that:

The proposal, called the Induce Act, says "whoever intentionally induces any violation" of copyright law would be legally liable for those violations, a prohibition that would effectively ban file-swapping networks like Kazaa and Morpheus. In the draft bill seen by CNET News.com, inducement is defined as "aids, abets, induces, counsels, or procures" and can be punished with civil fines and, in some circumstances, lengthy prison terms.

"Induce" stands for "Inducement Devolves into Unlawful Child Exploitation," making this yet another example of cloaking wildly restrictive legistation in the mantle of "save the children!". Because of course, it's all about keeping kids away from porn. Never mind that adults would have to throw away every recording device in their homes to make it work.

The good news? Even if this lame excuse for a bill were to actually pass both houses and be signed into law, I doubt it would stand, becasue the Supreme Court said in 1984 that VCRs are legal devices. But still, it's annoying to have to fight the same battles over and over again.

No More Clies

Accprding to Brighthand, Sony is getting out of the PDA business.

I had trouble understanding why Sony felt the need to push so many new Clie models out the door so quickly, so I'm not surprised by the rumors of flat profitability. I'm sure there's lessons to be learned for other PDA manufacturers. But it's tough to spin this as even remotely a Good Thing for
the Palm Economy.

It's also a bummer for me & Scott. We've owned 3 Clie models over the past few years, and I loved my 760C so much that I bought a second one when the original was stolen.

Is Graffiti not dead after all?

Longtime aficionados of the Palm OS were very displeased when the entity now known as PalmOne lost a patent infringement suit to Xerox over their single-stroke text entry system called Graffiti.

This time, the good guys finally won one. The suit has been invalidated.

I sincerely hope that PalmOne will now bring back Graffiti as an option in their operating system. The new version, created because of that dratted lawsuit, sucks.

Response to Mena

OK, I'll add my two cents to the list of "How I use MT" trackbacks. I currently have one author and two blogs. I expect to add one more blog every 6 to 12 months within my own personal blog. Plans are in the works to add two more blogs and two more authors for friends/family members.

But I also want to make it very clear that my personal concern is not ultimately about the number of authors and weblogs allocated to each segment of the license. That's a symptom of the bigger problem. Simply put, it's about perceived value for price. The issue is not "I don't want to pay for MT". The issue is, I don't want to pay this particular price for this particular feature set.

I would be quite willing to shell out $ for MT above and beyond what I already paid last fall *if* there were a current and/or future feature set worth paying for. Optimizing existing code is fine but that plus one questionable new feature (spammers have already begun to register over on typekey) is not enough change. Right now there is no compelling reason for the user like me to upgrade except for the fact that if we don't do it now, it may well cost more to upgrade in the future. Maybe you can get away with that if you're Microsoft, but not if you're a startup like SixApart.

Here's a few examples: Give me a CMS that does not require me to rebuild my site because I add one link to my links list. Give me more and better tools for managing comments that does not force me into a 3rd party service. Give me more and better tools for creating and mangaing templates. Make it easier to integrate graphics into posts, or even a whole photo album.

Give me stuff like that and I'll get out my credit card again.

Since Mena said she was going to delete trackbacks that are "commentaries on SixApart" this one probably won't stay in the trackback list for long. But I hope that it at least gets read and the message gets through.

To Move from MT or Not?

That seems to be the overwhelming issue in the Movable Type blogosphere this weekend.

I respect the folks at SixApart, but the way they have mishandled the launch of 3.0 clearly shows that they do not have enough people with communications skills on staff. Not surprising in a tech-oriented startup, of course, but in this case - a startup that creates software used to communicate - it's a big problem. Mena Trott gives some clues to their thinking in her revised announcement about MT 3.0.

I'm willing to bet that SixApart made a few classic mistakes in coming up with their licensing. They trusted their survey results too much, and they didn't talk to enough users at critical stages.

One of the most valid comments we heard is that the personal licenses do not work well for many people who are currently using Movable Type. This surprised us because in a survey of 2500 people, a whopping 85% of respondents had 5 of fewer weblogs or authors. This help educate our final decisions about the weblog and author limits.

The more important question is, who were those 2500 users? Were they self-selected or was any effort put into making sure that a broad cross-section of users, from little bloggers like me to big users like Jason Calacanis, participated? Not balancing your participant base is a very good way to get data that is accurate yet ultimately wrong.

The second question is, did SixApart vet this new licensing package with any customers before launching it? With a level of upset as big as this one, if they had bothered to talk to even a handful of customers before going public with their pricing they would surely have gotten some indication that they needed to rethink things. Instead, they have had to handle a very public firestorm.

Now, to their credit, they are trying to calm the waters, and with some success. But they are at a critical junction. I hope they respond by putting one or more people on staff who are more practiced in the arts of marketing, product management and corporate communications. I'm tempted to send them a resume myself, but I suspect they're already flooded with them.

When I started this blog, I chose Movable Type because several blogger pals (most notably my friend Mashby) were using it and all seemed quite happy with it. I know just enough about HTML, CSS, and configuring software to be able to tweak a package into something that works for me, and the lingering ghost of the techie I once was makes me unwilling to use a hosted service if I can run things myself. MT fit the bill. I gladly sent in a $25 donation last fall to SixApart, and had no expectation that I would want to look elsewhere for blogging software. Movable Type definitely has some annoyances and limitations (rebuilding is an ongoing PITA) but overall it does what I want it to do without getting in the way too much.

I have not yet decided whether or not I am going to stay with MT for the long haul. I'd like to see a clearer product evolution path for one thing - what features are going to be offered in the future, and which of those will not be in the free version? It could well be that MT 3.x is worth paying for, but right now there's not enough information for me to make a decision.

I've invested time and energy getting my blog set up the way I want it. I don't particularly want to have to spend a lot of time starting all over again with a new system if I don't have to. But right now, SixApart is not giving me enough information with which to make an informed decision. That's frustrating, and it's another sign that SixApart badly needs someone on staff who knows how to communicate with customers.

I'm going to wait and see what happens for the next couple of weeks. Hopefully by the time I get back from New York more dust will have settled and I'll be able to make a more informed decision about whether to upgrade or not.

Buzz Machine and Stupid Evil Bastard both have interesting takes on this issue as well. They're worth a read.

Site Update

I installed Gallery today as part of the preparations for getting the Rome photos online (they're being developed currently). Gallery, like Movable Type, is an excellent freeware application with more features than you can shake a stick at, and lots of room for plug-ins and customizing.

It was a very smooth install; the only hitch being I had to upgrade my Java VM before I was able to run the Gallery Remote tool that makes bulk uploading of pictures MUCH easier. I used one of the included skins, which doesn't really match the color theme for this blog, but it's cute. Over time I may tweak the CSS some to bring them closer in line, but this is a personal site, so 100% consistancy in look & feel is not my most important priority.

There's a link the the galleries over on the right side of this blog, or you can see them here. Pix from Rome should go online in the next couple of days.

What Kind of Drugs

What kind of drugs do you have to be on to come up with stuff like this?

Amazingly bad, yet amazingly funny at the same time. And what's even more amazing is Quiznos hired the guy to make TV commercials.

Good news / bad news

It's coming up on two years since my last layoff, but even so, news of a layoff affects me deeply. Today it was PalmOne, the company formerly known as Palm, Inc that recently acquired Handspring.

I'm well aware that businesses cannot guarantee employment to their people if the tides of business change. Nor am I enough of a Socialist to think that it's their obligation to do so. But after having been laid off multiple times in the dot-com implosion and also once back in the recession of the early 90's, my sympathy is much more with the people being let go than with the companies who make the cuts. Especially so because the trend these days is that jobs which vanish do not come back. Bob Herbert's latest column is one of many pointing out this trend.

The good news in today's announcement is that PalmOne is going to be focusing more heavily on smartphone convergence devices like their Treo line. As a longtime Treo fan, that pleases me. But to do so at the cost of people's jobs also gives me pain.

Ironically, I found the URL reporting the layoffs because the battery on my much-loved Treo 180 is showing signs of permanent failure and I'm starting to think about replacing it. I don't have the cash in hand for a new Treo 600, and even if I did, there are other things on my "to buy" list that come higher - like a new SLR camera to take with me to Italy.

There's an abundance of Treo 180s on eBay for about $100, so if necessary I can go there for a replacement. Despite its slow processor and B&W screen, the Treo 180 is an excellent balance between a PDA and phone and I've been really happy with it. Faster access to the Internet, a color screen, and other bells and whistles would be nice, of course, but that's what my Tungsten C is for.

But getting back to my original point, I hope that what comes out of PalmOne in the future is really, really good. Otherwise those people's lives will have been kicked to pieces for nothing.

Dana, Dana, Dana!

Thanks to the ever-so-generous people at AlphaSmart, a fabulous new PDA landed on my desk today - the Dana Wireless. Now I can blog from anywhere in the house, untethered to my PC.

The only problem is that the DanaWeb browser, which takes advantage of the Dana's widescreen capability, is quite buggy. The two problems that I find most annoying are it has issues with scrolling and the forms handler doesn't like extended text entry (a big minus for bloggers!). Eudora's PalmOS web browser, although not widescreen enabled, seems to handle forms a bit better and is thus more suited for WiFi blogging, although it doesn't take advantage of the Dana's ample screen real estate.

Other PalmOS Internet apps I've tested seem to work fine too. Verichat and upIRC, my two favorite messaging apps, both work flawlessly with the Dana, although neither had widescreen capability. And SnapperMail, an awesome email app, IS widescreen enhanced and works quite well.

The Dana keyboard is full sized and handles nicely, although some of the keys tend to be a bit sticky. I'm not sure if that's an issue with my Dana or if I'm pounding the keys too hard (a bad habit). At any rate, I've long wanted a simple laptop or laptop alternative that was wifi enabled so I could do some basic online tasks without having to leave the bedroom or living room.

Now I can.

Go Dana go!

A reason to have a phone camera?

It suddenly occurred to me tonight that if I'd had a camera in my phone, I might possibly have gotten a photo of the cute kitten on my shoulder at the SPCA on Sunday.

I was always one for pooh-poohing convergence devices. It took getting my hands on the oh-so-well-designed Treo to get me over my "PDAs and phones don't mix" kick and make me a major Treo enthusiast. So now I'm wondering whether the upcoming Treo 600 might get me over my disdain for cameras integrated into PDAs and phones.

Not that I can afford the Treo 600. But a gal can dream.....