Group Inanity

Social Media Suicide

2010-09-16T12:53:00.003-05:00

Some stories have been running about this site: Web 2.0 Suicide Machine which you give your social site creditentials to and it basically logs in and removes all your content, unlinks all your follows, etc.

Interesting spin is that once you do this, you can't get back in as they change your password and don't give it back (although I guess you could go thru a password recovery via email?)

I have to ask myself, is deleting your online stuff even possible? Google caches stuff. There's the wayback-machine. It would be like trying to unpost a usnet post (for those of you old enough to remember what nntp even stood for).

Hmm... Not quite ready to pull the trigger yet. But something to think about...

There is No Gatorade in Israel

2010-07-12T02:39:00.003-05:00

I don't know how this is possible. But I'm convinced there is no Gatorade in Israel.

You would think in a place so hot that you'd be able to find some kind of equivalent to Gatorade.

So here's what happened. My son got sick and I wanted to make sure he was getting enough fluids. So I went on a trek to find Gatorade (or its Israelli equivalent). You can get Coke. You can get Sprite. You can even get Orange Fanta and various "energy drinks" akin to Red Bull. But everwhere I went they told me "Super-Farm" in the mall.
I spoke with no less than 8 people including the pharmacist who I'm sure would know what electrolytes are. No dice. So I left - mission unaccomplished.

There is a seriously untapped market here - if you can stand the heat ;)

Evil Genius?

2010-06-10T12:59:00.002-05:00

Another interesting read regarding Apple's left/right hand dealings of ads.

BTW, I read it with the new "Reader" feature in Safari 5 -- which is awsome.

How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

2010-06-10T12:55:00.001-05:00

Interesting Wired article on the monarchy that is Apple.

Found myself comparing this to a startup "cowboy mode" -- J.K.

Worth a read...

File management on the iPad

2010-04-07T09:07:00.003-05:00

Setting up my wife's iPad with Pages & Keynote was interesting.
The file management is definitely strange. At first I thought I was just missing something obvious. Then I came across this article and found out I wasn't the only one.

Very poor execution IMHO, but I realize they had to push it out the door by a certain date (hence the pulling of the file sharing described in the article) or face the backlash of the fanboys (yes, I'm including myself as well -- can we please get a MBP refresh already?!).

I'll go on record now saying that they'll keep it cumbersome (current method) and add nice MobileMe support (in the same way that they are hooking it into iwork.com beta -- not that THAT implementation is very good either -- fine for commenting on documents and making copy after copy in multiple places). A far cry from something as elegant as say dropbox. Which is why I think they'll hook it into MobileMe iDisk (and, of course, not let any other webdav drives play nice).

Anybody else play with "file sharing" on the iPad?

Steve

P.S. - Anybody have the addiction support line for Plants vs Zombies? I might need an intervention for my wife ;)

P.P.S. - And while I'm at it, still can't send email from non-me.com/mac.com domain using MobileMe email. What is this still the 80's? I get it. We all have to smoke the Apple crack. Perhaps they are waiting for people to stop using faxes and AOL email addresses as a sign... Get with it Apple!

If version control systems were airlines....

2010-02-17T10:17:00.003-06:00

A friend sent this to me. Seemed appropriate given our history...

Don't miss the linked "if OSes were airlines" link as well.

Its Bacon!

2010-02-11T15:01:00.002-06:00

Wow. My Jewish ancestors are spinning...
I wonder if it comes with free shipping -- of your replacement heart!

Is it getting worse?

2010-02-07T08:03:00.003-06:00

I was riding the train home from work the other day and I started to wonder, is AT&T wireless voice and data service getting worse? Or is my tolerance for the crappy service diminishing? As I sat on the train, trying to Google search for something on my iPhone, I looked over at someone with a Verizon mobile broadband card and he was remotely managing some Windows systems. I'm barely able to pull up Google search results on my iPhone and he's using CoRD (on his Mac) to RDP to his systems with no problems whatsoever.

To top it off, I spend most of my days in an office that is absolute telephone hell. I've got a Sprint phone and my AT&T iPhone and I can't use either of them while sitting at my desk. Making matters worse, I've got a Nortel VOIP phone there that only works intermittently as well. WTF?! If it weren't for my current attachment to OmniFocus on my Mac and iPhone, I think I'd ditch the crappy AT&T service. What are the chances the Omni Group will ever come out with an Android version of OmniFocus?

Yo...

2009-12-29T10:17:00.002-06:00

Not my usually 80's retro, but good stuff:

Happy new year y'all

Inspiring enticement to register

2009-12-08T21:54:00.000-06:00

Register With Us

We have found java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "" properties based on your search. See your results and get unlimited property searches with your free account:

Worst translator ever

2009-07-26T19:48:00.002-05:00

I got bored so started looking at the last three people who followed me on twitter and one guy is just a page of SEO links and the top one was

RT @Rehan Marketing benefits given an online form with SEO services | The Best SEOhttp://bit.ly/UoIbp

And I clicked on it because I didn't understand it:

http://thebestseo.info/2009/06/30/marketing-benefits-given-an-online-form-with-seo-services/

It goes to a page of absolute gibberish that I assume was done by some software translator:

Therefore, with an enlarge in a volume, afterwards ask for great peculiarity has additionally taken place. Therefore, a SEO provider in a stream unfolding is compulsory to be vested with a multifaceted opinion which harbours a knack of being wakeful about opposite happenings all over a universe as well as how have been they able of conversion a website in conditions of a trade turn etc.

But, then I thought perhaps this guys is The Best SEO. I mean, I clicked on it...and perhaps all that gibberish confuses google or is so full of buzzwords that it gets great search results...

Quitting Facebook

2009-04-02T06:53:00.004-05:00

So last night I quit Facebook. Does this mean I'm not cool? Am I destined to live in social networking obscurity? Perhaps...

But here is what won't happen:
1) People from my past coming out of the woodwork who want to catch up 20 years later
2) Questions like: "Are you the Steve who went to such and such a school?" Perhaps this would be less of a problem if I had a more unique name like "Bagel Zipperstein"
3) No more free virtual gift offers from the Hannukah store

I did find the deactivation process interesting. When you press the link they ask why you want to do such a dastardly thing. When I picked the "I don't think this is useful" it suggested I needed more friends and provided links to the friend-finder (or whatever it is called). Clearly I don't have enough friends to pummel me with "Bob is eating toast" messages so that I'm unaware of how much of my life is ticking by reading about Bob's enjoyment of toast.

It also showed pictures from my existing friend network saying how much they would miss me. While "Roger will miss you!" with a picture of him holding a fish ALMOST made me reconsider, I decided instead to just call him and have lunch from time to time rather than continue a more virtualized relationship.

I guess this will make me less cool to/than my teen cousins and nephews, but what can I say? I also don't like High School Musical (1|2|3).

So what say you? Crazy? Have I put a virtual bullet in my social networking social life? Used the entree fork for my salad?

Maybe I'm just a mean old man... now get off my lawn!

spotlight: mds, mdworker

2009-03-28T09:16:00.003-05:00

The processes 'mds' and 'mdworker' frequently take over my macbook and make it sound like a jet engine about to take off. Clearly this is wasting a lot of battery power...

They are apparently related to spotlight, which I never, ever use. But there are some posts about how disabling spotlight altogether screws up OS X.

Anyone know anything about this?

Brush up on your Java exceptions

2009-02-24T09:45:00.001-06:00

A coworker sent me this link
I think he is trying to tell me something...

You too can brush up on your Java exception handling!

Enjoy,
Steve

That's funny

2009-02-14T09:13:00.000-06:00

Everything is better with Bacon...

Stupor Bowl?

2009-02-01T15:47:00.002-06:00

Is all day coverage of the Super Bowl really required? I, for one, don't really care to know all the details of the lives of professional football players.

If I were going to rip off a website

2009-01-23T10:23:00.004-06:00

I'd do something other than use the .org domain name of the .com site i was ripping off. But that is just me....

dotfiles.com
dotfiles.org

Xb: you should sue his ass.

Of course, you never got a mention in the RailsEnvy Podcast....

I could work for Apple

2009-01-07T11:05:00.002-06:00

They make up words too....

Look under Video Quality Improvements here.

Note I tried to screen cap a context menu, but I couldn't figure out how.

Recently Read Books

2009-01-06T09:10:00.002-06:00

Thirteen - Richard K Morgan

About 150 pages too long. Not as well-crafted as his Tokeshi Kovacs novels, but still good escapist fun. The US has split into a few countries around essentially blue states and red states. It's not clear exactly what happened to Illinois? The most interesting thing is that it's titled "Black Man" in the UK.

Moneyball - Michael Lewis

I'm on a bit of a Michael Lewis kick with Panic! (easily the best excerpt was this one) and all his recent financial writings. If you love baseball, actually if you know anything about baseball, you'll dig this book. It's fun to read it a few years on and recognize many of the names in the book. Good enough to tempt me into becoming an A's fan.

Mac users don't know unix

2009-01-03T16:47:00.002-06:00

In yet another example of how Mac users don't know Unix, I keep reading about how great SuperDuper is and how everyone should use it in addition to TimeMachine. Here it is:

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

It makes bootable backups of your HD. And if you pay $28, you can automatically schedule the backups to happen. And after the first backup, it only copies the changes.

Or, you could put this in your crontab:

0 5 * * * rsync -vaxE --delete --ignore-errors / /Volumes/BackupDrive/

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that does everything SuperDuper does as long as you setup BackupDrive to be bootable when you format/partition it.

Do you sign your credit card?

2008-12-30T16:22:00.003-06:00

So continuing my theme of things that bother me, let me ask this question. But first the drawn out setup...

I went to the post office to mail a package to my in-law. The post office worker in question I've dealt with in the past is just a pain to be a pain.

She puts the package on the scale, I pick a shipping option, and I hand her my American Express card. She hands it back and says she can't take it 'cause I need to sign it.

Now, things to note here are:
1) my picture is on the card
2) she would take the card if I signed it then and there

Which leads me to ask, do I really need to sign this thing? What's the point? What does that prove beyond my picture for identity? Any what would signing it in front of her have really have accomplished?

So confused by what has just transpired, I hand over my Visa card (which is signed), and she runs the transaction.

The gee-wiz of the story? I didn't have to sign for the purchase.

Zoinks!

We Are Fat

2008-12-30T16:16:00.003-06:00

It is official.

I went to the Dr. today for my annual meeting with my Allergist. I've been getting shots for seasonal allergies but they recently expanded onto another floor of their building. So new everything: exam tables, chairs, etc.

While I'm waiting for the Dr. to come in, I'm checking out the new digs. Then I see it. A new scale in the corner. So I go weigh myself. While I'm standing there, I'm thinking something doesn't seem right. Then it hits me. This scale goes to 500 lbs. As memory serves, most Dr. scales I've seen in the past have gone to 250, maybe 300 lbs. But 500 lbs? Have people become cargo?

Wow. We are fat.

Another useful Mac App

2008-12-22T12:31:00.002-06:00

There's been a flurry of articles about sleep / hibernate with Leopard. Using something like, sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0.

This dynamic automation tool is even cooler.

OJ + mouse button

2008-11-11T21:40:00.002-06:00

I spilled orange juice on my desk this morning, and some got into the mouse button of my macbook (old white one). I didn't notice until tonight when I tried to press it and it didn't go anywhere. I seem to have loosened it up a bit to where it is functional, but it is nowhere close to 100%.

Anyone have any cleaning secrets?

Other options:

external mouse
new macbook
become more adept at quicksilver and start using vimperator again

Enlightenment

2008-10-27T16:21:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure what made me think of it, but I was just wondering "What ever happened to the Enlightenment window manager?" I remember spending many hours building countless libraries to try to get it to work...

Sure enough, it's still kicking and it looks like DR17 is coming out soon. (DR16 came out in 2000).

http://www.enlightenment.org/p.php?p=index&l=en

It seems as if Rasterman's focus is trying to get Enlightenment on mobile phones:

http://www.rasterman.com/index.php?page=News

Hmmm.

I Love This Headline

2008-10-14T09:45:00.002-05:00

New MacBook Pro 2008 Mock-up Lights My Credit Card On Fire

The Internet in Your Pocket?

2008-10-10T11:01:00.002-05:00

I was traveling yesterday so I tried to sign up for the iPhone Tech Talk on my iPhone yesterday and I couldn't log in. If I purposefully typed in a bad password it would tell me but with the right credentials it would just drop me back to the login screen.

Maybe somebody who did register can ask the Uber-Genius' how they managed to make their site not work for iPhone's Safari. It'd be nice if I could have used another browser, but oh wait, that's not allowed...

Meet me halfway

2008-10-08T11:13:00.003-05:00

Not that inane, but I suppose it is if you build an entire business around it. The site, www.meetways.com let's you find a halfway meeting point. It needs to have other ways of calculating halfway, such as by car, by public transit, on foot, yadda, yadda. It also needs to support having more than 2 people. So that a group of people can meet in a fairly central location.

It also should have some kind of integration with a invite service, so that it chooses a location based on who's going to attend. Hmm, now I think I have a business that's not inane.

Why giving Mac Users Shell Access is Like Letting AOL Users on the Internet

2008-10-03T12:04:00.003-05:00

From TUAW: Terminal Tips: Play Tetris in Terminal

Nuclear Disarmament

2008-10-03T09:08:00.002-05:00

I think we should just start unilaterally getting rid of them. What better example of leadership would there be than that?

What's the downside?

Am I missing something?

The existence of our 10,000 warheads obviously doesn't deter Al Queda from anything. They would probably like nothing better than for us to use a "tactical" weapon. I can't imagine a scenario where we would actually drop them on anybody else. We've already proven that we have the most effective military on the planet.

Obama and McCain seem to generally agree on this topic but Obama only addresses the issue page 8 of his defense fact sheet PDF. McCain talks about it on his website but both camps maintain that we will maintain an effect nuclear deterence.

Wireless mouse recommendations?

2008-09-19T13:24:00.003-05:00

Anyone have a wireless mouse recommendation? Mac-compatible. I got the wireless keyboard + "Mighty Mouse" with my new 'puter, and the mouse sucks. Well, it's good for everything except clicking.

Doogie Howser gone evil?

2008-07-18T09:35:00.004-05:00

Its not Chitty Chitty, but this really appeals to me.

Behold Dr Horrible!

I was trying to remember if this was the first piece of internet video that made me smile. I couldn't think of any others.

Roger quit his day job...

2008-07-16T22:17:00.004-05:00

Funny Signature

2008-06-20T22:33:00.001-05:00

There are only 10 kinds of people:
-Those who understand binary
-Those who don't

Wine

2008-06-19T12:54:00.001-05:00

It's a good thing they named the project "wine" as it took 15 years to get to 1.0:

http://www.winehq.org/

Drucker's Law?

2008-06-19T08:59:00.003-05:00

I was reading a book that referred to the notion that to get people to switch to something new it has to be 10 times better. The book specifically referred to this as Drucker's Law and went on to discuss how Christensen's Disruptive Innovation is probably a simpler way to innovate since you don't have to figure out how to make something 10 times better, but rather come up with a way to change people's expectations.

Problem is, 20 minutes of Googling and I can't find any reference to Drucker's Law as defined in this way. I did see that Guy Kawasaki maybe has mentioned this 10x theory, but he didn't really take credit for it nor did he cite somebody else for originating the notion.

Without some kind of analysis of startups and failure it would be difficult to verify this idea of 10x. It does sound pretty good, but seems to fail the sniff test for fictional empircal numbers (those that don't end in 0 or 5 so that a random number you throw out feels less like what it is. ie, We estimated it would take 472 hours to build the UI in Java and 17 hours to build it in Rails.)

I suppose I'm fixated on this notion because maybe it explains why many startups fail. I mean if VCs could just ask, is this 10x better than the last thing, it'd be pretty easy to just say no.

The book BTW is, George Gilder's, The Silicon Eye.

I've officially turned into a Mac User

2008-06-06T16:33:00.002-05:00

Was on a windows box. Selected 3 files from the desktop and hit Backspace. Nothing happened.

Why?

2008-05-15T21:31:00.003-05:00

Why when I buy a CFL does it come in a dangerous to open plastic container that does not appear to even be recyclable? The cardboard insert tells me that it is "better for the environment" but I just don't know when you throw in all the packaging. Is there a class action I can join somewhere for people who have been disfigured by the stupidly sharp plastic packaging that seems to be wrapped around everything these days. It seems like CFL packaging is a step back from the old-school incandescent light bulb packaging of yesteryear.

Compact discs ditched the excessive packaging years ago. Why can't others follow suit? At least if a manufacturer is going to wrap their packages in layers of plastic crap they could try to make it look pretty (like Apple).

IM client with different statuses based on group?

2008-05-14T14:30:00.005-05:00

This might not be possible with the protocols in question, but is there an IM client that would allow me to have different statuses for different groups?

For example:

1) friends: available and willing to talk
2) brother-in-law: busy
3) client #1: not logged in
4) client #2: busy

I made the mistake of giving a client my personal IM information and now I can't use IM because every time I log in, they start chatting with me...There's some stuff in gmail chat where I can block certain people, but I'd like to be able to toggle it. Preferably for AIM.

Link Friday

2008-04-25T13:42:00.002-05:00

This is awesome:

starcade.tv

Random Vista / XP Stuff to Remember

2008-03-31T08:54:00.002-05:00

I've spent much too much time being a Windows admin lately. Things to remember that don't seem obvious.

If you dual boot between Vista and XP, every time you boot into XP it deletes all your system restore points.
Look at this page when you need to help a friend with some IT issue. The conversation usually starts like, "Everytime I get on the internet a bunch of windows keep opening up..."

IDE Survey

2008-01-17T09:03:00.000-06:00

IntelliJ - BMW
Eclipse -General Motors
Netbeans - Hyundai (maybe VW) - someday a Volvo?
VI - Fixed Gear
VIM - Lance Armstrong's bike
GVIM - a recumbent bike

My use:

Netbeans 80%
Eclipse 10%
GVIM 10%

Obsolete Computer Disposal

2008-01-14T08:33:00.000-06:00

I have a bunch of these things sitting in my house. They gather dust in the den.

Here's what I've thought of,

Let them continue to gather dust. Even when they are off, they still seem to gather dust pretty well. At my dad's house there's still a PCjr sitting in the garage. Maybe the Microsoft 128K sidecar with original mouse will have collectors value?
Turn the old laptop (200Mhz) into a digital picture frame. I spent about 6 hours getting an OS (Damn Small Linux) installed on it. Wireless (802.11b) too! Then I used it for 30 minutes before my wife asked me why.
Ebay - the whole posting and shipping seems like a lot of work.
Craigslist - I'm not sure I want all these people in my house.
Recycle - Since these computers actually work, seems like a waste.
Donate the whole lot to FreeGeekChicago and take the lazy way out. Maybe it's sassy if I donate some time along with the hardware?

What do you guys do?

My vs. Your

2008-01-09T22:41:00.000-06:00

Michael recently made one of his pet peeves known to me. He prefers a web app to say "My Settings" as opposed to "Your Settings". I never really thought about it before, but I think I prefer "Your Settings". I'm guessing this is a perception issue, perhaps due to a difference between desktop and server-hosted apps.

On a web app, I think I feel like the server is talking to me: "Here are your settings that we are storing on our servers for you." With a desktop app, perhaps I'd feel more ownership over the data and I would expect the button to say "My Settings".

Or maybe because I am writing the software, I'm thinking as a service provider when I write "Your Settings" in a link.

Anyone else? Is there a Strunk & White for user interfaces that provides a rule?

Moose Tacos

2007-12-04T15:05:00.001-06:00

From Colbert excerpted from the Fact Checker,

I will give the last word to failed Democratic presidential candidate and fake news commentator Stephen Colbert who described the superhighway as a scheme "to make Canada, the U.S. and Mexico one country and force us to eat moose tacos." After investigating the matter, Colbert concluded that it must be true "because I got it from the Internet."

pobox.com move...

2007-12-01T12:17:00.001-06:00

Time for an inane question:

I'm getting a little sick of paying pobox.com $20 every year, but so many people have that address. I just renewed for another year and my New Year's resolution is going to be to move all humans to my gmail address. While it will be a pain to change all my accounts to gmail, I can do that. I just don't know the best way to get people to change.

Any thoughts on the best way to do this that would be the least annoying? At least with my contacts, mass emails don't seem to work as some people are still calling a phone number I haven't had for 5 years. My "reply-to" has been gmail for a long time, to little avail.

I was thinking of setting up an autoresponder that will send a form message to anyone that sends to pobox telling them that in the future they should send it to gmail. But that's pretty annoying. Then again, I really don't have that many friends. I could even do it by hand each time a pobox email arrives.

Only possible on the Internet

2007-11-30T19:47:00.001-06:00

If we didn't have the Internet, how would we know things like this exist?

It's been a long time

2007-11-13T07:19:00.000-06:00

So I went to the mailbox the other day and was surprised to see an envelope from the law firm of Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, LLP. Surprised really to see a letter from any law firm. Having been through the lawsuit wringer before (well maybe it was a washboard not a wringer) I was a little nervous to open the envelope. Nervous enough that I had to open it right there and then standing on on my driveway. I was hoping for stupid junk mail or maybe some Nigerian e-mail scam turned postal.

After opening the envelope and pulling out the letter I tried to quickly process it. The letter said something about parking tickets for a license plate that didn't belong to either of my cars. But wait... the license plate does seem a bit familiar... and what is the date on those tickets? 1998? Oh crap. Then I remembered the license plate of the car I owned almost 10 years ago. The license plate that is still in a box in the basement on top of the license plates from all the cars that I've owned, my parents have owned since I've been alive, and maybe some others I've collected.

As you may have guessed by now, this was a letter from a law firm representing the City of Chicago. The city decided that after 9 1/2 years I owe $440 for 4 tickets - straight up. Do I remember getting those tickets? Not specifically. But I do remember that was the year I left Chicago (and the state) and sold the car to a junkyard for $25. I remember that was the last summer for that car and that it didn't work very often. It certainly seems possible that I got some tickets, but I don't remember specifics. Really most of the details are blurred through the lens of 9 1/2 years.

To add insult to injury, the glorious City of Chicago has informed me that I've been found liable through an Administrative Hearing process. This process is now over, my time to contest the tickets has come and gone, and this is my final notice. The final notice was sent via regular mail - not registered mail or something to prove I received it. If I don't pay they claim they could put a lien on my property or garnish my wages. Why is this the first letter I've received? It's not as if I've been hiding out under a false name. Granted, I did leave town for a couple years, but I've lived in Illinois for the last 7 1/2 years. Was I really that hard to find? I have a drivers license, two cars registered in my name, and I faithfully pay state income taxes.

Should I pay? I think I'll consult with my attorney.

Android

2007-11-06T08:00:00.000-06:00

Look for an ex-Neog in this video.

Security?

2007-10-29T08:25:00.000-05:00

We've all heard of "security through obscurity" but have you ever heard of "security through letterhead"? One of my favorite sites (http://worsethanfailure.com/) has a nice mock conversation between a consultant and a domain registrar regarding a domain name transfer. If you've ever wondered how hard it would be for someone to swipe your domain from you the answer is probably not very hard.

The Colbert Effect

2007-10-24T16:33:00.000-05:00

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200710u/colbert-campaign

This is an interesting analysis of the effect Colbert might have on the South Carolina presidential primary. My favorite quote comes from page 2:

"I can’t point to anything other than truthiness, but I believe the 'drunken college student' demographic is being overlooked."

Cube-De-Sac

2007-10-19T14:58:00.001-05:00

This could have been good for the Cube-De-Sac...better than that mirror I had mounted on top of my monitor.

Ok, that's three posts in a row for me...Someone else needs to step up.

sql injection

2007-10-10T22:14:00.000-05:00

Pretty good, but this is still my favorite:

New Signature

2007-10-05T16:31:00.000-05:00

I came up with a new email signature. I can't believe I never thought of it before.

p@rick

And for those who know me as 'pat':

p@

Awesome...and it saves a keystroke to boot.

Spam Tagging Etiquette

2007-10-05T10:31:00.001-05:00

If I get added to a mailing list after buying something, I'll try to unsub. If that doesn't work do you mark it as SPAM? Is it worth contacting somebody? Complaining?

Feels very passive.

Java Web Technologies Renaissance

2007-10-04T08:33:00.000-05:00

It's a ruthless cycle. You create something so much cooler than anything out there. It makes people go wow, I never knew you could do that!

It's inevitable that somebody and probably a few somebodies will come along and make it relatively easy for mere mortals to do and the next thing you know M$ has a wizard that let's you click to build.

The good thing is that lazy people like me can benefit from the mini revolution in different ways to build integrated AJAX enabled web applications with just reading level Javascript skills. There's the obvious GWT, but also Wicket seems like a brand new way but maybe old feeling way to write web applications without feeling like you are writing web applications.

Why now all of a sudden the outburst of creativity? Is it all inspired by RoR?

2007-10-03T11:18:00.000-05:00

Your Travel Dossier

2007-10-01T08:47:00.000-05:00

Apparently everybody who flies now has a dossier. You can get a copy of your own. I saw a link to a link on boingboing. Try it and see what you get. It's ironic and perhaps telling that you have to snail mail the request and that some poor schmuck has to photocopy it and mail it back to you?

The samples they show seem to be the complete GDS PNR that a business travel agent might create. Knowing what I know it seems like it's your travel agent's fault that all the data is in there.

Don't drink coffee

2007-09-25T14:41:00.000-05:00

If your reaction on the first sip is "blech." It's helpful to also to throw away old cups of partially drunk coffee as you might accidentally drink from one.

Healthcare Reform

2007-09-25T08:43:00.001-05:00

I've read lots of stuff on this subject and the only conclusion I've really drawn is that the status quo doesn't cut it. In summary my views are,

Everyone should be able to get healthcare
Choice in insurance is good
Insurance should not be tied to your employment

I believe we can and should take care of people when they get sick. It just seems wrong to me that people have to die and suffer because they gambled on not needing insurance or they just can't afford it.

It should be obvious that choice is good.

This last point is important to me because it's one more thing that keeps people where they shouldn't be. It's completely at odds with "at-will" employment. Finally, it really limits the competitiveness of legacy companies like GM and even quasi-governmental CTA.

In a review of presidential perspectives on healthcare, in this Sunday's times, none of the 3 top candidates of either party have proposals to satisfy my 3 top requirements. I'm bummed out that it probably won't get any better than the status quo.

A Bonafide Plan to Improve the World

2007-09-20T10:18:00.000-05:00

I deal with a lot of contracts. In my last one I reviewed I spent 25% of the time stating the things I wanted and the other 75% pouring over the clauses to make sure it was consistent and to try to catch the holes. I just know that their are still ambiguity that I didn't intend that if things went south, I could be screwed by.

What if there were a DSL for contracts? With this we could test the contract for logical consistency, highlight the ambiguity, and eventually compile it into different styles of legalese.

And this is where we improve the world. Once people start using this widely, we would need significantly less corporate lawyers. Productivity would boom because people wouldn't waste their time reading the same sentence 20 times to figure out what it really means, and arbitration could be handled by code.

l33t 9009£3

2007-09-18T09:28:00.000-05:00

Is this really necessary?

Cleaning Up My Desktop

2007-09-11T17:28:00.001-05:00

This is one of my favorites that I had to capture for posterity before I trashed it. I guess whoever coded up that error must have never got it in their testing.

Palm Garnet has a similar thing where you get an error during sync and the error detail is something like AirStateSamMachine.c. What exactly are you supposed to do with that? Maybe enlightened mac / iPhone users don't have to deal with this?

I want to build an app like that

2007-09-10T16:18:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine has a kid at the Lab School, and they recently sent home a note with all the kids suggesting the parents talk to them about Twitter and the appropriateness of paying attention in class.

Free food

2007-09-10T11:24:00.000-05:00

Schneier has an interesting bit about how people steal free food from a drivethru. So let's assume you had a Mac-attack, is this really the best you can do? Do you think you could apply this to say a drive-thru Starbucks or cleaners (not that Leon's suits would come close to fitting me)? I mean if you have money enough to own a car and put gas into it, why would you need to do this? There's a reason they call it a Value Menu!

Mac Screen Capture

2007-09-08T16:10:00.000-05:00

There haven't been any posts in two days, so I thought I better help keep this blog alive...

In Gnome, to do a screen capture, you press the Print Screen key. On a mac, Cmd-Shift-4, which I can never remember and have to google every time. (You can also select a portion of the screen with Cmd-Shift-3). On my MacBook, there are five function keys with empty special features (F8 - F12)...couldn't they put a screen capture key on there (to be activated with the Fn key)? I'm sure I could remap my keyboard, but this is a useful activity that I think a lot of users would benefit from having a default, easy to use/remember way to do it.

I Wish I Could Buy an iPhone

2007-09-06T14:06:00.000-05:00

But I don't like iTunes. It would be great if somebody wrote a piece of software that allowed me to sync up the phone but didn't require iTunes. Ideally it would work on Linux and transcode my FLACs.

Eat Them Up Yum

2007-09-06T13:05:00.001-05:00

This one is a little old, but since I just joined up and don't have anything inane right now, I decided to pull this one out of my vast knowledge of stupid 80's trivia (a.k.a. my butt).

I give you the video for that wonderful 80's hit: Fish Heads

It was a big hit around the campfire back in the day. Little did I know that it stars Bill Paxton!

Game over man...

Other blogs to check out...

2007-09-06T10:36:00.000-05:00

sillydogbarks
Rules of the Swarm

By the way, is there a feed for the comments?

Yet Another Great Vista Feature

2007-09-05T23:33:00.000-05:00

After it crashes, it offers to check online for a solution to the problem. The progress bar moves for a while and then the dialog just disapears. I guess that means there's no solution or perhaps no problem it's willing to acknowledge?

Who are three people....

2007-09-05T21:05:00.001-05:00

I never thought would blog. Next thing I know you'll all have Facebook apps , Twitter pages, and a guild. I assumed that when I got an invite to a blog from Michael it was a phishing scam, but I was wrong. Thanks for letting me play.

Brings a smile to your face

2007-09-05T11:36:00.000-05:00

I get this from google analytics everyday. Makes me smile.

Snapfish Inanity

2007-09-05T10:48:00.000-05:00

I'm more of a snapfish consumer than producer (no kids), but I just uploaded 240 pictures from a road trip. I tried to do this on my mac, but if you are on a mac, you have to use an html form with 10 file fields and browse for the files one at a time, and there's no progress bar. On a PC, they let you use a flash uploader. So I booted up my PC into windows just for this and decided to use their "Picture Mover" application. Apparently, the snapfish programmers haven't heard of threads.

When I plugged in the camera, it took about thirty minutes for it to find all the photos. In that time, the interface was unresponsive (couldn't scroll, didn't redraw itself). It also had them in order by filename, not by date. And it didn't respect the rotation that is stored in the files. I figured that when I uploaded them, snapfish would make it right, so I clicked "move now". It copied all 240 to my PC (what was it doing during the first 30 minutes???), then started uploading. The first two took over an hour. I expected it to upload more than one at a time, but it looked to be going in order. For kicks, I left it on and went to sleep.

I couldn't believe it, but in the morning it was done. I went to the snapfish site and they were still in the wrong order and orientation. The rotating interface was actually kind of nice and worked well, but the rearranging interface is a nightmare. They present all photos in the album with a text entry box next to each photo with a number in it. Then they tell you to change the numbers to the order you want them in. This is nontrivial for 240 pictures. I started doing some sort of insertion sort. After you click rearrange, it of course takes you back to the album page and you have to click edit, rearrange, wait for a page load, then start doing some renumbering. Another tactic I tried was moving ones that were interrupting the order to the end by giving them numbers greater than 250 (this way I didn't have to renumber both the source and the destination).

Anyway, I've made it halfway and it's a complete mess. I'm thinking of doing bubble sort for the remaining 120...

Still nothing else to do

2007-09-04T08:46:00.001-05:00

Now it says this...

Nothing else to do

2007-09-04T08:38:00.000-05:00

It's been saying this for 15 minutes.

I found a bug on blogger

2007-08-31T14:29:00.000-05:00

They aren't pluralizing "comment" correctly...

Leave linked in?

2007-08-31T14:26:00.001-05:00

We should start a national leave linked in day. Get everybody to delete all their contacts at once . Think of the productivity gains when people stop spending all day trolling for names they recognize.

EOM?

2007-08-31T08:50:00.000-05:00

When sending an e-mail without any content, what should you put in the subject line to indicate the body of the message is empty? If the recipient is surprised to find the message empty, then you have failed.

I've seen two different ways of trying to convey an entire message with just a subject line. The first I might call the standard [EOM]. The other frankly left me a bit surprised and confused. Would you use [nt]?

Group Inanity

2007-08-29T14:31:00.000-05:00

This is for Roger.