Category Archives: Uncategorized

Spam Bait

Fitz notes that his email address appears 960 places on the web. I’m at 2630. This is one of the reasons that I’ll very soon (hopefully tomorrow) switch my primary domain over to the Google for Domains service (or whatever they’re calling it now), so that I can get out of the spam fighting business. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time over the last 12 years or so trying to figure out how to get less spam to hit my inbox, and I’m all done. Google’s got folks who do that full time, and, while I can’t figure out why they would provide this to me for free, I’m perfectly willing to let them.

Microsoft DHCP and usability

Programming design lesson for today. Programmers should be forced to use the software that they design, in an actual real-world scenario, before it is released.

The only time I ever look at the lease list on a DHCP server is when I want to find one and add a reservation for it. So, you bring up a device, it acquires an address, and you wish to make that address permanent.

So, I go to the lease list, find the device, and look around for the “Add as a reservation” button, which doesn’t exist. Grr.

So I try to copy the MAC address, so that at least I can paste it in over in the “Add a reservation” dialog, which is in a separate part of the interface – and I can’t keep the one window up while I go over to the other one.

Nope, sorry, copy disabled in this interface.

So, I bring up a notepad and type in the address, then switch to the “add reservation” interface. Turns out I can’t copy from notepad and paste it into this interface. Paste is disabled here. Grr.

So I type it in. It tells me that the format is invalid. Turns out that the MAC address format in the one interface – with colons – is invalid here. I have to enter it without colons.

So, I ask you, in what design meeting were such stupid decisions made, and have the people responsible been fired?

Sure, I know, you’ll tell me that it’s fixed in a later version. Perhaps in Vista? But, seriously, if these people had used their own product for even 10 minutes in a real environment, these kinds of issues would surely have been discovered. Or are they the kind of people who memorize their MAC address?

iPod Touch and PDAs

I recently (about a month ago) acquired an iPod Touch as my primary PDA to replace my Palm TX

The thing that kept me loyal to Palm for so many years were the apps. Thousands of apps, free or reasonably priced, that work on all Palm devices. Some of them, I used for years. Some I swapped out as something better became available. But there was always an app that did what I wanted it to do.

I got the iPod Touch for two reasons. One, it was shiny. Two, the Palm desktop on Macs is terrible, and the replacement (Missing Sync) is better, but still falls way short of what I expect.)

What surprised me the most about the iPod Touch (and, of course, the iPhone too, since they are essentially the same device for this purpose) is the lack of availability of apps. No, I didn’t stumble on this blind – I knew it before I bought. But the more I think about it, the more it astonishes me. Why would Apple do this? They ship a device without even the minimum of usable apps, and then make it so that nobody can write apps for the device but them. Surely they realize that once folks get over the shiny, they’ll be pissed off by this?

In order to run apps on this device, you have to “jailbreak” it. Now, if you’re a geek like me, that’s fine. But most ordinary people are going to take one look at the various jailbreak websites and run screaming. Yeah, it’s fairly easy, but it’s a little intimidating to do something to a $500 device that looks and sounds illegal. Is it illegal? I don’t think anybody knows. And how many people on the planet know what the “BSD Subsystem” is? Come on, Apple, you can do better than this for your customers.

What I expect on a PDA, at a bare minimum is the following:

A ToDo app. (Missing completely)

A calendar that I can sync with my desktop. (Present, but I can’t edit events on the device. I have to edit them on the computer, unless I create them on the device. So, only about half-present.)

An address book. (Present, and mostly fine, except that I can’t delete contacts from the device. Have to do that on the computer.)

Notebook. (Present, but I can’t sync the notes to anything on the desktop, so of very limited usefulness.)

Email. (Present and very nice.)

Web browser. (Present and exceptionally nice.)

So, Apple, step up a little here. Provide an API so that folks can develop apps without having to feel like criminals. Provide a way to install those apps easily.

Yes, I know, you can use web-based applications, but this is utterly worthless for a PDA. I use my PDA when I don’t have access to my computer. That tends to coincide with when I don’t have a wireless network available. See the problem?

Look at the success of Palm. It’s 98% due to their decision from the very beginning to enable third-party application developers. This helped Palm, and it helped thousands of small app dev shops, as well as hobbyists. It’s obvious that your customers want this – that’s why there’s the jailbreak sites. And it will make the device more popular, and thus sell more, so it will help you.

In Sir Arthur’s Parlor

(Inspired by Ode to the Maker of Odes, and by a brief visit with Sir Arthur C. Clarke, in his home in Colombo.)

In Sir Arthur’s Parlor
Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2006
June 5, 2008

The hand that grasped the rungs
down the gravity well into Rama,
held up a bone to tap
on a black monolith,
and held the pen
that wrote the stories of my youth,
clasped mine, for just that moment.

That hand, robbed of all its strength
by the long years,
but which gave its strength
to a constellation of dreams,
including mine.

I held it gently
afraid to bruise
that which had created
the worlds in which I spent my childhood.

The eyes that stared into space
full of stars
for just that moment looked into mine,
saw me
as a fellow writer.

Servers, then and now

Server Room, Then
Then (2005) (And there’s at least 2 others that aren’t shown here, because they’re over on the desk.

My servers, now
Now (2008)

Apparently my priorities have shifted a little in the last few years. It no longer seems like a lot of fun to maintain a bunch of dusty noisy hardware that could fail any moment. And I’ve got slightly better use for the space, too.

And some folks tell me that “normal” people (whatever that means) don’t have *any* servers in their house. I find that hard to believe.

Giles Davies

Last night we drove up to Oxford, OH, to see Giles Davies perform his night of Dickens. It was absolutely worth the drive.

He started with a piece from The Uncommercial Traveler, in which he, playing Dickens, discussed his visits to Boston and New York, in (I believe) 1859. This piece was very funny – although people at the time found it quite insulting.

Then, after the intermission, he did an excerpt from Oliver Twist, going from just before Nancy’s murder, up to Bill Sykes hanging himself. It was gripping, and although he was playing 4 different characters throughout the piece, he was very convincing, and perfectly in character with each one.

If you get the opportunity to see Giles Davies, it’s worth driving a little out of your way to go see him.

Rebel xsi

We recently got a Cannon Rebel xsi, and I am simply amazed at the difference it makes in the pictures we can take. Simply being able to take the picture I want, without having to wait 2 seconds for the shutter and missing it, is an enormous improvement. But the quality of the picture itself is so much better it makes the old camera seem like a cheap toy.

I don’t know enough about optics or photography to say exactly what the difference is, they just look so lifelike.

On the other hand, it’s discouraging to me how getting new technology makes older technology – which I was perfectly satisfied with until that moment – utterly unacceptable and useless. I really thought that our older camera took good pictures. Clearly, I was mistaken. The photos it takes are hardly worth looking at. It’s sad.

Tell you what we’re going to tell you

Yesterday the guv’mint sent us a letter to tell us that they’re going to send us a letter. That is, they sent us a letter informing us that in 3 days we’ll receive our “economic stimulus” check. I wonder how many millions of dollars it cost to send out the additional mailing. Surely it would have been sufficient to just send us the check and be done with it?